Meeting 1 American Society-Intro 16 Feb 2022

Dr. Didik Murwantono

1 AMERICAN SOCIETY

A. GENERAL INTRUCTIONAL AIM

The students understand about American society

B. PARTICULAR INSTRUCTRIAL AIM

The student can answer some questions in relation to American society

This handout of Introduction to American Society and Literature provides various

aspects of textual studies for college students, mainly at College of Languages, Sultan Agung
Islamic University Semarang, to specialize in English or American literature. This handout
targets a slightly more beginner audience interested in the scholarly aspects of literature. It
does not include entire literary texts, but rather draws on a number of very short excerpts to
illustrate major issues of literary studies as an academic discipline.
An Introduction to Literature deals with questions concerning the nature of literature
and text, discusses the three major textual genres, gives an overview of the most important
periods of literature in American and English literature, and raises issues of literary theory.
Moreover it also covers American society dealing with American traditions and society.
The book owes a great deal to my interaction with students in “American Studies”
courses which I taught at the Literature Department of the Faculty of Language and
Communication Science (FBIK) at UNISSULA Semarang, and the Letters Department of Ahmad
Dahlan University Yogyakarta. Large parts of the manuscript were written during the
completion of Research in Faculty of 2021

A. INTRODUCTION
Most students majoring American Studies are tempted to know the definition of
American Studies in the beginning of class. What is American Studies? Viewed from
different angles there are two kinds to answer to the question. It is analogous to the question of
“What is literature” We all know that it can mean “all that is written”, such as catalogue,
brochure, leaflet and so forth. Another is “belle lettre” such as poetry, novel, and so forth.
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Dr. Didik Murwantono

When we come to the question of what American Studies is, we also think of the fact
that first, it means all information and readings about the US, such as its politics, its presidents,
its geography, its society, and so forth. The second one, American Studies is as an academic
discipline. In this lecture, I will cover such issues: American Studies as information and
reading about the US.
These kinds of information are usually provided by USIS and other US information
agencies in the form of books, magazines or brochures. Some of them rather obvious, a pure
information about the US. What can be termed as propaganda or persuasive writing. Any
American Studies scholars –here I would refer as “Americanist”—might remember that
persuasive writing is one of the earliest types of American literature to entice people from
Europe to come America, such as we see in the works Captain John Smith and others.
Those kinds of writing usually contain only positive elements of the country in order to
convince people how advanced the US are. These writings claim that they provide the “fact”
about the country. Some of them are rather obvious, but some are more subtle. Books such as
American Reader American Personified offer a border line between scholarly writing and
informative or persuasive writing. At a glance they offer authentic and scientific issues but if
we look at it more carefully we see that they only touch the surface of the item or subject
discussed. The second interpretation of American Studies is that it is by itself an academic
discipline. And this is what we are as Americanists more concerned with

B. AMERICAN SOCIETY
That Americans are white, that they eat bread, that they lead free-sex, that they are hard
workers, that there is no poverty in America are all shallow generalization people usually make
in referring to America. The truth is that it is hard to generalize people of America. Gastil
(1988:121) points out: “Almost any generalization about Americans will be true of some group
in the country, and as surely not true of many others. Few Americans are aware of the variety
of peoples or subcultures that make up the country…” .The question is, what is America and
Americans? How do they behave? What kind of culture do they have? How do they lead their
lives? These are all questions the topics of which are interesting to be discussed. Dealing with
those issues means dealing with American culture. What kind the be called American culture?
Before we go on discussing it, I would start with the discussion of what is culture.
There are many, even contradictory, definitions of a culture. Let me point out what
Raymond Williams says in Keyword (1976) that it refers to “a complex argument about the
relation general human development and a particular way of life, and between both the works
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Dr. Didik Murwantono

