Making Something of Ourselves

Making Something of Ourselves: On Culture and Politics in the United States by Richard M. Merelman is a bold inquiry into the ways cultural codes shape, sustain, and sometimes distort democratic life in America. Merelman argues that U.S. political culture has evolved into what he calls a “loosely bounded culture,” one that provides little traction for individuals to navigate or challenge the powerful institutional and economic structures that dominate modern life. Through analyses that range from Puritan visions of civic destiny to the democratic ideals of mid-century pluralism and the class frameworks of Marxist thought, the book identifies the decline of coherent cultural visions and their replacement by fragmented codes embedded in schools, television, advertising, architecture, and language.

Engaging both structural anthropology and political theory, Merelman contends that contemporary American culture neither fully legitimizes elite authority nor enables effective democratic opposition, leaving citizens adrift in what he terms a “shadowland.” His chapters on television, advertising, and education show how cultural institutions cultivate values of openness, flexibility, and individualism, but in ways that undercut collective power and meaningful civic engagement. By positioning culture alongside political economy as central to the study of democracy, Making Something of Ourselves challenges readers to rethink the relationship between cultural forms and political life, and to consider how the erosion of cultural coherence threatens democratic possibilities.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.