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WORK TITLE: Enduring Vietnam
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Wright, James Edward
BIRTHDATE: 8/16/1939
WEBSITE:
CITY: Hanover
STATE: NH
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://us.macmillan.com/author/jameswright-1 * http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jameswright/ * http://alumni.dartmouth.edu/content/president-emeritus-james-wright-64a-pens-new-book-vietnam-war * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wright_(historian)
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 82242143
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n82242143
HEADING: Wright, James Edward, 1939-
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400 10 |a Wright, James E. |q (James Edward), |d 1939-
670 __ |a LC data base, 1-9-84 |b (hdg.: Wright, James E; usage: James Edward Wright; James E. Wright) LC manual auth. cd. (from Madison, Wisc.)
670 __ |a Dir. of American scholars, 1982, |b v. 1. (Wright, James Edward, b. 8/16/39, Dept. of His., Dartmouth College, Hanover N.H.)
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PERSONAL
Born August 16, 1939, in Madison, WI.
EDUCATION:University of Wisconsin, Platteville, B.A.; University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, history department, 1969, Dean of Faculty, 1989–97, Provost, 1997-98; president emeritus, Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History Emeritus, president, 1998-2009.
MIILITARY:U.S. Marine Corps, 1957-60.
MEMBER:American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Organization of American Historians.
AWARDS:Recipient of fellowships and grants, including Social Science Research Council Grant; Guggenheim Fellowship; Charles Warren Fellowship at Harvard. Council of College and Military Educators, President’s Award, 2008; Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, Semper Fidelis Award, 2008; Veterans of Foreign Wars, Commander-in-Chief’s Gold Medal of Merit Award and Citation, 2009; New England Board of Higher Education, Eleanor M. McMahon Award for Lifetime Achievement, 2010.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
American scholar James Edward Wright has written books on history, wars, and Republican politics in New Hampshire. He was the sixteenth president of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, serving from 1998 to 2009. Prior to that he was President Emeritus and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History Emeritus. He grew up in Galena, Illinois in the 1950s, and earned a Ph.D. in history from University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Wright began publishing in 1966 with The Galena Lead District: Federal Policy and Practices, 1824-1847 and wrote The West of the American People in 1970 and The Politics of Populism: Dissent in Colorado in 1974. His 1987 book, The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire, 1906-1916 covered the political history of the progressive movement in the state and the reforms made during the administration of state Governor Robert Perkins Bass.
Those Who Have Borne The Battle
Wright wrote Those Who Have Borne The Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them in 2012. The book examines how America has treated its citizen soldiers from the Revolution to recent wars in the Middle East. He describes how the American military has mobilized for war, how the military and the citizenry view military service and obligations to fight for freedom, how soldiers view their legacy, how the military treats wounded soldiers after their service has ended and how they are prepared for return to civilian life. In describing the assumption that Americans believe the service of its volunteer soldiers has always been important to politicians and society, “the reality of America’s relationship to its veterans is far more complex,” noted a contributor to Military Review.
Most of Wright’s book focuses on World War II and the subsequent wars. He contends that while soldiers have been celebrated as national heroes in our culture, soldiers were only temporarily embraced by the military and that recently, justifications for wars have become increasingly difficult for the people to understand, and the medical and emotional support teams treating veterans has let them down. For the book, Wright conducted roughly 300 interviews with personnel and soldier at military hospitals for wounded veterans. He also discusses returning veterans’ problems with homelessness, unemployment, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Wright address the glorification of war and deification of veterans of World War II, known as “the good war,” and how attitudes changed over the following decades. After questions were raised about the Vietnam War and the view by some conservatives that Vietnam veterans were “weak drug addicts and shiners,” America’s attitude toward veterans changed, so that the soldiers were not blamed for unpopular wars, and veterans of the recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts were now regarded as heroes. Wright “presents a well-written summary of the way America has raised its armies to fight its wars and how the nation has treated the veterans of those wars,” according to Marc Leepson in Military History.
Calling Wright’s book “impressively detailed,” T. Rees Shapiro commented online at the Washington Post that Wright “sympathetically portrays the hardships of the common men—and more recently, women—called up for duty.” In The New York Times, Andrew J. Bacevich explained Wright’s impetus for writing the book and the context of American soldiers in today’s war climate: “His encounters with severely wounded soldiers—and his discomfort with present-day civil-military relations—spurred him to write this book.” Bacevich continued: “With the United States more or less permanently at war, Americans profess unstinting admiration for those serving in uniform. Yet the gap between soldier and society is wider than at any time in our history.”
Forever New and Enduring Vietnam
In a collection of Wright’s academic speeches, the 2012 Forever New: The Speeches of James Wright, President of Dartmouth College, 1998-2009, editor Sheila Culbert highlights the president’s optimism, American values, individuality, sense of opportunity, and academic excellence. Wright used his career as a teacher and administrator, position as president, and his many commencement addresses to make a positive difference in the world. He encouraged goals and aspirations for Dartmouth students, faculty, and the college as a whole.
In 2017, Wright published Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War, putting a human face on the controversial war. In judging the Vietnam War, its reasons, and its execution as a mistake, Wright attempts to bring the people who served out of the shadows and highlight their bravery, sacrifices, and legacy into the open. Most of the young men who served grew up as baby boomers in the 1950s. Wright explores why men went into war, how they viewed the war and its mission, and what it was like serving in the military. He also notes the terrible cost of the war in the lives of young men, that the median age of draftees who died was twenty-one, and non-draftees was twenty. The aftermath and treatment of soldiers returning home from war are also recounted through interviews with the men involved.
Calling the book well-researched and readable, a Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: “Wright’s worthy effort is a tribute to Americans who saw the worst that the Vietnam War offered,” adding that Wright provides a broad look at the domestic and geopolitical factors that contributed to U.S. involvement in the war. Praising Wright for doing what opponents of the war have not done, which is honor those who served, Mark Levine in Booklist observed that the book “is very much a work of history and deserves high praise in that context.” Levine added that Wright’s redress of the badly misplaced animosity on the soldiers “is among the most powerful and heartbreaking.”
According to Karl Helicher in Library Journal, “This excellent combination of historical scholarship is amplified by the often horrifying battlefield descriptions.” Helicher added that Wright is at his best when describing how the young soldiers in their teens and early twenties lived and fought under fire and daily threat of death. These soldiers, even forty years later, are still dealing with medical issues like post-traumatic stress, exposure to chemical defoliants like Agent Orange, and troubling memories. Responding to Wright’s tribute to the soldiers, Jerry D. Morelock noted in Vietnam that “Wright said the casualties of war cry out to be known as persons, not as numbers or names on a memorial.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2017, Mark Levine, review of Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War, p. 32.
Library Journal, January 1, 2017, Karl Helicher, review of Enduring Vietnam, p. 113.
Military History, November 2012, Marc Leepson, review of Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them, p. 72.
Military Review, January-February 2013, review of Those Who Have Borne the Battle, p. 86.
Publishers Weekly, January 9, 2017, review of Enduring Vietnam, p. 53.
Vietnam, June 2017, Jerry D. Morelock, review of Enduring Vietnam, p. 56.
ONLINE
New York Times Online, http://www.nytimes.com/ (May 25, 2012), Andrew J. Bacevich, review of Those Who Have Borne the Battle.
Washington Post Online, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (August 24, 2012), T. Rees Shapiro, review of Those Who Have Borne the Battle.
James Wright (historian)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Edward Wright
16th President of
Dartmouth College
In office
August 1, 1998 – July 1, 2009
Preceded by James Oliver Freedman
Succeeded by Jim Yong Kim
Personal details
Born August 16, 1939 (age 78)
Madison, Wisconsin
Residence Hanover, New Hampshire
Alma mater Wisconsin State University
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Website http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jameswright/
James Wright is President Emeritus[1] and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History Emeritus at Dartmouth College.[2] The 16th President in the Wheelock Succession, he served as Dartmouth president from 1998 until 2009. He joined the Dartmouth History Department in 1969 and served as Dean of Faculty from 1989–97 and as Provost from 1997-98. Wright received a bachelor's degree from University of Wisconsin–Platteville and a masters and doctoral degree in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Presidency at Dartmouth College
3 Work with Veterans
4 Awards and Societies
5 Key Publications
6 References
7 External links
Early life[edit]
James Wright grew up in Galena, Illinois, a small Midwestern town in the 1950s, the son of a World War II veteran. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1957, at age 17. Three years later upon his discharge he went to college. He worked as a laborer in a cheese plant and as a janitor, bartender, and night watchman in order to pay for his education. He also worked at the local zinc mines, including working as a powderman, setting dynamite charges. Encouraged by his undergraduate faculty mentors and enabled by the Danforth Fellowship, he went on to graduate school and became an academic.
Presidency at Dartmouth College[edit]
As president, Wright’s priorities included advancing the academic strength of the institution and expanding the faculty, enhancing the out-of-the-classroom experience, strengthening Dartmouth's historic commitment to a strong and inclusive sense of community, building and renovating Dartmouth’s facilities and strengthening the College's financial resources. He worked to more fully integrate the professional schools into the intellectual life of the College. During his presidency undergraduate applications grew by 79 percent and the student body became increasingly diverse, with students of color and international students representing more than 40 percent of the student body.[3] The College also made significant improvements to the financial aid program, including: tripling the budget for undergraduate aid, expanding its need-blind admissions policies to include international students, eliminating loans for all students and offering free tuition to students who come from families with incomes at or below $75,000.[4]
President Wright focused on advancing the academic strength of the College by expanding and diversifying the faculty; resulting in more than 10 percent growth in the faculty of the Arts & Sciences, an 8:1 student-faculty ratio, and the highest percentage of tenured women faculty in the Ivy League and among the highest percentage of faculty of color.[5] The three professional schools all participated in similar patterns of growth and improvement.
Leading the College's $1.3 billion campaign - the largest fund-raising effort in its history - Wright provided additional resources for faculty support, including: the creation of more than 20 new endowed professorships, increased compensation and research funding, and the construction of Berry and Rauner Special Collections Libraries, Carson Hall, Moore Hall, Kemeny Hall, and the Haldeman Center.[6] Wright enhanced the out-of-classroom experience by investing in new residence halls and off-campus housing for students, renovating or building new athletic and recreation facilities, and subsidizing student tickets to the Hopkins Center and athletic events. Under his stewardship, the College’s endowment and annual fundraising more than doubled, with more than 67 percent of all alumni/ae making gifts to the Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience.[7]
Work with Veterans[edit]
In 2005, Wright began a series of visits to U.S. military medical facilities in Washington, D.C., where he met Marines and other U.S. military personnel who had been wounded in the course of service in Iraq and Afghanistan.[8] In over thirty visits since then, he has encouraged the injured servicemen and women to continue their education.
President Wright worked with Senators Jim Webb, John Warner, and Chuck Hagel on language for the GI Bill that was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in June 2008, to provide a means for private institutions to partner with Veterans Affairs in supporting veterans who matriculated at these institutions (the "Yellow Ribbon Program").[9] He also worked with the American Council on Education (ACE) to create a new educational counseling program for wounded U.S. veterans. It has served several hundred injured veterans since 2007, and continues today at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at Bethesda.[10]
He served as an honorary co-chair for the fall 2008 and the fall 2009 dinner of the Iraq-Afghanistan Veterans of America. President Wright wrote the Spring 2008 cover story on veterans in higher education for The Presidency, a publication of the American Council on Education for college and university presidents. He spoke about some of this work on February 2, 2009, at the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.[11]
Since he stepped down from the Dartmouth presidency in 2009, Wright has focused on support of veterans and research, writing, and public speaking on matters relating to education and veterans. His scholarly work as a political historian has extended to include military history and questions about American culture and war.
On Veterans Day 2009, Wright spoke at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. at the invitation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. As the Jefferson Memorial Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley in February 2010, he delivered "War Veterans and American Democracy" and was a participant in a follow-up panel about veterans.[12][13]
Wright has lectured and participated in discussions at Texas A&M University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Norwich University, Rollins College, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, as well as Seoul National University and at Yonsei University in Seoul.[14]
Wright was a speaker at the 2012 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference (he had earlier spoken at the Conference in 2002), and in 2013 he was the speaker for the Veterans Day Program at the Abraham Lincoln Library.[15] He participated in a “National Veterans’ Strategy Roundtable” organized by the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and convened at the Library of Congress in September 2013. Wright was one of the speakers at the 2014 Veterans Day Symposium of Veterans on Wall Street, hosted by Goldman Sachs. Other speakers included General Martin Dempsey and Bob Woodruff.[16]
In his 44th year at Dartmouth, Wright taught a senior seminar on America’s wars in the winter term of 2013 and again in 2014. Over the last few years, he has written articles that have appeared in online publications, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and the Huffington Post. The theme that runs through all of these is the way that American society largely ignores those who fight and sacrifice in the country’s wars.
Wright was a commentator in the Harvard Business School case study and supporting film produced by Linda Bilmes. This deals with the merging of the Walter Reed and Bethesda Hospitals. He also participated in director Ric Burn's film, "Debt of Honor: A History of Disabled Veterans in America," which was shown at the New York Historical Society on November 9, followed by a panel discussion with Ric Burns, James Wright, Charles Marmar, and Jose Rene "J.R." Martinez. The film, which aired nationally on PBS on November 10, 2015 examines the rise of disabled veterans in the country. Improved battlefield medicine has led to fewer wartime fatalities, but also to more severe injuries for survivors. Veterans of each war have come home to different attitudes about their service and their war, which has had long-reaching effects on their recovery.[17]
James Wright serves on the Board of the Semper Fi Fund/America's Fund.
Awards and Societies[edit]
Social Science Research Council Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Charles Warren Fellowship at Harvard[18]
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[19]
Member of the Organization of American Historians[20]
Featured by The New York Times for work with injured veterans, May 2007[21]
"ABC World News with Charles Gibson" - "Person of the Week," Memorial Day Weekend 2007[22]
New Englander of the Year by New England Council[23]
Council of College and Military Educators “President’s Award," February 2008[24]
Semper Fidelis Award by Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, April 2008[25]
Commendation from General James Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps, March 2009[26]
Invitation to throw out the “first pitch” from Boston Red Sox for contributions to education and to supporting veterans, June 2009[27]
Commander-in-Chief’s Gold Medal of Merit Award and Citation by Veterans of Foreign Wars, August 2009[28]
Eleanor M. McMahon Award for Lifetime Achievement from the New England Board of Higher Education, March 2010[29]
Key Publications[edit]
An American historian, Wright is the author or editor of six books. His most recent book, "Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War", published by St. Martin's Press was released April 2017.
Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them, published by Public Affairs Press, was introduced in April 2012 at a Washington event hosted by the Center for a New American Security. In the book, he provides a historical overview of American views of wars and those who have fought them, from the American Revolution to the current wars, and shares some of his own experiences and insights. The book has received wide critical acclaim, and was selected by the New York Times Book Review for an "Editors' Choice" recommendation.
Forever New: The Speeches of James Wright, President of Dartmouth College, 1998-2009, edited by Sheila Culbert, was published by UPNE (University Press of New England, 2012).
The early books he authored or edited are: The Galena Lead District: Federal Policy and Practices, 1824-1847 (1966); The West of the American People (1970); The Politics of Populism: Dissent in Colorado (1974); The Great Plains Experience: Readings in the History of a Region (1978); and The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire (1987).
References[edit]
Jump up ^ http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jameswright/
Jump up ^ "Dartmouth College". dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ "Dartmouth for All: Admissions & Financial Aid". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ "Dartmouth for All: Admissions & Financial Aid". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ "The Academic Enterprise: Faculty". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ "Dartmouth News - Dartmouth completes $1.3 billion campaign - 01/07/10". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ "Dartmouth News - Dartmouth completes $1.3 billion campaign - 01/07/10". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ "Travel Details". alumni.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ Alvarez, Lizette (2008-10-30). "A new G.I. bill is expected to swell the number of veterans in the nation’s colleges and universities.". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ Lewin, Tamar (2007-05-23). "The Few, the Proud, the Dartmouth-Bound". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
Jump up ^ "Higher Education Priorities". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
Jump up ^ "A Forum on the Experience of Veterans in American Society | Berkeley Graduate Lectures". gradlectures.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
Jump up ^ "War Veterans and American Democracy | Berkeley Graduate Lectures". gradlectures.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
Jump up ^ "Speeches & Essays". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
Jump up ^ "What does America owe its veterans?". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
Jump up ^ Bank, Deutsche. "Headlines". www.db.com. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
Jump up ^ "PBS Airing Debt of Honor November 10, 2015 as Part of its Stories of Service | PBS About". PBS Airing Debt of Honor November 10, 2015 as Part of its Stories of Service | PBS About. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | James Edward Wright". www.gf.org. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
Jump up ^ "Membership". www.amacad.org. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "Organization of American Historians: Distinguished Members". www.oah.org. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ Lewin, Tamar (2007-05-23). "The Few, the Proud, the Dartmouth-Bound". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "Person of the Week: Jim Wright". ABC News. 2007-05-25. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "New Englander of the Year Award Recipients - The New England Council | The New England Council". newenglandcouncil.com. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "CCME Awards | CCME - Council of College and Military Educators". www.ccmeonline.org. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation". staging.mcsf.org. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "Biography of James Wright". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "President Wright to throw out first pitch at Red Sox game". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "President Wright to throw out first pitch at Red Sox game". www.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
Jump up ^ "NEBHE Announces 2010 New England Higher Education Excellence Award Winners". mbasic.facebook.com. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
External links[edit]
President of Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Wheelock Succession
[show] v t e
Presidents of Dartmouth College
Authority control
WorldCat Identities VIAF: 111065364 ISNI: 0000 0000 8408 3624 BNF: cb135975591 (data)
Categories: American historiansPresidents of Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth College faculty1939 birthsLiving peopleWriters from Madison, WisconsinUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison alumniGuggenheim Fellows
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Historian, author, veteran will discuss the human face of Vietnam War
Posted Oct 26, 2016 10:18 am
book cover
AMES, Iowa -- The author of a forthcoming book that brings Vietnam veterans out of the shadows will speak at Iowa State University.
James Wright will present "Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served" at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His free, public talk is part of the university's National Affairs series: "When American Values are in Conflict."
Wright is president emeritus and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Marine veteran, he is also author of "Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them." His new book puts a human face on the Vietnam War by recounting experiences of the young Americans who fought there. It describes these baby boomers growing up in the 1950s, why they went into the military, what they thought of the war, and what it was like to serve in Vietnam — and to come home.
Wright served as president of Dartmouth College from 1998 until June 2009. He was a leader in establishing an educational counseling program for wounded U.S. veterans offered through the American Council on Education. He also worked with several U.S. senators to double college benefits for troops and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He recently participated in director Ric Burns' film, "Debt of Honor: A History of Disabled Veterans in America," which aired on PBS. Over the last few years, he has written articles in the online publications Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and the Huffington Post around the theme of how American society largely ignores those who fight and sacrifice in the country’s wars.
His talk is co-sponsored by the College of Business, history department, ISU Veterans Center, and the National Affairs Series and Committee on Lectures, both funded by Student Government. More information is available online at ISU Lectures Program, or by calling 515-294-9935.
Contacts
Pat Miller, Lectures Program, 515-294-9935,pamiller@iastate.edu
Teddi Barron, News Service, 515-294-4778, tbarron@iastate.edu
James Wright
"Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served"
James Wright
8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10
Memorial Union Great Hall
Free and open to the public
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011, (515) 294-4111. Published by: University Relations, online@iastate.edu.
Copyright © 1995-2017, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.
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Historian, author, veteran will discuss the human face of Vietnam War
Posted Oct 26, 2016 10:18 am
book cover
AMES, Iowa -- The author of a forthcoming book that brings Vietnam veterans out of the shadows will speak at Iowa State University.
James Wright will present "Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served" at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His free, public talk is part of the university's National Affairs series: "When American Values are in Conflict."
Wright is president emeritus and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Marine veteran, he is also author of "Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them." His new book puts a human face on the Vietnam War by recounting experiences of the young Americans who fought there. It describes these baby boomers growing up in the 1950s, why they went into the military, what they thought of the war, and what it was like to serve in Vietnam — and to come home.
Wright served as president of Dartmouth College from 1998 until June 2009. He was a leader in establishing an educational counseling program for wounded U.S. veterans offered through the American Council on Education. He also worked with several U.S. senators to double college benefits for troops and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He recently participated in director Ric Burns' film, "Debt of Honor: A History of Disabled Veterans in America," which aired on PBS. Over the last few years, he has written articles in the online publications Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and the Huffington Post around the theme of how American society largely ignores those who fight and sacrifice in the country’s wars.
His talk is co-sponsored by the College of Business, history department, ISU Veterans Center, and the National Affairs Series and Committee on Lectures, both funded by Student Government. More information is available online at ISU Lectures Program, or by calling 515-294-9935.
Contacts
Pat Miller, Lectures Program, 515-294-9935,pamiller@iastate.edu
Teddi Barron, News Service, 515-294-4778, tbarron@iastate.edu
James Wright
"Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served"
James Wright
8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10
Memorial Union Great Hall
Free and open to the public
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011, (515) 294-4111. Published by: University Relations, online@iastate.edu.
Copyright © 1995-2017, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.
