Why Do People Hate America? - Softcover

Sardar Z

3.36

531 ratings by Goodreads

9781840465259: Why Do People Hate America?

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840465255 ISBN 13: 9781840465259

Publisher: Icon Books, 2003

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Many people do hate America, in the Middle East and the developing countries as well as in Europe. Sardar and Davies explore the global impact of America's foreign policy and its corporate and cultural power.

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From the Publisher:

In their important new book, Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies dissect this question and get to the root of the all too complicated answer. An answer that is not a straightforward counterblast to the hatred expressed for America but rather a look at the consequences of interaction in a world in which gross disparities of power, wealth, freedom, and opportunity must be factored into each and every situation.

Already an international bestseller, "Why Do People Hate America?" doesn’t stop there but rather examines, discusses and debates many topics, including:

� The indiscriminate use of the term ‘America’ to cover many different aspects of U.S. influence and operation around the world and how it is a reflection of the ‘hamburger syndrome’.

� The way in which the brand called ‘America’ has been sold to the rest of the world and the consequences of the globalization of American culture on developing countries are examined via analysis of: American foreign and economic policies; U.S. treatment of the rest of the world at the United Nations; American control of global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization; and U.S. relationship with developing countries over the last five decades.

� Why are presumptions of innocence and self-righteousness so central to American self-image? The authors examine America’s image of itself in its historic narratives and founding myths. They argue that definitions are relational terms, in that everyone’s image of self includes, and in part depends on, their view of other people.

� How the power of the American media works to keep Americans closed to experiences and ideas from the rest of the world and thereby increases the insularity, self-absorption and ignorance that are the overriding problems the rest of the world has with America.

� How the foreign policy of the U.S. government, backed by its military strength, has unprecedented global influence now that the United States is the world’s only superpower – its first ‘hyperpower’.

� The problem of ‘knowledgeable ignorance’: defined as knowing people, ideas, civilizations, religions, histories as something they are not - and could not possibly be - and maintaining these ideas even when the means exist to know differently.

� The American construction of the ‘axis of evil’ is a form of grand absolutism reflecting America as a hostile, inimical perversion, endemic and operating within other nations all around the globe.

The authors of "Why Do People Hate America?" know that the one of the hardest things for people to do is examine oneself and admit one’s own problems. The same holds true for the U.S., as a nation, creating much frustration within the country and infuriation, antipathy, hostility and even hatred beyond the bounds of America. If America refuses to reflect upon its history, its uses and abuses of power and wealth at home and abroad, the consequences of its lifestyle and abundance, the relations between quality of life and values, the relation between ideals and practical application of those ideals to all of its people, then what chance has the rest of the world of engaging America in reasoned discussion?

About the Author:

Ziauddin Sardar is a widely-respected writer and Visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the City University, London. He is a regular contributor to the New Statesman. Merryl Wyn Davies is writer, anthropologist and former television producer. She is the author of Knowing One Another: Shaping An Islamic Anthropology.

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