AMERICANISM

Globalization
A smaller world
People are closer together
A world closer in time and space
A world without borders
Goods, services and ideas move faster or instantly.
Driven by technology
Transportation Shipping, Containerization Air travel
Communication Television, the Internet

AMERICANISATION
The Americanism is based on its custom,
linguistic usage, or other feature peculiar to or
characteristic of the United States, its people, or
their culture and loyalty to the United States.
Americanism is a term to characterize the
influence of the United States in other cultures
around the world.

The US has been a beneficiary of the free markets, free trade

and free flow of financial resources that are at the heart of
Globalization.
The US is the center of both world finance and technological
innovation and has the worlds most vibrant democracy, best
higher education system and strongest military. However,
Globalization has brought the rise of emerging powers that
have the capacity to catch up with and even surpass the US in
several areas, principally economic.
The US is vulnerable to the kind of imperial overstretch,
where military involvement abroad overtakes the capacity of
the nations economy to sustain it. However, until now, no other
power appears to be close to amassing the kind of power that
the US has.

Americanization the spread of American

culture
The U.S. is selling their culture to the rest of
the world
The U.S. entertainment industry generates
high revenue from overseas sales
Spreads through music, television, films, the
Internet, and American corporations in foreign
countries
98% of movie ticket sales in Canada are from
American movies
MTV Arabia was launched recently
Impacts local cultural traditions.

How does globalization affect culture?

It is argued that one of the consequences of
globalization would be the end of cultural
diversity, and the triumph of a uni-polar
culture serving the needs of transnational
corporations. Hence the world drinks CocaCola, watches American movies and eats
American junk food.
American culture is seen to be dominated
by monetary relationships and commercial
values
replacing
traditional
social
relationships and family values.

 It does not make sense to talk of a

world of 6 billion people becoming a
monoculture. The spread of globalization
will undoubtedly bring changes to the
countries it reaches, but change is an
essential part of life. It does not mean
the abolition of total traditional values.
Indeed, new global media, such as the
internet, have proven a powerful means
of affecting traditional culture.

 capitalism,
democracy
and
Americanism are used as synonyms.
The anti-globalists portray globalization
as an American neo-liberal project,
accusing U.S. based multinational
corporations to have severely magnified
the trade conflicts and job insecurity,
exploited indigenous resources, and
threatened local culture.

Dominance of American mass media

Oligopoly (the domination of a market by a few
firms) of big media companies:- Disney, Warner,
Sony etc
Imbalance of cultural flows: from core to
periphery, not vice versa

America Puts a Man on the Moon, 1969

Westernisation / Americanisation of the world

Domination of American consumer brands:
McDonalds, Nike, Coca-Cola, Gap
(McWorld - Benjamin Barber)
Global cultural homogenisation
-Same consumer goods everywhere
-Same ways of thinking everywhere
This is bad (left-wing critics e.g. Noam
Chomsky)
This is good (right-wing critics e.g. Francis
Fukuyama)

A multinational Enterprise (MNE) is any

business that has productive activities in two
or more countries

One particular local culture plays leading role in global processes, and
this particular local culture is American one. The content of cultural
flows mostly have American

Associated with the American Image A new one opens every

three hours Found in 119 countries
Takes away from local cultures Makes more revenue from
overseas than from America

THE USA IS AN INDISPUTABLE LEADER OF

THE MODERN GLOBAL MEDIA MARKET
19 of top 40 global audiovisual companies have the US origin.
The USA is also a leader in media content production and export.
44% of overall television programming in the EU countries is
the US import; in Latin America it runs up to 75%.
Even in the EU more then 70% of films have the US origin,
and only about 2% from the rest of the World.
These are not just material goods; these are strong images and
brands which bring certain values, style of life, behavior models.

Universal Values
Systems of socio-political values which are
disseminated all over the World via global
institutions and organizations (governmental
and nongovernmental) and which considered
as universal (human rights, democracy,
liberal market) have western culture
provenance (origin).
The USA is the main articulator and promoter
of these values.

The USA has the great power in world economy

and politics.
American culture has greater technical capacity:
greater information, communication and social
technologies, which make American cultural
goods much more competitive.
Most of modern TNC/MNC have the US origin.
The level of American economy and effective
management give much more possibilities to
transformed local companies into global
corporations.

Impact of the Global Economy on Culture has

resulted in a consumer culture built on a tendency
toward homogenization of cultural products and
heightened awareness of local tastes and values
This homogenization is often called the
Americanization or McDonaldization of the
world
Through advertising, American music, fashion,
fast food, etc have spread throughout the world
At the same time, global marketing often
emphasizes the local or indigenous value of a
product.

