Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power
ISBN: 9780231517935
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter



Inderjeet Parmar reveals the complex interrelations, shared mindsets, and collaborative efforts of influential public and private organizations in the building of American hegemony. Focusing on the involvement of the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations in U.S. foreign affairs, he traces the transformation of America from an "isolationist" nation into the world's sole superpower, all in the name of benevolent stewardship. Parmar begins his study in the 1920s with the establishment of these foundations and their system of top-down, elitist, scientific giving, which focused more on managing social, political, and economic change than on solving modern society's structural problems. He recounts how American intellectuals, academics, and policy makers affiliated with these organizations institutionalized such elitism, which then bled into the machinery of twentieth-century? U.S. foreign policy and became regarded as the essence of modernity.


Inderjeet Parmar is professor of international politics and head of the Department of International Politics at City University London. He is the coeditor of Obama and the World: New Directions in U.S. Foreign Policy and Barack Obama and the Myth of a Post-Racial America . His new book project is entitled Presidents and Premiers at War: Race, Elitism, and Empire in Anglo-American Wars from Korea to the War on Terror .
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