Disruptive foreign influence

The vitality of a particular society can impinge, regionally and globally, on many other nation-states in a number of ways, acting through a variety of mechanisms. Most notable of the influences of one state on another is that upon human behaviour, which includes language, customs, dress and consumer preferences. The foreign influences may also affect social relations, societal structures from the nuclear family upwards, values, norms, religious beliefs and cultural, ethnic or national identities. All foreign influences are disruptive to the extent that they usually introduce change in an abrupt manner. This is particularly true with regard to the artificially stimulated demand for free-market, developed countries' consumer products in less developed countries. Countries with significant aboriginal populations, or extremely low standards of living, are market targets for numerous sophisticated products that by any criteria would be called luxuries, or for products that are health hazards.

The intensive marketing of milk powders for bottle feeding of infants in countries where mothers are illiterate and do not understand the need to sterilize bottles or to avoid over-dilution or exposure of the formula to pests, and where mothers find too late that they can no longer pay for more milk powder or breast-feed their babies, has resulted in higher rates of infant mortality.