Transnational America: Cultural Pluralist Thought in the Twentieth Century
In Transnational America, Everett Akam brilliantly addresses one of the most fundamental issues of our time—how Americans might achieve a sense of racial and ethnic identity while simultaneously retaining the common ground of shared traditions and citizenship. Akam's study transcends the current debates over multiculturalism and cultural pluralism by retrieving the tradition of cultural pluralist thought neglected since the first half of the twentieth century. He argues that thinkers such as Randolph Bourne, John Collier, Horace Kallen, and Alain Locke sought to reconcile diversity and community by challenging the cults of individualism, universal reason, and assimilation typical of their age. Akam goes on to demonstrate how cultural pluralist thought was eclipsed during the second half of the twentieth century by an intellectual mainstream that both discounted pluralists' emphasis on culture and heralded interest-group pluralism as a model for racial and ethnic relations.

Transnational America is an engaging look at the difficulty of achieving the delicate synthesis between identity and community that will be of interest to sociologists, political theorists, and historians alike.
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Transnational America: Cultural Pluralist Thought in the Twentieth Century
In Transnational America, Everett Akam brilliantly addresses one of the most fundamental issues of our time—how Americans might achieve a sense of racial and ethnic identity while simultaneously retaining the common ground of shared traditions and citizenship. Akam's study transcends the current debates over multiculturalism and cultural pluralism by retrieving the tradition of cultural pluralist thought neglected since the first half of the twentieth century. He argues that thinkers such as Randolph Bourne, John Collier, Horace Kallen, and Alain Locke sought to reconcile diversity and community by challenging the cults of individualism, universal reason, and assimilation typical of their age. Akam goes on to demonstrate how cultural pluralist thought was eclipsed during the second half of the twentieth century by an intellectual mainstream that both discounted pluralists' emphasis on culture and heralded interest-group pluralism as a model for racial and ethnic relations.

Transnational America is an engaging look at the difficulty of achieving the delicate synthesis between identity and community that will be of interest to sociologists, political theorists, and historians alike.
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Transnational America: Cultural Pluralist Thought in the Twentieth Century

Transnational America: Cultural Pluralist Thought in the Twentieth Century

by Everett Helmut Akam
Transnational America: Cultural Pluralist Thought in the Twentieth Century

Transnational America: Cultural Pluralist Thought in the Twentieth Century

by Everett Helmut Akam

Paperback(New Edition)

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Overview

In Transnational America, Everett Akam brilliantly addresses one of the most fundamental issues of our time—how Americans might achieve a sense of racial and ethnic identity while simultaneously retaining the common ground of shared traditions and citizenship. Akam's study transcends the current debates over multiculturalism and cultural pluralism by retrieving the tradition of cultural pluralist thought neglected since the first half of the twentieth century. He argues that thinkers such as Randolph Bourne, John Collier, Horace Kallen, and Alain Locke sought to reconcile diversity and community by challenging the cults of individualism, universal reason, and assimilation typical of their age. Akam goes on to demonstrate how cultural pluralist thought was eclipsed during the second half of the twentieth century by an intellectual mainstream that both discounted pluralists' emphasis on culture and heralded interest-group pluralism as a model for racial and ethnic relations.

Transnational America is an engaging look at the difficulty of achieving the delicate synthesis between identity and community that will be of interest to sociologists, political theorists, and historians alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780742521988
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date: 08/20/2002
Series: American Intellectual Culture
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 5.84(w) x 8.96(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Everett Helmut Akam is professor of history at Casper College.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Truth and Consequences Chapter 3 Transnational America versus the Melting Pot Chapter 4 Horace Kallen and the Community of Consumption Chapter 5 John Collier and the Red Atlantis Chapter 6 Merger without Fusion: Alain Locke's Cosmopolitan Pluralism Chapter 7 The Eclipse of Cultural Pluralist Thought Chapter 8 Epilogue: The Civil Rights Movement as Beloved Community
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