For more information
Call 1-800-351-0222
Call 1-800-351-0222
The Community in America
Term Paper ID:27192
Get This Paper Free! or
Essay Subject:
Discusses the nature of community in America as examined by various essayists in THE BEDFORD READER. Argues that community is not & has never been an important factor in US society.... More...
4 Pages / 900 Words
1 sources, 8 Citations,
MLA Format
$16.00
More Papers on This Topic
Paper Abstract:
Discusses the nature of community in America as examined by various essayists in THE BEDFORD READER. Argues that community is not & has never been an important factor in US society.
Paper Introduction:
The community is seen as an endangered institution and as an institution under attack. Many see our sense of both family and community as disappearing in the face of new technologies and social pressures. It is clear that neither the family nor the community were ever the rock-solid institutions they have been made out to be. Indeed, even the definition of community is often uncertain, and how this is defined helps decide whether it is healthy or damaging, thriving or disappearing. A number of the essays in The Bedford Reader address problems with the meaning of community, its health, and its potential.
Scott Russell Sanders notes how the cult of the individual developed in American society and how this has come to celebrate drifters, loners, and rebels, those separated from family and community, each of which is reviled as an anchor holding back the indiv
Text of the Paper:
The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper.
. This was a shocking story when first published becauseJackson is so skilled at creating what seems to be an idyllic community ofthe sort many delude themselves into believing once existed, and the shockcomes when we see the reality hidden beneath the idyllic surface. He also notes how the larger community of American society has tobe recognized as developing from elements offered by the smallercommunities which go into our multicultural melting pot, a fact that hastoo often been ignored: Even the notion that North America is part of Western civilization because our "system of government" is derived from Europe is being challenged by Native American historians who say that the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin especially, were actually influenced by the system of government that had been adopted by the Iroquois hundreds of years prior to the arrival of large numbers of Europeans (Reed 478).Reed sees America as a nation where the rest of the world has been arrivingfor hundreds of years and intermixing to form a truly multiculturalcommunity. Many see our sense of both family and communityas disappearing in the face of new technologies and social pressures. Esther Dyson also refers to the way Americans revere frontiers, andfor her, cyberspace is a new frontier, a "place where you can go and beyourself without worrying about the neighbors" (Dyson 64 ). This is thecommunity that exists online, accessed by people through the Internet andother computer links. It isa community that protects the past and does not look to the future. She says thatwhat attracts people to cyberspace is that it is so different than thecommunity they are accustomed to in their lives, and one difference is thatcyberspace involves a degree of freedom not possible elsewhere. The fact that this attitude hascontinued to be powerful in American society long after the era of thefrontier, however, is what concerns so many who see community as anecessity, as a means of binding people together against the ills of theworld: Many people shy away from community out of a fear that it may become suffocating, confining, even vicious; and of course it may, if it grows rigid or exclusive. The idea ofManifest Destiny told Americans that they would inevitably extend theirdomain from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which meant that the frontierwould have to cease being the frontier and be civilized by settlers. Instead of a melting pot, wenow have ethnic and cultural stratification, with each represented culturein American society vying for the right to retain its original characterand even to promote it through education to other groups. Indeed, the idea and the reality of the frontier stand in Americanhistory as ideas that helped shape the American character. Sanders actually finds that the cult of the individual had toemerge in American society given the nature of those who came to thiscountry, adventurers striking out on their own and seeking a new world: The first Europeans to reach America were daredevils and treasure seekers, as were most of those who mapped the interior. Scott Russell Sanders notes how the cult of the individual developedin American society and how this has come to celebrate drifters, loners,and rebels, those separated from family and community, each of which isreviled as an anchor holding back the individual seeking to express him orherself. Itis clear that neither the family nor the community were ever the rock-solidinstitutions they have been made out to be. Sanders also says he isnot looking for an idyllic past that never really existed as some peoplemay be, but he is looking for a reclamation of the policy of looking afterthose who live nearby (Sanders 623). The community is seen as an endangered institution and as aninstitution under attack. Kadi seems to believe that the community incyberspace is in fact too isolated and too small to connect people as somehope the computer will. The Bedford Reader. Can they all get along? Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. Rarely does anyone venture into a random folder just to see what others (the Other?) are talking about (Kadi 651).Yet, this only means that people are finding smaller communities than Kadimight like, not that they are not finding communities at all. Much of theargument over this issue takes on the form of near-hysteria about what willhappen to democracy if multiculturalism flourishes and about howundemocratic and anti-academic-freedom multiculturalism is. Ishmael Reed points to the fact that the meaning of community has tobe extended to account for both the different ethnic and religiouscommunities which can be identified as communities unto themselves whilerecognizing that these are also part of the larger community of Americansociety. It isnot a community such as Sanders seeks. On the frontier, community was hard to find, and family as well wasoften a tenuous concept for many. As Reed shows,though, we are already a multicultural society and always were, and thefears of a few today are simply misplaced. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands (Jackson 627-628).This seems a description of children out of schools everywhere, but thefact that they and the rest of the town are gathering for the lottery,something not defined but evidently a ritual of ancient lineage whichcreates some sense of impending doom for the reader: The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. . TheInternet is notorious for being difficult to learn and to traverse, butthose who manage to learn can access huge amounts of printed data, images,and even video on a limited basis. Dyson believes they can. Shirley Jackson in he short story "The Lottery" shows the dangers ofcommunity and of the way the solidarity of the community as a whole maydepend on finding and identifying a scapegoat as a protection for the restof the community. It isthe very normality of the people of the village that makes their actions sohorrible--we recognize ourselves in these people and realize that undercertain circumstance, we might act in the same way to protect thecommunity. Instead, Kadi sees people as finding the same sortof friends online that they have in life: People are drawn to topics and folders that interest them and therefore people will only meet people who are interested in the same topics in the same folders. Work CitedKennedy, X.J., Dorothy M. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box (Jackson 628).This is a community that does not change or adapt to new conditions. A new type of community has been developing recently, one that somefear undercuts the power of the traditional communities. Kennedy, and Jane E. Thefrontier became, then, a place to which settlers went, and they goal inAmerican life was to battle the frontier and to bring it into the Americanfold. From the first, the normality of life in the village is tempered bythe sense that something is wrong, though the reader cannot identify it: The children assembled first, of course. A number of theessays in The Bedford Reader address problems with the meaning ofcommunity, its health, and its potential. Indeed, even the definition ofcommunity is often uncertain, and how this is defined helps decide whetherit is healthy or damaging, thriving or disappearing. Interactive computing is found in places like theInternet, a loose agglomeration of computing networks that enables the userto access vast amounts of information from sources all over the world. Many colonists were renegades of one stripe or another, some of them religious nonconformists, some political rebels, more than a few of them fugitives form the law. A healthy community is dynamic, stirred up by the energies of those who already belong, open to new members and fresh influences, kept in motion by the constant bartering of gifts (Sanders 622).The community Sanders wants is something different --it is tolerant,joyful, and grounded in affection and mutual aid. (Dyson 64 ). One of the current buzzwords in academic circles, and wherevercritics of academia gather, is multiculturalism, a term that turns the oldidea of the American melting pot on its head. Coast to coast, our land has been settled and our cities have been filled by generations of immigrants more intent on leaving behind old tyrannies than on seeking new social bonds (Sanders 621). it bringstogether many different communities under one heading: Formerly a playground for computer nerds and techies, cyberspace now embraces every conceivable constituency: schoolchildren, flirtatious singles, Hungarian-Americans, accountants--along with pederasts and porn fans. Aaron.
If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again:
or
We can write a Custom Essay just for you.
Browse Essays by Subject