Stuff It: Domestic Consumption and the Americanization of the World Paradigm*

Enclave space: a new metageography of development?

“…These places were once celebrated, in an age when development was being asserted as a US‐led global goal and programme, as the ‘societies of high mass consumption’; the highest ‘stage of development’ (Rostow 1960). Today, the artefacts being consumed mostly originate in the export‐orientated enclaves of the South; the flip‐side side of Americanisation and globalisation is an immense accumulation of imported commodities (Hoganson 2006). But, both in the forms of socio‐spatially fragmented urbanism (what have also been described as ‘revanchist’ cities 8 ) and the confinement of those designated as criminal and terrorist in new gulag archipelagos in the United States and its territories, enclave space proliferates (Wacquant 2002; Mitchell 2005; Ross 2005; Bewley‐Taylor 2006; Gilmore 2007).…”

The subsiding sizzle of advertising history

“…WPP's biggest advertising budgets have long left Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and moved to Mumbai and Shanghai. More and more historians are puzzled how these facts can be explained through the paradigm of "Americanization" (Hoganson, 2006).…”

The Globalization of American Culture

“…Even though much of the expansion of capitalism occurred under American tutelage, the process was one of "modernization, ranging from the impact of capitalism to processes of democratization of the political arena or the rise of a culture of consumption" (Kroes 2002: 298). Other scholars redefi ned Americanization as the emergence of a modern consumer culture, "the pursuit of happiness as the pursuit of consumption" (Wagnleitner 1994: 6-7;Hoganson 2006). As the most advanced consumer society in the world, the USA served as both prototype and antitype in European debates about capitalism and modernity.…”

“…Globalization emerged before the ascendancy of American power in the twentieth century and will continue after the decline of the American empire (Armitage 2004). More importantly, American culture itself has become subject to global infl uences (Hoganson 2006). The movie industry is no longer spatially tied to Hollywood; production of some of the biggest blockbusters in recent years has occurred outside the United States.…”