With the current state of foreign affairs, the terms "Americanism" and "Americanization" sometimes take on an unexpected--and an unflattering--connotation. Americanism essentially involves values, beliefs, ideals, goods and practices in local settings outside the United States that are in some way related or attributed to American influence. While the validity of this influence may be under scrutiny, it requires a detailed historical--and sometimes cultural--analysis to understand all the dynamics and implications of Americanization. A variety of factors contributes to this influence, including the preoccupation and reception of the relevant culture itself. For instance, many European countries have at times demonstrated a preoccupation with all things American which was not necessarily swayed by any action of America itself. The overall actualization of Americanization, however, encompasses a number of societal dimensions, including power differentials in the exchange processes concerned. Informed by a history of relevant developments since the early nineteenth century, this volume presents an in-depth critical analysis of the Americanization process. Beginning with a survey of early European preoccupations with things American, the book goes on to discuss European concerns regarding American influence after World War II. The work then looks at Americanism and its influence within the United States itself, especially regarding developments during the New Deal and beyond. The primary goal of the analysis is the construction of an interpretative framework, allowing for a more balanced approach to the study of Americanism abroad. Written from a critical, social-emancipatory perspective, the author's approach blends economic, military, social, political, cultural and psychological dimensions as well as an examination of the ways in which these areas interact. Finally, Americanism is examined as part of a U.S.-style corporate globalization at the current juncture. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

An analysis of Americanization in European and Japanese industry after World War II. The contributors analyze the creative role of local actors in selectively adapting US technology and management methods to suit local conditions, and in creating hybrid forms combining foreign and indigenous practices in unforeseen, yet remarkably competitive ways.

This reference resource combines unique historical analysis, scholarly essays, and primary source documents to explore the evolution of ideas and institutions that have shaped American government and Americans' political behavior. One of the most active and revealing approaches to research into the American political system is one that focuses on political development, an approach that combines the tools of the political scientist and the historian. A History of the U.S. Political System: Ideas, Interests, and Institutions is the first comprehensive resource that uses this approach to explore the evolution of the American political system from the adoption of the Constitution to the present. A History of the U.S. Political System is a three-volume collection of original essays and primary documents that examines the ideas, institutions, and policies that have shaped American government and politics throughout its history. The first volume is issues-oriented, covering governmental and nongovernmental institutions as well as key policy areas. The second volume examines America's political development historically, surveying its dynamic government era by era. Volume three is a collection of documentary materials that supplement and enhance the reader's experience with the other volumes.

Focusing on Japan, France, and the United States, Christopher L. Hill reveals how the writing of national history in the late nineteenth century made the reshaping of the world by capitalism and the nation-state seem natural and inevitable. The three countries, occupying widely different positions in the world, faced similar ideological challenges stemming from the rapidly changing geopolitical order and from domestic political upheavals: the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the Civil War in the United States, and the establishment of the Third Republic in France. Through analysis that is both comparative and transnational, Hill shows that the representations of national history that emerged in response to these changes reflected rhetorical and narrative strategies shared across the globe. Delving into narrative histories, prose fiction, and social philosophy, Hill analyzes the rhetoric, narrative form, and intellectual genealogy of late-nineteenth-century texts that contributed to the creation of national history in each of the three countries. He discusses the global political economy of the era, the positions of the three countries in it, and the reasons that arguments about history loomed large in debates on political, economic, and social problems. Examining how the writing of national histories in the three countries addressed political transformations and the place of the nation in the world, Hill illuminates the ideological labor national history performed. Its production not only naturalized the division of the world by systems of states and markets, but also asserted the inevitability of the nationalization of human community; displaced dissent to pre-modern, pre-national pasts; and presented the subject’s acceptance of a national identity as an unavoidable part of the passage from youth to adulthood.

A Companion to American Cultural History offers a historiographic overview of the scholarship, with special attention to the major studies and debates that have shaped the field, and an assessment of where it is currently headed. 30 essays explore the history of American culture at all analytic levels Written by scholarly experts well-versed in the questions and controversies that have activated interest in this burgeoning field Part of the authoritative Blackwell Companions to American History series Provides both a chronological and thematic approach: topics range from British America in the Eighteenth Century to the modern day globalization of American Culture; thematic approaches include gender and sexuality and popular culture

The postwar period is no longer current affairs but is becoming the recent past. As such, it is increasingly attracting the attentions of historians. Whilst the Cold War has long been a mainstay of political science and contemporary history, recent research approaches postwar Europe in many different ways, all of which are represented in the thirty-five chapters of this book. As well as diplomatic, political, institutional, economic, and social history, The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History contains chapters which approach the past through the lenses of gender, espionage, art and architecture, technology, agriculture, heritage, postcolonialism, memory, and generational change, and shows how the history of postwar Europe can be enriched by looking to disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy. The Handbook covers all of Europe, with a notable focus on Eastern Europe. Including subjects as diverse as the meaning of 'Europe' and European identity, southern Europe after dictatorship, the cultural meanings of the bomb, the 1968 student uprisings, immigration, Americanization, welfare, leisure, decolonization, the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, and coming to terms with the Nazi past, the essays in this Handbook offer an unparalleled coverage of postwar European history that offers far more than the standard Cold War framework. Readers will find self-contained, state-of-the-art analyses of major subjects, each written by an acknowledged expert, as well as stimulating and novel approaches to newer topics. Combining empirical rigour and adventurous conceptual analysis, this Handbook offers in one substantial volume a guide to the numerous ways in which historians are now rewriting the history of postwar Europe.

"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.

The US government launched the European Recovery Programme, otherwise known as the 'Marshall Plan', in order to save war-torn Europe from collapse in 1948. Yet while much is known about the economic side of the Marshall Plan, the extensive film campaign that accompanied it has been largely overlooked until now. The American Marshall Plan Film Campaign and the Europeans is the first book to explore the use of the Marshall Plan films and, importantly, their distribution and reception across Europe. The study examines every available film – the 170 that remain from the 200 estimated to have been made – and looks at how they were designed to instil hope, argue the case for economic restructuring and persuade the Europeans of the superiority of the liberal-capitalist system. The book goes on to reason that the films served as a powerful weapon in the cultural Cold War, but that the European audiences were by no means passive victims of the US propaganda effort. Maria Fritsche discusses the Marshall Plan films in the context of countries across Western, Northern and Southern Europe, covering the majority of the 17 European countries that participated in the Plan in the process. The book incorporates 70 images and utilises a vast number of archival sources to explore the strategies the US adopted to sway the minds of the Europeans, the problems they encountered in the process and, not least, the varied responses of the European audiences. It is a vital study for any scholar or student keen to know more about postwar recovery in Europe, the legacy of the Second World War or America's relationship with Europe in the 20th century.