American intellectual and cultural history in the age of globalisation

Abstract American cultural and intellectual life since the end of the Second World War has undergone a significant transformation, one which has preoccupied recent scholarship in the history of American ideas and culture and that has broad implications for the discipline of intellectual history internationally as it reflects current debates about the phenomenon of globalisation. Although a consensus has yet to be reached about what the term globalisation actually describes and entails, it cannot be denied that post-war American cultural and intellectual history, like the historiography that now attempts to document it, has been both catalyst and observer to globalisation, and current attempts to document this fact are, as a result, thoroughly involved in this process as well. The international exchange of ideas, and the effects this has had on intellectual life both ncar and far, arc thus a topic in need of more careful scholarly scrutiny from all sides.