Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Laski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Forward Movement ◽  
The Past ◽  
Racial History ◽  
The Common ◽  
Chronological Time

This introductory chapter outlines the conceptual, historical, and literary stakes of the book’s examination of the place of progress in definitions of democracy. The chapter opens with a reading of Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas (1871) as articulating one of the constitutive tensions of standard narratives of American democracy: the tendency to locate this political form’s promise in a future that is divorced from the past of racial slavery. Offering context for Whitman’s vision, the chapter surveys key political, cultural, and legal developments that functioned to consolidate the idea of time as linear and progressive in the period that historians have termed the nadir of racial history in the United States. The chapter then outlines the contributions of the authors and activists at the center of this study who identify an untimely democratic hope in contesting the common-sense notion that the forward movement of chronological time entails change.

Rethinking Market Regulation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John N. Drobak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
The Past ◽  
United States Today ◽  
The Common ◽  
The U.S

Rethinking Market Regulation: Helping Labor by Overcoming Economic Myths tackles the plight of workers who lose their jobs from mergers and outsourcing by examining two economic “principles,” or narratives that have shaped the perception of the economic system in the United States today: (1) the notion that the U.S. economy is competitive, making government market regulation unnecessary, and (2) the claim that corporations exist for the benefit of their shareholders but not for other stakeholders. Contrary to popular belief, this book demonstrates that many markets are not competitive but rather are oligopolistic. This conclusion undercuts the common refrain that government market regulation is unnecessary because competition already provides sufficient constraints on business. Part of the lack of competition has resulted from the large mergers over the past few years, many of which have resulted in massive layoffs. The second narrative has justified the outsourcing of millions of jobs of U.S. workers this century, made possible by globalization. The book argues that this narrative is not an economic principle but rather a normative position. In effect, both narratives are myths, although they are accepted as truisms by many people. The book ties together a concern for the problems of using economic principles as a justification for the lack of government intervention with the harm that has been caused to workers. The book’s recommendations for a new regulatory regime are a prescription for helping labor by limiting job losses from mergers and outsourcing.

Effective Modern Campaigns Against Inequality and Poverty in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Brooks ◽  
Amanda Gutwirth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Public School ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public School Educators ◽  
Macro Social Work

If one of the goals of macro social work in the United States is to decrease poverty and inequality, by most measures it has largely failed that mission over the past 40 years. After briefly documenting the four-decade rise in inequality and extreme poverty in the United States, three organizing campaigns are highlighted—living wage, Fight for $15, and strikes by public school educators—that fought hard to reverse such trends. A strategy, “bargaining for the common good,” which was implemented across those campaigns, is analyzed as a key ingredient to their success.

Civic Disengagement in Contemporary America

2001 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Putnam
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Past ◽  
Life Saving ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Common

Over The Past Two Generations The United States Has Undergone a series of remarkable transformations. It has helped to defeat global communism, led a revolution in information technology that is fuelling unprecedented prosperity, invented life-saving treatments for diseases from AIDS to cancer, and made great strides in reversing discriminatory practices and promoting equal rights for all citizens. But during these same decades the United States also has undergone a less sanguine transformation: its citizens have become remarkably less civic, less politically engaged, less socially connected, less trusting, and less committed to the common good. At the dawn of the millennium Americans are fast becoming a loose aggregation of disengaged observers, rather than a community of connected participants.

Pluralism in Religion and American Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana L. Eck ◽  
Brendan Randall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Established Fact ◽  
The Common

The United States is among the most religiously diverse countries in the world. Although such diversity is not a new phenomenon, its degree and visibility have increased dramatically in the past fifty years, reigniting the debate over a fundamental civic question: What is the common identity that binds us together? How we respond to religious diversity in the context of education has enormous implications for our democratic society. To the extent that previous frameworks such as exclusion or assimilation ever were desirable or effective, they no longer are. Increased religious diversity is an established fact and growing trend. The United States needs a more inclusive and robust civic framework for religious diversity in the twenty-first century—pluralism—and this framework should be an essential component of civic education.

scholarly journals US Hegemony and the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Consensus, Crisis, and Common Sense

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-101
Author(s):  
Rubrick Biegon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Economic Policy ◽  
Elite Networks ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Hegemony ◽  
The Common

Abstract This article provides a critical analysis of the agency of the United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Building on neo-Gramscian theory, it contextualises the US decision to withdraw from the TPP as an expression of hegemonic crisis. Through an examination of the strategic and geoeconomic logics and objectives of the trade agreement in US foreign economic policy, it maintains that the TPP was intended primarily to expand the structural and consensual power of the United States in the international political economy. Partly an attempt to kick-start a stalled neoliberal agenda, the TPP was also an effort to respond to China’s growing influence in trade governance. The article argues that, despite the revival of the TPP in the form of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the inability of elite networks in the United States to implement the original accord is illustrative of a crisis of hegemony driven largely by the collapse of the ‘common sense’ in favour of economic globalisation.

