In this innovative study, Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht challenges
long-standing analyses of the United States' ""cultural
imperialism"" that emphasise the policy makers' determination to
export U.S. culture in order to spread capitalism and gain access
to overseas markets and raw materials. She also contests the claims
by scholars of reception theory that foreign audiences deliberately
condition the reception of U.S. culture abroad. Studying the
example of the U.S. Army newspaper the Neue Zeitung, published for
the German population from 1945 to 1955, she convincingly
demonstrates that U.S. officials actually exerted very little
direct influence on their cultural and information programs in
postwar Germany, leaving the initiative to binational midlevel
agents. Transmission Impossible reveals that the selection of
agents who transmit political and cultural values to the foreign
world is as crucial to the success of the enterprise as the package
of values itself. The Neue Zeitung was run by German--speaking
émigrés, mostly of Jewish descent, who had fled the Third Reich
in the 1930s and whose political history ranged from communism to
fascism. Children of Weimar Kultur, but beneficiaries of Franklin
D. Roosevelt's New Deal, these men and women possessed a unique
understanding of how to present the American way of life to a
German audience. They intertwined European concepts of culture and
gender with U.S. politics, showing that democracy was reflected in
values of high culture, such as artistic freedom, creativity,
individualism, and tolerance. In the dawning Cold War, the paper's
large circulation, extending even into the Soviet occupation zone,
indicated the success of its approach and the editors' lasting
political and cultural influence in postwar Germany. In retracing
the history of the Neue Zeitung, Gienow-Hecht focuses on the
editors' biographies and their conflicts with the U.S. War
Department, charting the newspaper's political and philosophical
changes over the course of a decade. She examines the publication's
role in the larger context of occupation policy and psychological
warfare, its significance in the unfolding Cold War, the growing
Soviet resentment of the paper, the attempted shift of the Neue
Zeitung from an information medium to a propaganda instrument,
public and official reactions to this change of editorial policy,
and the unsuccessful effort of U.S. officials to turn the paper
into a mouthpiece of the U.S. military in Germany shortly before
the ratification of the German Basic Law. Transmission Impossible
addresses many lingering questions regarding the transmission of
culture and the influence of images, core values, and ideas on a
country's foreign relations. Containing a wealth of fresh
information on the use of propaganda in the Cold War, the
administrative structure of the U.S. occupation, Soviet-American
conflicts, and Jewish biography, this book will be of interest to
scholars of U.S. foreign relations, German history, occupation
history, ethnicity, sociology, and culture. More than the history
of one newspaper, Gienow-Hecht's groundbreaking work revolutionises
our understanding of how culture instruments and cultural agents
become important arbiters of political power.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
