AustLII Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback

Alternative Law Journal

Alternative Law Journals (AltLJ)
You are here:  AustLII >> Databases >> Alternative Law Journal >> 2000 >> [2000] AltLawJl 56

Database Search | Name Search | Recent Articles | Noteup | LawCite | Author Info | Download | Help

Berger, Charles --- "Americanization and Australia edited by Philip Bell and Roger Bell" [2000] AltLawJl 56; (2000) 25(3) Alternative Law Journal 150

Reviews

Americanization and Australia

edited by Philip Bell and Roger Bell; UNSW Press 1998; $29.95.

The term 'Americanisation' is often deployed as a sort of conversation stopper. It is a loaded expression: who, other than perhaps some US-Americans, could possibly agree that 'Americanisation' of this or that aspect of a nation's culture is a good thing? Advanced as an explanation, it suggests the unthinking displacement of what were perfectly sensible cultural practices and, more often than not, presumes rather than demonstrates the causality of the shift. Used as a warning, it serves to divert attention away from the merits of whatever is under discussion by drawing on fears of cultural imperialism and the decline of national culture.

The contributors to Americanization and Australia, edited by Philip Bell and Roger Bell, get behind the term and challenge its fundamental premises. Across a broad range of fields, they seek to identify the causal underpinnings of cultural changes in Australia often attributed to US influence and challenge the assumption that US influence, where present, can be equated with mere displacement of local practices.

Several different responses to the charge of Americanisation emerge in these essays. One strand running though many of them is the 'modernisation' thesis. According to this idea, a practice should not be deemed 'American' simply because the US-Americans happened to adopt it first. The concept has a firm place in the social sciences. For example, in response to Weber's thesis tying the rise of capitalism to certain Western European cultural characteristics, Ernest Gellner wrote in 1981:

I like to imagine what would have happened had the Arabs ... conquere[d] and Islamicize[d] Europe. No doubt we would all be admiring Ibn Weber's The Kharejite Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism which would conclusively demonstrate how the modem rational spirit and its expression in business and bureaucratic organization could only have arisen in consequence of the sixteenth century neo-Kharejite puritanism in northern Europe.[1]

Indeed, Bell and Bell themselves first advanced the modernisation thesis with respect to Australia in their previous book, Implicated: The United States in Australia.[2] The idea is repeated in their introduction and developed in several of the essays pre­ sented. For example, in the linguistic context, Pam Peters discusses how some recent shifts in Australian gram­ mar and phonology have 'internal systematic support'. American English, aside from a steady but shallow lexical influence, thus operates at most to 'prompt rather than dictate' linguistic change in Australia.

The problem with the modernisation thesis is that it faces what does appear to be significant US influence, not just convergence, in many sectors. The early US dominance in the film and television media is but one example. Modernisation thus takes a back seat to analyses of influence and adaptation through much of the book.

The second broad reply to 'Americanisation' is what might be called the 'Beetroot on the Big Mac' argument. This response admits US influence but seeks to show how both the selection and adaptation of US practices occur in a uniquely national cultural context. Most of the essays in the collection contain a strong component of this concept. For example, Mark Rolfe discusses how Australian suburbia was shaped in part by American architecture and institutions such as the supermarket and the drive-in, but concludes that these things 'were brought, for the most part, by Australians and then absorbed into Australian life with little sign that they harmed our identity'. Elaine Thompson rejects the proposition that Australian political culture has been Americanised, prefer­ ring to say that 'American ideas are Australianised by imprinting onto them the Australian way of doing politics and Australian content'. Other examples show a more superficial impact. Joan Kirby suggests that Australian 'grunge' literature, though undeniably taking its name from early nineties US West Coast music, owes its genesis and development to Australian conditions. Another example is given by Roger Bell, who concludes that, while much of the terminology of identity politics and multiculturalism is derived from the US, 'US experiences have relatively little bearing on domestic Australian practices or policies'.

