culture of usa presentation

American culture: Traditions and customs of the United States

American culture's languages, religion, sports, styles, foods, arts and holidays

American style

American food, american holidays, additional resources.

American culture encompasses the customs and traditions of the United States. "Culture encompasses religion , food , what we wear, how we wear it, our language , marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave with loved ones, and a million other things," said Cristina De Rossi , an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate College in London .

The United States is the third largest country in the world with a population of more than 332 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau . A child is born every 9 seconds, and a person dies every 11 seconds.

In addition to Indigenous Americans who were already living on the continent, the population of the United States was built on immigration from other countries. A new immigrant moves to the United States every 666 seconds, according to the Census Bureau.

Because of this, the United States is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, according to The London School . Nearly every region of the world has influenced American culture, most notably the English who colonized the country beginning in the early 1600s, according to the Library of Congress . U.S. culture has also been shaped by the cultures of Indigenous Americans, Latin Americans, Africans and Asians.

The United States is sometimes described as a "melting pot", according to Golden Beacon USA , in which different cultures have contributed their own distinct "flavors" to American culture. Just as cultures from around the world have influenced American culture, today American culture influences the world. The term Western culture often refers broadly to the cultures of the United States and Europe, according to ScienceDaily .

The way people "melt" in the United States differs. "Different groups of immigrants integrate in different ways," De Rossi told Live Science. "For example, in the United States, Catholic Spanish-speaking communities might keep their language and other cultural family traditions, but are integrated in the urban community and have embraced the American way of life in many other ways."

The Northeast, South, Midwest, Southeast and Western regions of the United States all have distinct traditions and customs. Here is a brief overview of the culture of the United States.

There is no official language of the United States, according to the U.S. government . While almost every language in the world is spoken in the United States, the most frequently spoken non-English languages are Spanish, Chinese, French and German. Ninety percent of the U.S. population speaks and understands at least some English, and most official business is conducted in English. Some states have official or preferred languages. For example, English and Hawaiian are the official languages in Hawaii, according to the Washington Post . 

The Census Bureau estimates that more than 350 languages are spoken in the United States. The bureau divides those languages into four categories: Spanish; other Indo-European languages, which includes German, Yiddish, Swedish, French, Italian, Russian, Polish, Hindi, Punjabi, Greek and several others. Asian and Pacific Island languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Tamil and more are also included. There is also a category for "all other languages," which is for languages that didn't fit into the first three categories, such as Hungarian, Arabic, Hebrew, languages of Africa and languages of native people of North, Central and South America.

Nearly every known religion is practiced in the United States, which was founded on the basis of religious freedom . About 70% of Americans identify themselves as Christians, according to information gathered by the Pew Research Center , a nonpartisan research group, in 2017. The research also found that about 23% had no religious affiliation at all and around 6% of the population is made up non-Christian religions. 

The number of people who identify with no religion seems to be decreasing. According to the Pew Research Center , this category is expected to drop from 16% in 2015 to 13% in 2060.

Clothing styles vary by social status, region, occupation and climate. Jeans, sneakers, baseball caps, cowboy hats and boots are some items of clothing that are closely associated with Americans, though there have been a variety of other styles throughout the decades, according to InterExchange . Ralph Lauren , Calvin Klein , Michael Kors and Victoria Secret are some well-known American brands.

American fashion is widely influenced by celebrities and the media, in 2019 US Clothing and Accessories sales amounted to 24 Billion US Dollars, according to Statista . More and more Americans are buying fashion, electronics and more online. According to the Census Bureau , U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third  quarter of 2021 totalled $214.6 billion.

American cuisine was influenced by Europeans and Native Americans in its early history. Today, there are a number of foods that are commonly identified as American, such as hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, macaroni and cheese, and meat loaf. "As American as apple pie", despite the dishes non-American origins, has come to mean something that is authentically American, according to the Smithsonian .

