Robert C. Hauhart - The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream

What do we mean by the American dream? Can we define it? Or does any discussion of the phrase end inconclusively, the solid turned liquidlike ice melting? Do we know whether the American dream motivates and inspires or, alternately, obscures and deceives? The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream offers distinctive, authoritative, original essays by well-known scholars that address the social, economic, historical, philosophic, legal, and cultural dimensions of the American dream for the twenty-first century. The American dream, first discussed and defined in print by James Truslow Adamss The Epic of America (1931), has become nearly synonymous with being American. Adamss definition, although known to scholars, is often lost in our ubiquitous use of the term. When used today, the iconic phrase seems to encapsulate every fashion, fad, trend, association, or image the user identifies with the United States or American life. The American dreams ubiquity, though, argues eloquently for a deeper understanding of its heritage, its implications, and its impactto be found in this first research handbook ever published on the topic.

Robert C. Hauhart, PhD, JD, is a professor in the Department of Society and Social Justice at Saint Martins University, Lacey, WA (USA). He is the author or co-editor of seven books and numerous published papers in sociology, literature, and education journals. In sociology, Professor Hauhart is a recognized scholar of the American Dream. His most recent books include The Lonely Quest: Constructing the Self in the Twenty-First Century United States (Routledge 2018) and Seeking the American Dream: A Sociological Inquiry (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), nominated for the Pacific Sociological Associations Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2017. In 2019 Professor Hauhart was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award to teach and research the American dream at the Postgraduate School and Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. In literature, Professor Hauhart is a student of twentieth-century American literature and, in particular, American dream themes in American literature. He is the co-editor, with Jeff Birkenstein, of four volumes: American Writers in Exile (Salem Press 2015); Social Justice in American Literature (Salem Press 2017); European Writers in Exile (Lexington Books 2018); and Connections and Influence in the Russian and American Short Story (Lexington Books 2021). In education, Professor Hauhart is the co-author, with Jon Grahe, Pacific Lutheran University, of Designing and Teaching Undergraduate Capstone Courses (Jossey-Bass/Wiley 2015).

Mitja Sardo, PhD, is senior research associate at the Educational Research Institute in Ljubljana (Slovenia), where he is a member of the Educational Research program. His research interests and expertise include philosophy of education, political philosophy, and education policy. He is the author of scholarly articles and the editor of a number of journal special issues on citizenship education, multiculturalism, toleration, equality of opportunity, radicalization and violent extremism, patriotism, the American dream, neoliberalism and education, talents, and distributive justice. He is the managing editor of Theory and Research in Education and a member of the editorial board of the CEPS Journal and Postdigital Science and Education. Between September and December 2019, he was a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy). He is editor-in-chief of The Handbook of Patriotism (Springer) and editor of The Impacts of Neoliberal Discourse and Language in Education to be published by Routledge (in 2021). Additional information (including publications) is available at the website: www.researchgate.net/profile/Mitja_Sardoc

First published 2022

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2022 Taylor & Francis with the exception of:

Exporting the American Dream: Global Implications Robert C. Hauhart and Common Ground 2011. Used by Permission. This paper first appeared in print in The International Journal of the Humanities, 9(2):1-12 (2011) ISSN 1447-9508.

and

The American Dream, Latinx and the US Media in the 21 st Century Clara E. Rodriguez 2021.

Cover Photo Ericka Birkenstein, Theorie Photography and Rob Edmondson

The right of Robert C. Hauhart and Mitja Sardo to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hauhart, Robert C., 1950 editor. | Sardo, Mitja, editor.

Title: The Routledge handbook on the American Dream / edited by Robert C. Hauhart and Mitja Sardo.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020052765 | ISBN 9780367895990 (hardback : vol. 1) | ISBN 9780367896003 (paperback : vol. 1) | ISBN 9781003020028 (ebook : vol. 1)

Subjects: LCSH: American Dream. | Social mobilityUnited States. | Social valuesUnited States. | Quality of lifeUnited States. | United StatesSocial conditions21st century. | United StatesEconomic conditions21st century. | United StatesCivilization21st century.

Classification: LCC HN59.2.R685 2021 | DDC 306.0973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052765

ISBN: 978-0-367-89599-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-89600-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-02002-8 (ebk)

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Epigraphs

Preface

Robert C. Hauhart and Mitja Sardo

PART I Economic Success, Upward Economic Mobility and the American Dream

2 Racial Capitalism and (Im)Mobility: Asian Americans in the Contemporary Economy

Pawan Dhingra

3 Gendered Street Capitalism and the Violence of the American Dream

Susan Dewey

4 The Mirage of Meritocracy and the Morality of Grace

Victor Tan Chen

5 Hegemony and Interpellation: The Ideological Functions of the American Dream

Cyril Ghosh

6 Paradise for Whom? Rural Inequality and the Elusive American Dream

Jennifer Sherman

7 Is the Nordic Model More Compatible with the American Dream Than Present-Day United States?

John Erik Fossum

8 The Random Factor: Chance, Luck, and the American Dream

Mark R. Rank

9 The Feminist American Dream

Alison Dahl Crossley

PART III Migration and the Immigrant American Dream