and the practices or art and intelligence.” For the purpose of his investigation on violence in
America, Richard Slotkin (1985) describes culture as denoting “works and practices that have
to do with the assigning or attributing of meaning and significance to the things, persons, and
happenings of the material world.” This may conclude that researchers give definition of a
culture in accordance with the subject of their investigation. Because Jung operates within
Psychoanalysis, he suggests that “culture which has developed its own identity and
consciousness, together with a sense of continuity and purpose or meaning” (1986). He often
refers the word culture in phrases such as “more cultured” or “totally archaic without culture”.
While Slotkin provides the definition in attempt to distinguish it with society, Jung used the
word as roughly synonymous with society “somewhat differentiated and more self-conscious
segment or group belonging to the collective” (1986). For the purpose of this discussion, I use
the word in a more general term meaning the development of human mind, spirit, and body
and, borrowing William’s definition of a culture, a particular way of life. What is then
American Culture?
As stated before, there is no single word to refer to in American culture as America is
made up of a variety of discrete units comprising of many ethnic groups that bring with them
their own culture. Therefore space is an important thing in referring to American culture.
Moreover, the United States has experienced a long history of recorded civilization. This makes
American culture has also experienced changing or development which is recorded and
discussed by many writers, spokesman, politicians, and critics. This fact makes giving
comment on a single definition of American culture even more difficult. Whether Americans
are now new people in that they are like innocent children trying to shape their own identity
from a vacuum is often talked about but it was also questioned especially by people from other
countries who are studying about America. Had they been already civilized people who came
from certain culture? How could they be discussed as new people?
Statements like Spiller’s: “America was a new world of the mind and spirit” (1956:17)
are found in great number in American discourses. The claim of having such new mind and
spirit was surely the result from not only the social, economic and political condition of the old
world but also the material condition of life in the new beginning of America. One of the
shaping factors of the American behavior frequently discussed was the new landscape which
was famously called by the frontier, described as the material condition of life that shaped the
behavior and the ideas of the colonists and pioneers (Slotkin, 1985:15). This is also in
accordance with Spencer’s theory on how community is shaped. He states: “ In a society living,
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Dr. Didik Murwantono

growing, changing, every new factor becomes a permanent force; Modifying more or less the
direction of movement determined by aggregate of forces” (Spencer, 1986:95).
Therefore, because of the location in “New World”, Americans became different
people, as also explained by Wise (1970:495): “What distinguishes the American Mind its
location in “New World”. This New World creates American people as “characteristically
hopeful, innocent, individualistic, pragmatic, and idealistic.” Such landscape is popularly
called Frontier. Although the life of the frontier started as early as the new migration to the new
world but the issue was frequently talked about in the nineteenth century when Turner proposed
his thesis on the American character in 1893 in his famous work, The Significance of Frontier
in American History. He points out:
The American was a new man…who owed his distinctive characteristics
and institutions to the unusual New world environment—characterized
by the availability of free land and an ever-receding frontier—in which
his civilization into maturity…This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of
American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its
continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the
forces dominating American character” (Turner, 1963:28).
Turner, regarded as one of the most brilliant and the most influential of American
history, has colored all of the American thinking about the growth of the American nation
(Wright, 1956:34). He argued that the true point of view for understanding the history of
America was the great west and the Frontier he regards it as the melting pot of savagery and
civilization, “the line of most rapid and effective Americanization” (Turner, 1963:44). Turner’s
idea on the importance of the frontier in shaping American behavior may bring about an idea
that the myth of innocence may be reflected in the frontier environment.
That Turner was influential person could be seen not only from the writings, agreeing
with, or questioning his thesis but also from those against it as Hecker (1956:43) who points
out: “From that day, forty years ago, until now it may truly be said that he has so completely
dominated American historical writing that hardly a single production in all that time has failed
to show the marks of his influence.” Among those against Turners’s thesis, Hayes is an example
of the one who puts his disagreement on Turner’s by saying that there is not much the difference
between Americans and Europeans. The difference may be distinctively seen from Englishman
and Spaniards or the Germans and Italian, for example. He puts it:
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Dr. Didik Murwantono

We used to know that we were Europeans as well as Americans, that we

were not Indians or people miraculously sprung from virgin forests like
primitive Germans described by Tacitus, but modern Europeans living
in America on a frontier of Europe. All our original white ancestors on
this continent knew they came from Europe, they and their son and
grandsons knew they had ties with Englishmen, Spaniards, Portuguese,
Hollanders or Frenchmen as the case might be…(1956:69)

