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The Breeding of an Adversarial Culture

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A Nation of Adversaries

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Abstract

American society has always had its cultural myths. From the 17th-century Puritan “City on a Hill” to the rugged individualism of the Western frontier, certain cultural models have been used to characterize and describe American society. Perhaps the most enduring social model and cultural myth has been that of the melting pot. Symbolized by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the melting pot model described America as a country where immigrants from different corners of the world came to start a new life by stepping out of their previous ethnic identities and into the American melting pot. It was this melting pot in which they were all transformed into the ingredients of one and the same national brew.

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Notes

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  1. Patrick M. Garry
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Garry, P.M. (1997). The Breeding of an Adversarial Culture. In: A Nation of Adversaries. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6604-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6604-9_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-45564-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-6604-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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