To understand a non-Western perspective on culture as a research field, we must first take a few steps back in history. Why, after all, should ‘non- Western’ be a category at all when researching culture? Doesn't such a question directly assume the superiority of Western culture because of the sharp dichotomy that the word connotes? Yet this dichotomy was exactly what the Western white man wanted to convey at the end of the nineteenth century. An example of this attitude is reflected in the poem written in 1899 by English poet Rudyard Kipling entitled The White Man's Burden:

The poem, written on the occasion of the diamond jubilee year of Queen Victoria of the British Commonwealth, is seen as a typical example of the colonial, racist, and imperialist attitude of the West.

The way in which the extreme lack of reflection on the exploitation of the colonies was linked as a matter of course to the racist premise of ‘the White Man’ is also evident in the telling advertisement for Pears’ Soap from the 1890s. Yet even back then, there was significant criticism of this work. More generally, it was around this time that a growing public outcry against how the West treated the colonies started to materialise. Although this criticism gradually increased in strength, it was to take almost half a century before the colonial system crumbled worldwide, and some scholars still doubt whether it has completely disappeared. We will return to this point in the next chapter. The intense and often violent processes of decolonisation in India, Asia, and Africa in the decades after the World War II had a far-reaching impact on the way culture is studied, for understandable reasons. Postcolonial studies has left its definitive mark and is still ongoing; it continues to have an impact on cultural studies.