Democracy in Mass Society: The United States
Department of Sociology Professor Arthur J. Vidich
The Graduate Faculty Fall 1996
New School for Social Research 4:00-5:40
GS-194
The course consists of fourteen lecture
and discussion sessions organized under seven topic rubrics listed below. The
rubrics are designed to highlight the political processes, rhetorics and mechanics
of the American democracy during this presidential election year. Under each
session’s topic heading there is one required reading and a list of supplemental
titles. Required readings and selected supplemental readings will be
distributed to the members of the course.
Course
Requirements: Each student in
consultation with the instructor will submit a research paper written on a
subject chosen from one or another of the topic rubrics. The list of
supplementary titles are provided as preliminary bibliographic references for
the research paper.
Course
Outline and Reading List
I. The
Conflation of Religion and Politics in the American Democracy.
Required:
Michael W. Hughey: “The Political Covenant: Protestant
Foundations of the American State,” State,
Culture and Society, Vol. 1, No. 1, (1985).
Supplementary:
Adam Seligman: “Inner Worldly
Individualism and the Institutionalization of Puritanism in late
seventeenth-century New England,” British Journal of sociology, Vol. 41, No.4.
(December 1991).
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America
J. Fenimore Cooper: The American Democrat (Indianapolis:
Liberty Classics, 1981, pp. 12-35.
Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (1953 reprint,
Boston, 1961)
Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad, 1978, University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison, WI
II.
Characteristics of Mass Society
Required:
Herbert Blumer: The Concept of Mass
Society”, in Stanford M. Lyman and Arthur J. Vidich, Social Order and the Public Philosophy: An Analysis and Interpretation
of the Work of Herbert Blumer (Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press,
1988), pp. 337-352 (see also pp. 35-54).
Supplementary:
Emil Lederer: Masses and Social Groups
and “The Background of Fascism,” in State of the Masses, the Threat of the
Classless Society (New York, W.W. Norton, 1940), pp. 23-68.
C. Wright Mills, “The Mass Society” in The Power Elite (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1956), pp. 298-324.
Edward Shils, “The Theory of Mass
Society”, in Fred Krinsky (ed.) Democracy
and Complexity: who governs the governors? (Beverly Hills, Glencoe Press,
1968), pp. 3-23
III.
Masses, Classes, Races and Ethnicities
Required:
Michael W. Hughey, “Protestantism and
the Politics of Diversity: Religion, Race and Ethnicity in the Ame3ircan
Covenant” (manuscript).
Supplementary:
Arthur J. Vidich, “Religion, Economics
and Class in American Politics”,
International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall
1978, pp. 4-22.
Michael W. Hughey and Arthur J. Vidich, “The
New American Pluralism: Racial and Ethnic Sodalities and their Sociological
Implications,” International Journal of
Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1992, pp. 159-180.
Michael W. Hughey, “Americanism and its
Discontents, Protestantism, Nativism and Political Heresy in America,” International Journal of Politics, Culture
and Society, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1992, pp. 533- 554.
Hans Speier, “Democracy and the Social
Insecurity Level” in Social Order and the
Risk of War, (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1952), pp. 27-35
Joseph Bensman and Arthur J. Vidich,
Economic Class & Personality: in American
Society: The Welfare State and Beyond, (South Hadley, MA, Bergin &
Garvey, 1985, Chapter IV, pp. 63-86.
IV.
Democracy and the Professionalization of Political Leadership
Required:
Joseph Bensman, “The Crisis of
Confidence in Modern Politics”, in International
Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1988, pp. 15-35.
Supplementary:
Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation”, in
Essays in Sociology, ed. By Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, (New York,
Oxford University Press 1946, pp 77-128.
Joseph Bensman and Robert Lillienfeld, “Political
Attitudes” in Craft & Consciousness:
Occupational Technique and the Development of World Images, (New York,
Aldine de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 303-324
Jeffrey K Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1987).
V. Nineteenth Century Values: Twentieth
Century Politics
Required:
Arthur J. Vidich, “American Democracy in
the late Twentieth Century”,
International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1990, pp. 5-30.
Supplementary:
Frances Fox Piven and Richard A.
Cloward, Why Americans Don’t Vote
(New York: Pantheon, 1989)
Kathleen Hall Jamieson and David S.
Birdsell, Presidential Debates: The Challenge of Creating and Informed Electorate,
(New York, Oxford University Press, 1988).
Arthur J. Vidich, “Political Legitimacy in
Bureaucratic Society: An Analysis of Watergate”, Social research, Vol. 42, No.
4. (1975), pp. 778-811.
James Division Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define
America, Making Sense of the Battles over the Family, Art, Education, Law and
Politics, 1995, Basic Books, New York, NY
VI.
The Rules and Mechanics of Electoral Democracy
Required:
Andrew Arato, “Constitutions and the
Continuity in the Transitions”, Constellations,
Vol. 1, No. 4, 1994, pp. 92-112
Andrew Arato, “Electoral Rules,
Democracy and the Coherence of Constitutions. Theoretical Considerations and
the Case of the New Democracies”. New School,
May 1995
Supplementary:
Benjamin Ginsburg and Alan Stone (Eds). Do Elections Matter, 1996, M.E. Sharpe
Herbert E. Alexander and Anthony
Corrado, Financing the 1992 Election, 1995, M.E. Sharpe
Joseph Bensman and Arthur J. Vidich, The
Coordination of Organizations”, in American Society: The Welfare State and Beyond, (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and
Garvey, 1985), Chapter 5, pp. 87-100
John Lukacs, “Inheritances and
Prospects: The Passage from a Democratic Order to a Bureaucratic State”, in Outgrowing Democracy, (New York:
Doubleday, 1984), pp. 368-404
Eugene Lewis, American Politics in a Bureaucratic Age: Citizens, Constituents,
Clients and Victims (Cambridge, MA: Winthrop, 1977).
Robert Westbrook, “Politics as Consumption:
Managing the Modern American Election”, in Richard Wrightman Fox and T. J.
Jackson Lears (eds.), The Culture of
Consumption, (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 143-173.
Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: Chicago University
Press), 1988.
VII.
The Roles of public Opinion, Propaganda and the Media
Required:
Paul Cantrell, “Opinion Polling and
American Democratic Culture”, International
Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 5, No.2, Winter 1991
Supplementary:
Guy Oakes and Andrew Grossman, “Managing
Nuclear Terror: The Genesis of American Civil Defense Strategy”, International Journal of Politics, Culture
and Society, Vol. 5, No.3, Spring 1991
Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and the American Cold War Culture,
New York, Oxford University Press, 1994 (on reserve in the library).
Arthur J. Vidich, “Atomic Bombs and
American Democracy”, International
Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 8, No.3, 1995 (a comment on
Oakes’ book)
Robert Jackall, Propaganda, New York, NYU Press, 1995.
Joseph C. Spear, Presidents and the Press: The Nixon Legacy, (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1984).
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Packaging the
Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
