[PDF] State Americanization eBook

Author : Mel van Elteren
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 12,8 MB
Release : 2006-09-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 078642785X

GET BOOK

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.

Author : John C. Hennen
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 32,81 MB
Release : 2021-12-14
Category : History
ISBN : 0813193621

GET BOOK

Local teachers and ministers extolling the virtues of hard work and loyalty to God and country. Veterans' groups and women's clubs promoting the military fighting radicalism, and equating business and patriotism. Industrial leaders gaining legal as well as moral influence over national domestic policy. Such scenes might seem to be lifted from a Sinclair Lewis novel or a Contract with America publicity video. But as John C. Hennen shows in this piercing analysis of early-twentieth-century American political culture, from 1916 to 1925 "Americanization" became the theme—indeed, the script—not only of West Virginia but of the entire nation. Hennen's interdisciplinary work examines a formative period in West Virginia's modern history that has been largely neglected beyond the traditional focus on the coal industry. Hennen looks at education, reform, and industrial relations in the state in the context of war mobilization, postwar instability, and national economic expansion. The First World War, he says, consolidated the dominant positions of professionals, business people, and political capitalists as arbiters of national values. These leaders emerged from the war determined to make free-market business principles synonymous with patriotic citizenship. Americanization, therefore, refers less to the assimilation of immigrants into the national mainstream than to the attempt to encode values that would guarantee a literate, loyal, and obedient producing class. To ensure that the state fulfilled its designated role as a resource zone for the perceived greater good of national strength, corporate leaders employed public relations tactics that the Wilson administration had refined to gain public support for the war. Alarmed by widespread labor activism and threatened by fears of communism, the American Constitutional Association in West Virginia, one of dozens of similar organizations nationwide, articulated principles that identified the well-being of business with the well-being of the country. With easy access to teacher training and classroom programs, antiunion forces had by 1923 rolled back the wartime gains of the United Mine Workers of America. Middle-class voluntary organizations like the American Legion and the West Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs helped implant mandated loyalty in schoolchildren. Far from being isolated during America's transformation into a world power, West Virginia was squarely in the mainstream. The state's people and natural resources were manipulated into serving crucial functions as producers and fuel for the postwar economy. Hennen's study, therefore, is a study less of the power or force of ideas than of the importance of access to the means to transmit ideas. The winner of the1995 Appalachian Studies Award is a significant contribution to regional studies as well as to our understanding of American culture during and after World War I.

Author : Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson
Publisher : Working in the Americas
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 21,37 MB
Release : 2010-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813035505

GET BOOK

"Makes a formidable contribution to U.S. immigration history by addressing historical and contemporary debates about national identity and the place of immigrants within American society."--Brian Gratton, Arizona State University "Deepens and clarifies our understanding of this understudied but very important social movement by comparing and contrasting those Americanization efforts aimed at protecting immigrants with those more coercive educational programs which we have previously thought to encompass the entire movement."--John F. McClymer, Assumption College In the first decades of the twentieth century, a number of states had bureaus whose responsibility was to help immigrants assimilate into American society. Often described negatively as efforts to force foreigners into appropriate molds, Christina Ziegler-McPherson demonstrates that these programs--including adult education, environmental improvement, labor market regulations, and conflict resolutions--were typically implemented by groups sympathetic to immigrants and their cultures. Americanization in the States offers a comparative history of social welfare policies developed in four distinct regions with diverse immigrant populations: New York, California, Massachusetts, and Illinois. By focusing on state actions versus national agencies and organizations, and by examining rural and western approaches in addition to urban and eastern ones, Ziegler-McPherson broadens the historical literature associated with Americanization. She also reveals how these programs, and the theories of citizenship and national identity used to justify their underlying policies, were really attempts by middle-class progressives to get new citizens to adopt Anglo-American, middle-class values and lifestyles. Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson is a public historian who lives in New Jersey.

Author : Alexander Stephan
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 39,4 MB
Release : 2005
Category : History
ISBN : 9781571816733

GET BOOK

The ongoing discussions about globalization, American hegemony and September 11 and its aftermath have moved the debate about the export of American culture and cultural anti-Americanism to center stage of world politics. At such a time, it is crucial to understand the process of culture transfer and its effects on local societies and their attitudes toward the United States. This volume presents Germany as a case study of the impact of American culture throughout a period characterized by a totalitarian system, two unusually destructive wars, massive ethnic cleansing, and economic disaster. Drawing on examples from history, culture studies, film, radio, and the arts, the authors explore the political and cultural parameters of Americanization and anti-Americanism, as reflected in the reception and rejection of American popular culture and, more generally, in European-American relations in the "American Century." Alexander Stephan is Professor of German, Ohio Eminent Scholar, and Senior Fellow of the Mershon Center for the Study of International Security and Public Policy at Ohio State University, where he directs a project on American culture and anti-Americanism in Europe and the world.

Author : Eileen Tamura
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 20,58 MB
Release : 1994
Category : History
ISBN : 9780252063589

GET BOOK

"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.

Author : Patrick J. Buchanan
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 17,61 MB
Release : 2007-10-02
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780312374365

GET BOOK

A wake up call alerting us to America's dire problem with illegal immigration, from bestselling conservative author Pat Buchanan