American Tradition Research Articles

Public Sector Employees’ Political Activity Across Administrative Traditions: Tensions Between Democratic Participation and Bureaucratic Impartiality in an Era of Populism and Democratic Backsliding

In the face of a global rise of populism and democratic backsliding, several scholars have argued that public servants can play an important role in safeguarding the integrity of our democracies. But are public servants equally likely to be politically active in all countries? While a large body of scholarship has found that public sector employees participate in a variety of political activities more than private sector employees, most studies use data from a single, often Western, country. Drawing upon literature studying administrative traditions, this article theoretically considers differences in traditions’ participation-impartiality equilibrium—the balance struck between the democratic value of political participation and the bureaucratic value of impartiality—and hypothesizes that the nature of the relationship public sector employment has with political activity varies across countries belonging to different traditions. Using data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study, this article empirically investigates whether the nature of the relationship public sector employment has with political activity varies across the Anglo-American, Nordic, Germanic, Napoleonic, Confucian, and Latin American administrative traditions in ways that are consistent with differences in their participation-impartiality equilibrium. The results from various multivariate regression models show that administrative traditions do matter. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, public sector employment’s positive relationship with political activity is less pronounced in the Anglo-American, Nordic and Confucian administrative traditions than in the Germanic, Napoleonic and Latin American traditions. The findings suggest that public sector employees’ role in protecting democratic principles, at least as far as participating in the political realm as private citizens, will likely vary across countries belonging to different administrative traditions.

Responding to the Rhythms of Labor: Lola Ridge’s Work Songs in The Ghetto and Other Poems

Although nearly forgotten by the end of the twentieth century, Irish-born poet Lola Ridge is now recognized as a highly influential, socially engaged writer and editor who was active in various Modernist and activist circles in the United States from 1907-1941. This essay discusses the lesser-known poems within the “Labor” section of her 1918 publication, The Ghetto and Other Poems. I suggest that these labor poems draw from and participate in the American traditions of work and sorrow songs, thereby positioning Ridge as an avant-garde poet of the working class, a kind of Modernist troubadour. I read Ridge’s “The Song of Iron” alongside Kane O’Donnell’s 1863 long poem, also titled “The Song of Iron,” drawing intertextual connections between these poems, both of which appropriate hymn-like rhythms that gesture toward the work and sorrow song traditions. I address how Ridge’s engagement with these traditions attempts to “make new” various images, metaphors, and cadences found in O’Donnell’s poem, and I situate Ridge’s “Labor” poems within the context of World War One, conscription, labor radicalization, and the suppression of free speech by the federal government. I offer close readings of select poems to further demonstrate her textual play with antiphony and other communal poetics and themes, all of which model on the page the collective action necessary to challenge the capitalist and imperialist aims of the modern era.

Nathan's International Hot Dog Eating Contest and the Last Great Public Relations Stunt Man

The Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest is a combination of a sport and a festival. This Fourth of July tradition is annually televised on ESPN in the United States and has become an American spectacle. George Shea, a long-time New York City public relations expert, is the master of ceremonies for the event. He has been part of evolving its scope from a minor public relations photo opportunity for the local newspapers to the nationally televised spectacle that attracts more than twenty-thousand people every year. This interview documents the history of this annual sport festival and records how a small hot dog photo opportunity was transformed into a massive American tradition.

Tayo in Ceremony: The Gray Area for Preserving Native American Culture

This paper examines the themes of cultural preservation and integration in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony, focusing on the character Tayo and his role in bridging the gap between Native American and modern American cultures. Historically, Native Americans have faced isolation, whether by choice or by force, leading to economic, social, and cultural challenges. Government policies such as the Dawes Act and efforts to assimilate Native Americans into modern American society through education and religious conversion have disrupted traditional ways of life and led to a legacy of mistrust and marginalization. Ceremony portrays a path forward, advocating for a balance between maintaining cultural integrity and embracing necessary changes for survival. The novel emphasizes the importance of cultural adaptation and integration, suggesting that Native Americans can thrive without losing their identities by engaging with the broader American society. Through Tayo’s journey of healing and his interactions with the medicine man Betonie, Silko illustrates the potential for cultural hybridity to foster resilience and understanding. By presenting a nuanced vision of coexistence, Ceremony calls for mutual respect and collaboration between Native Americans and modern Americans. The novel encourages a reimagining of cultural identity that is inclusive and adaptable, ensuring that Native American traditions remain vibrant and relevant in a changing world. This paper argues that cultural survival depends not on isolation but on the ability to adapt and integrate, creating a future where multiple cultures can coexist and enrich each other.

