Legitimacy in Crisis: Case-Studies in American Political Culture

By: Lawrence Rosen

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Synopsis: This book takes a case study approach to explore the crisis of legitimacy in American political culture. The question of legitimacy resides at the heart of any political system. However, understanding why an individual should recognize another’s power over them is not solely limited to the analytically political but is deeply embedded in the larger cultural context of any society. Through a series of ethnographic case studies focused on the United States – from those involving the rhetoric of presidential prophecy and abuse of power to the dispute over a local sewerage authority’s reach and a case of classroom blasphemy – the book aims to demonstrate both a ground-up approach to the problem of legitimacy and to capture some of the common cultural features that bond the examples together. The book will, therefore, be of interest to scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, and socio-legal studies.