Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Americanisation'

[From Introduction]: ‘Work’ is not a topic that much concerns contemporary novelists or fires the creative imagination. Today, writing about work is primarily done by investigative reporters like Elizabeth Wynhausen, whose Dirt Cheap: Life at the Wrong End of the Job Market (2005) is a striking – if rare – under-cover exposé of what ‘economic reform’ really means for menial Australian workers. There is certainly no literary equivalent now of the British and Australian novels, appearing in the 1950s and 1960s, preoccupied with the relationship between changing patterns of work and working-class experience: the lived transformations of traditional class and family ties; the impact of new consuming habits and popular cultural pursuits; the political situation of ordinary working people, and shifts in their attitudes and values. These British and Australian novels generally assumed that reorganisations of the working coal face or factory floor extended into the private sphere, informing or producing the stressful personal dramas played out in communities and at the kitchen sink.This thesis argues that these novels were elements of a broader dialogue in the 50s and 60s: one in which work and working-class life were significant subjects, articulated in a range of complementary discourses that were interlocutory – economic and political analysis, sociology, nascent cultural theory, popular newspaper commentary and literature. Consequently, a main objective of this thesis is to reveal how these representational forms or disciplines converged in the period 1950–1965: to examine their common themes and interests, and their collectiveresponses to questions concerning working-class life. The thesis argues that all these forms or disciplines shared the view that the condition of the working classes, in both Britain and Australia, crucially mattered to the overall social architecture of the time. It also argues that they all regarded the presence of America, the era’s pre-eminent global force, as central to such questions; and that America was complexly understood as an idealised political concept, a power-house of popular cultural production, and a very real engine of socio-economic change.

1. Why was there a strong reaction from Islamist MPs about the Americanisation of education in Kuwaiti schools?
2. Which parts of the textbooks were being questioned and which arguments were used?
3. Could there be any reasons to delete particular phrases in textbooks, which may seem to offend people of certain religious denominations?

Kuwait as a state has been in earlier conflicts with Iraq, which has led to some Islamists not being in favour of Kuwait, getting support from the USA. The Islamists in these Arab states imply that the war between Kuwait and Iraq was a direct punishment from Allah as Kuwaitis were in close contacts with USA. That USA supported the Kuwaitis in the battle against Iraq is still an irritation subject for some Arab states.

At this juncture, I would like the reader to put into consideration that the books in question are written in Arabic hence, the difficulty in translation without an Arabic translator, has made it impossible to use them for this study.

Both the verses and the books that are in question were difficult to get hold of. It is therefore difficult to give a vivid description of what it contained for this thesis. My try to get hold of them has been to no results. However, I will continue trying and hopefully get hold of a translated version of them.

To summarise the whole issue in a nutshell one can say that the ministry of education said that USA were not pressuring them to make any changes in textbooks which could for that reason be a so-called Americanisation of Education. 

The purpose of this study is to determine how stand-up comedians outside the U.S. have succeeded to adapt the art of stand-up comedy to their own regional contexts and to define the extent of the influence of American comedians on comedians from other countries, discussing the concept of Americanisation and globalised media. Two stand-up comedy presentations, one by American comedian Bill Hicks, Revelations; and one by Swedish comedian Magnus Betnér, Inget är heligt, were analysed using comparative content analysis in order to determine similarities and differences in the subjects addressed during the presentations along with similarities and differences in the style of performance. In-depth interviews were conducted as part of this research with professional comedians from Costa Rica: actor and stand-up comedian Hernán Jiménez, and members of the comedy group “La Media Docena” Édgar Murillo and Erik Hernández.

