A Measure of Detachment: Richard Hofstadter and the Progressive Historians
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Unpopular Policies and the Theory of Representative Democracy Pierre Salmon
Unpopular policies and the theory of representative democracy Pierre Salmon To cite this version: Pierre Salmon. Unpopular policies and the theory of representative democracy. [Research Report] Laboratoire d’analyse et de techniques économiques(LATEC). 1991, 25 p., ref. bib. : 2 p. hal- 01526994 HAL Id: hal-01526994 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01526994 Submitted on 23 May 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. LABORATOIRE D'ANALYSE ET DE TECHNIQUES ÉCONOMIQUES UMR 5601 CNRS DOCUMENT DE TRAVAIL �I CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE I SCIENTIFIQUE '1 UNIVERSITE DE BOURGOGNE Pôle d'Economie et de Gestion 2, boulevard Gabriel - 21000 DIJON - Tél. 03 80 3954 30 - Fax 03 80 39 54 43 ISSN : 1260-8556 9102 UNPOPULAR POLICIES AND THE THEORY OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY Pierre SALMON* May 1991 Université de Bourgogne * I am grateful to the participants of the Fourth Villa Colombella Seminar, especially Ron Wintrobe, to Alain Wolfelsperger and to an anonymous referee for their helpful comments. The errors and shortcomings that remain are solely my responsability. INTRODUCTION: IS MOB RULE OUR IDEAL OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY? Their platforms reflect concern with enhancing the probability of being elected, but some candidates often, or all candidates occasionally, voluntarily adept stances that reduce that probability. -
The Paranoid Style in American History of Science *
The Paranoid Style in American History of Science * George REISCH Received: 31.5.2012 Final version: 30.7.2012 BIBLID [0495-4548 (2012) 27: 75; pp. 323-342] ABSTRACT: Historian Richard Hofstadter’s observations about American cold-war politics are used to contextualize Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and argue that substantive claims about the nature of sci- entific knowledge and scientific change found in Structure were adopted from this cold-war political cul- ture. Keywords: Thomas S. Kuhn; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ; Richard Hofstadter; “The Paranoid Style in American Politics;” Cold War; James B. Conant; Brainwashing. RESUMEN: Las observaciones del historiador Richard Hofstadter sobre la política americana en la Guerra Fría se uti- lizan para contextualizar La estructura de las revoluciones científicas de Thomas Kuhn y sostener que algunas afirmaciones fundamentales sobre la naturaleza del conocimiento científico y el cambio científico que se pueden hallar en La estructura fueron adoptadas de esta cultura política de la Guerra Fría. Palabras clave: Thomas S. Kuhn; La estructura de las revoluciones científicas ; Richard Hofstadter; “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”; Guerra Fría; James B. Conant; lavado de cerebro. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant. –Richard Hofstadter (1964, 4) 1. Introduction The conventional wisdom holds that Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions of- fered a revolutionary critique of existing scholarship about science. The book swept aside misconceptions wrought by three kinds of intellectuals—logic-chopping philos- ophers who confused their logical models and formulas with historical fact, Whiggish historians who viewed science’s past through the lenses of the present, and text-book writers whose brief, potted historical introductions obscured science’s dynamic, revo- lutionary history. -
Preventing Mob Rule
In a democracy, the people rule. This means that if a majority of HANDOUT: the public demands a law or public policy, elected leaders have an obligation to seriously consider that demand. However, sometimes the majority demands a law or public policy Preventing that could trample the rights of minorities. The phenomena of the majority wanting to trample the rights of a minority is also known as Mob Rule: ochlocracy, or mob rule. Passing a Law To keep ochlocracy at bay, liberal democracies spread power amongst several institutions. The separate powers of the Senate, the House of Commons, and even the Queen illustrate how the power to create and enact laws is spread amongst different institutions in Canada. Each institution can act as a check on the power of the others. By having power spread across institutions, the law-creation process can be more reasoned and less mob-like. There are more opportunities to consider positions, consult experts, and ask questions. This helps temper emotions, protect minority rights, and promote reason when creating laws. The Path to Creating a Law In Canada, the federal government cannot simply declare a law, without a debate and without that law being subjected to reviews and consideration. The rule of law requires that there are open and established processes to guide the creation of laws. The process below outlines the steps to creating most federal laws in Canada. The process for creating laws at the provincial level is similar, except that there is no Senate review of provincial laws. Three Readings When a proposed law—also known as a bill—is first introduced in the House of Commons, it must pass a series of three votes. -
Spooked by the Demos: Aristotle's Conception of the Good Citizenry
