Perceptions Of America Research Articles

Adam Smith on America

The article makes an incursion into Smith’s perception of America, according to his many approaches to the new continent in The Wealth of Nations and in Lectures on Jurisprudence. Smith’s perceptions about the population – immigrants, indigenous population, slaves – are under review. Smith’s treatment of ‘colonies’, as well as his commitment to combating the ‘mercantile system’ determine his approach to America. Contrasts between slave labor and free labor colonization are also under review, as well as the contrasts among the European nations in their American colonial adventures. Given the many recent studies on the diffusion of the Wealth of Nations in American colonies and countries, especially at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the article tries to invert the focus, showing that ‘Smith on America’, instead of the reception of the Wealth of Nations in America (‘Smith in America’), may add to our understanding of nuclear points of Smith’s approach to historical realities.

Framing the Baltic States in the US Security Policy Discourse During Donald Trump Administration

For decades the US has been a cornerstone of the security of the Baltic States. It has played an important role in regaining independence in the 1990s as well as strengthening the deterrence and defence posture in the region. Until Donald Trump’s presidency the relations between both sides weren’t questioned and, at some point, even taken for granted. Donald Trump’s perception of America’s role and the cooperation with the closest Allies made several external “shocks” to the security environment that was built and strengthened by previous US administrations. This approach extensively affected the perception of security within and of the Baltic States. Understanding how Donald Trump and other main security policy discourse agents frame the Baltic States and what is the role of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in the overall US security policy, affects the overall security of the Baltic States. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyse how the US security policy discourse agents formulated the Baltic States and what was the “framing” of the Baltic States in the discourse of US security policy during the Trump administration. This paper is based on the qualitative content analysis of primary sources. It analyses official documents and speeches made by the US security policy discourse agents (president, vice-president, state secretary and secretary of defence). The conducted analysis outlines that: a) an official US security policy discourse during the Trump’s administrations towards the Baltic States has been resistant to internal and external “shocks”, b) involvement of the US in the Baltic States can be described as “conditional” depending on the financial commitment of the Baltic States - the framing of the Baltic States have been interconnected with their commitment to devote the necessary resources to the defence, c) the analysis concludes that Baltic States haven’t had a “special” role in the US security policy discourse.

Russian-American relations in the public opinion of Russia and the USA

The article is devoted to the study of Russian-American relations through the prism of public opinion of both countries. Foreign political views of citizens are an important element of international politics in the modern information society; they directly affect the development of international relations, providing an opportunity to legitimize and moralize foreign policy decisions of world leaders. Based on open secondary data from opinion polls, the article traces the history of the development of Russian-American relations in the post-Soviet period. The author proves that the formation of anti-Americanism ideas underlying the current reversion of consciousness to the Cold War era was formed by the early 2000s. The personality of President Vladimir Putin and his foreign policy strategy have become decisive for Russian-American relations, but at the same time, negative identification in the system of images of “friends and enemies” of Russians and Americans is realized by value-based foreign policy ideas, rather than by opportunistic situational value judgments. The media produces the existing crisis agenda, influencing the emotional, rather than meaningful response in citizens’ opinions. The events of 2014 triggered the current long-term crisis in Russian-American relations, a characteristic feature of which was the disparity (asymmetry) of mutual perceptions, which intensified after 2018. This period is also characterized by an increase in the ambivalence and turbulence of public opinion, primitivizing its model to the expression of the bloc consciousness “for — against”, “friend — enemy”. For Russians, their stance on the Ukrainian question alongside sanctions remain the key indicators in the perception of America. For Americans, such indicators are the strengthening of totalitarianism in Russia and interference in American elections. There are no short- and medium-term prospects for improving Russian-American relations in the current period.

