Search

Despite the relevance of nationalism for politics and intergroup relations, sociologists have devoted surprisingly little attention to the phenomenon in the United States, and historians and political psychologists who do study the United States have limited their focus to specific forms of nationalist sentiment: ethnocultural or civic nationalism, patriotism, or national pride. This article innovates, first, by examining an unusually broad set of measures (from the 2004 GSS) tapping national identification, ethnocultural and civic criteria for national membership, domain-specific national pride, and invidious comparisons to other nations, thus providing a fuller depiction of Americans’ national self-understanding. Second, we use latent class analysis to explore heterogeneity, partitioning the sample into classes characterized by distinctive patterns of attitudes. Conventional distinctions between ethnocultural and civic nationalism describe just about half of the U.S. population and do not account for the unexpectedly low levels of national pride found among respondents who hold restrictive definitions of American nationhood. A subset of primarily younger and well-educated Americans lacks any strong form of patriotic sentiment; a larger class, primarily older and less well educated, embraces every form of nationalist sentiment. Controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and partisan identification, these classes vary significantly in attitudes toward ethnic minorities, immigration, and national sovereignty. Finally, using comparable data from 1996 and 2012, we find structural continuity and distributional change in national sentiments over a period marked by terrorist attacks, war, economic crisis, and political contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has witnessed budding of American high culture. The number of museums and theaters has increased, the number of orchestras, opera companies, and dance companies has skyrocketed, and attendance at all of them is up. Ironically, however, the upsurge in public enthusiasm has been accompanied by financial tension. Earnings from admission and ticket prices have risen far less quickly than expenses, traditional patrons have been unable or unwilling to bridge the gap, and inherently labor intensive production systems, inflation, energy costs, urban fiscal crises, and constraints on ticket and admission fees promise to make the situation worse. The effect of this fiscal malaise has been to involve the government - federal, state, and municipal - in American high culture to a degree unprecedented in this country. In twelve years the National Endowment for the Arts budget has grown from $3 million to $96 million, the number of state arts agencies has increased from 18 to 55, and the number of local arts councils has expanded from 175 to 900.

Recent work in cognitive psychology and social cognition bears heavily on concerns of sociologists of culture. Cognitive research confirms views of culture as fragmented; clarifies the roles of institutions and agency; and illuminates supra-individual aspects of culture. Individuals experience culture as disparate bits of information and as schematic structures that organize that information. Culture carried by institutions, networks, and social movements diffuses, activates, and selects among available schemata. Implications for the study of identity, collective memory, social classification, and logics of action are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes determinants of variation in cultural capital-awareness of and orientation toward prestigious cultural resources-among a sample of white U.S. eleventh-graders in 1960, focusing upon the effect of socioeconomic background, household cultural climate, parental social participation and gender. Parental education, occupation and income are associated with children's cultural capital, but the impact is largely indirect, through home cultural climate. Girls had significantly more cultural capital than boys, suggesting that the gender division of labor associated with the Victorian doctrine of separate spheres remained strong and had diffused throughout the class structure by 1960; moreover, SES and activities of same-sex parents had stronger effects than those of opposite- sex parents. Mother's participation in artistic and school activities significantly influenced daughters' cultural capital, and parents' participation in religious activities significantly increased both daughters' and especially, Sons' cultural capital. Models differed by gender, with occupational effects on daughters, but not on sons, entirely mediated by home climate.

This article focuses on the gender and age composition of the arts audience in the United States. The debate over the extent and consequences of elite dominance of the arts constituency has been intensified in recent years by the rise of government support for the arts. The findings of the study consistently indicate that the audiences for the visual and live performing arts are more well educated, of higher occupational standing, and more affluent than the general populace. The strong relationship between education and attendance, the extreme over-representation of professionals and managers, and the virtual absence of blue-collar workers was particularly striking. Moreover, cultural democratization does not seem to be occurring, despite arguments to the contrary, outreach efforts of some arts administrators and a degree of pressure from those responsible for public funding of the arts. Analysis of differences between and within art forms reveals that museums, particularly science and history museums, draw a broader audience than do performing arts events, frequent attenders within most forms are found to be more elite than irregular consumers Assessment of audience composition trends since the early 1960s indicates no movement toward a broader inclusion of the public, suggesting that a recent expansion in the scale of arts activities and government subsidies has not been accompanied by a democratization of cultural consumption.