Culture Wars

Extracted Attributes

• Coined by

  James Davison Hunter

• Definition

  A cultural conflict (metaphorical war) between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology upon mainstream society, or upon the other.

• Focus of Conflict

  Values, ideologies, morality, lifestyle, public policy, consumption, economic matters (e.g., tax policy).

• Key Characteristics

  Hot-button politics about values and ideologies, adversarial social narratives, political polarization, social policy wedge issues, abstract arguments about values, morality, and lifestyle.

• Impact on Democratic Party (according to Pete Buttigieg)

  Overly focused on identity politics, hindering ability to form broad coalitions.

Timeline

• The culture wars as we know them began, rife with movements for liberation and change, with marginalized groups demanding equal rights and challenging normative American culture. (Source: Web Search Results)

  1960s

• Sociologist James Davison Hunter coined and popularized the term 'Culture Wars' with his book 'Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America'. (Source: Web Search Results)

  1991

Culture war

A culture war is a form of cultural conflict (metaphorical war) between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology upon mainstream society, or upon the other. In political usage, culture war is a metaphor for "hot-button" politics about values and ideologies, realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provoke political polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters, such as those of public policy, as well as of consumption. As practical politics, a culture war is about social policy wedge issues that are based on abstract arguments about values, morality, and lifestyle meant to provoke political cleavage in a multicultural society.

Web Search Results

• Culture Wars: Now Small Businesses Are Being Affected

  The term “Culture Wars” was coined by James Davison Hunter in 1991 referring to the intense conflict in the U.S, between conservative and progressives where each side believes their values, positions, morals, and actions as morally correct and view their opposites as morally bankrupt, un-American, ill-informed and to be discredited. Large organizations have been pulled into these culture wars over their products, practices or postures related to issues such as abortion, employee benefits, [...] James Davison Hunter’s seminal book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1991) placed the term ‘culture wars’ into the American psyche. A large sociological literature has explained, expanded or critiqued the term (Florina et al., 2005; Florina & Abrams, 2008: Wolfe, 1991; and current writers Anthony, 2021; Baldassari & Gellman, 2008; Baldassari & Park, 2020; Deighton, 2023; Murray, 2023; Park, 2018). While other societies are more concerned with their politics, according to Hunter, [...] Hunter, J. D. (1991). Culture Wars: The struggle to define American: Making sense of the battles over the family, art, education, law, and politics. Basic Books. Google Scholar Hunter, J. D., & Wolfe, A. (2006). Is there a culture war? Faith Angle Forum: a bridged transcript. Pew Research Center: Brooking Institute Press. Google Scholar Jones, J. M. (2023, February 22). US. LGBT identification steady at 7.2%. Gallup News Service.

• How the culture wars poisoned American politics — and how to fix it

  MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: America's Culture Wars. They've become so ubiquitous. It's hard to imagine a time where politics wasn't defined exclusively by a battle for America's soul. Perhaps that time never actually existed. And the story of this country is the story of a perpetual battle towards the ideal that is E pluribus unum, out of many. Back in 1991, sociologist James Davison Hunter popularized the phrase culture wars. It was in the title of his book called Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define [...] CHAKRABARTI: Professor Hunter, I actually just want to go back for a second, for a moment to the analysis that you put forth in 1991 in your book, Culture Wars, where you talked about how the United States had basically since the '60s, but definitely through the '80s and early '90s entered this period where there was a divide in beliefs between two groups that you called the orthodoxy belief or those who believe in some kind of transcendent truth and progressive beliefs in terms of the ever [...] Skip to main content Advertisement # How the culture wars poisoned American politics — and how to fix it 47:21 ### Copy the code below to embed the WBUR audio player on your site Jonathan Chang Meghna Chakrabarti This article is more than 1 year old. More than 30 years ago, sociologist James Davison Hunter coined the term "culture wars." Since then, those wars have poisoned American politics. How could we end America's culture wars?

• Culture wars: How identity became the center of politics in America

  But the culture wars as we know it begins in the 1960s, which were rife with movements for liberation and change, according to historians. Marginalized groups in the Civil Rights, Black power, Chicano, feminist and gay rights movements were demanding equal rights and challenging the "normative American culture" of the '50s that had begun to solidify, according to historian and author Andrew Hartman. [...] "You get these sort of two coalescing movements that are polarizing the national culture. By the 1980s, and especially '90s, you get what's called the culture wars," said Hartman, who wrote "A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars." [...] "The things that we now associate with the Republicans in terms of their anti-trans, anti-critical race theory – the culture wars they're fighting right now – you see all of this even during the Reagan years." Alesha Doan, a political scientist and professor at the University of Kansas, told ABC news that the recent restrictions on reproductive care including abortion rights are reflective of the efforts of that ongoing cultural movement.

• The Politics of the Culture Wars in Contemporary America

  culture-war issues are a risk that the Democrats must manage, while presenting an opportunity for the Republicans. [...] Fourth, culture-war issues now rank above the midpoint on Republican voters’ priority lists, above religion and family values. For all voters, these issues are now more important than the environment. Republicans are more united in opposition to progressive illiberalism than Democrats are in support, with independents more opposed than supportive. This suggests that culture-war issues are likely to benefit the political right more than the political left in the foreseeable future. [...] Western societies are in the midst of a growing conflict between what I call cultural socialism and cultural liberalism. The two sides in this culture war partly overlap with this country’s partisan political divide, but the conflict divides Democrats while largely uniting Republicans and independents. For some Democrats, a commitment to cultural socialism overrides their historical defense of free speech; among most Republicans, a perceived denigration of white Americans and the nation’s past

• Understanding the Evolving Culture-War Vernacular - AAUP

  to refer to forms of speech that, as Christopher Newfield put it, “compromised free speech—or allegedly commonsense language—in order to avoid [causing] offense to a person or group.” [...] Our present conjuncture, including the aggressive efforts to privatize public education, has been made possible by successive waves of attacks over the past four decades. The culture-war rhetoric aimed at public education, and higher education in particular, has evolved over time, taking on different rhetorical strategies or culture-war vernaculars. These different vernaculars, however, rely on anecdotes and manufactured evidence about higher education to delegitimize all public education, from [...] Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and elsewhere that have successfully bargained for the common good. These unions have worked with parents and community groups not only to advocate for better wages and benefits but also to fight for smaller class sizes, increased school funding, better student supports, and racial and environmental justice. In other words, they have used organized power to fight for things that benefit the broader community.