The Ford Foundation and Europe (1950's-1970's)

This book is the first serious effort to view comprehensively what the Ford Foundation thought it should do about Europe over the period 1950-1970. And what it effectively did. It looks both at general trends in that policy and at strategic impetus transmitted by the Foundation to important sectors of intellectual, scientific and economic life.

It falls into two parts both introduced by long chapters and followed by case studies. The contributors analyze the various and complex effects of -cross-fertilization- of learning on the two sides of the Atlantic and reveal that the Ford Foundation did not operate through transplant but mainly as a translator: it favored the strengthening of selective appropriations of American patterns rather than a process of mechanical imitation. The dominant orientation was the internationalization of scholarship and education rather than simply -Americanization-. This allows one to question the limits of concentrating exclusively on the notion of Americanization when the forms of cultural transfer are considered."