Handy and clear summary of English: Society and Culture. Contains the most important aspects of the powerpoints and oral explanations by the prof. Thanks to this summary, a 14/20 obtained (on the cesure exam).
Samenvatting Engels Cultuur En Geschiedenis (1034FLWTTA)
All for this textbook (4)
Written for
Universiteit Antwerpen (UA)
Toegepaste Taalkunde
Engels Cultuur En Geschiedenis (1034FLWTTA)
All documents for this subject (20)
Seller
Follow
Student19567
Reviews received
Content preview
English: culture and history
US: culture and history
US = NOT same as America
Chapters to know, not discussed in class
- Chapter 11: social services
- Chapter 12: education
LESSON 1: SETTLEMENT AND IMMIGRATION
Chapter: 3: The people – Settlement and immigration
Poem: ‘The New Colossus’ – Emma Lazarus
- America = country designed for immigrants
- Poem on statue of liberty
- To welcome all the poor and outsiders from other nations
- ‘naïve’ utopian description of a country welcomes all people that were rejected from other countries
Trump could not Disagree more
- Today Trump policies Biden: reverse effect on immigration = tension, stress, …
- America is not a country of infinite immigration
Early encounters between Europeans and Native Americans
- America = not an empty land when European colonists arrived
- Did not blend into a new race ‘The American’
= ideology
- US: accidental nation, stumbled into being
- Never such a thing as a ‘single national culture’
culturalism: people often seem to lament the loss of American identity
(“Make America Great Again” = nostalgia: America was once greater as it is now)
presuppose a ‘lost paradise’: Americans knew who they were + not as problematic as today
(movements, ethnic groups, smaller entities)
tone of cultural discussion today: based on false, mythical past: America used to be never been!!
- Anglo-Americas have tried to establish a white European culture attempted to turn America into a white
men’s paradise
- White ideology = tried to wipe out presence of native culture
- People arrived from two sides: England + Spain/Portugal
native people lived there for thousands of years: 10 million native Americas
Speaking several 100 languages
Often mutual incomprehensible
Huge culture: already there
- Confrontation with settlers (Spain and England Natives) = extremely problematic from day one
- Conflict: European Native Americans = tree different issues
a. HEALTH
- They made each other sick: caught diseases from each other
- Many deaths on both sides
- Immigrants: 50% died
- Native American: population 10 million 2 million
- Deadly from the beginning
b. LAND/TRADE
- Europeans and native Americans = different ideas of function of land and tray
- Europeans: land = commodity, instrument to be exploited, cultivate, try to make money from
working on a land => it becomes yours (to sell, inherit to children, …)
claiming more land + pushing Native Americans back into smaller pieces of land (= reservations)
- Native Americans: land = NOT a commodity
sacred, needs to be admired, respected rather than changed
not sell, trade, … but use for communal life + using nature to feed yourself, cure diseases but NEVER
claim it as property
c. RELIGION
- Europeans: mostly protestants: believed that nature (=wilderness) it is God’s assignment to cultivate it
into land
Work a land, make it lucrative = please god
believe in a personal god = who has no problem with people claiming land
dualism
- Native Americans: land = sacred, needs to be admired, respected, … not changed
land = great mother of nature + respect for mother nature
believe in a divine quality that humans and nature take part off: we are all part of a huge, divine
universe: no Lord, Jesus, God in one person but land was sacred and divine just like human beings
,English: culture and history
nature and human beings = continuum, merging into each other, …
The founders
- Two different voyages/approaches to this new world
St. Augustin, Florida (1565) = eldest settlement
Jamestown, Virginia (1607) = by the English
- From the very beginning: shortage of labor = inspired/forced the colonists to import African laborers
(=start of slavery)
indentured servants: African people who came to America, willing to serve for a period of 5-7 years in
order to be free citizens after in the New World
1619: First African laborers as indentured servants
- Two types of colonists:
separatists
Arrived on Mayflower
Protestant, separatist pilgrims
Belief = people had failed + God gives Christians one more chance to establish a truly Christian
ideal world on earth
Europe had failed to live up to God’s demand
Separatists: turn their back on Europe for good determined to set up an ideal, Christian culture
in the New World
Never to return
This escape by the separatist pilgrims= failed completely
diseases
‘first immigration move’ = mythical
FAIL
America was NOT founded by pilgrims on the Mayflower
1620: Pilgrims, separatists on Mayflower arrive
puritans
Variant of same stem
Arrived ten years later
Ship = Arbella
Reformers
Did not want to turn their backs/separate from Europe
Wanted to purify, set up an example for the Old World
To do better
Maybe not return physically to Europe but export their lifestyles, ideas, … to Europe
Still today: Why do Americans think they have to mingle in e.g. Middle East? Violent moves? Police
the entire world?