The word 'marijuana' was introduced to Australia by the US Bureau of Narcotics via the Diggers newspaper, Smith's Weekly, in 1938. Marijuana was said to be 'a new drug that maddens victims' and it was sensationally described as an 'evil sex drug'. The resulting tabloid furore saw the plant cannabis sativa banned in Australia, even though cannabis had been a well-known and widely used drug in Australia for many decades. In 1964, a massive infestation of wild cannabis was found growing along a stretch of the Hunter River between Singleton and Maitland in New South Wales. The explosion in Australian marijuana use began there. It was fuelled after 1967 by US soldiers on rest and recreation leave from Vietnam. It was the Baby-Boomer young who were turning on. Pot smoking was overwhelmingly associated with the generation born in the decade after the Second World War. As the conflict over the Vietnam War raged in Australia, it provoked intense generational conflict between the Baby-Boomers and older generations. Just as in the US, pot was adopted by Australian Baby-Boomers as their symbol; and, as in the US, the attack on pot users served as code for an attack on the young, the Left, and the alternative. In 1976, the 'War on Drugs' began in earnest in Australia with paramilitary attacks on the hippie colonies at Cedar Bay in Queensland and Tuntable Falls in New South Wales. It was a time of increasing US style prohibition characterised by 'tough-on-drugs' right-wing rhetoric, police crackdowns, numerous murders, and a marijuana drought followed quickly by a heroin plague; in short by a massive worsening of 'the drug problem'. During this decade, organised crime moved into the pot scene and the price of pot skyrocketed, reaching $450 an ounce in 1988. Thanks to the Americanisation of drugs policy, the black market made 'a killing'. In Marijuana Australiana I argue that the 'War on Drugs' developed -- not for health reasons -- but for reasons of social control; as a domestic counter-revolution against the Whitlamite, Baby-Boomer generation by older Nixonite Drug War warriors like Queensland Premier, Bjelke-Petersen. It was a misuse of drugs policy which greatly worsened drug problems, bringing with it American-style organised crime. As the subtitle suggests, Marijuana Australiana relies significantly on 'alternative' sources, and I trawl the waters of popular culture, looking for songs, posters, comics and underground magazines to produce an 'underground' history of cannabis in Australia. This 'pop' approach is balanced with a hard-edged, quantitative analysis of the size of the marijuana market, the movement of price, and the seizure figures in the section called 'History By Numbers'. As Alfred McCoy notes, we need to understand drugs as commodities. It is only through a detailed understanding of the drug trade that the deeper secrets of this underground world can be revealed. In this section, I present an economic history of the cannabis market and formulate three laws of the market.

The word 'marijuana' was introduced to Australia by the US Bureau of Narcotics via the Diggers newspaper, Smith's Weekly, in 1938. Marijuana was said to be 'a new drug that maddens victims' and it was sensationally described as an 'evil sex drug'. The resulting tabloid furore saw the plant cannabis sativa banned in Australia, even though cannabis had been a well-known and widely used drug in Australia for many decades. In 1964, a massive infestation of wild cannabis was found growing along a stretch of the Hunter River between Singleton and Maitland in New South Wales. The explosion in Australian marijuana use began there. It was fuelled after 1967 by US soldiers on rest and recreation leave from Vietnam. It was the Baby-Boomer young who were turning on. Pot smoking was overwhelmingly associated with the generation born in the decade after the Second World War. As the conflict over the Vietnam War raged in Australia, it provoked intense generational conflict between the Baby-Boomers and older generations. Just as in the US, pot was adopted by Australian Baby-Boomers as their symbol; and, as in the US, the attack on pot users served as code for an attack on the young, the Left, and the alternative. In 1976, the 'War on Drugs' began in earnest in Australia with paramilitary attacks on the hippie colonies at Cedar Bay in Queensland and Tuntable Falls in New South Wales. It was a time of increasing US style prohibition characterised by 'tough-on-drugs' right-wing rhetoric, police crackdowns, numerous murders, and a marijuana drought followed quickly by a heroin plague; in short by a massive worsening of 'the drug problem'. During this decade, organised crime moved into the pot scene and the price of pot skyrocketed, reaching $450 an ounce in 1988. Thanks to the Americanisation of drugs policy, the black market made 'a killing'. In Marijuana Australiana I argue that the 'War on Drugs' developed -- not for health reasons -- but for reasons of social control; as a domestic counter-revolution against the Whitlamite, Baby-Boomer generation by older Nixonite Drug War warriors like Queensland Premier, Bjelke-Petersen. It was a misuse of drugs policy which greatly worsened drug problems, bringing with it American-style organised crime. As the subtitle suggests, Marijuana Australiana relies significantly on 'alternative' sources, and I trawl the waters of popular culture, looking for songs, posters, comics and underground magazines to produce an 'underground' history of cannabis in Australia. This 'pop' approach is balanced with a hard-edged, quantitative analysis of the size of the marijuana market, the movement of price, and the seizure figures in the section called 'History By Numbers'. As Alfred McCoy notes, we need to understand drugs as commodities. It is only through a detailed understanding of the drug trade that the deeper secrets of this underground world can be revealed. In this section, I present an economic history of the cannabis market and formulate three laws of the market.