American Philhellenes and the Poetics of War

ABSTRACT Between 1821 and 1829, the Greek War for Independence attracted widespread and enthusiastic support in the United States. While most were content to simply follow along with the war’s proceedings, a small but vocal group of “philhellenes” took the remarkable step of making Greece’s cause their own. American philhellenes used nationalistic appeals couched in the language of an emergent middle-class sentimentality to raise funds for the Greeks while also lobbying for deeper American involvement in the conflict. Greece’s revolution, American philhellenes argued, was not a foreign war to be avoided; it was an occasion for reaffirming the nation’s moral and political commitments. By studying the poetical justifications for American involvement with the Greek Revolution, we are afforded a glimpse of an important development in popular perceptions of U.S. foreign policy. Philhellenic poetry presents a case study in how popular reading habits blended with nationalistic rhetoric to“sentimentalize” popular perceptions of America’s place in the world. Philhellenes used the nation’s expanding market for print material to forward normative claims about the nation’s responsibility toward the Greek revolutionaries, bringing into sharp relief the permeable boundaries between popular culture and public perceptions of foreign policy.

Fake News Is Real: The Significance and Sources of Disbelief in Mainstream Media in Trump’s America

Are appeals to discredit mainstream media reporting of political news in the guise of “fake news” merely a diversion from more fundamental threats to democratic politics and policymaking? Or is the emerging belief in “fake news” itself a looming threat? Using data from the Voter Study Group’s panel survey, we examine the relationship between disbelief in mainstream media and a wide range of social attitudes and policy preferences. We find that in December 2016, just after Trump’s election, belief in fake news wields an outsized influence, independent of partisanship, ideology, media consumption, and other established foundations of public opinion. The effects of fake news beliefs are especially pronounced on key elements of Trump’s rhetoric as candidate and as president—hostility toward immigrants, racial and religious minorities, gender equality, perceptions of America’s “greatness,” and even support for democratic norms and institutions itself. We also find some evidence that by January 2019, the belief in fake news has become even more focally associated with Trump. These findings portend the possibility of an emerging exclusionary, populist variant of American conservatism, of which disbelief in media institutions is a key component.

How America and China see each other: charting national views and official perceptions

Based on the premise that perception operates either as a catalyst or a constraint for a hegemonic war, this study examines ‘national perceptions’ (i.e. how the citizens of the two states view each other) and ‘official views’ (i.e. how the two governments perceive each other) between the US and China of the post-Cold War period. As for the national views, (1) American perceptions of China have generally become more negative than Chinese perceptions of America; (2) little congruence is found between the two powers on key values and norms; and (3) perceptions are generally getting far ahead of the realities. As for the official views, formal documents do not fully reveal their real state of minds. Diplomatic courtesy and strategic self-esteem runs through them. Yet, America’s strategic concern and growing will to manage China from a position of strength is increasingly more discernible. From the Chinese documents, on the other hand, signs of inferiority have gradually disappeared. In sum, perceptions between the two are working more as a catalyst for strategic competition than a constraint on it.

Amerikan Jokes: The Transnational Politics of Unlaughter in Turkey

How did ideas about humor shape US allies’ perceptions of America and Americans during the Cold War? This essay offers a small part of the puzzle by examining a category of unfunny jokes that midcentury Turks came to call “Amerikan.” The structure of these jokes shifted between the late 1940s and 1990s, offering clues as to how disparate cultures can merge and transform across uneven power divides. The label itself and the connection to “unlaughter,” however, also operated as a political index. Turkish opinion leaders and journalists used Amerikan jokes to comment on US actions, including Cold War aid policy and the war in Vietnam, and to code local perceptions of American political leaders, including President Harry Truman, then senator Joseph Biden, and President Ronald Reagan. Using Turkish newspaper archives and Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports, this essay demonstrates how ideas about American national character coded through humor could influence local perceptions at a time when the United States was both seeking to differentiate itself from Europe as a “benevolent” world power and driving economic and cultural change in newly independent nations.

