Nationalism,Loss-Gain Framing and the Confederate States of America

Abstract. In recent years, numerous states have become racked with internal secessionist strife. Why have calls for independence by regional subgroupings been heeded even after long periods of inter-ethnic peace or in regions without any previous history of secessionist activity? I contend that this question can be answered by examining the phenomenon of loss-gain framing, in which people are motivated to adopt risky stratagems, like secession, due to fears of unacceptable losses. This article examines the enigma of why most white American Southerners in 1861 willingly fought for the establishment of the Confederacy, a nation based upon slavery, despite the fact that most Southerners did not own slaves and had continuously rejected secessionist appeals for years. Confederate President Jefferson Davis overcame this reluctance by emphasising what all Southerners – slaveholder and non-slaveholder alike – would lose by remaining in the United States rather than accentuating what would be gained by secession.     

熊出没的美国自驾游

怀描着这样那样的梦想,飞越太平洋,来到了昼与夜的对面。电影中的大都会,教科书中的车轮上的国家,明信片上的国家公园,一一展现在我们的面前,旅行即将开始。     

A sense of an ending: late-generation ethnicity and Irish America

Irish America today is at a stage of “late generation ethnicity,” designating an ethnic formation that reaches back many generations in the US and is not being significantly replenished from the country of origin. This is not necessarily a terminal state of ethnic affairs, but it is a transitional one, and the analytical challenge is to identify and understand the features and implications of “lateness,” what the sense of an ending means in the Irish American case. This essay will explore this question, drawing on field study among Irish communities in Chicago, and also consider some of the differences in worldview among Irish-Americans, particularly as these pertain to matters of immigration reform and undocumented Irish in the US.