ShareThis Copy and PasteSkip Navigation CyMail Outlook Blackboard AccessPlus Directory Maps Contact Us A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z News Service News Service Home News releases News archives Video Broadcast studio Faculty/staff photos Campus maps Contact us News by topic Arts & entertainment Colleges, units Cyclone athletics Research news from Futurity Campus news Inside Iowa State Employee announcements Student announcements Social Media Social media directory Iowa State Facebook page Twitter (@IowaStateUNews) Historian, author, veteran will discuss the human face of Vietnam War Posted Oct 26, 2016 10:18 am AMES, Iowa -- The author of a forthcoming book that brings Vietnam veterans out of the shadows will speak at Iowa State University. James Wright will present "Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served" at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His free, public talk is part of the university's National Affairs series: "When American Values are in Conflict." Wright is president emeritus and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Marine veteran, he is also author of "Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them." His new book puts a human face on the Vietnam War by recounting experiences of the young Americans who fought there. It describes these baby boomers growing up in the 1950s, why they went into the military, what they thought of the war, and what it was like to serve in Vietnam — and to come home. Wright served as president of Dartmouth College from 1998 until June 2009. He was a leader in establishing an educational counseling program for wounded U.S. veterans offered through the American Council on Education. He also worked with several U.S. senators to double college benefits for troops and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He recently participated in director Ric Burns' film, "Debt of Honor: A History of Disabled Veterans in America," which aired on PBS. Over the last few years, he has written articles in the online publications Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and the Huffington Post around the theme of how American society largely ignores those who fight and sacrifice in the country’s wars. His talk is co-sponsored by the College of Business, history department, ISU Veterans Center, and the National Affairs Series and Committee on Lectures, both funded by Student Government. More information is available online at ISU Lectures Program, or by calling 515-294-9935. Contacts Pat Miller, Lectures Program, 515-294-9935,pamiller@iastate.edu Teddi Barron, News Service, 515-294-4778, tbarron@iastate.edu "Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served" James Wright 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10 Memorial Union Great Hall Free and open to the public Ames, Iowa 50011, (515) 294-4111. Published by: University Relations, online@iastate.edu. Copyright © 1995-2017, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved. Skip Navigation CyMail Outlook Blackboard AccessPlus Directory Maps Contact Us A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z News Service News Service Home News releases News archives Video Broadcast studio Faculty/staff photos Campus maps Contact us News by topic Arts & entertainment Colleges, units Cyclone athletics Research news from Futurity Campus news Inside Iowa State Employee announcements Student announcements Social Media Social media directory Iowa State Facebook page Twitter (@IowaStateUNews) Historian, author, veteran will discuss the human face of Vietnam War Posted Oct 26, 2016 10:18 am AMES, Iowa -- The author of a forthcoming book that brings Vietnam veterans out of the shadows will speak at Iowa State University. James Wright will present "Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served" at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His free, public talk is part of the university's National Affairs series: "When American Values are in Conflict." Wright is president emeritus and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Marine veteran, he is also author of "Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them." His new book puts a human face on the Vietnam War by recounting experiences of the young Americans who fought there. It describes these baby boomers growing up in the 1950s, why they went into the military, what they thought of the war, and what it was like to serve in Vietnam — and to come home. Wright served as president of Dartmouth College from 1998 until June 2009. He was a leader in establishing an educational counseling program for wounded U.S. veterans offered through the American Council on Education. He also worked with several U.S. senators to double college benefits for troops and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He recently participated in director Ric Burns' film, "Debt of Honor: A History of Disabled Veterans in America," which aired on PBS. Over the last few years, he has written articles in the online publications Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and the Huffington Post around the theme of how American society largely ignores those who fight and sacrifice in the country’s wars. His talk is co-sponsored by the College of Business, history department, ISU Veterans Center, and the National Affairs Series and Committee on Lectures, both funded by Student Government. More information is available online at ISU Lectures Program, or by calling 515-294-9935. Contacts Pat Miller, Lectures Program, 515-294-9935,pamiller@iastate.edu Teddi Barron, News Service, 515-294-4778, tbarron@iastate.edu "Enduring Vietnam: Reflections on a War and Those Who Served" James Wright 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10 Memorial Union Great Hall Free and open to the public Ames, Iowa 50011, (515) 294-4111. Published by: University Relations, online@iastate.edu. Copyright © 1995-2017, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved. ShareThis Copy and Paste
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New Hampshire Business Review / July-7 2017 / Q&A with Dartmouth President Emeritus James Wright
Q&A with Dartmouth President Emeritus James Wright BY JACK KENNY
4
Published: July 6, 2017
‘I don’t like to hear talk of putting “boots on the ground.” We’re not sending in shoe leather, we’re sending in sons and daughters,’ says James Wright, former president of Dartmouth College and author of the book, ‘Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation And Its War.’
‘I don’t like to hear talk of putting “boots on the ground.” We’re not sending in shoe leather, we’re sending in sons and daughters,’ says James Wright, former president of Dartmouth College and author of the book, ‘Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation And Its War.’
COURTESY PHOTO
As a high school graduate in Galena, Ill., James Wright did not think he would ever go to college. Later he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, and still later he became a professor of history at Dartmouth College. He wound up serving as president of Dartmouth from 1998 to his retirement as president emeritus in 2009.
The son of a World War II veteran, he joined the Marines at age 17 and served from 1957 to 1960, primarily with the First Marine Brigade in Hawaii and Japan. He began visiting military hospitals in 2005, and his 2012 book, “Those Who Have Borne the Battle,” is about American war veterans and the struggles they have faced, both in the field and at home.
He made an extensive visit to Vietnam in 2014 in research for his latest book, “Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation And Its War,” published in April.
Q. Did any of the people you interviewed for this book say, “Look, we’re trying to forget Vietnam. Why are you dredging all this up?”
A. Some of the people I talked to had never really talked about Vietnam before. I was really interested In telling the story of those who died in Vietnam and others who served in Vietnam. I interviewed families who’d had that knock on the door telling them that their son or daughter was not coming home, and that was a very moving experience. No one refused to talk to me. Most of the people contacted me.
I worked with the Vietnam Veterans of America, and VFW put up a listing that said I was working on the book. A few people got in touch with me and others followed up with people who served in combat units – Army infantry, paratroopers, Marine infantry.
Q. Considering the title of David Halberstam’s book about the architects of the early stages of the Vietnam War, “The Best and the Brightest,” you might wonder: If the Vietnam War is an example of what the “best and brightest” produce, that’s kind of scary, isn’t it?
A. It is scary. But we do have to recognize what the world view of the 1950s was. To the World War II generation, Munich was generally believed to be the reason we found ourselves in World War II, and because of Munich we had to stand up to aggression.
I think the mistake was in imagining Vietnam was like Austria and Ho Chin Minh was like Hitler. There is a real danger in not understanding historical experience, but there may be a greater danger when people think everything has to be looked at by analogy. Every situation is different. I think that’s what history tells us.
Q. Your book, while not lacking in statistics, presents stories of individuals, with their names and their hometowns – Herbert Sweat from Brooklyn, Dan Shaw of Dorchester, Mass., Rick Rajner of Toledo, to name a few. Was this an effort to put a human face on the war?
A. I think one of the great dangers in the world is in having to think only of military power, and we don’t put faces on people. I don’t like to hear talk of putting “boots on the ground.” We’re not sending in shoe leather, we’re sending in sons and daughters. I’m concerned about the way most Americans can distance themselves from war because such a small percentage is serving, and it’s not a representative percentage.
Q. You also write that among those serving in Vietnam, the talk was about survival and not an ideological or global struggle, or “protecting the shore of California in the jungles of Vietnam.” Stated that way, doesn’t that, as a rationale for being in Vietnam, seem absurd?
A. These guys grew up in the generation that was told if we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them on the beaches of Los Angeles. They became disillusioned with that. The kids in the South Pacific in World War II had to fight the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But they were thinking about survival for themselves and their buddies serving with them. I don’t think in any war people are sitting around their foxholes at night thinking about making the world safe for democracy.
Q. Today we find a lot of people speaking and writing about the need to recognize the limits of power. In President Kennedy’s stirring inaugural address in 1961 there was the solemn pledge that we would “pay any price, bear any burden meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Yet it is difficult, if not impossible, to find any expression of concern about the limitless nature of that pledge.
A. There was that sense in 1961 of obligation and responsibility. The U.S. came out of World War II as the strongest country and we felt we had to provide leadership and take responsibility for the world. World War II was a massive war to secure the unconditional surrender of the enemy. The wars we’ve been involved in since then have not been. There has been no equivalent of the army rushing through France liberating villages and going on to liberate Paris, or marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. You’re lacking that grand sense of purpose, that sort of metric of success, that great conclusion that leads to the surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri.
Q. President Kennedy also said about Vietnam that we could provide equipment and advisers, but it was their war and they had to win it. Did the South Vietnamese think it was their war or did they regard it as an American war being fought on their land?
A. I think clearly the government of South Vietnam looked on it as their war. The Vietnamese living out in the country probably didn’t even follow or know what was going on in or who was in charge in Saigon. They were afraid of the Americans rather than respectful or grateful to them. I think [the Americans] decided on a number of occasions that the Vietnamese army was not as engaged and didn’t fight as hard as Americans did, so the Americans decided they were going to direct the war in the field and were better able to do that. We have higher technology, are better educated, and we can show these backward people how to run things.
Q. You write in ironic understatement, “Civilian deaths and injuries, even if accidental, and destroying homes and property of noncombatants, were not steps toward winning either hearts or minds in pacification programs.” Shouldn’t that have been obvious?
A. It should have been obvious to the kids out in the field. I don’t think it was back in Saigon. They thought it was tactically necessary to deny the enemy these resources. Resettlement surely did not supply equivalent places. To be ripped out your place, out of your own land, where your ancestors’ bones are buried, and taken to a new place to live is not exactly a step up in the world. It’s more than ironic, it’s cruel, it’s immoral and it’s wrong.
Q. If today we were to draw a circle around our defensive perimeter, our national security interests, would it include the entire planet?
A. In many ways, it shouldn’t. In terms of economic and political security we have a stake in what happens around the world, but that doesn’t mean we have a responsibility militarily to police the world. We can’t just start shaking spears every time we have a problem.
Q. Critics of the Vietnam War often cited President Eisenhower’s previously forgotten warning about the “military-industrial complex.” Do we need wars to keep the economy going?
A. No, I don’t think so. There’s no major mobilization for war such as there was in World War II. We’re not talking about turning automotive plants to making tanks and personnel carriers.
Q. Is it your concern that today’s veterans aren’t adequately appreciated?
A. We appreciate them when we say, “Thank you for your service.” I don’t think we appreciate what we’ve asked them to do on our behalf. I don’t think we appreciate what we owe them for what they’ve done on our behalf.
Q. Given all the controversy about our Vietnam experience, both during and since the war, what do you see as the lesson of Vietnam?
A. I think the lesson is not to engage in military action unless you know what the results will be. Don’t ask the military to do things that are not military. [And] to recognize that we’re not talking about shoe leather when we talk about “boots on the ground,” when we’re talking about a war. We’re talking about kids.
As a high school graduate in Galena, Ill., James Wright did not think he would ever go to college. Later he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, and still later he became a professor of history at Dartmouth College. He wound up serving as president of Dartmouth from 1998 to his retirement as president emeritus in 2009.
The son of a World War II veteran, he joined the Marines at age 17 and served from 1957 to 1960, primarily with the First Marine Brigade in Hawaii and Japan. He began visiting military hospitals in 2005, and his 2012 book, “Those Who Have Borne the Battle,” is about American war veterans and the struggles they have faced, both in the field and at home.
He made an extensive visit to Vietnam in 2014 in research for his latest book, “Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation And Its War,” published in April.
Q. Did any of the people you interviewed for this book say, “Look, we’re trying to forget Vietnam. Why are you dredging all this up?”
A. Some of the people I talked to had never really talked about Vietnam before. I was really interested In telling the story of those who died in Vietnam and others who served in Vietnam. I interviewed families who’d had that knock on the door telling them that their son or daughter was not coming home, and that was a very moving experience. No one refused to talk to me. Most of the people contacted me.
I worked with the Vietnam Veterans of America, and VFW put up a listing that said I was working on the book. A few people got in touch with me and others followed up with people who served in combat units – Army infantry, paratroopers, Marine infantry.
Q. Considering the title of David Halberstam’s book about the architects of the early stages of the Vietnam War, “The Best and the Brightest,” you might wonder: If the Vietnam War is an example of what the “best and brightest” produce, that’s kind of scary, isn’t it?
A. It is scary. But we do have to recognize what the world view of the 1950s was. To the World War II generation, Munich was generally believed to be the reason we found ourselves in World War II, and because of Munich we had to stand up to aggression.
I think the mistake was in imagining Vietnam was like Austria and Ho Chin Minh was like Hitler. There is a real danger in not understanding historical experience, but there may be a greater danger when people think everything has to be looked at by analogy. Every situation is different. I think that’s what history tells us.
Q. Your book, while not lacking in statistics, presents stories of individuals, with their names and their hometowns – Herbert Sweat from Brooklyn, Dan Shaw of Dorchester, Mass., Rick Rajner of Toledo, to name a few. Was this an effort to put a human face on the war?
A. I think one of the great dangers in the world is in having to think only of military power, and we don’t put faces on people. I don’t like to hear talk of putting “boots on the ground.” We’re not sending in shoe leather, we’re sending in sons and daughters. I’m concerned about the way most Americans can distance themselves from war because such a small percentage is serving, and it’s not a representative percentage.
Q. You also write that among those serving in Vietnam, the talk was about survival and not an ideological or global struggle, or “protecting the shore of California in the jungles of Vietnam.” Stated that way, doesn’t that, as a rationale for being in Vietnam, seem absurd?
A. These guys grew up in the generation that was told if we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them on the beaches of Los Angeles. They became disillusioned with that. The kids in the South Pacific in World War II had to fight the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But they were thinking about survival for themselves and their buddies serving with them. I don’t think in any war people are sitting around their foxholes at night thinking about making the world safe for democracy.
Q. Today we find a lot of people speaking and writing about the need to recognize the limits of power. In President Kennedy’s stirring inaugural address in 1961 there was the solemn pledge that we would “pay any price, bear any burden meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Yet it is difficult, if not impossible, to find any expression of concern about the limitless nature of that pledge.
A. There was that sense in 1961 of obligation and responsibility. The U.S. came out of World War II as the strongest country and we felt we had to provide leadership and take responsibility for the world. World War II was a massive war to secure the unconditional surrender of the enemy. The wars we’ve been involved in since then have not been. There has been no equivalent of the army rushing through France liberating villages and going on to liberate Paris, or marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. You’re lacking that grand sense of purpose, that sort of metric of success, that great conclusion that leads to the surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri.
Q. President Kennedy also said about Vietnam that we could provide equipment and advisers, but it was their war and they had to win it. Did the South Vietnamese think it was their war or did they regard it as an American war being fought on their land?
A. I think clearly the government of South Vietnam looked on it as their war. The Vietnamese living out in the country probably didn’t even follow or know what was going on in or who was in charge in Saigon. They were afraid of the Americans rather than respectful or grateful to them. I think [the Americans] decided on a number of occasions that the Vietnamese army was not as engaged and didn’t fight as hard as Americans did, so the Americans decided they were going to direct the war in the field and were better able to do that. We have higher technology, are better educated, and we can show these backward people how to run things.
Q. You write in ironic understatement, “Civilian deaths and injuries, even if accidental, and destroying homes and property of noncombatants, were not steps toward winning either hearts or minds in pacification programs.” Shouldn’t that have been obvious?
A. It should have been obvious to the kids out in the field. I don’t think it was back in Saigon. They thought it was tactically necessary to deny the enemy these resources. Resettlement surely did not supply equivalent places. To be ripped out your place, out of your own land, where your ancestors’ bones are buried, and taken to a new place to live is not exactly a step up in the world. It’s more than ironic, it’s cruel, it’s immoral and it’s wrong.
Q. If today we were to draw a circle around our defensive perimeter, our national security interests, would it include the entire planet?
A. In many ways, it shouldn’t. In terms of economic and political security we have a stake in what happens around the world, but that doesn’t mean we have a responsibility militarily to police the world. We can’t just start shaking spears every time we have a problem.
Q. Critics of the Vietnam War often cited President Eisenhower’s previously forgotten warning about the “military-industrial complex.” Do we need wars to keep the economy going?
A. No, I don’t think so. There’s no major mobilization for war such as there was in World War II. We’re not talking about turning automotive plants to making tanks and personnel carriers.
Q. Is it your concern that today’s veterans aren’t adequately appreciated?
A. We appreciate them when we say, “Thank you for your service.” I don’t think we appreciate what we’ve asked them to do on our behalf. I don’t think we appreciate what we owe them for what they’ve done on our behalf.
Q. Given all the controversy about our Vietnam experience, both during and since the war, what do you see as the lesson of Vietnam?
A. I think the lesson is not to engage in military action unless you know what the results will be. Don’t ask the military to do things that are not military. [And] to recognize that we’re not talking about shoe leather when we talk about “boots on the ground,” when we’re talking about a war. We’re talking about kids.
This article appears in the July 7 2017 issue of New Hampshire Business Review
Did you like what you read here? Subscribe to New Hampshire Business Review »
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Print Marked Items
The high cost of victory at Hamburger Hill
Jerry D. Morelock
Vietnam.
30.1 (June 2017): p56.
COPYRIGHT 2017 World History Group, LLC
http://www.historynet.com/magazines/vietnam
Full Text:
Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War
by James Wright, Thomas Dunn Books, 2017
The operative word in the title of James Wright's superb book is "enduring." It applies not only to members of all
military branches who were "enduring" the horrors of combat alternating with the soul-numbing boredom of an
assignment far from home but also to the families back home "enduring" the wait for their loved ones to return, while
being bombarded daily with media reports primarily featuring bad news.
Enduring Vietnam succeeds on several levels as it looks at a generation and those of it "who served and sacrificed." On
one level it is a well-researched, cogently written and thoughtful history of the war. On another, it gives Vietnam vets
and their families the opportunity to tell their stories in their own words. Finally, it includes Wright's own reflections
on "why America in the 1960s sent its young to war ... and why this generation served and sacrificed in a war that
drifted in purpose and declined in public support."
In a vivid example of the combat suffered by those who fought in Vietnam, Wright focuses on the May 1969 assault
and capture of Hill 937 in the A Shau Valley near the Laotian border. The Vietnamese name for Hill 937 is Dong Ap
Bia, but the 101st Airborne Division troopers who launched multiple frontal assaults up its steep slopes to dislodge the
firmly entrenched North Vietnamese Army aptly called it "Hamburger Hill"--a veritable human meat grinder. Wright
chose that battle because it encapsulated "many of the elements of the American War: elusive tactical goals,
unexpected sustained resistance from disciplined and tough enemy forces who seldom followed the American
expectations, American troops who despite those surprises fought with courage, and a growing controversy in the
United States about the need for the battle."
Both U.S. and NVA troops fighting for Hamburger Hill were surprised. The Americans because the NVA, unlike in
previous engagements, stood and fought. The NVA because the Americans, despite horrific casualties, kept coming
time after time for 10 agonizing days. The Americans eventually took the heavily bombed, burned and blasted hill, but
at a high cost-more than 100 dead and another nearly 400 wounded. The NVA suffered an estimated 630 killed in
action and likely several hundred more wounded.
But, as was so typical in America's Vietnam War battles, Wright notes, "The heroism was there, but the tales of it were
missing.... There was no flag raising on the top of Dong Ap Bia, no symbolic moment when weary soldiers reached the
summit and combat photographers captured their victory with an inspiring, iconic image."
Wright highlights the irony that the victory American troops had sacrificed so much to gain was seized upon by antiwar
politicians to criticize the war. Sen. Ted Kennedy publicly lambasted the Nixon administration's political
leadership and criticized the tactical skill and competence of the military leadership that caused "American boys ... to
be sacrificed for a false sense of military pride." Unlike in America's previous wars, during the Vietnam War it became
acceptable to score political points using the blood and bodies of U.S. troops.
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Further insight into Wright's motivation for writing this history of the Vietnam War can be gleaned from a Veterans
Day speech the author delivered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 2009. Wright said the casualties of war cry out to
be known as persons, not as numbers or names on a memorial. We can remember them for history and for those in the
future who would send the young to war.
Company of Heroes, by Eric Poole
Prom their deployment during the Tet Offensive to the deadly Mother's Day Ambush, Leslie Sabo Jr. and the soldiers
of Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, displayed bravely and sacrifice.
Sabo received the Medal of Honor 42 years after his actions. The paperwork had been lost during the war.
Taking the Offensive: October 1966 September
1967, by Glenn F. Williams
In the latest publication of the U.S. Army Campaigns of the Vietnam War series, Williams explores Operation
Attleboro and other American efforts to disrupt North Vietnamese Army camps and supply stores. This booklet
illustrates how U.S. actions during the 11 months allowed for increased political stability in South Vietnam before the
1967 election.
Caption: The "meat grinder" battle Wounded troopers of the 101st Airborne Division are loaded onto a Huey during
the fighting on Hamburger Hill in May 1969.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Morelock, Jerry D. "The high cost of victory at Hamburger Hill." Vietnam, June 2017, p. 56+. General OneFile,
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490622611&it=r&asid=7ef0946952fcddebe512c1dbbf6e3eee.
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Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and
Its War
Publishers Weekly.
264.2 (Jan. 9, 2017): p53.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War
James Wright. St. Martin's/Dunne, $29.99
(464p) ISBN 978-1-250-09248-9
In this well-researched and readable work, Wright (Those Who Have Borne the Battle), president emeritus of
Dartmouth College, takes a deep look at a particular segment of an American generation--men who took part in ground
combat in the Vietnam War. These men, whom he calls "the war fighters," were from the Army and Marines and
accounted for approximately a fourth of the troops who served in Vietnam during the war. To do so, Wright
interviewed 160 veterans and family members of those who died in the war. He utilizes primary and secondary sources
to examine the political, diplomatic, and cultural climate of the Vietnam War period. Wright includes an analysis of
military strategy, and his descriptions of on-the-ground action concentrate on the decisive year of 1969, including an
extended look at the May 1969 Battle of Ap Bia Mountain, commonly known as Hamburger Hill. He also devotes a
chapter to Vietnam veterans' homecoming. Wright's worthy effort is a tribute to Americans who saw the worst that the
Vietnam War offered, combined with a broad look at the domestic and geopolitical factors that led to the U.S. getting
involved in the long, controversial conflict. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War." Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2017, p. 53. General OneFile,
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477339320&it=r&asid=51c2989f6d70a531bc5ec59efd3244e7.
