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Transnational America
Everett Helmut Akam
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Description for Transnational America
Hardback. The uniqueness of the many American ethnicities provides the roots of US identity, yet recognizing those differences often makes Americans feel isolated from the whole. This work relies on the tradition of cultural pluralism to argue that unity and individuality are not mutually exclusive. Series: American Intellectual Culture. Num Pages: 240 pages, bibliography, index. BIC Classification: 1KBB; JFC; JFSL1. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 160 x 19. Weight in Grams: 426.
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
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2002
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield United States
Number of pages
240
Condition
New
Series
American Intellectual Culture
Number of Pages
240
Place of Publication
Lanham, MD, United States
ISBN
9780742521971
SKU
V9780742521971
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-15
About Everett Helmut Akam
Everett Helmut Akam is professor of history at Casper College.
Reviews for Transnational America
Well organized. Recommended. . . . Excellent for graduate students and above.
CHOICE
Looking to a neglected past, Everett Akam offers a richer perspective on the tensions between diversity and community than that afforded by contemporary 'identity politics' and its critics. Carefully recovering the insights of an earlier generation of 'cultural pluralists,' he evokes a compelling vision of difference within unity which promised an American identity that averted the perils of both stifling homogeneity and divisive separatism.
Robert Westbrook, professor of history, University of Rochester; author of John Dewey and American Democracy Akam weaves a fascinating thesis from the diverse strands of thought in our European/colonial/frontier development. Questioning why we have not created a transnational culture and insist on some form of isolation or absorption, he clarifies some of the major conceptual problems we share today. A brilliant analysis of our society as a quasi-culture.
Vine Deloria Jr., author of Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact, God is Red: A Native View of Religion, and many others Confounding the standard academic division of labor, Akam blends the intellectual histories of pragmatism, ethnicity and race into a highly original synthesis organized around the concept of cultural pluralism. Rejecting both tribalism and universalism, he calls for an ideal of diversity in unity that respects the irreducible particularity of distinct cultures while still maintaining a common national culture capable of uniting people across their local cultural communities. Akam's powerful, concluding tribute to the Civil Rights Movement as the most significant, if short-lived, historical embodiment of this pluralist ideal should serve as the starting point for all future discussions of multiculturalism in America.
Christopher Shannon, author of A World Made Safe For Differences: Cold War Intellectuals and the Politics of Identity This book is most valuable for its examination of Locke in context.
Journal of American History
Akam's Transnational America captures better than any previous work the philosophical aspirations of the early-twentieth century cultural pluralists. Bourne, Kallen, Collier, and Locke emerge here not only as critics of the 'melting-pot ideal,' but as thinkers engaged with the most vital issues of modernity. Their inquiry into the nature of truth, values, selfhood, and community in a pluralistic universe has much to offer the contemporary debate about ethno-racial diversity and U.S. national identity. There's wisdom in this book.
Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University
CHOICE
Looking to a neglected past, Everett Akam offers a richer perspective on the tensions between diversity and community than that afforded by contemporary 'identity politics' and its critics. Carefully recovering the insights of an earlier generation of 'cultural pluralists,' he evokes a compelling vision of difference within unity which promised an American identity that averted the perils of both stifling homogeneity and divisive separatism.
Robert Westbrook, professor of history, University of Rochester; author of John Dewey and American Democracy Akam weaves a fascinating thesis from the diverse strands of thought in our European/colonial/frontier development. Questioning why we have not created a transnational culture and insist on some form of isolation or absorption, he clarifies some of the major conceptual problems we share today. A brilliant analysis of our society as a quasi-culture.
Vine Deloria Jr., author of Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact, God is Red: A Native View of Religion, and many others Confounding the standard academic division of labor, Akam blends the intellectual histories of pragmatism, ethnicity and race into a highly original synthesis organized around the concept of cultural pluralism. Rejecting both tribalism and universalism, he calls for an ideal of diversity in unity that respects the irreducible particularity of distinct cultures while still maintaining a common national culture capable of uniting people across their local cultural communities. Akam's powerful, concluding tribute to the Civil Rights Movement as the most significant, if short-lived, historical embodiment of this pluralist ideal should serve as the starting point for all future discussions of multiculturalism in America.
Christopher Shannon, author of A World Made Safe For Differences: Cold War Intellectuals and the Politics of Identity This book is most valuable for its examination of Locke in context.
Journal of American History
Akam's Transnational America captures better than any previous work the philosophical aspirations of the early-twentieth century cultural pluralists. Bourne, Kallen, Collier, and Locke emerge here not only as critics of the 'melting-pot ideal,' but as thinkers engaged with the most vital issues of modernity. Their inquiry into the nature of truth, values, selfhood, and community in a pluralistic universe has much to offer the contemporary debate about ethno-racial diversity and U.S. national identity. There's wisdom in this book.
Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University