Thursday, May 28, 2009

Culture of Germany

Identification. The name Germany is derived from the Latin word Germania, which, at the time of the Gallic War (58–51 B.C.E. ), was used by the Romans to designate various peoples occupying the region east of the Rhine. The German-language name Deutschland is derived from a Germanic root meaning volk, or people. A document (written in Latin) from the Frankish court of 786 C.E. uses the term theodisca lingua to refer to the colloquial speech of those who spoke neither Latin nor early forms of Romance languages. From this point forward, the term deutsch was employed to mark a difference in speech, which corresponded to political, geographic, and social distinctions as well. Since, however, the Frankish and Saxon kings of the early Middle Ages sought to characterize themselves as emperors of Rome, it does not seem valid to infer an incipient form of national consciousness. By the fifteenth century, the designation Heiliges Römisches Reich ,or "Holy Roman Empire," was supplemented with the qualifying phrase der deutschen Nation , meaning "of the German Nation." Still, it is important to note that, at that point in history, the phrase "German nation" referred only to the Estates of the Empire— dukes, counts, archbishops, electoral princes, and imperial cities—that were represented in the Imperial Diet. Nevertheless, this self-designation indicates the desire of the members of the Imperial Estates to distinguish themselves from the curia in Rome, with which they were embroiled in a number of political and financial conflicts.

The area that became known as Deutschland, or Germany, had been nominally under the rule of the German king—who was usually also the Roman emperor—since the tenth century. In fact, however, the various territories, principalities, counties, and cities enjoyed a large degree of autonomy and retained distinctive names and traditions, even after the founding of the nation-state—the Kaiserreich or German Empire—in 1871. The names of older territories—such as Bavaria, Brandenburg, and Saxony—are still kept alive in the designations of some of today's federal states. Other older names, such as Swabia and Franconia, refer to "historical landscapes" within the modern federal states or straddling their boundaries. Regional identities such as these are of great significance for many Germans, though it is evident that they are often manipulated for political and commercial purposes as well.

The current German state, called the Federal Republic of Germany, was founded in 1949 in the wake of Germany's defeat in World War II. At first, it consisted only of so-called West Germany, that is the areas that were occupied by British, French, and American forces. In 1990, five new states, formed from the territories of East Germany—the former Soviet zone, which in 1949 became the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—were incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany. Since that time, Germany has consisted of sixteen federal states: Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia.

Location and Geography. Germany is located in north-central Europe. It shares boundaries with nine other countries: Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. At various

Germany
Germany
times in the past, the German Reich claimed bordering regions in France (Alsace-Lorraine) and had territories that now belong to Poland, Russia, and Lithuania (Pomerania, Silesia, and East Prussia). Shortly after the unification of East and West Germany in 1990, the Federal Republic signed a treaty with Poland, in which it renounced all claims to territories east of the boundary formed by the Oder and Neisse rivers—the de facto border since the end of World War II.

The northern part of Germany, which lies on the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, is a coastal plain of low elevation. In the east, this coastal plain extends southward for over 120 miles (200 kilometers), but, in the rest of the country, the central region is dotted with foothills. Thereafter, the elevation increases fairly steadily, culminating in the Black Forest in the southwest and the Bavarian Alps in the south. The Rhine, Weser, and Elbe rivers run toward the north or northwest, emptying into the North Sea. Similarly, the Oder river, which marks the border with Poland, flows northward into the Baltic Sea. The Danube has its source in the Black Forest then runs eastward, draining southern Germany and emptying eventually into the Black Sea. Germany has a temperate seasonal climate with moderate to heavy rainfall.

Demography. In accordance with modern European patterns of demographic development, Germany's population rose from about 25 million in 1815 to over 60 million in 1914, despite heavy emigration. The population continued to rise in the first half of this century, though this trend was hindered by heavy losses in the two world wars. In 1997, the total population of Germany was 82 million. Of this sum, nearly 67 million lived in former West Germany, and just over 15 million lived in former East Germany. In 1939, the year Germany invaded Poland, the population of what was to become West Germany was 43 million and the population of what was to become East Germany was almost 17 million. This means that from 1939 to 1997, both the total population and the population of West Germany have increased, while the population of East Germany has decreased.

Following World War II, the population of both parts of Germany rose dramatically, due to the arrival of German refugees from the Soviet Union and from areas that are now part of Poland and the Czech Republic. In 1950, eight million refugees formed 16 percent of the West German population and over four million refugees formed 22 percent of the East German population. Between 1950 and 1961, however, more than 2.5 million Germans left the German Democratic Republic and went to the Federal Republic of Germany. The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 effectively put an end to this German-German migration.

From 1945 to 1990, West Germany's population was further augmented by the arrival of nearly four million ethnic Germans, who immigrated from Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union or its successor states. These so-called Aussiedler or return settlers took advantage of a provision in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, which grants citizenship to ethnic Germans living outside of Germany.

Another boost to the population of West Germany has been provided by the so-called Gastarbeiter (migrant or immigrant workers), mostly from Turkey, the Balkans, Italy, and Portugal. Between 1961 and 1997, over 23 million foreigners came to the Federal Republic of Germany; seventeen million of these, however, later returned to their home countries. The net gain in population for Germany was still well over 6 million, since those who remained in Germany often established families.

The population of Germany is distributed in small to medium-sized local administrative units, though, on the average, the settlements tend to be larger in West Germany. There are only three cities with a population of over 1 million: Berlin (3.4 million), Hamburg (1.7 million), and Munich (1.2 million). Cologne has just under 1 million inhabitants, while the next largest city, Frankfurt am Main, has a population of 650,000.

Linguistic Affiliation. In the early nineteenth century, language historians identified German as a member of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The major German dialect groups are High and Low German, the language varieties of the southern highlands and the northern lowlands. Low German dialects, in many ways similar to Dutch, were spoken around the mouth of the Rhine and on the northern coast but are now less widespread. High German dialects may be divided into Middle and Upper categories, which, again, correspond to geographical regions. The modern standard is descended largely from a synthetic form, which was developed in the emerging bureaucracy of the territorial state of Saxony and which combined properties of East Middle and East Upper High German. Religious reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546) helped popularize this variety by employing it in his very influential German translation of the Bible. The standard language was established in a series of steps, including the emergence of a national literary public in the eighteenth century, the improvement and extension of public education in the course of the nineteenth century, and political unification in the late nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, massive population movements have contributed to further dialect leveling. Nevertheless, some local and regional speech varieties have survived and/or reasserted themselves. Due to the presence of immigrants, a number of other languages are spoken in Germany as well, including Polish, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Mongolian, and Vietnamese.

Symbolism. Any review of national symbols in Germany must take into account the clash of alternative symbols, which correspond either to different phases of a stormy history or to different aspects of a very complex whole. The eagle was depicted in the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire, but since Prussia's victory over Austria in 1866 and the exclusion of Austria from the German Reich in 1871, this symbol has been shared by two separate states, which were united only briefly from 1937 to 1945. Germany is the homeland of the Reformation, yet Martin Luther is a very contentious symbol, since 34 percent of all Germans are Roman Catholic. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Germany became known as the land of Dichter und Denker , that is, poets and philosophers, including such luminaries as Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. In the latter nineteenth century this image was supplemented by that of the Prussian officer and the saber-rattling Kaiser. Der deutsche Michel —which means, approximately, "Mike the German," named after the archangel Michael, the protector of Germany—was a simpleton with knee breeches and a sleeping cap, who had represented Germany in caricatures even before the nineteenth century. The national and democratic movement of the first half of the nineteenth century spawned a whole series of symbols, including especially the flag with the colors black, red, and gold, which were used for the national flag in the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) and again in the Federal Republic of Germany (as of 1949). The national movement also found expression in a series of monuments scattered over the countryside. The National Socialists were especially concerned with creating new symbols and harnessing old ones for their purposes. In the Federal Republic of Germany, it is illegal to display the Hakenkreuz or swastika, which was the central symbol of the Nazi movement and the central motif in the national flag in the Third Reich (1933–1945).

The official symbols of the Federal Republic of Germany are the eagle, on one hand, and the black, red, and gold flag of the democratic movement, on the other. In many ways, however, the capital city itself has served as a symbol of the Federal Republic, be it Bonn, a small, relatively cosy Rhenish city (capital from 1949 to 1990), or Berlin, Germany's largest city and the capital of Brandenburg-Prussia, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and, since 1990, the Federal Republic. From the Siegessäule (Victory Column) to the Reichstag (parliament), from the Charlottenburg Palace to the former Gestapo Headquarters, from the Memorial Church to the fragmentary remnants of the Berlin

A Bavarian town settlement. Predominantly Catholic, Bavaria is  home to many shrines and chapels, as well as the majestic Bavarian  Alps.
A Bavarian town settlement. Predominantly Catholic, Bavaria is home to many shrines and chapels, as well as the majestic Bavarian Alps.
Wall, Berlin contains numerous symbols of Germany and German history.

Given the contentious character of political symbols in Germany, many Germans seem to identify more closely with typical landscapes. Paintings or photographs of Alpine peaks and valleys are found in homes throughout Germany. Often, however, even features of the natural environment become politicized, as was the case with the Rhine during Germany's conflicts with France in the nineteenth century. Alternatively, corporate products and consumer goods also serve as national symbols. This is certainly the case with a series of high-quality German automobiles, such as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW.

H ISTORY AND E THNIC R ELATIONS

Emergence of the Nation. The emergence of the nation has been understood in very different ways at different times. Humanist scholars of the early sixteenth century initiated a discourse about the German nation by identifying contemporaneous populations as descendants of ancient Germanic peoples, as they were represented in the writings of Roman authors such as Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.E. ) and Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55–c.116 C.E. ), author of the famous work Germania. From the viewpoint of Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523), among others, Tacitus provided insight into the origins and character of a virtuous nation that was in many ways equal or superior to Rome. The German humanists found their hero in Armin, or Hermann, who defeated the Romans in the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 C.E.

The interest of German intellectuals in their ancient predecessors, as depicted in the literature of classical antiquity, continued into the eighteenth century, when it inspired the patriotic poetry of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) and of the members of a group of poets called the Göttinger Hain , founded in 1772. The twentieth century scholar, Norbert Elias, has shown that the attention that bourgeois Germans of the eighteenth century devoted to the origins and the virtuous character of their nation was motivated in large part by their rejection of powerful aristocrats and courtiers, who modeled themselves on French counterparts.

On the eve of the French Revolution (1789), Germany was divided into nearly three hundred separate political entities of various sizes and with various degrees of sovereignty within the Holy Roman Empire. By 1794, French troops had taken the west bank of the Rhine, which had previously been divided among many different principalities; by 1806, Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) had disbanded the Holy Roman Empire. In the same year, Napoléon's armies defeated Prussia and its allies in the simultaneous battles of Jena and Auerstädt. In its modern form, German nationalism took shape in response to this defeat. In the War of Liberation (1813–1815), in which many patriots participated as volunteers, the allied forces under Prussian leadership were successful in expelling the French from Germany. After the Congress of Vienna (1815), however, those who had hoped for the founding of a German nation-state were disappointed, as the dynastic rulers of the German territories reasserted their political authority.

With the rise of historical scholarship in the first half of the nineteenth century, the earlier emphasis on German antiquity was supplemented by representations of the medieval origins of the German nation. In the age of nationalism, when the nation-state was understood as the end point of a law-like historical development, German historians sought to explain why Germany, in contrast to France and England, was still divided. They believed that they had discovered the answer to this puzzle in the history of the medieval Reich. Shortly after the death of Charlemagne (814), the Carolingian empire split into a western, a middle, and an eastern kingdom. In the teleological view of the nineteenth century historians, the western kingdom became France and the eastern kingdom was destined to become Germany; the middle kingdom was subdivided and remained a bone of contention between the two emerging nations. The tenth century German king, Otto I, led a series of expeditions to Rome and was crowned as emperor by the pope in 962. From this point forward, Germany and the medieval version of the Roman Empire were linked.

German historians of the nineteenth century interpreted the medieval Reich as the beginning of a process that should have led to the founding of a German nation-state. The medieval emperor was viewed as the major proponent of this national development, but modern historians often criticized the actual behavior of the emperors as being inconsistent with national aims. The main villains of medieval history, at least in the eyes of latter-day historians—especially Protestants—were the various popes and those German princes who allied themselves with the popes against the emperor for reasons that were deemed to be "egotistical." This opposition of the pope and the princes was thought to have stifled the proper development of the German nation. The high point in this development was, the nationalist historians believed, the era of the Hohenstaufen emperors (1138–1254). The Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick I was rendered in nineteenth century historiography as a great hero of the German cause. After his reign, however, the empire suffered a series of setbacks and entered into a long period of decline. The early Habsburgs offered some hope to latter-day historians, but their successors were thought to have pursued purely dynastic interests. The low point in the national saga came in the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), when foreign and domestic enemies ravaged Germany.

Among the educated bourgeoisie and the popular classes of nineteenth century Germany, the desire for a renewal of the German Reich was widespread; but there was much disagreement about exactly how this new state should be structured. The main conflict was between those favoring a grossdeutsch solution to German unification, that is, a "large Germany" under Austrian leadership, and those favoring a kleindeutsch solution, that is, a "small Germany" under Prussian leadership and excluding Austria. The second option was realized after Prussia won a series of wars, defeating Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1871. In the writings of the Prussian school of national history, Prussia's victory and the founding of the German Reich in 1871 were depicted as the realization of the plans of the medieval emperor, Frederick I. After the founding of the Reich, Germany pursued expansionist policies, both overseas and in the territories on its eastern border. Defeat in World War I led to widespread resentment against the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, which many Germans thought to be unfair, and against the founders of the Weimar Republic, who many Germans viewed as traitors or collaborators. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist (Nazi) movement, was able to exploit popular resentment and widespread desires for national greatness. National Socialist propagandists built upon beliefs in the antiquity and continuity of the German nation, augmenting them with racialist theories, which attributed to the Germans a biological superiority over other peoples.