Stewart, Dugald (1753–1828)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward H. Madden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Realistic Interpretation ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The Common

Dugald Stewart was, after Thomas Reid, the most influential figure in the Common Sense School; he was a major influence on Victor Cousin and Théodore Jouffroy in France and on most academic philosophers in the United States. Along with Reid and Cousin, Stewart made the Scottish tradition the dominant philosophy in America for half a century. His Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind and Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man were his most important works and went through a number of printings. The abridged edition of his Active and Moral Powers was reprinted ten times from 1849 to 1868. Stewart followed Reid in claiming that any philosophy which contravenes the principles of common sense must be false, and the problem is to discover and eliminate the premise which yields such results. He added the requirement that philosophical propositions must not change the meanings of concepts in ordinary life, and he also added a new dimension to Reid’s agency theory. More than any other writer he emphasized correctly the epistemic similarities between Reid and Immanuel Kant, but he followed Reid in avoiding Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena. Stewart disagreed with Reid in avoiding the phrase ‘principles of common sense’ as misleading, rejected his mentor’s realistic interpretation of universals and provided his own nominalistic alternative. He also modified to some extent, though quite cautiously, Reid’s rigid inductivism and made some concessions to a realistic interpretation of scientific hypotheses. Stewart was equipped to discuss issues in the philosophy of science since he was well versed in mathematics and physics, having been professor of mathematics at Edinburgh for ten years before being named professor of moral philosophy. Stewart was arguably the first and finest philosopher of science in the Scottish tradition.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Rottenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Liberal Feminism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Family Balance ◽  
The Us ◽  
Work Family

Providing the cultural context for the rise of neoliberal feminism in the United States, the introductory chapter of The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism begins by laying out the book’s key conceptual terms, such as human capital, work-family balance, affect, and happiness. It then maps out the way in which feminism has been represented in the US popular imagination over the past hundred years, differentiating among classic liberal feminism, postfeminism, and neoliberal feminism, while underscoring the book’s theoretical contributions. Finally, it provides an overview of the book’s overall trajectory, offering a chapter-by-chapter outline, highlighting each chapter’s major arguments, contributions, and assumptions.

The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theda Skocpol
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Concerns

Over the past 15 years, my scholarship has been devoted to understanding the patterns, the possibilities, and the impossibilities of politics and social policy in the United States. In this essay, therefore, I have decided to use historical evidence to address current public and scholarly debates about civic engagement in American democracy. As I hope to remind us all, social science historianscanspeak clearly to contemporary public concerns. We may be able to introduce some better evidence and more sophisticated explanations into ongoing debates.

An Homage to the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Jones-Bamman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Tone Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Music Community ◽  
The Common ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

This chapter and the one that follows (Chapter Five) draw on interviews with twenty-two banjo makers in the United States and Canada to explore the issues facing these individuals who strive to maintain their preferred connections with the old-time music community without losing sight of the artistic and personal motivations that drew them into this undertaking initially. Chapter Four is focused on those who create instruments most closely adhering to the common expectations of old-time banjo players, factors that include certain structural and design features as well as playability and tone production. What unites all of those in this chapter is the influence of the past on their own efforts, but how this is defined is quite different from one person to the next. For some, this means replicating existing instruments from a specific era or locale, and involves learning techniques that long ago passed from common practice. For others, the past is purely inspirational, providing ideas to be expanded upon and subject to new interpretation. The chapter concludes with a consideration of tone production, how this has changed in recent decades, and how banjo builders approach what is clearly a highly subjective topic. The builders profiled here include Kevin Enoch, Chuck Waldman, Wayne Sagmoen, Kevin Fore, Jason and Pharis Romero, Greg Galbreath and Brooks Masten.

The Creation of the American in Paris

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-39
Author(s):  
William Cloonan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Henry James ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Cold War

Henry James’ The American, influenced by de Tocqueville’s studies of American democracy, creates a paradigm of Franco-American images of each other which will persist, with variations and reversals, until almost the end of the Cold War. Simply put, the French see the Americans as wealthy, yet culturally naïve, while the Americans see the French as highly cultivated but duplicitous. The United States is the present and the future, while France is the past.

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