Overview

American Imaginaries examines the diverse societies and nations of the Western hemisphere as they have emerged across the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Exploring cities, capitalism, nations, nationalism, and politics from both comparative and transnational perspectives, the book develops a unique approach based on the paradigms of civilizational analysis and social imaginaries. In addition to providing a fresh perspective on the Americas, American Imaginaries gives proper analysis of multinational and intra-national regions and, crucially, the civilizational force of resurgent indigenous nations. The book also covers regions often underemphasized in histories of the hemisphere, such as Central America and the Caribbean. The book will appeal to scholars and students of history, Atlantic studies, comparative and historical sociology, and social theory. In addition, it will gain audiences amongst academics and graduate students who follow debates about modernity, civilizations, historical constellations, and social imaginaries.

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9781786609670

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Reviews

This is an unusual book for our days. With a theoretically ambitious agenda and a breathtaking space-time scope, Jeremy Smith takes us through the imaginary and institutional trajectories of the modern New World. A big adventure.--Jose Mauricio Domingues, professor of sociology, University of the State of Rio de Janeiro

There is no doubt that Jeremy Smith is currently the most important and creative scholar in theorizing the Americas from a macro-sociological perspective. With great cultural sensitivity his new book analyses the role of imaginaries in the making of the most important regions and national societies of this continent so that an immensely rich picture of big cities, social movements, and capitalist structures is presented to the reader who cannot do anything else but admire Smith's theoretical and empirical expertise.--Wolfgang Knoebl, director, Hamburg Institute for Social Research This is an unusual book for our days. With a theoretically ambitious agenda and a breathtaking space-time scope, Jeremy Smith takes us through the imaginary and institutional trajectories of the modern New World. A big adventure.--Jose Mauricio Domingues, professor of sociology, University of the State of Rio de Janeiro

Author Information

Jeremy C A Smith is in the Institute of Education, Arts and Community at Federation University Australia. His principal research interests lie in the disciplinary fields of historical and comparative sociology and social theory. He has published in European Journal of Social Theory, Current Sociology, Critical Horizons, Thesis Eleven, Journal of Intercultural Studies, Atlantic Studies and Political Power and Social Theory. He is the author of Europe and the Americas: State Formation, Capitalism and Civilizations in Atlantic Modernity (2006) and Debating Civilizations: Interrogating Civilizational Analysis in a Global Age (2017). He is also a Managing Editor of the International Journal ofSocial Imaginaries and Rowman & Littlefield’s Social Imaginaries series. His current work revolves around the multidisciplinary fields of civilizational analysis and social imaginaries.

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