President Lyndon Johnson’s visit to Australia in October 1966 was the apogee of the Australian-American political alliance and coincided with the peak of Australian public support for the American war in Vietnam. It was also during this period that Americanisation in Australia intensified. This thesis utilises the Johnson visit as a lens onto Australia’s Cold War political relationships and cultural loyalties. I argue that Australians’ enthusiastic embrace of the president did not reflect either political or cultural subservience, and that Australian political and civic culture at this time remained essentially ‘British’.

This research seeks to understand the process of technological development in the UK and the specific role of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’ in that process. The concept of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’ will be developed throughout the thesis through a study into the computer industry in the UK in the post-war period. Specifically, the thesis discusses the threat of America, or how actors in the network of innovation within the British computer industry perceived it as a threat and the effect that this perception had on actors operating in the networks of construction in the British computer industry. However, the reaction to this threat was not a simple one. Rather this story is marked by sectional interests and technopolitical machination attempting to capture this rhetoric of ‘threat’ and ‘falling behind’. In this thesis the concept of ‘threat’ and ‘falling behind’, or more simply the ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’, will be explored in detail and the effect this had on the development of the British computer industry. What form did the process of capture and modification by sectional interests within government and industry take and what impact did this have on the British computer industry? In answering these questions, the thesis will first develop a concept of a British culture of computing which acts as the surface of emergence for various ideologies of innovation within the social networks that made up the computer industry in the UK. In developing this understanding of a culture of computing, the fundamental distinction between the US and UK culture of computing will be explored. This in turn allows us to develop a concept of how Americanisation emerged as rhetorical construct. With the influence of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’, the culture of computing in the UK began to change and the process through which government and industry interacted in the development of computing technologies also began to change. In this second half of the thesis a more nuanced and complete view of the nature of innovation in computing in the UK in the sixties will be developed. This will be achieved through an understanding of the networks of interaction between government and industry and how these networks were reconfigured through a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’. As a result of this, the thesis will arrive at a more complete view of change and development within the British computer industry and how interaction with government influences that change.

This thesis argues that high culture was integrated in distinctive ways into the new modern Italian identity and into Italy’s associated mass culture boom between 1950-70. It examines the presence and purpose of high culture in Italian mass culture, arguing that high culture formed an important part of both everyday life and mass culture, creating in the process meaningful and valued cultural content. The focus of the research is on the two mass culture formats that experienced a popular boom in this period: the illustrated news and photo-based magazines; and the Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) state-monopoly television channels. High culture coexisted and mingled with the emerging symbols of American consumerism in popular Italian magazines and television programs. Through words or pictures, readers could experience French, English and Russian literature in the weekly magazines such as Epoca and Tempo, and also in the fotoromanzo magazines, Bolero Film and Le Grandi Firme, as publishing houses sought new reader markets. The state-run broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) also developed an educational strategy for disseminating popularised high culture, not solely with televised adaptations of literary works and opera music, but also through popular quiz and variety shows based on high culture content that surreptitiously introduced art, music and literature into the daily lives of its citizens. The thesis focuses on cultural content and its reception, arguing for the symbolic, entertainment and educational importance to readers and viewers of popularised high culture through case studies from popular magazines, television programs and advertising based on audience research.

Disney is known for their family animation movies with a non-western or indigenous cultural background. Nevertheless, Disney is basically very influential for the perception of cultures by a global audience. Many studies have proven that Disney’s depiction of a certain represented culture has not always been that clean. Of course two side notes are that Disney does make movies from an American dominant perspective and second, there is no such thing as a ‘real’ or ‘correct’ culture.   Now, with the movie Moana freshly released in 2016, Disney took a step in the indigenous Polynesian culture. This research uses a thorough Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse how Disney portrays Polynesia and the Polynesian culture inside four selected samples of the movie Moana. This analysis is combined with the theories and concepts of Americanisation, Disneyfication and cultural appropriation to find out mixtures of the portrayed Polynesian culture with American and Disney values.   Interesting findings were that Disney indeed portrays a hotchpotch of many cultures that can be found in Polynesia. Disney took care of highlighting the culture in the general storyline, in the characters and in the small details. Disney uses details of Polynesian mythology and the history around the ancient voyagers and wayfinding techniques for the storyline. What Disney emphasises is the importance of family, their history and their culture. Disney always portrays the culture with a certain emission of power and pride.   However, the American dominancy is still noticeable. For example, the depiction of the coconut and the plumeria flower are signs of Americanised Polynesia. The American and Disney values are all visible during the whole movie and can be found in quotes, gestures and behaviour of characters as Moana, the ocean and demigod Maui. Especially Maui is being portrayed as the ‘American dominant hero’ even though Maui is considered to be a honoured and popular Polynesian demigod.

