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Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of the American culture and economy on other countries outside the United States, including their media, American cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology and political techniques. Some observers have described Americanization as synonymous with progress and innovation.
The cinema of the United States has dominated most of the world's medias markets since the 1910s, and is the chief medium by which the international community sees American fashions, customs, scenery, and American way. The majority of the top 50 highest-grossing films of all time have been made either entirely or partially in the United States or were financed by U.S. production companies, even with limited or no artistic involvement.Criteria for determining a movie's country of origin are mutable and subjective but are, in practice, based on fiscal contribution and head office locations, which creates a significant advantage for a country with the money and industrial support structure - i.e. Hollywood - to fund large-scale motion pictures) The top 50 constituents set and filmed entirely in the United Kingdom, like some of the Harry Potter franchise, or with deliberately and quintessentially British source material, like the Lord of the Rings series, count as American productions for solely financial reasons. This coopting of the works of other nations and cultures into "American" works (and the hegemonic ability to do as such) forms part of many critical definitions of Americanization.
United States–based commercial enterprises operating internationally are also associated with Americanization. Notably, the Coca-Cola Company was previously the top global company by revenue, giving rise to the term "Coca-Cola diplomacy" for anything emblematic of U.S. soft power. U.S.-based fast food franchises such as McDonald's, Subway, Starbucks, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC and Domino's Pizza, among others, have numerous outlets around the world. Of the top ten global brands (2017) by revenue, seven are based in the United States: Apple Inc., Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Amazon, Facebook, and IBM.
During the Cold War, Americanization was the primary soft power method chosen to counter the more hard power-orientated polar process of Sovietization around the world. Education, schools, and particularly universities became the main target for Americanization. Resistance to Americanization within the university community restrained its effectiveness, though it was still much more successful than Sovietization. Americanization has become more prevalent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which left the United States as the world's sole superpower (the full soft power of China as a potential competing influence has yet to manifest within Occidental pop culture). Americanization found yet another gear with the advent of widespread Internet access use in the mid-2000s (notably heavily censored in China).
Criticism of Americanization has included opposition to U.S. investments in Europe during the 1960s, which subsided by the 1970s. A new dimension of anti-Americanism is fear of the pervasiveness of American Internet technology.
In general, the U.S. government plays only a facilitating role in the dissemination of films, television, books, journals etc. However, after the occupation of the former Axis countries during World War II, the U.S. government played a major role in restructuring the media in those countries to eliminate totalitarianism and to promote democracy against fascism and Nazism. For example, in Germany, the American occupation headquarters, Office of Military Government (OMGUS), began its own newspaper based in Munich in 1945. Die Neue Zeitung was edited by German and Jewish émigrés who had fled to the United States before the war. Its mission was to destroy Nazi cultural remnants and encourage democracy by exposing Germans to the ways American culture operated. There was great detail on sports, politics, business, Hollywood, fashions, and international affairs.Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht, "Art is democracy and democracy is art: Culture, propaganda, and the Neue Zeitung in Germany", Diplomatic History (1999) 23#1 pp. 21–43
Despite the restrictions placed by communist authorities, Americanization would continue to spread out over the Iron Curtain even before the collapse of the Soviet Union and accelerated afterwards. The first McDonald's in Soviet Russia had a grand opening on Moscow's Pushkin Square on 31 January 1990 with approximately 38,000 customers waiting in hours long lines, breaking company records at the time. By 1997, there were 21 locations of the Russian chain.
The importation of Little Golden Books (Petits Livres d'Or) to France under the publisher Cocorico after World War II is discussed as a subtle way of implementing cultural productions that "presented the economic principles of American liberalism in a favorable light" in a study by Cécile Boulaire.Boulaire, Cécile (2023). "The Little Golden Books in the Shadow of the CIA, or the Americanization of Children's Publishing in Cold War France." Book History 26 (fall): 390-418.
Foreign versions of American television programs are rebroadcast around the world, many of them through American broadcasters and their subsidiaries (such as HBO Asia, CNBC Europe and CNN International). Many of the distributors broadcast American programming on their television channels. In 2006, a survey of 20 countries by Radio Times found seven American shows in the ten most watched: , Lost, Desperate Housewives, The Simpsons, , Without a Trace, and .
