American Exceptionalism and the Naturalization of “America”

Prospects ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Maria Irene Ramalho de Sousa Santos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peculiar Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Poets ◽  
Social Recovery ◽  
The 19Th Century

American exceptionalism, Joyce Appleby has recently reminded us, is “America's peculiar form of Eurocentrism.” Now that the multicultural history of the United States is finally being written, nothing would justify another look at American exceptionalism, except perhaps the need to examine the intellectual ways that have hidden American historical and social diversity for so long. In this essay I basically argue that a certain appropriation of the 18th-Century conception of nature as “what is” played a role also in the development of American exceptionalism. The naturalist rhetoric in American discourse in the 19th Century, I further argue, ran parallel to the most savage depredations of nature ever performed by humankind. I am particularly interested in foregrounding the discrepancy between the steady construction of that greatest of modern artifacts, the American nation, and its concomitant self-justification as a thing of nature. The other side of the commodification of America is its naturalization, an idea that I find is supported, whether critically or uncritically, by many American poets and artists. In recent times we have witnessed a number of ecological attempts at the social recovery of nature in the most advanced capitalist countries, including, of course, the United States. I am not concerned here with these developments, of which ecofeminism is arguably one of the most interesting ones.

Another Killer Industry: A Review of Fake Silk by Paul Blanc

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 400-411
Author(s):  
Daniel Berman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Carbon Disulfide ◽  
The United States ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Worker Exposure ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Essential Input ◽  
The 19Th Century

Rayon, a shiny artificial fabric with the flashy allure of silk, constitutes no danger to consumers. But worker exposure to carbon disulfide, an essential input in rayon manufacture, can drive workers insane and kill them as well. The dangers of carbon disulfide have been known since the middle of the 19th century. Professor Paul Blanc’s book traces the social amnesia about the dangers of making rayon and how its production has shifted from wealthy countries in Europe, the United States, and Japan to poorer countries like South Korea and the People’s Republic of China. The history of the rayon industry constitutes a metaphor for the lives of millions of people who toil unnoticed at dangerous jobs to support their families and help make life possible and even pleasurable for the luckier ooernes.

scholarly journals Mapping a Nation: Daniel Carter Beard’s Time as a Surveyor for the Sanborn Map Company

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
John J. Swab
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Urban America ◽  
Fire Insurance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City ◽  
Eastern Half

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Fire insurance maps produced by the American firm the Sanborn Map Company have long served as cartographic guides to understanding the history of urban America. Primarily used by cultural and historical geographers, historians, historic preservationists, and environmental consultants; historians of cartography have little explored the history of this company. While this scholarship has addressed various facets of Sanborn’s history (Ristow, 1968), no scholarly piece has explored the lived experience of being a Sanborn surveyor. This lack of scholarship comes not from any significant oversight but rather from the fact that the contributions of most Sanborn surveyors were anonymous and little recorded on the maps themselves. Moreover, the company itself has done little to save its own history, thus little is known of their individual stories and experiences. The exception to this is perhaps the most famous Sanborn surveyor of all: Daniel Carter Beard.</p><p>Over the course of his nine-decade life, Daniel Carter Beard held several prominent positions including the co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America and the lead illustrator for many of Mark Twain’s novels. However, he got his start as a surveyor for the Sanborn Map Company in the 1870s, just a few years after its founding. His papers, housed at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, includes a variety of ephemera from his time with the Sanborn Map Company.</p><p>Trained in civil engineering, Beard got his start as a surveyor for the Cincinnati (Ohio) Office of Platting Commission, creating the first official plat map for the city. He was hired by Sanborn in 1874 and served as a surveyor until 1878, traveling extensively over the eastern half of the United States, parlaying his skills into creating fire insurance maps for Sanborn. Thus, this paper speaks to two main themes. The first theme traces the route of Beard during his early years with the company across the eastern half of the United States, documenting both the places he visited and the challenges he faced as a Sanborn surveyor. The second theme, interwoven through the paper, is an analysis of the innerworkings of Sanborn’s administrative structure and its relationship with the larger fire insurance market during the 1870s. Altogether, these documents present unique insight into the organization of the Sanborn Map Company and how it produced its maps during the second-half of the 19th century.</p>

The Feminization of Etiquette Literature: Foucault, Mechanisms of Social Change, and the Paradoxes of Empowerment

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Arditi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Change ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Space ◽  
The 19Th Century

