ABSTRACT
Viewed in this long-term perspective, globalization has been driven as much by war as by the expansion of trade and contact between cultures. But, in a more conventional perspective, the term globalization is often used almost as a synonym for Americanization for the rise to military, economic, financial and cultural dominance of the United States of America, since 1990 the self-proclaimed sole superpower. Both globalization and Americanization need to be studied in long-term perspective, but not as two separate things: to assume that, because two words exist, there must be two separate processes is to fall into the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Americanization of habitus In one respect, Elias was wrong: there is an absolute beginning for Americanization, even if by sociologists' usual standards it is a long time ago. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, one of the great champions of globalization, stated his expectation that the same would go for manufacturing corporations during the coming recession.
