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- Volume 23, Issue 2, 2004
European Journal of American Culture - Volume 23, Issue 2, 2004
Volume 23, Issue 2, 2004
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Editorial
More LessThis special edition of the European Journal of American Culture began life as a series of seminars that I pulled together with the assistance of a number of colleagues, at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford in the spring of 2003. Everyone who participated in the series, which was titled ‘Americanisation and Anti-Americanism: Global Views of the USA’ agreed there was a growing need for a closer study of global attitudes toward the United States. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the increasing strength of opinion about America - in Europe particularly - encouraged an engagement in the discussion about the causes and consequences of Americanization and anti- Americanism. The response to the seminars in Oxford was enthusiastic and the widespread interest led to the staging of a three-day conference at the Rothermere American Institute in September 2003, organized in conjunction with the Mershon Center at the Ohio State University. Local (as well as global) interest in the subject continues to grow, and it has recently secured a place on Oxford’s modern history faculty’s lecture list....
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Layers of anti-Americanism: Americanization, American unilateralism and anti-Americanism in a European perspective
More LessThe American invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 brought to the surface of public debate among European elites a robust anti-Americanism. The reaction to US unilateralism has been nourished by a complex of fears. Two in particular. The first fear has to do with the presumed economic and cultural Americanization of Europe. The second fear with the Americanization of the European political process. Both fears seem unjustified to a closer logical and empirical scrutiny. However, the overwhelming global power acquired by the US in the post Cold War era, and the unilateral exercise of that power especially after September 11, 2001, fed the anti-American sentiment contributing to its most militant manifestation. Although anti-Americanism is deeply rooted in European political cultures and experiences, nevertheless its re-emergence has been greatly triggered by American foreign policy strategy.
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Under America’s sign: two nineteenthcentury British readings
More LessRather than emphasizing British anti-Americanism during the nineteenth century, ‘Under America’s sign: two nineteenth-century British readings’ examines the ways in which British attitudes to America and its culture reflect ambivalence about Britain’s own place in the modern world. In order to illustrate how British identities were shaped in exchanges with America, the article concentrates on two texts: Charles Dickens’s American Notes for General Circulation (1842) and Charles Wentworth Dilke’s Greater Britain (1868). ‘America’ is thus seen as a space marked not by ‘otherness’ or sheer difference, but by the differences of proximity, in-between-ness, or kinship.
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Americanisation and anti-Americanism at the periphery. Nicaragua and the Sandinistas
By David RyanAnti-Americanism in Nicaragua arose from a dialectical relationship between US power and influence and opposition to it. The expressions of anti-Americanism were directed against American power and intervention and not towards some of the shared values such as liberty, self-determination and democracy. The Sandinista revolution was largely successful because it coalessed around a ‘coalition of revulsion’ against the US client regime. It resisted both the US economic presence and its overbearing culture, attitudes, diplomacy and disproportionate influence. North Americans were widely regarded as the champions of democracy, liberty and self-determination. When those narratives did not accord with the experience of those who encountered US power, and when that power was perceived as creating economic dependencies or supporting political authoritarianism it fermented strong resentment. US attitudes further polarised the situation, giving rise to an identity politics based on caricature, exclusion, fundamental essences and intolerance.
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No common ground? Islam, anti-Americanism and the United States
More LessGiven the tension between America and Islam which was provoked by the terrorist attacks of September 11, the question posed by this essay is what areas of common ground exist between the United States and the Islamic world and what likelihood there is of expanding such common ground. Two models of US-Islamic relations - a ‘cooperation model’ and a ‘conflict model’ - are examined with a view to establishing the relative weight of negative and positive factors in the relationship. The essay concludes with the suggestion that Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, and others like it, come close to cultural determinism. The case can be made that it is not conflict of cultures which gives rise to political conflict and war but political conflict, and especially the collapse of political authority, which provokes cultural conflict. From this point of view, the challenge is to seek workable solutions to political problems, taking into account cultural differences without allowing them to dictate the agenda.
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From modernism to the movies: The globalization of American culture in the twentieth century
More LessThe cultural relationship between the United States and world has never been one-sided. On the contrary, America was and continues to be as much a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic influences as it has been a shaper of the world’s entertainment and tastes. Indeed, American culture has spread throughout the world precisely because it has drawn on foreign styles and ideas. Americans have then reassembled and repackaged the cultural products they received from abroad, and retransmitted them to the rest of the planet. In effect, Americans have specialized in selling the fantasies and folklore of other people back to them. This is the reason America’s culture has been so popular for so long in so many places.
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Uniting a divided nation: Americanism and anti-Americanism in post-war Germany
More LessIn the context of the Iraq war, ‘Anti-Americanism’ has become a European fact but also an instrument of political controversy, part of a simplifying argument of either/or. The essay probes into the various implications of European ‘Anti- Americanism’ and then concentrates on German cultural history where the influence of American culture (‘Americanization’), after both wars, was fought by cultural nationalists on the right as well as on the left but was also embraced by those who wanted to break up rigid social and cultural structures in the name of innovation and democracy. Resentment and ambivalence run deep but should not hide a basis of shared values as well as the new global fact of a mutual dependency which makes multilateralism a necessity.
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 42 (2023)
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Volume 41 (2022)
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Volume 40 (2021)
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Volume 39 (2020)
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Volume 38 (2019)
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Volume 37 (2018)
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Volume 36 (2017)
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Volume 35 (2016)
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Volume 34 (2015)
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Volume 33 (2014)
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Volume 32 (2013)
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Volume 31 (2012)
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Volume 30 (2011 - 2012)
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Volume 29 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 28 (2009)
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Volume 27 (2008)
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Volume 26 (2007 - 2008)
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Volume 25 (2005 - 2007)
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Volume 24 (2005)
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Volume 23 (2004)
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Volume 22 (2003)
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Volume 21 (2002)
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Volume 20 (2001 - 2002)