Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America is a book written by James Davison Hunter and published in 1991. It concerns the idea of a struggle to define American public life between two cultures: the progressives and the orthodox. The book illustrates its framework of historical analysis through several of the contemporary issues of the time: abortion rights, school prayer, gay rights, and more.[1]
Progressive and orthodox views are primarily systems of moral understanding. He identifies orthodoxy as a viewpoint through which moral truth is static, universal, and sanctioned through divine powers; contrasting progressivism, which sees moral truth as evolving and contextual. These two groups are locked in an everlasting "culture war"[2] to assert dominion over the various institutional and systemic entities influenced by contemporary cultural praxis, most visibly the governing branches of America.[3][4]
References
Sources
- Grimes, Michael D. (1993). "Review". Social Science Quarterly. 74 (1): 230. JSTOR 42863186.
- Johnson, D. Paul (1992). "Review". Journal of Church and State. 34 (3): 607–608. doi:10.1093/jcs/34.3.607. JSTOR 23919465.
- Kurtz, Lester R. (1994). "Review". American Journal of Sociology. 99 (4): 1125–1128. doi:10.1086/230395. JSTOR 2781763.
- Mechling, Jay (1994). "Review". American Studies. 35 (1): 155–156. JSTOR 40642591.