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Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and
Its War
Mark Levine
Booklist.
113.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2017): p32.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War. By James Wright. Apr. 2017.464p. St. Martin's/Thomas
Dunne, $29.99 (97812500924891.959.704.
Wright, historian and former president of Dartmouth College, focuses his history of the Vietnam War on those who
served in Southeast Asia, rather than on the counterculture, which often garners so much attention. This is very much a
work of history and deserves high praise in that context. Wright does what opponents of the war often have failed to
do: honor those who served. In the Vietnam era, what Wright calls the "national narrative" had changed, certainly since
WWII, as had the American view of its leaders and soldiers. As broadcaster Eric Severeid said, "It is difficult to think
of soldier heroes ... in a war without glory." Though personally affected by young peoples sacrifices, Wright strikes a
careful balance, describing in vividly human terms the deaths of so many soldiers while simultaneously summarizing
the social conditions at the time and the national and world background, using other journalism but also drawing on
dozens of interviews he conducted himself. While explicitly covering the war's abuses--My Lai, fragging, drugs--the
book redresses a badly misplaced emphasis by spotlighting the men who went to war and what they endured, both in
battle and, later, upon returning to a conflicted America where they were reviled (and even spit at). There have been
hundreds of books written about the Vietnam War, but this is among the most powerful and heartbreaking.--Mark
Levine
Levine, Mark
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Levine, Mark. "Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 32. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479077931&it=r&asid=7df3406e3a032e666bac02bfab0c28e8.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
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Wright, James. Enduring Vietnam: An American
Generation and Its War
Karl Helicher
Library Journal.
142.1 (Jan. 1, 2017): p113.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Wright, James. Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War. Thomas Dunne: St. Martin's. Apr.
2017.464p. maps, notes, bibliog. index. ISBN 9781250092489. $29.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250092496. HIST
The Vietnam War remains the all-encompassing event of the baby boomer generation, claims Wright (president
emeritus & emeritus history, Dartmouth Coll.; Those Who Have Borne the Battle) in this poignant account of those
who fought and died there. This excellent combination of historical scholarship is amplified by the often horrifying
battlefield descriptions of the 160 Americans interviewed, who share stories of some of the bloodiest fighting,
especially at Khe Sanh (1968) and Dong Ap Bai (1969). Although the war's impact on the home front is covered in
depth, the author is at his best when describing how the soldiers, mostly in their late teens and 20s, lived under the
daily threat of death, and how more than 40 years after the last American troops came home, many remain casualties of
post-traumatic stress disorder, exposure to Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants, and are haunted by memories
of fallen friends. VERDICT This important investigation of the Vietnam War and its effects on an entire generation
will appeal to both Vietnam-era specialists and general readers. See also Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves and
Christian Appy's Working Class War--Karl Helicher, formerly Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Helicher, Karl
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Helicher, Karl. "Wright, James. Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War." Library Journal, 1 Jan.
2017, p. 113+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA476562409&it=r&asid=5c99aa04bcacb8d734fdd1ca822130a1.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
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Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of
America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them
Marc Leepson
Military History.
29.4 (Nov. 2012): p72.
COPYRIGHT 2012 World History Group, LLC
http://www.historynet.com/magazines/military_history
Full Text:
Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them, by James Wright,
PublicAffairs, New York, 2012, $28.99
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
James Wright, the historian and former president of Dartmouth College, takes the title of his book from Abraham
Lincoln's famed March 4, 1865, second inaugural address. "Let us strive," Lincoln said, "... to care for him who shall
have borne the battle." Those stirring words, which are inscribed at the entrance of the Department of Veterans Affairs
headquarters in Washington, D.C., fittingly describe the subject of Wright's worthy book.
As does his subtitle, since Wright--who served three years (1957-60) in the U.S. Marine Corps--here presents a wellwritten
summary of the way America has raised its armies to fight its wars and how the nation has treated the veterans
of those wars. Wright begins with the American Revolution but concentrates on World War II and what came
afterward. The book, Wright says, "describes how we have mobilized for our wars, how we think about the service of
those who are called upon, and how we treat them after their service has ended, as we attempt to return to status quo
ante bellum."
Specifically, Wright says, he is interested in "the way societies and cultures think about their past and about their
legacy, which can indeed have consequences for subsequent understandings, choices and behavior." In that context he
writes convincingly of the negative consequences of the "deification of the World War II generation" (aka the "Greatest
Generation"), which prevailed in the "good war."
Among many other things, that glorification of World War II and its veterans had an impact on the way the United
States prosecuted the Vietnam War and the shameful way the nation as a whole treated veterans of that war. While it
has been well chronicled that members of the antiwar movement vilified Vietnam veterans for taking part in that war,
Wright also points out that members of the Greatest Generation also mistreated those who fought in the Vietnam War.
"The pro-war right, normally considered the natural allies of military forces and veterans, was of little help to Vietnam
veterans," Wright writes. "There was on the part of some conservatives, particularly among veterans groups, a sense
the Vietnam veterans were weak drug addicts and shiners."
One good thing came out of this: Sometime in the 1980s the American populace realized it was unfairly blaming the
Vietnam warrior for the war. That situation then led directly to the situation today in which, as Wright points out,
Americans of all virtually political stripes have embraced today's veterans of the wars in Iraq an Afghanistan as heroes,
"even if we do not really know them." While treating every returning veteran as a hero has some drawbacks, it is
immeasurably preferable to the disgraceful treatment given to veterans of the Vietnam War when they returned home.
Leepson, Marc
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Leepson, Marc. "Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them."
Military History, Nov. 2012, p. 72. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA302463921&it=r&asid=85d372da307dda2f94de9cc8de5a77a5.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
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Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of
America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them
Military Review.
93.1 (January-February 2013): p86.
COPYRIGHT 2013 U.S. Army CGSC
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/
Full Text:
THOSE WHO HAVE BORNE THE BATTLE: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them
James Wright, Public Affairs, New York, 2012, 368pages, $28.99
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
AT THE HEART of the story of America's wars are our "citizen soldiers"--those hometown heroes who fought and
sacrificed from Bunker Hill at Charlestown to Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, and beyond, without expectation of
recognition or recompense. Americans like to think that the service of its citizen volunteers is, and always has been, of
momentous importance in our politics and society. But though this has made for good storytelling, the reality of
America's relationship to its veterans is far more complex. In Those Who Have Borne the Battle, historian and marine
veteran James Wright tells the story of the long, often troubled relationship between America and those who have
defended her--from the Revolutionary War to today--shedding new light both on our history and on the issues our
country and its armed forces face today. From the publisher.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them." Military Review,
Jan.-Feb. 2013, p. 86. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA335734341&it=r&asid=61027ac9bf362ad7216c851223ae8aa1.
Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.
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The Emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and
the Political Culture of the Old Northwest
Glen Gendzel
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History.
28.2 (Autumn 1997): p225.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/
Full Text:
A cursory glance at new titles in U.S. political history may give the impression that "all the past is political culture,"
and that this intuitively sensible formula is "casually invoked" by writers casting about for theoretical support.
Admittedly, some users have turned political culture into an elastic category. The Encyclopedia of American Social
History, for example, expansively claims political culture for both the "new social history" and the "new political
history." A recent survey of the Organization of American Historians finds that nine of the top ten "most influential"
books can be considered "inquiries into the nature of American political culture," even though none of these classic
works ever invoked the concept by name. Political culture might be an example of what Thompson called "a clumpish
term, which by gathering so many activities and attributes into one common bundle may actually confuse or disguise
discriminations that should be made between them." Absent a clear definition and intellectual genealogy, "political
culture" threatens to obscure more than it reveals.(1)
Despite this danger, historians should not turn their backs on political culture. Recent works like Etcheson's Emerging
Midwest suggest that the concept possesses great analytical utility. Others like Wiebe's Self-Rule, however, underscore
the need for more discipline in using it. Beyond casual invocation, historians of political culture would do well to
acquaint themselves with the intellectual genealogy of the concept - not least because it teaches a rare lesson in how to
make theoretical contributions to other disciplines. Political culture originated as an analytical tool for political
scientists using quantitative-behavioralist methods, but historians have so enriched the concept with theories of cultural
interpretation that now "one can see grounds for reborrowing by political scientists of the concept originally borrowed
from them." There is nothing new about historians pilfering ideas, but, in this instance, historians are not exporters of a
precious theoretical commodity, gaining unaccustomed leverage in the interdisciplinary balance of trade. Furthermore,
while political scientists have come to accept that historically derived "cultural beliefs," not just systemic "variables,"
affect political outcomes, historians have established that the intersection of politics and culture was a vital part of the
American past.(2)
The concept of political culture evolved from centuries of generalizing about power's different faces in different places.
Plato's "dispositions," Montesquieu's "spirit of the laws," Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "mores," David Hume's "manners,"
Alexis de Tocqueville's "habits of the heart," Emile Durkheim's "collective consciousness," and Max Weber's
"authority systems" were all ancestors to the concept. Earlier in this century, American social scientists began asking
how the unique "psychological coherence" or "modal personality" of a culture might affect its politics. Laswell's call
for "extend[ing] the scope of political investigation to include the fundamental features of the cultural setting" helped
loose a flood of so-called "national character" studies in the 1940s. These works placed whole countries on the couch,
linking supposedly essential traits to the resolution of collective psychodramas. The resulting neo-Freudian
interpretations of culture were imaginative and often frivolous, such as the theory of "diaperology" that ascribed Soviet
foreign policy to Russian swaddling practices. At best, national character studies lapsed into hereditarian determinism;
at worst, they reified crude stereotypes. Political scientists concluded from this early misadventure that cultural theory
must rely on "observations systematically made and recorded by trained social scientists" armed with the rigorously
empirical methods of quantitative behavioralism.(3)
The modern-day concept of political culture was born amid Cold War efforts to distinguish the "Free World" from the
rest of the world. In a landmark 1956 essay, Almond contrasted the "pragmatic" politics of Britain and the United
States with the "simplism" of totalitarian states. This Manichean dichotomy appealed to postwar political scientists
who hoped that comparative theory would help spread the blessings of American democracy and stem the tide of
communism. But Almond's research agenda outlasted the Cold War: "Every political system is embedded in a
particular pattern of orientations to political action. I have found it useful to refer to this as the political culture." With
this single stroke, he offered a convenient catchphrase for such loosely conceptualized terms in comparative politics as
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attitudes, values, ideology, and socialization. It bore an obvious affanity to Weber's recently translated theory of
Protestantism as the cultural engine of modernization. The problem for political scientists was how to apply Almond's
idea - how to identify, measure, and compare the "pattern of orientations" that characterized politics in different
nations. The solution came from another field of postwar political science, namely, psephology, or the study of voting
behavior.(4)
Psephologists at the time were busily using the sample-survey methods of opinion pollsters and market researchers to
explore "how the voter makes up his mind." Inspired by this work, regarded at the time as methodologically
sophisticated, Almond teamed with Verba to survey thousands of citizens in five nations. In The Civic Culture (1963),
Almond and Verba vowed to develop "a scientific theory of democracy" by "codify[ing] the operating characteristics of
the democratic polity itself." In practice, however, they simply measured "attitudes toward the political system" in
various places and called the result political culture. The authors made startling discoveries - for example, that 85
percent of Americans expressed pride in their government, compared with 7 percent of Germans and 3 percent of
Italians. But critics questioned the "psychologically reductionistic" use of poll data to sum up individual attitudes,
given that culture was a group phenomenon, protesting that "political culture [was] the property of a collectivity."
"Individuals have beliefs, values, and attitudes, but they do not have cultures." Evidently, there was a difference
between answering questionnaires, which reflected diffuse opinions, and constituting a polity, which reflects historical
evolution, intersubjective understanding, and collectively negotiated (and contested) meanings.(5)
Almond and Verba had completely omitted history and politics from their construction of political culture. They
presumed that polls measure timeless cultural attributes; instead, they may simply record ephemeral opinions about a
particular regime at a particular time. Almond and Verba seemed to imply that political culture never changed and
never varied internally. Marxists objected that The Civic Culture ignored class and power relations, and many
detractors raised the red flag of normative bias: Almond and Verba seemed to idealize the "moderate" civic culture of
Anglo-American liberal democracy that other benighted countries lacked.(6)
The worst flaw in the original political culture concept was its chicken-egg conundrum of cause and effect: Did civic
culture create democracy - or did democracy create civic culture? As an explanatory model, political culture seemed
tautological; structure rather than culture could well account for democratic success, rendering the civic culture just
another dependent variable. Potter had earlier suggested an alternative explanation that American democracy was
rooted not in civic culture but in economic "abundance." Almond later showed signs of agreeing with him.(7)
Before long, Verba admitted to having written "a bold and incautious book." He redefined political culture as "beliefs,
expressive symbols, and values" that required interpretation as well as measurement. He tried to be more specific about
"what aspects of political culture are determinants of what phenomena," repositioning the concept as the "link between
the events of politics and the behavior of individuals." Verba allowed for cultural changes that could shape or be
shaped by politics, for class-specific versions of a culture, and for subcultures within a polity. In a volume dedicated to
Almond, he offered his "broad and rather loose definition" to answer their critics, and Pye, his new collaborator, soon
followed with a similarly inclusive definition that stretched political culture from "the collective history of a political
system" to "the life histories of the members of that system," creating a link between "public events and private
experiences." Thus, the political culture concept acquired its "kitchen sink" reputation, eliciting criticism that it
described everything about politics "without explaining anything" and turned "abstract idealizations" into uncaused
causes. Dissatisfied political scientists implored their colleagues to "stop using political culture as a handy residual
variable to explain phenomena we cannot think of other ways to deal with."(8)
Political culture's wash-out left comparative politics in what Wiarda called "a state of crisis," woefully lacking "a
single global and integrating theoretical framework." According to Laitin, "The systematic study of politics and culture
[was] moribund."(9)
The underappreciated concept emerged again in another branch of the political-science family, the study of American
government. Patterson suggested treating regions of the United States as mini-nations with distinct political cultures,
and Elazar soon emerged as the leader of this project. For him, political culture comprised the "habits, perspectives,
and attitudes that exist to influence political life"; regional variations in political forms resulted directly from
"differences in political culture among the states." Elazar theorized that the arrival and spread of Euro-American
civilization across the United States from east to west left a residual pattern. He isolated and identified the "moralistic"
culture of New England, the "individualistic" culture of the Mid-Atlantic region, and the "traditionalistic" culture of the
South. These Ur-cultures migrated to the "continuing frontier" of the West, then to the cities, and finally to the suburbs.
Elazar applied "cultural geology" to the sediments of human society that these migration streams left behind, devising
intricate maps of each culture's national diffusion.(10)
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Few political scientists found Elazar's "American mosaic" completely persuasive. Some rejected his triangular
typology in favor of a continuum, but none could agree on which two cultures were polar opposites. Some disputed
Elazar's terms because his categories entailed a type of belief (individualism), a manner of belief (traditionalism), and a
source of belief (moralism), which made them incommensurable. Elazar devoted considerable effort to refine these
cultural constructs, never backing down from what he considered "the soundness of [his] original thesis." Eventually,
he inflated it into a grand theory of "the actual way in which the art of government is practiced" throughout the United
States, even insisting that political culture, "an independent variable with a dynamic of its own," had caused the Civil
War.(11)
Stirred by such extravagant claims, swarms of doubting scholars tested Elazar's cultural constructs against such
quantitative state-level variables as voter turnout, tax rates, per capita spending, quality of life, and poll data of all
kinds. The results proved inconclusive. "For every study that claims to have found Elazar's theory vindicated," one
survey of this literature observed, "there is another that claims to find it of little use."(12)
After a much-heralded birth, the political culture concept had mutated into an awkward and unloved scion of political
science. "Doubts about the approach no doubt arose from its too-quick popularity, its rapidly acquired faddishness,"
reasoned Eckstein, and a recent textbook stated, "Rarely has a concept been so frequently used and so often
contended." Most users had to refashion the notion to suit themselves - either employing survey data to suggest
changes in political culture between generations, thereby sidestepping questions of causality or attitudinal distribution,
or whittling down the concept into a humble "heuristic device" merely to set boundaries for political outcomes. At best,
culture influenced "preferences" by demarcating the range of conceivable alternatives without choosing among them.
Too often, however, "political culture" served as an academic token or a bland cliche. For example, Elazar's friends and
foes alike could hardly have disagreed that, in the name of political culture, "the political attitudes of U.S. citizens vary
in important ways on the basis of where in the United States they live." With this sort of commonplace wisdom,
political culture betrayed its early promise as the "scientific theory of democracy."(13)
After political scientists abandoned the political culture concept, historians gave it a new home. Political scientists had
tried to observe, dissect, classify, and quantify culture, but U.S. historians absorbed a more holistic view of it from
postwar anthropologists. Beyond arts and literature, culture came to encompass the "complex whole" of social
organization spiritual belief, political institution, traditional practice, ethical value, psychological assumption, folkloric
custom, popular entertainment, gender roles, material artifacts, and myriad other kaleidoscopic concerns. Indeed,
anthropologists argued among themselves about the "conceptual slovenliness" that plagued their "inordinately swollen"
construct. Most, however, accepted that the broader definition of culture was "a source of illumination, not a veil of
obscurity." As Berkhofer pointed out, both the postwar American Studies movement and what later drew scorn as
"consensus" history resulted from similar efforts to trace "manifestations of behavior" to cultural "ideas and values" in
anthropological fashion.(14)
The temptation to quantify culture seduced relatively few historians, because their subjects, being for the most part
dead, could not fill out questionnaires. Instead, historians immersed themselves in texts and applied (or misapplied)
anthropological theory as best they could. Many became devotees of Geertz, whose ethnographic method of "thick
description" sought to inscribe words and deeds with phenomenological and contextual meaning. Thick description
entranced those who already believed with Skinner that "the explanation of human action must always include - and
perhaps even take the form of - an attempt to recover and interpret the meanings of social actions from the point of
view of the agents performing them." In a Weberian paraphrase, Geertz postulated that "man is an animal suspended in
webs of significance he himself has spun," thus declaring that the study of homo significans required impressionistic
interpretation, not scientific measurement. Focusing on the intersubjective aspects of public acts, thick description
became a technique of cultural semiotics, or the contextual interpretation of cultural symbols. With it, historians would
breathe new life into the political culture concept. Historiographical surveys of Geertz's influence tend to focus on
European cultural historians, but his impact on American political historians was no less impressive.(15)
On the surface, cultural semiotics seemed incompatible with history because it ignored the origin and evolution of
cultural symbols. As Biersack put it, in cultural semiotics, "Meaning is described, never derived." European historians
inclined toward Foucault's style of locating symbols (or "representations") in history rather than Geertz's penchant for
ahistorical description. But many political historians in the United States embraced cultural semiotics in the 1970s
because it promised to liberate them from the theoretical legacies of materialism, behavioralism, and idealism, which
had paralyzed the study of ideology. For decades, materialist historians had treated ideology as a rationalization of
material interest or an outright obfuscation; behavioralists had treated it as idiosyncratic, hopelessly subjective, and
irrelevant; and idealists had treated it as disembodied "thought" with a life of its own, at least until the "linguistic turn"
enshrined a less transcendental view of abstract discourse. Many political historians agreed with Hartz that the
materialist-idealist schism distorted ideology's role in history by rendering ideas either epiphenomenal or overly
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deterministic. Many also agreed with such linguistic philosophers as Austin that behavioralism either ignored the
possibility of "doing things with words" or oversimplified human behavior by dismissing intentionality.(16)
Geertz deftly fused ideas, interests, and behavior by treating ideology as a socially constructed "cultural system."
Ideology, in his view, affected how people perceived and acted on their material interests; it also shaped political ideas
with unspoken assumptions that guided behavior. Geertz stressed that ideology was the overall context of "events,
behaviors, institutions, or processes," rather than the cause (as idealists assumed) or the effect (as materialists and
behavioralists assumed) of social phenomena - including politics. The cultural context of politics encompassed
perception of interest, intention for behavior, and assumption behind idea. It inscribed the words and deeds of
participants with culturally symbolic meanings that analysts endeavored to decipher. Of course, historians had to keep
in mind "that symbols convey multiple meanings and that meaning is construed in different ways by different people,"
as Darnton cautioned aspiring Geertzians. But the discovery of cultural semiotics helped American historians cultivate
a renewed appreciation for the symbolic forms of politics - discourse and practice, voting and speaking, campaigning
and governing. Political words and deeds became symbolic texts susceptible to interpretation for meanings intended by
communicators, constructed by audiences, and (though Geertz was weak on this point) contested by subaltern groups.