National Identity. Following World War II, German national identity became problematic, since the national movement seemed to have culminated in the Third Reich and found its most extreme expression in the murder of millions of people, including six million Jews. All further reflection on the German nation had to come to grips with this issue in one way or another. There have been many different attempts to explain Nazism and its crimes. Some see Adolf Hitler and his cronies as villains who misled the German people. Others blame Nazism on a flaw in the German national character. Still others see the beginning of Germany's problems in the rejection of the rational and universal principles of the Enlightenment and the adoption of romantic irrationalism. Marxist scholars see Nazism as a form of fascism, which they describe as the form that capitalism takes under certain historical conditions. Finally, some cite the failure of the bourgeois revolution in the nineteenth century and the lingering power of feudal elites as the main cause. Interpretations of this sort fall under the general heading of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past. Since the fall of the GDR, West German traditions of coming to terms with the past have been extended to the period of socialist rule in East Germany. Some Germans emphasize the similarities between the two forms of dictatorship, National Socialist and communist, while others, especially many East Germans, view the Third Reich and the GDR as being essentially dissimilar. Lingering differences between the attitudes and practices of West and East Germans are often attributed to the so-called Mauer in den Köpfen, or wall in the mind— an allusion to the physical wall that used to divide East and West Germany.

In recent years, German nationalism has been reexamined in accordance with views of the nation as an "imagined community" which is based on "invented traditions." Most scholars have concentrated on the organization, the symbolism, and the discourse of the national movement as it developed in the nineteenth century. The most significant contributions to the imagination and the invention of the German nation in this era took place in the context of (1) a set of typical voluntary associations, which supposedly harkened back to old local, regional, or national traditions; (2) the series of monuments erected by state governments, by towns and cities, and by citizens' groups throughout Germany; and (3) the various representations of history, some of which have been alluded to above. In addition, there is a growing body of literature that examines understandings of the nation and the politics of nationhood in the eighteenth century. There is much disagreement on the political implications of the critical history of nationalism in Germany. Some scholars seem to want to exorcize the deviant aspects of modern German nationalism, while retaining those aspects, with which, in their view, German citizens should identify. Others see nationalism as an especially dangerous stage in a developmental process, which Germans, in their journey toward a postnational society, should leave behind.

Ethnic Relations. The framers of the Grundgesetz (Basic Law or Constitution) of the Federal Republic of Germany adopted older laws that define citizenship according to the principle of jus sanguinis, that is birth to German parents (literally, law of blood). For this reason, many people born outside of Germany are considered to be German, while many people born in Germany are not. Since the 1960s, the country has admitted millions of migrant workers, who have, in fact, played an indispensable role in the economy. Although migrant workers from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal were called Gastarbeiter (literally, guest workers), many stayed in Germany and established families. They form communities, which are to varying degrees assimilated to German lifestyles. Indeed, many of the children and grandchildren of immigrant laborers regard themselves not as Turkish, Greek, or Portuguese, but as German. Nevertheless, they have had great difficulty in gaining German citizenship; and many Germans view them as Ausländer, or foreigners. Beginning in the year 2000, new laws granted restricted rights of dual citizenship to children of foreign descent who are born in Germany. This new legislation has been accompanied by intensified discussion about Germany's status as a land of immigration. All major political parties now agree that Germany is and should be a land of immigration, but they differ on many aspects of immigration policy.

U RBANISM , A RCHITECTURE , AND THE U SE OF S PACE

The earliest urban centers in what is now Germany were established by the Romans on or near the Rhine, often on the sites of pre-Roman settlements. Examples include Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. In the Middle Ages, older and newly founded towns became centers for commerce and for the manual trades, which were organized in guilds. Towns developed distinctive forms of social organization and culture, which set them off from the agrarian world of peasants and nobles. Some, called "free imperial cities," enjoyed the protection of the emperor and concomitant political and economic privileges. Others were directly subordinate to territorial lords, but still tried to gain or maintain a degree of autonomy.

By the early modern period, the most important commercial centers were the Hanseatic towns or cities of the northern coastal regions, the Rhenish towns, and the southern German towns, such as Augsburg, Würzburg, Regensburg, and Nuremberg, which were located along trade routes leading to the Mediterranean. There was often a sharp distinction between commercial cities, such as Leipzig, and court cities, such as Dresden. Up until the nineteenth century, however, the urban populations were very modest in size. In 1800, only Berlin and Hamburg had more than 100,000 inhabitants.

In the course of the nineteenth century, Germany experienced the forms of internal migration and urbanization that are typical of the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. Industrial centers such as Leipzig, Berlin, and the Ruhr Valley grew dramatically in the second half of the century. Essen, in the Ruhr Valley, had 10,000 inhabitants in 1851 and 230,000 in 1905. The inadequate living conditions in the burgeoning cities were a major impetus for the workers' movement, which led to the formation of unions and working-class parties, most notably the Social Democratic and Communist parties.

German cities typically bear witness to all eras in the architectural history of Europe. The sequence of Romanic, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles is especially evident in churches, many of which have been renovated repeatedly over the centuries. Much of the urban architecture in Germany bears witness to the tastes of the nineteenth century, including the classicism of the first half of the century and the historicism (including neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance) of the second half of the century. In the period of rapid industrial growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many German cities were largely rebuilt in the styles of the so-called Gründerzeit, that is, the founding years of the new German Empire. Most cities dispensed of their medieval walls in the nineteenth century, but they retained their central town square, which is typically flanked by the town hall and sometimes the town church as well. In German cities today, some of the old town halls are still administrative centers, but others have become historical museums. The town square is, however, still used for festivals, weekly farmers' markets, and other special events. Since the late 1970s, inner city areas surrounding the central squares have often been transformed into pedestrian zones, with many shops, cafés, restaurants, and bars.

German cities experienced an unprecedented degree of destruction in the late years of World War II. In the first decades of the postwar era, they were often rebuilt in a modern style that differed sharply from the earlier appearance of the cities. Since the 1970s, cultural preservation has become a higher priority. This emphasis on the preservation of historic aspects of the city corresponds to an increased popular interest in all things historical and to the importance of the international tourist trade. The politics of cultural preservation is characterized by debates over the way in which the past should be represented in urban places. This applies especially to the representation of the Third Reich and World War II. In Berlin, for example, many buildings have been linked to different regimes of the past, including Brandenburg-Prussia, the German Empire, and the Third Reich. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was largely destroyed in the last war, has been left in ruins. It now serves as a memorial not to Kaiser Wilhelm but to World War II. In Dresden, the federal state of Saxony, the city of Dresden, and various citizens organizations have elected to rebuild the famous Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), which was destroyed in the bombing of February 1945. Thus, they have chosen to emphasize the baroque tradition of "Florence on the Elbe," as Dresden was called. At the same time, Dresden—like many other towns and cities of former East Germany—has elected to remove many, though not all, of the monuments of the German Democratic Republic.

People socializing at a festival in Allgau. German beer, a  favorite beverage, must be made only of water, hops, and malt.
People socializing at a festival in Allgau. German beer, a favorite beverage, must be made only of water, hops, and malt.

F OOD AND E CONOMY

Food in Daily Life. Eating habits in Germany vary by social class and milieu, but it is possible to generalize about the behavior of the inclusive middle class, which has emerged in the prosperous postwar era. Most Germans acquire food from both supermarkets and specialty shops, such as bakeries and butcher shops. Bread is the main food at both breakfast and supper. Breakfast usually includes brötchen, or rolls of various kinds, while supper— called Abendbrot —often consists of bread, sausages or cold cuts, cheese, and, perhaps, a salad or vegetable garnish. The warm meal of the day is still often eaten at noon, though modern work routines seem to encourage assimilation to American patterns. Pork is the most commonly consumed meat, though various sorts of wurst, or sausage, are often eaten in lieu of meat. Cabbage, beets, and turnips are indigenous vegetables, which are, however, often supplemented with more exotic fare. Since its introduction in the seventeenth century, the potato has won a firm place in German cuisine. Favorite alcoholic beverages are beer, brandy, and schnapps. German beers, including varieties such as Pilsner, Weizenbier, and Alt, are brewed according to the deutsche Reinheitsgebot, i.e., the German law of purity from the sixteenth century, which states that the only admissible ingredients are water, hops, and malt. Large family meals are still common at noontime on Saturdays and Sundays. These are often followed in mid-afternoon by Kaffee und Kuchen, the German version of tea time.

Food Customs at Ceremonial Occasions. Special meals usually include meat, fish, or fowl, along with one of a number of starchy foods, which vary by region. Examples of the latter include klöße (potato dumplings), knödel (a breadlike dumpling), and spätzle (a kind of pasta). Alternatively, Germans often celebrate in restaurants, which often feature cuisines of other nations. Greek restaurants tend to be more moderately priced, French restaurants are often more expensive, and the especially popular Italian restaurants span the range of price categories. The most important holiday meal is Christmas dinner. Regional and family traditions vary, but this often consists of goose, duck, or turkey, supplemented by red cabbage and potatoes or potato dumplings.

Basic Economy. Since the late nineteenth century, the German economy has been shaped by industrial production, international trade, and the rise of consumer culture. Consequently, the number of people involved in agricultural production has steadily declined. At the end of the twentieth century, only 2.7 percent of the German workforce was involved in agriculture, forestry, and fishery combined. Nevertheless, 48 percent of the total area of Germany was devoted to agriculture, and agricultural products covered 85 percent of domestic food needs.

Land Tenure and Property. The reform of feudal land tenure was not initiated in Germany until the period of upheaval and change during or following the Napoleonic Wars. In the various German states of those days, land reform was typically part of a broader reform plan that affected many aspects of political, economic, and social life. Programs for land reform, which were begun in the first decades of the nineteenth century, often were not completed until the second half of the century. Subsequently, however, new technologies and new organizational forms allowed agriculture to become an increasingly efficient branch of the modern economy. As the nineteenth century progressed, production rose dramatically. Simultaneously, the workforce shifted away from agriculture and into industry.

Following World War II, agricultural production was subject to further modernization, which resulted in fewer farmers on fewer farms of greater size. Nevertheless, the family farms of West Germany were on the average relatively small, the great majority having less than 100 acres (40 hectares). In East Germany, the postwar reform of agriculture was planned and executed by the state and the ruling socialist party. The most important aspects of this reform were the redistribution of land in 1945, the formation of agricultural collectives between 1952 and 1960, and the regional cooperation among different local collectives in the late 1960s and 1970s. This led to the creation of large, industrialized, cooperative farms. At the end of the Cold War (1989), however, over 10 percent of the East German population was involved in agricultural production, while West German farmers and farm workers made up only 5 percent of the population. After the reunification of Germany in 1990, agriculture in eastern territories was privatized.

The Federal Republic of Germany has liberal property laws which guarantee the right to private property. This right is, however, subject to a number of restrictions, especially with regard to state prerogatives concerning public utilities, public construction projects, mining rights, cultural preservation, antitrust issues, public safety, and issues of national security, to name only a few. Following the German reunification, there were a number of property issues to be resolved, since the GDR had expropriated private property and had not taken appropriate action with regard to private property expropriated during the Third Reich. The farmland taken from landowners between 1945 and 1949 was explicitly excluded from the reunification treaty; otherwise, it was required that expropriated property be restored to private owners. The ruling principle in this process was "restitution over compensation." The restitution of real estate was complicated by multiple claims on single objects. In agriculture, ownership issues were usually clear, since the land exploited by the cooperatives had remained in private hands. Since, however, the cooperatives had worked the land for over thirty years, building roads and buildings irrespective of property boundaries, private owners faced many practical difficulties in gaining access to their land.

Commercial Activities. In Germany, there is a strong tradition of handwerk, or manual trades. In the manual trades, training, qualification, and licensing are regulated by special ordinances. Training and qualification occur through vocational schools and internships. These are an integral part of the modern educational system, though some of the vocabulary is reminiscent of guilds, which were abolished in the nineteenth century. For example, the owner or manager of a business enterprise in the manual trades is required to have his or her Meisterbrief (master craftsman's certificate). In the mid-1990s, the eleven most important manual trades, in terms of both the number of firms and the total number of employees, were those of barbers and hairdressers, electricians, automobile mechanics, carpenters, housepainters, masons, metalworkers, plumbers, bakers, butchers, and building- and window-cleaners.

Major Industries. Among the industrial countries of Europe, Germany was a late comer, retaining a largely agricultural orientation until the later nineteenth century. Following German unification in 1871, rapid industrial development exploited extensive coal resources in the Ruhr Valley, in the Saarland, in areas surrounding Leipzig, and in Lusatia. Building upon a strong tradition of manual trades, Germany became a leader in steel production and metalworking. Coal reserves also provided the basis for an emerging carbo-chemical industry. When, in the decades following World War II, heavy industry migrated to sites in Asia and Latin America, Germany experienced a dramatic decrease in the number of industrial jobs; this was accompanied by the growth of the service sector (including retail, credit, insurance, the professions, and tourism). At the beginning of the 1970s, over half of the workforce was employed in industry; by 1998, however, this number had dwindled to less than one third. In the early twenty-first century, the most important industries in Germany are automobile manufacturing and the production of automobile parts, the machine industry, the metal products industry, the production of electrical appliances, the chemical industry, the plastics industry, and food processing.

