employed by all contributors. So is the view of anti-Americanism as heterogeneous and
multidimensional, which we put forward in Section 2. Many of the subsequent papers
discuss, in different contexts, the concepts of opinion, distrust and bias that we analyze in
Section 3. Indeed, we asked the authors of the chapters on France, Egypt and China to
examine reactions to American tsunami relief efforts in January 2005, so that we could
compare the public discourses on the American tsunami relief with the comparative
polling data that we present in Section 3 of this chapter. The typology of anti-
Americanisms in Section 4 is designed, in part, to assist the comparative analyses of
France, Egypt, and China in Part III of this book; without accepting it entirely, the
authors of those three chapters all make use of the typology. In our typology, there are
four main types, which scale from being less to more deeply experienced, as well as two
additional forms of anti-Americanism. In any particular situation we expect anti-
Americanism to result from different constellations of the different forms and types that
“bleed” into each other in variable constellations that are activated by and manipulated
through political processes.
In the broadest sense, we view anti-Americanism as a psychological tendency to
hold negative views of the United States and of American society in general. Such views
draw on cognitive, emotional, and normative elements.
Using the language of
psychology, anti-Americanism constitutes an attitude.
Although we take the social-
psychological literature seriously, our approach is resolutely political. This emphasis
reflects not only our disciplinary competence, but also our view that anti-Americanism
can only be understood fully in its political context, as affected by interests and power.
Anti-American views, are always contested or at least contestable. They are objects of
political struggle. Both persuasion and power can be used to shape individual attitudes
and collective beliefs. Our analysis of anti-Americanism thus is fundamentally about
politics.
1. Conceptualizing anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism can have cognitive, emotional, and normative components.
4
This formulation is indebted to Pierangelo Isernia, chapter 4 below, and to personal communications with
Yaacov Vertzberger. He defines an attitude “as an ideational formation having affective and cognitive
dimensions that create a disposition for a particular pattern of behavior.” See Vertzberger 1990, 127.
2
2
Convention