Ethnography: Self and citizenship in inaugural speeches

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

5 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

09/23/2009

Category :

Political science

Sub category :

Political science

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Summary :

Introduction
The ideological forces
The principles of the democrats
The party split between valuing cooperation and valuing the individual
Contrast between languages between George W. Bush and Barack Obama
Character
1. Definition of middle-class American temperament
2. Bush's two inaugural speeches
America/American
1. Usage of the word Amercian by Obama
2. Bush's usage of the word America
Tyranny/evil
1. Bush's 2001 speech
Conclusion
References

Abstract

People of my generation have largely learned to distrust the government. The past eight years of conservative leadership have taught us, both by example and by policy, that the idea of government as of the people, by the people, and for the people, as Abraham Lincoln described it, is a fallacy. In general, we don't identify with government officials as our elected representatives. We fear them, view them with extreme skepticism, and challenge their words and actions.

In Inventing the Psychological, John Demos tells us that it wasn't always this way. "In the colonial period of American history," he writes, "family and community had been experienced as complementary to one another; indeed the household unit was typically viewed as the 'little commonwealth' which prepared the individual in a wholly natural way for social and political roles in the wider world [Pfister and Schnog p. 67]." When the Industrial Revolution hit, the family moved to the city, and men went outside of the home to work instead of staying on the family farm, what Demos calls "structural differentiation" took place: each member of the family took on a distinct role, and the family itself became distinct from the wider world [68]."