Kadu
11-03-2009, 06:19 AM
American Exceptionalism Reconsidered: Anglo-Saxon Ethnogenesis in the 'Universal' Nation, 1776-1850
Kauffmann
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/polsoc/staff/academic/eric-kaufmann/wasp-reconsidered
Abstract
The history of nativism in the United States has received considerable scholarly attention, yet the few systematic attempts to explain it have focused predominantly on psychological or economic causes. This paper asserts that such explanations fail to address the crucial cultural dimension of the nativism issue, which must be analyze through the prism of historical sociology. Specifically, this paper argues that American nativism cannot be understood without reference to an 'American' national ethnic group whose myth-symbol complex had developed prior to the large-scale immigration of the mid-nineteenth century. Without understanding this social construction, it is difficult to explain subsequent attempts to defend it. This paper, therefore does not seek to retrace the history of American nativism. Instead, it focuses on the period prior to 1850, when American nativism was in its infancy. It examines the development of an Anglo-American ethnicity during 1776-1850 and attempts to delineate its structure. This 'American' complex of myths and symbols, with its attendant set of lifestyle images and narratives, is shown to conform to more general models recently presented by theorists of ethnicity and nationalism. Finally, it is argued that American nativism may have exhibited a very different pattern if an 'American' national ethnicity had not taken root.
Kauffmann
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/polsoc/staff/academic/eric-kaufmann/wasp-reconsidered
Abstract
The history of nativism in the United States has received considerable scholarly attention, yet the few systematic attempts to explain it have focused predominantly on psychological or economic causes. This paper asserts that such explanations fail to address the crucial cultural dimension of the nativism issue, which must be analyze through the prism of historical sociology. Specifically, this paper argues that American nativism cannot be understood without reference to an 'American' national ethnic group whose myth-symbol complex had developed prior to the large-scale immigration of the mid-nineteenth century. Without understanding this social construction, it is difficult to explain subsequent attempts to defend it. This paper, therefore does not seek to retrace the history of American nativism. Instead, it focuses on the period prior to 1850, when American nativism was in its infancy. It examines the development of an Anglo-American ethnicity during 1776-1850 and attempts to delineate its structure. This 'American' complex of myths and symbols, with its attendant set of lifestyle images and narratives, is shown to conform to more general models recently presented by theorists of ethnicity and nationalism. Finally, it is argued that American nativism may have exhibited a very different pattern if an 'American' national ethnicity had not taken root.