350 N. J. Demerath III
research has indicated that the so-called American culture war is a hyperbolic misrep-
resentation of the inevitable cultural skirmishes entailed in what is mostly democracy
in action. A true culture war would involve a massive and violent polarization of the
public at large with the state itself hanging in the balance. But study after study shows a
citizenry huddled in the middle of virtually every contentious issue ranging from race
and inequality to abortion and homosexuality (e.g., DiMaggio et al. 1996; Williams
1997a; Mouw and Sobel 2001). There have certainly been inflamed episodes fanned by
movement entrepreneurs on the flanks of public opinion; there have even been pro-
tracted agonies such as the Civil War of the 1860s and the Civil Rights Movement of
the 1960s. But to characterize the current American scene in warlike terms is to make a
mockery of those countries around the world where culture wars have become a tragic
way of everyday life. These include not only the countries mentioned previously but
other violent battlegrounds such as Afghanistan, the Balkans, Egypt, Guatemala, Israel,
Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and Sudan.
Of course, one reason why the “scare” of an American culture war is overdone is
that the solution of a “civil society” is already in place in the United States and a num-
ber of recent scholars have probed its various dimensions. But many have lamented
some missing virtues (e.g., Cohen and Arato 1992; Glendon 1995), while others such
as Adam Seligman (1992), Robert Putnam (2000), Francis Fukuyama (1995), and S. M.
Lipset (1996) have explored problems emanating from America’s distinctive value
placed on individualism, the special role of American voluntary associations, the un-
usual American line drawn between the community and the state, and the unique
importance attached to American religion. None of these analysts can be accused of
playing a starry-eyed Pangloss to a nail-biting Cassandra. All would likely acknowledge
problems with both the theory and the reality of American civil society.
References to any civilized society combine the same sense of nostalgia and hope
that once characterized earlier accounts of the nature of social order. Indeed, from one
vantage point, civil society is simply social order with a handshake and a smile. As
one who was involved in the earlier debate over functionalism (e.g., Demerath and
Peterson 1967; Demerath 1996), I have an uncomfortable feeling of deja-vu. Many of
the same specific issues lurk beneath the current theoretical surface, including questions
of consensus versus conflict, stability versus change, culture versus structure, and macro
versus micro.
And yet there are also differences. For example, Seligman (1992) quite rightly notes
that architects of civility have tended to work from the individual up, assuming an
ideal citizen who embodies all the scouting virtues, with trustworthiness above all. But
when this model of civil society is identified with the great Emile Durkheim of the turn
of the twentieth century, we can almost hear the protests from his Paris grave: “Mon
Dieu; this is Herbert Spencer revisited! Individuals take their moral cores from society
rather than imparting morality to it.” Again, Seligman is aware of the tension; in fact,
his central paradox is that, in stressing the individual rather than the collectivity, civil
society deemphasizes the very source of the individual’s virtues; namely, the moral
force of the collectivity itself. But then one might also point out that no collectivity
has more legitimacy than one that trumpets the centrality of the individual; the two
levels operate in tandem.
Of course, many have lionized America’s individualism, including some who have
seen it as a mixed blessing gone sour (Bellah et al. 1985; Putnam 2000). But again the