Paleoindian, East Asian and Siberian components of the Eskimo oral traditions

The possibility to use analytical units extracted from traditional narratives for the study of prehistoric migrations and contacts follows from the works of Franz Boas published bet­ween 1895 and 1915. In the 1920s, the priorities of American anthropology changed, so the folklore studies missed the opportunity to become a tool of historic research. Here we try to advance a project abandoned a hundred years ago. Our database consists of more than 80,000 abstracts of texts from all over the world and helps to determine the approximate time of spread of narrative episodes and mythological ideas. The study analyzes the parallels between the narrative motives of the Eskimo and motives collected outside of the Arctic. Since the Paleo-Eskimo are associated with the Denbigh flint complex, which appeared in Alaska about 3000 BC and, which is usually believed to descend from the Eas­tern Siberian Belkachi culture, it can be assumed that Siberian links must prevail in the narratives of the Eskimo. Instead, parallels for those episodes and images that typical for the Arctic are found mostly in South America. Apparently, these motives appeared in the New World during its initial peopling around 15,000 cal. BC. The narrative analogies between the Arctic and the East Asia are less numerous and some of them are also found in South American traditions. The American parallels in Siberia are widespread among the Indians but not among the Eskimo. To date, only one episode of Eskimo tales with definite Siberian roots, namely “The Blind Hunter”, has been identified. Though possibly related to the Belkachi tradition, this motif is also typical for the Indians of the North American Northwest, one case recorded in South America. The Eskimo version is slightly different from the main one. It probably split from it in Alaska and was brought to Canada and Greenland by the Paleo-Eskimo or by the Inuit. The Eskimo oral traditions emerged in Alaska and in major part go back not to the Siberian language ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleuts but to the local substratum.

Social Movements, Social Change, and International Cooperation: Strategic Insights from Latin America and the Caribbean

In the wake of the advancements made in civil and human rights in the twentieth century, social movements have come to be regarded as a driving force behind social change. Nevertheless, evidence demonstrates that social transformations driven by certain citizen mobilisations do not always prove beneficial to the most marginalised groups. In January 2023, acts of vandalism were perpetrated against the buildings of public institutions in Brasilia. Similarly, anti-democratic mobilisations have been observed in Colombia against the peace agreement with the FARC and in Chile against the proposed more inclusive constitution. Globally, anti-democracy and other movements that are in opposition to human rights are gaining ground, and their effects are having a detrimental impact on the environment in which organisations that are advocating for excluded sectors are operating. However, Latin American perspectives of social and behaviour change (SBC) emphasise engagement with social movements to contribute to social justice, creating alliances to amplify the voices of those most affected without interfering with the organic nature of citizen-led movements. This prompts the following inquiries: Can we categorize as social movements those with popular roots but espousing hegemonic interests? How can the Latin American tradition of social movement action and reflection inform strategies for social change? How can SBC strategies counteract anti-human rights movements and empower social movements prone to inclusion? This essay addresses these questions.

Mendax v Verax Images of Snowden and Assange in Fiction and Documentary Films

This paper deals with depictions of the whistleblower Edward Snowden and publisher/activist Julian Assange in fiction and documentary Films and aims to compare and contrast the images of the two whistleblowers in the media: one the “good patriot”, the other an “egotistical” outsider. Whereas a film like Snowden (2016) tries to locate Snowden in the tradition of American whistleblowing as a righteous critique of power and depict him as a “good” individual, films about WikiLeaks/Assange tend to focus on his problematic personality, as in The Fifth Estate (2013). Is it possible to think Snowden and Assange together, even when they appear radically different: Mendax, the (noble) “liar” and Verax, the truth teller? At the same time, whistleblowing can be read through critique of ideology as put forth by Slavoj Žižek, a critique that is perhaps only possible through the “naive” gaze of the whistleblower and can help us discern the act of whistleblowing as such from the individualistic approach often deployed by the media.

