CHAPTER SIX

PAX AMERICANA

by Hugh M. Lewis

As an American cultural anthropologist, and since cultural anthropology has almost exclusively been developed by American scholars, it is important to delineate some basic aspects of American culture that may underlie many of our biases about the world and others in it, and that serve as at least implicit points of comparison which are inevitably involved in every ethnographic text and cultural description which is produced by American cultural anthropologists. Rendering explicit what would otherwise remain only implicit is a central job of the cultural anthropologist as a scientist.

There are several facets about American culture and what it has become in the decade of the nineties as these have become apparent to me. These facets are important to an anthropological accounting of an American point of view. The first is to point up certain basic characteristics of American character and culture which appear to be common throughout American society. These are the discrepancies represented by the promotion of democracy, equality and rights on one hand, and the promotion of capitalism, wealth, profit and development, on the other. These sets of interests are frequently mutually contradictory and incompatible. Rarely are they in clear alignment of interests and cultural policies. Related to this, but along another axis, is the relationship between a strong cultural ethos of rugged individualism, on the one hand, and a strong social pressure toward being a "good team player" or "organization man" on the other hand. These two sets of contraposed ideals are dialectal in expression, and do not appear as strongly incompatible as do the contrasting ideals of democracy and capitalism. A great deal of American mythoi--of the frontier, of a long line of American culture heroes--real and fictional-- of our legends and histories, can be understood in terms of the dialectics of these basic sets of contrasts.

Such polar contrasts invite what is known as a grid-group comparison and representation of different segments of American society along the principle grid-group axis of "Democracy versus Capitalism" and "Rugged Individual versus Organization Man." Within such a representation we can recognize that various styles and groups fall within one or another quadrant of the grid-group representation, and from these values we might develop a number of rather specific analytical indices from which we might development more precise locational measures.

There are other important facets of American culture--such as a central romantic ethos and idealism, a basic "poor Richard's" protestant morality, a strong elaboration of the interwoven themes of obscene sex and violence, a culture of guns and violence, one that is expressed in a strong militarism and via the media, and undercurrent of repressed "dirty sex" or "toilet sex" that represents a strong ambivalence between sexual expression and repression, and which is represented by a long succession of serial psycho-killers, a gasoline culture of fast cars and drive-thru fast food chains and a strong sense of the achievement of an essentially middle class American Dream. American culture has also been strongly influenced by periodic injections of diverse foreign immigrant cultures from many different regions of the globe. Thus there are strong ethnic undercurrents of American culture that are ideologically unified under the aegis of a cultural consensus of the assimilationist ideology of the American "melting pot." Last, but not least important, is a strong sense of racism that is tied to skin color and physical traits, and that is linked to a folk belief that "blood is thicker than water" and that social group differences are rooted to innate biological differences that are linked to race. This racial ideology is supported by a deeply rooted Christian doctrine of a Great Chain of Being upon which the white man is above all the others, just below the angels, and by a Spencerian social race ethos of "survival of the fittest" that is rooted to capitalist competition in the marketplace.

The articulation of symbolisms at this level of American culture is not so highly developed or organized that frequently contradictory notions--gun control and freedom, prayer in school and racial segregation, capital punishment and anti-abortionism, drug rehabilitation centers and social promotion of drugs and alcohol, fast food and fitness spas, can't be brought into convenient juxtaposition in support or condemnation of some cultural orientation or ideology or other.

It is enough to point out that in almost everything the Americans do, there is a strong intrinsic sense of cultural ambivalence about goals and beliefs--an ambivalence that is characteristic of and results from the incorporation and dialectic of so many basic cultural contradictions. To a large extent, we have successfully managed the ideal of the cultural organization of extreme diversity--a diversity reinforced by the premium all Americans put upon individual freedoms and liberty. Americans symbolically embody this diversity of ideals and the strong sense of ambivalence and contradiction they entail.

But it is important to see how some of these basic contradictions have become manipulated and articulated in the institutional organization and symbolizations of our society. Largely, to the extent that such articulation is planned and coordinated, especially by sponsors of television commercials and programs, newspapers and news magazines, there occurs an implicit sliding scale of multiple standards which are applied socially and bureaucratically in a differential and basically unequal manner--hence, men tend to be treated better in the work place than women, whites tend to be treated better than blacks (except for affirmative action programs which have reversed this trend), Japanese tend to be treated better than Chinese, Germans better than Southern Italians. Underlying this sliding scale is another kind of grid-group representation--one whose principal axis appear to be those of: 1. race (i.e. darkness to lightness of skin, hair and eye color) and 2. socio-economic status-identity (i.e. acquired and achieved class background). Class differences largely underlie many of the socio-cultural differences and stereotypes which have been perpetuated in our society. These differences have largely been ameliorated by the fact that the American social system has traditionally and at least ideologically been "open" (more open for some categories and classes than others) and strongly "middle class" in value orientation and outlook. Thus, like the Chinese, the Americans value achievement and love a winner. 