(17)
Cultural semiotics allowed historians to describe political ideology without transmuting it into idealist "thought,"
exaggerating it into "hegemony," or reducing it to "false consciousness." When assessed symbolically, politics became
as much a part of culture as gender or religion - social constructions that historians routinely subjected to symbolic
interpretations. This approach appealed to political historians who recognized that elitist biographies were passe, but
whom its successor, the "new political history," failed to satisfy. As confirmed behavioralists, the new political
historians downplayed "rhetoric" as deceptive, meaningless, and anecdotal. Instead, they correlated voting and census
data to build determinist models of political action based on "ethnocultural" loyalty. These historians stripped objective
behavior from subjective context, treating voters in poll booths like laboratory rats in mazes; with a wave of the slide
rule, they dismissed ideology as irrelevant to "how democracy works." Cultural semiotics attracted instead those
historians of politics who agreed that old-fashioned approaches merely skimmed the surface, but who rejected both the
old Marxian-materialist and the new ethnocultural-behavioralist alternatives. Surely there was more to politics than
class conflict and correlation coefficients. Armed with Geertz's expansive definition of ideology, which shifted
historical attention to the symbolic content of campaign rallies, platform oratory, and political tracts, historians could
redeem political culture while doing useful work.(18)
"One of the things that everyone knows but no one can quite think how to demonstrate," Geertz pondered, "is that a
country's politics reflect the design of its culture." With Geertz's help, historians cut this Gordian knot by replacing the
"behavioral orthodoxy" of political science with the classic anthropological theory of culture as unarticulated
consciousness - what Kluckhohn, in 1943, had called "covert culture," which operates through "unstated premises"
rather than measurable attitudes. Kluckhohn defined culture as the collection of "premises and categories whose
influence is greater, rather than less, because they are seldom put into words."(19)
Tracking down the unspoken assumptions of past politics was not a new quest. As early as the 1940s, long before the
discovery of cultural semiotics, ambitious U.S. historians were forging grand syntheses of ideology into cultural
systems. For their pains, many of these writers were branded as "consensus" celebrators, even though their intent was
not always celebratory. Others showed sensitivity to political symbols in the ideology of colonial Virginians, early
national politicians, the followers of Andrew Jackson, and the founders of the Republican party. These early works
anticipated the political culture synthesis, but the watershed in historical application of the political culture concept
was the discovery of republicanism as the ideology that shaped colonial American perceptions of British rule in the
imperial crisis of the eighteenth century.(20)
For generations, historians had argued about the validity, and even the sincerity, of complaints against British rule
leading up to the Revolution. It seemed incongruous that a tax increase could have provoked a general rebellion against
king and country. The reinterpretation of revolutionary discourse in light of republican symbols and meanings helped
historians to see George III's "long train of abuses" from the patriots' perspective as a monstrous conspiracy against
liberty and a harbinger of corruption. Bailyn and his students drew on cultural semiotics to stress that revolutionary
leaders and a great many followers perceived British policy as "a deliberate assault launched surreptitiously by plotters
against liberty." Through the republican lens, American rebels "saw behind the actions of the English ministry . . . not
merely misgovernment . . . but a deliberate design to destroy the constitutional safeguards of liberty, which only
concerted resistance - violent resistance if necessary - could effectively oppose." Intellectual historians also helped
articulate republicanism to recapture the meaning of symbol-laden words like tyranny, corruption, liberty, and virtue in
their original setting and to reinterpret the Revolution from the revolutionaries' point of view.(21)
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Predictably, materialist historians denounced the republicanism thesis as "ideological determinism." Failing to
appreciate the subtlety of political culture as a perceptual context and a semiological system, not a cause, these critics
mistook republicanism for a "consensus" theory that attributed the Revolution to the writings of"Great White Men."
Undaunted, Bailyn's students kept spreading the gospel of political culture, urging colleagues to recognize that public
expressions of political ideas "meant something very real to both the writers and their readers," and that revolutionary
rhetoric deserved renewed attention for evidence of forgotten meanings. Bailyn himself nominated Geertz as a
potential mediator for political historians divided between materialism, behavioralism, and idealism. "Formal discourse
becomes politically powerful when it becomes ideology," he asserted - that is, when it "shapes what is otherwise
instinctive and directs it to attainable goals; when it clarifies, symbolizes, and elevates to structured consciousness the
mingled urges that stir within us." Wood, Bailyn's student, likewise echoed Geertz in affirming that the "meanings"
people gave to their political actions were "never epiphenomenal" and that "all human behavior can only be understood
and explained, indeed can only exist, in terms of the meanings it has."(22)
Republicanism advanced the cause of political culture with historians, but family quarrels about the relationships
between republicanism, liberalism, and labor radicalism still had to be settled. Accusatory footnotes abounded, as
historians sought to prove the predominance of increasingly abstract viewpoints. Taylor complained that the
republicanism debate seemed to "describe categories that were, at best, dimly apprehended by people in the past," a
sadly ironic outcome for political culture's historiographical debut, given that the concept was supposed to reinfuse
past perspectives into the study of past politics.(23)
If nothing else, the debate proved that historians, unlike political scientists, would not demand scientific rigor from
their adopted concept. Historians refrained from flinging statistics at each other. Despite its flaws and controversies, the
republicanism thesis successfully grafted cultural semiotics onto American political history. As Silbey put it, at least
historians of republicanism tried to describe "things that link a people together politically, their shared values,
memories, and perspectives" within a holistic framework, and Rogers, in an otherwise critical review, cited
republicanism's "investment of language and culture with coherence and social power."(24)
Answering the "consensus" canard, political culture historians began to refocus the concept from the nation to specific
groups. Holt and Greenberg described the advent of the Civil War from the perspective of Northern and Southern
politicians - both sides viewing themselves as defenders of republican virtue. Howe analyzed the partisan political
culture of antebellum Whigs, declaring a la Geertz that "the mood, metaphors, values, and style of Whig political
attitudes mattered." Howe profiled prominent politicians, not because they were "Great White Men," but because they
were useful informants who "would reveal the fullest development and elaboration of Whig culture." Baker conferred
comparable attention on Democrats in the antebellum North, drawing upon anthropological theory to describe partisan
"tribal rites." Like Howe, Baker relied on prominent "informants," but her methodological breakthrough was to treat
"voting as a symbolic demonstration," the American equivalent of Geertz's famous Balinese cockfight that is, the
essential ritual of a culture. At a time when other political historians poured over election returns and census
manuscripts, Baker set her sights on "metaphorical language and political iconography," asking "what voting meant in
a collective sense," rather than piling up more decontextualized statistics.(25)
Soon a great many U.S. historians adopted the political culture concept as their own. Reviewers found the approach
"stunning in its originality," for it "include[d] everyone who participated in politics," turning historians into mass mind
readers. Political culture captured "popular beliefs and expectations that gave meaning to the political process and
guided the conduct of politics and government." With this concept, historians could recover the "manners,"
"intellectual atmosphere," and "perceptions" of past political figures, though temporal change did not enter into their
analyses until Watson chose the transition from the first to the second party system to link economic development to
shifts in antebellum political culture. In the process, he demonstrated that the retrieval of submerged patterns of belief
need not entail any presumptions of immutability. Formisano examined the same transition more thoroughly,
describing how genteel "electioneering" gave way to rough-and-tumble "campaigning" in Massachusetts. He unearthed
"the taken-for-granteds" of political discourse by combining sources about "community life" with statistical analysis -
but without inferring ideas from behavior.(26)
In the 1990s, Ethington's account of San Francisco's shift from "republican liberalism" to "pluralist liberalism" and
Bond's tracking of white Mississippi's "social ethic" have added sophisticated diachronic analysis to political culture
history. In this spirit, Wiebe's Self-Rule offers a sweeping narrative of the transition from active, high-turnout
democracy in the nineteenth-century United States to passive, low-turnout democracy in the twentieth century. Women
and non-whites were proscribed from politics, Wiebe freely admits, but for the white-male masses, the nineteenth
century was a democratic golden age of "self-determination" when "people ruled themselves" both individually and
collectively.(27)
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This edenic era ended with the urban-industrial transformation that brought "centralization and hierarchy." In the early
twentieth century, a new "national class" of reformers, businessmen, and intellectuals wielded scientific expertise to
isolate political power from the masses. Wiebe charges the progressive movement with the crime of "atomizing the
electorate" - forcing voters to abandon partisan identities in order to cast their ballots as "an individualized private act."
No longer did elections function as fraternal celebrations of shared identity. After 1920, faced with the necessity of
"absorbing increasing amounts of information on a multiplying array of issues," fewer and fewer Americans straggled
to the polls, and voter turnout fell from over 80 percent in the 1880s to barely 50 percent a century later.(28)
Wiebe tells a familiar story with two new twists. First, whereas some historians argue that the "decline of popular
politics" was an unintended consequence of reform, Wiebe is less charitable. "If most progressives did not set out to
keep the poor from the polls," he writes with scorn, "they had little invested in bringing them there." Elitist reformers
"tolerated lower-class exclusion" if they did not actively seek it. In this respect, Self-Rule is a sequel to Wiebe's
acclaimed classic, The Search for Order, 1877-1920, because it extends to the present his saga of centralized
bureaucracy displacing popular self-government. In both works, however, Wiebe seems to romanticize blind party
loyalty, bossism, and corrupt political machines because they, at least, yielded high turnouts. He might have devoted
more attention to the difference between genuine "self-rule" and its illusion under boss rule, or to the democratic
potential of the rational, non-partisan, issue-oriented politics that progressives hoped to create. But Wiebe doubts that
voters need to know much about issues: "Even if we accept the implausible proposition that a determinate body of
knowledge lies out there to be learned," he writes, "why should citizens be obliged to sit there and learn it?" Given this
attitude, it is not surprising that Wiebe finds nineteenth-century elections, which Henry George called "glittering
displays of partisanship," more compelling than the bland information-overload of modem campaigns.(29)
The second new twist to Wiebe's "cultural history of American democracy" is his pointed invocation of "culture."
Sounding like a comparative politics scholar in the Almond-Verba tradition, Wiebe defines democracy as "invariably
popular self-government and variably something else - something culturally specific that has adhered to it." Sounding
like a Geertzian ethnographer, he wants to explore "the webbing of values and relations" spun within American
democracy. Seemingly a culturalist, not a behavioralist, Wiebe declares that "my study is situated at the intersection
between beliefs and actions," steering between "a systematic history of ideas on one side and a detailed history of
political behavior on the other." Yet, except for brief forays into exposing sundry political theorists as closeted antidemocrats,
Wiebe does not engage the rhetorical conventions, unspoken assumptions, and significant symbols of past
politics as would a true student of cultural semiotics. Although Self-Rule is a powerfully argued brief for democratic
revitalization, its invocation of political culture terminology seems gratuitous. Despite claims to the contrary, Wiebe's
real concern is behavioralist, not culturalist: voter turnout, not the meanings and discourse of politics, is for him the
measure of democracy. "At some point on a curve of declining turnouts," he writes, "the system no longer functions."
Indeed, he dismisses Almond and Verba's theory of political culture precisely because it ignores issues of voting
behavior and turnout.(30)
Other historians combining chronological narratives with cultural comparisons have applied the political culture
concept to symbols and ideology rather than to functions and behaviors. This approach seems to hold the most promise
for scholarly exploration of political culture. Two decades ago, Kelley helped point the way by retracing the
transmigration of social groups between the Jeffersonian/Democratic and Whig/Republican party coalitions. Freeman
later offered a more ideologically oriented comparison of the styles, traditions, and worldviews of the two major
parties. More recently, Baker, Sklar, and McCurry have produced major studies of women's political culture in the
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States, emphasizing that the franchise was not a necessary precondition
to public political participation and comparing the gendered assumptions that men and women brought to the political
arena. These authors imply that the modern welfare state gradually replaced the older laissez-faire state at least partly
because male political culture lost its monopoly on formal power. Now that historians have placed political elites in
context alongside diverse masses of cultural contestants, no longer can political culture history be said to dwell
exclusively on "Great White Men."(31)
Whether inspired by Elazar's work in political science, or by Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, American
historians have also begun to connect migration patterns with geographical variations in political culture. Etcheson's
Emerging Midwest compares the ideologies of southern and northern migrants in antebellum Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois. Following the trend toward integration of both comparative and diachronic analysis, Etcheson discusses how
the events leading to the Civil War sundered state-level polities already divided between two regnant political cultures.
Shared ideologies of republicanism, partisanism, and "westernness" could not withstand the resurgence of sectional
loyalties in the 1850s. Like Bond, who reconstructed the meaning of "liberty" and "virtue" for white Mississippians,
and Greenberg, who likened the interpretation of political culture to "a work of translation," Etcheson shows a keen
sensitivity to language, closely reading the key terms "private interest" and "public good" in context. She adds that
historians need not dwell on whether political rhetoric was ever sincere, because, in any case, its users were "aware of
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public sensibilities and community values." In a democracy, since successful candidates "win office by appealing to
assumptions shared with the electorate," historians can "depend on politicians to be articulate voices of the political
culture," regardless of ulterior motives. With these words, Howe and Baker's pioneering reliance on prominent
informants in the study of political culture now stands vindicated.(32)
These impressive new contributions to American historiography bring political culture to fruition. Yet, not every
historian is satisfied. For example, Lotchin allows that "political culture seems to be about ideas," but he objects that
the concept "fails to link specific political outcomes to specific attitudes," fretting that "without outcomes we cannot
fully understand politics."(33)
Perhaps the problem is that American historians are offering ever-thicker descriptions of politics by invoking the term,
"political culture," without adequate definition or focus. Sometimes it seems to denote not political
symbols in context but minute procedural dissections of nominations, campaigns, patronage, and officeholding. Other
times, it seems to encompass "common assumptions" about everything from "the legitimacy of the political process in
general" to "the role of government in particular." Eager proponents have used the concept to investigate diverse
matters, ranging from antebellum literary metaphors and the origins of New Deal liberalism to abolitionist fairs and
George Washington's personality cult. Like political scientists before them, incautious historians are somewhat in
danger of turning political culture into an indiscriminate uncaused cause once again.(34)
Certain of political culture's early champions have recanted. "The need for conceptual clarity is not mere semantics,"
wrote Formisano, and Baker complained that, too often, "political culture serves as gloss." The concept appears least
promising to those whose explanatory frameworks privilege class conflict and objective conditions over ideology and
subjective beliefs. Historians who prefer "political economy" to political culture, and who are more likely to invoke
Antonio Gramsci than Geertz when they write about ideology, often accuse political culture historians of constructing
static, univocal models, although they do not necessarily hesitate to construct their own in the name of "hegemony."
(35)
The concept has failed to bring about a paradigm shift because it has not been able to subsume the conflicts between
materialism, behavioralism, and idealism. Nonetheless, political culture's anticipation of the burgeoning "public
sphere" literature, in its focus on publicly negotiated meanings, suggests its continued relevance. Public-sphere
participants couch their arguments in symbols that are amenable to interpretation by historians who would have their
Habermas with a grain of Geertz. Political culture also has a place in the larger movement toward cultural history that
Kelley describes as a "phenomenological critique" of behavioralism.(36)
Political culture, as construed in both political science and history, underscores "the importance of values, feelings, and
beliefs in the explanation of political behavior." Just as the concept drew political scientists like Rosenbaum into "the
underlying psychological forces that shape much of civic life," it drew historians like Howe into the "political
psychology" of past politics. Verba went looking not for "what is happening in the world of politics, but [for] what
people believe about those happenings," and he recruited historians as well as political scientists in his quest. No
longer must political scientists assume that "culture does not exist or is not important"; nor must political historians
conjure up "ethnocultures" from mute statistics of behavior. The charge that the political culture concept tends toward
imprecision is not without merit. Yet, despite its analytical expansiveness, the concept represents a valuable check on
the assumption that political scientists and historians are "objective" observers.(37)
One controversial trait has haunted the concept since its political-science origins. "The study of political culture,"
observed Dittmer, "has since its beginnings been in the vanguard of the behavioral revolution in political science."
Once Almond and Verba introduced statistical tables into political culture studies, everyone followed suit. Ironically,
Almond ended up renouncing the "behavioral revolution," and Verba warned that a ballot was "a rather blunt
instrument" for reconstructing a voter's mentality. But most of their followers continued reducing politics to
quantifiable variables. It remained for interpretivist historians to go where behavioralists in both disciplines feared to
tread, combining cultural semiotics with textual sources.(38)
Gradually the news filtered back to political scientists that historians had done well by political culture. Adams
excitedly informed his colleagues that "the non-scientific practitioners of interpretation have something to say to
political scientists about the task of understanding the place and production of meaning in politics." He pleaded for
cultural semiotics in the study of political culture: "Political meaning is born not just in what individual subjects
consciously think and value politically, but in cultural and intersubjective symbols, in collective meanings inscribed in
the symbolic texts of political practices themselves." Though no fan of Geertz, Merelman agreed that "if political
scientists are to continue to talk about 'political culture' . . . they should attend to contemporary anthropology."(39)
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In the 1990s, political scientists, like historians, have begun to look beyond quantitative behavioralism to cultural
semiotics. Brint urges his colleagues to seek "meaning" in politics revealed not by polls but by "the social and
discursive practices of a culture." They should learn "the cultural grammar or narrative of a polity - the internal
coherence of its social, cultural, and discursive practices." Elkins echoes historians by defining political culture as "a
framework for action rather than a set of specific actions or beliefs. It consists of largely unspoken assumptions about
the world so 'taken for granted' most of the time that they have become 'second nature.'" Learning "cultural grammar"
and "unspoken assumptions" requires textual interpretation informed by anthropological theory rather than sample
surveys or correlation coefficients.(40)
Some political scientists prefer Mary Douglas to Geertz as their anthropologist of choice, but their interpretations of
political action are couched in language that participants would have difficulty understanding. Other political scientists
follow historians in adopting Geertz's less structuralist approach precisely because of its intelligibility. From this camp,
Laitin counsels that "historical (contextual) analysis," combined with a "richer notion of culture, one built upon the
Geertzian framework," is the key to political culture research.(41)
A recent survey of the field by Welch, a British political scientist, notes approvingly that "political culture as used and
developed within American historiography has begun to fulfill some of the promise of a phenomenological approach."
Welch appreciates historians because "a researcher investigating the past with the tool of political culture is much less
constrained than one investigating it with a view to justifying this or that theory of comparative politics." The problem,
he realizes, is that "the empirical bounty offered by the attitude survey has encouraged behavioral political scientists to
imagine they have the fullest conception of political culture, and has distracted them from the more fertile modes of
inquiry to which historians have perforce been led." Welch admires how American historians escaped "the necessity of
choosing between interests and culture as explanations, instead using political culture to transcend that dichotomy." No
longer need students of politics argue about the relative weight of ideas, interests, and behavior; political culture is the
context of politics itself - the structure of meaning through which political participants develop ideas, perceive
interests, and act on both. Political culture, as applied by historians, provides "a means of connecting the analyst's thick
description with the self-understandings of the participants," and this connection is what comparative politics has
always lacked.(42)
When political culture was still in its conceptual infancy within political science, Hitchner argued that it should be
nourished with historical analysis, not survey data. Political culture offered great analytical potential, but if the
"methodological inclination" to rely solely on supposedly "scientific" data persisted, "we are headed for some trouble."
Hitchner wanted his colleagues to become historians of the political cultures that they studied. He believed that "to
discard the ever important dimension of history is truly to cut us adrift from reality. There is a wisdom in our past to
which we must always listen." Historians, not political scientists, turned out to be the better listeners. Indeed, many
political scientists using the political culture concept still rely on poll data, but, among historians, cultural (or "public
sphere") approaches are gradually supplanting quantitative behavioralism. "We have not begun to understand our
political history sufficiently," Levine recently admonished, "because we too frequently artificially separated it from the
larger cultural context of which it was a part." Perhaps that artificial separation has ended. "Historiographically,"
acknowledges Silbey, a prominent behavioralist, "we live in an age of political culture."(43)
1 Jean H. Baker, "And All the Past is Political Culture," Reviews in American History, XV (1987), 59-65; David
Farber, "Political Culture and the Therapeutic Ideal," Reviews in American History, XXIII (1995), 681; Peter N.
Steams, "The Old Social History and the New," in Mary Kupiec Cayton, Elliot J. Gorn, and Peter W. Williams (eds.),
Encyclopedia of American Social History (New York, 1993), 1, 238; Robert Kelley, "Political Culture," in ibid., III,
2269-2278; Thomas Bender, "'Venturesome and Cautious': American History in the 1990s," Journal of American
History, LXXXI (1994), 995-996, referring to David Thelen, "The Practice of American History," ibid., 953; Edward P.
Thompson, Customs in Common (New York, 1991). 13.
2 Stephen Welch, The Concept of Political Culture (New York, 1993), 148; Lawrence C. Dodd and Calvin Jillson
(eds.), The Dynamics of American Politics: Approaches and Interpretations (Boulder, 1994), 2. See also Michael
Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder, 1991).
3 Harry Eckstein, "A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present," in idem and David E. Apter (eds.),
Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York, 1963.); Gabriel A. Almond, "The Intellectual History of the Civic Culture
Concept," in idem and Sidney Verba (eds.), The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston, 1980); Glenda M. Patrick, "Political
Culture," in Giovanni Sartori (ed.), Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis (Beverly Hills, 1984); Abram
Kardiner, The Individual and His Society (New York, 1939); Ralph Linton, The Cultural Background of Personality
(New York, 1945); Harold D. Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York, 1965; orig. pub. 1935),
158; Geoffrey Gofer, "National Character: Theory and Practice," in Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux (eds.), The
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Study of Culture at a Distance (Chicago, 1953); Mead, "National Character," in Alfred L. Kroeber (ed.), Anthropology
Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory (Chicago, 1953); Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at
America (New York, 1942); Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston,
1946); Gofer, The American People: A Study in National Character (New York, 1948); idem and John Rickman, The
People of Great Russia (London, 1949); Nathan Leites, "Psycho-Cultural Hypotheses About Political Acts," World
Politics, 1 (1948), 102n; Alex Inkeles and Daniel J. Levinson, "National Character: The Study of Modal Personality
and Sociocultural Systems," in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology
(Reading, Mass., 169; 2d ed.), IV.
4 Almond, "Comparative Political Systems," Journal of Politics, XVIII (1956), 319-409; Terence Ball, "American
Political Science in Its Postwar Political Context," in James Farr and Raymond Seidelman (eds.), Discipline and
History: Political Science in the United States (Ann Arbor, 1993); Almond, "Comparative Political Systems," 96;
Weber (trans. Talcott Parsons), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958). The term "political
culture" appeared earlier in Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (New York,
1936).
