Globalization As A Threat To American Exceptionalism
October 26th, 2007 | by Naimp | Posted in Environment |By reviewing the history of America, we will realize that American exceptionalism is stemming in American early history. In 1630, John Winthrop governor of Massachusetts Bay colony, in the Tea Party brought an Idea of “City upon a hill” (Ferrie, 2005; 2). Since then America has been defined as a unique land for Americans which still this idea exists. That is why some countries like France are opposing Globalization because they considered it as Americanization.
What will happen in the era of Globalization and post modern theories? Will American exceptionalism be threatened by Globalization and is Globalization Americanization?
In this article I will answer these questions and the reason I will talked about Americanization is that I think this term is a connection between American exceptionalism and Globalization.
Definition
American exceptionalism is a historical phrase that was first used by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831. Basically it refers to a perception that United States is qualitatively superior to other developed nations for its “unique origin, national credo, historic evolution and distinctive political and religious institutions” (Wikipedia www page, 2006).
Americanization is the term used for the influence the United States of America has on the culture of other countries, substituting their culture with American culture. When it is encountered voluntarily has positive connotation and while is unwillingly has negative meaning (wikipedia www page, 2006). Americanization actually is a complex word in modern cultural criticism and indicates two issues:
1.cultural criticism
2.International communicative debates (Biltereyst, 2002; 4);
Featherstone defined globalization and referred it to:
1.An intensified world compression of the world
2.Our increasing conscious of the world ( Barker, 2000; 167)
Globalization is constituted by abundance of global connections (such as World Wide Web, telephone, advertisements, TV, video CDs and etc) and understanding of them. Since 1970 we have witnessed an era of accelerated globalization.
Americans identify themselves more strongly than the people in other democracies. About 71% of Americans are “very proud” of living in America. This is by the way that only 38 % of French and 21 % of Germans and Japanese are proud of living in their own countries (Wilson, 2006; 1). Three-froths of Americans believe that spreading American culture around the world is a good idea but just one-forth of French think the same about French culture. By this brief statistic we can realize the depth of American exceptionalism among Americans. Even George Bush senior in January 29th 1991 said:” we are American; we have unique responsibility to do the hard work of freedom and when we do, freedom works” (Sellevold, 2002, 46).
About Globalization, Herbert Schiller indicated that the global communication industries are dominated by US-controlled corporations (cited by barker, 2000; 171) and about two-third of global movies are American (Zonis, 1999; 8). As we know Coco Cola, Mac Donald, Jeans, KFS restaurants which are wide spread around the world are American Originally. Arthur Koestler in his book “The Lotus and the Robot” defined Americanization as coco colonization (wikipedia WWW page, 2006).
Some countries like France are opposing Globalization for they dislike Americanization and like to preserve their French orientation .Jose` bove` was the first French who opposed Mac Donald (Felsing, 1999; 8).Americanization has a Fear of vulgarity, commercialization, mass mediated and standardization for the countries who are Anti-Americanist like France and some Middle Eastern Muslim countries like Iran (Biltereyst, 2002; 1). Fear of homogenous culture of America is the reason of this hate. But by arrival of Globalization and post modern theories American culture lost its highlighted impact. The idea of post colonial and post modern era changed and reduced influence of American culture. Giddens in 1999 brought a nice definition of Globalization and Americanization. He believed that people who are out of Europe and North America see globalization as westernization or Americanization (Biltereyst, 2002; 3).
I believe Globalization is not Americanization necessarily. Because we do have many global products which are embedding in different people’s life style which are not American like Toyota (Japan), Clothes (china), Nokia cell phones (Finland) or Pizza (Italy), do we consider it as Japanezation or Chinization or Finlandization or Italization?
Miller also said that Hollywood is global because it is adapting itself to Global changes to have more dominance around the world (Biltereyst, 2002; 9). Generally, globalization is not monolithic one way flow from west to the rest (Barker, 2000; 173). Each nation has a portion in this process, the more power your have the more changes you will make in the world. We have seen impacts of non-western ideas on the west as well such as:
1.Spreading religion of Islam in the world.
2.Exportation of telenovelas from Latin American countries to other parts.
3.Sale of ethnic foods and cloths.
As a Conclusion, I don’t want to ignore the influence of American culture in the world but I think Globalization will Perl influence of American dominance and in some cases will do the same about American exceptionalism but this is just in some levels. It will not ruin the whole role. Because I believe global products will become localized in some degrees to be able to be used in each country so American exceptionalism which is embedded in those products will be low lighted. Like censorship of pornographic parts of Hollywood films in Iran or even translation can sometimes change the encoded meanings in the film. The way we use internet can not exactly be the same as Latin American’s usage. Although the means are the same, we pursue different purposes. I label it as localization of the global so during the localization process some encoded meanings like American exceptionalism will loose their original functions.
1.Barker, Ch (2000) cultural studies; theory and practice, sage, London
2.Biltereyst , D ( 2002) Globalization, Americanization and politicization of media research, learning from a long tradition of research on the cross cultural influences of US media, international communication conference, Spain
3.Ferries,J( 2005) The end of American exceptionalism; mobility in the US since 1850, National bureau of economic research, Massachusetts
4.Flesing , E ( 1999) France’s conflicted relationship with globalization, international political economy, USA
5.Sellevold , M ( 2002)Look at American exceptionalism , Australian nationalist, number 65
6.Wilson , J ( 2006),American exceptionalism, The American spectator
7.Zonis, M (1999) Americanization globalization, and the disruptions of traditional culture, should business care? Journal of international political economy,volume6, number 20, Michigan