Trade. After the United States, Germany has the second largest export economy in the world. In 1998, export accounted for 25 percent of the gross domestic product and import for nearly 22 percent. Export goods include products from the major industries cited above. Other than coal, Germany lacks fossil fuels, especially oil and natural gas. These products must be imported. Germany's most important trading partners are France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European lands. It also trades actively with East Asian countries and has become increasingly involved in eastern Europe.

Division of Labor. The work force in Germany includes laborers, entrepreneurs, employees and clerical workers, managers and administrators, and members of the various professions. Access to particular occupations is determined by a number of factors, including family background, individual ability, and education or training. Laborers in Germany are usually highly skilled, having completed vocational training programs. Beginning in the 1960s, the ranks of the laboring class were augmented by migrant workers from Turkey and other countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Both laborers and employees are represented by well organized and aggressive unions, which, in the postwar era, have often cooperated with entrepreneurial organizations and the state in long range economic planning. Since the 1970s, rising labor costs and the globalization of industrial production have led to high rates of unemployment, especially in areas where heavy industry was dominant, as in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. The problem of unemployment in the Federal Republic of Germany was exacerbated by the entry of the five new federal states of the former GDR in 1990. Once the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany lost its protected markets in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. As a result, its industry collapsed and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs. In 1998, unemployment rates were over 10 percent in former West Germany and 20 percent in former East Germany. The figures for the latter, however, did not take into account those who were involved in make-work and reeducation programs. Since many were pessimistic about the possibility of creating new jobs in eastern Germany, the flow of migrants to western Germany continued to the early twenty-first century.

S OCIAL S TRATIFICATION

Classes and Castes. By the early twentieth century, German society was divided into more or less clear-cut classes. Industrial workers included both the skilled and the unskilled. The former came from the manual trades but became factory laborers when it had proved impossible or undesirable to remain independent. The middle classes included small businessmen and independent members of the trades, white-collar employees, professionals, and civil servants. Finally, the upper or upper middle classes consisted of industrialists, financiers, high government officials, and large landowners, among others. Members of these classes were usually associated with corresponding political organizations and milieus, for example, the workers with unions and socialist or communist organizations, and the middle classes with a range of bourgeois parties, occupational organizations, and patriotic societies. In the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, however, many Catholics of all classes were organized in the Zentrum, or Center Party.

The National Socialist (Nazi) Party found supporters among all social classes, especially the middle classes. The Third Reich was, in many ways, an upwardly mobile society, which created new jobs, provided subsidies, and opened career opportunities for party members. The success of many party supporters was gained at the expense of members of the workers' movement and the Jews and other minorities.

In the prosperous West German society of the postwar era, class boundaries seemed to open up and admit more members into a new, more inclusive middle class. Correspondingly, the political distinction between the bourgeois and the socialist parties lessened. In East Germany, the Socialist Unity Party wanted to eliminate the bourgeoisie, which had compromised itself through its support of National Socialism. This was to be achieved by nationalizing larger private enterprises, forcing independent farmers to enter agricultural cooperatives, and favoring the children of workers in education and hiring programs. The GDR described itself as a "workers' and peasants' state," but some social scientists have described it as a leveled middle-class

People collecting pieces of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Built in  1961, the wall was a visible reminder of Germany's defeat in World War  II and subsequent division into first four, then two distinct and  independent zones.
People collecting pieces of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Built in 1961, the wall was a visible reminder of Germany's defeat in World War II and subsequent division into first four, then two distinct and independent zones.
society, made up of skilled workers, employees, and specialists, who held state-subsidized positions. Since the entry of the five new federal states into the Federal Republic, class relations have been reshuffled in eastern Germany once again, sending many westward in search of work and bringing many eastward to occupy leading positions in government and corporations. Large groups of retired and unemployed persons live side by side with entrepreneurs, managers, employees, civil servants, and others working in the service sector.

Symbols of Social Stratification. Social class in Germany is not only a matter of training, employment, and income but also a style of life, self-understanding, and self-display. The so-called bildungsbürgertum, or educated bourgeoisie of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to cite one example, was characterized first and foremost by a particular constellation of artistic and literary taste, habits, and cultural and ethical values. Modern sociologists have tended to focus on the full range of social milieus that make up German society and on the various kinds of consumer behavior that characterize each milieu. Thus, variations in interior design in private residences, eating habits, taste in music and in other entertainment forms, reading materials, personal hygiene and clothing, sexual behavior, and leisure activities can all be viewed as indexes of association with one of a finite set of social milieus. A single example must suffice. Highly educated persons in business, government, or the professions are likely to read the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (a major newspaper, published in Frankfurt), if they are relatively conservative, or the Süddeutsche Zeitung or the Frankfurter Rundschau (newspapers published in Munich and Frankfurt, respectively), if they are somewhat left of center. Members of both groups will probably also read the politically moderate and rather sophisticated weekly newspaper, Die Zeit (Hamburg). Conservatives who are more interested in politics and business than in arts and literature may read Die Welt (another Hamburg newspaper), while readers who identify more closely with an alternative leftist milieu are more likely to reach for die tageszeitung, or taz (a newspaper published in Berlin). In contrast, those with a vocational education, who are small business owners, employees, or workers may read the very popular Bild (Hamburg), a daily tabloid newspaper. Finally, those who still feel loyal to the defunct GDR or who hope that socialism will come again often read Neues Deutschland (Berlin), which was the official organ of the Socialist Unity Party, that is the East German communist party.

P OLITICAL L IFE

Government. Germany is a parliamentary democracy, where public authority is divided among federal, state, and local levels of government. In federal elections held every four years, all citizens who are eighteen years of age or older are entitled to cast votes for candidates and parties, which form the Bundestag, or parliament, on the basis of vote distribution. The majority party or coalition then elects the head of the government—the Kanzler (chancellor)—who appoints the heads of the various government departments. Similarly, states and local communities elect parliaments or councils and executives to govern in their constitutionally guaranteed spheres. Each state government appoints three to five representatives to serve on the Bundesrat, or federal council, an upper house that must approve all legislation affecting the states.

Leadership and Political Officials. Germany's most important political parties are the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union; the Social Democratic Party; the Free Democratic or Liberal Party; The Greens; and the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to the East German Socialist Unity Party. In 1993, the Greens merged with a party that originated in the East German citizens' movement, called Alliance 90. Since the late 1980s, various right-wing parties have occasionally received enough votes (at least 5 percent of the total) to gain seats in some of the regional parliaments. The growth of right wing parties is a result of political agitation, economic difficulties, and public concern over the increasing rate of immigration. The first free all-German national election since 1932 was held on 2 December 1990 and resulted in the confirmation of the ruling Christian Democratic/Free Democratic coalition, headed by Helmut Kohl, who was first elected in 1982. The Christian Democrats won again in 1994, but in the election of 1998, they were ousted by the Social Democrats, who formed a coalition government with Alliance 90 (the Greens). Like his then counterparts in the United States and Great Britain, Gerhard Schröder, the chancellor elected in 1998, described himself as the champion of the new political "middle."

Social Problems and Control. In the Federal Republic of Germany, police forces are authorized by the Departments of Interior of the sixteen federal states. Their activities are supplemented by the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Police) and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution). In the early twenty-first century, organized crime and violence by right-wing groups constituted the most serious domestic dangers.

Military Activity. The German armed forces are under the control of the civilian government and are integrated into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). German men who are eighteen years of age are required to serve for ten to twelve months in the armed forces—or an equivalent length of time in volunteer civilian service. In 2000, Germans began a public debate about the restructuring of the armed forces.

S OCIAL W ELFARE AND C HANGE P ROGRAMS

Germany's social welfare programs are among the oldest of any modern state. In 1881, the newly founded German Reich passed legislation for health insurance, accident insurance, and for invalid and retirement benefits. The obligation of the state to provide for the social welfare of its citizens was reinforced in the Basic Law of 1949. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the state supplements monthly payments made by citizens to health insurance, nursing care insurance, social security, and unemployment insurance. Beginning in the late twentieth century, questions were raised about the long-term viability of existing social welfare programs.

N ONGOVERNMENTAL O RGANIZATIONS AND O THER A SSOCIATIONS

German society is structured by many different Verbände, or associations, which are often organized at federal, regional, and local levels. There are associations for business and industry, for workers and employees (unions), for social welfare, for environmental protection, and for a number of other causes or special interests. Through such associations, members seek to influence policy making or to act directly in order to bring about desired changes in society. Associations that contribute to public welfare typically operate according to the principle of subsidiarity. This means that the state recognizes their contribution and augments their budgets with subsidies.

In local communities in Germany, public life is often shaped to a large degree by Vereine , or voluntary associations, in which citizens pursue common

People fill a street in Lindau. Since the late 1970s, many  inner-city areas have become pedestrian zones.
People fill a street in Lindau. Since the late 1970s, many inner-city areas have become pedestrian zones.
interests or seek to achieve public goals on the basis of private initiative. Such organizations often provide the immediate context for group formation, sociability, and the local politics of reputation.

Beginning in the late twentieth century, German society was strongly affected by the so-called new social movements, which were typically concerned with such issues as social justice, the environment, and peaceful coexistence among neighboring states. In the last years of the GDR, several civil rights groups emerged throughout the country and helped usher in the Wende (literally, turning or transition) in 1989 and 1990.

G ENDER R OLES AND S TATUSES

Division of Labor by Gender. With the transition from agricultural to industrial society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women, who had been largely restricted to the domestic sphere, began to gain access to a wider range of economic roles. More than a century after this process began, women are represented all walks of life. Nevertheless, they are still more likely to be responsible for childcare and household management; and they are disproportionately represented among teachers, nurses, office workers, retail clerks, hair dressers, and building and window cleaners.

The Relative Status of Women and Men. The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany states that men and women have equal rights under the law. Nevertheless, women did not enjoy juridical equality in marriage and the family until new family legislation was passed in 1977. Previously, family law, which had been influenced by the religious orientation of the Christian Democratic and Christian Social parties, had stated that women could seek outside employment only if this were consistent with their household duties. East German law had granted women equal rights in marriage, in the family, and in the workplace at a much earlier date. Needless to say, in both the Federal Republic and in the former GDR, the ideal of equality of opportunity for men and women was imperfectly realized. Even under conditions of full employment in East Germany, for example, women were under represented in leading positions in government, industry, and agricultural production.

M ARRIAGE , F AMILY , AND K INSHIP

Marriage. In Germany, the basic kinship group, as defined by law, is the nuclear family, consisting of opposite sex partners, usually married, and their children; and, in fact, the majority of households are made up of married couples with or without children. Between 1950 and 1997, however, there were fewer and fewer marriages both in total numbers and per capita. In 1950, there were a total of 750,000 marriages, or eleven marriages for every thousand persons; in 1997, by contrast, there were 423,000 marriages, or five marriages for every thousand persons. It is estimated that 35 percent of all marriages ended in divorce in the late twentieth century. In light of these facts, there has been much media speculation on the "crisis of the family," as has been the case in other industrial societies of western Europe and North America as well. Despite the increase in the number of unmarried couples, with or without children, such couples make up only 5 percent of all households. Nevertheless, the rising number of children who are born to unmarried mothers (currently 18 percent, lower than the European Union average), the rising divorce rate, and the growth of alternative forms of partnership have, since 1979, led to a broadening of the concept of family and a liberalization of family law and family policy.

Much more dramatic is the reduction of the birthrate. The annual number of deaths has been greater than the annual number of births since 1972. On the eve of reunification in 1990, there was an annual birthrate of 1,400 children per 1,000 women in West Germany and 1,500 children per 1,000 women in East Germany. In the new federal states of former East Germany, the birthrate had sunken to 1,039 children per 1,000 women by 1997. In both parts of Germany, the reduction of the birthrate is matched by a progressive reduction in the average size of households. In 1998, less than 5 percent of private households had five or more members. Since 1986, the Federal Republic of Germany has provided for the payment of Kindergeld (child-raising benefits) to families or single parents with children. As of January 1999, these payments were 250 marks (or approximately half that amount in dollars) per month for the first and second child up until his or her eighteenth birthday— and, in some cases, until the twenty-seventh birthday.

In the new federal states of former East Germany, there are fewer marriages and fewer children; but a disproportionately high number of children are born to unmarried couples. These differences between former East Germany and former West Germany may be attributed, in part, to the economic difficulties in the new federal states. Some of the differences, however, may be understood as lingering effects of the divergence of family law and social policy during the separation of the East and the West. In the GDR, the official policy of full employment for men and women was realized by providing women with benefits and services such as pregnancy leave, nursing leave, day-care centers, and kindergartens. In general, the family law of the GDR served to strengthen the position of women vis-á-vis men in their relationships to their children. With the cutback or elimination of such policies following the entry of the new federal states into the Federal Republic of Germany, there was both a greater hesitancy to have children and a greater tendency to view having children separately from marital status.

Kin Groups. A society the size of Germany lends itself to the statistical analysis of family relations. It is unfortunate, however, that official statistics direct attention so single-mindedly to the nuclear family or variations thereof (unmarried couples, single parents) and cause observers to overlook family ties with grandparents, grown siblings, cousins, and other consanguineal or affinal relatives. Nevertheless, it is clear that ties with more distant relatives are a vital part of kinship in Germany at the onset of the twenty-first century, as is especially evident on holidays, at key points in the lifecycle of individuals, and in large family projects such as moving.