There are also styles of cooking and types of foods that are specific to a region. Southern-style cooking is often called "American comfort food" and includes dishes such as fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas and cornbread, according to Southern Living . Tex-Mex, popular in Texas and the Southwest, is a blend of Spanish and Mexican cooking styles and includes items such as chili and burritos, and relies heavily on shredded cheese and beans, according to Culture Trip .

Jerky, dried meats that are served as snacks, is also a food that was created in the United States, according to NPR .

The United States is widely known around the world as a leader in mass media production, including television and movies. According to the Select US A , the United States comprises one-third of the worldwide media and entertainment industry and is worth $717 Billion.

The television broadcasting industry took hold in the United States in the early 1950s, and American television programs are now shown around the world, according to PBS. The United States also has a vibrant movie industry, centered in Hollywood, California, and American movies are popular worldwide. The U.S. film industry earned a record $100 Billion in 2019, according to Forbes , before dropping in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic .

The United States' arts culture extends beyond movies and television shows, though. New York is home to Broadway, and Americans have a rich theatrical history, according to Arcadia Publishing . American folk art is an artistic style and is identified with quilts and other hand-crafted items, according to the Folk Art Museum . American music is very diverse with many, many styles, including rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel, country and western, bluegrass, rock 'n' roll and hip hop.

The United States is a sports-minded country, with millions of fans who follow football, baseball, basketball and hockey, among other sports . Baseball, which was developed in colonial America and became an organized sport in the mid-1800s, according to Sporcle Blog , is known as America's favorite pastime, although its popularity has been eclipsed by football for the past three decades, according to the Harris Poll .

Many holidays are celebrated only in the United States. Americans celebrate their independence from Britain on July 4. Memorial Day , celebrated on the last Monday in May, honors those who have died in military service. Labor Day, observed on the first Monday in September, celebrates the country's workforce. Thanksgiving , another distinctive American holiday, falls on the fourth Thursday in November and dates back to colonial times to celebrate the harvest. 

Presidents' Day, marking the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln , is a federal holiday that occurs on the third Monday in February. The contributions of veterans are honored on Veterans' Day, observed on Nov. 11. The contributions of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. are remembered on the third Monday in January.

Additional reporting by Alina Bradford, Live Science Contributor. 

• University of Michigan: 101 Characteristics of Americans/American Culture
• Penn State: The Politics of Fashion in American Consumer Culture
• American Folk Art Museum
• World Atlas: Most Spoken Languages in America

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Callum McKelvie is features editor for All About History Magazine . He has a both a Bachelor and Master's degree in History and Media History from Aberystwyth University . He was previously employed as an Editorial Assistant publishing digital versions of historical documents, working alongside museums and archives such as the British Library . He has also previously volunteered for The Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum , Gloucester Archives and Gloucester Cathedral . 

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• Countries and Their Cultures
• Culture of United States of America

United States of America

Culture name, orientation.

Identification. The name "America" is often used to refer to the United States, but until the political formation of the United States after the Revolutionary War, this designation referred to South America only. Contemporary use of the term to refer to the United States underlines that country's political and economic dominance in the western hemisphere. Such use of this designation is impolitic from the perspective of Canadians and Latin Americans.

The United States has an Anglo majority that is politically and economically dominant. One of the defining characteristics of the country as a nation is its legacy of slavery and the persistence of economic and social inequalities based on race.

U.S. culture has significant regional inflections. Most Americans are aware of these differences despite the fact that these regions have experienced economic transformations and that Americans are a mobile people who often leave their regions of origin.

The Northeast is densely populated. Its extensive corridors of urbanization have been called the national "megalopolis." Once a leader in technology and industry, the Northeast has been overtaken in those areas by California's Silicon Valley.

The Midwest is both rural and industrial. It is the home of the family farm and is the "corn belt" and "breadbasket" of the nation. In the Great Lakes area of the upper Midwest, the automobile and steel industries were central to community and economy. As those industries declined, the upper Midwest became known as the rust belt.

