The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History

by Richard Wightman Fox (Editor), T.J. Jackson Lears (Editor)

"We are in the midst of a dramatic shift in sensibility, and 'cultural' history is the rubric under which a massive doubting and refiguring of our most cherished historical assumptions is being conducted. Many historians are coming to suspect that the idea of culture has the power to restore order to the study of the past. Whatever its potency as an organizing theme, there is no doubt about the power of the term 'culture' to evoke and stand for the depth of the re-examination not taking place. At a time of deep intellectual disarray, 'culture' offers a provisional, nominalist version of whatever the fragmentation of knowledge, however centrifugal the spinning of the scholarly wheel, 'culture'—which (even etymologically) conveys a sense of safe nurture, warm growth, budding or ever-present wholeness—will shelter us. The PC buttons on historians' chests today stand not for 'politically correct' but 'positively cultural.'—from the Introduction

More and more scholars are turning to cultural history in order to make sense of the American past. This volume brings together nine original essays by some leading practitioners in the field. The essays aim to exhibit the promise of a cultural approach to understanding the range of American experiences from the seventeenth century to the present.

Expanding on the editors' pathbreaking The Culture of Consumption , the contributors to this volume argue for a cultural history that attends closely to language and textuality without losing sight of broad configurations of power that social and political history at its best has always stressed. The authors here freshly examine crucial topics in both private and public life. Taken together, the essays shed new light on the power of culture in the lives of Americans past and present.

312 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1993

About the author

Richard Wightman Fox is a professor of history at the University of Southern California and the author of Jesus in America and Trials of Intimacy, among other books. He lives in Venice, California.

Reviews

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking demonstrations of how one might study culture. The contributors to this volume believe in cultural critique. History can be used to identify themes and "resonances," instead of simply telling a story. Studying culture can be political and interrogate public life, particularly the effects of power in society. The chapters cover a variety of topics:
- Modernist writer Sherwood Anderson honed his writing style as an ad man, but he wanted to escape from capitalism and find authenticity in America's small towns (with which he had a difficult relationship);
- Novelist Tillie Olsen navigates her past and present feelings about American communism to write her 1974 novel "Yonnondio";
- Early horror fiction shows how readers wanted to imagine evil as something outside the community, attacking good people, instead of imagining evil as coming from within;
- The adultery trial of Henry Ward Beecher shows how people advancing a free love message still struggled with guilt and their bourgeois values;
- Chicago CIO unions used pop culture to win over the Americanized children of immigrants;
- Book critics and professors tried to excite the public about reading literature, creating a "middlebrow" sensibility;
- WWII propaganda emphasized the family, more than collective or public values;
- The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair proposed a technocratic, corporate-owned future devoid of workers, women, or people of color;
and - If you want people to debate art in the public sphere and develop a spirit of “collective deliberation,” then you need controversial art to set off the debate.