Chapter 2 The American Character Complete the following sentences in your own words. There may be more than one answer. 1. Americans are ____________________________ 2. They like __________________________________ 3. They don ’ t really like _________________________ 4. They act ___________________________________ 5. Most Americans believe in _____________________ 6. The United States is a country where __________________ 7. The average American is _____________________________ 8. Americans today are worried about _________________________ 9. The most important thing in life to most Americans is ______________ Discussion Questions: 1. What ’ s good and what ’ s bad about majority rule? 2. Americans are usually described as sociable, conventional people who join groups and try to behave like everyone else in the group. However, some American books and movies have made a hero of the person who fights the majority will and tries to accomplish something good independently. What ’ s better to be a joiner or a loner? 3. Do you think wealth and possessions make a person important? If not, what does? If yes, what else does? 4. Americans are often accused of admiring youthful beauty and energy over the experience and wisdom of older people. Who should be most respected young adults, middle-aged people, or senior citizens? Why? Barry Goldwater, a candidate for the presidency in 1964, said that most poor people are poor because they deserve to be. Most Americans would find this a harsh statement, but many might think there was some truth in it. These basic values do not tell the whole story of the American character. Rather, they should be thought of as themes, which will appear throughout the book as we continue to explore more facets of the American character and how it affects life in the United States. People and Culture: Diversity and Convergence American movies, television programs, magazines, popular music, fast food, dress, software, along with a host of other goods and services, have been aggressively exported to the rest of the world. As a result, outsiders view the U. S. as a largely homogeneous country of superhighways connecting widely separated sky-scraping cities; everywhere similarly auto-oriented, single-family dwelling suburbs dotted around shopping malls; deteriorating, crime-ridden, minority-dominated inner cities; enormous, technologically advanced and specialized factory farms; human activities firmly in control of the natural world. This perception does correspond to a discernible trend of greater cultural convergence over the last quarter of the 20th century. Together, mass communications, mass production, big business, and central governments have been powerful agents in shaping a mass culture today with standardized tastes, behavior, products, and artifacts. What's more, speech patterns, dress, music, sport, foods, and religion, to name a few culture traits, are each giving up their regional/local expressions and have been replaced by nation-wide common habits. For example, the distinctive accents of the American South have become progressively more modulated, and country music, once also centered in the South, has spread to the entire country. What will happen to this seemingly placeless cultural convergence when America enters the 21st century? Given the widespread postmodern values, including an enthusiasm for local landscapes, historic preservation and ethnic communities and traditions, cultural critics argue, it makes sense that regional diversity and cultural convergence will incongruously exist side by side at different levels of American society. One new approach to American cultural geography is to distinguish traditional from voluntary culture areas. A traditional culture region is formed over a long period of time in an environmental setting by people who come to share a common worldview and way of life. Such traditional areas are never static: assimilation, interactions with other areas and internal events and inventions are always bringing changes. A voluntary region, on the other hand, is formed by people with similar interests moving to a common destination region. What follows is a region-by-region description and interpretation of America's cultural diversity. Traditional Culture Regions New England New England includes Massachusetts. Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. This area was nationally preeminent in the century following the American Revolution in a wide range of activities: manufacturing, engineering, maritime trade, finance, education, literature, theology, science and civic values. Today, the southern part of New England retains this national preeminence as part of Megalopolis. Within this area Puritanism still defines the cultural landscape. A New England "town" combined an agricultural area with a service center into a single political unit with the size of the rural area large enough to sustain a church. In the town center the church and other civic buildings were arrayed around a common. The white buildings around a green common have become a powerful visual icon for New England and for the goodness of small-town America in general. Today, the historic New England village is an indispensable part of the cultural capital of the region's tourist industry. Midland Culture Area Located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, the Midland area became a door through which for the first time flowed immigrants from the European mainland as well as from Great Britain. An ethnically diverse and religiously tolerant area, the Midland area set the cultural pattern for the future U.S.'s larger cultural identity — liberty, tolerance and pursuit of economic freedom, the Midland region adopted the gridiron town, an influential