The South was shaped by its secession from the Union before the Civil War and is associated with slavery and with subsequent battles over civil rights for African-Americans. In contemporary terms, these are the sunshine states, retirement havens, and new economic frontiers.

The West, the last national frontier, is associated with national dreams and myths of unlimited opportunity and individualism. It has the nation's most open landscapes.

California, along with the southwestern states were ceded to the United States by Mexico in 1848 after the Mexican-American War. The Southwest is distinctive because of its historical ties to colonial Spain, its Native American populations, and its regional cuisine, which has been influenced by Native American and Spanish cultures.

Location and Geography. The United States is the world's fourth largest country, with an area of 3,679,192 square miles (9,529,107 square kilometers). It includes fifty states and one federal district, where the capital, Washington, D.C., is located. Its forty-eight contiguous states are situated in the middle of North America. The mainland United States borders Canada to the north and Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Straits of Florida to the south. The western border meets the Pacific Ocean, and to the east lies the Atlantic Ocean.

Alaska and Hawaii are not joined to the other forty-eight states. Alaska is at the extreme north of North America, between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, and is bordered by Canada to the east. The island chain of Hawaii is situated in the east-central Pacific Ocean, about two thousand miles southwest of San Francisco.

Although Americans generally do not consider themselves an imperial or colonial power, the country has a number of commonwealths and territories, most of which were acquired through military conquest. These territories include Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean basin, and Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Wake island in the Pacific.

The physical environment is extremely diverse and often spectacular. Alaska's glaciers coexist with flowering tundras that bloom in the arctic summer. The forests of the Pacific Northwest and northern California are known for giant ancient trees such as Sitka spruce and sequoia (redwoods). Niagara Falls, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon are a few of the better-known landscapes.

The physical regions of the country overlap both national boundaries and cultural regions. For example, the Atlantic coastal plain extends from New England to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. It is characterized by flooded river valleys that form major estuaries, such as the Chesapeake Bay.

The Appalachian Mountains span two cultural regions. Located to the west of the Atlantic coastal plain, they extend from the Middle Atlantic state of New York to the southeastern state of Georgia. The Appalachians are an old, eroded mountain range that is now heavily forested. It is possible to traverse the entire range by walking the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail.

The interior lowlands area also crosses regions and national borders. It includes the Midwestern corn belt and the Great Plains wheat-growing region. The Great Plains section of the interior lowlands stretches into Canada.

The Western Cordillera is part of a mountain chain that stretches from Chile in South America to Alaska. The highest peak in the country, Mount McKinley (Denali), is in the Western Cordillera in Alaska. The Western Intermontane Plateau, or Great Basin, crosses from the mountain states into the west.

Major navigable inland waterways include the Mississippi River, which cuts north to south through the east-central part of the country; the Great lakes in the upper Midwest, the largest freshwater lake group in the world; and the Saint Lawrence River.

The physical environment has had significant effects on regional cultures. The rich topsoil of the Midwest made it an important agricultural area; its rivers and lakes made it central to industrial development. However, settlers significantly transformed their environments, recreating the landscapes they had left behind in Europe. The vast prairies of the Great Plains, which were characterized by numerous species of tall grasses, have been transformed by irrigation and modern agricultural methods into continuous fields of soybeans and wheat. In the West, a series of pipelines and dams transformed Los Angeles and its desert surroundings into a giant oasis.

American settlers were not the first to transform these landscapes; native American groups also altered the lands on which they depended. Fire was used in hunting, and this expanded the prairie; irrigation was used in settled communities that practiced agriculture; and maize, a crop that cannot grow without human manipulation, was a staple crop.

The idea that the environment shapes culture or character does have cultural currency. Over a century ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner theorized that the American frontier experience had been instrumental in forming the rugged, independent, and democratic national character. Wilderness, independence, and democracy are common aspects of American symbolism.

