Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War [Paperback]

Reinhold Wagnleitner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807844551 | ISBN-13: 978-0807844557 | Publication Date: November 18, 1994

Reinhold Wagnleitner argues that cultural propaganda played an enormous part in integrating Austrians and other Europeans into the American sphere during the Cold War. In Coca-Colonization and the Cold War, he shows that 'Americanization' was the result not only of market forces and consumerism but also of systematic planning on the part of the United States.

Wagnleitner traces the intimate relationship between the political and economic reconstruction of a democratic Austria and the parallel process of cultural assimilation. Initially, U.S. cultural programs had been developed to impress Europeans with the achievements of American high culture. However, popular culture was more readily accepted, at least among the young, who were the primary target group of the propaganda campaign. The prevalence of Coca-Cola and rock 'n' roll are just two examples addressed by Wagnleitner. Soon, the cultural hegemony of the United States became visible in nearly all quarters of Austrian life: the press, advertising, comics, literature, education, radio, music, theater, and fashion. Hollywood proved particularly effective in spreading American cultural ideals. For Europeans, says Wagnleitner, the result was a second discovery of America.

This book is a translation of the Austrian edition, published in 1991, which won the Ludwig Jedlicka Memorial Prize.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book draws on a large array of sources in German, French, and English.

Choice

A complex and challenging book.

International History Review

A masterpiece of a new genre which shows precisely the nexus of politics, diplomacy, and culture.

H-German

Fascinating. . . . Wagnleitner's research is exhaustive, and he has a keen eye for colorful detail and the telling anecdote.

Emily S. Rosenberg, Macalester College

A breathtaking account of the conquest of Austria by American culture.

Gunther Barth, University of California, Berkeley

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 388 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (November 18, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807844551
• ISBN-13: 978-0807844557
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,468,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great analysis, Interesting writing, April 10, 2000

By 

Adam C Brault (Pullman, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War (Paperback)

Wagnleitner does a great job of taking the reader through Western Austria's change from an ex-Nazi state to a miniature US "wannabe." The author also discusses the discrepancy between the percieved American culture and actual American culture. He furthers the discussion by examining the role that cultural imperialism has played in the history of the world. Overall, it was a great look at an issue which remained a hot one in Europe for decades (and still is in France, of course).

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Case Study of American Expansionist Cultural Policy Vis-A-Vis Media Technology. The Colonial Metaphor is a Stretch, April 2, 2006

By 

Adam Bahner - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War (Paperback)

In Coca-Colonization and the Cold War, Reinhold Wagnleitner traces the evolution of an American foreign policy of cultural imperialism and its success in post World War II Austria. This success is rooted in American influence on periodicals, radio, literature, education, drama, music, and film. The author contends that Europe and the United States should be part of the same political analytic and in important ways constitute a common cultural bloc. He sees World War I as a tipping point where the expansion of American exports into Europe is necessarily followed by American culture. The expansion of American media monopoly is closely tied to its rise as a global superpower. The text even suggests that some American cultural trends, like a belief in choice through consumerism and science as the engine of social progress, matured in Europe a generation before they matured in the United States.

Coca-Colonization can draw parallels with two books that proceeded it, John W. Dower's Embracing Defeat and Tom Engelhardt's The End of Victory Culture. Like Dower, Wagnleitner confronts American cultural expansion as a policy aim in the occupation of a war torn nation. He also documents the reification of American occupiers and their country of origin. Like Engelhardt, Wagnleitner weaves together political history and personal childhood experience in telling the story of the Cold War through American popular culture. Unlike Engelhardt, Wagnleitner is less interested in biography and more interested in policy and policy actors. Unlike both, Coca-Colonization emphasizes the technological infrastructure of media distribution as an adjunct to cultural policy.

After comprehensively making a case for the common yoke of America and Europe, Wagnletiner's "colonialism" comes off as a "civil-colonialism" at best. While he finds it ironic in chapter one that America was a European colony that became a cultural imperialist in Europe, he is not Frantz Fanon. The colonialism he refers to (from the seventeenth thru the twentieth centuries) is quite different than the colonialism which exploits political subjects and inscribes power in the psychology of inferiority and mutilated kinship ties. Wagnleitner's colonialism is not one of balls and chains but rather bread and circuses. Perhaps this is what is missing from Coca-Colonization. While it is impressive in relating European and American cultural history, and even more impressive in documenting the American cultural-industrial-policy complex, it speaks of American colonialism in Austria without speaking of being an exploited people. It is as though there was a wild party across the Atlantic which Austrian children suddenly found themselves immersed in and liking. Is this the same as the historical experience of American Indians or Australian Aboriginals who may have also found themselves drinking Coca-Cola?

If the author does not see this distinction in appropriating colonialism as a term, how can he animate it in his consideration of American foreign policy? It should be noted that as a translated work, this review treads one step removed from the project's indigenous nomenclature. The credibility of this engagement with debates in the translated language is constrained. Still, as Austrian children reveled alongside American children in rock-n-roll, blue jeans, anti-Vietnam sit-ins, movies, logos, new left counterculture and individual expression, Coca Colonization does a fabulous job at explaining this as a policy outcome. It just yearns for a comparison with other "colonial" experiences and in discussing American "colonization" of Austria, it does not question the meta-narrative of World War II American liberation with a ten-foot pole. It is also lacking in its consideration of race, gender, and class in the American cultural products which it documents.