20th century american culture
20th century french culture
A01=Richard F. Kuisel
american consumerism
american cultural products
american culture
americanization
anthropology
Author_Richard F. Kuisel
Category=JBCC
Category=JH
Category=NHD
coca cola
coke
cold war
communism
consumer society
cultural boundaries
cultural landscape
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
euro disney
france
french culture
frenchness
gaullist exorcism
hegemony
marshall plan
materialism
modernism
multinationals
national identity
social conformity
united states of america
Product details
- ISBN 9780520206984
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 27 Jan 1997
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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When Coca-Cola was introduced in France in the late 1940s, the country's most prestigious newspaper warned that Coke threatened France's cultural landscape. This is one of the examples cited in Richard Kuisel's engaging exploration of France's response to American influence after World War II. In analyzing early French resistance and then the gradual adaptation to all things American that evolved by the mid-1980s, he offers an intriguing study of national identity and the protection of cultural boundaries. The French have historically struggled against Americanization in order to safeguard 'Frenchness'. What would happen to the French way of life if gaining American prosperity brought vulgar materialism and social conformity? A clash between American consumerism and French civilisation seemed inevitable. Cold War anti-Communism, the Marshall Plan, the Coca-Cola controversy, and de Gaulle's efforts to curb American investment illustrate ways that anti-Americanization was played out. Kuisel also raises issues that extend beyond France, including the economic, social, and cultural effects of the Americanized consumer society that have become a global phenomenon.
Kuisel's lively account reaches across French society to include politicians, businessmen, trade unionists, Parisian intelligentsia, and ordinary citizens. The result reveals much about the French - and about Americans. As Euro Disney welcomes travelers to its Parisian fantasy land, and with French recently declared the official language of France (to defend it from the encroachments of English), Kuisel's book is especially relevant.
Richard F. Kuisel is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Stonybrook and the author of Capitalism and the State in Modern France (1981).