Problematique Issue 11 (Spring) 2007 Bell: Spooked by the Demos Spooked by the Demos: Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Citizenry Against the Mob Colleen Bell This article addresses two aspects of Aristotle’s The Politics.1 The first concerns his conception of the good citizenry and the second concerns the character that he attributes to a politically active demos. At times, Aristotle refers to this latter category as the ‘mob’ which serves as the citizenry’s disruptive counterpart.2 I explore how the ideas of rationality, virtue and excellence are used to characterize the good citizenry, while the mob, driven by passion, moral depravity and irrationality, is represented as its alterity. The relationship between the good citizenry and the mob, I argue, is critical to the image that Aristotle casts of the best possible constitution; one designed to be largely invulnerable to revolution and to the formation of an active, democratic polity. His awareness of the potential for the demos to transform into a form of ‘mob rule’ leads him to compromise the ideal constitution, composed of a wholly ‘rational’ and ‘virtuous’ citizenry, by extending citizenship rights to a limited and select portion of the demos in order to minimize the likelihood of mob driven revolution. Aristotle provides the classical account of the citizen as one who has both the knowledge, and the ability to rule and be ruled. 3 Key is the idea that while ‘man’ is distinguished by reason, not all ‘men’ posses sufficient reason to warrant citizenship. 4 In holding that not all of humanity has the capacity to rule, essential to his conception of the good citizen is the willful exclusion of women, slaves, immigrants, and children from both political subjectivity and participation. -
The Democratic Party and the Transformation of American Conservatism, 1847-1860
PRESERVING THE WHITE MAN’S REPUBLIC: THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN CONSERVATISM, 1847-1860 Joshua A. Lynn A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2015 Approved by: Harry L. Watson William L. Barney Laura F. Edwards Joseph T. Glatthaar Michael Lienesch © 2015 Joshua A. Lynn ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Joshua A. Lynn: Preserving the White Man’s Republic: The Democratic Party and the Transformation of American Conservatism, 1847-1860 (Under the direction of Harry L. Watson) In the late 1840s and 1850s, the American Democratic party redefined itself as “conservative.” Yet Democrats’ preexisting dedication to majoritarian democracy, liberal individualism, and white supremacy had not changed. Democrats believed that “fanatical” reformers, who opposed slavery and advanced the rights of African Americans and women, imperiled the white man’s republic they had crafted in the early 1800s. There were no more abstract notions of freedom to boundlessly unfold; there was only the existing liberty of white men to conserve. Democrats therefore recast democracy, previously a progressive means to expand rights, as a way for local majorities to police racial and gender boundaries. In the process, they reinvigorated American conservatism by placing it on a foundation of majoritarian democracy. Empowering white men to democratically govern all other Americans, Democrats contended, would preserve their prerogatives. With the policy of “popular sovereignty,” for instance, Democrats left slavery’s expansion to territorial settlers’ democratic decision-making. -
Theorizing Three Cases of Otherness in the USA: Hofstadter, Foucault, and Scott
University of New England DUNE: DigitalUNE All Theses And Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2017 Theorizing Three Cases Of Otherness In The SU A: Hofstadter, Foucault, And Scott Austin Coco University of New England Follow this and additional works at: http://dune.une.edu/theses Part of the Political Science Commons © 2017 Austin Coco Preferred Citation Coco, Austin, "Theorizing Three Cases Of Otherness In The SAU : Hofstadter, Foucault, And Scott" (2017). All Theses And Dissertations. 136. http://dune.une.edu/theses/136 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at DUNE: DigitalUNE. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses And Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DUNE: DigitalUNE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Austin Coco Dr. Ahmida PSC 491 4/18//17 Theorizing Three Cases of Otherness in the USA: Hofstadter, Foucault, and Scott Austin Coco Coco|1 Dr. Ahmida PSC 491 4/18//17 Theorizing Three Cases of Otherness in the USA: Hofstadter, Foucault, and Scott Introduction This essay examines three cases of otherness: the Italian other in the 1920s, the Communist other during the Red Scare of the 1950s, and the Muslim other in post-2001. The similarities and differences of these cases will be analyzed through Richard Hofstadter’s analysis of the production of otherness for what he calls the paranoid style, Foucault’s analysis of power relations, and James Scott’s analysis of power relations and language. This essay will assess the theoretical methods behind “otherness” that Hofstadter, Foucault, and Scott use, the three cases of “otherness”, and the similarities and differences between the cases and how the theoretical mechanisms apply. -
What Kind of Book Is the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution?
