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Radical civic virtue: women in 19th‐century civil society

2004; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0739314042000185120

1469-9931

R. Claire Snyder,

Political Theory and Influence

Abstract This article contests the conservative revisionism that emphasizes the importance of traditional families, pietistic religion, individual moral virtue, and small government for undergirding democratic self‐government. The first part exposes the conservative misreading of American history and political theory. The second part uses the civic engagement of middle‐ and upper‐class women in 19th‐century America to construct a progressive alternative to conservative narratives. It shows that women did not stay home and focus on the family during the 19th century but instead entered civil society to address the problems created by industrialization, formed social reform movements, built institutions to pursue a social justice agenda, and demanded that the government take an active role in solving public problems. Their civic engagement built on and created social capital, grew out of and produced a sense of civic virtue (defined as public‐spiritedness), and resulted in the demand for progressive government. Notes Rogers Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America,” American Political Science Review 87:3 (1993), pp. 549–566, at p. 550. Dan Balz, “Dean Sharpens Rhetoric on Bush,” The Washington Post, September 24, 2003, p. A8. See R. Claire Snyder, “A Strange Drift to the Right: The Civic Historiography of Michael Sandel,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture 25:3 (2003), pp. 307–326. J. R. Pole (ed.), The American Constitution For and Against: The Federalist and the Anti‐Federalist Papers (New York: Hill & Wang, 1987), pp. 12–13. Snyder, op. cit. Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: Norton, 1986) and Hannah Fenichel Pitkin, Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1984). Gertrude Himmelfarb, One Nation, Two Cultures (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), p. 19. Ibid., pp. 20–22. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 96. Mary Ann Glendon, “Introduction,” in Glendon and David Blankenhorn (eds), Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Competence, Character, and Citizenship in American Society (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1995), pp. 1–2. Pole, op. cit. Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). Classic works of republican political theory include Cicero, De re publica and De officiis; Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy; Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana; and Rousseau, On the Social Contract and Government of Poland; among others. Codex 5.59.5 cited in Maurizio Viroli, Republicanism (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002). Viroli, op. cit., p. 8. Ibid., p. 66. R. Claire Snyder, Citizen‐Soldiers and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender in the Civic Republican Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). William Bennett, “A Victory for ‘Ordered Liberty,’ ” The Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2002, available online at: ⟨http://www.empoweramerica.org/stories/storyReader$554⟩ (accessed December 9, 2003). Prepared Remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft, Federalist Society National Convention, November 15, 2003, available online at: ⟨http://seclists.org/lists/politech/2003/Nov/0063.html⟩ (accessed December 9, 2003). Glendon, op. cit., pp. 1–2. Altman v. Schlesinger, 198 N.Y.S. 128, 132 (App. Div. 1923). See Kenneth Katkin, APSA‐CIVED@H‐NET.MSU.EDU list‐serve, August 16, 2002 and Keith Whittington, APSA‐CIVED@H‐NET.MSU.EDU list‐serve, August 17, 2002. Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to William S. Smith (1787),” in Kenneth M. Dolbeare (ed.), American Political Thought, 4th edn (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1998), p. 172. Contrary to conservative ideological insistence, the so‐called “traditional family” of the 1950s was in reality “a qualitatively new phenomenon.” See Coontz, op. cit., p. 25. For a discussion of the larger rightwing movement to reinforce the traditional family, see Jyl J. Josephson and Cynthia Burack, “The Political Ideology of the Neo‐Traditional Family,” Journal of Political Ideologies 3:2 (1998), pp. 213–231, at p. 213. The authors argue that the current rightwing version of the family should actually be called “neo‐traditional”: “It is ‘traditional’ because it assigns male and female roles within the family, particularly with regard to children. It is ‘neo’; because it avoids explicitly coupling its prescription of gender roles and familial arrangements with a prescription for masculine control and authority over women,” although that is what the movement actually seeks (p. 214). Glendon, op. cit., p. 2. Ibid., p. 574. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (eds) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 565. Ibid., p. 576. Jean Bethke Elshtain, “The Family and Civic Life,” in David Blankenhorn, Steven Bayme and Jean Bethke Elshtain (eds), Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the American Family (Milwaukee, WI: Family Service America, 1990), p. 122, emphasis hers. Council on Civil Society, A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths (New York: Institute for American Values, 1998), p. 18, emphasis mine. Elshtain, “Against Gay Marriage‐II: Accepting Limits,” Commonweal CXVIII:22 (1991), pp. 685–686. Glendon, op. cit., p. 5. Judith Stacey, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 70. For a discussion of empirical studies of lesbian and gay parenting, see her Chapter 5. Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); William A. Galston, Liberal Purpose: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Peter Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). Berkowitz, op. cit., p. 23. Ibid., p. 24. Coontz, op. cit., p. 53. Berkowitz, op. cit., p. 26. Ibid., pp. 173–174. Ibid., p. 188. Galston, “The Reinstitutionalization of Marriage: Political Theory and Public Policy,” in David Popenoe, Jean Bethke Elshtain and David Blankenhorn (eds), Promises To Keep: Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 280–281. For a discussion of the flaws in this type of argument, see Coontz, op. cit., Josephson and Burack, op. cit., and Stacey, op. cit. Galston, “Reinstitutionalization of Marriage,” pp. 274–275. For an analysis of the fatherhood movement, see Josephson and Burack, op. cit. Don Eberly, “Civic Renewal or Moral Renewal,” Policy Review, September‐October 1998, p. 5, available online at: ⟨http://www.policyreview.com/sept98/renewal.html⟩. All pages refer to online version. Eberly, “Restoring Civil Society Through Fatherhood,” in Eberly (ed.), The Faith Factor in Fatherhood (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999), pp. 251–263, at p. 256. Ibid., p. 255. Ibid., p. 260. Eberly, America's Promise: Civil Society and the Renewal of American Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), p. 55. Eberly, “Restoring Civil Society,” p. 253. Josephson and Burack, op. cit. Eberly, “Civic Renewal or Moral Renewal,” p. 7. Eberly, America's Promise, p. 41. Eberly, “Civic Renewal or Moral Renewal,” p. 3. Working‐class women also participated in civil society. However, this article focuses on the civic engagement of middle– and upper‐class women only. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 19. Pole, op. cit. Snyder, Citizen‐Soldiers. Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997). Kerber, op. cit., p. 8. Ibid. and Evans, op. cit. Evans, op. cit. Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 576. Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), p. 13. Sandra Haarsager, Organized Womanhood: Cultural Politics in the Pacific Northwest, 1840–1920 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 29. Scott, op. cit., p. 13. Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2003), p. 32. Skocpol stresses the “translocal” and “federal” structures of many voluntary organizations in her analysis, in order to contest the conservative emphasis on localism. Haarsager, op. cit., p. 29. Skocpol, op. cit., p. 35. See Paula J. Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Harper Collins, 1996). Scott, op. cit., pp. 13–14. Ibid., pp. 14–15. Cynthia A. Kierner, Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700–1835 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 190. Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1998), p. 11. Kierner, op. cit., p. 193. Scott, op. cit., p. 13. Ibid. Ibid., p. 15. Glenna Matthews, The Rise of Public Woman: Woman's Power and Woman's Place in the United States, 1630–1970 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 105. Kierner, op. cit., p. 181. Ibid., p. 193. Haarsager, op. cit., p. 63. Ibid., pp. 64, 68. Christine Stansell, “What a Woman Could Do,” New York Times, January 27, 2002. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002). Varon, op. cit., pp. 1–2. Haarsager, op. cit., p. 5. See Putnam, op. cit. Haarsager, op. cit., p. 28. For progressive accounts, see Benjamin R. Barber, A Place for Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998) and Harry C. Boyte and Nancy N. Kari, Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Ibid., p. 29. Varon, op. cit., p. 11. Haarsager, op. cit., p. 28. Ibid., pp. 3, 25. Ibid., pp. 3–4. Gayle Gullett, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women's Movement, 1880–1911 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 11. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 107. For a history of the subsequent rise of this organization, see Landon Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000). Judith N. McArthur, Creating the New Woman: The Rise of Southern Women's Progressive Culture in Texas, 1893–1918 (Urbana and Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1998). Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 143. Ibid., p. 144. Elisabeth S. Clemens, “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of American Politics: 1890–1920,” in Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina (eds), Civic Engagement in American Democracy (Washington, DC: Brookings/Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), pp. 81–110, at p. 106. McArthur, op. cit., p. 21. Ibid., p. 144. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 144. Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion of Social Reform, 1890–1935 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Evans, op. cit. Evans, op. cit., p. 210. Ibid. Matthews, op. cit., p. 186. For a critique of this vision, see John Ehrenberg, Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1999). Theda Skocpol, op. cit., pp. 12–13. Berkowitz, op. cit., p. 188.