Nevertheless, Turner and others who do not agree with him fall to an agreement that
geographical condition that make them different as Hayes points out: “The American frontier
is a frontier of European or ‘Western’ culture. This culture, however, modified by or adapted
to peculiar geographical and social conditions in America or elsewhere…”(Hayes, 1956:74).
Smith (1957:90) also states: “The special quality of American culture arises from what the
American land and climate did to men who brought with then the glories and the burdens of
European culture. Released from the feudal restraints which still clung to ownership even in
the seventeenth century, they were driven by ling hunger to possess land of their own.”
Man identity is generally believed to be influenced by nature and nurture. The
controversies whether or not American start their history in vacuum are the ones on nature
because, certainly, they all came with their capabilities, which were far from being ‘innocent’.
They contribute in influencing and shaping the culture with their “nature” brought from their
former home. This can be seen in the following evidence.
The English’s first important contribution in shaping the culture, for example, were
schools, colleges, and newspaper. This is why English language then became the media of
communication and trade. In political life, they, coming with a heavy intellectual and
institutional baggage, brought a constitutional theory based on the popular sovereignty and the
supremacy of legislature. The Constitution, representative government, trial by the jury, free
speech, a free press, religious toleration and freedom, local self government, the freedom of
private property were some of the ideas and ideologies that were brought about by them. The
important contribution by the Germans coming with their hatred of their old world tyranny
were from intellectual leaders and their followers, not from farmers and traders who also came
in great number. They had to leave their native kingdom in Germany because of the failure of
unsuccessful agitation led by the intellectuals. Their influence was found in many aspects of
Americans lives from building construction to philosophical thought, research, method and
music. The French immigrants also influenced the United States by their social, political and
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Dr. Didik Murwantono

religious thought. This influence could be found in the language, art, manners and architecture.
The Irish who came in a great number with their strong Roman Catholic created a strong race
consciousness as they tended to keep them from intermarrying with other than their own
religion. The Dutch who were interested in commodities rather than intellects made them
tolerant to any beliefs and opinions. Unlike Irish that influence literary world in the United
States as there were many writers had Irish blood, Dutch did not give contribution to American
literature. The Spanish and other the minor groups like Russians, Greeks, Chinese and Japanese
also existed in few numbers but their influence to American culture cannot be comparable to
the major groups like English, Germans, French, Irish, Scotch-Irish and Dutch. African who
also came in great number brought to American as slaves also enriched significantly American
culture (Blackenship, 1973: 25-47; Low, 1990: 84-96, 377-409; Hacker 1947: 13).
In its development, America is developing, growing into a strong, mature, developed
country. The question raised then. What kind of picture that can be describe America or the
United States? Many people concern with this issue. For example, Geographers dealing with
place concerns with the foreground and to “load on its material structures the weight and
meaning of social relation and other values” whereas anthropologist dealing with culture tend
to go directly to “customs and social relations, as these are manifest in gesture, informal and
formal modes of behavior, and the smaller articles of tools, dress, and ornaments” (Tuan, 1974:
29).
Culture is shaped in nurtured way. This can thus means that American culture is shaped
by American experience along with the development of nation. Happenings in American
history, therefore, help to shape the changing in American culture. There were many important
happenings that is recorded to shape American culture, such as: Colombus’s first voyage to
New World (1492), conquest of certain area, wars, settelements, founding states (1519-1775),
Declaration of Independence (1776), Civil War (1861-1865), and other happenings like
immigration, industrialization, railroads connecting the nation, World War I, World War II,
Vietnam War, etc.
Those happenings brought about not only the physical change but also the way people
perceived the change and this generated the change in their way. The biggest contribution to
the change came from writers, spokespersons, and critics. They created ideas, published,
distributed to the public, acknowledged, and believed by the people. For example, Thomas
Piane’s Common Sense brought about the awareness of independence; H. St. John de
Crevecoer’s Letters from an American Farmer gave ideas of who and what Americans are;
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America described the distinctiveness of America in
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Dr. Didik Murwantono

terms of democracy. Abundant writers also contributed to the shape of the culture and reshapes
by the culture so that people can perceive and understand what is the culture of America.
For the purpose of this discussion, let me put forward some important feature of
American people, shaped and shaping by and from American culture, as summarized by Albert
and Williams in the early 1960s as follows:
• An activist approach to life, based on mastery rather than passive acceptance of events
• Emphasis on achievement and success, understood largely as material prosperity
• A moral character, oriented to such Puritan virtues as duty, industry, and seriousness
• Religious faith
• Science and secular rationality, encouraged by a view of the universe as orderly,
knowable
• A progressive rather than traditionalist or static view of history, governed by optimism,
confidence in the future, and a belief that progress can be achieved by effort
• Equality, with a horizontal or equalitarian rather than hierarchical view of social
relations
• High evaluation of individual personality, rather than collective identity of
responsibility
• Self-reliance
• Tolerance of diversity
• Efficiency and practicality
• Freedom
• Democracy
• Nationalism and patriotism
• Idealism and perfectionism
• Mobility and change