S OCIALIZATION

Child Rearing and Education. In Germany, infant care and child rearing correspond to typical western European and North American patterns. Childhood is viewed as a developmental stage in which the individual requires attention, instruction, affection, and a special range of consumer products. Child rearing is typically in the hands of the mother and father or the single parent, but here, especially, the importance of the extended family is evident. Variations in child rearing behavior by social class and social milieu are, however, less well studied than other aspects of adult behavior. In light of the critique of the "authoritarian personality" by the German sociologist Theodor Adorno and others, some middle-class parents have tried to practice an anti-authoritarian form of child rearing. Adorno and his colleagues thought that certain child rearing practices, especially strict and arbitrary discipline, encourage stereotypic thinking, submission to authority, and aggression against outsiders or deviants. In the past, they argued, the prevalence of such practices in Germany contributed to the success of National Socialism.

In most federal states, the school system divides pupils between vocational and university preparatory tracks. The vocational track includes nine years of school and further part-time vocational training, together with a paid or unpaid apprenticeship. The university preparatory track requires attendance of the humanistic Gymnasium, beginning in the fifth year of school, and successful completion of the Abitur, a university entrance examination.

Higher Education. Germany has many universities and technical colleges, almost all of which are self-administered institutions under the authority of the corresponding departments of the individual federal states. University study is still structured according to the humanistic ideals of the nineteenth century, which entrusts students with a great deal of independence. The assignment of grades, for example, is largely independent of class attendance. Grades are given for oral and written examinations, which are administered at the departmental level after the completion of the semester. Students of law and medicine begin with their chosen subject in the first year at the university and pursue relatively specialized courses of study. Admittance to popular

A cowherd leads cows down a rural road at Reit im Winkl, Germany.  The cows wear flowered headdresses for an annual celebration.
A cowherd leads cows down a rural road at Reit im Winkl, Germany. The cows wear flowered headdresses for an annual celebration.
major subjects is governed by the so-called Numerus clausus, which restricts the number of students, usually according to scores on college entrance examinations. German students pay no admission fees and are supported with monthly allowances or loans from the state.

E TIQUETTE

It has often been noted that German society retains a small town ethos, which arose in the early modern period under conditions of political and economic particularism. Indeed, many Germans adhere to standards of bürgerlichkeit, or civic morality, which lend a certain neatness and formality to behavior in everyday life. When entering a store, for example, one is not likely to be noticed, unless one announces oneself forcefully by saying, " guten Tag " (literally, "good day") or "hello." In former East Germany, it is still common for friends and acquaintances to shake hands when they see each other for the first time each day. West Germans consider it more modern and perhaps more American not to do so. In pronouns of direct address, one uses either the formal sie or the informal du. Colleagues in the workplace typically address each other as Sie or use a title and the family name, such as, Herr or Frau Doktor Schmidt.

Life in public does not seem to be the highest good for all Germans, as urban centers often appear to be abandoned on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. This is linked to the issue of the operating hours of shops, which has been debated in Germany since the mid-1970s. For different reasons, both the unions and the churches opposed extended operating hours, as do many citizens, who are critical of "consumer societies" or who prefer, on the weekends, to remain with their families or in their private gardens.

R ELIGION

Religious Beliefs. Germany was the homeland of the Protestant Reformation, but, in the politically fragmented Holy Roman Empire of the sixteenth century, many territories remained faithful to Roman Catholicism or reverted back to it, depending of the policy of the ruling house. Today, 34 percent of the population belongs to the Evangelical (Protestant) Church and a further 34 percent belongs to the Catholic Church. Many Germans have no religious affiliation. This is especially true of former East Germany, where, in 1989, the Evangelical Church had 4 million members (out of a total population of 16.5 million) and the Catholic Church had only 921,000 members. Since 1990, the Evangelical Church has lost even more members in the new federal states.

The Evangelical Church is a unified Protestant church, which combines Lutherans, Reformed Protestants, and United Protestants. Reformed Protestants adhere to a form of Calvinism, while United Protestants combine aspects of Lutheranism and Calvinism. Other Protestant denominations make up only a small fraction of the population. Most German Catholics live in the Rhineland or in southern Germany, whereas Protestants dominate in northern and central parts of the country.

In 1933, there were over 500,000 people of Jewish faith or Jewish heritage living within the boundaries of the German Reich. Between 1933 and 1945, German Jews, together with members of the far more numerous Jewish populations of eastern Europe, fell victim to the anti-Semitic and genocidal policies of the National Socialists. In 1997, there are an estimated sixty-seven thousand people of Jewish faith or heritage living in Germany. The largest Jewish congregations are in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin.

In the postwar era, migratory workers or immigrants from North Africa and western Asia established Islamic communities upon arriving in Germany. In 1987, there were an estimated 1.7 million Muslims living in West Germany.

Religious Practitioners. Religious practitioners in Germany include especially the Protestant or Catholic pfarrer (minister or priest). In local communities, the minister or priest belongs to the publicly acknowledged group of local notables, which also includes local governmental officials, school officials, and business leaders. Roman Catholic priests are, of course, local representatives of the international church hierarchy, which is centered in Rome. Protestant ministers represent Lutheran, Reformed, or United churches, which are organized at the level of the regional states. These state-level organizations belong, in turn, to the Evangelical Church of Germany.

Rituals and Holy Places. From the smallest village to the largest city, the local church dominates the central area of nearly every German settlement. German churches are often impressive architectural structures, which bear witness to centuries of growth and renovation. In predominantly Catholic areas, such as the Rhineland, Bavaria, and parts of Baden-Württemberg, the areas surrounding the towns and villages are typically strewn with shrines and chapels. The processions to these shrines, which were common until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have now been largely discontinued.

Despite processes of secularization, which had became intensive by the early nineteenth century, churches retained their importance in public life. Beginning in the 1840s, there was a popular movement to complete the Cologne cathedral, which was begun in the Middle Ages but which remained a construction site for 400 years. With the support of the residents of Cologne, the Catholic Church, and the King of Prussia (who was a Protestant), work on the cathedral was begun in 1842 and completed in 1880. The character of the ceremonies and festivals that accompanied this process indicate that the Cologne Cathedral served not only as a church but also as a national monument. Similarly, the national assembly of 1848, in which elected representatives met to draft a constitution for a united Germany, took place in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt. (The national and constitutional movement failed when the Prussian king refused the imperial crown, which was offered to him by the representatives of the national assembly.) One of the centers of the popular movement that led to the fall of the GDR in 1989–1990 was the Nikolaikirche (St. Nicolas Church) in Leipzig.

Since the late nineteenth century, churches and other historical buildings in Germany have become the objects of Denkmalpflege (cultural preservation), which may be understood as one aspect of a broader culture of historical commemoration. Together with museums, historical monuments constitute a new set of special sites, which may be approached only with a correspondingly respectful attitude.

Graveyards and war memorials occupy a kind of middle ground between holy sites and historical monuments. All settlements in Germany have graveyards, which surviving family members visit on special holidays or on private anniversaries. War memorials from World War I are also ubiquitous. Monuments to World War II often have a very different character. For example, the concentration camp Buchenwald, near Weimar, has, since the early 1950s, served as a commemorative site, which is dedicated to the victims of the National Socialist regime.

Death and the Afterlife. Nearly 70 percent of Germans are members of a Christian church, and many of these share common Christian beliefs in himmel (heaven) and hölle (hell) as destinations of the soul after death. Many other Germans describe themselves as agnostics or atheists, in which case they view beliefs in an afterlife as either potentially misleading or false. Funerary rites involve either a church service or a civil ceremony, depending on the beliefs of the deceased and his or her survivors.

M EDICINE AND H EALTH C ARE

Germans were among the leaders in the development of both Western biomedicine and national health insurance. Biomedical health care in Germany is extensive and of high quality. In addition to having advanced medical technology, Germans also have a large number of medical doctors per capita. In 1970, there was one medical doctor for every 615 people, while in 1997, there was one medical doctor for every 290. Forty-one percent of doctors are in private practice, while 48 percent are in hospitals, and 12 percent are in civil service or in similar situations.

In medical research, there is an emphasis on the so-called zivilisationskrankheiten (diseases of the "civilized" lands), that is, heart disease and cancer. In 1997, heart disease caused 47 percent of all deaths in former West Germany and 52 percent of deaths in former East Germany. In the same year, cancer was responsible for 25 percent of all deaths in former West Germany and 23 percent of deaths in former East Germany.

Alongside biomedicine, there is a strong German tradition of naturopathic medicine, including especially water cures at spas of various kinds. Water cures have been opposed by some members of the German biomedical establishment but are still subsidized to some extent by statutory health insurance agencies.

S ECULAR C ELEBRATIONS

German holidays are those of the Roman calendar and the Christian liturgical year. Especially popular are Sylvester (New Year's), Karneval or Fastnacht (Mardi Gras), Ostern (Easter), Himmelfahrt (Ascension Day), Pfingsten (Pentecost), Advent, and Weihnachten (Christmas). The new national holiday is 3 October, the Tag der deutschen Einheit (Day of German Unity).

T HE A RTS AND H UMANITIES

Support for the Arts. The arts in Germany are financed, in large measure, through subsidies from state and local government. Public theaters, for example,

The Holstentor and Holsten gate, built between 1469 and 1478, in  Lübeck, Germany.
The Holstentor and Holsten gate, built between 1469 and 1478, in Lübeck, Germany.
gained 26 percent of their revenues from ticket sales in 1969–1970 but only 13.6 percent in 1996–1997. Public subsidies have been threatened in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by budget cuts, which have been accompanied by calls for more sponsorship by private industry. In the new federal states of former East Germany, the once very dense network of theaters and concert halls has been reduced dramatically. In Saxony, for example, the Kulturraumgesetz of 1994 (legislation for the creation of arts regions) requires neighboring communities to pool their resources, as, for example, when one community closes its concert hall but retains its theater, while another does just the opposite. Concert- or theatergoers are then required to travel about within the region, in order to take advantage of the full arts program. Still, many major and some minor German cities have excellent theater ensembles, ballets, and opera houses. Berlin and Munich are especially important centers for the performing arts.

Literature. Germany was a Kulturnation, that is, a nation sharing a common language and literature, before it became a nation-state. As is well known, the printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–1468) in Mainz about a half a century before the onset of the Protestant Reformation. The Luther Bible, written in the vernacular German of Upper Saxony, spread throughout the German-speaking world and helped to create a national reading public. This reading public emerged among the educated bourgeoisie in the Age of Enlightenment (eighteenth century). Important aspects of this public sphere were newspapers, literary journals, reading societies, and salons. The classical phase in the history of German literature, however, came during the transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, the two most important figures being Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1809). The nineteenth century saw a dramatic expansion of the publishing industry and the literary market and the blossoming of all modern literary genres. Following World War II, there was a split between the literary spheres of East and West Germany. German reunification began with an acrimonious debate over the value of East German literature.

Graphic Arts. German artists have contributed to every era in the history of the graphic arts, especially the Renaissance (Albrecht Dürer), Romanticism (Caspar David Friedrich), and Expressionism (the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter).

Performance Arts. Germans are especially well-known for their contributions in the area of classical music, and the heritage of great German or Austrian composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, and Gustav Mahler is still cultivated in concert halls throughout the country. Germans developed an innovative film industry in the Weimar Republic, but its greatest talents emigrated to the United States in the 1930s. In East Germany, Babelsberg was the home of DEFA ( Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft ), an accomplished film company. With the help of extensive public subsidies, a distinctive West German cinema emerged in the 1970s. Since then, however, attempts to reinvigorate the German film industry have proven difficult, in light of the popularity of products from Hollywood.

T HE S TATE OF THE P HYSICAL AND S OCIAL S CIENCES

In the course of the nineteenth century, German scientists and scholars cultivated distinct national traditions in the physical sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences, which served, in turn, as important models for other countries. Since the end of the World War II, however, science and scholarship in Germany have become internationalized to such a degree that it is problematic to speak of deutsche Wissenschaft (German Science), as was once common. The most important centers for science and scholarship in Germany today are the universities, independent research institutes, such as those sponsored by the Max Planck Society, and private industry.

B IBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor W., et al. The Authoritarian Personality, 1982.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. Ed., 1991.

Beyme, Klaus von, Werner Durth, Niels Gutschow, Winfried Nerdinger, and Thomas Topfstedt, eds. Neue Städte aus Ruinen: Deutscher Städtebau der Nachkriegszeit, 1992.

Blackbourn, David. The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918, 1998.

Blitz, Hans-Martin. Aus Liebe zum Vaterland: Die Deutsche Nation im 18. Jahrhundert, 2000.

Borneman, John. Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation, 1992.

Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, 1992.

Buse, Dieter K., and Jürgen Dörr. Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture, 1871– 1990, 1998.

Chickering, Roger. We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886–1914, 1984.

Craig, Gordon A. Germany, 1866–1945, 1978.

——. The Germans, 1991.

Dann, Otto. Nation und Nationalismus in Deutschland, 1770–1990, 1993.

Elias, Norbert. The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

——. The Civilizing Process, Rev. Ed., 2000.

Forsythe, Diana. "German Identity and the Problem of History." In E. Tonkin, M. McDonald, and M. Chapman, eds., History and Ethnicity, 1989.

Francois, Etienne, and Hannes Siegrist, eds. Nation und Emotion: Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, 1995.

Hermand, Jost. Old Dreams of a New Reich: Völkisch Utopias and National Socialism, 1992.

Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition, 1984.

Iggers, Georg G. The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present, Rev. Ed., 1983.

Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland, 1987.