American films have been historically extremely popular around the world and often dominate cinemas as a result of a high demand of U.S. product exported to consumers to clear away the outlook of World War II. The top 50 highest-grossing films of all time were all made entirely or partially in the United States. Often, part of the negotiating in free trade agreements between the U.S. and other nations involves screen quotas. One such case is Mexico, which abolished screen quotas after the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the U.S. and Canada.
Many American musicians, such as Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, are popular worldwide and have sold over 500 million albums each. Michael Jackson's album Thriller, at 100 million sales, is the best-selling album of all time internationally.
By the study of vocabulary and spelling of English words in books and tweets, American English is more common in communities of the European Union than British English.
Many of the world's biggest computer companies are also U.S.-based, such as Microsoft, Apple, Intel, HP Inc., Dell, and IBM, and much of the software bought worldwide is created by U.S.-based companies. Carayannis and Campbell note, "The United occupies, also in global terms, a very strong position in the software sector."Elias G. Carayannis and David F. J. Campbell, Mode 3 Knowledge Production in Quadruple Helix Innovation Systems (2011) p. 42
Even as far back as 1900, some observers saw "Americanization" as synonymous with progress and innovation. In Germany during the 1920s, the American efficiency movement was called "rationalization" and was a powerful social and economic force. In part, it looked explicitly at American models, especially Fordism.Noland (1975) "Rationalization" meant higher productivity and greater efficiency and promised that science would bring prosperity. More generally, it promised a new level of modernity and was applied to economic production and consumption as well as public administration. Various versions of rationalization were promoted by industrialists and , by engineers and architects, by educators and academics, by middle-class feminists and social workers, by government officials and politicians of many parties. As ideology and practice, rationalization challenged and transformed not only machines, factories, and vast business enterprises but also the lives of middle-class and working-class Germans.Mary Nolan, "Housework Made Easy: the Taylorized Housewife in Weimar Germany's Rationalized Economy," Feminist Studies. Volume: 16. Issue: 3. pp. 549+
Department stores threatened the more local businesses, with low prices and chain-managed stores. The small businesses were determined and fought back to protect their source of income from the U.S. market.
During the Cold War, Americanization was the method to counter the processes of Sovietization around the world. Education, schools, and particularly universities became the main target for Americanization. However, resistance to Americanization of the university community restrained it,Natalia Tsvetkova. Failure of American and Soviet Cultural Imperialism in German Universities, 1945–1990. Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2013 although it was still much more successful than Sovietization.
A new dimension of anti-Americanism is fear of the pervasiveness of American Internet technology. Americanization has arrived through widespread Internet access and smartphone technology since 2008, with a large fraction of the new apps and hardware being designed in Silicon Valley. In Europe, there is growing concern about excess Americanization through Google, Facebook, Twitter, the iPhone, and Uber, among many other American Internet-based corporations. European governments have increasingly expressed concern about privacy issues, as well as antitrust and taxation issues regarding the new American giants. There is a fear that they are significantly evading taxes and posting information that may violate European privacy laws.See "Google The Wall Street Journal in 2015 reported "deep concerns in Europe's highest policy circles about the power of U.S. technology companies."Tom Fairless, "Europe’s Digital Czar Slams Google, Facebook," Wall Street Journal 24 Feb. 2015
In 1902, the British journalist William Stead used this term in the title of his book, The Americanization of the World, in which he discussed the growing popularity of the "American ideas".
Berghahn (2010) analyzes the debate on the usefulness of the concepts of 'Americanization' and 'Westernization'. He reviews the recent research on the European–American relationship during the Cold War that has dealt with the cultural influence of the United States upon Europe. He then discusses the relevant work on this subject in the fields of economic and business history. Overall, the article tries to show that those who have applied the concept of 'Americanization' to their research on cultural or economic history have been well aware of the complexities of trans-Atlantic relations in this period, whether they were viewed as a two-way exchange or as a process of circulation.
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