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American foundations and the development of international knowledge networks
Author(s) -
Parmar Inderjeet
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
global networks
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.685
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1471-0374
pISSN - 1470-2266
DOI - 10.1111/1471-0374.00024
Subject(s) - hegemony , latin americans , globalism , internationalism (politics) , political science , international relations , foundation (evidence) , sociology , empirical research , political economy , social science , law , epistemology , globalization , philosophy , politics
This article examines the role and influence of three American foundations – Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford – in developing international knowledge networks that significantly impacted upon the Third World, helping to consolidate US hegemony after 1945, fostering pro‐US values, methods and research institutions. The international networks were modelled on prior domestic initiatives resulting in the effective intellectual hegemony of ‘liberal internationalism’, of empirical scientific research methods, and of policy‐oriented studies. Such domestic hegemony constructed a key basis of America’s rise to globalism, which after 1945 required a continuing and enhanced foundation role, especially with the onset of the Cold War. The article, which examines the role of the US foundations in relation to intellectual hegemony construction in Latin America, Indonesia, and Africa, concludes that the evidence is best explained by Gramscian theory, and calls for further empirical research in this vital area.