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Summary:

"Daria Frezza covers six tumultuous decades of transatlantic history to examine how European theories of mass polities and crowd psychology influenced American social scientists' perception of crowds, mobs, democratic "people," and its leadership. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the development of an urban-industrial mass society and the disordered influx of millions of immigrants required a redefinition of these important categories in American public discourse. Frezza shows how in the Atlantic crossing of ideas, American social scientists re-elaborated the European theories of crowd psychology and the racial theories then in fashion. Theorists made a sharp distinction between the irrationality of the crowd, including lynchings, and the rationality of the democratic "public."" "However, this paradigm of a rational Anglo-Saxon male public in opposition to irrational mobs - traditionally considered to be composed of women, children, and "savages"--Was challenged by the reality of southern lynch mobs made up of white Anglo-Saxons, people who used mob violence as an instrument of subjugation over an allegedly inferior race, After World War I, when the topic of eugenics and immigration restrictions ignited the debate of exclusion/inclusion regarding U.S. citizenship, Franz Boas's work provided a significant counterbalance to the biased language of race. Furthermore, the very concept of democracy was questioned from many points of view." "During the Depression years, social scientists such as John Dewey critically analyzed the democratic system in comparison to European dictatorships, The debate then acquired an international dimension. In the "ideological rearmament of America" on the eve of World War II, social scientists criticized Nazi racism but at the same time stressed how racism was also deeply rooted in America. This is a fresh look at the parallels between the emergence of America as a world power and the maturing of the new discipline of social science."--Jacket.

Table of Contents:

• American democracy in the Gilded Age: the individual, the crowd, and the "people"
• The language of race, the crowd, and the public in the progressive era
• The mob stereotype
• The paradox of a conformist democracy
• Criticism of mass democracy after World War I
• From the factory to the nation : leadership or domination
• The international challenge
• The defense of democracy.

Author/Creator:

Frezza, Daria

Languages:

English
Italian

Language Notes:

Translated from the Italian.

Main Work:

Leader, la folla, la democrazia nel discorso pubblico americano [by Frezza, D.] (English)

Subjects:

Political leadership — United States — History

Collective behavior — History

United States — Politics and government — 1865-1933

United States — Politics and government — 1933-1945

Democracy — United States — History

General Notes:

"First published in Italian in 2001 as Il leader, la folla, la democrazia nel discorso pubblico americano: 1880-1941"--Acknowledgments.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-318) and index.
Description based on print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Call Numbers:

E661 .F7913 2007eb

ISBNs:

9780820336473 (electronic bk.)
0820336475 (electronic bk.)
9780820329130 [Invalid]
0820329134 [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

593301915

Other Control Numbers:

EBC3038809 (source: MiAaPQ)
[Unknown Type]: ybp3290230