Distillations of something larger: the local scale and American national identity

Abstract

This paper examines the role of the local scale in popular cultural constructions of American nationhood between 1942 and 1969. By local scale, I refer to a geographical, sociological and psychological space that is limited to face-to-face experiences, but is the manifestation of constantly changing relations of interdependence between social, political, economic and cultural processes operating at scales smaller and larger than the local. Drawing upon empirical material from the Saturday Evening Post, it illustrates how the local scale operates as a medium through which shifting notions of American identities are articulated. It argues that throughout this period the Post promoted the image of a united America, and the local scale provided tangible links with the nation that attempted to integrate readers into a sense of national community. The local scale was used to define the United States as a nation that was united by subsuming internal differences, but, in time, the local came to articulate a nation where unity was expressed through a shared political creed of democracy in which difference and diversity were celebrated. The paper also traces the changing meaning and significance of the local scale for mediating the nation. The paper shows that the meaning of the local scale shifted between notions of community, locality, neighbourhood and territory. The metonymic value of the local scale also changed and the paper argues that while the local scale was useful for defining an integrated nation during and after World War II that relied on an inward-looking perspective, by the late 1950s that perspective had become less introspective and more outward looking. By the 1960s, the paper shows how the significance of the local scale as a metonym of the nation had diminished, but instead was used as a means of attracting readers in a rapidly changing social and economic climate. The result is a deeper understanding of the way the media articulate the nation through imagined places to render it accessible for readers, and how this is inherently tied to the economic climate of the magazine.