Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, and Professional Affiliation in the United States (Studies in American Thought and Culture) - Hardcover

Hollinger, David A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299216608 ISBN 13: 9780299216603

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006

Synopsis

    "Who are we?" is the question at the core of these fascinating essays from one of the nation's leading intellectual historians. With old identities increasingly destabilized throughout the world—the result of demographic migration, declining empires, and the quickening integration of the global capitalist economy and its attendant communications systems—David A. Hollinger argues that the problem of group solidarity is emerging as one of the central challenges of the twenty-first century.  
    Building on many of the topics in his highly acclaimed earlier work, these essays treat a number of contentious issues, many of them deeply embedded in America's past and present political polarization. Essays include "Amalgamation and Hypodescent," "Enough Already: Universities Do Not Need More Christianity," "Cultural Relativism," "Why Are Jews Preeminent in Science and Scholarship: The Veblen Thesis Reconsidered," and "The One Drop Rule and the One Hate Rule." Hollinger is at his best in his judicious approach to America's controversial history of race, ethnicity, and religion, and he offers his own thoughtful prescriptions as Americans and others throughout the world struggle with the pressing questions of identity and solidarity.

About this title

About the Author:

David A. Hollinger is the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Postethnic America and Science, Jews, and Secular Culture.

Review:

"This collection confirms that David Hollinger is a fine citizen-scholar as well as one of the premier intellectual historians in the United States. He steers wisely and humanely through the rapids of identity—racial, ethnic, religious, and national—with a worldly tolerance as his guide. It's a brilliant performance that every student of American society—in and out of the academy-should read."—Michael Kazin, Georgetown University

"This is scholarship of the first order. Hollinger's spirited interventions in contemporary debates ranging from race and multiculturalism to religion and academic freedom are indispensable."—James T. Kloppenberg, Harvard University

“Reaffirms Hollinger’s status as one of America’s premier scholars in intellectual history, with a broad interdisciplinary knowledge, cosmopolitan worldview, and sharp insights into some of the most contested issues of the twenty-first century. This is a book invaluable not just to historians but to sociologists, other social scientists, and humanists as well.—Philip Q. Yang, Journal of American Ethnic History

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0299216608
• ISBN 13: 9780299216603
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240