Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character (review)

In Made in America sociologist Claude S. Fischer mines nearly five decades of work in American social history to answer the broad questions that have shaped his discipline since its founding: “What has modern life, the coming of industry, technology, metropolises, and wealth, meant for the experiences and personalities of average people? Are there distinctively modern individuals, and if so, what are the culture and character of such individuals?” (p. ix). The result is a sweeping synthetic argument that is grounded in personal stories from the past.

Writing for historians, sociologists, and other academics, as well as a general readership, Fischer argues that mainstream American culture has changed little since the colonial period. Where social historians have so often chronicled change, he finds evidence for continuity—or more precisely, the expansion of certain patterns of life and mind to more Americans. As he notes, much of his interpretation can be summed up in a single word: “more”—more security, more goods, more ability to participate in voluntary associations, more access to public spaces and politics, more sense of control and belief in self-improvement.

Notions of American national culture and character, ideas discredited by much of the social history on which his study depends, stand at the heart of Fischer’s interpretation. He asserts that Americans possess certain “ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that [they] typically share with others in their nation” (p. 10). They have sought security, valued goods, and formed associations for nearly 400 years. Too often we (and Fischer includes himself here) miss these shared beliefs and behaviors, because we overestimate the direction and nature of historical change. We accept myths: that Americans today are more mobile, more violent, more alienated from work, less religious, less attentive to the needy than in the past. Fischer uses evidence from social history to dismantle these myths and seeks to reconcile national character with diversity by charting the movement of various groups—women, the working-class, African Americans—toward a mainstream American culture. Building on David Potter’s interpretation of Americans as a “people of plenty,” Fischer contends that “the availability and expansion of material security and comfort enabled early American social patterns and culture to expand and solidify, to both delineate and spread an American national character. With growth, more people could participate in that distinctive culture more fully and could become ‘more American’” (pp. 9–10).

Fischer describes this distinctive (even “exceptional”) culture in separate chapters on security, goods, groups, public spaces, and mentality. Each chapter draws upon a wealth of historical research. (The endnotes and bibliography are as long as the text and serve as a guide to much of the best social history of the last several decades.) For example, when making the case that Americans have grown more secure from the threat of privation, Fischer cites the decline in boarders, child labor and residential turnover as evidence. Similarly he notes that this change in material conditions fostered a greater faith in the future, measured in the reduction of childbirths, increased investment in children’s upbringing and education, and the growing numbers of Americans who plan for retirement. A focus on voluntarism—a “combination of individualism, group-orientation, contract, and egalitarianism” (p. 100)—unites many of Fischer’s examples reflecting his belief that this quality “weav[es] together many threads in the story of American social change” (p. 11). Again, the examples are varied and provocative as he finds evidence of Americans’ voluntaristic mindset not only in the founding of religious congregations, clubs and professional organizations, but also in the celebration of companionate marriages and even the twentieth-century retreat from public life described by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone. The juxtapositions as much as the examples provide compelling evidence that Americans have repeatedly sought out social attachments that could be severed by mutual consent.

It is difficult not to admire what Fischer has accomplished in Made in...