I’d like to avoid stuff like specific TV shows and food, since both are released deliberately upon the market by large corporations. What about the stuff that, thanks to globalization, has simply reached a wider audience and caught on amongst certain (or entire) populations? Hip-hop and various off-shoots of it is one possible example. What are the strongest?
Music? Fashion? I think that it’s hard to dismiss two huge aspects such as food and entertainment because they’ve been marketed by large corporations. Globalization is all about, well, making the market globalized and to advertise to populations that wouldn’t have been exposed to the products otherwise. Without “large corporations” selling the foreign music, for example, hip-hop wouldn’t have become popular in areas outside of the United States.
Baseball is pretty popular in a lot of countries.
Whaaa? I know basebal is popular/semi-popular in Canada, Cuba and Japan but are there any other? I mean, doesn’t the “World Series” consist of just USA and Canada? 
This pales in comparison to an international sport like Soccer or even other ones Hockey/Rugby/Cricket/Basketball.
Well, baseball is an “American” thing. The question is not “What American things are the dominant things in the world”.
It’s also popular in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic…
Action movies maybe.
Is rock music considered an American or British invention?
Are blue jeans a cultural phenomenon?
There are Arab, Israeli, African .Jamaican and everybody else rappers. They can have it. But it is all around the globe.
American.
I’m not really sure I’m understanding the question. Are you asking what aspects of our culture that isn’t promoted by large corporations are popular abroad? Or just excluding TV shows and food?
Some of the things I notice that are very popular in many parts of the world (not necessarily all parts of the world) include NBA basketball, baseball caps, action movies, Windows, Disney stuff (Mickey Mouse et al), blue jeans, and rock and roll. But pretty much all of those are spread by major corporations.
“The West”, as portrayed in movies and TV. Not just the culture of frontiersmen, cowboys & Indians, etc–but the concept of wide open spaces and freedom to get away from it all.
The contents of American wallets have never waned in popularity abroad.
Whoa, there! They can’t have it just yet! There are some heads right here in the U.S. that still love it.
I have a friend (well, technically my cabbie, but I like to think we are friends now).
He tells a story about the South African kids in his home town. He says they live and breath hip hop. The entire culture. The graffiti, the beat boxing, the breakdancing. Ha! I would love to see it with my own eyes.
Also, my husband tells me of the stories his Japanese co-worker tells him about the hip hop community in Japan, and it is apparantly more huge than a lot of people realize. I mean, I knew it was big, but he says that she said it is a way of life for a lot of people there. Beautiful.
Baseball is huge in Japan. The Japanese professional leagues are considered more prestigious than even the AAA leagues in the US.
It’s also quite popular in Venezuela and Mexico.
Well, duh. But hockey, rugby and cricket aren’t American. Basketball is, though.
Ditto. I read your question and… well… if anything one of the strengths of the US seems to be the ability to package slices of your culture and then market it all over the world. (Not a criticism; just an observation). Did you want to exclude the deliberately marketed aspects of US culture and see what was left, but still popular overseas?
I think that was my intent, yes. It seemed “wrong” to include Coke, McDonalds, and Desperate Housewives in this. But I guess I’m not sure I can explain why I would exclude some things and not others. Hmm. Maybe that should be the new focus? Or another one? I dunno. Any thoughts?
Hip-hop is huge here. Direct aping of American styles used to be bigger in the 80s-90s, but now there are more homegrown variants so the styles have changed.
Country music is big with large parts of the Afrikaner sub-population.
Jazz is popular across all race groups.
Basketball & volleyball are quite popular sports.
Baseball caps, saggy-ass jeans and sneakers are always a popular dress code.
I love my Chuck Taylors. It’s the only dent in my otherwise thoroughly Anglophile persona, I loved them even before The Doctor started wearing them. But Chucks and other Converse sneakers are quite big right now.
I know the cynics will argue this, but: democracy, freedom, the rule of law, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, property rights, capitalism and all of the fruits of liberty itself.
In 2009, many countries can argue that they either possess some of these, or even inspired some of these (the mother country of Britain has the best case obviously).
But America, while not having a monopoly on these qualities (or a perfect record in their execution-- who does?), has been the best able to synthesize these into a global idea, the best shorthand for which is “The American Dream.”
That’s the reason why people all around the world still choose to move to America (legally or illegally).
BTW, in support of this point, this Reader’s Digest “global poll” from 2008 is making the rounds online today. This finding was interesting:
France. Heh.
For many foreigners, the American Dream means “you can get rich.”
Different animal.
And a lot of those people who’d like to move there from Europe would be dismayed if they heard about “11 days vacation.” Let’s not even go into health insurance.
Isn’t baseball popular in Russia?
Many Scandinavians seem to love various aspects of (North) American culture. Almost nobody in Europe cares about baseball, except in Finland where they have their own version. Instead of a pitcher, someone from the batter’s team stands next to them and tosses the ball up for them to hit as far as they can. In Sweden, one Saturday night I saw guys cruising around the otherwise empty town in classic 50s American cars. In general, I think that people see a lot of similarities between life in parts of North America and life in the wide empty spaces of Scandinavia, what with the extreme climate and everything else.
Personally, I feel that if you ignore all the obsolete tartan crap, the culture of the Highlands of Scotland is a mixture of Scandinavia and North America. American country music is very popular with many people in the Highlands. I believe it’s also very popular in Ireland.
None of this should be particularly surprising since rural North America, rural Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland and parts of Scandinavia have been culturally intertwined for many centuries.