Columbia University Press
After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East
Key Metrics
- Brian Edwards
- Columbia University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780231174008
- 9.1 X 6.1 X 0.9 inches
- 1.15 pounds
- Literary Criticism > American - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
How do we make sense of this shift? Building on a decade of fieldwork in Cairo, Casablanca, and Tehran, Brian T. Edwards maps new routes of cultural exchange that are innovative, accelerated, and full of diversions. Shaped by the digital revolution, these paths are entwined with the growing fragility of American soft power. They indicate an era after the American century, in which popular American products and phenomena--such as comic books, teen romances, social-networking sites, and ways of expressing sexuality--are stripped of their associations with the United States and recast in very different forms.
Arguing against those who talk about a world in which American culture is merely replicated or appropriated, Edwards focuses on creative moments of uptake, in which Arabs and Iranians make something unexpected. He argues that these products do more than extend the reach of the original. They reflect a world in which culture endlessly circulates and gathers new meanings.
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