The realities of social and economic inequalities and social class hierarchy in society is also culturally denied by the strong ideological legitimate of the principles of equality and human rights. These are principles that are as often as not merely a matter of ideological rhetoric than they are a matter of institutional or social practice. The effect of class differences make themselves felt upon the development youth at adolescence and these difference become set by high school age when social segregation into a social peeking order of cliques, clubs and associations becomes formative of a social identity that is carried over into college (fraternities, varsities, honor roles) and adult life. The critical factors in the promotion of socio-economic hierarchy in American culture appear to be via the development of social networking skills, the dichotomization of personality between foreground and background, and relative differential of socio-structural screens of opportunity for education, employment and social involvement. The main difference between the British and the American class systems appears to be in the "dressing down" of such asymmetries by Americans which would for British be normally naked and exposed, and by the fact that the British have a single royal "received standard" while the Americans have only regionally defined variants of a "newscaster standard."

As money comes to mediate and define interpersonal interactions in an increasingly impersonal, spurious and alienating society, as conservative capitalists have achieved more and more political and socio-economic preponderance within American culture. It is an orientation that tends toward a conservative orthodoxy and monolithic hegemony of cultural values, and as the actual distribution of wealth becomes more and more ossified between an increasingly polarized class system in which opportunities for the working or middle class to move ahead become increasing fewer and further between, it can be expected that socioeconomic asymmetries of wealth, class and social privilege will become more pronounced, more symbolically reinforced and legitimated, and more victimizing of the disenfranchised.

It can also be expected that the basic elements of racism and class inequality will become increasingly merged into a form of social racism in which the beautiful people defined principally by their physical appearance and their wealth, who represent a largely token "racial rainbow" will be increasingly highlighted and contrasted against the poor people whose ugly characteristics are exaggerated. Furthermore, this type of social racism will become linked to socio-biological theories which claim to demonstrate an innate, genetic basis for these--theories which will legitimate the asymmetries and status quo of social policies which protect the privileged interests of the rich while keeping the poor behind bars. This socio-structural promotion of socio-economic asymmetries is reinforced largely by a bureaucratic machinery defined by its sense of false consciousness, its structural hypocrisy, and by the systematic, unspoken application of a sliding scale of multiple standards.

It is in reference to the Pax Americana of the 1990's that I have dedicated this essay upon the basic contradictions of American cultural values. The Pentagon, as the head of the Department of Defense, is the single most wealthy, powerful, autocratic and lethal organization on earth. It is composed of an exclusive elite of "organization" Americans who have by any standard sacrificed ideals of individualism. They, and most Americans, sincerely believe that what they are defending is democracy and individual freedom. But they make this claim without reflecting upon the history of American military intervention and involvement in foreign countries. The American military remains the most power and capable of projecting itself abroad compared to any other country on earth or in the history of human civilization. Recent events in the Middle East clearly demonstrate this capacity, and the determination of those who control it, to protect what are construed to be vital industrial (i.e. capitalist) resources abroad. Mention has not even been made to the vast, undismantled nuclear arsenal which could easily destroy the entire planet. America has promoted a kind of international peace abroad, but we must ask, at what price has it achieved this peace? American culture, from Elvis Presley to Walt Disney to Colt to Budweiser, remains strongly acculturative an influence in most third world countries.

It is amazing the extent to which Americans have closed themselves culturally to the cultural realities and differences of other peoples in the world. On returning from fieldwork abroad, my strongest "reverse culture shock" impression of American culture was how inbound, uninterested, culturally circumscribed, stick in the mud it really is--so preoccupied with issues of social hierarchy and status that its individuals cannot truly free themselves to cultivate alternative points of view or orientations towards reality. America may be many different things, but, culturally speaking, it will probably never be cosmopolitan.

American Culture has achieved a pinnacle of development and civilization by the great individual creativity that was its dynamo. It appears to be in a slow process of socially sacrificing the opportunities for the promotion and cultivation of such creativity, for the sake of private profit and an increasingly false sense of organizational-ideological security. A new closed culture is emerging, based upon spurious social relationships in the marketplace, hospitals, insurance offices and in administrative offices. It is a culture which can predictably be counted on to socially and systematically stifle strong expression of individualism and to frustrate the cultivation of creativity and opportunities for creative expression and invention. Increasing violence and destructiveness at a grass roots level, reflected in greater organizational violence and destructiveness, will be the net outcome of these cultural developments, unless the American public can reassert its cultural prerogatives of democracy, freedom and individualism.