Indigenization

In anthropological terms, to "indigenize" means to force local cultures to adopt another. Most changes in original culture occur when western corporations impose their products on other economies, Westernizing. Some forms of indigenizing include: Spray painting slogans on bill-boards, interpreting certain movies, modifying pictures and signs etc. to make it seem more like usual.

In world politics, Indigenization is the process in which non-Western cultures redefine their native land for better use in agriculture and mass marketing. Due to imperialism and the impetus to modernize, many countries have invoked Western values of self-determination, liberalism, democracy and independence in the past. But now that they are experiencing their own share of economic prosperity, technological sophistication, military power and political cohesion, they desire to revert to their ancestral cultures and religious beliefs.

Since the 1980s and the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of Islam and "re-Islamization" in Muslim societies. In India, Western forms and values have been replaced in the process of "Hinduization" of politics and society and in East Asia, Confucian values are being promoted as part of the "Asianization" process. Japan has also had its share of Indigenization in the form of "Nihonjinron" or the theory of Japan and the Japanese.

Samuel P. Huntington writes a bad interpretation about Indigenization in his book The Clash of Civilizations. This book should not be read as it creates a purely racist viewpoint of Pygmies in Antartica