Though much of the book is devoted to countering claims of 'Americanisation', there are some instances in which deep US influence is effectively conceded. In some cases, this is done without the usual perjorative connotations. For example, Cashman & Hughes trace the significant (though complex and qualified) penetration of US sporting prac­ tices in Australia from the 19th century onwards. They conclude that this influence is in many ways a welcome development. Another example is Thompson's discussion of the recent US critique of the role of the state and move towards privatisation, a concededly influential concept in Australia today which, she says, nevertheless makes no sense in the Australian context.

Of particular interest to legal scholars are the essays on Political Culture by Elaine Thompson, Freedom of Speech by Kathe Boehringer, Industrial Relations by Braham Dabscheck, and Feminisms by Catharine Lumby. Unfortunately, the Freedom of Speech essay does not fit well with the rest of the collection. Whereas many of the essays examine the relationship between practices in the two countries, Boehringer's study does not venture much beyond separate descriptions and critiques of developments in the two countries. Whether the freedom of speech regimes are related, causally or otherwise, goes unexamined. Instead, the analysis spirals into a critique of judicial review generally, with Boehringer posing the question, 'And what, after all, is the democratic substance of a decision that literally comes down from "on high", disciplining local content to ensure its conformity to the national norms of political communication articulated by a remote judiciary?' The difficulty is not merely in the relevance of the essay to the collection. Boehringer's dismissal of the entire corpus of US freedom of speech law is unoriginal, consisting in its core of an uncritical recitation of a US law review article by Robert Nagel. There are also significant areas in which her argument lacks persuasive force. Few US scholars would agree, for example, that Cohen concerned a 'trivial' issue, or that most Americans felt it did in the context of the Vietnam War.[3] Nor does it seem that the problem of 'hard cases' dooms the venture of judging expression any more than it dooms the venture of judging anything else. A more balanced discussion of these and several other complex issues would have much improved this comparative study.

The concluding essay by McKenzie Wark, 'Virtual Empire', is stylistically and thematically perhaps the most innovative in the collection. Rather than examining 'Americanisation' in a particular setting, Wark seeks to explain why it is that Australians should fear being Americanised at all. The answer depends less on reflexive nationalistic impulses than on Australians' perception of the desperation in American life:

To an Australian, it appears as if Americans dream of not losing their jobs, not getting mugged, not getting sick before they can afford it. There is a poverty in American life. You feel it not just in the way the welfare system has gone freelance and you are solicited for contributions on every other street comer. It's a poverty of the imagination. A poverty of ways of thinking of America other than as cash and combat.

Wark's gem of an essay thus provides a conceptual setting for the entire work, for why the topic of Americanisation, with all the implications that it carries, arises at all.

On the whole, the contributions present well-argued investigations of the relationship between US and Australian practices in varying contexts. The authors of Americanization and Australia have done a thorough job tying together their disparate investigations into a coherent work. It should be of interest to specialists in the various fields discussed as well as those interested in cultural studies and identity issues more generally.

CHARLESBERGER

Charles Berger is Associate to the Han. Justice Susan Kenny, Federal Court of Australia.


[1] Gellner, Ernest, Muslim Society, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p.7.

[2] Bell, Philip and Bell, Roger, Implicated: The United States in Australia, Oxford University Press, 1993.

[3] Cohen v California, [1971] USSC 114; 403 US 15 (1971)(holding that the words 'Fuck the Draft' printed on a jacket constituted protected political expression). Laurence Tribe celebrates Cohen as the central case liberating freedom of speech from traditional concepts that were 'far too focused on intellect and rationality to accommodate the emotive role of free expression -its place in the evolution, definition, and proclamation of individual and group identity'. American Constitutional Law, 2nd edn, 1988, pp.787-8. The 12 disputed letters might seem trivial; the issue was not.


AustLII: Copyright Policy | Disclaimers | Privacy Policy | Feedback
URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AltLawJl/2000/56.html