form of this economic freedom, and it spread all over the country while European urban forms and New England towns remained on the eastern seaboard. The philosophy behind the gridiron town is everywhere the same and therefore ideal for the speculator, surveyor and real estate agent laying out and expanding new towns. The South The cultural features of this much larger traditional region — which runs from Kentucky to northern Florida and from Virginia to Texas along with many sub-regions — are much more homegrown than the others which cultivated and projected certain British and French habits. Here, British settlers, African slaves, a humid subtropical environment and a plantation economic system combined to produce an original cultural set. The South was quite isolated from the rest of America due to slavery, defeat in the Civil War, and a slow reconstruction as well as the lack of new immigration from other countries following initial settlement. Consequently, some traits unique to the South were developed: two societies segregated by race, chronic poverty, local rural allegiances, an inefficient plantation economy, a small town society, strong adherence to evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity (especially Baptist), gracious hospitality, distinctive white and black dialects, regional music such as gospel, blues, jazz, and country. The South of today is more like the rest of the United States. Agriculture, though highly specialized and mechanized, is no longer the dominant economic sector. Industrialization is rapidly growing and getting diversified. Urbanization is approaching national levels. The Midwest The actual cultural landscape of the Midwest was formed by New England, midland and southern cultures each pushing into their own west beyond the Appalachians at the end of the 18th century. While the boundaries and precise cultural meaning of this region have shifted over time, the pastoral ideal has remained central to the Midwest's personality. Nationally, the Midwest was and is viewed as an ideal middle landscape between the vices of the urban and industrial East and the lawless wilderness of the West. Its cultural traits include modest, honest and industrious yeoman farmers cultivating a bountiful garden, a superior moral character produced by working the soil and by self-reliance, egalitarian communities with deep roots in places working for the common good. All these qualities made the Midwest, the heartland of America, into a repository of its basic values. The actual landscape of this region runs from western New York to the Dakotas and from Wisconsin to northern Missouri. The largest influence on the look of the land in the Midwest today was the region-wide implementation of the national Township and Range Survey System. The West When we outsiders talk about the American West, some of us can't help thinking of cowboy films where cowboys conquer nature and represent freedom, masculinity and strength. The reality is quite different from 5 2 the culture of the early western cattle industry. There is no single American West but an assortment of different West. To a significant degree this is because the physical geography from Alaska to the Mexican border separated groups of population one from another by uninhabited mountains and deserts. One early American West with enduring cultural impact is the Hispanic Borderlands stretching from California to Texas. Its influence has been intensified and modernized with the more recent and expanding immigration of Mexicans and others from Central America. Spanish architecture gave a distinctive look to the built environment. Spanish-Mexican dress is the principal component of the American cowboy look. Spanish place names cover many natural and human features. Mexico is steadily drawn more closely into the North American economy. Legal and illegal immigration from Mexico and the rest of the hemisphere show no signs of slacking up, the sway of Spanish-Mexican culture over the Hispanic Borderlands and the rest of the United States will continue to widen in the new century. Another American West is the Mormon culture area of Utah, eastern Nevada and Southern Idaho. This narrowly defined religious community isolated itself from the American mainstream and formed a deep attachment to its sacred land. In distinction from the grazing economy of most western lands, the Mormons raised crops on irrigated land. Voluntary Culture Regions Personal mobility seems to be a universal trait throughout the United States. Heavy and continuous migration to economic, retirement, amenity and recreational destinations has enabled populations to relocate into both established and emerging culture areas. These are classified as voluntary culture regions. Southern and Central California Nationally, this is the most influential voluntary region. In the 19th century, millions of people from all over the United States settled here, attracted by a warm and healthy climate, by economic opportunity, and by the image of a desirable lifestyle and of an ideal America. After World War II, southern California became a cultural center for the nation and the world: the Hollywood movie industry as well as the television and music industries, fashion, fads, architecture, and automobile culture. Today, migration from the rest of the country has been replaced by immigration from all over the globe (especially from Mexico and Asia), making urban southern California the most culturally diverse region in the country. Tropical Florida Tropical Florida is a new voluntary region with its personality just taking shape. The cultural influence of the American South is quite marginal. The essential character of the region is now based on two migration streams: one (earlier) of tourists and retirees from America ’ s colder areas, and the other (later) of Hispanic immigrants, refugees and exiles especially from the Caribbean and South America. The cultural landscape of north tropical Florida is water-oriented, tourist, and exotic with a Mediterranean tropical look. The cultural landscape of south tropical Florida is made of urban concentrations, where Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Haitians are transforming every aspect of the region ’ s society. Megalopolis This Megalopolis, from southern New Hampshire to northern Virginia, has a population of more than 50 million people. Its features, like those of an urban region, include high-intensity interaction, great functional complexity, loss of community, a wide range of personal choices, anonymity, segmented personal relationships and a fast pace of life. It is more than an urban region. It is the powerful nerve center of the United States in banking, public policy, and education. It remains an important gateway for immigrants and retains great ethnic diversity. Pacific Northwest Pacific Northwest is a last area just beginning to emerge as a distinct voluntary culture region. Running from central California through Oregon to Washington, this area has recently started to attract migrants from the rest of the country, for its lifestyle and the beauty of its natural environment. Dubbed as an "Ecotopia," this region is relatively unspoiled and lightly settled. It has found a balance between economic growth and environmental well-being, its extensive rainforests having been well-preserved. Contemporary American Culture and Society Zhou Jingqiong. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2003. 5 3 Exercises: 1. Write T if the statement is true and F if it is false according to the reading material above. (1) The United States is a vast and complex nation marked by immense cultural similarity and constant change. (2) Equality of opportunity is an ideal that is not always put into practice in America. (3) Members of the countercultures reject the conventional wisdom and standards of behavior of the majority and provide alternatives to mainstream culture. (4) Countercultures are groups that share many elements of mainstream culture but maintain their own distinctive customs, values, and lifestyles. (5) One result of this globalization is cultural convergence — a process in which cultures become similar to one another as expanding industrialization brings not only technology but also Western culture to the rest of the world. 2. Choose the best answer to complete the sentences about the chapter. 1). Early settlers came to the North American continent and established colonies mainly because they wanted to be free from__________ a. the power of kings, priests, and noblemen. b. the influence of their families. c. the problems of poverty and hunger. 2). There are no titles of nobility in the United States today because_________ a. no one likes aristocrats. b. the church does not allow it. c. they are forbidden by the Constitution. 3). The price that Americans pay for their individual freedom is_________ a. self-reliance. b. competition. c. hard work. 4). The American belief in self-reliance means that_________ a. receiving money from charity, family, or the government is never allowed. b. if a person is very dependent on others, he or she will be respected by others. c. people must take care of themselves and be independent, or risk losing their personal freedom. 5. The American belief in equality of opportunity means that_________ a. all Americans are rich. b. Americans believe that everyone should be equal. c. everyone should have an equal chance to succeed. 6). In the United States, learning to compete successfully is__________ a. part of growing up. b. not seen as healthy by most people c. not necessary, because Americans believe in equality. 7). Traditionally, immigrants have been able to raise their standard of__________ living by coming to the United States because a. Americans value money more than anything else. b. there were such abundant natural resources. c. the rich have shared their wealth with the poor. 8). Americans see their material possessions as__________ a. having nothing to do with social status. b. the natural reward for their hard work. c. showing no evidence of a person's abilities. 9). A belief in the value of hard work____________ a. developed because it was necessary to work hard to convert natural resources into material goods. b. developed because the immigrants who came here had a natural love of hard work. c. has never been a part of the American value system because people have so much. 10). In reality, such American ideals as equality of opportunity and self-reliance___________ 5 4 a. do not exist because there is no equality in the United States. b. are always put into practice in the United States and truly describe American life. c. are only partly carried out in real life, but are still important because people believe in them. 3. Choose one basic American value you Find most influential in contemporary Chinese society and analyze its effects on your life. 5 5 . chronic poverty, local rural allegiances, an inefficient plantation economy, a small town society, strong adherence to evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity (especially Baptist), gracious. cultural capital of the region's tourist industry. Midland Culture Area Located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, the Midland area became a door through which for the first time. malls; deteriorating, crime-ridden, minority-dominated inner cities; enormous, technologically advanced and specialized factory farms; human activities firmly in control of the natural world. This