5 Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in
a Presidential Campaign (New York, 1944); Berelson, Lazersfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of
Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago, 1954); Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E.
Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York, 1960); Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture: Political
Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, 1963), 12, 5, 13, 102. On the methodological context, see
Campbell and George Katona, "The Sample Survey: A Technique for Social Science Research," in Leon Festinger and
Darnel Katz (eds.), Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences (New York, 1953). Lowell Dittmer, "The
Comparative Analysis of Political Culture," Amerikastudien, XXVII (1982), 20; David J. Elkins and Richard E. B.
Simeon, "A Cause in Search of Its Effect, or What Does Political Culture Explain?" Comparative Politics, XI (1979),
129. See also Louis J. Cantori, "Post-Behavioral Political Science and the Study of Comparative Politics," in idem and
Andrew H. Zeigler, Jr. (eds.), Comparative Politics in the Post-Behavioral Era (Boulder, 1988); Mattei Dogan, "Use
and Misuse of Statistics in Comparative Research," in idem and Ali Zazancigil (eds.), Comparing Nations: Concepts,
Strategies, Substance (Oxford, 1994).
6 Carole Pateman, "Political Culture, Political Structure, and Political Change," British Journal of Political Science, I
(1971), 291-305; Jerzy Wiatr, "The Civic Culture from a Marxist Sociological Perspective," in Almond and Verba
(eds.), Civic Culture Revisited, 103-123; Ronald H. Chilcote, Theories of Comparative Politics (Boulder, 1994; 2d
ed.), 183-186; Young C. Kim, "The Concept of Political Culture in Comparative Politics," Journal of Politics, XXVI
(1964), 313-364; Edward Lehman, "On the Concept of Political Culture: A Theoretical Reassessment," Social Forces,
L (1972), 361-370.
7 Pateman, "The Civic Culture: A Philosophical Critique," in Almond and Verba (eds.), Civic Culture Revisited, 57-
102; Arend Lijphart, "The Structure of Inference," in ibid., 37-56; Edward N. Muller and Mitchell A. Seligson, "Civic
Culture and Democracy: The Question of Causal Relationships," American Political Science Review, LXXXVIII
(1994), 635-652; David Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and American Character (Chicago, 1954);
Almond, "Capitalism and Democracy," PS: Political Science and Politics, XXIV (1991), 467-474.
8 Verba, "On Revisiting The Civic Culture: A Personal Postscript," in Almond and idem (eds.), Civic Culture
Revisited, 394; idem, "Comparative Political Culture," in Lucian W. Pye and idem (eds.), Political Culture and
Political Development (Princeton, 1965), 513-518; Pye, "Political Culture," in David L. Sills (ed.), International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1968), XII, 218; Louis Schneider, "Some Disgruntled and
Controversial Comments on the Idea of Culture in the Social Sciences," Social Science Quarterly, LIII (1972), 378;
Robert C. Tucker, "Culture, Political Culture, and Communist Society," Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVIII
(19743), 179; Chilcote, Theories of Comparative Politics, 9; Ruth Lane, "Political Culture: Residual Category or
General Theory?" Comparative Political Studies, XXV (1992), 364.
9 Howard J. Wiarda (ed.), New Directions in Comparative Politics (Boulder, 1985), xi-xii; David D. Laitin, Hegemony
and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago, 1986), 171. See also Alasdair MacIntyre, "Is
a Science of Comparative Politics Possible?" in Peter Laslett, Walter G. Runciman, and Quentin Skinner (eds.),
Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford, 1972).
10 Samuel C. Patterson, "The Political Cultures of the American States,"Journal of Politics, XXX (1968), 187-209;
Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View From the States (New York, 1972; 2d ed.), 85, 89, 93-127.
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11 Ira Sharkansky, "The Utility of Elazar's Political Culture: A Research Note," Polity, II (1969), 66-83; Frederick
Wirt, "Does Control Follow the Dollar? Value Analysis, School Policy, and State-Local Linkages," Publius, X (1980),
69-88; Ellis, American Political Cultures (New York, 1993), 165-169; Elazar, "Afterword: Steps in the Study of
American Political Culture," Publius, X (1980), 127; idem, The American Mosaic: The Impact of Space, Time, and
Culture on American Politics (Boulder, 1994), 219, 12; idem, Building Toward Civil War: Generational Rhythms in
American Politics (Lanham, Md., 1992), 193-197. See also idem, Cities of the Prairie: The Metropolitan Frontier and
American Politics (New York, 1990).
12 M. Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky, Cultural Theory, 242. See also John Kincaid, "Dimensions and Effects of
America's Political Subcultures," Journal of American Culture, V (1982), 84-92; Jody L. Fitzpatrick and Rodney E.
Hero, "Political Culture and Political Characteristics of the American States: A Consideration of Some Old and New
Questions," Western Political Quarterly, XLI (1988), 145-153.
13 Eckstein, Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability, and Change (Berkeley, 1992), 286; Robert W.
Jackman and Ross A. Miller, "A Renaissance of Political Culture?" American Journal of Political Science, XL (1996),
632-659; Mattei Dogan and Dominique Pelassy, How to Compare Nations: Strategies in Comparative Politics
(Chatham, NJ., 1990; 2d ed.), 68; Samuel Barnes and Max Kaase, Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western
Democracies (Beverly Hills, 1979); Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Style Among
Western Publics (Princeton, 1977); idem, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, 1990); Wildavsky,
"Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation," American Political
Science Review, LXXXI (1987), 3-21; Eckstein, "A Culturalist Theory of Political Change," ibid., LXXXII (1988),
789-804; Robert S. Erikson, John P. McIver, and Gerald C. Wright, Jr., "State Political Culture and Public Opinion,"
ibid., LXXXI, 813.
14 Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (Cambridge,
Mass., 1952); Milton Singer, "The Concept of Culture," in Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Science,
III, 527-543; Roger M. Keesing, "Theories of Culture," Annual Review of Anthropology, III (1974), 73-97; Ward H.
Goodenough, "Culture," in Levinson and Melvin Ember (eds.), Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology (New York,
1996), I, 291-297; Schneider, "Some Disgruntled and Controversial Comments," 377, 378; Robert A. LeVine,
"Properties of Culture: An Ethnographic View," in Richard A. Shweder and idem (eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on
Mind, Self, and Emotion (New York, 1984), 67. See also Sherry B. Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology Since the
Sixties," Comparative Studies in Society and History, XXVI (1984), 126-166, and the responses in ibid., XXVIII
(1986), 356-374. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., "Clio and the Culture Concept: Some Impressions of a Changing
Relationship in American Historiography," Social Science Quarterly, LIII (1972), 299. See also Richard E. Sykes,
"American Studies and the Concept of Culture: A Theory and Method," American Quarterly, XV (1963), 253-270;
Brian Attebery, "American Studies: A Not So Scientific Method," American Quarterly, XLVIII (1996), 316-343.
15 Some anthropologists take a dim view of these efforts; some historians concur. See the symposium, "History and
Anthropology: A Dialogue," Historical Methods, XIX (1986), 119128; Jean-Christophe Agnew, "History and
Anthropology: Scenes from a Marriage," Yale Journal of Criticism, III (1990), 29-50; Nicholas B. Dirks, "Is Vice
Versa? Historical Anthropologies and Anthropological Histories," in Terrence J. McDonald (ed.), The Historic Turn in
the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor, 1996), 17-51; Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New
York, 1973), esp. 3-30; Skinner (ed.), The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (New York, 1985), 6. See
also Kenneth A. Rice, Geertz and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1980); Nigel Rapport, "Thick Description," in Levinson and
Ember (eds.), Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, IV, 1311-1313. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 5. See also
Ronald G. Walters, "Signs of the Times: Clifford Geertz and Historians," Social Research, XLVII (1980), 537-556;
Lynn Hunt, "History Beyond Social Theory," in David Carroll (ed.), The States of 'Theory": History, Art, and Critical
Discourse (New York, 1990).
16 Aletta Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond," in Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History
(Berkeley, 1989), 80. See also Karen Lystra, "Clifford Geertz and the Concept of Culture," Prospects, VIII (1983), 31-
47; Eric Kline Silverman, "Clifford Geertz: Towards a More 'Thick' Understanding?" in Christopher Tilley (ed.),
Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism (Oxford, 1990), 143-145; Peter Clarke,
"Ideas and Interests," in Theodore K. Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg (eds.), The New History: The 1980s and Beyond
(Princeton, 1982); Myron J. Aronoff, "Ideology and Interest: The Dialectics of Politics," Political Anthropology, I
(1980), 1-29; John E. Toews, "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the
Irreducibility of Experience," American Historical Review, XCII (1987), 879-907; Louis Hartz, "The Problem of
Political Ideas," in Roland Young (ed.), Approaches to the Study of Politics (Evanston, 1958); John L. Austin, How to
Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass., 1962); John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language
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(Cambridge, Mass., 1969); Skinner, "On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions," Philosophical Quarterly, XXI
(1971), 1-21.
17 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 193-229, 14; Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections on Cultural
History (New York, 1990), 330. See also M. Margaret Conway, "The Political Context of Political Behavior," Journal
of Politics, LI (1989), 3-10.
18 Allan G. Bogue, "United States: The 'New' Political History," in Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse (eds.), The
New History (New York, 1967). See also Bogue, Clio and the Bitch Goddess: Quantification in American Political
History (Beverly Hills, 1983). Richard Jensen, "How Democracy Works: The Linkage Between Micro and Macro
Political History,"Journal of Social History, XVI (1983), 31. See also J. Morgan Kousser, "The Revivalism of
Narrative: A Response to Recent Criticisms of Quantitative History," Social Science History, VIII (1984), 133-149;
Bogue, "Systematic Revisionism and a Generation of Ferment in American History," Journal of Contemporary History,
XXI (1986), 135-162; idem, "The Quest for Numeracy: Data and Methods in American Political History," Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, XXI (1990), 89-116.
19 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 311; Kluckhohn, "Covert Culture and Administrative Problems," American
Anthropologist, XLV (1943), 218; idem, Mirror for Man: The Relation of Anthropology to Modem Life (New York,
1949), 35. See also Kluckhohn and William H. Kelly, "The Concept of Culture," in Ralph Linton (ed.), The Science of
Man in the World Crisis (New York, 1945); LeVine, "Properties of Culture," 76-77.
20 Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948); Hartz, The
Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York,
1955); Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective
(New York, 1963); Daniel Boorstin, The Americans (New York, 1958-73), 3v; Charles S. Sydnor, American
Revolutionaries in the Making: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia (New York, 1962); Edmund S. Morgan,
American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975); Hofstadter, The Idea of a
Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley, 1969); John William
Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York, 1955); Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics
and Belief (Stanford, 1957); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before
the Civil War (New York, 1970).
21 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 95; idem, "The
Central Themes of the American Revolution: An Interpretation," in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson (eds.),
Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1973), 12. See also Robert E. Shalhope, "Toward a Republican
Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography," William and Mary
Quarterly, XXIV (1972), 49-80; idem, "Republicanism and Early American Historiography," ibid., XXXIX (1982),
334-356; Lance Banning, "The Republican Interpretation: Retrospect and Prospect," Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, CII (1992), 153-180; Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman
(Cambridge, Mass., 1961); John Greville Agard Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and
the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism:
Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America (Ithaca, 1990); Richard K. Mathews (ed.), Virtue,
Corruption and Self-Interest: Political Values in the Eighteenth Century (Bethlehem, 1994).
22 Staughton Lynd, "Tories and Neo-Whigs," Reviews in American History, I (1973), 204; Jesse Lemisch, "The
American Revolution Bicentennial and the Papers of Great White Men," AHA Newsletter 9 (November 1971), 7-21.
For an overview of the "Great White Men" critique, see Ruth H. Bloch, "Radical Whigs Revisited: Reflections upon
Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution," Intellectual History Newsletter 15 (1993), 14-
22. Bailyn, Ideological Origins, ix; idem, "Central Themes," 11; Gordon S. Wood, "Intellectual History and the Social
Sciences," in Higham and Conkin (eds.), New Directions in American Intellectual History, 32. See also Wood, "The
Creative Imagination of Bernard Bailyn," in James A. Henretta, Michael Kammen, and Stanley N. Katz (eds.), The
Transformation of Early American History (New York, 1991).
23 Alan Taylor, "Imperative Categories," Reviews in American History, XIX (1991), 352. For the barest outlines of
these republicanism debates, see Lance Banning, "Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the
New American Republic," William and Mary Quarterly, XLIII (1986), 3-19; Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and
Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, 1992); Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The
Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia, 1990), 106-119.
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24 Joel H. Silbey, "Conclusion," in Lloyd E. Ambrosius (ed.), A Crisis of Republicanism: American Politics in the
Civil War Era (Lincoln, 1990), 129; Daniel T. Rogers, "Republicanism: the Career of a Concept," Journal of American
History, LXXIX (1991), 37. For a more sympathetic review of republicanism, see James T. Kloppenberg,
"Republicanism in American History and Historiography," Tocqueville Review, XIII (1992), 119-136.
25 Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York, 1978); Kenneth S. Greenberg, Masters and
Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery (Baltimore, 1985); Darnel Walker Howe, The Political Culture
of the American Whigs (Chicago, 1979), 1-2, 4; Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats
in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1983), 11-12, 262-263. On the Balinese cockfight, see Geertz, Interpretation of
Cultures, 412-453.
26 Holt, "Political Culture and Political Legitimacy," Reviews in American History, XI (1983), 527; Richard L.
McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era
(New York, 1986), 116; Sean Wilentz, "Whigs and Bankers," Reviews in American History, VIII (1980), 349; Harry L.
Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in
Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge, 1981); idem, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian
America (New York, 1990); Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties,
1790s-1840s (New York, 1983), 22, 20. See also idem, "Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political
Culture, 1789-1840," American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 473-487.
27 Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (New
York, 1994); Bradley G. Bond, Political Culture in the Nineteenth-Century South, 1830-1900 (Baton Rouge, 1995);
Wiebe, Self-Rule, 9, 39.
28 Wiebe, ibid., 253, 136-137, 176-177, et passim.
29 Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986); James
Wright, The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire, 1906-1916 (Hanover, 1987); John F.
Reynolds, Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform in New Jersey, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill,
1988); Wiebe, Self-Rule, 164, 261; idem, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967); Henry George, "Money
in Elections," North American Review, CXXXVI (March 1883), 209.
30 Wiebe, Self-Rule, 9-10, 257, 220.
31 Kelley, "Ideology and Political Culture from Jefferson to Nixon," American Historical Review, LXXXII (1970),
531-562; Jo Freeman, "The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties," Political Science Quarterly,
CI (1986), 327-356; Paula Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life: Gender, Politics, and the State in Rural New
York, 1870-1930 (New York, 1991); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's
Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven, 1995); Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households,
Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York, 1995). See
also Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical
Review, LXXXIX (1984), 620-647. For other comparative approaches, see Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: American
Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley, 1850-1986 (Berkeley, 1989); John D. Buenker, "Sovereign
Individuals and Organic Networks: Political Cultures in Conflict During the Progressive Era," American Quarterly, XL
(1988), 187-204; Sklar, "Two Political Cultures in the Progressive Era: The National Consumers' League and the
American Association for Labor Legislation," in Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and idem (eds.), U.S. History
as Women's History (Chapel Hill, 1995).
32 On migration and political culture, see also Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration,
Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (Philadelphia, 1996). Bond, Political Culture in the
Nineteenth-Century South, 81-114; Greenberg, Honor and Slavery (Princeton, 1996), xi; Etcheson, Emerging Midwest,
xiii. Greenberg and Etcheson acknowledge a debt to Geertz's theory of cultural semiotics: See Greenberg, Honor and
Slavery, 147-148n, and Etcheson, Emerging Midwest, 145n. On language and political culture, see also Andrew R. L.
Cayton, "'Language Gives Way to Feelings': Rhetoric, Republicanism, and Religion in Jeffersonian Ohio," in Jeffrey P.
Brown and idem (eds.), The Pursuit of Public Power: Political Culture in Ohio, 1787-1861 (Kent, 1994).
33 Roger W. Lotchin, "The Political Culture of the Metropolitan-Military Complex," Social Science History, XVI
(1992), 278-279; idem, book review, Journal of American History, LXXXII (1995), 1213. See also Paul Goodman,
"Putting Some Class Back into Political History: 'The Transformation of Political Culture' and the Crisis in American
Political History," Reviews in American History, XII (1984), 80-88.
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34 Philip R. VanderMeer, The Hoosier Politician: Officeholding and Political Culture in Indiana, 1896-1920 (Urbana,
1985); Patrick F. Palermo, "The Rules of the Game: Local Republican Political Culture," Historian, LXVII (1985),
479-496; Taylor, "'The Art of Hook & Snivey': Political Culture in Upstate New York During the 1790s," Journal of
American History, LXXIX (1993), 1371-1396; George C. Rable, The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against
Politics (Chapel Hill, 1994), 3; Anne Norton, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture
(Chicago, 1986); Richard Schneirov, "Political Cultures and the Role of the State in Labor's Republic: The View from
Chicago, 1848-1877," Labor History, XXXII (1991), 376-400; Lee Chambers-Schiller, "'A Good Work Among the
People': The Political Culture of the Boston Antislavery Fair," in Jean Yellin, Jean Fagan, and John C. Van Home
(eds.), The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America (Ithaca, 1994); Simon P.
Newman, "Principles or Men? George Washington and the Political Culture of National Leadership, 1776-1801,"
Journal of the Early Republic, XII (1994), 477-507.
35 Formisano, "Ideology and Political Culture," American Historical Review, LXXXII (1977), 568; Baker, "And All
the Past is Political Culture," 60; John P. Diggins, "The Misuses of Gramsci," Journal of American History, LXXV
(1988), 141-145; Peter Burke, "Popular Culture Reconsidered," Storia della Storiagrafia, XVII (1990), 43-44; James
Scott, "False-Consciousness, or Laying It on Thick," in Richard M. Merelman (ed.), Language, Symbolism, and
Politics (Boulder, 1992).
36 Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Donald R. Kelley, "The Old
Cultural History," History of the Human Sciences, IX (1996), 117. See also David Chaney, The Cultural Turn: SceneSetting
Essays on Contemporary Culture History (London, 1994). For an example of public-sphere history that
resembles political culture history, see Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: From Banners to Ballots, 1825-1880
(Baltimore, 1990).
37 Almond, "The Study of Political Culture," in idem (ed.), A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political
Science (Newbury Park, Calif., 1990), 143; Walter A. Rosenbaum, Political Culture (New York, 1975), 4; Howe, "The
Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System," Journal of American
History, LXXVII (1991), 1236; Verba, "Comparative Political Culture," 516; William Bostock, "The Cultural
Explanation of Politics," Political Science, XXV (1973), 43; Pye, "Culture and Political Science: Problems in the
Evaluation of the Concept of Political Culture," Social Science Quarterly, LIII (1972), 285-296. Culture was such an
alien concept in political science that Verba apologized for using the word at all. See Verba, "Comparative Political
Culture," 513n.
38 Dittmer, "Political Culture and Political Symbolism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis," World Politics, XXIX
(1977), 553. See also Farr, "Remembering the Revolution: Behavioralism in American Political Science," in idem,
John S. Dryzek, and Stephen T. Leonard (eds.), Political Science in History: Research Programs and Political
Traditions (New York, 1995). For a radical critique of behavioralism, see Timothy W. Luke, "Political Science and the
Discourses of Power: Developing a Genealogy of the Political Culture Concept," History of Political Thought, X
(1989), 125-149. Almond and Stephen Genco, "Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics," in Almond (ed.), A
Discipline Divided, 32-65; Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social
Equality (New York, 1972), 106. See also Pye, "Political Culture Revisited," Political Psychology, XII (1991), 487-
508.
39 William Adams, "Politics and the Archaeology of Meaning," Western Political Quarterly, XXXIX (1986), 549, 562;
Merelman, "On Culture and Politics in America: A Perspective from Structural Anthropology," British Journal of
Political Science, XIX (1989), 470. See also idem, Making Something of Ourselves: On Culture and Politics in the
United States (Berkeley, 1984).
40 Michael Brint, A Genealogy of Political Culture (Boulder, 1991), 117; David J. Elkins, Manipulation and Consent:
How Voters and Leaders Manage Complexity (Vancouver, 1993), 123. See also Joseph V. Femia, "Political Culture," in
William Outhwaite and Tom Bottomore (eds.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought
(Oxford, 1993), 475-477.
41 Laitin, "The Civic Culture at 30," American Political Science Review, LXXXIX (1995), 171-173. For Douglas
followers, see M. Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky, Cultural Theory; Ellis, American Political Cultures; and Dennis J.
Coyle and Ellis, Politics, Policy, and Culture (Boulder, 1994). For Geertz followers, see Dittmer, "Political Culture and
Political Symbolism"; Adams, "Politics and the Archaeology of Meaning"; and Paul Nesbitt-Larking, "Methodological
Notes on the Study of Political Culture," Political Psychology, XIII (1992), 79-92.
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42 Welch, The Concept of Political Culture, 13, 148, 157-158. See also Richard W. Wilson, Compliance Ideologies:
Rethinking Political Culture (New York, 1992); David Brian Robertson, "Politics and the Past: History, Behavioralism,
and the Return to Institutionalism in American Political Science," in Eric H. Monkkonen (ed.), Engaging the Past: The
Uses of History Across the Social Sciences (Durham, 1994).
43 Dell G. Hitchner, "Political Science and Political Culture," Western Political Quarterly, XXI (1968), 552; Lawrence
W. Levine, The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History (New York, 1994), 12; Silbey,
"Conclusion," 129.
Glen Gendzel is a Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of
"Competitive Boosterism: How Milwaukee Lost the Braves," Business History Review, XLIX (1995), 530-566.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Gendzel, Glen. "The Emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest." The
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 28, no. 2, 1997, p. 225+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American
Democracy
Glen Gendzel
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History.