What Kind of Book is The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution? eric nelson first read Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the I American Revolution when I was a nineteen-year-old stu- dent in the Harvard History Department’s sophomore tutorial. The text was assigned by my late friend and teacher Mark Kish- lansky, who began our discussion of the book by posing the same deceptively simple question that he asked about each his- toriographical masterwork on the syllabus: “What kind of book is this?” I remember thinking rather smugly that, in this case at least, the question had an obvious and straightforward answer: surely, Ideological Origins was a work of intellectual history— and, more specifically, a contribution to the history of early American political thought. But it now strikes me that this an- swer, while not incorrect, was, and is, quite beside the point. Mark was not asking us a banal question about the genre to which Bailyn’s monograph belonged, but rather a deep one about how Bailyn understood that genre. To present Ideological Origins as a history of political thought is, implicitly, to defend a particular conception of what sort of thing “political thought” is and what its history looks like. What, Mark wished us to pon- der, is that conception? I found myself asking this question with a renewed sense of urgency more than fifteen years later as I grappled witha I am indebted to Bernard Bailyn, Richard Bourke, Jonathan Gienapp, James Hank- ins, Michael Rosen, and Quentin Skinner for extremely helpful comments on this essay. -
Imperialism, Racism, and Fear of Democracy in Richard Ely's Progressivism
The Rot at the Heart of American Progressivism: Imperialism, Racism, and Fear of Democracy in Richard Ely's Progressivism Gerald Friedman Department of Economics University of Massachusetts at Amherst November 8, 2015 This is a sketch of my long overdue intellectual biography of Richard Ely. It has been way too long in the making and I have accumulated many more debts than I can acknowledge here. In particular, I am grateful to Katherine Auspitz, James Boyce, Bruce Laurie, Tami Ohler, and Jean-Christian Vinel, and seminar participants at Bard, Paris IV, Paris VII, and the Five College Social History Workshop. I am grateful for research assistance from Daniel McDonald. James Boyce suggested that if I really wanted to write this book then I would have done it already. And Debbie Jacobson encouraged me to prioritize so that I could get it done. 1 The Ely problem and the problem of American progressivism The problem of American Exceptionalism arose in the puzzle of the American progressive movement.1 In the wake of the Revolution, Civil War, Emancipation, and radical Reconstruction, no one would have characterized the United States as a conservative polity. The new Republican party took the United States through bloody war to establish a national government that distributed property to settlers, established a national fiat currency and banking system, a progressive income tax, extensive program of internal improvements and nationally- funded education, and enacted constitutional amendments establishing national citizenship and voting rights for all men, and the uncompensated emancipation of the slave with the abolition of a social system that had dominated a large part of the country.2 Nor were they done. -
Than Faith: Latter-Day Saint Women As Politically Aware and Active Americans, 1830-1860 Kim M
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Western Washington University Western Washington University Western CEDAR WWU Graduate School Collection WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship Spring 2017 More Than Faith: Latter-Day Saint Women as Politically Aware and Active Americans, 1830-1860 Kim M. (Kim Michaelle) Davidson Western Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Davidson, Kim M. (Kim Michaelle), "More Than Faith: Latter-Day Saint Women as Politically Aware and Active Americans, 1830-1860" (2017). WWU Graduate School Collection. 558. https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet/558 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in WWU Graduate School Collection by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. More Than Faith: Latter-Day Saint Women as Politically Aware and Active Americans 1830-1860 By Kim Michaelle Davidson Accepted in Partial Completion of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Kathleen L. Kitto, Dean of the Graduate School ADVISORY COMMITTEE Chair, Dr. Jared Hardesty Dr. Hunter Price Dr. Holly Folk MASTER’S THESIS In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s degree at Western Washington University, I grant to Western Washington University the non- exclusive royalty-free right to archive, reproduce, distribute, and display the thesis in any and all forms, including electronic format, via any digital library mechanisms maintained by WWU. -
Uncovering the Reformation Roots of American Marriage and Divorce Law