Demography. The United States has a population of over 280 million (2000 census), but it is relatively sparsely populated. The most populous state, California, with 33,871,648 inhabitants, contrasts with Wyoming, which has only 493,782 residents.

These population figures reflect the fact that the United states is an urban nation. Over 75 percent of the inhabitants live in cities, among whom more than 50 percent are estimated to be suburban. Population growth is at below-replacement levels unless immigration is taken into account.

One of the most significant facts about the population is that its average age is on the rise. The baby boomers born in the period from the end of World War II until the early 1960s are beginning to get old.

Life expectancy is seventy-three years for white men and seventy-nine years for white women. African-American men have a life expectancy of sixty-seven years; in inner-city areas, the average life expectancy of African-American males is much lower. Infant mortality rates are higher among African-Americans than among whites.

U.S. Census categories identify populations according to whether they are of European descent (white). Whites constitute a large majority at about 70 percent of the population. According to current census figures, in the year 2000 the largest minority was blacks, who number about 35 million, or 13 percent of the population.

The Hispanic (Latino) population, which includes primarily people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban (who may be any color) descent, is estimated to number 31 million, or 12 percent of the population. Latinos are expected to become the largest minority group early in the twenty-first century.

The Asian population (including Pacific Islanders) is defined as people of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese origin. It is estimated that there are eleven million Asians, making up about 4 percent of the population.

The Native American population, which includes natives of Alaska such as the Inuit and Aleuts, is estimated to consist of over two million people, slightly over 1 percent of the population. Roughly a third of Native Americans live on reservations, trust lands, territories, and mother lands under Native American jurisdiction.

Linguistic Affiliation. There is no official national language. If English is its unofficial first language, Spanish is its unofficial second language. The United States ranks fifth in the world in the number of Spanish speakers.

Standard English is the language Americans are expected to speak. Within the social hierarchy of American English dialects, Standard English can be described as the exemplar of acceptable for correct usage based on the model of cultural, economic, and political leaders. There is no clear-cut definition of what Standard English is, and it is often defined by what it is not. For example, it often is contrasted with the type of English spoken by black Americans (African-American Vernacular English).

Standard English grammar and pronunciation are taught by English teachers in public schools. Like "whiteness," this implies a neutral, normative and nonethnic position. However, most Americans do not speak Standard English; instead, they speak a range of class, ethnic, and regional variants.

Spoken English includes many dialects that have been influenced by Native Americans, immigrants, and slaves. These languages include not only Dutch, German, and Scandinavian, Asian, and African languages, but less widely spoken languages such as Basque, Yiddish, and Greek. Thus, spoken English reflects the nation's immigration and history.

As linguistic diversity has increased, and particularly as Spanish has become more widely spoken, language has become an important aspect of the debate over the meaning or nature of American culture. Linguistic and cultural diversity is accepted in states such as New York and Illinois, where Spanish bilingual education is mandated in the public schools. In California, however, where tensions between Anglos and Mexican immigrants run high, bilingual education has been abolished in the public school systems. State laws prohibit even bilingual personnel from using Spanish with Spanish-speaking patients in hospitals or with students in schools.

Bilingual education is not new. In the nineteenth century, Germans outnumbered all other immigrant groups except for all the people from the British Isles combined. With the exception of Spanish speakers in the Southwest, at no other time has foreign language been so widely spoken. German-only newspapers and German and bilingual public schools were found throughout the Midwest and Oregon and Colorado and elsewhere from the mid-nineteenth century until World War I, when anti-German sentiment resulted in the elimination of German instruction in public schools.

Other languages used in the press and in public schools included Yiddish, Swedish, and Norwegian. Thus, proponents of English only, who claim that bilingual education should not be provided to Spanish-speaking immigrants because earlier immigrants did not have this advantage, overlook the fact that those immigrants often were schooled in their native languages.

