Sowing The American Dream

Author : David Blanke
Publisher : Ohio University Press
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Consumer behavior
ISBN : 9780821413470

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Sowing the American Dream by David Blanke Pdf

From 1840 to 1900, midwestern Americans experienced firsthand the profound economic, cultural, and structural changes that transformed the nation from a premodern, agrarian state to one that was urban, industrial, and economically interdependent. Midwestern commercial farmers found themselves at the heart of these changes. Their actions and reactions led to the formation of a distinctive and particularly democratic consumer ethos, which is still being played out today. By focusing on the consumer behavior of midwestern farmers, Sowing the American Dream provides illustrative examples of how Americans came to terms with the economic and ideological changes that swirled around them. From the formation of the Grange to the advent of mail-order catalogs, the buying patterns of rural midwesterners set the stage for the coming century. Carefully documenting the rise and fall of the powerful purchasing cooperatives, David Blanke explains the shifting trends in collective consumerism, which ultimately resulted in a significant change in the way that midwestern consumers pursued their own regional identity, community, and independence.

Author : Lawrence R. Samuel
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2012-08-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9780815651871

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The American Dream by Lawrence R. Samuel Pdf

There is no better way to understand America than by understanding the cultural history of the American Dream. Rather than just a powerful philosophy or ideology, the Dream is thoroughly woven into the fabric of everyday life, playing a vital role in who we are, what we do, and why we do it. No other idea or mythology has as much influence on our individual and collective lives. Tracing the history of the phrase in popular culture, Samuel gives readers a field guide to the evolution of our national identity over the last eighty years. Samuel tells the story chronologically, revealing that there have been six major eras of the mythology since the phrase was coined in 1931. Relying mainly on period magazines and newspapers as his primary source material, the author demonstrates that journalists serving on the front lines of the scene represent our most valuable resource to recover unfiltered stories of the Dream. The problem, however, is that it does not exist, the Dream is just that, a product of our imagination. That it is not real ultimately turns out to be the most significant finding about the Ameri­can Drea, and what makes the story most compelling.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 155 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : American Dream
ISBN : OCLC:1303718109

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The American Dream by Anonim Pdf

Author : Daniel P. Ott
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781496234407

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Harvesting History by Daniel P. Ott Pdf

Harvesting History explores how the highly contentious claim of Cyrus McCormick’s 1831 invention of the reaper came to be incorporated into the American historical canon as a fact. Spanning the late 1870s to the 1930s, Daniel P. Ott reveals how the McCormick family and various affiliated businesses created a usable past about their departed patriarch, Cyrus McCormick, and his role in creating modern civilization through advertising and the emerging historical profession. The mythical invention narrative was widely peddled for decades by salesmen and in catalogs, as well as in corporate public education campaigns and eventually in history books, to justify the family’s elite position in American society and its monopolistic control of the harvester industry in the face of political and popular antagonism. As a parallel story to the McCormicks’ manipulation of the past, Harvesting History also provides a glimpse of the nascent discipline of history during the Progressive Era. Early historians were anxious to demonstrate their value in the new corporate economy as modern professionals and “objective” guardians of the past. While ethics might have prevented them from being historians for hire, their own desire for inclusion in the emerging middle class predisposed them to be receptive to the McCormicks’ financial influence as well as their historical messages.

Author : Mark Wyman
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2016-11-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780809335565

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Immigrants in the Valley by Mark Wyman Pdf

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface to the Paperback Edition -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- 1. The Prairie as a Land of Hope -- 2. From the Irish Island -- 3. Auswanderers -- 4. Needed: Laborers -- 5. Saving ""This Dark Valley""--6. A Land without a Sabbath -- 7. Whiskey and Lager Bier -- 8. The Politicians -- Epilogue -- Sources -- Index -- Back Cover

Author : Robert C. Hauhart,Mitja Sardoč
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 510 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2022-11-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000781564

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The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream by Robert C. Hauhart,Mitja Sardoč Pdf

The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream: Volume 2 explores the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the American Dream in both theory and reality in the twenty-first century. This collection of essays brings together leading scholars from a range of fields to further develop the themes and issues explored in the first volume. The concept of the American Dream, first expounded by James Truslow Adams in The Epic of America in 1931, is at once both ubiquitous and difficult to define. The term perfectly captures the hopes of freedom, opportunity and upward social mobility invested in the nation. However, the American Dream appears increasingly illusory in the face of widening inequality and apparent lack of opportunity, particularly for the poor and ethnic, or otherwise marginalized, minorities in the United States. As such, an understanding of the American Dream through both theoretical analyses and empirical studies, whether qualitative or quantitative, is crucial to understanding contemporary America. Like the first volume of The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream, this collection will be of great interest to students and researchers in a range of fields in the humanities and social sciences.

Author : Jim Cullen
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 9780195173253

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The American Dream by Jim Cullen Pdf

The first "narrative history" traces the thread that binds the dreams and aspirations of most Americans together, exploring shared history and sacred texts--the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence--in search of the origins of these ideas.

Author : Calvin C. Jillson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015059156219

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Pursuing the American Dream by Calvin C. Jillson Pdf

Marked by continuity, renewal, and expansion, the image of the Dream, Jillson contends, has been remarkably constant since well before the American Revolution - an image of a nation offering a better chance for prosperity than any other. His book reveals how that Dream has motivated our nation s leaders and common citizens to move, sometimes grudgingly, toward a more open, diverse, and genuinely competitive society.

Author : Peter Bruck
Publisher : Ernst Klett Sprachen
Page : 49 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 3125136105

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The American dream by Peter Bruck Pdf

Author : Cynthia Culver Prescott
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2007-11
Category : History
ISBN : 0816525439

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Gender and Generation on the Far Western Frontier by Cynthia Culver Prescott Pdf

"Prescott traces long-term ideological changes, arguing that favorable farming conditions enabled Oregon families to progress from accepting flexible frontier roles to participating in a national consumer culture in only one generation. As settlers' children came of age, participation in this new culture of consumption and refined leisure became the marker of the middle class. Middle-class culture shifted from the first generation's emphasis on genteel behavior to a newer genteel consumption."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Robert J. Ringer
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : Free enterprise
ISBN : UOM:39015003655225

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Restoring the American Dream by Robert J. Ringer Pdf

Author : Hal S. Barron
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2000-11-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780807860267

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Mixed Harvest by Hal S. Barron Pdf

Mixed Harvest explores rural responses to the transformation of the northern United States from an agricultural society into an urban and industrial one. According to Hal S. Barron, country people from New England to North Dakota negotiated the rise of large-scale organizational society and consumer culture in ways marked by both resistance and accommodation, change and continuity. Between 1870 and 1930, communities in the rural North faced a number of challenges. Reformers and professionals sought to centralize authority and diminish local control over such important aspects of rural society as schools and roads; large-scale business corporations wielded increasing market power, to the detriment of independent family farmers; and an encroaching urban-based consumer culture threatened rural beliefs in the primacy of their local communities and the superiority of country life. But, Barron argues, by reconfiguring traditional rural values of localism, independence, republicanism, and agrarian fundamentalism, country people successfully created a distinct rural subculture. Consequently, agrarian society continued to provide a counterpoint to the dominant trends in American society well into the twentieth century.

Author : Susanna Delfino,Michele Gillespie,Louis M. Kyriakoudes
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2011-07-29
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780826219183

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Southern Society and Its Transformations, 1790-1860 by Susanna Delfino,Michele Gillespie,Louis M. Kyriakoudes Pdf

