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Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART ONE Political Interests and Political Symbolism -- 1 The Political Language of the Nonprofit Sector -- 2 The Political Uses of Political Issues -- 3 Public and Private Political Realities and the Privatization Movement -- PART TWO Elections and Symbolism -- 4 Constructing Explanations for Election Results: When 'The Voters Have Spoken,' Who Decides What They Said? -- 5 The Postmodern Election -- PART THREE Policy Implementation, Elite Control, and Political Symbolism -- 6 Law at the Margins: The Symbolic Power of Professional Discourse -- 7 The Neutered Mother -- 8 Museums, Zoos, and Ecology: Animal Displays on Display -- PART FOUR Culture and Political Domination -- 9 False-Consciousness, or Laying It on Thick -- 10 Challenge and Resistance: Two Cases of Cultural Conflict in the United States -- PART FIVE Symbolic Representation and Power -- 11 Language and Power: The Spaces of Critical Interpretation -- 12 Representation and the Silences of Politics -- Afterword -- About the Contributors -- About the Book.

This article argues that "technologies of culture" influence citizens' conceptions of the American state. The technology of modernism (which lasted into the 1960s) educated citizens to manipulate machines and control nature. This influenced citizens' views of government's tasks and capacities. Postmodern technology focuses attention on the self and alters people's conceptions of the tasks and capacities of government. The article discusses the political implications of postmodern citizenship and suggests possible remedies for postmodernism's effects on democratic citizenship in the United States.