A hovering ghost from the future: the posthuman gothic landscape of Bangalore in Appupen’s ‘Bangaloids’

ABSTRACT The academic discussion surrounding the Gothic is dominated by British and American traditions. The globalgothic, concerned with gothic discourses outside the canonical traditions, is a developing arena, and gothic voices from other parts of the globe need to be studied. Appupen’s ‘Bangaloids’ is a dystopian short story that represents the gothic voice from India. Part of Bangalore: A Graphic Novel (2017), a city-centric graphic storytelling initiative, the story responds to the social trauma caused by fast-paced urbanism and questions some of the deepest fears about the human condition. This paper argues that ‘Bangaloids’ presents Bangalore’s fictitious posthuman gothic landscape to make readers contemplate a dystopian future. It analyses the gothic matrix of the metropolis; theories on modern gothic are used to comprehend Bangalore’s gothic character. It also studies the formal qualities of the graphic medium that highlight the gothic themes and facilitate storytelling.

NEW JOURNALISM AND TRUMAN CAPOTE’S IN COLD BLOOD

New Journalism was a response to the new competitive situation brought about by the new forms of narration in the postwar era introduced by the mass media besides being the successor of a long-term American tradition in literature. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) is often considered to be a magnum opus of New Journalism, which attracted considerable attention in terms of the aesthetic and theoretical questions it raised. This article mainly scrutinizes the possibilities of fictionalizing the reality and of the capability of the author to offer a new form of writing reconciling the mass-mediated forms of narration and aesthetics of conventional fiction with references to the Capote’s efforts to transform literary aesthetics.

Environmental Responsibility and Ethics in Hindu and Native American Traditions

Environmental Responsibility and Ethics in Hindu and Native American Traditions

The Formation of American Historiography of the New Deal (1930s – early 1960s)

The article analyzes the formation of American historiography of the New Deal based on a comprehensive study of scientific and journalistic literature. The initial assessments of the New Deal date back to the presidential campaign of 1932 when it was still a preliminary theoretical reform program. During the political debates of the 1930s, opponents of F. Roosevelt criticized the New Deal because, in their opinion, it did not align with American traditions, operated with un-American approaches to public administration, etc. These assessments were significantly influenced by the international situation related to the crisis of capitalism and democratic governance in Europe. Political opponents, referring to experience overseas, unjustly regarded the New Deal as a manifestation of one of the European radical “isms”. The author of the article found that such assessments did not find a wide response in society, and the scientific works of researchers who defended similar theses were on the margins of historical debates around the New Deal.
 The publication of their memoirs by most members of F. Roosevelt’s cabinet and his advisers, as well as the opening of access to the President’s library in Hyde Park, contributed to the formation of the first scientific assessments of the New Deal in the late 1940s. The historiography of the New Course had its “founding fathers”, to whom the author of this article includes – Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., B. Rauch, R. Hofstadter, F. Freidel, J. Burns, and W. Leuchtenburg. These researchers established a scientific basis that remains valid to this day, despite various attempts to revise it. They established certain historiographical trends and approaches to research and interpretation of this period in the 1950s. The author determined that the 1950s were marked by a debate between two schools of historical thought – Progressive and Consensus, regarding what the New Deal was – a continuation of the reform movement of previous decades, a turning point, or a revolution in American life and politics. In the research, the author considered and analyzed the main arguments and counterarguments of each of the schools.

Phenology

Flowers blooming, fungi fruiting, insects biting, fish spawning, geese migrating, deer calving; our consciousness is steeped in a seasonal calendar of nature's events. Phenology is the study of these recurring, seasonal life-history events, though nowadays this term is widely applied to the events themselves. From Shakespeare's sonnet 98, "From you I have been absent in the spring", to the appearance of seasonal events and migratory species in the oral traditions of Native Americans, interest in phenology is long-standing and transcends cultures. In this primer we introduce the study of phenology, trace the development of the field, and examine the prominent role phenology has played in evidencing the widespread impacts of anthropogenic climate change on life on Earth. We will consider the potential implications of climatic change for the ability of populations to persist and the stability of species interactions.

Humboldt’s Individualism: Theorizing Social Individuality

This article retraces in the thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt an account of the ideal of individuality which I propose to call ‘social individuality’. Against readings of Humboldt’s individualism as atomist, asocial and apolitical, I show how his conceptualization attends expressly to the social origins and the inherent interindividual and even collective dimension of individuality, while nevertheless insisting on the irreducible uniqueness of each human being. I show how this inherent sociability is anchored in his ideal of self-cultivation and, importantly, in his linguistic thought, which is often neglected in interpretations of Humboldt’s political theory. In concentrating on the social dimension of individual self-formation, I argue, we can discern a different ideal of individuality that emphasizes interindividual communicative processes over the stress on nonconformity as found for instance in Mill’s defence of eccentricity or the ideal of ‘democratic individuality’ in the American tradition.

