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Do Americans live in a liberal capitalist society, where evenhanded competition rules the day, or a society in which big money, private security, and personal relations determine key social outcomes? Vladimir Shlapentokh and Joshua Woods argue that the answer to these questions cannot be found among the conventional models used to describe the nation. Offering a new analytical tool, the authors present a provocative explanation of the nature of contemporary society by comparing its essential characteristics to those of medieval European societies. Their feudal model emphasizes five elements: the weakness of the state and its inability to protect its territory, guarantee the security of its citizens, and enforce laws; conflicts and collusions between and within organizations that involve corruption and other forms of illegal or semilegal actions; the dominance of personal relations in political and economic life; the prevalence of an elitist ideology; and the use of private agents and organizations for the provision of safety and security. Feudal America urges readers to suspend their forward-thinking and futurist orientations, question linear notions of social and historical progression, and look for explanations of contemporary social problems in medieval European history.
Medieval America analyzes literary, legal, and historical archives that help tell a new story about the formation of American culture. Against Cold War–era studies of U.S. culture that argued, following political scientist Louis Hartz’s “liberal consensus” model, that the United States emerged from the Revolutionary era free from Europe’s feudal institutions and uninterested in the production of its medieval culture productions, Robert Yusef Rabiee contends that feudal law and medieval literature were structural components of the American cultural imaginary in the nineteenth century. The racial, gender, and class formations that emerged in the first era of U.S. nation building were deeply indebted to medieval social, political, and religious thought—an observation that challenges the liberal consensus model and allows us to better grasp how American social roles developed. Far from casting off feudal tradition, the early United States folded feudalism into its emerging liberal order, creating a knotted system of values and practices that continue to structure the American experience. Sometimes, the feudal residuum contradicted the liberal values of the Unites States. Other times, the feudal residuum bolstered those values, revealing deep sympathies between so-called “modern” and “premodern” political thought. Medieval America thus aims to reorient our discussions about American cultural and political development in terms of the long arc of European history.
Do Americans live in a liberal capitalist society, where evenhanded competition rules the day, or a society in which big money, private security, and personal relations determine key social outcomes? Vladimir Shlapentokh and Joshua Woods argue that the answer to these questions cannot be found among the conventional models used to describe the nation. Offering a new analytical tool, the authors present a provocative explanation of the nature of contemporary society by comparing its essential characteristics to those of medieval European societies. Their feudal model emphasizes five elements: the weakness of the state and its inability to protect its territory, guarantee the security of its citizens, and enforce laws; conflicts and collusions between and within organizations that involve corruption and other forms of illegal or semilegal actions; the dominance of personal relations in political and economic life; the prevalence of an elitist ideology; and the use of private agents and organizations for the provision of safety and security. Feudal America urges readers to suspend their forward-thinking and futurist orientations, question linear notions of social and historical progression, and look for explanations of contemporary social problems in medieval European history.
Traditional theories of American political development depict the American state as a thoroughly liberal state from its very inception. In this book, first published in 1992, Karen Orren challenges that account by arguing that a remnant of ancient feudalism was, in fact, embedded in the American governmental system, in the form of the law of master and servant, and persisted until well into the twentieth century. The law of master and servant was, she reveals, incorporated in the US Constitution and administered from democratic politics. The fully legislative polity that defines the modern liberal state was achieved in America, Orren argues, only through the initiatives of the labor movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was finally ushered in as part of the processes of collective bargaining instituted by the New Deal. This book represents a fundamental reinterpretation of constitutional change in the United States and of the role of American organized labor, which is shown to be a creator of liberalism, rather than a spoiler of socialism.
The Lord and the Vassal is a classic study of the feudal system by acclaimed historian Francis Palgrave. Drawing on primary sources and his own extensive research, Palgrave offers a comprehensive overview of the political, economic, and social structures that defined feudalism. Written in an engaging, accessible style, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of medieval Europe. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Studies on the influence of the middle ages, and in particular the Arthurian legends, on the culture of North America. Fifteen essays trace North America's enthusiastic engagement with the middle ages from the Revolution to Disney. There are eight studies of the American reception of Arthur: in art (Abbey, Rosenthal), literature (Canadian writers, John Ciardi), scholarship (R.S. Loomis), politics (JFK), and popular culture (Arthurian youth groups, Disneyland, the Excalibur Casino). Other topics include Tom Paine, Elbertus Hubbard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.B. DeMille, popular treatments of Villon, the roots of the New Mexican cuento, and the rhetoric of the Gulf War. Contributors: ROGER WOOD, KYMBERLEY N. PINDER, ERICA E. HIRSHLER, ALAN LUPACK, CHARLOTTE OBERG, RAYMOND H. THOMPSON, STAN GALLOWAY, ROBIN BLAETZ, ROBERT D. PECKHAM, JEFF RIDER, KLAUS P. JANKOFSKY, MARY MORSE, PAMELA S. MORGAN, SUSAN ARONSTEIN, NANCY COINER, JONATHAN M. ELUKIN
The author describes and analyzes four principal factors that distinguish Latin America from the countries that share the northwestern European tradition: the absence of the feudal experience; the absence of religious nonconformity; the absence of any conceivable counterpart of the Industrial Revolution; and the absence of those ideological, social, and political developments associated with the French Revolution. Originally published in 1980. 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.