The New Imperialism

Read for Network Imperialism

Bibliographic Deets

 * Harvey, David 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Content

 * Alludes to this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/magazine/the-american-empire-the-burden.html?scp=1&sq=american%20empire%20get%20used%20to%20it&st=cse


 * "A 'new imperialism', many now assert, is already in operation but it calls for more explicit acknowledgement and a more solid commitment if it is to establish a Pax Americana that can bestow the same benefits upon the world as the Pax Brittanica secured in the last half of the nineteenth century" (4)

How America's Power Grew

 * Harvey defines "special brand of it called 'capitalist imperialism' as a contradictory fusion of 'the politics of state and empire' (imperialism as a distinctively political project on the part of actors whose power is based in command of a terrority and a capacity to mobilize its human and natural resources toward political, economic, and military ends) and 'the molecular processes of capital accumulation in space and time' (imperialism as a diffuse political-economic process in space and time in which command over and use of capital takes primacy)" (26).


 * "Imperialistic practices, from the perspective of capitalistic logic, are typically about exploiting the uneven geographical conditions under which capital accumulation occurs and also taking advantage of what I call the 'asymmetries' that inevitably arise out of spatial exchange relations" (31)


 * "most of the US population either lives in a state of denial, refusing to even hear of such things, or if it does hear, passively accepts liquidations and coercions as facts of life, the normal cost of doing fundamentally honest business in a dirty world" (39)


 * The US emerged from WW II as most dominant power. It dominated technology and production (49)


 * "In foreign affairs, the US presented itself as chief defender of freedom (understood in terms of free markets) and the rights of private property" (51-52)


 * "And so began the huge cultural assault upon 'decadent' European values and the promotion of the superiority of American culture and of 'American values'. Money power was used to dominate cultural production and influence cultural values ... Cultural imperialism became an important weapon in the struggle to assert overall hegemony." (55-56)


 * US "strongest card" = "military dominance" (79)

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