Dissertation
Transnational cultural market: A concept for understanding cultural transmission across the Mexico-United States border, 1920-1946
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
05/2010
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000006119
Abstract
Between 1920 and 1946, the national cultures of Mexico and the United States entered upon a general path of convergence. This dissertation argues that three major agents were responsible for accelerating the transmission of culture across the border. Government officials, private businessmen, and common migrants usually pursued their country's or their own economic betterment, but as they did so they pushed or pulled culture into a new national setting. Often a combination of two or more of the group's efforts was necessary for cultural transmission to occur. Mexico's government, for example, contracted American corporate capital and construction expertise in the 1930s to develop the national highway system, which then enabled Mexican migrants to travel northbound and American tourists to come south. In the early 1940s, the American government welcomed Mexican "bracero" workers, who frequently then transformed the culture of their new localities. These confluences of government, corporate, and migrant activities produced a broad transnational cultural market in which people exchanged goods, practices, and ideas that originated from abroad. The cultural market concept emphasizes the interplay of state and market forces for transmitting foreign culture in this case study of Mexico and the United States. As the governments and peoples of both countries began to shed their historical mistrust of each other, more cultural interaction transpired within an increasingly connected bi-national capitalistic system. The concept also notes, however, the agency of individuals in the story. Ambassadors and presidents advanced or retarded cultural relations by showing more or less understanding of and respect for their counterparts' culture throughout the decades. Common individuals, meanwhile, often had the capability to accept or reject the cultural offerings advanced to them by government or corporate representatives. This freedom to act and thus exchange within a transnational cultural market seems generally to apply when societies are for the most part capitalistic and democratic.
Metrics
4 File views/ downloads
24 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Transnational cultural market
- Creators
- Jon S. Middaugh
- Contributors
- John E. Kicza (Chair)Heather Streets (Committee Member)Laurie K Mercier (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Department of HistoryJeffrey C Sanders (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Department of History
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of History
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 287
- Identifiers
- 99901055023101842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation