One of the main features of the world economy since the late nineteenth century has been the growing dominance of the American economy in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Aspects of this development - e.g. rationalization or the world-wide diffusion of Coca-Cola - have been researched, but largely in isolation. Americanization of the European Economy provides a comprehensive yet compact survey of the growth of American economic influence in Europe since the 1880s. Three distinct but cumulative waves of Americanization are identified. Americanization was (and still is) a complex process of technological, political, and cultural transfer, and this overview explains why and how the USA and the American model of industrial capitalism came to be accepted as the dominant paradigm of political economy in today's Europe. Americanization of the European Economy summarizes the ongoing discussion by business historians, sociologists, and political scientists and makes it accessible to all types of readers who are interested in political and economic development.

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.

Rifkin delves deeply into the history of Europe--and eventually America--to show how Europeans have succeeded in slowly and steadily developing a more adaptive, sensible way of working and living.

No survey can capture the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, from globalization opponents to corporate executives--Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America. For the first time, anti-Americanism has become a European lingua franca. In this sweeping and provocative look at the history of European aversion to America, Andrei Markovits argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776. While George W. Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, particularly in Western Europe, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is. Focusing on seven Western European countries big and small, he shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday life--such as sports, language, work, education, media, health, and law--that remain far from the purview of the Bush administration's policies. Aggravating Europeans' antipathies toward America is their alleged helplessness in the face of an Americanization that they view as inexorably befalling them. More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism. Above all, he shows that while Europeans are far apart in terms of their everyday lives and shared experiences, their not being American provides them with a powerful common identity--one that elites have already begun to harness in their quest to construct a unified Europe to rival America.

The postwar period is no longer current affairs but is becoming the recent past. As such, it is increasingly attracting the attentions of historians. Whilst the Cold War has long been a mainstay of political science and contemporary history, recent research approaches postwar Europe in many different ways, all of which are represented in the 35 chapters of this book. As well as diplomatic, political, institutional, economic, and social history, the The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History contains chapters which approach the past through the lenses of gender, espionage, art and architecture, technology, agriculture, heritage, postcolonialism, memory, and generational change, and shows how the history of postwar Europe can be enriched by looking to disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy. The Handbook covers all of Europe, with a notable focus on Eastern Europe. Including subjects as diverse as the meaning of 'Europe' and European identity, southern Europe after dictatorship, the cultural meanings of the bomb, the 1968 student uprisings, immigration, Americanization, welfare, leisure, decolonization, the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, and coming to terms with the Nazi past, the thirty five essays in this Handbook offer an unparalleled coverage of postwar European history that offers far more than the standard Cold War framework. Readers will find self-contained, state-of-the-art analyses of major subjects, each written by acknowledged experts, as well as stimulating and novel approaches to newer topics. Combining empirical rigour and adventurous conceptual analysis, this Handbook offers in one substantial volume a guide to the numerous ways in which historians are now rewriting the history of postwar Europe.

In a lively critique of how international and comparative political economy misjudge the relationship between global markets and states, this book demonstrates the central place of the American state in today's world of globalized finance. The contributors set aside traditional emphases on military intervention, looking instead to economics.

This textbook offers students an interdisciplinary and theoretically informed understanding of the cultural processes of Americanisation.

An analysis of Americanization in European and Japanese industry after World War II. The contributors analyze the creative role of local actors in selectively adapting US technology and management methods to suit local conditions, and in creating hybrid forms combining foreign and indigenous practices in unforeseen, yet remarkably competitive ways.

Observing the dramatic shift in world politics since the end of the Cold War, Peter J. Katzenstein argues that regions have become critical to contemporary world politics. This view is in stark contrast to those who focus on the purportedly stubborn persistence of the nation-state or the inevitable march of globalization. In detailed studies of technology and foreign investment, domestic and international security, and cultural diplomacy and popular culture, Katzenstein examines the changing regional dynamics of Europe and Asia, which are linked to the United States through Germany and Japan. Regions, Katzenstein contends, are interacting closely with an American imperium that combines territorial and non-territorial powers. Katzenstein argues that globalization and internationalization create open or porous regions. Regions may provide solutions to the contradictions between states and markets, security and insecurity, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Embedded in the American imperium, regions are now central to world politics.