WITHIN THESE WALLS

 

Daniel Elazar, in the mid-1960s, offered a geographic image of how three American political subcultures are situated within the US borders.  The first rendition of that image appeared in 1966 but subsequent versions have emerged since that first attempt.[1]  This posting introduces some of the general attributes one can observe among these subcultures.

In simple terms, the origins of the three date back to the earliest days of the nation’s colonial period in the 1600s.  By the time the national polity was being formed, during the late 1700s, one already had the three distinctive cultural modes:  the moralistic, the individualistic, and the traditionalistic.

          The moralistic originated in the New England colonies/states and basically grew from the Puritanical colonial experience.  It was characterized by strong, disciplined behavior that proved essential as early Americans dealt with the severe physical environment.  George Santayana[2] claims that that view, while strongest in New England, did influence the cultural development of all the colonies.

          Moving south, the next set of colonies/states developed an individualistic subculture and reflected a more market-oriented view.  This posting, shortly, will more specifically describe it, but the immediate point is that relative to the moralistic, one sees a more secular and self-centered orientation to politics and social relationships in general.

          And in the southernmost set of colonies/states, due to the developed plantation and slave economy, the traditionalistic subculture developed.  Here the main assumption is to see society in a more hierarchical fashion.  The upcoming postings will share with the readers a more rounded rendition of what these traditionalistic and moralistic beliefs and customs were/are.

          As for their expansion, one can roughly project westward across the North American continent and each of these subculture modes progressed within three layers toward the Pacific Ocean.  One writes roughly because geographic features such as mountain ranges and more local developments interrupted that progression with each one maintaining its original character. 

Although individual states, even as of 1966, harbored mixtures of the three (e.g., Florida had a mix of traditionalistic and individualistic modes), one could still detect, as of the turn of the last century, that influence being significantly maintained.  That is, this notion or insight of the US having these three subculture modes still has a good deal of vibrancy.

          So, what makes up the ideals of an individualistic subculture?  It is presented first since its devolved form is presently dominant in the US, but one should keep in mind it was not first to develop – that honor belongs to the moralistic subculture.  The introduction or initial development of the individualistic, though, did not take long, and one can argue that it reflects natural proclivities of humans to prioritize their self-interests.  One can denote that bias in its attributes.

          According to Elazar, the individualistic subculture is noted by the following characteristics:

1.    Politics is seen as part and exemplary of the general marketplace.  Activities consist of the trading of favors to achieve public goals.  Those who engage in the work of politics do so for personal advancement and are expecting to be commensurably compensated for their labor.

2.    The focus of society should be private concerns, not public ones.  Therefore, community interventions should be held to a minimum and only allowed in extreme, unusual circumstances.

3.    Politics should be practiced addressing specific problems.  There should not be a programmatic end attached to politics.

4.    The public is not expected to get involved in the professional activity of politics.  First, this business is often “dirty” and should be left to those who have chosen to do its loathsome work.  Second, the public expects some degree of corruption, but calculates the costs of getting involved, i.e., how corrupt must it get before it’s worth doing something about it?

Consequently, public officials will engage in new initiatives only when there is an overwhelming uproar to do so.

Generally, the individualistic subculture encourages political decisions that do not seek to identify or deal with core causes of public problems.  It instead tends to address the surface symptoms.  At best, it typifies the leadership James MacGregor Burns describes as transactional leadership.[3]  That is, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back.”

          One adjective that comes to mind in contextualizing this cultural mode is simple.  It views politics relatively simply in that it does not call on one to exert much concern other than what is presented to a person at a given time.  The consequences only extend to such outcomes that can be described as one getting what one wants in the immediate circumstance.  Its thinking takes on some form of the following:  one wants X, one has Y to exchange for X; is the current holder of X willing to exchange it for Y?  If yes, that is good and the trade is made; if not, well, can one negotiate to offer Z instead, etc.?

          If common, this mode of thinking and behavior generates a social environment.  In such an environment, how are its attributes socialized to the young?  Here, the insights of George Lakoff can be helpful.  He, as the last posting shared, offers political socialization models that he has devised that include being of the strict father morality model or the nurturant family morality model.  This blogger, while agreeing that the models accurately describe how socialization transpires, personally finds, in terms of social utility, great deficiencies with both models. 

He, the blogger, aims to describe their influence within the three subcultures respectively and hopes to point out those shortcomings.  These efforts to relate Lakoff’s models to Elazar’s subcultures are those of this blogger and should not be attributed to either Elazar or Lakoff.  But to the degree the relationships are true, one can better appreciate the power these cultural forces have.

And as is the case in any socialization approach, there are tensions between and among the ideals of such modes in one plane – e.g., family relationships – and that of another – e.g., the national political arena.  But patterns emerge from the accommodations that are made over the years of social history.  So, in the case of individualistic subculture and the socialization of political beliefs, one can detect a path from the individualistic and the strict father model revealing how families engage in socialization practices.

In both, the individualistic and strict father model, the emphasis is on the immediate and one detects a tradeoff – obedience or willingness to behave in a certain fashion in exchange for avoidance of disfavor or unwanted outcome.  A tension though exists.  The individualistic strives to cater to the desires of the “consumer” while the strict father view looks toward some overall goal. 

After all, parents want good children to become good adults.  It’s just that in everyday family exchanges, that distant goal becomes subsumed under the immediate challenge at hand and that is better expressed in transactional terms.  And the other effect is that the strict father view keeps family affairs within the family and it does not invite outside elements to have a role but, instead, socializes children to adopt an exclusionary orientation – what happens within the family stays there.  “We handle our affairs” tends to be the tone even when external aid is needed.

But there is a nurturant element in the individualistic view.  That is one of limited empathy – not to the level one has with the nurturant parent approach, but to the degree one needs to effectively negotiate.  As the “Godfather” suggested, one needs to think like one’s enemy to understand and predict what that enemy’s next move will be.  And to be able to predict accurately is always a good thing.

In all of this, this blogger wants to be clear.  In both the case of strict father model and that of nurturant parent, one basic deficiency is that both analogize social arrangements – be it a community, a state, or a nation – as “families.”  This is basically misleading and detrimental.  These arrangements are not families, or anything like them.  This blogger rather wishes the common analogy would be a partnership.  And that is what the constitutions of the nation and of all the states establish.  But that’s an item for another posting.

For now, this blog is set to next describe the moralistic subculture that was responsible for introducing federalist ideals and ideas to the American experience.  That will be the topic of the next posting and as with this one, Lakoff’s ideas will add a bit of substantive insight as to how that subculture has its effects on this nation’s political thinking and action.

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[1] For the original depiction see Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966).  For a more recent one, see, for example, “State Political Culture,” Lumen:  American Government (n.d.), accessed December 26, 2021, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/amgovernment/chapter/state-political-culture/ .

[2] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” in The Annals of America, Vol. 13 (Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968/1911), 277-288.

[3] James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York, NY:  Harper and Row, 1978).