Final Readings

Bamyeh’s piece is about how we’ve learned our lessons from the great world wars and how nationalism is not such a good idea. He illustrates how the Europeans get the post nationalist thing started by creating interdependencies among various countries. He chastises America for still hanging on to imperialism. Bamyeh then breaks post national culture into four categories: Religion, material possessions, humanist and liberation. In Halle’s piece we see how the Europeans tried to force the bourgeois culture on any one who stood in their way. How American culture is nearly hegemonic related to the film industry. The American film culture industry actually turns foreign people away from their own culture. When people get too critical of globalization it leads to romantic nationalism or statism. In the Patomaki and Teivainen piece we see how the area called Mercosur (Which is made up of the five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela) is transitioning into a more European style democracy. He goes on to explain how the society functioned after the military dictatorships by keeping private property rights. We see how human rights groups have been working the Mercosur. They’ve put in place some protections to prevent military coups. The Andean community may move towards a European style parliament soon.

How silent films were marketed internationally but when sound was added it forced them to become regional. The fact that Argentineans and Uruguayans identify themselves with Europe. I’ve never heard the term Mercosur.

In Bamyeh’s piece he speaks of how America is neo colonialist and then cites the examples of the war in Kosovo and the Persian Gulf. We liberated Kuwait from the Iraqis and we protected the Muslims from being killed by the Serbs in Kosovo, how the hell is that considered colonialism?