Beyond "Modernization" and "Colonization"

Abstract

Recent scholarship on foreign relations focuses increasingly on its cultural dimensions. Definitions of “American culture” in such investigations vary greatly, ranging from exports produced by industries situated in the United States, to interactions between “ordinary” Americans and “ordinary” people abroad, to the value systems that Americans bring to their interactions with foreign nations. Frequently, assessments of the impact of American culture abroad employ the term “Americanization.” Although what constitutes “American culture,” “American values,” or “Americanization” has been highly contested, two main interpretive paradigms have emerged to make sense of U.S. foreign cultural relations. The “modernization paradigm” links American culture to economic development and political democratization and presents Americanization as a process by which the United States, through its political, economic, and cultural presence, manages the development of liberal democracies, market economies, and consumer cultures abroad. Constructed in the postwar period, this paradigm builds on a firm belief in the American superiority over totalitarianism, over both the fascist losers of World War II and Cold War enemies. The experiences of postwar Western European countries and especially the democratization and growing wealth of West Germany seem to confirm that U.S. power applied abroad brings peace, progress, and prosperity. Crudely put, this paradigm, which has shaped much scholarship on post-World War II Europe, posits the existence of an American culture that reflects and transports a uniform, democratic American value system.1