This paper explores the opening of a discursive space within the etiquette literature in the United States during the 19th century and how women used this space as a vehicle of empowerment. It identifies two major strategies of empowerment. First, the use or appropriation of existing discourses that can help redefine the “other” within an hegemonic space. Second, and more importantly, the transformation of that space in shifting the lines by which differentiation is produced to begin with. Admittedly, these strategies are neither unique nor the most important in the history of women's empowerment. But this paper argues that the new discourses formulated by women helped forge a new space within which women ceased being the “other,” and helped give body to a concept of womanhood as defined by a group of women, regardless of how idiosyncratic that group might have been.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Luhrmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Ethnic Density ◽  
Cultural Interpretation ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of

The introduction lays out what we know about the social context of schizophrenia from the epidemiological literature: that risk of schizophrenia is particularly high for immigrants from predominantly dark-skinned countries to Europe; that risk increases with lower socioeconomic status at birth and even at parent’s birth; that risk increases with urban dwelling and seems to increase the longer time is spent in cities; that risk increases as ethnic density in the neighborhood declines. The chapter presents a history of the way schizophrenia has been understood in the United States, and the diagnostic complexities of serious psychotic disorder. It then discusses what ethnographers have observed so far about the social conditions which may shape the experience of psychosis: the local cultural interpretation of mental illness; the role and presence of the family; the structure of work; and the basic social environment. This becomes the ground for our case studies.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Martin Luther King

The introduction includes Bible verses cited by ministers to defend segregation and verses to oppose segregation. There are slices of the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and African American history. The southern states, where white ministers confronted segregation, are identified. The term “minister” is explained as well as the variety of labels given these ministers ranging from “Liberal,” Progressive,” “Neo-Orthodox,” “Evangelical Liberal,” “open conservative,” ‘Last Hurrah of the Social Gospel Movement” to “Trouble Maker,” “Traitor, “ “Atheist,” “Communist,” “N_____ Lover.” Rachel Henderlite, the only woman minister mentioned in the book, is identified. Synopses of the book’s seven chapters are included. Comments by historians David Chappell, Charles Reagan Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Campbell, and Thomas Pettigrew are cited.

A Brief History of Central America

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-180
Author(s):  
Rachel Gibson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Central America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Events ◽  
History Of

The history of Central America directly impacts current events, and exploring the social, political, and economic reasons why Guatemalans and other Central Americans emigrate to the United States deepens our connections to family stories and legacies. This chapter offers a brief overview of the region....

scholarly journals Beyond quarantine: a history of leprosy in Puerto Rico, 1898-1930s

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 225-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie H. Levison
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

From biblical times to the modern period, leprosy has been a disease associated with stigma. This mark of disgrace, physically present in the sufferers' sores and disfigured limbs, and embodied in the identity of a 'leper', has cast leprosy into the shadows of society. This paper draws on primary sources, written in Spanish, to reconstruct the social history of leprosy in Puerto Rico when the United States annexed this island in 1898. The public health policies that developed over the period of 1898 to the 1930s were unique to Puerto Rico because of the interplay between political events, scientific developments and popular concerns. Puerto Rico was influenced by the United States' priorities for public health, and the leprosy control policies that developed were superimposed on vestiges of the colonial Spanish public health system. During the United States' initial occupation, extreme segregation sacrificed the individual rights and liberties of these patients for the benefit of society. The lives of these leprosy sufferers were irrevocably changed as a result.

Classical Architecture in Europe and North America since 1700

Classics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Classical Architecture ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The 19Th Century