Uncovering the Reformation Roots of American Marriage and Divorce Law Judith Areent INTRO D UCTIO N ............................................................................................... 30 I. SIXTEENTH CENTURY EUROPEAN MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAW R EFO R M .............................................................................................. 34 A. Luther Advocates Civil Marriage and Fault-Based Divorce .......... 35 B. Zwingli Inspires Zurich to Enact the First Modem Marriage and D ivorce Law ....................................................................... 44 C. Calvin's Geneva Adopts a Civil Marriage and Divorce O rdinance .................................................................................. 49 II. REFORMATION IN ENGLAND ............................................................... 53 A. Henry VIII Opposes Divorce ..................................................... 53 B. Archbishop Cranmer Proposes the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum....................................................................... 54 C. The Rise of Godly Puritans and Support for Marriage and D ivorce Reform ......................................................................... 59 III. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAW IN COLONIAL AMERICA .................... 61 A. Civil Marriage in Plymouth Plantation ...................................... 61 B. Civil Marriage and Divorce in Massachusetts Bay Colony ........... 64 C. Civil Marriage, but No Divorce, in the Colonies Outside New E ngland ................................................................................... -
Under the Direction of Professor David A
ABSTRACT MEDLIN, ERIC PATRICK. The Historian and the Liberal Intellectual: Power and Postwar American Historians, 1948-1975. (Under the direction of Professor David A. Zonderman.) Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Richard Hofstadter, and Daniel Boorstin were three of the most influential American historians of the post-World War II period. They sold millions of books, influenced historiographic debates, and filled prominent positions in society and government. Schlesinger spent two years as a special adviser to President Kennedy, Hofstadter served on the board of the forerunner to PBS, and Boorstin became the first historian to be appointed Librarian of Congress. Over the past five decades, historians have characterized these writers as conservative academics who focused on consensus and agreement in American history. My work challenges that notion. In this thesis, I analyze the writings, speeches, and personal correspondence of Schlesinger, Hofstadter, and Boorstin between 1945 and 1975. My study focuses on both their political ideas and their roles in society. I look at how their work articulated different arguments for and ideas about liberalism during this period. I argue that their positions and roles in society changed in response to their ideas about what society needed from intellectuals. I also argue that the experiences and successes of these figures a provide a template for contemporary public intellectuals who desire both academic and public relevance. © Copyright 2017 by Eric Patrick Medlin All Rights Reserved The Historian and the Liberal Intellectual: Power and Postwar American Historians, 1948-1975 by Eric Patrick Medlin A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2017 APPROVED BY: ____________________________ ____________________________ Julia E. -
The Age of Reform After Fifty Years
Downloaded from https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781400001961 FORUM: RICHARD HOFSTADTER'S THE AGE OF REFORM AFTER FIFTY YEARS https://www.cambridge.org/core [Note: The following two essays are revised versions of presentations made by Robert Johnston and Gillis Harp at the annual meeting of the British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) in Cambridge, England, in October 2005. BrANCH invited SHGAPE to help organize the conference. Based on a suggestion by Robert Johnston, SHGAPE con- tributed a session commemorating Richard Hofstadter's book on the Populist and Progressive movements, first published in 1955 and much-acclaimed and much-criticized since. While Professor Johnston had the assignment of assessing The Age of Reform in retro- . IP address: spect, Gillis Harp attempted to put the book within its contemporary intellectual context. Beyond evaluating this noteworthy book, the session had the intention as well of prompting memories from a few people in attendance who knew Hofstadter as a friend and colleague. 170.106.35.229 In this, the session succeeded, reminding those present that The Age of Reform reflected the personality of its author and is more than a historiographic interpretation against which one measures one's own views.! , on 25 Sep 2021 at 06:23:25 The Age of Reform: A Defense of Richard Hofstadter Fifty Years , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at On* Robert D. Johnston, University of Illinois at Chicago When we attend academic history conferences, it has become common to hold sessions honoring important books of the moment. This makes con- siderable sense, as authors get to engage with thoughtful critics in a process that, we hope, advances the discipline.