Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Authors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- “The American Century”
- 1 Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century
- 2 “Empire by Invitation” in the American Century
- 3 America and the Twentieth Century: Continuity and Change
- 4 The Idea of the National Interest
- 5 The Tension between Democracy and Capitalism during the American Century
- 6 The American Century: From Sarajevo to Sarajevo
- 7 East Asia in Henry Luce's “American Century”
- 8 The American Century and the Third World
- 9 Race from Power: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of “White Supremacy”
- 10 Immigrants and Frontiersmen: Two Traditions in American Foreign Policy
- 11 Partisan Politics and Foreign Policy in the American Century
- 12 Philanthropy and Diplomacy in the American Century
- 13 A Century of NGOs
- 14 Consuming Women: Images of Americanization in the “American Century”
- 15 The Empire of the Fun, or Talkin' Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe
- 16 American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End
- Index
16 - American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Authors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- “The American Century”
- 1 Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century
- 2 “Empire by Invitation” in the American Century
- 3 America and the Twentieth Century: Continuity and Change
- 4 The Idea of the National Interest
- 5 The Tension between Democracy and Capitalism during the American Century
- 6 The American Century: From Sarajevo to Sarajevo
- 7 East Asia in Henry Luce's “American Century”
- 8 The American Century and the Third World
- 9 Race from Power: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of “White Supremacy”
- 10 Immigrants and Frontiersmen: Two Traditions in American Foreign Policy
- 11 Partisan Politics and Foreign Policy in the American Century
- 12 Philanthropy and Diplomacy in the American Century
- 13 A Century of NGOs
- 14 Consuming Women: Images of Americanization in the “American Century”
- 15 The Empire of the Fun, or Talkin' Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe
- 16 American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End
- Index
Summary
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Ambiguous LegacyU.S. Foreign Relations in the 'American Century', pp. 500 - 520Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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