puritan origin: ‘we have to set up a religious utopia to inspire the entire world’
Survival of mankind = high
White America not founded by pilgrims on Mayflower (myth) but by puritans on Arbella
1630: Pilgrims, puritans on Arbella arrive
Four waves of immigration
- First wave: colonial immigrants 1680 – 1776
- Second wave: old immigrants 1820 – 1890
- Third wave: new immigrants 1890 – 1930
- Fourth wave: Latino and Asian 1965 – present
Renewed immigration debate and migration restriction
- 1890-1914: 15,5 million new immigrants
- 1875: federal government began listing ‘banned groups’
= contract laborers, convicts, prostitutes, lunatics, idiots, paupers, polygamists, political radicals, the
Chinese, the Japanese, illiterates
- 1892: Ellis Island: screening depot for immigrants
- 1908: The Melting Pot by Israel Zangwill
play
popularized the idea, introduced metaphor that: eventually in the US would fuse many races and
cultures (through intermarriage) and become new people, new race = Americans
,English: culture and history
to this day: notion of melting pot survived: multiculturalism ‘I am German-American, Afro-American,
…: my ancestors are German, African, … but I am American
= hybrid, multi-layered cultural identity
= hyphenated America
Still consider, treat them as American
‘Make America great again’ = slogan looks backward to some kind of imaginary past were all Americans
were white, Anglo-Saxons
melting pot = nostalgic idea of people who were never willing/able to embrace complexity of America
= America + something else (Afro-American)
being American = ideally: not dependent on who your parents/language/religion were (Not who you used
to be) Who you decide to be = open idea
- 1921: Emergency Quota Act: each European nation = certain number of immigrant visas per year
already 100 Belgians in US? = every new year another 3 Belgians allowed in the country
very serious constriction
nationality quotas 3%
- 1924: Asian Excusion Act: ended all immigrations from Asian nation
+ National Origins Quota Act: reduced European nationality quotas to 2%
- 1965: immigration Act
- 1986: immigration Reform and Control Act
- 1990: Immigration Act
2018:
increase of immigrants in the US dropped to 70% compared to 2017
John Winthrop
- Puritan: leader of Arbella ship
- Religious people: on voyage from known to the unknown
- John W. held a speech: spoke to people on board of Arbella
- Suddenly extraordinary passage: he prepares these religious people for a class society
= what they left behind + point of voyage to create egalitarian paradisa?
religious originis of America = offer a justification for raw capitalism
God says: ‘some will be rich, some will be poor’
= justification of everything they left behind: not sailing into ‘socialism’ but sailing into pretty much
the same (= model of Christian charity)
Gordon Wood: What 18th century America must have felt like
Face to face society
culture/society of very small entities, villages, communities where people knew each other personally
biggest city back than = Philadelphia
America = rural, agrarian, backwaters of Europe
UK: less and less agriculture and more manufactures
everybody knew each other
no distinction: private – public
= huge social control: people would turn each other in
reputation is VERY important
(people started gossiping, could destroy reputation)
stories told not true? Brought to court => clear your name, damage of symbolic capital
Friendship
web of social relations that linked people to one another
not just ‘friends’ in meaning today
friends = people in your community
once a reputation was established (he uses cocaine, she is possessed by the devil,…) not much to do
about it or go to court
Husbandry
to husband = verb
to deal with scarce means in a frugal manner
smart distributing, deal, … scarce grounds
bad husbandry? = ‘wanbeheerr’
deal with economic resources: bread, liquid, milk, … and use them in a wise manner
husband: links family sphere to market sphere
Father as a king of the family
Husbandry = more than a family man
, English: culture and history
difficult to have goods circulate beyond a certain sphere: primitive no bank, stock exchange, difficult
to trade beyond village
lack of paper money
Book accounts:
listings that register everything people owed to one another
complicated register
‘he owns me X, I own her Y, ...’
technical term for all the economical interdependency that linked one another
whole network
source of conflict and social cohesion
= conflict: remind your neighbour he has to give you X back, he can’t because waiting to be paid
by Y, …= led to conflict
social cohesion: you could not just run away stay in same circle
Proprietary wealth
wealthy people in town accumulated wealth: make more money than already had
land = plenty = cheap
wealth produced by rents, interests …
= main source of income of the rich
network of interdependencies
Patronage
society run by patrons
the rich people would also be the powerful
economic independence: only an economic independent can be a fair judge can’t be blackmailed
All together: small scale, agricultural, tide knit communities: no sign that seems to anticipate the formation
of a new nationstate
The war of independence
- All about money
- Story begins in 1763: end of Seven Years War: England France
English won the war + lot of new territory from France: Canada + Eastern Mississipi territory
so much land so far away how to protect it?
financial ‘problem’ even though they had won the war
- George Grenville: chancellor in 1763
discovered: American custom service (colonies) were costing more to operate than it was bringing in
introduced acts (Sugar Act – 1764 and Stamp Act – 1765)
= to generate money in the colonies to fund the English bank
levy taxes on importation of sugar (Sugar Act)
all official documents have a particular stamp in order to be officially legal = would generate
money (Stamp Act)
- Opposition to these taxes
new ‘tax’: Townshend Act: money that taxes raise can be invested in colonies (money goes not even
back to England)
but no
- People started resenting from beginning: English people that lived in colonies
colonists were not represented in parliament: no right to levitate taxes!
how can we be taxed by a parliament in which we have no representatives?
‘No taxation without Representation’
- English: sent Customs Commisioners = were hated by the locals
- To prevent social protest: England sent 2 regiments of British Army: to teach colonists a lesson
to make sure they would obey mother country
- Americans: demotivated the regiments = by behaving like ideal school children, lived by the rule, …
regiments felt like they had no use
= pacifist provocation
- March 1770: English soldiers were unguarded in Custom House, Boston
some locals started provoking the soldiers
from out of nothing: violent confrontation between provocative colonists military representatives
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller Student19567. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $8.22. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
