The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900
The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900

Author: Peter D. Hall

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1984-02

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780814734254

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Nationality, argues Peter Hall, did not follow directly from the colonists' declatation of independence from England, nor from the political union of the states under the Constitution of 1789. It was, rather, the product of organizations which socialized individuals to a national outlook. These institutions were the private corportions which Americans used after 1790 to carry on their central activities of production. The book is in three parts. In the first part the social and economic development of the American colonies is considered. In New England, population growth led to the breakdown of community - and the migration of people to both the cities and the frontier. New England's merchants and professional tried to maintain community leadership in the context of capitalism and democracy and developed a remarkable dependence on pricate corporations and the eleemosynary trust, devices that enabled them to exert influence disproportionate to their numbers. Part two looks at the problem of order and authority after 1790. Tracing the role of such New England-influenced corporate institutions as colleges, religious bodies, professional societeis, and businesses, Hall shows how their promoters sought to "civilize" the increasingly diverse and dispersed American people. With Jefferson's triumph in 1800. these institutions turned to new means of engineering consent, evangelical religion, moral fegorm, and education. The third part of this volume examines the fruition a=of these corporatist efforts. The author looks at the Civil War as a problem in large-scale organization, and the pre- and post-war emergence of a national administrative elite and national institutions of business and culture. Hall concludes with an evaluation of the organizational components of nationality and a consideration of the precedent that the past sets for the creation of internationality.

The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900
The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900

Author: Peter Dobkin Hall

Publisher: New York : New York University Press

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 9780814734155

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Nationality, argues Peter Hall, did not follow directly from the colonists' declaration of independence from England, nor from the political union of the states under the Constitution of 1789. It was, rather, the product of organizations which socialized individuals to a national outlook.

The Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel
The Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel

Author: Stephen Shapiro

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0271046732

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Taking his cue from Philadelphia-born novelist Charles Brockden Brown's Annals of Europe and America, which contends that America is shaped most noticeably by the international struggle between Great Britain and France for control of the world trade market, Stephen Shapiro charts the advent, decline, and reinvigoration of the early American novel. That the American novel "sprang so unexpectedly into published existence during the 1790s" may be a symptom of the beginning of the end of Franco-British supremacy and a reflection of the power of a middle class riding the crest of a new world economic system. Shapiro's world-systems approach is a relatively new methodology for literary studies, but it brings two particularly useful features to the table. First, it refines the conceptual frameworks for analyzing cultural and social history, such as the rise in sentimentalism, in relation to a long-wave economic history of global commerce; second, it fosters a new model for a comparative American Studies across time. Rather than relying on contiguous time, a world-systems approach might compare the cultural production of one region to another at the same location within the recurring cycle in an economic reconfiguration. Shapiro offers a new way of thinking about the causes for the emergence of the American novel that suggests a fresh way of rethinking the overall paradigms shaping American Studies.

A Place Somewhat Apart
A Place Somewhat Apart

Author: Philip E. Harrold

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2006-10-01

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1597526193

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The story of secularization and religious disestablishment in American higher education is told from the standpoint of a lively community of professors, students, and administrators at the University of Michigan in the late nineteenth century. This campus culture--one of the most closely watched of its day--sheds new light on the personal and cultural meanings of these momentous changes in American intellectual and public life. Here we see how religion was not so much displaced or marginalized in the heyday of university reform as translated into new arenas of public service and scholarly pursuit. The main characters in this story--professors Calvin Thomas and Henry Carter Adams--underwent profound religious crises of faith accompanied by major adjustments in their interpersonal relationships. Together, with students and administrators, their lives constituted a communal biography of religious deconversion. A close examination of these private and public worlds provides a more complete understanding of the dynamics behind new academic policies and intellectual innovations in a leading public university. The non-cognitive, intersubjective, gendered, quasi-religious shadings of academic modernism and early pragmatist philosophy, in particular, come to light in vivid ways. As John Dewey later observed, Michigan became an experimental laboratory for new meanings to unfold, new acts to propose.

Reconstructing History
Reconstructing History

Author: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-10-25

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1317721764

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In May 1997, a group of distinguished historians announced the formation of the Historical Society, an organization that sought to be free of the jargon-laden debates and political agendas that have come to characterize the profession. Eugene Genovese, Prsident of the Society, explained the commitment to form a new and genuinely diverse organization. "The Society extends from left to right and embraces people of every ideological and political tendency. The Society promotes frank debate in an atmosphere of civility, mutual respect, and common courtesy. All we require is that participants lay down plausible premises; reason logically; appeal to evidence; and prepare to exchange criticism with those who hold different points of view. Our goal: to promote an integrated history accessible to the public." From those beginnings, the Society has grown to include hundreds of members from every level of the profession, from Pulitzer-prize winning scholars to graduate students, across the ideological and political spectrum. In this first book from the Historical Society, several founding members explore central topics within the field; the enduring value of the practice of history; the sensitive use of historical records, sources, and archives; the value of common standards; and much more. An engaging and challenging work that will appeal to scholars, students, educators, and the many public readers who have become lost in the culture wars, Reconstructing History is sure to generate the kind of civil, reasoned debate that is a foundational goal of the Historical Society. Contributors include Walter A. McDougall, Marc Trachtenberg, Alan Charles Kors, Deborah A. Symonds, Leo P. Ribuffo, Bruce Kuklick, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Edward Berkowitz, John Patrick Diggins, John Womack, Victor Davis Hanson, Miriam R. Levin, Martin J. Sklar, Eugene D. Genovese, Daniel C. Littlefield, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Russell Jacoby, Rochelle Gurstein, Paul Rahe, Donald Kagan, Diane Ravitch, Sean Wilentz, Louis Ferleger and Richard H. Steckel.