해방기 문인들의 이데올로기와 현실인식의 갈등 양상 -‘미국’에 대한 형상화와 인식의 변화를 중심으로-

해방기 문인들의 이데올로기와 현실인식의 갈등 양상 -‘미국’에 대한 형상화와 인식의 변화를 중심으로-

What Young Russians Think about Russia and America

The article provides a comparative analysis of the linguistic and cultural picture of the world of contemporary Russian university students on the basis of surveys of their perceptions of America and the Americans as well as Russia and the Russians. The data that were collected from a free association experiment that was conducted by S.G. Ter-Minasova in 1992, 1995, and 1998 are compared with the data that were obtained by the author during her study in 2015. Respondents were asked to write down one to 10 associations that came to mind for a given concept. By comparing the data between the different surveys, we are able to note how the perceptions of Russian students about Russia and Russians, America and Americans and the reasons prompting these perceptions have changed. The most notable findings are that the following words representing the lexical-semantic group describing financial status were no longer cited in the 2015 survey: “poor,” “rich,” and “dollar,” whereas the following words belonging to the lexical-semantic group describing power appeared on the most recent survey: “war,” “impudent,” “selfish,” “haughty,” “the desire to dominate others,” “cunning,” “powerful,” and “racism.”

America’s Principled Realism and the Jerusalem Declaration: Implications on Israeli-Palestinian Two-State Solution

One of the vexed issues between Israel and Palestine in the Middle East region of escalating conflict and tension is claims and counter-claims on the status of Jerusalem between the defenders of Arab nationalism and Zionism. On 6 December 2018, United States President Donald Trump, leveraging on America’s “principled realism” in the new world order, made an epochal declaration on Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city. The declaration inflamed the war-cloud in the region; threw up protests and re-alignments between peoples, organisations and states based on perception of America’s national interest. The broad objective of the study is to examine the realities behind the declaration. The specific objective is to underscore the implication of the status of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Israeli-Palestinian two-State solution for global security. This study is anchored on realism

Syrian Refugees and Americans: Perceptions, Attitudes and Insights

In recent years, the United States (US) has seen an influx of refugees from the Syrian Crisis, highlighted by a public declaration from then President Obama that 10,000 refugees would be admitted. National surveys suggested that roughly half of US citizens were uncomfortable with this decision. This study serves as an extension of these previous surveys by further elucidating the underlying causes of this discomfort. As such, this study explores Americans’ perceptions of Syrian refugee resettlement as well as Syrians’ perceptions of America using face to face interviews and content analysis. Analyses revealed conflicting meanings of immigration for both Syrians and Americans as well as co-occurring compassion and fear directed towards Syrian refugees. In addition, Syrian refugees perceived their American resettlement as an opportunity for engagement with society and to contribute socially and economically, while also noting their marginalization and stigmatization in their transitional countries. Americans expressed a lack of understanding of the legal status of Syrian refugees, often equating them with undocumented and illegal migrants. Americans held oppositional attitudes towards Syrian refugees, expressing both empathy towards and fear of terrorism. This study extends the literature on immigration through a more dynamic exploration of attitudes of both refugees and citizens in America, capitalizing on the distinct advantages of qualitative approaches.

Ameryka w poezji Anny Frajlich

AMERICA IN ANNA FRAJLICH’S POETRY This article focuses on the representations of the United States in Anna Frajlich’s autobiographical work. Selected poems explore the transformations in her perception of their country of immigration. At first, the poet introduces America as a place of banishment after the events in Poland in March 1968, as a country where it is possible to live but difficult to feel at home. Later, she emphasises the beauty and delight over the American landscape and culture, and of New York in particular. Finally, she presents America as her new home and the place where she has put down new roots. However, this is not the end of the pilgrimage for the poet because for the Jewish nation that she is part of, this end never comes. Therefore, in the last volume of poetry, New York is referred to as “a boat and a haven” rather than a port. A change in thinking about herself and her life is the result of the transformation of the subject’s perception of America. The banished woman gradually accepts her fate, gets used to it and decides to live in the present. However, she does not reject the past which has largely determined her identity. If it had not been for her Jewish origin she would not have been banished from Poland. It leads the poet to a better self-understanding, to a new definition of herself as a human being, a woman, a Jew, a Pole and an American.

