American Indian Political Participation: From Melting Pot to Cultural Pluralism

1983 ◽  
Vol 07 (4) ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Silvester J. Brito
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Melting Pot

scholarly journals Book Review: American Political Culture: An Encyclopedia

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 174
Author(s):  
Carla Wilson Buss
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
American Political Culture ◽  
Israel Zangwill

Anyone seeking reliable information on American political life since the 1970s will be pleased with Michael Shally-Jensen’s work, American Political Culture. This three-volume set covers topics from abortion to Israel Zangwill, the nineteenth-century author who coined the phrase “melting pot” and who appears in the entry for “Cultural Pluralism.”

Explaining Ethnic Political Participation

1979 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Kasfir
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Sudden Rise ◽  
Ethnic Category ◽  
The One

Most concepts of ethnicity are unsuitable for political analysis because they ignore either subjective or objective aspects, and because they ignore the fluid and situational nature of ethnicity. The approach flowing from the concept proposed here permits the observer to examine empirical variations that tend to be treated as rigid assumptions by modernization analysts on the one hand and class analysts on the other. The concept is applied to a study of the Nubians of Uganda because of the intermixture of class and ethnic features involved in their fall from status at the beginning of the colonial period and their subsequent sudden rise following the 1071 coup d'état of Idi Amin. The fairly recent creation of the Nubians as an ethnic category and the relative ease with which others can become members illustrate other features of the proposed concept of ethnicity. Finally, this concept is used to examine and criticize overly restrictive notions of ethnicity found in theories based upon both cultural pluralism and consociationalism.

Eccezionalismo, identitŕ nazionale e interdipendenza : nuove sintesi italiane sulla storia degli Stati Uniti d'America

2009 ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Daniele Fiorentino
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Key Words ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
Dominant Society

- The essay examines some central concepts of U.S. history and culture through the analysis of three volumes published in Italy in 2008. The author uses the concept of American Exceptionalism in order to provide a closer reading of the books and a better understanding of the image of the United States offered today, as well as the place of U.S. history in Italy. Cultural Pluralism is an important framework in the historical and historiographical narratives. Touching upon other central ideals of American identity such as Manifest Destiny, the Frontier, and Internationalism, this essay deals with the issue of Imperialism and the reactions against it in the 19th and 20th centuries. Through the question of immigration, reference is made to multiculturalism and the processes that led toward a progressive integration of different minorities on the basis of models proposed by the dominant society. The essay thus recapitulates some of the most widespread stereotypes concerning ethnic groups and the construction of a new model of Cultural Pluralism.Key words: U.S. history, exceptionalism, American imperialism, immigration, cultural pluralism, Melting PotParole chiave: storia degli Stati Uniti, eccezionalismo, imperialismo americano, immigrazione, pluralismo culturale, melting pot

Race Science Captures the Prize, the U.S. Census

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Prewitt
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
American Indian ◽  
The Political ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Science Story ◽  
Policy Work ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
The U.S

This chapter narrates the race science story. Among the more important was the shift from simply counting races, as was needed to make the three-fifths policy work, to investigating characteristics considered unique to different races. The policy goal was to determine who was fit for citizenship responsibilities: whites, certainly; the American Indian, probably not; the African, clearly not. The statistical races helped fix the color line in American politics, essentially drawing policy boundaries that gradually governed all aspects of life: schooling, housing, employment, marriage, travel, and political participation. The political understanding that counting the population by race could do nationally significant policy work led naturally to a close partnership between race science and census statistics, setting the stage for what scholars call evidence-based policy 150 years later.

From Orthodoxy to Pluralism: A Postsecondary Curricular Reform

1988 ◽  
Vol 170 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Zita
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Curricular Reform ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The University ◽  
Intense Debate

The College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota requires all undergraduate students to complete at least two courses which have a primary focus on Afro-American, American Indian, Asian American, and/or Chicano cultures. This U.S. Cultural Pluralism Requirement, as it is called, was adopted in 1985 after two years of intense debate. In this article, the considerations that went into the shaping and ultimate adoption of this requirement are recounted and analyzed.

Ethnicity in Contemporary America

1981 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-339
Author(s):  
James H. Dormon
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
American Society ◽  
Age Of Aquarius

It is just under a decade since the historian Theodore Hershberg, a close student of American minority groups and a founder of the then new Journal of Ethnic Studies, announced the demise of the “Age of Aquarius,” pronouncing at the same time its displacement by the “Age of Ethnicity.” In so proclaiming he also, figuratively at least, announced the passing of one of the oldest of American ideals: the notion of the “Melting Pot,” that social process by which the ethnic elements of American society would all be boiled down into a national cultural amalgam by way of their “Americanization.” In announcing the advent of the Age of Ethnicity, Hershberg gave tacit recognition to the fact that the melting pot model of ethnic group accommodation to American culture had now been pre-empted, officially and normatively, by the notion of “cultural pluralism.” There was no further need for amalgamation at all: each group was now to proceed to celebrate its origins, its distinct culture, and its fellowship in any way it pleased, as one of its fundamental American “rights.”On reflection, it may seem that in some respects the timing of the Hershberg prophesy is odd, even perverse. Many specialists were even then about the business of eliminating ethnicity altogether as a major factor in American culture, pronouncing the vestigial ethnic elements in US society virtually “assimilated.”

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