Lowie, Robert H. Toward Understanding Germany, 1954.

Maier, Charles. The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity, 1988.

Merkel, Ina. Utopie und Bedürfnis: Die Geschichte der Konsumkultur in der DDR, 1999.

Mosse, George L. The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich, 1975.

Nipperdey, Thomas. Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1996.

Peukert, Detlev J. Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life, 1989.

Schulze, Gerhard. Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart, 4th ed., 1993.

Sheehan, James J. German History, 1770–1866, 1989.

Siegrist, Hannes. "From Divergence to Convergence: The Divided German Middle Class, 1945–2000." In O. Zunz, ed., Social Contracts Under Stress, 2001.

Tacitus, Cornelius. Agricola; and Germany, 1999.

Ten Dyke, Elizabeth. "Memory, History and Remembrance Work in Dresden." In D. Berdahl, M. Bunzl, and M. Lampland, eds., Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, 1999.

Tipton, Frank B. Regional Variations in the Economic Development of Germany During the Nineteenth Century, 1976.

Walker, Mack. German Home Towns, 1971.

—J OHN E IDSON


Source : http://www.everyculture.com/Ge-It/Germany.html

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Culture of United States of America

Identification. The name "America" is often used to refer to the United States, but until the political formation of the United States after the Revolutionary War, this designation referred to South America only. Contemporary use of the term to refer to the United States underlines that country's political and economic dominance in the western hemisphere. Such use of this designation is impolitic from the perspective of Canadians and Latin Americans.

The United States has an Anglo majority that is politically and economically dominant. One of the defining characteristics of the country as a nation is its legacy of slavery and the persistence of economic and social inequalities based on race.

U.S. culture has significant regional inflections. Most Americans are aware of these differences despite the fact that these regions have experienced economic transformations and that Americans are a mobile people who often leave their regions of origin.

The Northeast is densely populated. Its extensive corridors of urbanization have been called the national "megalopolis." Once a leader in technology and industry, the Northeast has been overtaken in those areas by California's Silicon Valley.

The Midwest is both rural and industrial. It is the home of the family farm and is the "corn belt" and "breadbasket" of the nation. In the Great Lakes area of the upper Midwest, the automobile and steel industries were central to community and economy. As those industries declined, the upper Midwest became known as the rust belt.

The South was shaped by its secession from the Union before the Civil War and is associated with slavery and with subsequent battles over civil rights for African-Americans. In contemporary terms, these are the sunshine states, retirement havens, and new economic frontiers.

The West, the last national frontier, is associated with national dreams and myths of unlimited opportunity and individualism. It has the nation's most open landscapes.

California, along with the southwestern states were ceded to the United States by Mexico in 1848 after the Mexican-American War. The Southwest is distinctive because of its historical ties to colonial Spain, its Native American populations, and its regional cuisine, which has been influenced by Native American and Spanish cultures.

Location and Geography. The United States is the world's fourth largest country, with an area of 3,679,192 square miles (9,529,107 square kilometers). It includes fifty states and one federal district, where the capital, Washington, D.C., is located. Its forty-eight contiguous states are situated in the middle of North America. The mainland United States borders Canada to the north and Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Straits of Florida to the south. The western border meets the Pacific Ocean, and to the east lies the Atlantic Ocean.

Alaska and Hawaii are not joined to the other forty-eight states. Alaska is at the extreme north of North America, between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, and is bordered by Canada to the east. The island chain of Hawaii is situated in the east-central Pacific Ocean, about two thousand miles southwest of San Francisco.

Although Americans generally do not consider themselves an imperial or colonial power, the country has a number of commonwealths and territories, most of which were acquired through military conquest. These territories include Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean basin, and Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Wake island in the Pacific.

United States
United States

The physical environment is extremely diverse and often spectacular. Alaska's glaciers coexist with flowering tundras that bloom in the arctic summer. The forests of the Pacific Northwest and northern California are known for giant ancient trees such as Sitka spruce and sequoia (redwoods). Niagara Falls, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon are a few of the better-known landscapes.

The physical regions of the country overlap both national boundaries and cultural regions. For example, the Atlantic coastal plain extends from New England to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. It is characterized by flooded river valleys that form major estuaries, such as the Chesapeake Bay.

The Appalachian Mountains span two cultural regions. Located to the west of the Atlantic coastal plain, they extend from the Middle Atlantic state of New York to the southeastern state of Georgia. The Appalachians are an old, eroded mountain range that is now heavily forested. It is possible to traverse the entire range by walking the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail.

The interior lowlands area also crosses regions and national borders. It includes the Midwestern corn belt and the Great Plains wheat-growing region. The Great Plains section of the interior lowlands stretches into Canada.

The Western Cordillera is part of a mountain chain that stretches from Chile in South America to Alaska. The highest peak in the country, Mount McKinley (Denali), is in the Western Cordillera in Alaska. The Western Intermontane Plateau, or Great Basin, crosses from the mountain states into the west.

Major navigable inland waterways include the Mississippi River, which cuts north to south through the east-central part of the country; the Great lakes in the upper Midwest, the largest freshwater lake group in the world; and the Saint Lawrence River.

The physical environment has had significant effects on regional cultures. The rich topsoil of the Midwest made it an important agricultural area; its rivers and lakes made it central to industrial development. However, settlers significantly transformed their environments, recreating the landscapes they had left behind in Europe. The vast prairies of the Great Plains, which were characterized by numerous species of tall grasses, have been transformed by irrigation and modern agricultural methods into continuous fields of soybeans and wheat. In the West, a series of pipelines and dams transformed Los Angeles and its desert surroundings into a giant oasis.

American settlers were not the first to transform these landscapes; native American groups also altered the lands on which they depended. Fire was used in hunting, and this expanded the prairie; irrigation was used in settled communities that practiced agriculture; and maize, a crop that cannot grow without human manipulation, was a staple crop.

The idea that the environment shapes culture or character does have cultural currency. Over a century ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner theorized that the American frontier experience had been instrumental in forming the rugged, independent, and democratic national character. Wilderness, independence, and democracy are common aspects of American symbolism.

Demography. The United States has a population of over 280 million (2000 census), but it is relatively sparsely populated. The most populous state, California, with 33,871,648 inhabitants, contrasts with Wyoming, which has only 493,782 residents.

These population figures reflect the fact that the United states is an urban nation. Over 75 percent of the inhabitants live in cities, among whom more than 50 percent are estimated to be suburban. Population growth is at below-replacement levels unless immigration is taken into account.

One of the most significant facts about the population is that its average age is on the rise. The baby boomers born in the period from the end of World War II until the early 1960s are beginning to get old.

Life expectancy is seventy-three years for white men and seventy-nine years for white women. African-American men have a life expectancy of sixty-seven years; in inner-city areas, the average life expectancy of African-American males is much lower. Infant mortality rates are higher among African-Americans than among whites.

U.S. Census categories identify populations according to whether they are of European descent (white). Whites constitute a large majority at about 70 percent of the population. According to current census figures, in the year 2000 the largest minority was blacks, who number about 35 million, or 13 percent of the population.

The Hispanic (Latino) population, which includes primarily people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban (who may be any color) descent, is estimated to number 31 million, or 12 percent of the population. Latinos are expected to become the largest minority group early in the twenty-first century.

The Asian population (including Pacific Islanders) is defined as people of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese origin. It is estimated that there are eleven million Asians, making up about 4 percent of the population.

The Native American population, which includes natives of Alaska such as the Inuit and Aleuts, is estimated to consist of over two million people, slightly over 1 percent of the population. Roughly a third of Native Americans live on reservations, trust lands, territories, and mother lands under Native American jurisdiction.

Linguistic Affiliation. There is no official national language. If English is its unofficial first language, Spanish is its unofficial second language. The United States ranks fifth in the world in the number of Spanish speakers.

Standard English is the language Americans are expected to speak. Within the social hierarchy of American English dialects, Standard English can be described as the exemplar of acceptable for correct usage based on the model of cultural, economic, and political leaders. There is no clear-cut definition of what Standard English is, and it is often defined by what it is not. For example, it often is contrasted with the type of English spoken by black Americans (African-American Vernacular English).

Standard English grammar and pronunciation are taught by English teachers in public schools. Like "whiteness," this implies a neutral, normative and nonethnic position. However, most Americans do not speak Standard English; instead, they speak a range of class, ethnic, and regional variants.

Spoken English includes many dialects that have been influenced by Native Americans, immigrants, and slaves. These languages include not only Dutch, German, and Scandinavian, Asian, and African languages, but less widely spoken languages such as Basque, Yiddish, and Greek. Thus, spoken English reflects the nation's immigration and history.

As linguistic diversity has increased, and particularly as Spanish has become more widely spoken, language has become an important aspect of the debate over the meaning or nature of American culture. Linguistic and cultural diversity is accepted in states such as New York and Illinois, where Spanish bilingual education is mandated in the public schools. In California, however, where tensions between Anglos and Mexican immigrants run high, bilingual education has been abolished in the public school systems. State laws prohibit even bilingual personnel from using Spanish with Spanish-speaking patients in hospitals or with students in schools.

Bilingual education is not new. In the nineteenth century, Germans outnumbered all other immigrant groups except for all the people from the British Isles combined. With the exception of Spanish speakers in the Southwest, at no other time has foreign language been so widely spoken. German-only newspapers and German and bilingual public schools were found throughout the Midwest and Oregon and Colorado and elsewhere from the mid-nineteenth century until World War I, when anti-German sentiment resulted in the elimination of German instruction in public schools.

Other languages used in the press and in public schools included Yiddish, Swedish, and Norwegian. Thus, proponents of English only, who claim that bilingual education should not be provided to Spanish-speaking immigrants because earlier immigrants did not have this advantage, overlook the fact that those immigrants often were schooled in their native languages.

Education was important in spreading English as a standard language. Public schools played a major role; by 1870, every state in the country had committed itself to compulsory education. The percentage of foreign-born persons who were unable to speak English peaked 31 percent in 1910, by 1920 had decreased to 15 percent, and by 1930 had fallen less than 9 percent. Among Native Americans, English was enforced by the establishment by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of compulsory boarding schools for school-age children. Contemporary Native American speech patterns can be traced to that experience.

Symbolism. The flag is perhaps the most potent and contested national symbol. Made up of stripes symbolizing the original thirteen colonies and fifty stars representing the fifty states, it is displayed on national holidays such as Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day. Public places and businesses raise the flag as a matter of course. Individuals who display the flag in their homes or yards make an explicit statement about their patriotic connection to the nation.

The flag is also employed frequently as a symbol of protest. In the nineteenth century, northern abolitionists hoisted the flag upside down to protest the return of an escaped slave to his southern owner, and upside-down flags continue to be used as a sign of protest. The use of the stars and stripes design of the flag in clothing, whether for fashion, humor, or protest, is controversial and is considered by some people to be akin to treason and by others to be an individual right in a state that upholds individual rights.

Nationalism and community solidarity frequently are expressed through sports. In the Olympic games, patriotic symbols abound, and victors are heralded for their American qualities of determination, individualism, and competitiveness. In the same way, football games connect fans to one another and to their communities through a home team. The game expresses the important value of competition: unlike soccer, American football games can never end in a tie. Football also reflects cultural ideals about sex and gender; the attire of players and cheerleaders exaggerates male and female sex characteristics.

Aerial view along the East River of New York City, one of the largest cities in the world and perhaps the most famous.
Aerial view along the East River of New York City, one of the largest cities in the world and perhaps the most famous.
H ISTORY AND E THNIC R ELATIONS

Emergence of the Nation. The first European settlements date from the early sixteenth century and included Spanish towns in Florida and California, French outposts in Louisiana, and British settlements in New England. The United States of America was declared in 1776 by colonists from England who wanted independence from that country and its elite representatives in the colonies.

The class, racial, ethnic, and gender relationships of the contemporary nation have their roots in the colonial period. Unsuccessful efforts by British settlers to enslave Native Americans were followed by the importation of African slaves to work on cotton plantations in the South and of white indentured servants to work in the emerging industries in the North.

British taxation fell disproportionately on poor white laborers and indentured servants. This sector was instrumental in organizing the protests and boycotts of British goods that culminated in the American Revolution. Women participated in the Revolution by running farms and businesses during the war.

The egalitarian rhetoric of the Revolution did not extend to slaves, and after independence, full citizenship rights did not extend to all whites. Men and women who did not own property had no voting rights. (Women did not gain the right to vote until the early twentieth century.) The area west of the Appalachians was settled by poor whites seeking land and autonomy from wage labor.

After 1820, when poor white men gained the vote in most states, women began to see their own lack of political rights in a new way. Women's ability to connect their powerlessness to that of men in relationship to plantation owners made them active in the abolitionist movement. However, after the Civil War when freed male slaves, but not freed women or white women, were given the right to vote, the women's suffrage movement broke with the civil rights movement in the South.

State laws enacted in the South after the Civil War enforced racial separation by keeping freed men out of skilled and industrial jobs, limited their political rights through restrictive voting registration practices, and enforced segregation at all levels, including in housing and education.

Women were an essential part of the industrial labor force in the early years of the nation. Their work in textile manufacturing helped provide commodities for an expanding population and freed men to work in the agricultural sector. Women were active in labor union organizing in the nineteenth century.

A man holds trays of cooked lobster and corn on the cob at the annual Yarmouth Clam Festival in Yarmouth, Maine.
A man holds trays of cooked lobster and corn on the cob at the annual Yarmouth Clam Festival in Yarmouth, Maine.

The emerging nation also was shaped by its territorial expansion. After the Revolution, the United States included only thirteen former British colonies in the Northeast and the Southeast. Territories to the west and south of the original colonies were acquired through later purchases and concessions. The most important of these acquisitions was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, by which the country doubled its territory. This purchase signaled the beginning of western expansion beyond the Appalachians. It became the country's "manifest destiny" to expand from the eastern to the western shore.

During this time, the Indian wars that eventually subdued the major Native American groups and drove them west to reservation lands were waged. In 1838, President Andrew Jackson rounded up thousands of Cherokees from North Carolina and marched them to "Indian territory," then a large area that included Oklahoma. One of every four Cherokees died of cold, hunger, or disease, and the Cherokees named this march the Trail of Tears.

Another major expansion occurred after the Mexican-American War. In 1848, Mexico was compelled to sell its northern territories to the United States. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo conceded California and what is now the Southwest, considerably expanding the continental United States and broadening its ethnic and linguistic profile.

In 1890, at the Battle of Wounded Knee, many of the Sioux were massacred, and the survivors were forced onto Pine Ridge Reservation. This battle marked the disappearance of the traditional Native American way of life. In the same year, the Census Bureau observed that the continental United States had been settled by whites in virtually every corner. The American frontier was considered closed.

National Identity. Often referred to as a melting pot, the United States is popularly regarded as a nation that assimilates or absorbs immigrant populations to produce a standard American. This is a powerful cultural idea. The word "American" conjures up an image of a person of white, middle-class status. All other residents, including the area's indigenous inhabitants, are "hyphenated" or characterized by an identifying adjective: African-American, Native American, Asian-American, Mexican-American. The national Census does not hyphenate Americans of European descent.

Huge waves of non-European immigration since the 1960s have made the United States the nation with the highest immigrant population in the world. This fact, combined with the many identity and civil rights movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, has created a new kind of cultural politics that challenges the country's Anglo identity and power base.

Ethnic Relations. From colonial times, indentured servants and other poor whites constituted a buffer between landowners and slaves, who made up the bottom rung of the social ladder. Poor whites self-identified as white to associate themselves with the powerful landowning class rather than see their common interests with slaves. This process accentuated the dominance of white racial identity over class identity.

The "whiteness" of buffer groups has been ambiguous, changing along with their position in the labor market. Although now considered white, the Irish immigrants who arrived in great numbers in the early nineteenth century occupied the lowest rungs of the labor force next to slaves and often were referred to as "white niggers."

Between 1848, when lands from Mexico were annexed, and the 1930s, Americans of Mexican descent were classified as white. As Mexicans became important as laborers in the expanding agribusiness sector, those people were reclassified as Mexican-American. The large waves of immigrants who poured into the country from Southern and Eastern Europe between 1880 and World War I made up a new buffer group. This group included large numbers of Jews who did not come to be considered white for several generations.

Relationships among racial and ethnic groups have been mediated by this association between status, whiteness, and position in the labor market. Between 1916 and 1929, African-American laborers migrated to the North to work in industrial jobs. Paid less than whites for comparable jobs, they were regarded by white workers as union busters and scabs. African-Americans also received less than their share of the social benefits extended to whites after World War II. Federal programs for returning veterans included housing and educational subsidies. Most of these white groups considered their own ascension into the middle class as being the result of sweat and determination.
U RBANISM , A RCHITECTURE, AND THE U SE OF S PACE

The United States is an urban and suburban nation whose numerous cities each tell a story about its historical and economic development. New York, founded by the Dutch as a trading colony, was once the hunting and fishing grounds of Native Americans. It became an important industrial center in the nineteenth century, but by the mid-twentieth century its industries had declined and much of its middle class population had relocated to the suburbs. As the twenty-first century begins, New York is a "global" city resurrected from decline by its role as a center of finance in the world economy. Like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have emerged as important cities in connected world.

Many cities are notable for their particular regional roles. Saint Louis, situated on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, was an important transportation hub in the nineteenth century before railroads replaced riverboats as the most efficient form of travel. Once known as the "Gateway to the West," it was the last outpost of civilization as the country expanded to the west. Today, it is possible to see the Arch, a monument to the expansionist past, from nearby Cahokia, which houses the ruins of one of the largest cities in the world of its time. Between 900 and 1300 C.E. , this city built by the indigenous Mississippian culture was larger than most contemporary European cities.

In colonial times, cities were divided along racial and class lines. The row house, a series of attached dwellings, was a common form of housing. It symbolized the defensive posture of early settlers, whose enclaves protected them from the untamed wilderness and its Indian inhabitants. The elites lived in the central city, often with slave quarters behind their homes. The working classes and urban slaves who eventually were allowed to live apart from their masters resided in peripheral areas and the early suburbs. In early American cities, there was no separation between the workplace and the home. Most goods were produced by artisans who lived and worked in the same building. As the country industrialized, home and workplace became distinct.

During the nineteenth century, the suburb was transformed from a space for social outcasts and the lower classes to a space for the elite. A number of factors led to the suburbanization that is central to modern American life. A romantic engagement with the countryside arose as the frontier expanded to the west and the wilderness receded from view in the East. The noise and pollution of the industrialized cities of the nineteenth century, as well as the presence of the working classes, made them less attractive to the elites. These factors combined with a transportation revolution made possible by cable cars and railroads.

Cities were stopovers for new immigrants, who soon began to move to the suburbs, and the permanent domains of the working poor and, until recently, black Americans of all classes, who were kept out of suburbs through discriminatory real estate and zoning practices. Suburbs were organized along class and ethnic lines, and cities became the repositories of the most disadvantaged.

The early suburbs of the elite classes were characterized by large and architecturally unique homes. Beginning in the early twentieth century, federal subsidies such as deductible mortgage interest and loan programs made suburban living a possibility for working-class and middle-class immigrants. Standard designs and quick building methods resulted in uninspired architecture but relatively inexpensive housing.

The use of the automobile and the growth of highways made possible a nationwide suburban sprawl of which shopping malls and motels are ubiquitous reminders. Americans have a complex relationship to the suburb. On the one hand, it represents success, family life, and safety from the chaos and danger of the city, fulfilling the peculiarly American promise that every family should be able to own its own home. On the other hand, the monotony of this landscape is a metaphor for cultural conformity, social isolation, and racism.

Fishing boats are anchored in the Lafourche Bayou in Cajun Country, Louisiana. Fishing is an important part of the Lousiana economy.
Fishing boats are anchored in the Lafourche Bayou in Cajun Country, Louisiana. Fishing is an important part of the Lousiana economy.

For women, suburban life is particularly ambiguous. The suburb promises a large home and yard and a safe and healthy place in which to raise children, but the single-family home isolates women from the extended family networks and friends that make child rearing less onerous.

Suburbs are often referred to as bedroom communities, suggesting that suburbanites depend on a nearby city for employment, services, and cultural activities. However, the growth of suburban industries and services that allow suburbanites to work in their own communities points to the declining dependency of suburbs on city centers.

By the 1970s, white flight from the cities created an urban-suburban landscape aptly described as Chocolate City/Vanilla Suburb, referring to the racial separation of blacks and whites. Cities were mythologized in the popular imagination as wild and dangerous places riddled with crime, gang violence, and drugs. Young black males and welfare mothers were the symbols of social problems.

Beginning in the 1980s, young urban professionals began to "reclaim" the cities, rehabilitating the aging and often decrepit housing stock. This process of gentrification turns cities into the new American frontier, where professionals drawn to major financial centers such as New York and Los Angeles are the "pioneers" and black and Hispanic residents are the "Indians."
F OOD AND E CONOMY

Food in Daily Life. Americans eat large amounts of processed, convenience, and fast foods. The average diet is high in salt, fat, and refined carbohydrates. It is estimated that 60 percent of Americans are obese. The preference for packaged and processed foods is culturally rooted. Americans as a whole enjoy the taste of hamburgers, hot dogs, and junk foods. Processed foods generally are perceived to be cleaner or more safe than unprocessed foods.

Industrial food producers use advertising to associate processed foods with the desirable modern and industrial qualities of speed, cleanliness, and efficiency. Speed of preparation was essential in a nation of nuclear family households where wives and mothers did not have relatives to help them and usually were solely responsible for food preparation.

However, gourmet, regional, and alternative styles of eating are highly influential. Gourmet foods, including high quality fresh and local produce, imported cheeses, fine coffees, and European kinds of bread, are available in every city and in many towns.

Regional cuisines, from cheese steaks in Philadelphia to the green chili stews of New Mexico and the grits of the South, are culinary reminders that the country encapsulates many different traditions.

An alternative tradition is the health food movement, which includes a preference for unprocessed foods and fruits and vegetables that have not been chemically treated or genetically altered. Some health food proponents are concerned primarily with avoiding the heavily processed foods that make up the bulk of the traditional diet. Others also see the consumption of organic products, which generally are produced by small, labor-intensive farms, as a way to fight the ecological damage caused by agricultural chemicals and challenge the corporate nature of food production.

Food Customs at Ceremonial Occasions. Americans have few occasions that they term ceremonial. In the case of weddings, funerals, and other rites, few fixed food rules apply. Most weddings, whether religious or secular, include a large tiered cake. After the wedding, the newlyweds feed each other a piece of the cake. At Jewish funerals, fish, usually smoked or pickled, and eggs may be served as symbols of life's continuation. Some Americans, particularly in the South, eat hopping john, a dish made with black-eyed peas, to bring good luck in the New Year.

Americans have many fixed food rituals to accompany events and occasions not generally considered ceremonial. Waking up is accompanied by coffee. Social occasions usually include alcohol. Hot dogs and beer are ubiquitous at sporting events, and popcorn and candy are consumed at movie theaters.

Basic Economy. The United States has an advanced industrial economy that is highly mechanized. The gross national product is the largest in the world. The country more than meets its own economic needs and is the world's leading exporter of food. Moreover, it is a dominant force in world finance.

The major challenges facing the economy are to maintain profits by keeping production costs low and to increase consumer markets. Besides mechanizing production to reduce labor costs, firms sub-contract production to less developed countries where those costs are much lower. At the same time, advertising firms that help market these goods to consumers at home and in other countries now constitute one of the biggest industries in the country.

The basic unit of currency is the dollar, with one hundred cents making one dollar.

Land Tenure and Property. Land tenure is based largely on private ownership, but the government owns an enormous amount of land. Private property is culturally valued, and this is best expressed in the high rate of home ownership. Historically, the United States was an agricultural nation, and it culturally has a romantic image of the small, independent farm family battling the elements on the prairie.

The ways in which federal lands were apportioned to settlers and developers constitutes a mixed legacy. Land grants made to pioneer families and the public universities in every state point to a democratic apportionment of land. However, many private companies gained access to large tracts of public lands. For example, federal land grants made to railroads in the nineteenth century resulted in the consolidation of wealth by railroad company directors who sold parcels of that land and by timber companies that bought large tracts of forested land from the railroads at low prices. Contemporary patterns of landholding in the Pacific Northwest reflect this legacy of land accumulation by a few large timber firms.

Commercial Activities. The vast majority of businesses are clustered within the service industry, including finance, advertising, tourism, and various professions.

Major Industries. Important manufacturing industries include petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, lumber, and mining.

The family farm is clearly on the decline. Most people who claim farming as their occupation work for an agricultural firm and do not own their own land. Since 1940, the United States has been the world's largest producer of wheat, corn, and soybeans, it produces over 40 percent of the world's corn and 45 percent of its soybeans. However, between 1940 and 1990, the number of farms fell from over six million to just over two million. Although occasional attention is paid to the "plight of the family farm," the growth of agribusiness has not resulted in major overt conflicts because most Americans see corporate growth as the fair outcome of free enterprise and competition.

Tension arises in cases where property is publicly owned. During the nineteenth century, the federal government reserved large tracts of western land for federal and common uses. Logging or grazing on these lands is regulated and requires permits. During the sagebrush rebellion of the 1980s, private developers and ranchers who wanted free access to
Overview of a summertime baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and the Colorado Rockies at Chicago's Wrigley Field. Baseball is often referred to as the "national pastime."
Overview of a summertime baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and the Colorado Rockies at Chicago's Wrigley Field. Baseball is often referred to as the "national pastime."
these lands claimed that federal restrictions on private property ownership were anti-American. The language of this rebellion resonated with westerners in poor rural areas who believed that the federal government was usurping valuable land at their expense.

Many environmental conflicts become battles between private developers and companies and the federal government. For example, endangered species are protected under federal rules. In the Pacific Northwest, this legislation mandated the protection of the spotted owl habitat, prohibiting logging in areas with owl nests. Loggers regarded owl protection as an assault on their livelihood and their constitutional right to private property.

Division of Labor. The labor force has always been divided on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender. Skilled jobs in manufacturing and management jobs typically have been more accessible to white men than to black men or women of any race. Within the service industries, there is a technological divide. Blacks and other minorities fill low-skill jobs such as food service and are found less often in managerial positions or the growing hi-tech industries.
S OCIAL S TRATIFICATION

Classes and Castes. Most Americans do not believe that theirs is a "class" society. There is a strong cultural belief in the reality of equal opportunity and economic mobility. Rags to riches stories abound, and gambling and lotteries are popular. However, there is evidence that mobility in most cases is limited: working-class people tend to stay in the working classes. Moreover, the top 1 percent of the population has made significant gains in wealth in the last few years. Similar gains have not been made by the poorest sectors. In general, it appears that the gap between rich and poor is growing.

Symbols of Social Stratification. Stratification is visible in many facets of daily life. The social segregation of blacks and whites in cities mirrors their separation in the labor force. The crumbling housing stock of blacks in the inner cities contrasts with giant homes in gated suburbs all across the country. Speech, manners, and dress also signal class position. With some exceptions, strong regional or Spanish accents are associated with working-class status.
P OLITICAL L IFE

Government. The United States is a federal republic composed of a national government and fifty state governments. The political system is dominated by two parties: the Republicans and the Democrats. One of the features of American democracy is low voter turnout. On the average, less than half the eligible voters participate in federal elections.

Also referred to as conservatives and liberals, respectively, Republicans and Democrats differ on certain key social issues. Republicans are generally conservative on social spending and moral issues. They support cuts in federally-sponsored social programs such as welfare. They believe in strengthening institutions such as marriage and the traditional family and usually are opposed to abortion and gay rights. Democrats tend to support federal funding for social programs that favor minorities, the environment, and women's rights. However, critics argue that these two parties set a very narrow range for political debate. Third parties that have emerged on both the left and the right include the Green, Socialist, Farm-Labor, Reform, and Libertarian parties.

The powers and responsibilities of the Federal government are set out in the Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. The national government consists of three branches that are intended to provide "checks and balances" against abuses of power. These branches are the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The executive branch includes the President and federal agencies that regulate everything from agriculture to the military. The legislative branch includes members elected to the upper and lower houses of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. At the state level, government is designed along the same lines, with elected governors, senators, and assemblymen and state courts. The smallest unit of government is the county, which has an elected board, but not all states have a system of county governments.

With the exception of the President, officials are elected directly, on the basis of popular vote. The President is elected by the electoral college. Each state has as many electors as it has senators and representatives, the latter of which are awarded according to population. Electors vote as a bloc within each state. This means that all electoral votes in a state go to the candidate with the plurality of the popular vote within that state. A candidate must win 270 electoral votes to win the election. This system is controversial because it is possible for a President to win a national election without winning a national majority of the popular vote, as happened in the presidential election of 2000.

Leadership and Public Officials. With the exception of local-level offices, politics is highly professionalized: most people who run for political offices are lifelong politicians. Running for a high-level political office is extremely expensive; many politicians in the House and the Senate are wealthy. The expense of winning campaigns requires not only personal wealth, but corporate sponsorship in the form of donations.

Social Problems and Control. Although crime rates have decreased, the United States remains the most violent industrialized nation in the world. The capital city, Washington, D.C., has the highest per capita crime rate in the country. In the nation as a whole, African-Americans, the poor, and teenagers are the most common victims of violent and nonviolent crime.

The country has more people in prison and more people per capita in prison than any other industrialized nation. The prison population is well over one million. These numbers have increased since 1980 as a result of mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes. Although African-Americans make up only about 12 percent of the population, they outnumber white inmates in prison. Both African-American and Hispanic men are far more likely to be imprisoned than are white men. Although rates of imprisonment are on the rise for women, women are far less likely to be imprisoned than men of any race or ethnicity. The United States is also the only Western industrialized nation that allows capital punishment, and rates of execution for African-American men are higher than those of any other group.

Cities are perceived to be very dangerous, but crime rate is not consistently higher in urban areas than in rural areas. The elderly tend to be the most fearful of crime but are not its most common victims. Tough penalties for violent crime are often perceived to be a solution, and it is on this basis that the death penalty is defended. Interestingly, Florida and Arizona, which have the death penalty, have the highest rates of violent crime in the country.

The vast majority of crimes in all categories are committed by white males, but in popular culture and the popular imagination, violent criminal tendencies are often associated with African-American and Hispanic males. This perception legitimates a controversial practice called racial profiling, in
Exterior façade of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Exterior façade of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
which African-American and Hispanic men are randomly stopped, questioned, or searched by police.

Historically, immigrant groups that constituted the urban "rabble" of their day were the subject of intense policing efforts and were believed to have propensities for vice and crime.

Military Activity. The country has officially been at peace since World War II but has unofficially been in almost continuous military conflict. These conflicts have included frequent interventions in Central and South America, the Middle East, and Africa. During the period between the end of World War II and the breakup of the Soviet Union (1989), military interventions frequently involved Cold War motivations. Since that time, the country has used its military forces against Iraq and has supported efforts by other governments to fight the drug war in Central America.
S OCIAL W ELFARE AND C HANGE P ROGRAMS

The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until World War II, posed a real threat to the legitimacy of the American economic model in the eyes of citizens. During that period, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established a series of social programs collectively known as the New Deal. Many of those programs, including government-backed pension programs, banking insurance, and unemployment benefits, are still in place. These programs, which were intended to provide a buffer against the inevitable downturns of economic cycles, were also a response to serious social unrest, including strikes and socialist organizing.

Americans generally are not opposed to social benefits such as social security pensions and the insurance of bank deposits. However, general relief programs for the poor, known popularly as welfare, have been very controversial. In a country that believes that all its citizens have an equal chance, where opportunity is unlimited, and where only the lazy are poor, programs for mothers and children and the indigent have been vulnerable to cutbacks. Recently, the federal government made sweeping reforms to the welfare laws that require mothers on welfare to work in order to receive benefits.
N ONGOVERNMENTAL O RGANIZATIONS AND O THER A SSOCIATIONS

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) are not as influential as they are in less wealthy nations. Among the NGOs that operate within the country, the most notable is Amnesty International, which has made both political prisoners and torture within American prisons major issues in recent years.

More influential than NGOs are the many nonprofit institutions. These groups are not associated with government agencies or corporate interests. They include a wide spectrum of advocacy and public interest groups that deal with consumer, environmental, and social justice issues. Nonprofits are a main locus for alternative views and left-wing politics. Examples include the American Civil Liberties Union, the various Public Interest Research Groups, Fairness and Accuracy in the Media, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization of Women.
G ENDER R OLES AND S TATUSES

Division of Labor by Gender. Although most women work outside the home, household and child-rearing responsibilities are still overwhelmingly the responsibility of women. The "double day" of women consists of working and then returning home to do domestic chores. This situation persists in spite of the cultural belief that men and women are equal. Studies carried out in middle-class homes, in which couples claim to share household duties, show that women still do the vast majority of domestic work. Although young women as a whole spend much less time on domestic chores than their mothers did, this is attributable not to the fact that men do a significant share of domestic work, but to the fact that women spend less time cooking, cleaning, and caring for children than they did in the past.

Women are paid seventy cents to every male dollar for comparable jobs. Occupations continue to be defined along gender lines. Secretarial or low-level administrative jobs are so overwhelmingly female that they have been termed pink-collar jobs. In the white-collar world, women often occupy middle-management positions. With a few exceptions, the "glass ceiling" keeps women out of high management positions. This situation is justified on the grounds that women take time from their working lives to raise children and therefore do not spend the same amount of time developing their working careers that men do. Occupations requiring nurturing skills, such as teaching and nursing, are still predominantly female.

Within the blue-collar sector, women are underrepresented in jobs considered to require physical strength, such as the construction industries and firefighting. Women often fill low-paid positions in industry, such as assembly-line work, sewing, and electronics assembly. This is justified on the basis that women are by nature more dextrous and that their small hands suit them to assembly-line work. It is more likely that the low wages offered by these factories explains the recruitment of female laborers, whose other options may include even less desirable seasonal and temporary work.

The Relative Status of Women and Men. In legal terms, women have the same formal rights as men. They can vote, own property, choose to marry or divorce, and demand equal wages for equal work. They also have access to birth control and abortion. The status of women in relation to men is very high compared to the situation in many other countries.

However, women as a whole do not receive the same social and economic benefits as men. Women are greatly underrepresented in elected political offices and are more likely to live in poverty. Female occupations both in the home and in the workplace are valued less than men's. Women are more likely than men to suffer from a sense of disempowerment and to have a distorted or low self-image.
M ARRIAGE , F AMILY, AND K INSHIP

Marriage. Marriage is formally a civil institution but is commonly performed in a church. Statistically, marriage appears to be on the decline. Half of all adults are unmarried, including those who have never married and those who are divorced. Rates of marriage are higher among whites than among blacks.

With the exception of Vermont, civil unions are legal only between heterosexual adults. However, gay marriages are increasingly common whether or not they are formally recognized by the state. Some religious denominations and churches recognize and perform gay marriages. The high rate of divorce and remarriage has also increased the importance of stepfamilies.

Domestic Unit. The typical model of the family is the nuclear family consisting of two parents and their children. Upon marriage, adult couples are expected to form their own household separate from either of their biological families. The nuclear family is the cultural ideal but is not always the reality. Immigrant groups have been reported to rely on extended family networks for support. Similarly, among African-American families, where adult males are often absent, extended kin ties are crucial for women raising children.

Inheritance. Americans trace their ancestry and inherit through both the maternal and paternal lines. Surnames are most commonly adopted through the paternal line, with children taking the father's name. Women usually adopt the husband's surname upon marriage, but it is increasingly common for women to keep their own surnames and for the children to use both the father's and the mother's last names.

Kin Groups. Family can refer to a nuclear family group or an extended kin group. The "ideal" family consists of a mother, a father, and two or three children. Americans often distinguish between blood relatives and relatives through marriage; blood relatives are considered more important. Ties among nuclear families generally are closer than ties among extended family members. Adoption is common, but reproductive technologies that allow infertile couples and gay couples to reproduce are highly valued. This reflects the importance of the concept of biological kinship in the culture.

Alternative models of family life are important in American life. A great deal of scholarship has addressed the historical and economic conditions
A snow-capped mountain rises above an old barn in the Mission Range Valley, Montana. The landscape of the U.S. is extremely diverse and often spectacular.
A snow-capped mountain rises above an old barn in the Mission Range Valley, Montana. The landscape of the U.S. is extremely diverse and often spectacular.
that have led to a high proportion of female-headed households and the incorporation of nonrelated members into family units among African-Americans. However, these trends are on the rise in the population as a whole. A significant number of Americans of all ethnic backgrounds live in nontraditional families. These families may consist of unmarried couples or single parents, gay couples and their children, or gay families without children.
S OCIALIZATION

Infant Care. Infant care varies by class. In New York City, it is common to see women of Dominican and West Indian descent caring for white children. Wealthy people often employ nannies to care for infants. Nannies, who often have children of their own, may have to rely on family members or their older children to watch over their infants. Wealthy or poor, the majority of mothers work outside the home. This, coupled with the fact that many people cannot rely on their extended families to help care for their newborns, makes infant care a challenge. Some employers offer short maternity leaves for mothers and increasingly, paternity leaves for fathers who are primary caregivers.

Child Rearing and Education. Child rearing practices are diverse, but some common challenges apply to all families. It is common to put children in day care programs at an early age. For wealthy families, this entails finding the most elite day care centers; for less wealthy families, it may involve finding scarce places in federally-funded programs. For all working families, day care can be a cause of anxiety and guilt. Negative media stories about child abuse at these centers spoke more to these anxieties than to the actual quality of care. The country makes few provisions for the care of young children considering the fact that most mothers work outside the home.

From age five to age eighteen, public schooling is provided by the state and is universally available. School is mandatory for children until the age of sixteen. Public school education in suburban areas and small cities and towns is usually adequate or excellent.

Inner-city schools are underfunded and have a high proportion of minority students. This reflects a history of white flight to the suburbs and a system in which schools are funded through local property taxes. Thus, in cities abandoned by wealthier whites, both tax bases and school funding have declined. The reputation of inner-city schools is so poor that families that live in cities send their children to private schools if they can afford it. Private schools are mostly white enclaves.

Access to equal education has long been an issue for African-Americans. Until the Supreme Court struck down the doctrine of "separate but equal" in 1954, all educational institutions in the South were segregated on the basis of race. However, the legally permitted segregation of the past has been replaced by the de facto segregation of the present.

Higher Education. The level of educational achievement is high. Most Americans complete high school, and almost half receive at least some college education. Almost one-quarter of the population has completed four or more years of college. Rates of graduation from high school and college attendance are significantly lower for African-Americans and Hispanics than for whites.

The quality and availability of colleges and universities are excellent, but a university education is not funded by the state as it is in many Western industrialized nations. The cost of higher education has soared and ranges from a few thousand dollars annually at public institutions to more than ten thousand dollars a year at private institutions. In elite private colleges, the cost of tuition exceeds $20,000 a year.

Among the middle classes, paying for college is a source of anxiety for parents from the moment their children are born. Students from middle-income and low-income families often pay for college with student loans, and the size of these debts is on the increase.
E TIQUETTE

Personal comportment often appears crass, loud, and effusive to people from other cultures, but Americans value emotional and bodily restraint. The permanent smile and unrelenting enthusiasm of the stereotypical American may mask strong emotions whose expression is not acceptable. Bodily restraint is expressed through the relatively large physical distance people maintain with each other, especially men. Breast-feeding, yawning, and passing gas in public are considered rude. Americans consider it impolite to talk about money and age.
R ELIGION

Religious Beliefs. The overwhelming majority of the people are Christian. Catholicism is the largest single denomination, but Protestants of all denominations (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and others) outnumber Catholics. Judaism is the largest non-Christian faith, followed by Islam, which has a significant African-American following. Baptism, the largest Protestant sect, originated in Europe but grew exponentially in the United States, especially in the South, among both whites and blacks. Aside from the many Christian movements from England and Europe that reestablished themselves early in the nation's history, a few religious sects arose independently in the United States, including Mormons and Shakers.

Although religion and the state are formally separated, religious expression is an important aspect of public and political life. Nearly every President has professed some variety of Christian faith. One of the most significant religious trends in recent years has been the rise of evangelical and fundamentalist sects of Christianity. As an organized political-religious
Ranchers herding cattle in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah.
Ranchers herding cattle in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah.
force, fundamentalist Christians significantly influence political agendas.

