Nationalism

Abstract

Throughout American history, notions of manliness have been central to concepts of national identity, and devotion to the nation has been deemed fundamental to understandings of American manhood. Yet definitions of manliness in relation to national identity have been multiform, ranging from collectivist ideals emphasizing virtue, sacrifice, and surrender to government and the commonwealth to individualist ideals stressing individualism, pursuit of self-interest, independence, and defiance of authority. Although manhood and nationalism sometimes stand in an ambivalent relation to one another, they have also served as mutually reinforcing codes of cultural and political power in the United States.