Americanizing labor: Columbian precedents, U.S. agencies and the construction of culture in postwar Australian history curricula

Austin, Robert (2004) Americanizing labor: Columbian precedents, U.S. agencies and the construction of culture in postwar Australian history curricula. Latin American Perspectives, 31 1: 95-133.


Author Austin, Robert
Title Americanizing labor: Columbian precedents, U.S. agencies and the construction of culture in postwar Australian history curricula
Language of Title eng
Journal name Latin American Perspectives  (ERA 2012 Listed)    (ERA 2010 Rank C)   Check publisher's open access policy
Language of Journal Name eng
Publication date 2004
Sub-type Article
DOI 10.1177/0094582X03259904
Volume number 31
Issue number 1
ISSN 0094-582X; 1552-678X
Start page 95
End page 133
Total pages 39
Place of publication Thousand Oaks, CA, United States
Publisher Sage
Language eng
Abstract In sum, then, this article develops three principal arguments. First, it locates the postwar cultural imperialism of the United States as part of a broader strategy of intervention on behalf of its own geopolitical and commercial interests and demonstrates that the policies and practices of the USIS and its variants are antithetical to popular democracy wherever they operate. Secondly, it highlights two complementary tendencies: the characteristic ways in which such interventions present a construction favorable to the United States, distorting its history, inflating its importance, and inducing amnesia, and the way in which U.S. agency intervention in those countries' own representations of themselves shapes constructions that conform to U.S. imperial interests. Latin American history will be seen to have especially succumbed to such politics. Finally, it argues that the operation of the USIS in the construction of recent New South Wales history curricula-and, by extension, in all Australian states' history curricula-ought to be publicly reviewed because it erodes the reconstitution of the study of history in Australian schools, already at a postwar low.
Keyword Curriculum
Education
History
Q-Index Code C1
Q-Index Status Provisional Code
Institutional Status Non-UQ

Document type: Journal Article
Sub-type: Article
Collection: School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics Publications
 
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