The Gospel of Anti-Americanism in South Korea: Mass Media Exposure and Negative Audience Perception

Although there are many reasons behind anti-Americanism in South Korea in the 21st century, it is believed by some experts that the anti-Americanism originated over a decade ago from the 2002 Olympic short track speed skating controversy, and the issues with the Boeing F-15K. Based on exemplification and social cognitive theories, this study examines the extent to which exposure to the South Korean mass media coverage of these two concrete exemplars of negative American images, Olympic short track speed skating and the Boeing F-15K, affected South Koreans' negative perceptions of America. Results revealed that the South Korean mass media coverage of negative American images serves as the basis for evaluating two well-known American-coded issues: the American soccer team's performance in the 2002 South Korea and Japan World Cup, and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism and the United States, 1776-1945

The main argument of Jan-Uwe Guettel’s book is that Germany’s imperial liberalism, which began in the mid-nineteenth century, was racist and expansionist, drawing as it did both on examples of westward expansion in the USA and on the discriminating racial politics prevalent in the American South to further the cause of German colonies. The perception of America as a liberal colonial empire was incorporated into German liberal theories from the late eighteenth century, and put into practice in the late nineteenth century when colonial debates in the Reichstag allowed for a framing of issues that transcended political lines. In defining liberalism, Guettel notes that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, it is often seen as a relatively benign concept when compared with Nazism. He disputes this, positing that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial liberalism was infused with violence, racism and oppression. In his lengthy introduction Guettel argues that German colonialism was supported and championed by German liberals, a stance contrary to traditional historical narratives, yet one aired by various newer studies. He draws upon a wide range of secondary literature (watch out for footnote 7, which is almost two manuscript pages long) to contextualize and describe the intellectual development of this historiography in reference to German history. His broader argumentation throughout the book questions the three prevailing methodologies describing German liberalism: cultural pessimists (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer); those who see European colonialism as the origin of European totalitarian ideologies (Hannah Arendt and others); and those advocating the theory of a German Sonderweg. In describing the historiography of the positive exceptionalism of America’s imperial and colonial past, Guettel draws upon a much smaller and predominantly older set of sources than he does for the German historiography. This sets the tone for the focus upon German domestic and international politics as opposed to domestic US politics.

Perceptions of America and British Reform during the 1860s

Perceptions of America and British Reform during the 1860s

Baldwin's Atlantics

Cora Kaplan and Bill Schwarz (eds), James Baldwin: America and Beyond, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2011, 259pp; paperback $24.65 James Baldwin: America and Beyond makes forceful contributions to the transnational scholarship on Baldwin's life and works by embedding selected writings of Baldwin within both the national and international contexts that influenced them. The edited book of Cora Kaplan and Bill Schwarz is an excellent addition to black Atlantic studies by providing essays that reveal Baldwin's complex relationships with America, Africa, France, Turkey and other parts of the world. Without a doubt, this volume provides the first extensive study of Baldwin's relationships with the world outside of the United States. James Baldwin: America and Beyond is a unique contribution to the transnational study of a major African American writer whose works have increasingly received the attention of scholars attempting to link America to the rest of the world, but not to the broad extent to which the essays of this volume have done. Before the publications of pioneer works such as William J. Weatherby's James Baldwin: Artist on Fire (1989), Michel Fabre's Black American Writers in France, 1840-1980 (1991), and David Leeming's James Baldwin: A Biography (1994), the scholarship connecting Baldwin to the world outside of the United States was rare. With Ernest A. Champion's Mr. Baldwin, I Presume: James Baldwin--Chinua Achebe, a Meeting of the Minds (1995), the three books above opened up the transatlantic study of Baldwin's writings with such varied emphases as Baldwin's initial impressions about racism in France, the legacy of colonialism in Africa, and the influence of this knowledge on the African American writer's identity. Complementing these works, Femi Ojo-Ade's introduction to his book, Of Dreams Deferred, Dead or Alive: African Perspectives on African-American Writers (1996) and Babacar M'Baye's essays, 'The Image of Africa in the Travel Narratives of W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr' (2003) and 'African Retentions in Go Tell It on the Mountain' (2006), helped bring Baldwin back to transnational studies by revealing his ambivalent relationships with Africa and some of the Francophone African participants at the 1956 Congress of Black Writers in Paris. The interpretation of Baldwin's works in a transnational framework is an ongoing endeavor that was tremendously enhanced with the publication of Magdalena J. Zaborowska's book, James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile (2009) and her essay, 'In the Same Boat: James Baldwin and the Other Atlantic' (2009), which both show the significance of Baldwin's works in Turkey, beyond the local and international settings in which they used to be confined. Kaplan and Schwarz's book make tremendous contributions to the above scholarship, since the essays within it effectively study both the local and transnational relevance of Baldwin's life and works. The first six chapters of the book examine Baldwin's life and works as the development of a black writer who always searched for his identity both within and outside the boundaries of America's national character. These chapters interpret Baldwin's intellectual heritage as the legacy of an American patriot who perfectly understood and embodied the exceptional qualities of his national identity to a point that he also knew its limitations. In this sense, as Cheryl A. Wall suggests, Baldwin was a master of the art of 'strategic American exceptionalism', since he 'repudiates in particular the myths and illusions of the American exceptionalism proposed by American studies scholars' while he 'extends this genealogy and affirms the democratic ideals enunciated in the letters of the republic' (p37). Wall's essay suggests the complex duality in Baldwin's perception of America that many of the contributions in the collection also reveal. While he valued the significance of American national symbols, Baldwin did not perceive these identity markers as unique and perfect. …