28.2 (Autumn 1997): p225.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/
Full Text:
A cursory glance at new titles in U.S. political history may give the impression that "all the past is political culture,"
and that this intuitively sensible formula is "casually invoked" by writers casting about for theoretical support.
Admittedly, some users have turned political culture into an elastic category. The Encyclopedia of American Social
History, for example, expansively claims political culture for both the "new social history" and the "new political
history." A recent survey of the Organization of American Historians finds that nine of the top ten "most influential"
books can be considered "inquiries into the nature of American political culture," even though none of these classic
works ever invoked the concept by name. Political culture might be an example of what Thompson called "a clumpish
term, which by gathering so many activities and attributes into one common bundle may actually confuse or disguise
discriminations that should be made between them." Absent a clear definition and intellectual genealogy, "political
culture" threatens to obscure more than it reveals.(1)
Despite this danger, historians should not turn their backs on political culture. Recent works like Etcheson's Emerging
Midwest suggest that the concept possesses great analytical utility. Others like Wiebe's Self-Rule, however, underscore
the need for more discipline in using it. Beyond casual invocation, historians of political culture would do well to
acquaint themselves with the intellectual genealogy of the concept - not least because it teaches a rare lesson in how to
make theoretical contributions to other disciplines. Political culture originated as an analytical tool for political
scientists using quantitative-behavioralist methods, but historians have so enriched the concept with theories of cultural
interpretation that now "one can see grounds for reborrowing by political scientists of the concept originally borrowed
from them." There is nothing new about historians pilfering ideas, but, in this instance, historians are not exporters of a
precious theoretical commodity, gaining unaccustomed leverage in the interdisciplinary balance of trade. Furthermore,
while political scientists have come to accept that historically derived "cultural beliefs," not just systemic "variables,"
affect political outcomes, historians have established that the intersection of politics and culture was a vital part of the
American past.(2)
The concept of political culture evolved from centuries of generalizing about power's different faces in different places.
Plato's "dispositions," Montesquieu's "spirit of the laws," Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "mores," David Hume's "manners,"
Alexis de Tocqueville's "habits of the heart," Emile Durkheim's "collective consciousness," and Max Weber's
"authority systems" were all ancestors to the concept. Earlier in this century, American social scientists began asking
how the unique "psychological coherence" or "modal personality" of a culture might affect its politics. Laswell's call
for "extend[ing] the scope of political investigation to include the fundamental features of the cultural setting" helped
loose a flood of so-called "national character" studies in the 1940s. These works placed whole countries on the couch,
linking supposedly essential traits to the resolution of collective psychodramas. The resulting neo-Freudian
interpretations of culture were imaginative and often frivolous, such as the theory of "diaperology" that ascribed Soviet
foreign policy to Russian swaddling practices. At best, national character studies lapsed into hereditarian determinism;
at worst, they reified crude stereotypes. Political scientists concluded from this early misadventure that cultural theory
must rely on "observations systematically made and recorded by trained social scientists" armed with the rigorously
empirical methods of quantitative behavioralism.(3)
The modern-day concept of political culture was born amid Cold War efforts to distinguish the "Free World" from the
rest of the world. In a landmark 1956 essay, Almond contrasted the "pragmatic" politics of Britain and the United
States with the "simplism" of totalitarian states. This Manichean dichotomy appealed to postwar political scientists
who hoped that comparative theory would help spread the blessings of American democracy and stem the tide of
communism. But Almond's research agenda outlasted the Cold War: "Every political system is embedded in a
particular pattern of orientations to political action. I have found it useful to refer to this as the political culture." With
this single stroke, he offered a convenient catchphrase for such loosely conceptualized terms in comparative politics as
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attitudes, values, ideology, and socialization. It bore an obvious affanity to Weber's recently translated theory of
Protestantism as the cultural engine of modernization. The problem for political scientists was how to apply Almond's
idea - how to identify, measure, and compare the "pattern of orientations" that characterized politics in different
nations. The solution came from another field of postwar political science, namely, psephology, or the study of voting
behavior.(4)
Psephologists at the time were busily using the sample-survey methods of opinion pollsters and market researchers to
explore "how the voter makes up his mind." Inspired by this work, regarded at the time as methodologically
sophisticated, Almond teamed with Verba to survey thousands of citizens in five nations. In The Civic Culture (1963),
Almond and Verba vowed to develop "a scientific theory of democracy" by "codify[ing] the operating characteristics of
the democratic polity itself." In practice, however, they simply measured "attitudes toward the political system" in
various places and called the result political culture. The authors made startling discoveries - for example, that 85
percent of Americans expressed pride in their government, compared with 7 percent of Germans and 3 percent of
Italians. But critics questioned the "psychologically reductionistic" use of poll data to sum up individual attitudes,
given that culture was a group phenomenon, protesting that "political culture [was] the property of a collectivity."
"Individuals have beliefs, values, and attitudes, but they do not have cultures." Evidently, there was a difference
between answering questionnaires, which reflected diffuse opinions, and constituting a polity, which reflects historical
evolution, intersubjective understanding, and collectively negotiated (and contested) meanings.(5)
Almond and Verba had completely omitted history and politics from their construction of political culture. They
presumed that polls measure timeless cultural attributes; instead, they may simply record ephemeral opinions about a
particular regime at a particular time. Almond and Verba seemed to imply that political culture never changed and
never varied internally. Marxists objected that The Civic Culture ignored class and power relations, and many
detractors raised the red flag of normative bias: Almond and Verba seemed to idealize the "moderate" civic culture of
Anglo-American liberal democracy that other benighted countries lacked.(6)
The worst flaw in the original political culture concept was its chicken-egg conundrum of cause and effect: Did civic
culture create democracy - or did democracy create civic culture? As an explanatory model, political culture seemed
tautological; structure rather than culture could well account for democratic success, rendering the civic culture just
another dependent variable. Potter had earlier suggested an alternative explanation that American democracy was
rooted not in civic culture but in economic "abundance." Almond later showed signs of agreeing with him.(7)
Before long, Verba admitted to having written "a bold and incautious book." He redefined political culture as "beliefs,
expressive symbols, and values" that required interpretation as well as measurement. He tried to be more specific about
"what aspects of political culture are determinants of what phenomena," repositioning the concept as the "link between
the events of politics and the behavior of individuals." Verba allowed for cultural changes that could shape or be
shaped by politics, for class-specific versions of a culture, and for subcultures within a polity. In a volume dedicated to
Almond, he offered his "broad and rather loose definition" to answer their critics, and Pye, his new collaborator, soon
followed with a similarly inclusive definition that stretched political culture from "the collective history of a political
system" to "the life histories of the members of that system," creating a link between "public events and private
experiences." Thus, the political culture concept acquired its "kitchen sink" reputation, eliciting criticism that it
described everything about politics "without explaining anything" and turned "abstract idealizations" into uncaused
causes. Dissatisfied political scientists implored their colleagues to "stop using political culture as a handy residual
variable to explain phenomena we cannot think of other ways to deal with."(8)
Political culture's wash-out left comparative politics in what Wiarda called "a state of crisis," woefully lacking "a
single global and integrating theoretical framework." According to Laitin, "The systematic study of politics and culture
[was] moribund."(9)
The underappreciated concept emerged again in another branch of the political-science family, the study of American
government. Patterson suggested treating regions of the United States as mini-nations with distinct political cultures,
and Elazar soon emerged as the leader of this project. For him, political culture comprised the "habits, perspectives,
and attitudes that exist to influence political life"; regional variations in political forms resulted directly from
"differences in political culture among the states." Elazar theorized that the arrival and spread of Euro-American
civilization across the United States from east to west left a residual pattern. He isolated and identified the "moralistic"
culture of New England, the "individualistic" culture of the Mid-Atlantic region, and the "traditionalistic" culture of the
South. These Ur-cultures migrated to the "continuing frontier" of the West, then to the cities, and finally to the suburbs.
Elazar applied "cultural geology" to the sediments of human society that these migration streams left behind, devising
intricate maps of each culture's national diffusion.(10)
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Few political scientists found Elazar's "American mosaic" completely persuasive. Some rejected his triangular
typology in favor of a continuum, but none could agree on which two cultures were polar opposites. Some disputed
Elazar's terms because his categories entailed a type of belief (individualism), a manner of belief (traditionalism), and a
source of belief (moralism), which made them incommensurable. Elazar devoted considerable effort to refine these
cultural constructs, never backing down from what he considered "the soundness of [his] original thesis." Eventually,
he inflated it into a grand theory of "the actual way in which the art of government is practiced" throughout the United
States, even insisting that political culture, "an independent variable with a dynamic of its own," had caused the Civil
War.(11)
Stirred by such extravagant claims, swarms of doubting scholars tested Elazar's cultural constructs against such
quantitative state-level variables as voter turnout, tax rates, per capita spending, quality of life, and poll data of all
kinds. The results proved inconclusive. "For every study that claims to have found Elazar's theory vindicated," one
survey of this literature observed, "there is another that claims to find it of little use."(12)
After a much-heralded birth, the political culture concept had mutated into an awkward and unloved scion of political
science. "Doubts about the approach no doubt arose from its too-quick popularity, its rapidly acquired faddishness,"
reasoned Eckstein, and a recent textbook stated, "Rarely has a concept been so frequently used and so often
contended." Most users had to refashion the notion to suit themselves - either employing survey data to suggest
changes in political culture between generations, thereby sidestepping questions of causality or attitudinal distribution,
or whittling down the concept into a humble "heuristic device" merely to set boundaries for political outcomes. At best,
culture influenced "preferences" by demarcating the range of conceivable alternatives without choosing among them.
Too often, however, "political culture" served as an academic token or a bland cliche. For example, Elazar's friends and
foes alike could hardly have disagreed that, in the name of political culture, "the political attitudes of U.S. citizens vary
in important ways on the basis of where in the United States they live." With this sort of commonplace wisdom,
political culture betrayed its early promise as the "scientific theory of democracy."(13)
After political scientists abandoned the political culture concept, historians gave it a new home. Political scientists had
tried to observe, dissect, classify, and quantify culture, but U.S. historians absorbed a more holistic view of it from
postwar anthropologists. Beyond arts and literature, culture came to encompass the "complex whole" of social
organization spiritual belief, political institution, traditional practice, ethical value, psychological assumption, folkloric
custom, popular entertainment, gender roles, material artifacts, and myriad other kaleidoscopic concerns. Indeed,
anthropologists argued among themselves about the "conceptual slovenliness" that plagued their "inordinately swollen"
construct. Most, however, accepted that the broader definition of culture was "a source of illumination, not a veil of
obscurity." As Berkhofer pointed out, both the postwar American Studies movement and what later drew scorn as
"consensus" history resulted from similar efforts to trace "manifestations of behavior" to cultural "ideas and values" in
anthropological fashion.(14)
The temptation to quantify culture seduced relatively few historians, because their subjects, being for the most part
dead, could not fill out questionnaires. Instead, historians immersed themselves in texts and applied (or misapplied)
anthropological theory as best they could. Many became devotees of Geertz, whose ethnographic method of "thick
description" sought to inscribe words and deeds with phenomenological and contextual meaning. Thick description
entranced those who already believed with Skinner that "the explanation of human action must always include - and
perhaps even take the form of - an attempt to recover and interpret the meanings of social actions from the point of
view of the agents performing them." In a Weberian paraphrase, Geertz postulated that "man is an animal suspended in
webs of significance he himself has spun," thus declaring that the study of homo significans required impressionistic
interpretation, not scientific measurement. Focusing on the intersubjective aspects of public acts, thick description
became a technique of cultural semiotics, or the contextual interpretation of cultural symbols. With it, historians would
breathe new life into the political culture concept. Historiographical surveys of Geertz's influence tend to focus on
European cultural historians, but his impact on American political historians was no less impressive.(15)
On the surface, cultural semiotics seemed incompatible with history because it ignored the origin and evolution of
cultural symbols. As Biersack put it, in cultural semiotics, "Meaning is described, never derived." European historians
inclined toward Foucault's style of locating symbols (or "representations") in history rather than Geertz's penchant for
ahistorical description. But many political historians in the United States embraced cultural semiotics in the 1970s
because it promised to liberate them from the theoretical legacies of materialism, behavioralism, and idealism, which
had paralyzed the study of ideology. For decades, materialist historians had treated ideology as a rationalization of
material interest or an outright obfuscation; behavioralists had treated it as idiosyncratic, hopelessly subjective, and
irrelevant; and idealists had treated it as disembodied "thought" with a life of its own, at least until the "linguistic turn"
enshrined a less transcendental view of abstract discourse. Many political historians agreed with Hartz that the
materialist-idealist schism distorted ideology's role in history by rendering ideas either epiphenomenal or overly
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deterministic. Many also agreed with such linguistic philosophers as Austin that behavioralism either ignored the
possibility of "doing things with words" or oversimplified human behavior by dismissing intentionality.(16)
Geertz deftly fused ideas, interests, and behavior by treating ideology as a socially constructed "cultural system."
Ideology, in his view, affected how people perceived and acted on their material interests; it also shaped political ideas
with unspoken assumptions that guided behavior. Geertz stressed that ideology was the overall context of "events,
behaviors, institutions, or processes," rather than the cause (as idealists assumed) or the effect (as materialists and
behavioralists assumed) of social phenomena - including politics. The cultural context of politics encompassed
perception of interest, intention for behavior, and assumption behind idea. It inscribed the words and deeds of
participants with culturally symbolic meanings that analysts endeavored to decipher. Of course, historians had to keep
in mind "that symbols convey multiple meanings and that meaning is construed in different ways by different people,"
as Darnton cautioned aspiring Geertzians. But the discovery of cultural semiotics helped American historians cultivate
a renewed appreciation for the symbolic forms of politics - discourse and practice, voting and speaking, campaigning
and governing. Political words and deeds became symbolic texts susceptible to interpretation for meanings intended by
communicators, constructed by audiences, and (though Geertz was weak on this point) contested by subaltern groups.
(17)
Cultural semiotics allowed historians to describe political ideology without transmuting it into idealist "thought,"
exaggerating it into "hegemony," or reducing it to "false consciousness." When assessed symbolically, politics became
as much a part of culture as gender or religion - social constructions that historians routinely subjected to symbolic
interpretations. This approach appealed to political historians who recognized that elitist biographies were passe, but
whom its successor, the "new political history," failed to satisfy. As confirmed behavioralists, the new political
historians downplayed "rhetoric" as deceptive, meaningless, and anecdotal. Instead, they correlated voting and census
data to build determinist models of political action based on "ethnocultural" loyalty. These historians stripped objective
behavior from subjective context, treating voters in poll booths like laboratory rats in mazes; with a wave of the slide
rule, they dismissed ideology as irrelevant to "how democracy works." Cultural semiotics attracted instead those
historians of politics who agreed that old-fashioned approaches merely skimmed the surface, but who rejected both the
old Marxian-materialist and the new ethnocultural-behavioralist alternatives. Surely there was more to politics than
class conflict and correlation coefficients. Armed with Geertz's expansive definition of ideology, which shifted
historical attention to the symbolic content of campaign rallies, platform oratory, and political tracts, historians could
redeem political culture while doing useful work.(18)
"One of the things that everyone knows but no one can quite think how to demonstrate," Geertz pondered, "is that a
country's politics reflect the design of its culture." With Geertz's help, historians cut this Gordian knot by replacing the
"behavioral orthodoxy" of political science with the classic anthropological theory of culture as unarticulated
consciousness - what Kluckhohn, in 1943, had called "covert culture," which operates through "unstated premises"
rather than measurable attitudes. Kluckhohn defined culture as the collection of "premises and categories whose
influence is greater, rather than less, because they are seldom put into words."(19)
Tracking down the unspoken assumptions of past politics was not a new quest. As early as the 1940s, long before the
discovery of cultural semiotics, ambitious U.S. historians were forging grand syntheses of ideology into cultural
systems. For their pains, many of these writers were branded as "consensus" celebrators, even though their intent was
not always celebratory. Others showed sensitivity to political symbols in the ideology of colonial Virginians, early
national politicians, the followers of Andrew Jackson, and the founders of the Republican party. These early works
anticipated the political culture synthesis, but the watershed in historical application of the political culture concept
was the discovery of republicanism as the ideology that shaped colonial American perceptions of British rule in the
imperial crisis of the eighteenth century.(20)
For generations, historians had argued about the validity, and even the sincerity, of complaints against British rule
leading up to the Revolution. It seemed incongruous that a tax increase could have provoked a general rebellion against
king and country. The reinterpretation of revolutionary discourse in light of republican symbols and meanings helped
historians to see George III's "long train of abuses" from the patriots' perspective as a monstrous conspiracy against
liberty and a harbinger of corruption. Bailyn and his students drew on cultural semiotics to stress that revolutionary
leaders and a great many followers perceived British policy as "a deliberate assault launched surreptitiously by plotters
against liberty." Through the republican lens, American rebels "saw behind the actions of the English ministry . . . not
merely misgovernment . . . but a deliberate design to destroy the constitutional safeguards of liberty, which only
concerted resistance - violent resistance if necessary - could effectively oppose." Intellectual historians also helped
articulate republicanism to recapture the meaning of symbol-laden words like tyranny, corruption, liberty, and virtue in
their original setting and to reinterpret the Revolution from the revolutionaries' point of view.(21)
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Predictably, materialist historians denounced the republicanism thesis as "ideological determinism." Failing to
appreciate the subtlety of political culture as a perceptual context and a semiological system, not a cause, these critics
mistook republicanism for a "consensus" theory that attributed the Revolution to the writings of"Great White Men."
Undaunted, Bailyn's students kept spreading the gospel of political culture, urging colleagues to recognize that public
expressions of political ideas "meant something very real to both the writers and their readers," and that revolutionary
rhetoric deserved renewed attention for evidence of forgotten meanings. Bailyn himself nominated Geertz as a
potential mediator for political historians divided between materialism, behavioralism, and idealism. "Formal discourse
becomes politically powerful when it becomes ideology," he asserted - that is, when it "shapes what is otherwise
instinctive and directs it to attainable goals; when it clarifies, symbolizes, and elevates to structured consciousness the
mingled urges that stir within us." Wood, Bailyn's student, likewise echoed Geertz in affirming that the "meanings"
people gave to their political actions were "never epiphenomenal" and that "all human behavior can only be understood
and explained, indeed can only exist, in terms of the meanings it has."(22)
Republicanism advanced the cause of political culture with historians, but family quarrels about the relationships
between republicanism, liberalism, and labor radicalism still had to be settled. Accusatory footnotes abounded, as
historians sought to prove the predominance of increasingly abstract viewpoints. Taylor complained that the
republicanism debate seemed to "describe categories that were, at best, dimly apprehended by people in the past," a
sadly ironic outcome for political culture's historiographical debut, given that the concept was supposed to reinfuse
past perspectives into the study of past politics.(23)
If nothing else, the debate proved that historians, unlike political scientists, would not demand scientific rigor from
their adopted concept. Historians refrained from flinging statistics at each other. Despite its flaws and controversies, the
republicanism thesis successfully grafted cultural semiotics onto American political history. As Silbey put it, at least
historians of republicanism tried to describe "things that link a people together politically, their shared values,
memories, and perspectives" within a holistic framework, and Rogers, in an otherwise critical review, cited
republicanism's "investment of language and culture with coherence and social power."(24)
Answering the "consensus" canard, political culture historians began to refocus the concept from the nation to specific
groups. Holt and Greenberg described the advent of the Civil War from the perspective of Northern and Southern
politicians - both sides viewing themselves as defenders of republican virtue. Howe analyzed the partisan political
culture of antebellum Whigs, declaring a la Geertz that "the mood, metaphors, values, and style of Whig political
attitudes mattered." Howe profiled prominent politicians, not because they were "Great White Men," but because they
were useful informants who "would reveal the fullest development and elaboration of Whig culture." Baker conferred
comparable attention on Democrats in the antebellum North, drawing upon anthropological theory to describe partisan
"tribal rites." Like Howe, Baker relied on prominent "informants," but her methodological breakthrough was to treat
"voting as a symbolic demonstration," the American equivalent of Geertz's famous Balinese cockfight that is, the
essential ritual of a culture. At a time when other political historians poured over election returns and census
manuscripts, Baker set her sights on "metaphorical language and political iconography," asking "what voting meant in
a collective sense," rather than piling up more decontextualized statistics.(25)
Soon a great many U.S. historians adopted the political culture concept as their own. Reviewers found the approach
"stunning in its originality," for it "include[d] everyone who participated in politics," turning historians into mass mind
readers. Political culture captured "popular beliefs and expectations that gave meaning to the political process and
guided the conduct of politics and government." With this concept, historians could recover the "manners,"
"intellectual atmosphere," and "perceptions" of past political figures, though temporal change did not enter into their
analyses until Watson chose the transition from the first to the second party system to link economic development to
shifts in antebellum political culture. In the process, he demonstrated that the retrieval of submerged patterns of belief
need not entail any presumptions of immutability. Formisano examined the same transition more thoroughly,
describing how genteel "electioneering" gave way to rough-and-tumble "campaigning" in Massachusetts. He unearthed
"the taken-for-granteds" of political discourse by combining sources about "community life" with statistical analysis -
but without inferring ideas from behavior.(26)
In the 1990s, Ethington's account of San Francisco's shift from "republican liberalism" to "pluralist liberalism" and
Bond's tracking of white Mississippi's "social ethic" have added sophisticated diachronic analysis to political culture
history. In this spirit, Wiebe's Self-Rule offers a sweeping narrative of the transition from active, high-turnout
democracy in the nineteenth-century United States to passive, low-turnout democracy in the twentieth century. Women
and non-whites were proscribed from politics, Wiebe freely admits, but for the white-male masses, the nineteenth
century was a democratic golden age of "self-determination" when "people ruled themselves" both individually and
collectively.(27)
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This edenic era ended with the urban-industrial transformation that brought "centralization and hierarchy." In the early
twentieth century, a new "national class" of reformers, businessmen, and intellectuals wielded scientific expertise to
isolate political power from the masses. Wiebe charges the progressive movement with the crime of "atomizing the
electorate" - forcing voters to abandon partisan identities in order to cast their ballots as "an individualized private act."
