Culture, Capitalism, And Democracy In The New America

by Richard Harvey Brown

• ISBN13: 9780300100259
• ISBN10: 0300100256
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2005-06-10
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

The United States is in transit from an industrial to a postindustrial society, from a modern to postmodern culture, and from a national to a global economy. In this book Richard Harvey Brown asks how we can distinguish the uniquely American elements of these changes from more global influences. His answer focuses on the ways in which economic imperatives give shape to the shifting experience of being American. Drawing on a wide knowledge of American history and literature, the latest social science, and contemporary social issues, Brown investigates continuity and change in American race relations, politics, religion, conception of selfhood, families, and the arts. He paints a vivid picture of contemporary America, showing how postmodernism is perceived and felt by individuals and focusing attention on the strengths and limitations of American democracy.

Author Biography

An influential social thinker, the late Richard Harvey Brown was professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of Toward a Democratic Science: Scientific Narration and Civic Communication, published by Yale University Press.

Table of Contents

1 Differences That Make a Difference: Some Exceptional Features of the United States,	1	(35)
2 A Peculiar Democracy: Race, Class, and Corporate Power in the United States,	36	(31)
3 Ideology After the Millennium: Problems of Legitimacy in American Society,	67	(46)
4 Social Movements, Politics, and Religion in a Postliberal Era,	113	(29)
5 The Dialectics of American Selfhood: Individualism and Identity in the United States,	142	(30)
6 Transformations of American Space and Time,	172	(33)
7 Genders and Generations: New Strains in the American Family,	205	(59)
8 The Postmodern Transformation of Art: From Production of Beauty to Consumption of Signs,	264	(35)
References,	299	(44)
Index,	343