Globalization. George Ritzer

the US handled the COVID-19 pandemic in its early days. While most countries implemented strict measures for social distancing, mask requirements, and quarantines, the US resisted many of these efforts. The virus hit China and Italy especially hard, which gave other countries – such as the US – more time to respond (Associated Press 2020). But despite the additional time to prepare, the medical knowledge about its threat, and the economic resources to handle it aggressively, the US and the Trump administration downplayed the threat, often referring to it as a hoax. As a result, it led the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths, with one of the highest per capita infection rates. At the same time, the US made efforts to acquire as much of the early vaccines produced elsewhere as possible elsewhere and outbid other purchasers to obtain medical supplies headed to other countries. Responses like this were common:

      To a watching world, the absence of a fair, affordable US healthcare system, the cut-throat contest between American states for scarce medical supplies, the disproportionate death toll among ethnic minorities, chaotic social distancing rules, and a lack of centralised coordination are reminiscent of a poor, developing country, not the most powerful, influential nation on earth. That’s a title the US appears on course to lose – a fall from grace that may prove irreversible. (Tisdall 2020)

      Compared to the US, citizens in other countries were far more agreeable to measures needed to curtail the virus, and interpreted them as necessary for the common good. Many commentators have wondered if the global reputation of the US will ever recover. (Associated Press 2020)

      Certainly, readers can debate whether or not Americanization is declining, but it is clear that it certainly was a powerful force in the past and much of globalization, at least until very recently, has been American-led. At the minimum, that (recent) history needs to be recognized for what it was – heavily dominated by Americanization. Furthermore, no matter how far Americanization may have already declined in importance, it will be a long time before most of the nations and areas affected by it in the past will be free of its highly diverse and often powerful effects. The effects of Americanization will continue to be felt in many nations for years to come even if we think of it as slowing or even halting completely (a clearly erroneous view, at least at the present time).

The continued effects of Americanization are demonstrated by the modern fast-food restaurant, which was an American invention (specifically Ray Kroc and the creation of the McDonald’s chain beginning in the mid-1950s) that was, and is still being, actively and aggressively exported to the rest of the world. However, many nations have now created their own McDonaldized restaurants (and other forms) that in some cases (e.g. Pollo Campero from Guatemala) are being actively exported back into the US. While this may now be part of the “Latin Americanization” of the US, it has its roots in Americanization (in this case of Latin America) via the export of the fast-food restaurant. While it may be selling food more indigenous to Latin America, even a superficial look at a Pollo Campero restaurant makes it clear that it is a product of Americanization.

      A more clear example of Latin-Americanization was the politics of Trump himself (Lovato 2018). For decades, many Latin American countries have been led by a “caudillo,” or strong man using fiery rhetoric. A Washington Post reporter went so far as to declare Trump “the US’s first Latin American president” (Tharoor 2017). He was a clear departure from American political norms, and rather draws upon extreme self-inflation, tough talk, authoritarianism, machismo, and public humiliation to attack his enemies. By mimicking Latin American (from both left and right) strong men in style, he brought forth a different kind of Americanization.

A BROADER AND DEEPER VIEW OF THE AMERICANIZATION OF CONSUMER CULTURE

      Consumerism and consumer culture are at the heart of Americanization. Victoria de Grazia’s Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through 20th-Century Europe (de Grazia 2005: 3) examines the deeper forces in the Americanization of consumer culture, but with a somewhat different focus on:

      The rise of the great imperium [the United States] with the outlook of a great emporium. This was the United States during the reign of what I call the Market Empire. An empire without frontiers, it arose during the twentieth century, reached its apogee during its second half, and showed symptoms of disintegration toward its close. Its most distant perimeters would be marked by the insatiable ambitions of its leading corporations for global markets, the ever vaster sales territories charted by state agencies and private enterprise, the far-flung influence of its business networks, the coin of recognition of its ubiquitous brands, and the intimate familiarity with the American way of life that all these engendered in peoples around the world. Its impetus and instruments derived from the same revolution in mass consumption that was ever more visibly reshaping the lives of its own citizens.

      It was, in her view, the exportation of America’s innovations in the realm of mass consumption that helped lead, through mass marketing, to the “fostering of common consumption practices across the most diverse cultures” (de Grazia 2005: 3).

De Grazia does not focus on seemingly superficial exports like Coca-Cola, but rather on much subtler phenomena that settled far more deeply in the fabric of other, especially European, societies and later many other societies. Among the exports dealt with by de Grazia are the service ethic, the chain store, big-brand goods, corporate advertising, and “supermarketing.” By the end of the twentieth century Americanization had progressed so far, and these and other changes had taken hold so well in Europe (and elsewhere), that the US had lost its leadership position: “Europe was as much a consumer society as the United States” (de Grazia 2005: 463). As China’s economy expands, it stands to become the greatest consumer society in the world and is likely to far surpass the US in its consumption.

      The arguments made by de Grazia suggest it is in these deeper, more basic realms, that the most important impact of Americanization is found and felt. In addition, if activists really wish to counter Americanization, it is on these levels and against these phenomena that they really must direct their energies. However, it is far more difficult to locate many of these, let alone attack them. Many of these phenomena have made their way deep into the fabric of societies around the world with the result that an attack on them becomes an assault on one’s own society. It is far more difficult to oppose one’s own society than it is to oppose an external “enemy” like the US. It is this that makes the task of those opposed to Americanization so daunting, if not impossible.

MINIMIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF AMERICANIZATION

      In spite of all of the evidence on the importance of Americanization, the academic literature on globalization tends to minimize or downgrade the significance of the US in global processes.

      Some researchers focus on the declining importance of the US (Ferguson 2012; Hardt and Negri 2000; Huntington 2011; Preble 2018). Operating from his world-system perspective, Wallerstein offers a nuanced picture of the role of the US in the global world system, but it is dominated by images of decline. Beginning with the near-revolutionary events in the late 1960s (e.g. the student uprisings, the anti-Vietnam War movement), Wallerstein (1992) describes the US as undergoing a long-term decline that it has only been able to stem in part. He argues that “The heyday of US prosperity is over. The scaffolding is being dismantled” (Wallerstein 1992: 16). It could be argued that much of the recent well-being of the US has been built on unusually low-priced imports and that that era is ending as a result of increasing tariffs and other economic trends (Goodman 2019), although Wallerstein wrongly focused on Japan and was unable to see the economic ascendancy of China. While America will retain its military and political power, Wallerstein sees a “terrible” decline psychologically among Americans who will have a difficult time adjusting to their less exalted position in the world system.

      Others see the decline of the US linked to the overall decline in the importance of the nation-state (Dasgupta 2018; Strange 1996). The declining importance of the nation-state in general, and the US in particular, is also reflected in work that focuses, for example, on the rise in the importance of transnational flows (see Chapter 4) and of global cities (see Chapter