Boundaries of the State in US History / James T. Sparrow, William J. Novak, Stephen W. Sawyer.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Novak, William J., Editor.

Sawyer, Stephen W., Editor.

Sparrow, James T., Editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Federal government--United States--History.

Federal government.

United States--Politics and government.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (372 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The question of how the American state defines its power has become central to a range of historical topics, from the founding of the Republic and the role of the educational system to the functions of agencies and America's place in the world. Yet conventional histories of the state have not reckoned adequately with the roots of an ever-expanding governmental power, assuming instead that the American state was historically and exceptionally weak relative to its European peers. Here, James T. Sparrow, William J. Novak, and Stephen W. Sawyer assemble definitional essays that search for explanations to account for the extraordinary growth of US power without resorting to exceptionalist narratives. Turning away from abstract, metaphysical questions about what the state is, or schematic models of how it must work, these essays focus instead on the more pragmatic, historical question of what it does. By historicizing the construction of the boundaries dividing America and the world, civil society and the state, they are able to explain the dynamism and flexibility of a government whose powers appear so natural as to be given, invisible, inevitable, and exceptional.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

One / The Early American State "In Action": The Federal Marine Hospitals, 1789-1860

Two / Beyond Tocqueville's Myth: Rethinking the Model of the American State

Three / Inventing the US-Mexico Border

Four / Rumors of Empire: Tracking the Image of Britain at the Dawn of the American Century

Five / The Great Transformation: The State and the Market in the Postwar World

Six / Governing the Child: The State, the Family, and the Compulsory School in the Early Twentieth Century

Seven / Youth as Infrastructure: 4-H and the Intimate State in 1920s Rural America

Eight / Good Citizens of a World Power: Postwar Reconfigurations of the Obligation to Give

Nine / The Rise of the Public Religious Welfare State: Black Religion and the Negotiation of Church/State Boundaries during the War on Poverty

Ten / Private Power and American Bureaucracy: The State, the EEOC, and Civil Rights Enforcement

Eleven / From Political Economy to Civil Society: Arthur W. Page, Corporate Philanthropy, and the Reframing of the Past in Post-New Deal America

Conclusion / The Concept of the State in American History

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226277813

022627781X

OCLC:

917153393