The development of high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure in the United States faces a great challenge given concerns of economic viability and political complexity. However, an in-depth investigation reveals that some of these challenges and complexities regarding high-speed rail mobility can be elucidated by historical and cultural characteristics that affect daily behavior, lifestyle, and public attitudes in U.S. society. This essay discusses the debate on the U.S. high-speed rail development policy from the perspective of American exceptionalism. Through an exploration of the four traits of American exceptionalism, the essay argues that the stagnation of U.S. federal high-speed rail initiatives can be explained by U.S. cultural constraints: individualism, antistatism, populism, and egalitarianism. Unless more solid evidence is provided to convince the public about the benefits of HSR mobility, the HSR debate is likely to continue in the United States.
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Culture Constraints of High-Speed Rail in the United States
A Perspective from American Exceptionalism
Zhenhua Chen
Anthropology and the Cognitive Science of Religion
A Critical Assessment
Carles Salazar
Recent cognitive and evolutionary approaches to the study of religion have been seen by many as a naturalistic alternative to conventional anthropological interpretations. Whereas anthropologists have traditionally accounted for the existence of religion in terms of social and cultural determinants, cognitive scientists have emphasized the innate—that is pre-cultural—constraints placed by natural selection on the formation and acquisition of religious ideas. This article provides a critical assessment of the main theoretical proposals put forward by cognitive scientists and suggests possible interactions, perhaps interdependencies, with more standard anthropological sensibilities, especially between cognitive and evolutionary perspectives that see religion as a by-product of innate psychological dispositions and anthropological approaches that take the 'meaningful' nature of religious symbols as their point of departure.
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2010
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 44–56 (13 total)
Underground Theater
Theorizing Mobility through Modern Subway Dramas
Sunny Stalter-Pace
This article begins from the premise that modern American drama provides a useful and understudied archive of representations of mobility. It focuses on plays set on the New York City subway, using the performance studies concept of “restored behavior” to understand the way that these plays repeat and heighten the experience of subway riding. Through their repetitions, they make visible the psychological consequences of ridership under the historical and cultural constraints of the interwar period. Elmer Rice's 1929 play The Subway is read as a particularly rich exploration of the consequences of female passenger's presumed passivity and sexualization in this era. The Subway and plays like it enable scholars of mobility to better understand the ways that theatrical texts intervene in cultural conversations about urban transportation.
Reviews
The Copernican Revolution in Ideology Research; Exploring the Ubiquity of “Progress” in Modern Chinese Thought; History beyond History; Three Stages of the Danish Welfare State through the Prism of Citizen Categories
Tobias Adler-Bartels, Egas Bender de Moniz Bandeira, Kirill Postoutenko, and Johan Strang
and cultural constraints, whereby he emphasizes the important role of emotions “as additional decontesting ‘agents’ alongside, and often cutting across, logical and cultural constraints” (116). While the morphology describes the micro-level of an
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2023
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 119–136 (18 total)
Mixed Message Media
Girls’ Voices and Civic Engagement in Student Journalism
Piotr S. Bobkowski and Genelle I. Belmas
Gilbert (1989) focused on Australia and the UK as well as on the United States. Toh and Leonardelli (2013) took a global look at cultural constraints on women leaders in 32 countries in a study that suggests that to be considered a leader, an individual
In Girlhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 89–106 (18 total)
From Sickle to Pen
Women's Education and Everyday Mobility in Rural Pakistan
Muhammad A. Z. Mughal
higher for both men and women in rural areas, the latter have fewer opportunities for educational and occupational development due to some cultural constraints on their mobility. Nonetheless, education has played an important role in increasing women
Reading Production and Culture
UK Teen Girl Comics from 1955 to 1960
Joan Ormrod
their study of Beatles fandom, enabled American girls to express their sexuality and resistance to cultural constraints placed on them in the early 1960s. Promotion differentiated British pop stars from their more glamorous American cousins as accessible
In Girlhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 18–33 (16 total)
Bringing Lebanon’s Civil War Home to Anglophone Literature
Alameddine’s Appropriation of Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Yousef Awad
the emotional as well as cultural constraints governing women’. 13 Likewise, as a result of living in a war-torn city, Aaliya adopts a manly persona. During the civil war, Aaliya acquires an AK-47 (67–68), which during the war lies next to her ‘where
[I] ‘did write this Wyll with my own hand’
Simulation and Dissimulation in Isabella Whitney’s ‘Wyll and Testament’
Vassiliki Markidou
, among other things, the strategies that Whitney uses in her poem in order to surmount her contemporary cultural constraints, legitimate her writing and voice her gendered and/or social class critique. For instance, Wendy Wall has underlined Whitney
1968 – The Resonant Memory of a Rebellious Year
Donatella della Porta
Cultural Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics .” American Sociological Review 62 ( 6 ): 921 – 936 . https://doi.org/10.2307/2657347 . 10.2307/2657347 Olick , Jeffrey K. , and Joyce Robbins . 1998 . “ Social Memory