Passing and Intergenerational Trauma in Ladivine and The Vanishing Half

This essay presents two structurally similar novels that tell stories of racial passing: Marie Ndiaye’s Ladivine and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. Both novels follow a light-skinned woman of African descent who leaves home and passes as White, getting married and having a family from whom she keeps the secret of her origins. Ndiaye’s novel, despite being set in France — where there is not the same tradition of the « passing novel » as it has existed for nearly 200 years in the (African-)American tradition — bears many similarities to what has historically been one of the best-known examples of the genre: Douglas Sirk’s film Imitation of Life. The emotional and psychological experience portrayed is very different in the American context versus the French based on the historical, social, and demographic contrast between the two countries. What is unique about these two novels, however, is that they focus not only on the person passing, but on the effect of that action on their children, even though they are unaware of what is being kept from them. Both novels portray passing as a decision that has intergenerational consequences, but through those consequences we see the distinct understandings of the nature of racialized identity by both authors.

АМЕРИКАНСЬКІ ТРАДИЦІЇ У ІСТОРИЧНОМУ ВИМІРІ

American anthropologist and sociologist Jack David Eller covered in detail the process of origin and development of American traditions. In the introduction, the author considered the theoretical issues of the emergence and evolution of traditions as a socio-historical phenomenon. In the next fifteen chapters, American political traditions, American secular traditions, American lifestyle traditions, and American traditional heroes are considered. In the conclusions, the question of the futurology of traditions is considered. American society in the early stages of history consisted mainly of European immigrants, was never traditional, and almost immediately became modern. But as with any society, traditions are an important source of identity for the United States. For most of American history, there has been a tradition of breaking tradition. In fact, tradition is what the future creates from the past. Mechanisms of tradition creation are defined as absorption or syncretism, addition, improvement, withdrawal or reduction, split or separation. Traditions form a certain image of the world. Cultural globalization is seen as imported American culture. Traditions are inextricably linked with myths. Myths and traditions try to reconcile us with ourselves and our existence. Tradition, unlike ideology, can be tested by social practice. There has been a transition from a society based on the production of things to a society based on the production of information. The Internet has dissolved into life, and life has dissolved into the Internet. Tradition creates us. We create a tradition.

The Phenomenon of Romanization in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Collection of Short Stories «Unaccustomed Earth»

The aim of this article is to analyze the genre form of a short story on the example of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short prose in the aspect of the phenomenon of romanization. The subject of the study is the determination of the features of romanization disclosed in the genre structure of the second part of short stories’s collection «Unaccustomed Earth» entitled «Hema and Kaushik». As an object of research the three stories («Once in a Lifetime», «Year’s End», «Going Ashore») united by a common plot were chosen which form the second part of the collection. The relevance of the work is explained by the fact that the study of works of modern multicultural and postcolonial literature in the genre aspect allows us to reveal the features of the functioning and modification of stable genre forms in the literary process. The method of structural analysis and the comparative method have made it possible to examine the process of romanization on the compositional, subjective and spatial–temporal levels of the text and reveal the correlation of the short story form with the American tradition of the genre. The scientific novelty consists in applying the new approach to the analysis of the genre form of this collection within the framework of the concept of romanization. The study concludes that the romanization of a short story is based on the complication of compositional, subjective and spatial–temporal organizations. This leads to the integration of the stories into a cohesive narration united by the several main characters whose names gave the title to the second part of the collection. Besides, the genre strategies of a short story including a narrator’ figure, covering a single event of the past are putting in the front which is expressed in the use of the ending like in a novella.

“Racial Greatness” Reconsidered: Race Theory, Masking, and Pragmatism in Sutton Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio

Abstract: This essay situates Sutton Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899) as a pragmatic intervention in Jim Crow-era discourses around Black Nationalism. Highlighting Griggs’s instrumentalist relationship to race theory in both Imperium and Guide to Racial Greatness (1923), this essay argues that his works are fertile sites for examining a distinctly African American tradition of philosophical pragmatism that sought to conceptualize racial solidarity in nonessentialist ways. It further suggests that Griggs’s pragmatism, responding to the unique pressures of the Jim Crow period, emphasized the need for emancipatory efforts to be masked and embedded within the very structures they sought to dismantle.

