“DUCK, DUCK, GRAY GOOSE” AND POLITICAL THEORY.

I was reminded by the thought of immigrants bringing their version of children’s games with them of THE FOUNDING OF NEW SOCIETIES by Lewis Hartz. I was persuaded by Hartz’s theory some fifty years ago and still subscribe to it.

To quote from this wikipdeia entry: “In The Founding of New Societies (1964), Hartz developed the idea that the nations that developed from settler colonies were European “fragments” that in a sense froze the class structure and underlying ideology prevalent in the mother country at the time of their foundation and did not experience the further evolution experienced in Europe. He considered Latin America and French Canada to be fragments of feudal Europe, the United States, English Canada, and Dutch South Africa to be liberal fragments, and Australia and English South Africa to be “radical” fragments (incorporating the nonsocialist working class radicalism of Britain in the early 19th century)

I posted here about THE FOUNDING OF NEW SOCIETIES.

Just as big things like class structure are frozen at the time of immigrating, so are aspects of the texture of everyday life.