American Cultural Imperialism Research Articles

American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End

Students of Americanization are in general agreement regarding the semantic transformations that attend the dissemination of American cultural messages across the world. Depending on their precise angle and perspective, some tend to emphasize the cultural strategies and auspices behind the transmission of American culture. Whether they study Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show when it traveled in Europe, Hollywood movies, or world's fairs, to name just a few carriers of American culture, their focus is on the motifs and organizing views that the producers were trying to convey, rather than on an analysis of what the spectators and visitors did with the messages to which they were exposed. All such cultural productions, taken as representations of organizing worldviews, tend to lead researchers to focus on the senders rather than the receivers of messages. Such a focus, in other words, hardly ever leads these researchers to look at the process of reception as more than one of passive imbibing. But whatever the words one uses to describe what happens at the point of reception – words such as hybridization or creolization – current views agree on a freedom of reception, a freedom to re-semanticize and recontextualize meaningful messages reaching audiences across national and cultural borders. Much creativity and inventiveness goes into the process of reception, much joy and exhilaration springs from it. Yet making this the whole story would be as fallacious as a focus centered solely on the schemes and designs of the senders of messages.

Invasion

Invasion

Bibliographia Missionaria: Thermometer of Missiology

Can German Catholic missionary bibliographers find happiness in a French Catholic missionary order, and then adapt to working with conciliar and evangelical Protestant bibliographers? Bibliographia Missionaria's change from Italian to English also raises the problem of American cultural imperialism if all our reference tools are in English. Bibliographia Missionaria reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the modern missionary movement, especially cross-cultural development.

Ministering to the Oppressed? Change and the Spiritual Economy of the Faith Movement in Durban during the late Twentieth-Century

There are, generally, three explanations for the politics of Charismatic Christianity in late twentieth-century South Africa. In the first instance, materialist social science and religious studies interpretations have come to assert an intellectual hegemony over the study of fundamentalism in South Africa. These explanations draw from deprivation theories and critiques of American cultural imperialism.' The latter fuses the inappropriateness of the prosperity gospel for southern Africa's socio-economic crises with the influence of the New Christian Right. These interpretations have depicted Charismatic Christianity as supporting the ideology of the apartheid state, the white social order and the economic system of western liberal capitalism.

Music Culture in Singapore: Record Companies, Retailers and Performers

abstractWorld popular music is often seen as the arena for American cultural hegemony or imperialism. This study proposes a more complex model based on Singapore’s cultural characteristics and the actions of the largest multi-national music corporations, retailers, and local music performers. The study is based on the results of interviews conducted at six international music record companies in Singapore, one-third of the record retailers, and 46 live music performers.

The future of war

Trends Promoting Violence Throughout the world, America has been and continues to be the promised land, the standard of human success, and the embodiment of the fulfillment of a broad range of human aspirations for prosperity, health, freedom, mobility, and the good things in life. That expanding image of American culture has been augmented today by television and by films. American culture is the dominant culture in the world. English is the universal language of the world’s middle class and, increasingly, of business, industry, and diplomacy. One result of the US dominance in entertainment and its delivery of culturally oriented messages are the comparisons, in most parts of the world, with what could be-the U.S. situation, and what is-the local situation. Information technology has led to a rise in global expectations and promoted a global homogenization of values and expectations. Low-cost transportation allows the direct cultural injection of values into people, as tourists and, more deeply, as students. One consequence of American cultural imperialism we see is pathetically illustrated recently in Tiananmen Square. The plan of the old-guard Chinese leadership was to have their students go abroad and selectively pick up only the economically and technologically useful lessons from the West. Instead, the inevitable happened, they picked up the cultural messages as well, and on returning home became

School teachers as agents of cultural imperialism in territorial hawaii

THE COLONIZATION OF HAWAII, MARKED ESPECIALLY BY ANNEXATION OF THE islands in 1898, involved the familiar processes of economic, political and cultural domination by an external power. In this or any other episode of im perialism, and whatever processes are emphasized, the role of the system of public schooling should be taken into account; indeed, it was once thought im portant enough to warrant the title Education as Cultural Imperialism for a publication in which imperialism was defined in the broadest sense.1 To measure the significance of formal education against American policies of domination in territorial Hawaii is to examine schooling within two intertwin ing local contexts: the legitimation of 'Americanization' after 1898 and the efforts to protect the planter oligarchy interests of the region. But another, almost contrary, role has been claimed for education in that part of the world. Lawrence Fuchs posited the notion of territorial public schools as 'crucibles of democracy', contributing strongly to the ultimate political eclipse of the oligar chy after the Pacific War of the 1940s.2 To what extent can these attributed roles of schooling be sustained with respect to Hawaii? Several general histories of Hawaiian education touch upon such aspects to a certain extent,3 but the concern of this paper is rather with the teachers themselves than broadly with education as a social institution. How far, for instance, did this group of in dividuals figure as agents of American cultural imperialism and how much did they foster the political revolution of the post-War era? The period chosen for examining these questions is the 1920s and 1930s. In the earliest stages of that period chauvinistic hysteria produced principally by World War I reached its peak in the school system. In Hawaii at that time ethnocentrism found a further dimension in the authorities' fear of 'Japaniza tion' of the islands, a fear based on demographic trends and on the largely Japanese labour strikes on the plantations in 1909 and 1920. By the late 1920s and until the Pacific War another major issue with implications for formal education was the drift of rural labour from the plantations. Against the

Evaluation statistique de la pénétration du cinéma américain en France

A Statistical Evaluation of the Penetration of American Movies in France. American movies, which come into France in large numbers (they account for about 30 % of general attendance), do not, however, seem to pose a threat to the health of our national movie industry. A statistical study comparing the success of French and American films over the last 20 or, even 40 years, points to a relative stability in the ratio of films shown and the number of persons attending them. It shows them to be more complementary than competitive and questions the « invasion » theory often put down to American cultural imperialism. French film production, even with its ups and downs, far from giving way before Hollywood imports, continues to impose its supremacy (50 % of total attendance) and seems to be able both to take advantage of the American image and return its challenge.

American Cultural Imperialism Reconsidered

L'Impérialisme culturel américain ré-examiné. Souvent simple sous-produit d'une domination politique, militaire et économique, l'impérialisme culturel s'est donné par le passé « une mission civilisatrice» qui le légitimait. (C'est le cas de la France). Ce qui fait l'originalité de l'impérialisme culturel américain, c'est qu'il n'est mu que la logique de la loi du marché. Les produits culturels, conçus pour un public peu cultivé qui nourrit souvent des préventions anti-intellectuelles, ne requièrent qu'une attention et une capacité conceptionnelle très faibles, et pratiquement aucune connaissance historique ou autres. Ces produits sans caractère sont donc facilement exportables. Plutôt indifférents au reste du monde (la tradition isolationniste), les Américains n'ont jamais été très enclins à « convertir » les autres. Ils se contentent de leur vendre à bas prix les produits de leurs industries « de la culture ».

1. American business values and cultural imperialism

1. American business values and cultural imperialism