ABSTRACT
Discussions of globalization often focus on Americanization and many discussions of Americanization focus on popular culture, media and consumerism, as in the familiar litanies of Coca-colonization, McDonaldization, Disneyfication, and Barbie culture. These are all highly visible, within many people’s range of experience and easily communicated, so they receive overwhelming attention. But the focus on culture belies the significance of American influence in economics, politics, and security, though it is less visible on the street. Besides, American cultural influence and what Joseph Nye calls “soft power” is rarely adequately linked to the other dimensions of American influence,1 yielding an approach that is culturalist and ignores the relations between soft and hard power. This chapter combines the themes of American exceptionalism and American international influence and in the process seeks to correct the culturalist approach to “Americanization.”