No longer did elections function as fraternal celebrations of shared identity. After 1920, faced with the necessity of
"absorbing increasing amounts of information on a multiplying array of issues," fewer and fewer Americans straggled
to the polls, and voter turnout fell from over 80 percent in the 1880s to barely 50 percent a century later.(28)
Wiebe tells a familiar story with two new twists. First, whereas some historians argue that the "decline of popular
politics" was an unintended consequence of reform, Wiebe is less charitable. "If most progressives did not set out to
keep the poor from the polls," he writes with scorn, "they had little invested in bringing them there." Elitist reformers
"tolerated lower-class exclusion" if they did not actively seek it. In this respect, Self-Rule is a sequel to Wiebe's
acclaimed classic, The Search for Order, 1877-1920, because it extends to the present his saga of centralized
bureaucracy displacing popular self-government. In both works, however, Wiebe seems to romanticize blind party
loyalty, bossism, and corrupt political machines because they, at least, yielded high turnouts. He might have devoted
more attention to the difference between genuine "self-rule" and its illusion under boss rule, or to the democratic
potential of the rational, non-partisan, issue-oriented politics that progressives hoped to create. But Wiebe doubts that
voters need to know much about issues: "Even if we accept the implausible proposition that a determinate body of
knowledge lies out there to be learned," he writes, "why should citizens be obliged to sit there and learn it?" Given this
attitude, it is not surprising that Wiebe finds nineteenth-century elections, which Henry George called "glittering
displays of partisanship," more compelling than the bland information-overload of modem campaigns.(29)
The second new twist to Wiebe's "cultural history of American democracy" is his pointed invocation of "culture."
Sounding like a comparative politics scholar in the Almond-Verba tradition, Wiebe defines democracy as "invariably
popular self-government and variably something else - something culturally specific that has adhered to it." Sounding
like a Geertzian ethnographer, he wants to explore "the webbing of values and relations" spun within American
democracy. Seemingly a culturalist, not a behavioralist, Wiebe declares that "my study is situated at the intersection
between beliefs and actions," steering between "a systematic history of ideas on one side and a detailed history of
political behavior on the other." Yet, except for brief forays into exposing sundry political theorists as closeted antidemocrats,
Wiebe does not engage the rhetorical conventions, unspoken assumptions, and significant symbols of past
politics as would a true student of cultural semiotics. Although Self-Rule is a powerfully argued brief for democratic
revitalization, its invocation of political culture terminology seems gratuitous. Despite claims to the contrary, Wiebe's
real concern is behavioralist, not culturalist: voter turnout, not the meanings and discourse of politics, is for him the
measure of democracy. "At some point on a curve of declining turnouts," he writes, "the system no longer functions."
Indeed, he dismisses Almond and Verba's theory of political culture precisely because it ignores issues of voting
behavior and turnout.(30)
Other historians combining chronological narratives with cultural comparisons have applied the political culture
concept to symbols and ideology rather than to functions and behaviors. This approach seems to hold the most promise
for scholarly exploration of political culture. Two decades ago, Kelley helped point the way by retracing the
transmigration of social groups between the Jeffersonian/Democratic and Whig/Republican party coalitions. Freeman
later offered a more ideologically oriented comparison of the styles, traditions, and worldviews of the two major
parties. More recently, Baker, Sklar, and McCurry have produced major studies of women's political culture in the
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States, emphasizing that the franchise was not a necessary precondition
to public political participation and comparing the gendered assumptions that men and women brought to the political
arena. These authors imply that the modern welfare state gradually replaced the older laissez-faire state at least partly
because male political culture lost its monopoly on formal power. Now that historians have placed political elites in
context alongside diverse masses of cultural contestants, no longer can political culture history be said to dwell
exclusively on "Great White Men."(31)
Whether inspired by Elazar's work in political science, or by Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, American
historians have also begun to connect migration patterns with geographical variations in political culture. Etcheson's
Emerging Midwest compares the ideologies of southern and northern migrants in antebellum Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois. Following the trend toward integration of both comparative and diachronic analysis, Etcheson discusses how
the events leading to the Civil War sundered state-level polities already divided between two regnant political cultures.
Shared ideologies of republicanism, partisanism, and "westernness" could not withstand the resurgence of sectional
loyalties in the 1850s. Like Bond, who reconstructed the meaning of "liberty" and "virtue" for white Mississippians,
and Greenberg, who likened the interpretation of political culture to "a work of translation," Etcheson shows a keen
sensitivity to language, closely reading the key terms "private interest" and "public good" in context. She adds that
historians need not dwell on whether political rhetoric was ever sincere, because, in any case, its users were "aware of
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public sensibilities and community values." In a democracy, since successful candidates "win office by appealing to
assumptions shared with the electorate," historians can "depend on politicians to be articulate voices of the political
culture," regardless of ulterior motives. With these words, Howe and Baker's pioneering reliance on prominent
informants in the study of political culture now stands vindicated.(32)
These impressive new contributions to American historiography bring political culture to fruition. Yet, not every
historian is satisfied. For example, Lotchin allows that "political culture seems to be about ideas," but he objects that
the concept "fails to link specific political outcomes to specific attitudes," fretting that "without outcomes we cannot
fully understand politics."(33)
Perhaps the problem is that American historians are offering ever-thicker descriptions of politics by invoking the term,
"political culture," without adequate definition or focus. Sometimes it seems to denote not political symbols in context
but minute procedural dissections of nominations, campaigns, patronage, and officeholding. Other times, it seems to
encompass "common assumptions" about everything from "the legitimacy of the political process in general" to "the
role of government in particular." Eager proponents have used the concept to investigate diverse matters, ranging from
antebellum literary metaphors and the origins of New Deal liberalism to abolitionist fairs and George Washington's
personality cult. Like political scientists before them, incautious historians are somewhat in danger of turning political
culture into an indiscriminate uncaused cause once again.(34)
Certain of political culture's early champions have recanted. "The need for conceptual clarity is not mere semantics,"
wrote Formisano, and Baker complained that, too often, "political culture serves as gloss." The concept appears least
promising to those whose explanatory frameworks privilege class conflict and objective conditions over ideology and
subjective beliefs. Historians who prefer "political economy" to political culture, and who are more likely to invoke
Antonio Gramsci than Geertz when they write about ideology, often accuse political culture historians of constructing
static, univocal models, although they do not necessarily hesitate to construct their own in the name of "hegemony."
(35)
The concept has failed to bring about a paradigm shift because it has not been able to subsume the conflicts between
materialism, behavioralism, and idealism. Nonetheless, political culture's anticipation of the burgeoning "public
sphere" literature, in its focus on publicly negotiated meanings, suggests its continued relevance. Public-sphere
participants couch their arguments in symbols that are amenable to interpretation by historians who would have their
Habermas with a grain of Geertz. Political culture also has a place in the larger movement toward cultural history that
Kelley describes as a "phenomenological critique" of behavioralism.(36)
Political culture, as construed in both political science and history, underscores "the importance of values, feelings, and
beliefs in the explanation of political behavior." Just as the concept drew political scientists like Rosenbaum into "the
underlying psychological forces that shape much of civic life," it drew historians like Howe into the "political
psychology" of past politics. Verba went looking not for "what is happening in the world of politics, but [for] what
people believe about those happenings," and he recruited historians as well as political scientists in his quest. No
longer must political scientists assume that "culture does not exist or is not important"; nor must political historians
conjure up "ethnocultures" from mute statistics of behavior. The charge that the political culture concept tends toward
imprecision is not without merit. Yet, despite its analytical expansiveness, the concept represents a valuable check on
the assumption that political scientists and historians are "objective" observers.(37)
One controversial trait has haunted the concept since its political-science origins. "The study of political culture,"
observed Dittmer, "has since its beginnings been in the vanguard of the behavioral revolution in political science."
Once Almond and Verba introduced statistical tables into political culture studies, everyone followed suit. Ironically,
Almond ended up renouncing the "behavioral revolution," and Verba warned that a ballot was "a rather blunt
instrument" for reconstructing a voter's mentality. But most of their followers continued reducing politics to
quantifiable variables. It remained for interpretivist historians to go where behavioralists in both disciplines feared to
tread, combining cultural semiotics with textual sources.(38)
Gradually the news filtered back to political scientists that historians had done well by political culture. Adams
excitedly informed his colleagues that "the non-scientific practitioners of interpretation have something to say to
political scientists about the task of understanding the place and production of meaning in politics." He pleaded for
cultural semiotics in the study of political culture: "Political meaning is born not just in what individual subjects
consciously think and value politically, but in cultural and intersubjective symbols, in collective meanings inscribed in
the symbolic texts of political practices themselves." Though no fan of Geertz, Merelman agreed that "if political
scientists are to continue to talk about 'political culture' . . . they should attend to contemporary anthropology."(39)
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In the 1990s, political scientists, like historians, have begun to look beyond quantitative behavioralism to cultural
semiotics. Brint urges his colleagues to seek "meaning" in politics revealed not by polls but by "the social and
discursive practices of a culture." They should learn "the cultural grammar or narrative of a polity - the internal
coherence of its social, cultural, and discursive practices." Elkins echoes historians by defining political culture as "a
framework for action rather than a set of specific actions or beliefs. It consists of largely unspoken assumptions about
the world so 'taken for granted' most of the time that they have become 'second nature.'" Learning "cultural grammar"
and "unspoken assumptions" requires textual interpretation informed by anthropological theory rather than sample
surveys or correlation coefficients.(40)
Some political scientists prefer Mary Douglas to Geertz as their anthropologist of choice, but their interpretations of
political action are couched in language that participants would have difficulty understanding. Other political scientists
follow historians in adopting Geertz's less structuralist approach precisely because of its intelligibility. From this camp,
Laitin counsels that "historical (contextual) analysis," combined with a "richer notion of culture, one built upon the
Geertzian framework," is the key to political culture research.(41)
A recent survey of the field by Welch, a British political scientist, notes approvingly that "political culture as used and
developed within American historiography has begun to fulfill some of the promise of a phenomenological approach."
Welch appreciates historians because "a researcher investigating the past with the tool of political culture is much less
constrained than one investigating it with a view to justifying this or that theory of comparative politics." The problem,
he realizes, is that "the empirical bounty offered by the attitude survey has encouraged behavioral political scientists to
imagine they have the fullest conception of political culture, and has distracted them from the more fertile modes of
inquiry to which historians have perforce been led." Welch admires how American historians escaped "the necessity of
choosing between interests and culture as explanations, instead using political culture to transcend that dichotomy." No
longer need students of politics argue about the relative weight of ideas, interests, and behavior; political culture is the
context of politics itself - the structure of meaning through which political participants develop ideas, perceive
interests, and act on both. Political culture, as applied by historians, provides "a means of connecting the analyst's thick
description with the self-understandings of the participants," and this connection is what comparative politics has
always lacked.(42)
When political culture was still in its conceptual infancy within political science, Hitchner argued that it should be
nourished with historical analysis, not survey data. Political culture offered great analytical potential, but if the
"methodological inclination" to rely solely on supposedly "scientific" data persisted, "we are headed for some trouble."
Hitchner wanted his colleagues to become historians of the political cultures that they studied. He believed that "to
discard the ever important dimension of history is truly to cut us adrift from reality. There is a wisdom in our past to
which we must always listen." Historians, not political scientists, turned out to be the better listeners. Indeed, many
political scientists using the political culture concept still rely on poll data, but, among historians, cultural (or "public
sphere") approaches are gradually supplanting quantitative behavioralism. "We have not begun to understand our
political history sufficiently," Levine recently admonished, "because we too frequently artificially separated it from the
larger cultural context of which it was a part." Perhaps that artificial separation has ended. "Historiographically,"
acknowledges Silbey, a prominent behavioralist, "we live in an age of political culture."(43)
1 Jean H. Baker, "And All the Past is Political Culture," Reviews in American History, XV (1987), 59-65; David
Farber, "Political Culture and the Therapeutic Ideal," Reviews in American History, XXIII (1995), 681; Peter N.
Steams, "The Old Social History and the New," in Mary Kupiec Cayton, Elliot J. Gorn, and Peter W. Williams (eds.),
Encyclopedia of American Social History (New York, 1993), 1, 238; Robert Kelley, "Political Culture," in ibid., III,
2269-2278; Thomas Bender, "'Venturesome and Cautious': American History in the 1990s," Journal of American
History, LXXXI (1994), 995-996, referring to David Thelen, "The Practice of American History," ibid., 953; Edward P.
Thompson, Customs in Common (New York, 1991). 13.
2 Stephen Welch, The Concept of Political Culture (New York, 1993), 148; Lawrence C. Dodd and Calvin Jillson
(eds.), The Dynamics of American Politics: Approaches and Interpretations (Boulder, 1994), 2. See also Michael
Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder, 1991).
3 Harry Eckstein, "A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present," in idem and David E. Apter (eds.),
Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York, 1963.); Gabriel A. Almond, "The Intellectual History of the Civic Culture
Concept," in idem and Sidney Verba (eds.), The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston, 1980); Glenda M. Patrick, "Political
Culture," in Giovanni Sartori (ed.), Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis (Beverly Hills, 1984); Abram
Kardiner, The Individual and His Society (New York, 1939); Ralph Linton, The Cultural Background of Personality
(New York, 1945); Harold D. Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York, 1965; orig. pub. 1935),
158; Geoffrey Gofer, "National Character: Theory and Practice," in Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux (eds.), The
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Study of Culture at a Distance (Chicago, 1953); Mead, "National Character," in Alfred L. Kroeber (ed.), Anthropology
Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory (Chicago, 1953); Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at
America (New York, 1942); Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston,
1946); Gofer, The American People: A Study in National Character (New York, 1948); idem and John Rickman, The
People of Great Russia (London, 1949); Nathan Leites, "Psycho-Cultural Hypotheses About Political Acts," World
Politics, 1 (1948), 102n; Alex Inkeles and Daniel J. Levinson, "National Character: The Study of Modal Personality
and Sociocultural Systems," in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology
(Reading, Mass., 169; 2d ed.), IV.
4 Almond, "Comparative Political Systems," Journal of Politics, XVIII (1956), 319-409; Terence Ball, "American
Political Science in Its Postwar Political Context," in James Farr and Raymond Seidelman (eds.), Discipline and
History: Political Science in the United States (Ann Arbor, 1993); Almond, "Comparative Political Systems," 96;
Weber (trans. Talcott Parsons), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958). The term "political
culture" appeared earlier in Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (New York,
1936).
5 Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in
a Presidential Campaign (New York, 1944); Berelson, Lazersfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of
Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago, 1954); Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E.
Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York, 1960); Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture: Political
Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, 1963), 12, 5, 13, 102. On the methodological context, see
Campbell and George Katona, "The Sample Survey: A Technique for Social Science Research," in Leon Festinger and
Darnel Katz (eds.), Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences (New York, 1953). Lowell Dittmer, "The
Comparative Analysis of Political Culture," Amerikastudien, XXVII (1982), 20; David J. Elkins and Richard E. B.
Simeon, "A Cause in Search of Its Effect, or What Does Political Culture Explain?" Comparative Politics, XI (1979),
129. See also Louis J. Cantori, "Post-Behavioral Political Science and the Study of Comparative Politics," in idem and
Andrew H. Zeigler, Jr. (eds.), Comparative Politics in the Post-Behavioral Era (Boulder, 1988); Mattei Dogan, "Use
and Misuse of Statistics in Comparative Research," in idem and Ali Zazancigil (eds.), Comparing Nations: Concepts,
Strategies, Substance (Oxford, 1994).
6 Carole Pateman, "Political Culture, Political Structure, and Political Change," British Journal of Political Science, I
(1971), 291-305; Jerzy Wiatr, "The Civic Culture from a Marxist Sociological Perspective," in Almond and Verba
(eds.), Civic Culture Revisited, 103-123; Ronald H. Chilcote, Theories of Comparative Politics (Boulder, 1994; 2d
ed.), 183-186; Young C. Kim, "The Concept of Political Culture in Comparative Politics," Journal of Politics, XXVI
(1964), 313-364; Edward Lehman, "On the Concept of Political Culture: A Theoretical Reassessment," Social Forces,
L (1972), 361-370.
7 Pateman, "The Civic Culture: A Philosophical Critique," in Almond and Verba (eds.), Civic Culture Revisited, 57-
102; Arend Lijphart, "The Structure of Inference," in ibid., 37-56; Edward N. Muller and Mitchell A. Seligson, "Civic
Culture and Democracy: The Question of Causal Relationships," American Political Science Review, LXXXVIII
(1994), 635-652; David Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and American Character (Chicago, 1954);
Almond, "Capitalism and Democracy," PS: Political Science and Politics, XXIV (1991), 467-474.
8 Verba, "On Revisiting The Civic Culture: A Personal Postscript," in Almond and idem (eds.), Civic Culture
Revisited, 394; idem, "Comparative Political Culture," in Lucian W. Pye and idem (eds.), Political Culture and
Political Development (Princeton, 1965), 513-518; Pye, "Political Culture," in David L. Sills (ed.), International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1968), XII, 218; Louis Schneider, "Some Disgruntled and
Controversial Comments on the Idea of Culture in the Social Sciences," Social Science Quarterly, LIII (1972), 378;
Robert C. Tucker, "Culture, Political Culture, and Communist Society," Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVIII
(19743), 179; Chilcote, Theories of Comparative Politics, 9; Ruth Lane, "Political Culture: Residual Category or
General Theory?" Comparative Political Studies, XXV (1992), 364.
9 Howard J. Wiarda (ed.), New Directions in Comparative Politics (Boulder, 1985), xi-xii; David D. Laitin, Hegemony
and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago, 1986), 171. See also Alasdair MacIntyre, "Is
a Science of Comparative Politics Possible?" in Peter Laslett, Walter G. Runciman, and Quentin Skinner (eds.),
Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford, 1972).
10 Samuel C. Patterson, "The Political Cultures of the American States,"Journal of Politics, XXX (1968), 187-209;
Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View From the States (New York, 1972; 2d ed.), 85, 89, 93-127.
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11 Ira Sharkansky, "The Utility of Elazar's Political Culture: A Research Note," Polity, II (1969), 66-83; Frederick
Wirt, "Does Control Follow the Dollar? Value Analysis, School Policy, and State-Local Linkages," Publius, X (1980),
69-88; Ellis, American Political Cultures (New York, 1993), 165-169; Elazar, "Afterword: Steps in the Study of
American Political Culture," Publius, X (1980), 127; idem, The American Mosaic: The Impact of Space, Time, and
Culture on American Politics (Boulder, 1994), 219, 12; idem, Building Toward Civil War: Generational Rhythms in
American Politics (Lanham, Md., 1992), 193-197. See also idem, Cities of the Prairie: The Metropolitan Frontier and
American Politics (New York, 1990).
12 M. Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky, Cultural Theory, 242. See also John Kincaid, "Dimensions and Effects of
America's Political Subcultures," Journal of American Culture, V (1982), 84-92; Jody L. Fitzpatrick and Rodney E.
Hero, "Political Culture and Political Characteristics of the American States: A Consideration of Some Old and New
Questions," Western Political Quarterly, XLI (1988), 145-153.
13 Eckstein, Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability, and Change (Berkeley, 1992), 286; Robert W.
Jackman and Ross A. Miller, "A Renaissance of Political Culture?" American Journal of Political Science, XL (1996),
632-659; Mattei Dogan and Dominique Pelassy, How to Compare Nations: Strategies in Comparative Politics
(Chatham, NJ., 1990; 2d ed.), 68; Samuel Barnes and Max Kaase, Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western
Democracies (Beverly Hills, 1979); Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Style Among
Western Publics (Princeton, 1977); idem, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, 1990); Wildavsky,
"Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation," American Political
Science Review, LXXXI (1987), 3-21; Eckstein, "A Culturalist Theory of Political Change," ibid., LXXXII (1988),
789-804; Robert S. Erikson, John P. McIver, and Gerald C. Wright, Jr., "State Political Culture and Public Opinion,"
ibid., LXXXI, 813.
14 Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (Cambridge,
Mass., 1952); Milton Singer, "The Concept of Culture," in Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Science,
III, 527-543; Roger M. Keesing, "Theories of Culture," Annual Review of Anthropology, III (1974), 73-97; Ward H.
Goodenough, "Culture," in Levinson and Melvin Ember (eds.), Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology (New York,
1996), I, 291-297; Schneider, "Some Disgruntled and Controversial Comments," 377, 378; Robert A. LeVine,
"Properties of Culture: An Ethnographic View," in Richard A. Shweder and idem (eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on
Mind, Self, and Emotion (New York, 1984), 67. See also Sherry B. Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology Since the
Sixties," Comparative Studies in Society and History, XXVI (1984), 126-166, and the responses in ibid., XXVIII
(1986), 356-374. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., "Clio and the Culture Concept: Some Impressions of a Changing
Relationship in American Historiography," Social Science Quarterly, LIII (1972), 299. See also Richard E. Sykes,
"American Studies and the Concept of Culture: A Theory and Method," American Quarterly, XV (1963), 253-270;
Brian Attebery, "American Studies: A Not So Scientific Method," American Quarterly, XLVIII (1996), 316-343.
