Week 3
Americanisation, the new globalisation
Americanisation continues to grow, just look at the word ‘globalisation,’ even Microsoft word wants to change it to globalization. Has globalisation been replaced by americanisation?
Between 1980 and 1991 the world trade in goods with cultural content almost tripled, with the United States at the forefront of this with their growing dominance of products and trading. Globalisation now is seen by many as American culture being dumped on the rest of the world.
We clearly see aspects of this in the way that the majority drink coca-cola world-wide, watch American movies and Television shows, Eat food from American chains, enjoy American sports, listen to American music and we even adopt different American slang like ‘y’all’ and ‘holler.’
“Globalisation is in so many ways Americanisation: Globalisation wears Mickey Mouse ears, it drinks Pepsi and Coke, eats Big Macs, does its computing on an IBM laptop with Windows.” (Friedman T, 2006 NP)
To fully understand Americanisation as a concept and reasons as to why it’s evolving, I’ve broken it up into 3 categories; Economic, Political and Cultural.
Economy: Dominance of American industrial model and hegemony of corporate interests
Politics: Increasing unilateral political action by USA and its allies
Culture: Dominance of American consumer and media culture on the world stage (Ulrich B, 2003, p36)
References
Friedman T, 2006, ‘Americanization or Globalization?’ Globalenvision.org, NP
Ulrich B, 2003, ‘Global America? The Cultural Consequences of Globalization, Liverpool University Press, p36
globlogisation 
You bring up an interesting point about globalisation having become almost indistinguishable from Americanisation though I would have been interested to see you taking this further, rather than just using the definitions others have given. The references are good, but I would have liked to see what you thought they meant to the world, and how much of a negative impact this has.
Agree with the fact that Americanisation continues to grow daily throughout the world. It’s funny if you go to what has traditionally been a third world country with plenty of their own culture, and you’ll see MacDonald’s, Hardrock cafes and many other American franchises. Nice 3 categories that you break Americanisation down to. In terms of Australia, I believe the main one that has held influence in this country is cultural Americanisation. Recently I was talking to a guy who had moved from England to live in Australia with his wife and he couldn’t believe how Americanised our country had become, when we traditionally had always had such a British background and culture 50 years ago. I enjoyed this post, nice work.
You have stated your contention early and have created a good structured post. It’s a strong argument for the limiting 250 words! I like the way you associate Americanization with the spell check correction. Changing the ‘s’ in Globalisation to a ‘z’ – always happens! Good pick-up. I agree with the ‘dumping’ of American culture on the rest of the world and the Friedman quote reflects this well. It’s funny how most of us have never been to America, yet we accept so many of their ‘products’ into our culture as our own.
I also believe your 3 stage theory could add a fourth category, ‘Social.’ Fads, trends and items of interest among social groups generally circulate at a higher rate if they are seen as ‘popular’. Take for example Miley Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” song. People who haven’t heard that must be living under a rock. Here’s the link to a humorous version…
Overall an interesting post.
I’ve just smiled when I was reading the first paragraph of this post. Indeed, Microsoft even wants to change the word from S to Z! Perhaps it’s just one small example, but it’s good and interesting enough. Indeed, americanisation can be regarded as a global phenomenon, but is it equal to globalisation? In my point of view, it is not only the American culture, many other cultures have been ‘shared’ to the rest of the world, such as the Japanese cuisines like sushi and sashimi, the Chinese confucian cultural value and the language itself. Hence, although we can say americanisation is exactly a global phenomenon, but the buzzword ‘globalisation’ does not necessarily mean americanisation, as it refers to a cultural exchange between countries, but not American cultural assimilation.
Hi Michael, great use of examples of americanisation such as coco-cola and American slang. Really great evidence used to support your views too. I would perhaps try to incoporate the categories of political, cultural and economic at the end instead of just listing them.. but really well done 🙂
This is a great post! The opening got me interested straight away because we don’t really consider that something as simple as spell check shows signs of Americanisation. I really loved your examples and wish we had more than 250 words so you could have expanded on the ideas in the last paragraph. Very well written though!
Hi Michael, you thoroughly explored the concept of Americanisation. Delving into the influences of American food chains and cultures. I think it was good that you linked the various categories of political, cultural and economic influences as it helps the ready comprehend key concepts. Good work.
This is a good post. I particularly liked the example of the US standards in MS Word, it’s a great example of hegemony in action. That figure quoted in the second paragraph about the rise in trade needs a reference though.