"Here, There and Everywhere": The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture / Edition 1

by Reinhold Wagnleitner, Elaine Tyler May

Overview

American popular culture is everywhere. All over the world, kids wear Levis, radios blare rap songs, television stations broadcast American programs, and Hollywood movies draw huge audiences. Does this massive "Americanization" of the globe represent some sinister form of cultural imperialism? Alternatively, do audiences and consumers in the importing countries accept American movies, music, and television programs because they match local trends and desires? Do receiving communities transform these products to fit their own needs, to the point where they are no longer "American" but in fact have become indigenous? And who is in charge of all of this, anyway? Is it Wall Street, Madison Avenue, the Pentagon, the CIA, or Hollywood? Is it, at least partly, local economic and political elites in the receiving countries? Or is it simply "the people," nationalities be damned? These are the questions at the heart of the essays collected in "Here, There and Everywhere." Essays by 23 authors from 14 countries cover topics from Japan to Spain, Nigeria to Russia, and from West Germany to East Germany (a distance that seemed to be further than travelling to the moon, yet was covered by rock 'n' roll most easily, despite the wall). In five sections, they examine the historical background, the impact of Hollywood, the power of American popular music from jazz to rock 'n' roll and rap, and the popularity of as well as resistance to American popular culture in particular countries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781584650355
Publisher:	University Press of New England
Publication date:	03/01/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

REINHOLD WAGNLEITNER, Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Salzburg and past President of the Austrian Association for American Studies, also played and sang in Austrian pop, rock, and jazz bands. The English translation of his Coca-Colonization and the Cold War (1994) won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. ELAINE TYLER MAY, Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Minnesota, was a recent President of the American Studies Association and a Fulbright Distinguished Professor of American History at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her books include Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (revised edition, 2000), and Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness (1995).

Table of Contents

Contributors: John G. Blair Aurora Bosch Gülriz Büken James T. Campbell Myles Dungan Michael Ermarth Thomas Fuchs David Gray J. Michael Jaffe Rob Kroes Elaine Tyler May Michael May Giuliana Muscio Masako Notoji Nosa Owens-Ibie Christoph Ribbat M. Fernanda del Rincón Oliver M. A. Schmidt Elizabeth Vihlen Penny M. Von Eschen Reinhold Wagnleitner Gabriel Weimann Theodore Wilson

Editorial Reviews

"A fitting vehicle for the editors' efforts to put the very idea of Americanization to rest." —Lingua Franca

From the Publisher

This anthology of 19 excellent articles grew out of a recent Salzburg Seminar on the impact of American cultural products abroad. (The Salzburg Seminar is a noted forum for promoting global dialog on mainly government/business issues.) The anthology is particularly strong on the reception and influence of classic Hollywood films and American jazz in Europe. A final section focusing on economic and cultural issues related to the Internet adds to the book's timeliness. The essays, by academics and cultural critics, are well written and engaging. However, while Wagnleitner (modern history, Univ. of Salzburg) and May (American studies and history, Univ. of Minnesota) herald the volume's "global" perspective, the coverage is somewhat lopsided. Aside from individual articles focusing on Japan, Nigeria, and South Africa, the content is heavily weighed toward the impact of American commercial culture in Europe. Nonetheless, it will prove interesting to general readers and scholars alike, complementing such earlier works on the subject as Americanization and the Transformation of World Cultures: Melting Pot or Cultural Chernobyl (edited by Philip H. Melling and Jon Roper, Edwin Mellen, 1996). Highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Andrew Brodie Smith, Martin Luther King Memorial Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

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