Customer Reviews

Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940 (Cultural Studies of the United States)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the largest contributions of this book is its effort to combine economic history with cultural analysis. Livingston takes the time to distinguish important structural changes in the US economy during this period (1850-1940). More cultural historians and critics should grapple with this material--Livingston can wean us off of blanket labels ("incorporation," "Gilded Age") that leave no room for thinking through the more dynamic relations of the economic and the cultural.

A second virtue of this book is Livingston's provocative, polemic argument. Although his political sympathies are with the left, he offers a strong critique of the tendency among left historians to see the emergence of corporate capitalism as the effective end to any chance for victory on the left. This "tragic" mode of analysis, Livingston argues, means we can only remain mired in a nostalgic orientation toward the past. Livingston turns to two cultural formations--literary naturalism (especially the fiction of Theodore Dreiser) and pragmatism (especially William James)--to argue for a "social self" that offers hope for political progress but is not inherently at odds with corporate capitalism. I'm still not sure if I buy Livingston's argument, but his frame of analysis and reflections on history and models of selfhood are tremendously fruitful.

Although the book is largely an advanced academic study, it is clearly written and free of jargon. Well read students of American history and culture will be able to follow the analysis.

This is a work of conceptual brilliance, in its argument about why pragmatism occurred when it did, its cultural ramifications and its current importance. In addition Livingston illuminatingly connects pragmatism with post-modernism.