The Americanization of pop culture in Asia?

Within the discipline of cultural studies, the Americanization of popular culture in Asia seems to be taken-for-granted as a coherent whole and thereby unproblematized. This paper argues that such anti-hegemonic, anti-colonial approaches to culturalism are inadequate. Reflecting on cricket as British imperialists' moralizing, culturalizing and politicizing force in their colonized states, I analyze cultural forms. namely baseball and 'American' popular music in relation to its production, dissemination and commoditization in Taiwan. Keeping the similarities and differences of the 'effects' of both cultural forms taking root in Taiwan, I argue that the discipline of cultural studies requires a critical subjectivity that privileges the strategizing choices of the agent within a framework that acknowledges the multiplicity of cultural reception and/or variable literacy.