Author: Peter Conrad Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500772274 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 449
Book Description
From politics and war, to jeans and sneakers: a look at America’s influence on the world from an international perspective On the day after 9/11, foreign newspapers ran headlines announcing “We Are All Americans Now.” Though the sentiment was not new, it was also not quite the same as when Henry Luce announced in 1941, the inauguration of what he called “the American Century,” during which the US was to raise all men “from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist calls a little lower than angels.” When America suddenly emerged as a global power in the postwar period, the world—with pockets of resistance from France, Russia, and Japan in particular—was happy to be remade in the US image. America dazzled, and sometimes intimidated, older, staler, less innovative cultures. The affluence it placed on display was something to which most other countries aspired, and it was this fantasy that helped win the Cold War. Fast forward to today and the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, days before a possible financial default by the US government, calling for a de-Americanized world. A context for Peter Conrad’s grand tale is, inevitably, politics, war, and commerce, but for the most part he draws on his brilliant repertoire of cultural skills to assess, surprise, invigorate, and delight us with his kaleidoscopic presentation of the movies and music, jeans and sneakers, food and refrigerators, novels and paintings that have shaped so much of the world in our lifetimes.
Author: Robert W. Rydell Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226732347 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 222
Book Description
When it comes to the production and distribution of mass culture, no country in modern times has come close to rivaling the success of America. From blue jeans in central Europe to Elvis Presley's face on a Republic of Chad postage stamp, the reach of American mass culture extends into every corner of the globe. Most believe this is a twentieth-century phenomenon, but here Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes prove that its roots are far deeper. Buffalo Bill in Bologna reveals that the process of globalizing American mass culture began as early as the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, by the end of World War I, the United States already boasted an advanced network of culture industries that served to promote American values. Rydell and Kroes narrate how the circuses, amusement parks, vaudeville, mail-order catalogs, dime novels, and movies developed after the Civil War—tools central to hastening the reconstruction of the country—actually doubled as agents of American cultural diplomacy abroad. As symbols of America's version of the "good life," cultural products became a primary means for people around the world, especially in Europe, to reimagine both America and themselves in the context of America's growing global sphere of influence. Paying special attention to the role of the world's fairs, the exporting of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show to Europe, the release of The Birth of a Nation, and Woodrow Wilson's creation of the Committee on Public Information, Rydell and Kroes offer an absorbing tour through America's cultural expansion at the turn of the century. Buffalo Bill in Bologna is thus a tour de force that recasts what has been popularly understood about this period of American and global history.
Author: Asif H Qureshi Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000596281 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
This book provides insights into the world trading order that is informed by power --- in particular, the unidirectional norm imparting impact of US foreign trade law and practice on its trading partners and non-State actors. In this context, the recent tensions between the US and China, has brought to the fore, several fundamental and systemic questions. Underpinning these is the challenge of accommodating economic power under the rule of international economic law, including inculcating responsibility in its engagement. In the light of the recent US challenges to the world trading order, this timely publication will help us understand how U.S. will continue to shape the international economic order.
Author: Lawrence A. Peskin Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM ISBN: 1421403366 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 463
Book Description
This American history explores the country’s role as a globalizing force from the arrival of Columbus to the 21st century. The twenty-first century may be the age of globalization, but America has been at the cutting edge of globalization since Columbus landed here five centuries ago. In America and the World, Lawrence A. Peskin and Edmund F. Wehrle explore America's evolving connections with Europe, Africa, and Asia in the three areas that historically have been indicators of global interaction: trade and industry, diplomacy and war, and the "soft" power of ideas and culture. Divided into four historical phases of globalization, this book considers how international events and trends influenced American as well as how America exerted its own influence—whether economic, cultural, or military—on the world. The authors demonstrate how technology and disease enabled Europeans to subjugate the New World, how colonial American products transformed Europe and Africa, and how post-revolutionary American ideas helped foment revolutions in Europe and elsewhere. Peskin and Wehrle also explore America’s rise to global superpower, and how this power alienated people around the world and bred dissent at home. During the civil rights movement, America borrowed much from the world as it addressed the social issues of the day. At the same time, Americans—especially African Americans—offered a global model for change as the country grappled with racial and gender inequality.
Author: Eileen Tamura Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252063589 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
"The main theme of this book is the interplay of Americanization and acculturation of the Japanese in the Hawaiian Islands. By acculturation the author refers to what the Nisei wanted and actually did achieve-their adaptation to American middle-class life" -- Preface.
Author: Natan Sznaider Publisher: Liverpool University Press ISBN: 1781386668 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 287
Book Description
Many contemporary issues cannot be readily or fully understood at the level of the nation state and the concept of globalization is used to develop understanding through the analysis of global (transnational) processes. This volume explores the phenomenon of Americanization, and its worldwide impact, and the cultural consequences of globalization.
Author: William H. Marling Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 0801889332 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
William Marling's provocative work analyzes—in specific terms—the impacts of American technology and culture on foreign societies. Marling answers his own question—how "American" is globalization?—with two seemingly contradictory answers: "less than you think" and "more than you know." Deconstructing the myth of global Americanization, he argues that despite the typically American belief that the United States dominates foreign countries, the practical effects of "Americanization" amount to less than one might suppose. Critics point to the uneven popularity of McDonalds as a prime example of globalization and supposed American hegemony in the world. But Marling shows, in a series of case studies, that local cultures are intrinsically resilient and that local languages, eating habits, land use, education systems, and other social patterns determine the extent to which American culture is imported and adapted to native needs. He argues that globalization can actually accentuate local cultures, which often put their own imprint on what they import—from translating films and television into hundreds of languages to changing the menu at a McDonalds to include the Japanese favorite Chicken Tastuta. Marling also examines the unexpected ways in which American technology travels abroad: the technological transferability of the ATM, the practice of franchising, and "shop-floor" American innovations like shipping containers, bar codes, and computers. These technologies convey American attitudes about work, leisure, convenience, credit, and travel, but as Marling shows, they take root overseas in ways that are anything but "American."
Author: Lane Crothers Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 9780742566835 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
A third edition of this book is now available. Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this concise and insightful book explores the ways American popular products such as movies, music, television programs, fast food, sports, and even clothing styles have molded and continue to influence modern globalization. Lane Crothers offers a thoughtful examination of both the appeal of American products worldwide and the fear and rejection they induce in many people and nations around the world. Concluding with a projection of the future impact of American popular culture, this book makes a powerful argument for its central role in shaping global politics and economic development.
Author: Judit Bokser Liwerant Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9047428056 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 460
Book Description
This volume addresses key conceptual issues and case studies dealing with contemporary Jewish identities amidst globalization processes, with special emphasis on Latin American socio-political, communal, and cultural milieu. The book brings together a variety of disciplinary and theoretical approaches that range from political science to sociology and from art and literature to demography in order to offer the reader a multidimensional and multifocal analysis of the diverse constitutional elements of the Jewish experience. Using as its point of departure the wide horizon of historical trajectories and current challenges, the articles analyze the transnational, regional and local processes that inform the different Jewish Diasporas and Israel. Simultaneously, its content provides a snapshot of the current state of research on collective identity building processes and a lively analysis of the challenges posed by cultural diversity and primordial and civic belongings in the framework of political transitions, as well as new and old forms of expressing through cultural creativity individual and collective identities.
Author: Peter Conrad
Author: William Thomas Stead
Author: Robert W. Rydell
Author: Asif H Qureshi
Author: Lawrence A. Peskin
Author: Eileen Tamura
Author: Natan Sznaider
Author: William H. Marling
Author: Lane Crothers
Author: Judit Bokser Liwerant