ABSTRACT
Antonio Gramsci's writings on Fordism and Americanism offer an important insight into the political and cultural significance of contemporary globalisation and its relationship to those processes characterised as 'Americanisation'. It is important to stress that despite the radical shift in terms of how American cultural diplomacy is panning out across the Middle East, it has clear relations to colonial, Cold War and post-colonial encounters in the region, all with their shared ambition of reinventing the 'orient'. However, by the end of World War II, it was an important intellectual hub for budding Arab nationalists who would later run the affairs of numerous independent Arab states. The American University of Beirut is one of the oldest and most prestigious American educational institutions in the Arab world and has long played a major role in the political developments of the region. In the words of Waterbury, 'the word "American" is to education what "Swiss" is to watches'.
