Agency, Autonomy and Authority
The Ethos and Modernization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8895576 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Tagg (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1984 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 451-464 |
| Publication date | 1984-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras-015-04-08 |
| OpenAlex | W2068026612 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
Hamilton Cravens, ed. Ideas in America's Cultures: From Republic to Mass Society. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982. 199 + xxv pp. John P. Diggins and Mark E. Kann, eds. The Problem of Authority in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. 255 pp. William Graebner. A History of Retirement: The Meaning and Function of an American Institution, 1885-1978. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980. 293 + x pp. Char Miller. Father and Sons: The Bingham Family and the American Mission. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. 308 + xi pp. H. Wayne Morgan. Drugs in America: A Social History, 1800-1980. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1981. 233 + xi pp. These are five disparate works. Superficially, they have one common characteristic; their chronological turf roughly spans the period from the Civil War to the present, with minor exceptions. After that, the fragmented nature of modern research takes over, with purpose, genre, content, research design, sources, argumentation and analysis differing greatly. Char Miller's study of the Bingham family, a work which fails in the ways Turgenev's Fathers and Sons succeeds in analyzing generational relationships, is a brief biography of five generations of Binghams and a survey of their drive to combine will and action into purposeful mission. Ideas in America's Cultures is a. festschrift com- memorating Stow Persons' many contributions to American intellectual history; its eight articles on religious and social ideas, of very uneven quality and diverse subject matter, come together somewhat in their focus on the relationship of clusters of ideas to individuals or groups. Morgan's Dings in America is a tightly organized, coolly written survey on the employment of, and general social responses to, drugs from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Expressing greater subtlety and complexity of thesis than Morgan, William Graebner examines the changing purposes and manipulations of age discrimination, the concept of retirement and old age pensions. The Diggins and Kann collection of conference papers—incorporating history, political science, literary criticism and psychology—demonstrates how treacherously broad and varied approaches can be to a philosophical concept such as authority
Agency (philosophy · Art history · Biography · Ethos · Institution · Miller · Modernization theory · Political science · Social science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |