Reviews for Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America

The average rating for Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-09-25 00:00:00 Bepi Maser For a book that released in 1990, it's striking how relevant this is. Underscores how the dynamics of American life that we take for granted were not always so and have only intensified in large part due to Internet news media and social media. I wished there had been more engagement on issues of race, and some of the descriptions of progressives and orthodox (the two warring camps in Hunter's estimation) seem outdated or simplistic. But this is certainly a worthy read in our culturally wartorn time.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-12-21 00:00:00 Mark Brett Although written over a quarter of a century ago, this book is a classic, an indispensable guide written by a fair and thoughtful sociologist that demonstrates why the United States (and much of the West) is polarized between two competing moral visions. Hunter traces the origins of the culture wars in America, noting that the push to the opposite ends of the moral spectrum began escalating after the Second World War, and focuses largely on the key battlegrounds where conservatives and liberals fight: the family, education, media and the arts, law, and electoral politics. These battlegrounds are significant because they wield symbolic value in the eyes of the general public. Hunter examines how conservatives and liberals define these social institutions; for instance, conservatives deem art to be that which speaks to transcendent notions of beauty, truth, and goodness, whereas liberals demur, asserting that art is only that which is designated as such (usually by experts), that is novel, and that it is free to transgress the boundaries of moral niceties (as exhibited by the photographs of the late Robert Mapplethorpe). This book was written at the beginning of the 1990s and much has changed (this book was released BEFORE Fox News launched, let alone other right-wing media such as The Federalist and InfoWars), but it is still well worth reading. Hunter enthuses about the role of direct mail in stirring the soldiers of the culture war, but its format would now be in email (and indeed, while Hunter notes how vital the knowledge industry is in our culture, he wrote this book before the advent of the Internet age which has dramatically transformed society by providing platforms for marginalized groups to find each other - think of how Tumblr has become a haven for the LGBTQ community). Debates about the Equal Rights Amendment and the legitimacy of same-sex relations have given way to intersectionality and transgenderism but debates and political machinations are still waged over abortion; what has not changed is the competition to frame the USA according to the conservative and liberal moral visions. In many respects this work reminded me of Jonathan Haidt's excellent book "The Righteous Mind."