Right-wing resistance to the process of American hegemony: the changing political geography of nativism in Pennsylvania, 1920–1998

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Abstract The process of hegemony requires the construction of a new and dynamic prime modernity in the capitalist world-economy. Such a process produces new social relations and, therefore, dislocations that invoke political reaction within the hegemonic power. In the case of American hegemony a new urban-based modernity marginalized rural areas and led to the establishment of suburbia as the centerpiece of American modernity. Two periods of nativism illustrate the social dislocations at the beginning and end of American hegemony, Ku Klux Klan activity in the 1920s and hate crimes in the 1990s. Using data for the state of Pennsylvania, the geography of 1920s Klan activity is contrasted with the geography of reported hate crimes in the 1990s. The two spatial patterns illustrate that nativism was a rural phenomena in the 1920s and a suburban phenomena in the 1990s. Nativism at the beginning of American hegemony was a reaction to the new modernity being defined in urban centers. As American hegemony experienced a decline, nativist reaction was found in the social setting that epitomized American consumer modernity, suburbia.