Another trend is the growth in New Age religions, which blend elements of Eastern religions and practices, such as Buddhism, with meditation, yoga, astrology, and Native American spirituality.

Religious Practitioners. In addition to the practitioners of world religions such as priests, ministers, and rabbis, the United States has a tradition of nonordained and nontraditional religious practitioners. These people include evangelical lay preachers, religious leaders associated with New Age religions, and leaders of religious movements designated as cults. Women are increasingly entering traditionally male religious positions. There are now women ministers in many Protestant denominations and women rabbis.

Rituals and Holy Places. The country does not have religious rituals or designated holy places that have meaning to the population as a whole. However, Salt Lake City is a holy city for Mormons, and the Black Hills of South Dakota and other places are sacred native American sites.

There are many shared secular rituals and places that have an almost religious importance. Secular rituals include baseball and football games. Championship games in these sports, the World Series and the Super Bowl, respectively, constitute major annual events and celebrations. Important places include Disneyland, Hollywood, and Grace-land (Elvis Presley's estate).

Death and the Afterlife. Americans have an uncomfortable relationship with their own mortality. Although most residents are Christian, the value placed on youth, vigor, and worldly goods is so great that death is one of the most difficult subjects to talk about.

Death is considered a sad and solemn occasion. At funerals, it is customary to wear black and to speak in hushed tones. Graveyards are solemn and quiet places. Some people believe in an afterlife or in reincarnation or other form of continuity of energy or spirit.
M EDICINE AND H EALTH C ARE

The dominant approach to medicine is biomedical, or Western. Although many people are interested in alternative approaches such as acupuncture, homeopathic medicine, and other therapies, the United States continues to be less medically diverse than most other countries. Biomedicine is characterized by the frequent use of invasive surgeries such as cesarean sections and high doses of psychotropic drugs. With the exception of limited government care for the elderly and the disabled, health care is private and profit-based. This makes the United States distinct from other wealthy, industrial nations, nearly all of which provide universal health-care coverage.
S ECULAR C ELEBRATIONS

A number of secular national holidays are celebrated but are regarded less as celebrations of patriotism than as family holidays. The fireworks displays of the Fourth of July mark the Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1776, but this is also a time for summer outings such as picnics and camping trips with friends and family members.

Thanksgiving is part of the national history that is understood by every schoolchild. This annual feast celebrates the hardships of the early colonists, who were starving in their new environment. According to the legend, American Indians came to their aid, sharing indigenous foods such as maize and turkey. Thanksgiving is important not primarily because of its symbolism but because it is the most significant family holiday of the year, one of the few large and elaborate meals that families prepare.
T HE A RTS AND H UMANITIES

Support for the Arts. The level of public support for the arts is much lower than it is in other wealthy nations. Patronage for unknown individual artists, writers, and performers is scarce. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has a very small operating budget with which it funds everything from public broadcasting to individual artists. In recent years, the NEA has been under attack from Congress, whose conservative members question the value and often the morality of the art produced with NEA grants.

Support also comes from private donations. These donations are tax-deductible and are a popular hedge among the wealthy against income and estate taxes. Generous gifts to prestigious museums, galleries, symphonies, and operas that often name halls and galleries after their donors are essential means of subsidizing the arts.

Literature. Much of American literature revolves around questions of the nature or defining characteristics of the nation and attempts to discern or describe the national identity. American literature found its own voice in the nineteenth century. In the early decades of that century, the essayists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson set out the enduring themes of personal simplicity, the continuity between man and nature, individualism, and self-reliance. Walt Whitman celebrated democracy in his free verse poems.

Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain, articulated moral and ethical questions about the new country and were particularly influential for their critique of American puritanism.

Turn-of-the-century writers such as Edith Wharton, Henry James, and Theodore Dreiser picked up on those themes but were particularly concerned with social class and class mobility. They explored the nature of American culture and the tensions between ideals of freedom and the realities of social conditions.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway began to question the values earlier writers had represented. Fitzgerald questioned the reality of the American dream by highlighting the corrupting influence of wealth and casting doubt on the value of mobility and success. Hemingway, like other modernists, addressed the issue of how one ought to live once one has lost faith in religious values and other social guidelines. Other early twentieth-century writers, such as Zora Neil Hurston, Nella Larsen, and William Faulkner, introduced race and racism as central themes in American literature.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression inspired authors such as John Steinbeck and Willa Cather to write about rural America. Their novels romanticized the hard work of poor rural whites. Implicit in these novels is a critique of the wealth and excess of the urban metropolis and the industrial system that supported it. Although these novels are permeated with multiethnic characters and themes, Anglos are generally the focal point.

Issues of identity and race were explored by earlier American black writers. A generation of black authors after World War II made these permanent themes in American literature, illustrating the poverty, inequality and racism experienced by American blacks. Many black writers explored the meaning of living inside a black skin in a white nation with a legacy of slavery. These writers included James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. Perhaps the most influential contemporary writer who deals with these themes is Toni Morrison.

An important literary school known as Southern Gothic discussed the nature of rural southern
A tractor harvesting crops in the western United States. The U.S. is the world's leading food exporter.
A tractor harvesting crops in the western United States. The U.S. is the world's leading food exporter.
life from the perspective of poor and middle-class whites. Writers such as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, and Shirley Jackson explored the contradictions between privileged whiteness and a culturally deficient southernness. These novels feature lonely, grotesque, and underprivileged white characters who are the superiors of their black playmates, servants, and neighbors but cultural inferiors in America as a whole.

Beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s, a generation known as the Beats challenged the dominant norms of white American masculinity. They rejected conventions of family and sexuality, corporate success, and money. Among the Beats were William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Allan Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

Starting in the 1960s, women writers began to challenge the notion that women's place was in the home. Early feminist writers who critiqued the paternalism of marriage include the nonfiction writer Betty Friedan, the novelist Marge Piercy, and the poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

Feminist themes, along with issues of ethnicity and otherness, continue to be important in American literature. Gloria Anzuldúa and Ana Castillo show how female and Latina identities intersect. Novels by Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko illustrate how Native American families attempt to survive and reclaim their traditions amid poverty and discrimination.

Other contemporary novels try to deconstruct the experience of the "norm" in American culture. Ann Tyler's characters are often empty and unhappy but cannot locate the sources of those feelings. Don Delillo writes about the amoral corporate world, the American obsession with consumer goods, and the chaos and anxiety that underlie the quietness of suburban life. Joyce Carol Oates is attracted to the sinister aspects of social conformity.

These novels are not the most widely read looks in the United States. Much more popular are genres such as crime and adventure, romance, horror, and science fiction. These genres tend to repeat valued cultural narratives. For example, the novels of Tom Clancy feature the United States as the moral victor in cold war and post–Cold War terrorist scenarios. Harlequin romances idealize traditional male and female gender roles and always have a happy ending. In horror novels, violence allows for catharsis among readers. Much science fiction revolves around technical-scientific solutions to human problems.

Graphic Arts. The most influential visual artists are from the modern period. Much early art was imitative of European styles. Important artists include Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol. Warhol's art documented icons of American life such as Cambell's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. His work was deliberately amusing and commercial. Most graphic art is produced for the advertising industry.

Performance Arts. Performance arts include many original genres of modern dancing that have influenced by classical forms as well as American traditions, such as jazz. Important innovators in dance include Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and Alvin Ailey. Theaters in every town that once hosted plays, vaudeville, and musicals now show movies or have closed. In general, performance arts are available only in metropolitan areas.

The United States has produced several popular music genres that are known for blending regional, European, and African influences. The best known of these genres are the African-American inventions blues and jazz. Among the most important jazz composers and musicians are Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonius Monk. Although now considered classics, blues and jazz standards were the popular music of their day.

Music fits into "black" and "white" categories. Popular swing jazz tunes were standardized by band leaders such as Glenn Miller, whose white band made swing music hugely popular with young white people.

Rock 'n' roll, now a major cultural export, has its roots in these earlier popular forms. Major influences in rock and roll include Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Bruce Springstein. Although rock 'n' roll is primarily white, soul and Motown, with singers such as Aretha Franklin, the Supremes, and the Temptations, produced a popular black music.

Country music, another popular genre, has its roots in the early American folk music of the Southeast now termed country or bluegrass. This genre reworked traditional gospel songs and hymns to produce songs about the everyday life of poor whites in the rural Southeast.

Popular music in the United States has always embodied a division between its commercial and entertainment value and its intellectual or political values. Country and folk, blues, rock 'n' roll, rap, and hip-hop have all carried powerful social and political messages. As old forms become standard and commercialized, their political edge tends to give way to more generic content, such as love songs.
T HE S TATE OF THE P HYSICAL AND S OCIAL S CIENCES

The United States is a leading producer and exporter of scientific knowledge and technology. Major areas of scientific research include medicine, energy, chemicals, weapons, aerospace technology, and communications. Funding for research comes from government agencies and universities as well as the private corporate sector.

The role of private corporations in research is controversial. Pharmaceutical companies often fund research that leads to cures and treatments for diseases. One consequence is a dearth of research on diseases particular to poor countries. Another consequence is that medicines are marketed at costs that are prohibitive to the poor both inside and outside of the country.

In the face of technology and science as being culturally valued, an increasing cause of social concern is the fact that American schoolchildren do not do well on standardized tests in the sciences.
B IBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarez, Robert R. "The Foundations and Genesis of a Mexican-American Community: A Sociohistorical Perspective." In Leigh Mullings, ed., Cities of the United States, 1987.

Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of New York, 1928.

Baer, Hans A., Singer Merrill, and Ida Susser. Medical Anthropology and the World System: A Critical Perspective, 1997.

Baker, Lee D. "The Color-Blind Bind." In Ida Susser and Thomas C. Patterson, eds., Cultural Diversity in the United States, 2000.

Bolles, A. Lynn. "Perspectives on U.S. Kinship: The Phoenix Rises from the Ashes." In Ida Susser and Thomas C. Patterson, eds., Cultural Diversity in the United States, 2000.

Brodkin, Karen. "Diversity in Anthropological Theory." In Ida Susser and Thomas C. Patterson, eds., Cultural Diversity in the United States, 2000.

——. "How Did Jews Become White Folks?" In Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, eds., Race, 1996.

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, 1981.

Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics, 1993.

Chan, Sucheng, et al., Peoples of Color in the American West, 1994.

Conklin, Nancy Faires, and Margaret A. Lourie. A Host of Tongues: Language Communities in the United States, 1983.

Cronon, William, ed. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, 1996.

Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 1987, revised edition 1997.

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, 1990.

Diamond, Sara. Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the U.S., 1995.

Fishman, Robert. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia, 1987.

Garreau, Joel. The Nine Nations of North America, 1981.

——. Edge City: Life on the New Urban Frontier, 1991.

Ginsberg, Faye, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, eds. Uncertain terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, 1990.

Gregory, Steven, and Roger Sanjek, eds. Race, 1994.

Hazen-Hammond, Susan. Timelines of Native American History, 1997.

Hibbard, Michael, and James Elias. "The Failure of Sustained-Yield Forestry and the Decline of the Flannel-Shirt Frontier." In Thomas A. Lyson and William W. Falk, eds., Forgotten Places: Uneven Development in Rural America, 1993.

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, 1985.

Lauter, Paul, et al. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 1998.

Mitchell, Robert D., and Paul A. Groves, eds. North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent, 1987.

Morgen, Sandra, ed. Gender and Anthropology: Critical Reviews for Research and Teaching, 1989.

Nash, June. From Tank Town to High Tech: The Clash of Community and Industrial Cycles, 1989.

Patterson, Thomas C. "Class and Historical Process in the United States." In Ida Susser and Thomas C. Patterson, eds., Cultural Diversity in the United States, 2000.

Piven, Francis Fox. Why Americans Don't Vote, 1988.

Ripetto, Robert, and Malcolm Gillis, eds. Public Policies and the Misuse of Forest Resources, 1988.

Robbins, Richard H. Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach, 1997.

Rodriguez, Gregory. "Do the Multiracial Count?"

Rodriguez, Sylvia. "Land, Water and Ethnic Identity in Taos." In Charles Briggs and John Van Ness, eds., Land, Water and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants, 1987.

Rosman, Abraham, and Paula G. Rubel. The Tapestry of Culture: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2001.

Sassen, Saskia. The Global City, 1991.

Smith, Neil. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, 1996.

Susser, Ida. "Gender in the Anthropology of the United States." In Morgen, Sandra ed., Gender and Anthropology: Critical Reviews for Research and Teaching, 1989.

——, and Thomas C. Patterson, eds. Cultural Diversity in the United States, 2000.

Turner, Frederick Jackson. Frontier and Section: Selected Essays of Frederick Jackson Turner, 1961.

Urciuoli, Bonnie. "The Complex Diversity of Language in the United States." In Ida Susser and Thomas C. Patterson, eds., Cultural Diversity in the United States, 2000.

White, Richard. "The Altered Landscape: Social Change and the Land in the Pacific Northwest." In William G. Robbins, Robert J. Frank, and Richard E. Ross, eds., Regionalism and the Pacific Northwest, 1983.

Winn, Peter. The Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1992.

Wright, John W., ed. The New York Times 1999 Almanac, 1998.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States, 1980.
Web Sites

Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/02/15/census

U.S. Department of the Census. http://www.census.gov

—M OLLY D OANE

Source : http://www.everyculture.com/To-Z/United-States-of-America.html