The American bourgeoisie

"What precisely constitutes an American bourgeoisie? Scholars have grappled with the question for a long time. Economic positions-the ownership of capital, for instance-most obviously defines this group. Control of resources cannot explain, however, the emergence of shared identities or the capacity for collective action: after all, economic interests frequently drove capital-rich Americans apart as they competed for markets or governmental favors. This book argues that one of the most important factors in this respect was the articulation of a shared culture, but this aspect has been neglected by most scholarship on the issue. This volume engages a fundamental disciplinary question about this period in American history: how did the bourgeoisie consolidate their power and fashion themselves not simply as economic leaders but as cultural innovators and arbiters? How did culture help them formulate a sense of themselves as a distinct social group with shared identities, while simultaneously setting themselves apart from other Americans?"-- "Nowhere in the world did a bourgeoisie emerge as influential as that in the nineteenth-century United States. This group of upper class men and women combined familiar forms of economic might and political power with new forms of cultural clout, creating institutional structures, architectural designs, and aesthetic models that continue to shape our lives today, from the foodstuffs we fancy to the art collections we admire. How bourgeois Americans established a dominant class culture and forged a common cultural vocabulary is the subject of this volume"--