Since the Western Roman Empire collapsed, classical, or Greco-Roman, architecture has served as a model to articulate the cultural, artistic, political, and ideological goals of later civilizations, empires, nations, and individuals. The Renaissance marked the first major, widespread re-engagement with classical antiquity in art, literature, and architecture. Debates over classical antiquity and its relation to the modern world continued ever since. One such important debate was that of the quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns, which resulted when Charles Perrault published his Parallèles des anciens et des modernes in 1688. This dispute focused on whether the modern age could surpass antiquity, especially in literature. The Greco-Roman controversy (1750s and 1760s) was another example of Europeans engaging with the classical past; this debate focused on whether Greek or Roman art was of greater historical value; an argument has continued unabated to this day. Figures like Johann Joachim Winckelmann argued (in publications such as Winckelmann 1764, cited under Early Archaeological Publications on Greece and Classical Ruins in the Roman East, on Greek art) for the supremacy of Greek forms, while others like Giovanni Battista Piranesi (whose 1748–1778 views of Rome are reproduced in Ficacci 2011, cited under Early Archaeological Publications on Italy) advocated for Rome’s preeminence. Such debates demonstrate how classical antiquity was an essential part of the intellectual and artistic milieu of 18th-century Europe. This bibliography focuses on the appropriation of classical architecture in the creation of built forms from 1700 to the present in Europe and North America, which is typically called neoclassical or neo-classical, both of which are acceptable. Scholars often define the neoclassical period as lasting from c. 1750 to 1830, when European art and architecture predominantly appropriated classical forms and ideas. The influence of classical architecture continued in popularity throughout the 19th century and early 20th century in the United States. The early 19th century saw the flourishing of the Greek Revival, where Greek forms dominated artistic and architectural production, both in Europe and the United States. The ascendance of Queen Victoria in 1837 marked a shift toward a preference for the Gothic and Medieval forms. Neoclassical forms saw a resurgence in the second half of the 19th century, as Roman architectural forms became increasingly popular as an expression of empire. The term “Neo-classical” was coined as early as January 1872 by Robert Kerr, who used the term positively. It later took on certain negative overtones, when it was used as a derogatory epithet by an unknown writer in the Times of London in 1892. Neoclassical architecture has fared no better with the rise of modernism in the early 20th century onward and since then it has been seen as old-fashioned and derivative. Neoclassical architecture was not a mindless imitation of classical architectural forms and interiors. The interest in classical architecture and the creation of neoclassical architecture was spurred on by important archaeological discoveries in the mid-18th century, which widened the perception of Greek and Roman buildings. The remarkable flexibility of ancient architecture to embody the grandeur of an empire, as well as the principles of a nascent democracy, meant that it had great potential to be interpreted and reinterpreted by countless architects, patrons, empires, and nation states—in different ways and at different times from the 18th to the 20th century. This bibliography is organized thematically (e.g., General Overviews; Companions, Handbooks, and Theoretical Works; Reference Works; Early General Archaeological Publications; The Reception of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Bay of Naples; and World’s Fairs and Expositions) and then geographically, creating country- or region-specific bibliographies. While this model of organization has some flaws, it aims to avoid repetition and highlights the interconnected nature and process of the reception of classical architecture in later periods.

Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwen Douglas ◽  
Dario Di Rosa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
The United States ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Historical Anthropology ◽  
Historical Ethnography ◽  
History Of

This article situates ethnohistory historically, conceptually, methodologically, and geographically in relation to its intertwined “parent” disciplines of anthropology and history. As a named interdisciplinary inquiry, ethnohistory emerged in the United States in the mid-1950s in the “applied” context of academic involvement in Native American land claims hearings after 1946. However, anthropology (the science of humanity) has overlapped, intersected, or diverged from history (study or knowledge of the past) since becoming a distinct field in Europe in the mid-18th century and gradually professionalized as an academic discipline from the 1830s, initially in Russia (see Before Boas: The genesis of ethnography and ethnology in the German Enlightenment [Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2015], cited under Anthropology and History). Anthropological approaches oscillated between historicization and its neglect or denial, with recurring tension between event and system, process and structure, diachrony and synchrony. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, ethnology (comparative study of peoples or races, their origins and development) was distinguished from the natural history of man and from anthropology (the science of race), initially in France. From the 1860s to the 1920s, Anglophone anthropological theory was dominated by the opposed doctrines of sociocultural evolution and diffusion—both superficially historical but largely ahistorical processes. For the next half century, prevailing functionalist, structuralist, and culturalist discourses mostly denied knowable history to ethnography’s purportedly vanishing “primitive” subjects. This uneven, agonistic disciplinary history did not encourage a subfield uniting anthropology and history. However, after 1950, in global contexts of anticolonialism, decolonization, and movements for Indigenous or egalitarian rights, anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists developed the hybrid fields of Ethnohistory and Ethnographic History, which flourished for half a century. Practitioners transcended ethnohistory’s spatial and conceptual roots in the United States and Canada to investigate Indigenous or African American pasts in Latin America and the Caribbean, Indigenous or local pasts in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, and non-Indigenous pasts in Europe and elsewhere. The need to incorporate Indigenous or popular histories and viewpoints was increasingly emphasized. From the 1980s, ethnohistory was condemned as Eurocentric, outdated, even racist, by postcolonial and postmodern critiques (see: The state of ethnohistory. Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1991):345–375, cited under General Overviews). The label’s usage declined in the 21st century in favor of the already established terms anthropological history or historical anthropology, or the emergent fields of Anthropology of History, historical consciousness, and historicity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document