Sacred Companies
Sacred Companies

Author: N. J. Demerath III

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1998-02-12

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 019535446X

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Religion is intrinsically social, and hence irretrievably organizational, although organization is often seen as the darker side of the religious experience--power, routinization, and bureaucracy. Religion and secular organizations have long received separate scholarly scrutiny, but until now their confluence has been little considered. This interdisciplinary collection of mostly unpublished papers is the first volume to remedy the deficit. The project grew out of a three-year inquiry into religious institutions undertaken by Yale University's Program on Non-Profit Organizations and sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. The scholars who took part in this effort weree challenged to apply new perspectives to the study of religious organizations, especially that strand of contemporary secular organizational theory known as "New Institutionalism." The result was this groundbreaking volume, which includes papers on various aspects of such topics as the historical sources and patterns of U.S. religious organizations, contemporary patterns of denominational authority, the congregation as an organization, and the interface between religious and secular institutions and movements. The contributors include an interdisciplinary mix of scholars from economics, history, law, social administration, and sociology.

Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors
Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors

Author: Thomas S. Wermuth

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2001-09-20

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0791490076

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Although Rip Van Winkle was a fictional character, his community in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York State was very real. Thomas S. Wermuth's book shows that the popular view of Hudson Valley farmers as self-sufficient, independent, and free of governmental authority is as fictional as the character of Rip Van Winkle himself. In fact these mid-Hudson farmers lived in villages where economic practices and behavior were regulated by civil authorities as well as neighborhood concerns, and where acquisitive practices that were believed to endanger the public good were forbidden. Based on extensive research into previously unused town records and commercial accounts, this book challenges the belief that the early valley was a capitalist society, arguing that the beliefs and practices associated with modern capitalism developed slowly and unevenly, and were not always welcomed by valley families.

Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education
Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education

Author: William G. Bowen

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 200?

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9780813933399

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Thomas Jefferson once stated that the foremost goal of American education must be to nurture the "natural aristocracy of talent and virtue." Although in many ways American higher education has fulfilled Jefferson's vision by achieving a widespread level of excellence, it has not achieved the objective of equity implicit in Jefferson's statement. In Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin explore the cause for this divide. Employing historical research, examination of the most recent social science and public policy scholarship, international comparisons, and detailed empirical analysis of rich new data, the authors study the intersection between "excellence" and "equity" objectives. Beginning with a time line tracing efforts to achieve equity and excellence in higher education from the American Revolution to the early Cold War years, this narrative reveals the halting, episodic progress in broadening access across the dividing lines of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The authors argue that despite our rhetoric of inclusiveness, a significant number of youth from poor families do not share equal access to America's elite colleges and universities. While America has achieved the highest level of educational attainment of any country, it runs the risk of losing this position unless it can markedly improve the precollegiate preparation of students from racial minorities and lower-income families. After identifying the "equity" problem at the national level and studying nineteen selective colleges and universities, the authors propose a set of potential actions to be taken at federal, state, local, and institutional levels. With recommendations ranging from reform of the admissions process, to restructuring of federal financial aid and state support of public universities, to addressing the various precollegiate obstacles that disadvantaged students face at home and in school, the authors urge all selective colleges and universities to continue race-sensitive admissions policies, while urging the most selective (and privileged) institutions to enroll more well-qualified students from families with low socioeconomic status.

The Shape of Culture
The Shape of Culture

Author: Judith R. Blau

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-07-31

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9780521437936

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This book systematically examines prevailing cultural patterns in contemporary American society. Using information on several thousands of cultural organisations, including elite ones (such as opera and chamber music companies) and popular cultural ones (such as cinemas and live rock concerts), Professor Blau examines the geography of culture, the changing demands for culture, the interdependencies among cultural organisations of different kinds, the nature of labour markets for artists, and the effects of arts subsidies on nonprofit cultural establishments over a ten year period. One of the major conclusions of the book is that the social conditions that support elite and popular culture are increasingly similar over time.

Social Contracts and Economic Markets
Social Contracts and Economic Markets

Author: J.R. Blau

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2007-08-20

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0585281874

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The thesis of this book is that people enter into social contracts because they are different from one another and have incentives to cooperate. In economic life, people have identical interests—namely, their own se- interests—so they have an incentive to compete. The social worlds that we create, or map, and those that are already mapped for us are increasingly complex, and thus the tracking of rationality is not so straightforward, although it is everywhere evident. In a sense, this book grew out of two questions: Why hasn't the United States had a second revolution? Or is the revolution yet to come? Many have discussed the current crises that confront contemporary society, such as great economic inequalities, poverty, the declining quality of jobs, the growing power of corporate elites, and racial antago nisms. I attempt to understand these problems in terms of the radical restructuring of social life by economic and spatial forces. My specula tive thesis is that social organizations must reinforce social contracts and nurture the opportunities for them to be forged. However, contemporary organizations, particularly economic ones, have internalized the princi ples of economic markets, thereby inducing competition and easing out cooperation. In defining social contracts, I draw from Rousseau and also from Marx and his analysis of use value. One hopes that new organiza tional forms based on principles of democracy and community will evolve. In a diverse, multicultural society, this requires great mutual understanding and cooperation and the recognition of differences.