Scholar Joseph Nye introduced the notion of soft

power the power of McDonalds and Coca-Cola
or the inherent appeal of American style
democracyto describe Americas supposedly
unique exercise of global power during the
twentieth century.
He argues that this disembodied power, the ability
to getting others to want what you want, is far
more important for Americas hegemony than the
hard power of military might.

Robert Gilpin constructs globalization as a form of

internationalization that is a byproduct of an U.S. initiated
multilateral economic order. He argues it is U.S. political
leadership that shaped international economic management
and created an impetus for the liberalization of national
economies.
Thomas Friedman also believes that globalization has a
distinctly
American
face
(or
Americanizationglobalization, as he calls it), but he describes it as a
process that is inevitable but not politically guided.

Reluctant globalization? U.S. Overseas

Expansion, 1860-1941
U.S. pre-First World War history as an era
characterized solely by economic expansion void
of any state intervention.
U.S. foreign policy aggressively sought to open
markets by combining it with the establishment of
a naval power around the globe when European
states were engaged in the imperial power grab in
Africa.

America and Globalization: (1919 1945): The period to be considered as a

confirmation of America as a world
power militarily. The U.S. committed
itself further to Latin America, Asia,
and the Pacific, while economically,
financially, and culturally it expanded
in Europe during this period.

Rosenberg has persuasively argued, the

U.S. government played a decisive role in
the expansion of media and popular
culture industries and the further
development
of
information
and
communication technologies the very
sectors that have come to symbolize
globalization to its theorists.

The U S government was actively engaged in the expansionist

developments of privately owned media, particular during times
of hot and cold wars when export of information, film and radio
transformed into American specialty products.
The U.S. governments war propaganda agency broke the
London monopoly in film for Hollywood during the First World
War. As a result of that government policy, 95 percent of films
shown in Britain and Canada, 70 percent in France and 80
percent in South America were Hollywood productions.
American
expansion
occurred
through
civil-society
organizations that were closely tied to the government.

First World War:

Alliance: Britain France Russia Vs Central Power
(Germany, Austria and Hungry
Victory of Allies Countries because of USA, entered in the
war in the last phase
Treaty of Versailles 1919 and President Woodrow Wilson
Origin of Second World War (1939 to 45)
Rise of Nazism and Fascism
War started with invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany
Japanese attack on US military base in Perl Harbour base
in Hawai on 7th Dec 1941
Ends with August 1945 when US dropped atomic Bomb in
Japan

American-led Globalization since 1945

The Post-Second World War era (1945-1972) brings into
sharp focus a new global partnership among an activist
American state, corporate business-union coalition, and
international non-governmental organizations that closely
collaborated on the basis of a shared global vision and
strategy.

The cold-war global reordering combined a set of

tools of control involving military (alliance systems
and interventions), economic (dollar aid and
investments), political (leverage and sanctions as
superpower), and cultural (image of America as leader
of the free world) means. The combination was
tremendously powerful and involved both hard and
soft powers, economic prowess, military hardware, and
cultural authority.
There is a broad consensus that during the postwar
period, the years between 1945 and 1972 mark an era
of classic Americanization.

The new corporatism was an outcome of an

American government that had established an
international financial system (Bretton Woods) that
came to determine the global economy with new
institutions, such as the World Bank, IMF, and
GATT after taking off in 1958. At the same time,
American MNCs became a new international
phenomenon. The American styled globalism that
merged an economic and military complex with a
cultural production was probably unique. One finds
little of it in theories of globalization.

The proponents and the historicallyminded skeptics of globalization, and

the U.S. role in it, are correct in their
assessment to temper the U.S. role in
shaping and directing globalization
during the twentieth century. The
effects of 9/11 have forced scholarship
to rethink the framing of U.S. global
power in new ways.

The
capitalism
and
Americanization
are
more
multidimensional forces than McDonaldization. That is, they
are more likely to bring with them both something and
nothing. While the impact of the United States has its
ambiguities, and is not as powerful as capitalism, it is clearly an
enormously powerful force throughout the world.
The power of Americanization comes from its strength in all of
the sectors being discussed herecultural, economic, political,
and institutional. While capitalism affects all of these realms,
its greatest impact is obviously in the economic realm.
Americanization is not only a potent force in these realms, but
its power extends much more into the political and institutional
areas, including the military. The political and military
hegemony of the United States in the world today accords it
enormous power.

No doubt America is playing a crucial role in

the
process
of
globalisation
but
Americanisation should not be understood as
synonymous of globalization.