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'analyser la façon dont les pratiques picturales des Andes coloniales se nouent et se dénouent autour d'une « matière » européenne. La nature d'un tableau répond à des exigences politiques occidentales (l'évangélisation des Indigènes) mais sa fonction va progressivement être démembrée au profit d'une peinture qui s'américanise.C'est d'abord en étudiant le contexte artistique de l'Europe des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, ses pratiques ainsi que ses transferts humains et matériels dans la vice-royauté péruvienne que l'on peut par la suite juger des différences, des nouveautés, mais aussi des transgressions des oeuvres produites sur place, la dimension régionale étant l'un des premiers facteurs de ces changements. Les médiateurs de cette circulation, acteurs sociaux et vecteurs de nouveaux codes, redéfinissent les qualités du peintre indien qui met un terme définitif à sa condition de « main d'oeuvre » pour devenir un artiste indépendant.Alors que tout porterait à croire que l'Espagne refuse l'américanisation de cette peinture, les fondements théoriques de l'art occidental sont pourtant à l'origine de formes et de thèmes nouveaux qui caractérisent essentiellement le XVIIIe siècle andin. L'adoption d'un système iconographique européen par des peintres principalement métis et indiens permet paradoxalement la réappropriation d'un support longtemps utilisé comme un objet de domination, de soumission et de contrôle de la part des autorités espagnoles
This thesis aims to analyse the way pictorial practices of the colonial Andes are formed and dissolved around a “European matter”. The nature of a painting complies with occidental political requirements (the evangelisation of the Indigenous) but its function will be progressively “dismembered” in favour of a painting which is becoming Americanised.The regional dimension being one of the factors of these changes, we will first study the artistic context of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Through the study of its practices and also its human and material transfers in the Peruvian viceroyalty, we can thereafter judge of the differences, the innovations, but also the transgressions of the artworks made on site. The mediators of this circulation, the social actors and the carriers of new codes, redefine the qualities of the Indian painter who put a definitive end to his condition of “labour” to become an independent artist.While we could be led to believe that Spain refuses the Americanisation of this form of painting, yet the theoretical foundations of Western art are at the starting point of forms and new themes which essentially characterise Andean’s 18th century. The adoption of a European iconographic system, mostly by mixed-race and Indian painters, paradoxically allows the reapropriation of a medium used for a long time by the Spanish authorities, as an object of domination, submission, and control

S’inscrivant dans l’histoire des relations culturelles internationales, cette thèse porte sur la seconde vague d’américanisation culturelle du Brésil (1946-1978). Elle s’interroge sur la notion d’américanisation, sur ses acteurs et décideurs et sur leurs moyens d’action, ainsi que sur les lieux de rencontres culturels entre le Brésil et les États-Unis. Dans un contexte politique international bipolaire, la seconde américanisation culturelle du Brésil s’insère dans une Guerre froide« périphérique », celle qui dépasse l’axe États-Unis - Union Soviétique : elle est conduite par un réseau complexe de décideurs artistiques, convaincus de l’importance du renforcement de l’amitié continentale américaine. Pour cela, la culture, sous toutes ses formes, s’avère un outil de politique étrangère relevant du soft power, mais aussi un instrument privilégié, voire une « arme » actionnée par des décideurs privés. Cette thèse s’intéresse aux acteurs et médiateurs individuels ou collectifs, à titre étatique ou privé, ainsi qu’à leurs actions culturelles contribuant à la diffusion de l’American Way of Life dans l’axe Rio de Janeiro - São Paulo. Les Brésiliens eux-mêmes, individus comme autorités politiques ou institutions privées, occupent une place déterminante dans cette démarche d’alignement culturel : les Brésiliens invitent ainsi volontiers des artistes états-uniens et organisent ou reçoivent avec sympathie des manifestations culturelles en provenance du « grand frère ». Cette participation brésilienne volontariste conduit l’approche de cette étude : celle d’une américanisation largement « invitée » dans les musées, galeries, théâtres ou instituts culturels brésiliens. Ces lieux de rencontres et domaines culturels ont jusqu’alors été peu analysés par l’historiographie ; mais ils s’avèrent fondamentaux pour la compréhension tout aussi bien de la place attribuée au Brésil dans les circuits internationaux artistiques dans le contexte bipolaire, que de la présence culturelle états-unienne au Brésil ou de la nature des relations internationales des deux géants américains lors de la Guerre froide culturelle
As a part of the history of the international cultural relations, this thesis focuses on the second wave of the cultural americanisation of Brazil (1946-1978). It questions the notion of americanisation, its actors, its decision makers and their means of action, as well as the cultural meeting places between Brazil and the United States. In a bipolar international political context, the second cultural americanisation of Brazil takes place in a « peripheral » Cold War which oversteps the axis United- States - Soviet-Union. It is realized by a complex network of decision makers who believe in the importance of the strenghtening of the American continental friendship. For that purpose, culture in all its different forms proves to be useful for the « soft power » foreign politic and to be an ideal tool, a true « weapon », in the hands of the private decision makers.This thesis focuses on the actors and the individual or collective mediators, private ones or public ones, as well as on their cultural actions which help to spread the American Way of Life over the axis Rio de Janeiro - Sao Paulo. The Brazilians, individuals, political authorities or private institutions occupy a key place in this cultural alignement process: they invite artists from the United-States willingly and organise or receive cultural events from the « big brother » with sympathy. This voluntary Brazilian participation leads the process approach of this work: a widely « invited » americanisation in the museums, galleries, theaters or Brazilian cultural instituts. These meeting places and cultural areas have not yet been much analysed by the historiography; but they are fundamental for the comprehension of the place given to Brazil in the international art circuits in the bipolar context, for the comprehension of the cultural presence of the United States in Brazil and for the nature of the international relations of the two giants during the cultural Cold War

