This chapter beckons historians of US international and transnational relations to borders – those spaces at which different systems of meaning and organization intersect.

Borders – both territorial and symbolic – can be messy places. They may produce conflict, demoralization, fear, and oppression. They may generate attraction, hybridization, creativity, and liberation. Borders are not one way or they would not be borders. The Berlin Wall marked a border. The metropolitan area of San Diego and Tijuana straddles a border. The journal Diplomatic History has been most controversial, and most successful, when it has pushed the borders of its field of study. All of these provide apt, but different, metaphors of the dangers and opportunities represented at borders. As conflicted zones, borders may be unsettled and postmodern in fostering juxtapositions, and – for that reason – they often raise concerns over control and become sites for oppression and policing as well as for resistance, imagination, and even emancipation.

Writing histories of US foreign relations is involved with – and complicated by – borders. Traditional scholarship in diplomatic history dealt largely with bounded states in a fairly defined international system. More recently, scholarship shifted toward a revised nomenclature called “America and the World” and toward transnational themes in which economic and cultural interactions, especially among nonstate actors, have become more visible. In addition, historians of America and the World now work within a larger universe of scholarly discourse that blurs disciplinary borders and debates the saliency of modernist categories and assumptions about the writing of history. Interrogating the borders of politics and power, of culture and knowledge, has been transformative. This chapter, in encouraging readers to think about borders of all kinds, considers some influential theoretical frames and reflects upon various directions suggested by recent scholarship.

MAKING MEANING ALONG BORDERS: OTHERING AND CONTACT ZONES

The border between “West” and “East,” “Occident” and “Orient,” is surely one of the most structuring, and also contentious, frameworks in global politics. Edward Said's Orientalism, a seminal work that has framed academic conversations for over three decades, is an appropriate place to begin a discussion of border-creation. Although Orientalism deals with Western representations of the Middle East, the implications of Said's work – and the debates generated by its many critics – extend far more broadly.

A mass consumerist ethos – driven by particular styles of resource use, production techniques, and advertising methods – became one of America’s most important and controversial contributions to the world. Despite the global impact of American-style consumerism – on people and on international politics – accounts of mass consumerism and of U.S. international (or transnational) relations have only recently addressed their overlapping historical themes.

This essay examines several different topics that lie at the intersections of histories of mass consumerism and international relations. Within each, it highlights historiographies that bring a global, historical perspective to the spread of U.S.-style consumerism and to the changing relationship between mass consumerism and America’s global power.

First, however, a definition is in order. Mass consumerism arises from and propels not only a variety of economic relationships but also complex codes of aspirations and desires. I define mass consumerism as a mass-production and mass-marketing system that imagines an ever-widening abundance of goods within a culture that emphasizes buying and selling, desire, glamour, and flexible, purchase-driven identities.

This essay beckons historians of U.S. international relations to borders– those spaces at which different systems of meaning and organization intersect.

Borders – both geographic and figurative – can be messy places. They may produce conflict, demoralization, fear, and oppression. They may generate hybridization, creativity, and liberation. Borders are no one way or they would not be borders. The Berlin Wall marked a border. The metropolitan area of San Diego and Tijuana straddles a border. The journal in our field, Diplomatic History, has been most controversial, and I think most successful, when it has pushed the borders of the field. All of these provide apt, but different, metaphors of the dangers and opportunities represented at borders. Conflicted zones, borders may be unsettled and postmodern in their juxtapositions, and – for that very reason – they often raise concerns over control and become sites for oppression and policing.

Writing histories of American foreign relations is involved with – and complicated by – borders. The traditional scholarship of diplomatic history dealt largely with bounded states in an international system; more recently, economic and cultural interactions among nonstate actors have attracted considerable attention. In addition, historians of foreign relations now work within a larger universe of scholarly discourse that blurs disciplinary borders and debates the saliency of modernist categories and assumptions about the writing of history. Interrogating the borders of politics and power, of culture and knowledge, is what this field – perhaps more than any other – should strive to do best.

Luce's famous essay “The American Century” called on Americans to accept their special “duty and opportunity” in the post-World War II era. They should, he wrote, exert “the full impact” of their influence on the world in four ways: through promoting systems of free enterprise, propagating training in practical, technical skills, becoming the Good Samaritan to the entire world in times of hunger and need, and spreading their ideals of freedom and justice. A central premise of Luce's essay was its identification of American power with the attractions of its culture. Luce's American Century was not articulated as a vision resting on arms buildups, nuclear capacity, covert intrigue, or other forms of realpolitik. It stemmed from the long tradition that identified American influence (or Americanization) with an inevitable and presumably welcomed process of cultural and economic modernization. Luce's essay provides an embarkation point for considering the ways in which visions of modernity and Americanization interrelated with messages about gender roles, particularly changing roles for women.