F.J. Turner’s ‘frontier thesis’: the ruse of American ‘character'

American society was transformed by the expansion of capital Westward and the explosion in opportunities that ensued for land grabbing and agricultural and industrial investment. In Turner’s (1961) frontier thesis this was portrayed as resulting in the emergence of ‘the new man’ i.e. the fulfilment of American character. The frontier thesis is a neo-Darwinian contribution. It posits exceptionalism and transcendence as the keys to American character. The gene pool of the Americans, thriving in a new geographical and social environment, is depicted as achieving a higher level of development than the stratified societies of Old Europe. What the thesis ignores is the importance of orthodox Eurocentric strategies of colonization and land appropriation. Turner portrays pioneer/settler society as a heroic departure, but in many ways, it is a continuation of European precedents. Analogously, the proposition that the push West crystallized American character obscures the role of personality, especially in urban-industrial settings, in establishing the parameters of American life. Turner conceived of character as emerging from a struggle with the spatial frontier. But the struggles of personality with the social frontier of repression and establishment values is no less significant. The paper examines the tensions between character and personality by using some ideas developed by Carl Schmitt on the significance of ‘the opportunity’ in competitive advantage. The importance of the opportunity and personality in developing the American way of life are examined by the vaudeville and celebrity traditions. The exploitation of contingency for personal advantage, the use of melodrama to engineer social impact, the social validation of forthright behaviour are examined in the context of the careers of the film actress Mae West and the comedian Bob Hope

Crime, bandits, and community: how public panic shaped the social control of territory in the Ottoman Empire

This study explores the role of crime, bandits, and public panic in in the nineteenth century Ottoman society by using archival documents and employing a comparative perspective. In addition to the social bandit concept of Eric Hobsbawm, there is an introduction of two new banditry forms in this study—opportunist bandits and imagined bandits. The comparison of different bandit forms clarifies that social bandits and opportunist bandits aggravated public panic and produced imagined bandits. Hence, public panic and the dissent of local people unveiled through rumors about the imagined bandits. The exploration of different forms of bandits in the Ottoman Empire is a response to the vexed issue concerning the challenges in the social control of territories in a multiethnic and multi-religious empire. This study provides new conceptual tools to rethink about the spatial dimensions in the emergence of bandits. This article shows that spatial factors in the social control of territory can be influenced by the reaction of local people from bottom-to-top and, in doing so, can determine the response of state authority. The present study, therefore, unveils the power relationship in the social control of territory whether it is manifested by physical force or public panic.N/

Support for Anonymous as Vicarious Dissent: Testing the Social Banditry Framework

This research uses the social banditry framework to propose that voiceless individuals in an unjust context may express their grievances vicariously. Specifically, it holds that individuals who perceive the system as unjust but lack political efficacy, express their anger against the system as support for actors whose behavior disrupts the system’s functioning. These actors are situated outside conventional societal and political structures of power, and institutions. To test the social banditry framework, two studies investigate attitudes toward Anonymous, a group of hackers who challenge the status quo using online tactics such as trolling. Study 1 (N = 304) demonstrates that appraising the system as more unjust, and perceiving lower political efficacy are positively linked to anger against the system, which in turn predicts more positive attitudes toward Anonymous. In contrast, stronger injustice-fueled anger and stronger political efficacy predict intentions to engage in direct forms of political action, such as protesting or voting. Study 2 (N = 410) replicates these findings, and theorizes and tests the role of individualistic and collectivistic values in predicting vicarious and direct expressions of dissent. Study 2 demonstrates that endorsement of horizontal individualism predicts positive attitudes towards Anonymous, whereas horizontal collectivism predicts engagement in direct political action. Implications and directions for future research are discussed