The Archaeology of Citizenship

Summary

This paper examines how a wide variety of communities and individuals have constituted and articulated what it means to be an American using material culture as a medium of social action. I oscillate back and forth from the institutions imparting ideals about American citizenship to the individuals on the receiving end of such ideological instruction. The vantage point historical archaeology affords permits a reading of citizenship that is multiscaler in methodology, nuancing previous studies of American citizenship that prioritize historical documents and court rulings over individual and communal responses. Inspired by globalization and transnationalist studies that look at how local identities and practices are informed by the global and the local, this mutually constitutive approach allows me to capture how national and regional Americanization and citizenship efforts enacted by corporate and federal initiatives were negotiated and retooled by, to use Scott's (1994) oft cited phrase, "those of little note."

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The American Experience in Archaeological Perspective   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 196