Abstract
This article examines the ways that specific interest groups within the American nation use material culture to attempt to define the parameters of a shared national identity. Case studies are drawn from the first decades of the twentieth century (1900–30) and the early years of the 21st century (2000–12). Analysis of landscapes and artifacts excavated from the working-class industrial town of Berwind in southern Colorado show how an early twentieth-century corporation and its immigrant workers used mundane objects to debate, through symbols, the meanings of citizenship and the nation. An analysis of yellow ribbon magnets used and created by supporters of the Iraq War (2003+) in the 21st century will show how material symbols are deployed in an attempt to reinforce a specific, but contested vision of the nation and the nature of her citizenry.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bender, B., and Winer, M. (2001). Contested Landscapes: Movements, Exile and Place, Berg, Oxford.
Burghart, D., and Zeskind, L. (2010). Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, Kansas City.
Chomsky, N. (2002). Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Seven Stories Press, New York.
Clark, B. (2005). Lived ethnicity: archaeology and identity in Mexicano America. World Archaeology 37: 440–452.
Diaz-Andreu, M., and Lucy, S. (2005). Archaeology of Identity, Routledge, London.
Dulles, F. R., and Dubofsky, M. (1984). Labor in America: A History, 4th ed, Harlan Davidson, Arlington Heights.
Fisher, L. (2003). Deciding on war against Iraq: institutional failures. Political Science Quarterly 118: 389–410.
Fisher, G., and Loren, D. D. (2003). Introduction: embodying identity in archaeology. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13: 225–230.
Foucault, M. (1989). The subject and power. In Dreyfus, H. L., and Rainbow, P. (eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 208–228.
Foucault, M. (1991). The Foucault Reader, Penguine, London.
Garofoli, J. (2005). Blue and red divided over yellow bibbons: “Support our Troops” car magnets arrive with political rebuttals. San Francisco Chronicle 1: A1.
Hehman, E., Gaertner, S., and Dovidio, J. (2011). Evaluations of presidential performance: race, prejudice, and perceptions of Americanism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47: 430–435.
Higham, J. (1955). Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.
Joyce, R. (2005). Archaeology of the body. Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 139–158.
Kertzer, D. I. (1988). Ritual, Politics, and Power, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Li, Q., and Brewer, M. (2004). What does it mean to be an American? Patriotism, nationalism, and American identity after 9/11. Political Psychology 25: 727–739.
Lilley, T., Best, J., Aguirre, B., and Lowney, K. S. (2010). Magnetic imagery: war-related ribbons as collective display. Sociological Inquiry 80: 313–321.
Meskell, L. M. (1999). Archaeologies of Social Life:Age, Sex Class etc. in Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, Oxford.
Meskell, L. M. (2001). Archaeologies of identity. In Hodder, I. (ed.), Archaeological Theory Today, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 187–213.
Milbank, D., and Deane, C. (2005). Polls find dimmer view of Iraq War. Washington Post 6: A01.
Ong, A. (1996). Cultural citizenship as subject-making: immigrants negotiate racial and cultural boundaries in the United States. Current Anthropology 37: 737–763.
Orser Jr., C. E. (2007). The Archaeology of Race and Racialization in Historic America, University of Florida Press, Gainsville.
Pencak, W. (1989). For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919–1941, Northeastern University Press, Boston.
Reckner, P. E. (2001). Negotiating patriotism at the Five Points: clay tobacco pipes and patriotic imagry among trade unionists and nativists in a nineteenth century New York neighborhood. Historical Archaeology 35(3): 103–114.
Rosaldo, R. (1994). Cultural citizenship in San Jose, California. Polar 17: 57–63.
Schmidt, R. A., and Voss, B. L. (eds.) (2000). Archaeologies of Sexuality, Routledge, London.
Selekman, B. M., and Van Kleeck, M. (1924). Employes’ Representation in Coal Mines: A Study of the Industrial Reprepresentation Plan of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, Russell Sage, New York.
Taylor, N. (2013). Spurs defend 11-year old anthem singer, New York Times June 14, 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/sports/basketball/spurs-defend-11-year-old-anthem-singer.html?_r=0>.
Tenety, E. (2001). Santorum, GOP continue anti-Sharia campaign. Washington Post, March 14.
Thompson, F., and Murfin, P. (1976). The IWW: Its First Seventy Years, Industrial Workers of the World, Chicago.
Wood, M. C. (2002). Fighting For Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working-Class Coal Mining Community. Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks as always to LouAnn Wurst for her thoughtful and constructive comments. Thanks to the Wenner Gren Foundation and Washburn University for support of my research and writing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wood, M.C. One Hundred Percent Americanism: Material Culture and Nationalism, Then and Now. Int J Histor Archaeol 18, 272–283 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-014-0257-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-014-0257-2