La construction des identités gay à Paris et à Londres depuis la fin de la deuxième guerre mondiale reflète l’ascendance du pouvoir politique, culturel, et économique états-unien et ses enjeux. Suivant l’œuvre de l’historien Alain Bérubé sur la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, ce projet de recherche part de ce moment quand des villes états-uniennes deviennent centrales aux rapports transatlantiques de savoir, capital économique, et influence culturelle. Dans ce contexte particulier, une conscience d’une identité homosexuelle masculine émerge, structurée par les échanges transatlantiques des nouveaux réseaux militants et culturels. Cela suscite résistances et adaptations. À Paris l’opposition à l’influence américaine sur la construction des identités gay se développe dans les politiques de la gauche comme celles de la droite où les deux s’accordaient curieusement sur ce sujet. Ce n’est qu’à la fin des années 70 et au début des années 80 qu’une influence états-unienne s’impose sur les identités gay de la capitale française. Les commerces américains en recherche des nouveaux marchés gay retrouvent une niche parisienne. Parallèlement, les petites entreprises parisiennes, inspirées par les modèles américains, construisent des espaces de consommation et d’acceptation de l’homosexualité masculine. L’arrivée des pratiques spatiales et comportements de consommateurs américains participe considérablement à la reconstitution des identités individuelles et collectives gay parisiennes. À Paris, comme à Londres, les identités gay se sont approprié, mais aussi ont renégocié et résisté les sémiotiques, pratiques politiques, sociales, et économiques nées dans les villes états-uniennes devenues globales, dans le sens que donne Saskia Sassen au mot
The construction of gay identities in Paris and London since the end of the Second World War has reflected the rise of American global political, economic, and sociocultural power. Building upon historian Alain Bérubé’s work on the Second World War, this thesis begins at this critical turning point when American cities became central to transatlantic flows of knowledge, economic capital, and cultural influence. It is within this context that a consciousness of a shared male homosexual identity began to emerge. Resistance, and adaptation, to this nascent awareness and the political activist and cultural networks that fed it, soon ensued. In Paris, the Left and Right made for strange bedfellows as they opposed the new transatlantic gay politics. As such, it would only be in the late 1970s and at the dawn of the 80s that American influence began to play a significant role in shaping gay identities in the French capital. At this point, American capital in search of new markets in Europe found an unexploited market in Paris. Furthermore, small business inspired by American models created spaces of consumption, and acceptance, for gay men. Americanized spatial practices and consumer behavior thus began to play a crucial role in the construction of individual and collective gay identities in Paris. In both Paris and London, gay identities took form as gay men appropriated, resisted ,and negotiated the symbols and political, social and economic practices of American-turned-global cities. “Global” understood in Saskia Sassen’s sense of the word