Suchergebnisse

1 Exploring Mankind's Past: Social Character Under Tribalism, Feudalism, and Early Industrialism -- 2 Documenting the Divide: Social Division in the Twenty-First Century United States -- 3 The Social Self: Early and Mid-Twentieth Century American Sociological Theories -- 4 The Formation of the Self Under the Conditions of Globalized Capitalism -- 5 Self Identity in Field Studies in Twenty-First Century American Class Settings: Implications for Modernist Theories -- 6 Life Projects in the Twenty-First Century United States: Rising Inequality, Global Capitalism, Neo-Liberal Government, and the Great Recession -- 7 Conclusion: Individualism and Meritocracy: Prospects for Constructing Self Identity under the Conditions of Twenty-First Century Modernity -- Index

"Historically, the United States has been viewed by generations of immigrants as the land of opportunity, where through hard work one can prosper and make a better life. The American Dream is perhaps the United States most common export. For many Americans, though, questions remain about whether the American Dream can be achieved in the twenty-first century. Americans, faced with global competition and increased social complexity, wonder whether their dwindling natural resources, polarized national and local politics, and often unregulated capitalism can support the American Dream today. This book examines the ideas and experiences that have formed the American Dream, assesses its meaning for Americans, and evaluates its prospects for the future." (Cover)

The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream offers authoritative essays that address the multifaceted dimensions of the American Dream in the 21st century, where it has become synonymous with being American. Its ubiquity requires a deeper understanding of its impact-to be found in this first research handbook ever on the topic

The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream: Volume 2 explores the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the American Dream in both theory and reality in the twenty-first century. This collection of essays brings together leading scholars from a range of fields to further develop the themes and issues explored in the first volume. The concept of the American Dream, first expounded by James Truslow Adams in The Epic of America in 1931, is at once both ubiquitous and difficult to define. The term perfectly captures the hopes of freedom, opportunity and upward social mobility invested in the nation. However, the American Dream appears increasingly illusory in the face of widening inequality and apparent lack of opportunity, particularly for the poor and ethnic, or otherwise marginalized, minorities in the United States. As such, an understanding of the American Dream through both theoretical analyses and empirical studies, whether qualitative or quantitative, is crucial to understanding contemporary America. Like the first volume of The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream, this collection will be of great interest to students and researchers in a range of fields in the humanities and social sciences.

AbstractThe American Dream is a powerful ideology that generates overwhelming support from our fairly typical group of American college students. In order to examine this phenomenon more carefully, we conducted a qualitative study of our team-taught, interdisciplinary undergraduate course, entitled "Chasing the American Dream." Answers to an in-class student survey over two semesters confirmed and enlarged our understanding of the nature of The American Dream. We believe that the Dream seems to achieve its effect in part by its high level of abstraction and generality. Thus, the American Dream is, effectively, an empty basket into which any American can place his/her hopes and aspirations. One can, for example, conceive of an entirely traditional domestic American Dream or one can re-conceive of a twenty-first century globalist Dream. As one breaks down the level of abstraction, generality, and mystery regarding the Dream concept, the support for various features of the Dream—as well as one's likely success in achieving the Dream—becomes less strong.