Pluralism at Yale: The Culture of Political Science in America explores the relationship between personal experience and academic theories of American politics. Through a detailed examination of the Yale University Department of Political Science between 1955 and 1970, including interviews with many of the political scientists involved, this book traces the way "pluralism," a predominately optimistic theory of American democracy which the Yale department helped to develop in those years, helped to support the American political regime. Merelman also analyzes the impact of social and political events on the decline of Yale pluralism and describes pluralism's continued political relevance today. Included are discussions of McCarthyism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War.
A pathbreaking study of political culture in the United States, Britain, and Canada, Partial Visions demonstrates how popular culture--expressed through television soap operas and comedies, civics and history textbooks, magazine advertisements, and corporate publications and recruitment leaflets--subtly deflects and suppresses democratic political action. Richard Merelman argues that political messages embedded in popular culture weaken the division between public and private and between society and the individual. These "partial visions" of democracy are idealized yet inequitable, revelatory yet distorted. As a result, issues that might galvanize useful group conflict do not emerge, and the full potential for public participation in a liberal democracy remains unrealized. Britain, Canada, and the United States share a liberal political culture but differ in their historical evolution and in the structure of their institutions. Each country, Merelman suggests, has developed a distinctive popular culture that shapes public opinion and stifles political debate in nationally specific ways. Different rhetorical devices and metaphors operate in each nation, he points out; in Britain, for example, the monarchy and party system serve as symbols of political reconciliation between the individual and the collectivity. Characterizing the United States as a culture of "institutionalized individualism" and Canada as a culture of emotionally tepid group conflict, Merelman finds Britain's culture of group-based political debate the most successful in encouraging democratic participation. Drawing on symbolic anthropology, poststructuralist literary theory, and positivistic analyses of attitudes and media influence, Merelman conducts a controlled comparison of media representations, political discourse, and public opinion, using rich, complex sets of quantitative and qualitative data . He concludes that culture is not reducible to institutional interests but is intelligible as a whole structure; furthermore, culture can and sometimes does change the contours of political conflict.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.
First published in 1985, Habits of the Heart continues to be one of the most discussed interpretations of modern American society, a quest for a democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditions. In a new preface the authors relate the arguments of the book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.
This book shows how specific agents shape the political character of adolescents, how response to these agents varies according to sex, race, and other factors, and how political learning changes through the life-cycle and across generations. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
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