15 Some anthropologists take a dim view of these efforts; some historians concur. See the symposium, "History and
Anthropology: A Dialogue," Historical Methods, XIX (1986), 119128; Jean-Christophe Agnew, "History and
Anthropology: Scenes from a Marriage," Yale Journal of Criticism, III (1990), 29-50; Nicholas B. Dirks, "Is Vice
Versa? Historical Anthropologies and Anthropological Histories," in Terrence J. McDonald (ed.), The Historic Turn in
the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor, 1996), 17-51; Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New
York, 1973), esp. 3-30; Skinner (ed.), The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (New York, 1985), 6. See
also Kenneth A. Rice, Geertz and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1980); Nigel Rapport, "Thick Description," in Levinson and
Ember (eds.), Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, IV, 1311-1313. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 5. See also
Ronald G. Walters, "Signs of the Times: Clifford Geertz and Historians," Social Research, XLVII (1980), 537-556;
Lynn Hunt, "History Beyond Social Theory," in David Carroll (ed.), The States of 'Theory": History, Art, and Critical
Discourse (New York, 1990).
16 Aletta Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond," in Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History
(Berkeley, 1989), 80. See also Karen Lystra, "Clifford Geertz and the Concept of Culture," Prospects, VIII (1983), 31-
47; Eric Kline Silverman, "Clifford Geertz: Towards a More 'Thick' Understanding?" in Christopher Tilley (ed.),
Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism (Oxford, 1990), 143-145; Peter Clarke,
"Ideas and Interests," in Theodore K. Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg (eds.), The New History: The 1980s and Beyond
(Princeton, 1982); Myron J. Aronoff, "Ideology and Interest: The Dialectics of Politics," Political Anthropology, I
(1980), 1-29; John E. Toews, "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the
Irreducibility of Experience," American Historical Review, XCII (1987), 879-907; Louis Hartz, "The Problem of
Political Ideas," in Roland Young (ed.), Approaches to the Study of Politics (Evanston, 1958); John L. Austin, How to
Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass., 1962); John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language
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(Cambridge, Mass., 1969); Skinner, "On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions," Philosophical Quarterly, XXI
(1971), 1-21.
17 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 193-229, 14; Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections on Cultural
History (New York, 1990), 330. See also M. Margaret Conway, "The Political Context of Political Behavior," Journal
of Politics, LI (1989), 3-10.
18 Allan G. Bogue, "United States: The 'New' Political History," in Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse (eds.), The
New History (New York, 1967). See also Bogue, Clio and the Bitch Goddess: Quantification in American Political
History (Beverly Hills, 1983). Richard Jensen, "How Democracy Works: The Linkage Between Micro and Macro
Political History,"Journal of Social History, XVI (1983), 31. See also J. Morgan Kousser, "The Revivalism of
Narrative: A Response to Recent Criticisms of Quantitative History," Social Science History, VIII (1984), 133-149;
Bogue, "Systematic Revisionism and a Generation of Ferment in American History," Journal of Contemporary History,
XXI (1986), 135-162; idem, "The Quest for Numeracy: Data and Methods in American Political History," Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, XXI (1990), 89-116.
19 Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 311; Kluckhohn, "Covert Culture and Administrative Problems," American
Anthropologist, XLV (1943), 218; idem, Mirror for Man: The Relation of Anthropology to Modem Life (New York,
1949), 35. See also Kluckhohn and William H. Kelly, "The Concept of Culture," in Ralph Linton (ed.), The Science of
Man in the World Crisis (New York, 1945); LeVine, "Properties of Culture," 76-77.
20 Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948); Hartz, The
Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York,
1955); Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective
(New York, 1963); Daniel Boorstin, The Americans (New York, 1958-73), 3v; Charles S. Sydnor, American
Revolutionaries in the Making: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia (New York, 1962); Edmund S. Morgan,
American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975); Hofstadter, The Idea of a
Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley, 1969); John William
Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York, 1955); Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics
and Belief (Stanford, 1957); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before
the Civil War (New York, 1970).
21 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 95; idem, "The
Central Themes of the American Revolution: An Interpretation," in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson (eds.),
Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1973), 12. See also Robert E. Shalhope, "Toward a Republican
Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography," William and Mary
Quarterly, XXIV (1972), 49-80; idem, "Republicanism and Early American Historiography," ibid., XXXIX (1982),
334-356; Lance Banning, "The Republican Interpretation: Retrospect and Prospect," Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, CII (1992), 153-180; Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman
(Cambridge, Mass., 1961); John Greville Agard Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and
the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism:
Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America (Ithaca, 1990); Richard K. Mathews (ed.), Virtue,
Corruption and Self-Interest: Political Values in the Eighteenth Century (Bethlehem, 1994).
22 Staughton Lynd, "Tories and Neo-Whigs," Reviews in American History, I (1973), 204; Jesse Lemisch, "The
American Revolution Bicentennial and the Papers of Great White Men," AHA Newsletter 9 (November 1971), 7-21.
For an overview of the "Great White Men" critique, see Ruth H. Bloch, "Radical Whigs Revisited: Reflections upon
Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution," Intellectual History Newsletter 15 (1993), 14-
22. Bailyn, Ideological Origins, ix; idem, "Central Themes," 11; Gordon S. Wood, "Intellectual History and the Social
Sciences," in Higham and Conkin (eds.), New Directions in American Intellectual History, 32. See also Wood, "The
Creative Imagination of Bernard Bailyn," in James A. Henretta, Michael Kammen, and Stanley N. Katz (eds.), The
Transformation of Early American History (New York, 1991).
23 Alan Taylor, "Imperative Categories," Reviews in American History, XIX (1991), 352. For the barest outlines of
these republicanism debates, see Lance Banning, "Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the
New American Republic," William and Mary Quarterly, XLIII (1986), 3-19; Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and
Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, 1992); Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The
Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia, 1990), 106-119.
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24 Joel H. Silbey, "Conclusion," in Lloyd E. Ambrosius (ed.), A Crisis of Republicanism: American Politics in the
Civil War Era (Lincoln, 1990), 129; Daniel T. Rogers, "Republicanism: the Career of a Concept," Journal of American
History, LXXIX (1991), 37. For a more sympathetic review of republicanism, see James T. Kloppenberg,
"Republicanism in American History and Historiography," Tocqueville Review, XIII (1992), 119-136.
25 Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York, 1978); Kenneth S. Greenberg, Masters and
Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery (Baltimore, 1985); Darnel Walker Howe, The Political Culture
of the American Whigs (Chicago, 1979), 1-2, 4; Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats
in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1983), 11-12, 262-263. On the Balinese cockfight, see Geertz, Interpretation of
Cultures, 412-453.
26 Holt, "Political Culture and Political Legitimacy," Reviews in American History, XI (1983), 527; Richard L.
McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era
(New York, 1986), 116; Sean Wilentz, "Whigs and Bankers," Reviews in American History, VIII (1980), 349; Harry L.
Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in
Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge, 1981); idem, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian
America (New York, 1990); Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties,
1790s-1840s (New York, 1983), 22, 20. See also idem, "Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political
Culture, 1789-1840," American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 473-487.
27 Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (New
York, 1994); Bradley G. Bond, Political Culture in the Nineteenth-Century South, 1830-1900 (Baton Rouge, 1995);
Wiebe, Self-Rule, 9, 39.
28 Wiebe, ibid., 253, 136-137, 176-177, et passim.
29 Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986); James
Wright, The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire, 1906-1916 (Hanover, 1987); John F.
Reynolds, Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform in New Jersey, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill,
1988); Wiebe, Self-Rule, 164, 261; idem, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967); Henry George, "Money
in Elections," North American Review, CXXXVI (March 1883), 209.
30 Wiebe, Self-Rule, 9-10, 257, 220.
31 Kelley, "Ideology and Political Culture from Jefferson to Nixon," American Historical Review, LXXXII (1970),
531-562; Jo Freeman, "The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties," Political Science Quarterly,
CI (1986), 327-356; Paula Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life: Gender, Politics, and the State in Rural New
York, 1870-1930 (New York, 1991); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's
Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven, 1995); Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households,
Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York, 1995). See
also Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical
Review, LXXXIX (1984), 620-647. For other comparative approaches, see Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: American
Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley, 1850-1986 (Berkeley, 1989); John D. Buenker, "Sovereign
Individuals and Organic Networks: Political Cultures in Conflict During the Progressive Era," American Quarterly, XL
(1988), 187-204; Sklar, "Two Political Cultures in the Progressive Era: The National Consumers' League and the
American Association for Labor Legislation," in Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and idem (eds.), U.S. History
as Women's History (Chapel Hill, 1995).
32 On migration and political culture, see also Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration,
Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (Philadelphia, 1996). Bond, Political Culture in the
Nineteenth-Century South, 81-114; Greenberg, Honor and Slavery (Princeton, 1996), xi; Etcheson, Emerging Midwest,
xiii. Greenberg and Etcheson acknowledge a debt to Geertz's theory of cultural semiotics: See Greenberg, Honor and
Slavery, 147-148n, and Etcheson, Emerging Midwest, 145n. On language and political culture, see also Andrew R. L.
Cayton, "'Language Gives Way to Feelings': Rhetoric, Republicanism, and Religion in Jeffersonian Ohio," in Jeffrey P.
Brown and idem (eds.), The Pursuit of Public Power: Political Culture in Ohio, 1787-1861 (Kent, 1994).
33 Roger W. Lotchin, "The Political Culture of the Metropolitan-Military Complex," Social Science History, XVI
(1992), 278-279; idem, book review, Journal of American History, LXXXII (1995), 1213. See also Paul Goodman,
"Putting Some Class Back into Political History: 'The Transformation of Political Culture' and the Crisis in American
Political History," Reviews in American History, XII (1984), 80-88.
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34 Philip R. VanderMeer, The Hoosier Politician: Officeholding and Political Culture in Indiana, 1896-1920 (Urbana,
1985); Patrick F. Palermo, "The Rules of the Game: Local Republican Political Culture," Historian, LXVII (1985),
479-496; Taylor, "'The Art of Hook & Snivey': Political Culture in Upstate New York During the 1790s," Journal of
American History, LXXIX (1993), 1371-1396; George C. Rable, The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against
Politics (Chapel Hill, 1994), 3; Anne Norton, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture
(Chicago, 1986); Richard Schneirov, "Political Cultures and the Role of the State in Labor's Republic: The View from
Chicago, 1848-1877," Labor History, XXXII (1991), 376-400; Lee Chambers-Schiller, "'A Good Work Among the
People': The Political Culture of the Boston Antislavery Fair," in Jean Yellin, Jean Fagan, and John C. Van Home
(eds.), The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America (Ithaca, 1994); Simon P.
Newman, "Principles or Men? George Washington and the Political Culture of National Leadership, 1776-1801,"
Journal of the Early Republic, XII (1994), 477-507.
35 Formisano, "Ideology and Political Culture," American Historical Review, LXXXII (1977), 568; Baker, "And All
the Past is Political Culture," 60; John P. Diggins, "The Misuses of Gramsci," Journal of American History, LXXV
(1988), 141-145; Peter Burke, "Popular Culture Reconsidered," Storia della Storiagrafia, XVII (1990), 43-44; James
Scott, "False-Consciousness, or Laying It on Thick," in Richard M. Merelman (ed.), Language, Symbolism, and
Politics (Boulder, 1992).
36 Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Donald R. Kelley, "The Old
Cultural History," History of the Human Sciences, IX (1996), 117. See also David Chaney, The Cultural Turn: SceneSetting
Essays on Contemporary Culture History (London, 1994). For an example of public-sphere history that
resembles political culture history, see Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: From Banners to Ballots, 1825-1880
(Baltimore, 1990).
37 Almond, "The Study of Political Culture," in idem (ed.), A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political
Science (Newbury Park, Calif., 1990), 143; Walter A. Rosenbaum, Political Culture (New York, 1975), 4; Howe, "The
Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System," Journal of American
History, LXXVII (1991), 1236; Verba, "Comparative Political Culture," 516; William Bostock, "The Cultural
Explanation of Politics," Political Science, XXV (1973), 43; Pye, "Culture and Political Science: Problems in the
Evaluation of the Concept of Political Culture," Social Science Quarterly, LIII (1972), 285-296. Culture was such an
alien concept in political science that Verba apologized for using the word at all. See Verba, "Comparative Political
Culture," 513n.
38 Dittmer, "Political Culture and Political Symbolism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis," World Politics, XXIX
(1977), 553. See also Farr, "Remembering the Revolution: Behavioralism in American Political Science," in idem,
John S. Dryzek, and Stephen T. Leonard (eds.), Political Science in History: Research Programs and Political
Traditions (New York, 1995). For a radical critique of behavioralism, see Timothy W. Luke, "Political Science and the
Discourses of Power: Developing a Genealogy of the Political Culture Concept," History of Political Thought, X
(1989), 125-149. Almond and Stephen Genco, "Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics," in Almond (ed.), A
Discipline Divided, 32-65; Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social
Equality (New York, 1972), 106. See also Pye, "Political Culture Revisited," Political Psychology, XII (1991), 487-
508.
39 William Adams, "Politics and the Archaeology of Meaning," Western Political Quarterly, XXXIX (1986), 549, 562;
Merelman, "On Culture and Politics in America: A Perspective from Structural Anthropology," British Journal of
Political Science, XIX (1989), 470. See also idem, Making Something of Ourselves: On Culture and Politics in the
United States (Berkeley, 1984).
40 Michael Brint, A Genealogy of Political Culture (Boulder, 1991), 117; David J. Elkins, Manipulation and Consent:
How Voters and Leaders Manage Complexity (Vancouver, 1993), 123. See also Joseph V. Femia, "Political Culture," in
William Outhwaite and Tom Bottomore (eds.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought
(Oxford, 1993), 475-477.
41 Laitin, "The Civic Culture at 30," American Political Science Review, LXXXIX (1995), 171-173. For Douglas
followers, see M. Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky, Cultural Theory; Ellis, American Political Cultures; and Dennis J.
Coyle and Ellis, Politics, Policy, and Culture (Boulder, 1994). For Geertz followers, see Dittmer, "Political Culture and
Political Symbolism"; Adams, "Politics and the Archaeology of Meaning"; and Paul Nesbitt-Larking, "Methodological
Notes on the Study of Political Culture," Political Psychology, XIII (1992), 79-92.
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42 Welch, The Concept of Political Culture, 13, 148, 157-158. See also Richard W. Wilson, Compliance Ideologies:
Rethinking Political Culture (New York, 1992); David Brian Robertson, "Politics and the Past: History, Behavioralism,
and the Return to Institutionalism in American Political Science," in Eric H. Monkkonen (ed.), Engaging the Past: The
Uses of History Across the Social Sciences (Durham, 1994).
43 Dell G. Hitchner, "Political Science and Political Culture," Western Political Quarterly, XXI (1968), 552; Lawrence
W. Levine, The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History (New York, 1994), 12; Silbey,
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Gendzel, Glen. "Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol.
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The familiar narrative of the American military experience traces the long, occasionally glorious, always bloody march from Lexington and Concord to Iraq and Afghanistan. “Those Who Have Borne the Battle” amends that account by adding two subjects of acute contemporary relevance: how the United States has raised the forces with which it wages war; and how, in the aftermath of battle, it cares for and remembers those who fought.
James Wright brings to his story unusual qualifications. Raised by working-class parents in Galena, Ill. (the adopted home of Ulysses S. Grant), he enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 17, back when a stint of military service was almost a rite of passage for young men. Upon completing an uneventful tour of duty, he went on to college and then attended graduate school during the Vietnam War, which he ardently opposed. After earning a Ph.D. in history, Wright embarked upon an academic career at Dartmouth. There he remained for 40 years, eventually becoming college president in 1998.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Wright began periodically visiting military hospitals, not standard fare for an Ivy League president. His encounters with severely wounded soldiers — and his discomfort with present-day civil-military relations — spurred him to write this book. “We pay lip service to our ‘sons and daughters’ at war,” he says, “even if the children of some 99 percent of us are safely at home.” With the United States more or less permanently at war, Americans profess unstinting admiration for those serving in uniform. Yet the gap between soldier and society is wider than at any time in our history.
On whom does the nation rely to defend itself? The standard answer, going back to the Revolution, was: “its citizens.” A deeply rooted dislike of standing armies and a generous evaluation of the citizen-soldier’s fighting prowess sustained this tradition through World War II. The G.I.’s who fought the “Good War” were not professionals. Representing a cross-section of society, they simply wanted to finish the job, go home and get on with their lives.
After World War II, however, Washington concluded that “go home” no longer constituted a policy option. The exercise of global leadership and the practice of relying on citizen-soldiers proved incompatible. Before 1940, Wright observes, “Americans mobilized in response to war rather than in expectation of war.” After 1945, this reactive approach did not suffice: the United States required forces held in readiness for immediate combat.
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If there were any doubts on that score, the Korean War removed them. For Wright, Korea defines “the missing chapter, the absent lesson” of American military history. It also served as a precursor of what was to come. Korea, he writes, was “a presumptive war, one aimed at a presumptive threat, and one with changing goals.” War was becoming amorphous — undeclared, lacking clear objectives, with victory as such no longer the goal. Americans conscripted to fight such no‑win wars disliked them intensely. So too did those watching on the home front.
If Korea sounded the death knell of the citizen-soldier tradition, Vietnam killed it once and for all. Wright repeatedly refers to the events of the Vietnam War as “tragedies,” an odd characterization suggesting some sort of cosmic inevitability. In fact, American policy makers chose to fight in Vietnam. They willed the war, which was at the very least a catastrophic blunder and arguably qualifies as a crime. Still, on one essential point Wright is surely correct: As this ill-advised, mismanaged war divided the nation, with substantial numbers of citizens turning againstthe armed forces, “it was no longer possible to pretend that military service was an obligation of citizenship in which all shared.”
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Out of the wreckage of Vietnam came the so-called All-Volunteer Force, at first the subject of indifference, then with the passage of time widely acclaimed. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still fights ambiguous no‑win wars in pursuit of elusive objectives. Yet in contrast to the reaction to Vietnam, the public finds these conflicts tolerable. Not required to serve or to sacrifice (or even to cover the costs incurred), Americans have effectively off-loaded responsibility for national security onto a small warrior elite, whose members, according to Wright, “are embraced as heroes, even as we do not really know them.”
Nothing is too good for these heroes when they come home, politicians and pundits alike agree — although the prevalence of homelessness, unemployment and post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans belies the rhetoric. Still, as military service has become a matter of personal choice, status, as well as privileges, has accrued to those willing to serve. Back when citizenship included (in theory) a responsibility to contribute to the country’s defense, those who served were merely doing their duty. Gratuities offered in return for wartime service tended to be belated and even grudging. During the Great Depression, Bonus Marchers — impoverished World War I veterans petitioning for early payment of a promised $500 bonus — learned this the hard way: In 1932 United States Army regulars under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur used tanks, tear gas and bayonets to send them packing. The following year President Franklin Roosevelt let it be known that “no person, because he wore a uniform, must therefore be placed in a special class of beneficiaries.”
Any politician expressing such views today would risk being tarred and feathered. On the list of what the nation is said to owe its veterans, reward has taken its place alongside remembrance.
For James Wright, both ends of the arrangement — how we constitute our forces and how we honor those who serve — contain much that is unseemly and disconcerting. A public disengaged from military service has lost an important check on Washington’s inclination to use force, with the result that the troops professed to be held in high regard are repeatedly misused and abused. Meanwhile, the vacuous symbols like bumper stickers and pregame ceremonials that have supplanted substantive engagement between citizens and soldiers invite mockery and derision.
How to remedy this situation is less clear. Wright concedes — correctly in my view — that a revival of conscription is politically implausible. (He does not consider the concept of national service — a universal obligation required of all youngsters, with military enlistment one option among many.) His alternative approach to reconnecting soldiers and society — waging war on a pay-as-you-go basis — has considerable merit. “There should be no military action authorized by the United States,” he writes, “that does not include income- and corporate-tax surcharges . . . sufficient to cover all of the operating costs of the war” and to create “a trust fund to provide for lifetime support for those who serve and sacrifice in the war.”
No war without taxes. That sounds like a proposal around which fiscal conservatives and left-leaning proponents of equality could rally. But don’t hold your breath.
“Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them” by James Edward Wright
By T. Rees Shapiro August 24, 2012
HISTORY
THOSE WHO HAVE BORNE THE BATTLE
A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them
By James Edward Wright PublicAffairs. 351 pp. $28.99
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James Edward Wright eloquently describes the history of American forces at war in his new book, “Those Who Have Borne The Battle.” Wright’s impressively detailed text begins in Yorktown during the revolution and progresses to the muddy redoubts around Pork Chop Hill in Korea and on to the unforgiving and austere mountainsides of the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.
One fascinating aspect of the book is its exploration of military demographics through the years. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, only 40 soldiers of the 28,000 in the Army were younger than 21. In Korea, half of them were younger than 21. In Vietnam, the average age was 19.
‘Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America's Wars and Those Who Fought Them by’ James Wright (PublicAffairs)
At the heart of this book are the experiences of the boots on the ground. Wright, a Marine veteran, historian and former president of Dartmouth College, sympathetically portrays the hardships of the common men — and more recently, women — called up for duty. In researching the book, he conducted more than 300 interviews during visits to military hospitals for wounded veterans. “War is about strategic agendas and epic battles that define nations and shape history,” he explains. “War is about courage and heroism, but it is also about pain and suffering and sorrow and tragedy.”
Wright contends that those who have borne the battle in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home to little fanfare. Most Americans have not been remotely affected by the wars of the past decade. Some choose to “display magnetic ribbons on automobiles” or “applaud their sacrifices” during baseball games, but “this has little real impact,” he writes. However, there is a risk to deifying the troops, Wright argues, as has largely occurred with the “greatest generation” who fought during World War II. “It was not a glamorous war,” he writes. “It was savage and dirty, and sometimes those fighting it demonstrated uncommon courage and sometimes uncommon cruelty.” Simply put, “It was a war.”