In Southern Society and Its Transformations, a new set of scholars challenge conventional perceptions of the antebellum South as an economically static region compared to the North. Showing that the pre-Civil War South was much more complex than once thought, the essays in this volume examine the economic lives and social realities of three overlooked but important groups of southerners: the working poor, non-slaveholding whites, and middling property holders such as small planters, professionals, and entrepreneurs. The nine essays that comprise Southern Society and Its Transformations explore new territory in the study of the slave-era South, conveying how modernization took shape across the region and exploring the social processes involved in its economic developments. The book is divided into four parts, each analyzing a different facet of white southern life. The first outlines the legal dimensions of race relations, exploring the effects of lynching and the significance of Georgia’s vagrancy laws. Part II presents the advent of the market economy and its effect on agriculture in the South, including the beginning of frontier capitalism. The third section details the rise of a professional middle class in the slave era and the conflicts provoked. The book’s last section deals with the financial aspects of the transformation in the South, including the credit and debt relationships at play and the presence of corporate entrepreneurship. Between the dawn of the nation and the Civil War, constant change was afoot in the American South. Scholarship has only begun to explore these progressions in the past few decades and has given too little consideration to the economic developments with respect to the working-class experience. These essays show that a new generation of scholars is asking fresh questions about the social aspects of the South’s economic transformation. Southern Society and Its Transformations is a complex look at how whole groups of traditionally ignored white southerners in the slave era embraced modernizing economic ideas and actions while accepting a place in their race-based world. This volume will be of interest to students of Southern and U.S. economic and social history.

Author : MaureenDaly Goggin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781351536776

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"Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750?950 " by MaureenDaly Goggin Pdf

Rejecting traditional notions of what constitutes art, this book brings together essays on a variety of fiber arts to recoup women's artistic practices by redefining what counts as art. Although scholars over the last twenty years have turned their attention to fiber arts, redefining the conditions, practices, and products as art, there is still much work to be done to deconstruct the stubborn patriarchal art/craft binary. With essays on a range of fiber art practices, including embroidery, knitting, crocheting, machine stitching, rug making, weaving, and quilting, this collection contributes to the ongoing scholarly redefinition of women's relationship to creative activity. Focusing on women as producers of cultural products and creators of social value, the contributors treat women as active subjects and problematize their material practices and artifacts in the complex world of textiles. Each essay also examines the ways in which needlework both performs gender and, in turn, constructs gender. Moreover, in concentrating on and theorizing material practices of textiles, these essays reorient the study of fiber arts towards a focus on process?the making of the object, including the conditions under which it was made, by whom, and for what purpose?as a way to rethink the fiber arts as social praxis.

Author : Bob Batchelor
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 1703 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2008-12-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780313364112

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American Pop [4 volumes] by Bob Batchelor Pdf

Pop culture is the heart and soul of America, a unifying bridge across time bringing together generations of diverse backgrounds. Whether looking at the bright lights of the Jazz Age in the 1920s, the sexual and the rock-n-roll revolution of the 1960s, or the thriving social networking websites of today, each period in America's cultural history develops its own unique take on the qualities define our lives.American Pop: Popular Culture Decade by Decade is the most comprehensive reference on American popular culture by decade ever assembled, beginning with the 1900s up through today. The four-volume set examines the fascinating trends across decades and eras by shedding light on the experiences of Americans young and old, rich and poor, along with the influences of arts, entertainment, sports, and other cultural forces. Whether a pop culture aficionado or a student new to the topic, American Pop provides readers with an engaging look at American culture broken down into discrete segments, as well as analysis that gives insight into societal movements, trends, fads, and events that propelled the era and the nation. In-depth chapters trace the evolution of pop culture in 11 key categories: Key Events in American Life, Advertising, Architecture, Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Comics, Entertainment, Fashion, Food, Music, Sports and Leisure Activities, Travel, and Visual Arts. Coverage includes: How Others See Us, Controversies and scandals, Social and cultural movements, Trends and fads, Key icons, and Classroom resources. Designed to meet the high demand for resources that help students study American history and culture by the decade, this one-stop reference provides readers with a broad and interdisciplinary overview of the numerous aspects of popular culture in our country. Thoughtful examination of our rich and often tumultuous popular history, illustrated with hundreds of historical and contemporary photos, makes this the ideal source to turn to for ready reference or research.