America after Tocqueville
America after Tocqueville
America after Tocqueville complements Harvey Mitchell's previous book, Individual Choice and the Structures of History: Alexis de Tocqueville as Historian Reappraised (1996). This study draws on Democracy in America to study the condition of democracy in the United States in our own time. Three aspects of Americanism inform Harvey Mitchell's book, and cannot be separated from Tocqueville's consideration of the three races. First, he addresses tensions in the United States between ideas of equality and a political system that tries to keep it within bounds. He turns to the relationship between this system and the dynamics of American capitalism. and he analyses the criteria for inclusion and exclusion in American life. Overall, he asks if Americans have surrendered to what Tocqueville called the materialization of life; if that compromise means their abandonment of their original spiritual quest; and, if they are on the way to a radical alienation from politics.
- It uses Alexis de Tocqueville's treatment of the three races in America as a springboard for an analysis of their relationship today
- It asks starkly whether democracy, conceived as a deliberative process, may in fact be a Utopian dream
- It suggests that American political culture must pay heed to the question of whether democratic civil society is defined by the market
Reviews & endorsements
Harvey Mitchell's new book is a wide-ranging meditation on fundamental tensions in America: between its egalitarian principle and its political system, between its political system and its economic development, between its ideological commitment to inclusiveness and its enduring boundaries of exclusion. America after Tocqueville moves from an incisive historical analysis of Tocqueville's America to a magisterial exploration of current debates on democracy's prospects. The relevance of Tocqueville's classic commentary has never been more comprehensively argued." Seymour Drescher, University of Pittsburgh
"Mitchell uses Tocqueville's writings to delve into questions about equality and diversity in American democracy , which the author sees as continually balancing these two values.... This work examines important issues. Recommended." Choice
Product details
September 2002Hardback
9780521812467
338 pages
229 × 152 × 22 mm
0.593kg
Available
Table of Contents
- References to Tocqueville's Democracy in America
- Preface
- Part I. Paths to Democracy in America:
- 1. Introduction: thinking about American democracy
- 2. Democracy's experiment: from inequality to equality
- 3. Achieving a democratic civil society
- Part II. Beginnings and Democracy:
- 4. Beginnings and history: red and white in Tocqueville's America
- 5. The New England township before the revolution: Tocqueville's American pastoral
- 6. A second beginning: black and white in Tocqueville's America
- Part III. American Democracy On Trial:
- 7. Difference, race, and color in America
- 8. Maintaining American democracy
- 9. The state, authority, and the people
- 10. Conclusion
- Works cited
- Index.