Do Black Fintechs Matter? The Long and Winding Road to Develop Inclusive Algorithms for Social Justice

Racism in the financial sector is a complex global phenomenon involving intertwined social, economic and digital systems. Credit denial rates for black applicants suggest that financial systems have assimilated racial discrimination into their algorithms and credit scoring tools. Considering that digital tools incorporate their developers' life experiences and perspectives, and in view of the low representation of the black community in the digital startup universe, it is evident that even well-meaning fintechs are reproducing racial bias in their technology-intensive business models. In this paper, we investigate how three black-owned Brazilian fintechs design and use inclusive algorithms to decrease persistent social injustice involving racial financial inclusion. We combine the concept of socio-technical reconfiguration, taken from the South American tradition of social technology, with the three core concepts of Nancy Fraser’s theory of social justice – representation, recognition and redistribution – to analyze the process by which black-owned fintechs develop their particular solutions for combating racial bias. We found that, pressured by the need to be profitable, the lack of capital to develop their own credit scoring tools, and the low profile maintained by the black community ecosystem, black-owned fintechs focus on a sort of affirmative experimentation to gradually create original digital solutions aimed at achieving social justice in the financial system.

COMPARATIVE COMMUNICATIVE AND SEMANTIC DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURAL SPEECHES OF EARLY 21ST CENTURY

The article develops the traditional rhetorical “issues” contained in inaugural speeches of American presidents as macrotopical entities which are applied to construct communicative semantic structures of those speeches consisting of macrotopics and respective topics in the realm of discourse linguistics. We propose a major rhetorical macrotopical cycle (MRMC) as a basic structure of those speeches. Most general repeated topics (macrotopics) in the Inaugural Speeches are Domestic Issues, International Issues, American Traditions and Other (Reference to the Audience, Reference to God, Application to Himself). Research of communicative semantic peculiarities of the use of such macrotopics in the Inaugural Speeches of the US Presidents of the beginning of the 21st century and their comparison constitute the subject matter of this article. Analyzing MRMCs within each of the Inaugural Speeches produces communicative semantic discourse description of them and gives the possibility to compare them. A tendency to use certain macrotopics in repeated orders in the speeches is found out. To a certain extent in all Inaugural Speeches of the US presidents we singled out the phenomenon which can be called major rhetorical macrotopical cycle which most frequently consists of the following macrotopics: Reference to the Audience – American Traditions – Domestic / International Issues and Reference to God. Communicative semantic structures of those speeches differ between themselves in the of such cycles, forms and subtypes of MRMCs. The peculiarities of the use of MRMCs by American presidents of the beginning of the 21st century are analysed and compared.

African American Redemption in the Pan-African Metropolis: Africanized Identities, Pan-African Lives and the African World Festival in Detroit

The article is situated within the conceptual lineage of St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s groundbreaking Black Metropolis model. However, it provides a new way of considering this intellectual heritage. The analysis suggests that African American traditions of Pan-Africanism have not been expansively addressed in their magnitude on Black urban sociology. Drake and Cayton’s theorization is reconfigured as it exists within a Pan-African value system for the contemporary Black (Diasporic) city. The research presents “unsung” Pan-African tropes that are central to the maintenance of the Black city’s identity and psychological cohesion. If the mind is the “primary battlefield” as Garvey insists, then it is important to note the (beneficial) psychological impact that African American redemption and the Pan- African Metropolis can bestow on African Americans. The discussion locates Pan-Africanism as a tangible operating mechanism on African Americans’ lifestyle, mental health, and (Africanized) identities within Detroit’s Black community. Field observations of Detroit’s African World Festival connect these festival spaces as they characterize and drive the city’s identity, psychology, economic considerations, and ultimately, Pan-African groundings. The sustainability of an Afrocentric philosophy and psychology has enhanced the Black city in the manifestation of a distinctive cultural political economy. The Pan African Metropolis emerged during Detroit’s Black Arts Movement (the 1970s of my youth). To this end, the article pushes back against “the lie” which overgeneralizes African Americans in a Black deficit homogeneity, whereas the “alleged Black American monolith” is not connected to any operating African continuum in their daily lives.