The Evolution of the American Community

Abstract

Nominalism and realism are defined as types of community integration. In the beginning the North American community was realistically integrated because it represented the transplanting of the medieval semifeudal village on our eastern coast. With the growth of the frontier and the mixing of peoples, Americanism and nominalist forms of community organization came to be almost identical. While pure realism or pure nominalism seldon exists in fact, a number of variables tend to emphasize one or the other. In America, age of settlement has been a constant factor promoting community realism. Mobility, low and differential fertility, urbanism, trade and commerce, and centralization of government and economic life have promoted community nominalism. On the whole, however, the evolution of the American community, after its first settlement, has been toward realistic integration. This process will probably move more rapidly in the twentieth than in the nineteenth century because the community-forming forces are gaining the upper hand over those which promote disintegration.