Contrasting Visions: Perceptions of America in Henrik Ibsen's Pillars of Society

The great conversion about America that took place in European letters throughout the nineteenth century was characterized by a marked tendency towards polarization and routinely cast the New World...

Chinese Outbound Tourists’ Destination Image of America

This study was designed to obtain a collective mental picture of the United States as a travel destination among Chinese long-haul outbound travelers. In addition to identifying major features and components of the America travel brand, the authors also attempted to map the links and associations among various image components and sketch an associative network. Findings of this study revealed that overall, Chinese outbound tourists’ perceptions of America are highly urban, featuring advanced economic development, an open and democratic system, high technology, and big cities. Most American destinations and attractions Chinese tourists can think of are located on the East and West coasts. By analyzing the data from multiple perspectives and using various tools, the authors also hope to contribute some methodological insights on how to make sense of a large amount of categorical image data.

(De)constructing “America”: the Case of Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream (1993)

By means of an analysis of Kusturica’s only film about America, Arizona Dream, this article argues that while the United States offers a vision of a united society founded on diversity, it also represses, altering in the process both society and the landscape. National unity is consequently a dream – a dream the film suggests that has often been dreamed up by un-Americans. Filtered through Kusturica’s own perceptions of America – and his position on the Balkan War (1991-2001) – the film seems to suggest sadness at the loss of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural perspective. Through its representations of geography and ethnic diversity, and its dense network of filmic citations, what Arizona Dream ultimately offers is consequently a European auteur’s view of the United States rather than a systematic deconstruction of the “imagined community” of “America.”

Rethinking Aristotle’s <i>Poetics</i>: The Pragmatic Aspect of Art and Knowledge

When pragmatism first gained favor in the early twentieth century, some British philosophers like Russell regarded it as evidencing their perception of America’s crude and enterprising spirit.1 The Imperial jab lay in this: that just as business indicates the exchange of products and services to meet basic needs as well as others, for the pragmatist, knowledge is tied to social practices and instrumentality (that is, being able to effect changes in the world). The slight lies in attributing to pragmatists, rightly or wrongly, the view that instrumentality is the ultimate purpose of knowledge. Thinking that knowledge and art are independent of instrumental ends can be traced back to at least Aristotle’s separation of theory from practice. For Aristotle, knowledge was superior to experience (Metaphysics, 1.1, 982b10) and art to history.2 For him, knowledge and art are not concerned with “individuals” (Metaphysics, 1.1, 981a16), which pertain to external ends related to actions. Knowledge and art yield “universals” (Metaphysics, 1.1, 981a16) that are internal ends in themselves, relating to specific cognitive changes. Yet for some time, Aristotelians have been attempting to elucidate the ethical, and hence practical, dimensions of art.3 Generally, it is little remarked