Education was important in spreading English as a standard language. Public schools played a major role; by 1870, every state in the country had committed itself to compulsory education. The percentage of foreign-born persons who were unable to speak English peaked 31 percent in 1910, by 1920 had decreased to 15 percent, and by 1930 had fallen less than 9 percent. Among Native Americans, English was enforced by the establishment by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of compulsory boarding schools for school-age children. Contemporary Native American speech patterns can be traced to that experience.

Symbolism. The flag is perhaps the most potent and contested national symbol. Made up of stripes symbolizing the original thirteen colonies and fifty stars representing the fifty states, it is displayed on national holidays such as Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day. Public places and businesses raise the flag as a matter of course. Individuals who display the flag in their homes or yards make an explicit statement about their patriotic connection to the nation.

The flag is also employed frequently as a symbol of protest. In the nineteenth century, northern abolitionists hoisted the flag upside down to protest the return of an escaped slave to his southern owner, and upside-down flags continue to be used as a sign of protest. The use of the stars and stripes design of the flag in clothing, whether for fashion, humor, or protest, is controversial and is considered by some people to be akin to treason and by others to be an individual right in a state that upholds individual rights.

Nationalism and community solidarity frequently are expressed through sports. In the Olympic games, patriotic symbols abound, and victors are heralded for their American qualities of determination, individualism, and competitiveness. In the same way, football games connect fans to one another and to their communities through a home team. The game expresses the important value of competition: unlike soccer, American football games can never end in a tie. Football also reflects cultural ideals about sex and gender; the attire of players and cheerleaders exaggerates male and female sex characteristics.

History and Ethnic Relations

Emergence of the Nation. The first European settlements date from the early sixteenth century and included Spanish towns in Florida and California, French outposts in Louisiana, and British settlements in New England. The United States of America was declared in 1776 by colonists from England who wanted independence from that country and its elite representatives in the colonies.

The class, racial, ethnic, and gender relationships of the contemporary nation have their roots in the colonial period. Unsuccessful efforts by British settlers to enslave Native Americans were followed by the importation of African slaves to work on cotton plantations in the South and of white indentured servants to work in the emerging industries in the North.

British taxation fell disproportionately on poor white laborers and indentured servants. This sector was instrumental in organizing the protests and boycotts of British goods that culminated in the American Revolution. Women participated in the Revolution by running farms and businesses during the war.

The egalitarian rhetoric of the Revolution did not extend to slaves, and after independence, full citizenship rights did not extend to all whites. Men and women who did not own property had no voting rights. (Women did not gain the right to vote until the early twentieth century.) The area west of the Appalachians was settled by poor whites seeking land and autonomy from wage labor.

After 1820, when poor white men gained the vote in most states, women began to see their own lack of political rights in a new way. Women's ability to connect their powerlessness to that of men in relationship to plantation owners made them active in the abolitionist movement. However, after the Civil War when freed male slaves, but not freed women or white women, were given the right to vote, the women's suffrage movement broke with the civil rights movement in the South.

State laws enacted in the South after the Civil War enforced racial separation by keeping freed men out of skilled and industrial jobs, limited their political rights through restrictive voting registration practices, and enforced segregation at all levels, including in housing and education.

Women were an essential part of the industrial labor force in the early years of the nation. Their work in textile manufacturing helped provide commodities for an expanding population and freed men to work in the agricultural sector. Women were active in labor union organizing in the nineteenth century.

The emerging nation also was shaped by its territorial expansion. After the Revolution, the United States included only thirteen former British colonies in the Northeast and the Southeast. Territories to the west and south of the original colonies were acquired through later purchases and concessions. The most important of these acquisitions was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, by which the country doubled its territory. This purchase signaled the beginning of western expansion beyond the Appalachians. It became the country's "manifest destiny" to expand from the eastern to the western shore.

During this time, the Indian wars that eventually subdued the major Native American groups and drove them west to reservation lands were waged. In 1838, President Andrew Jackson rounded up thousands of Cherokees from North Carolina and marched them to "Indian territory," then a large area that included Oklahoma. One of every four Cherokees died of cold, hunger, or disease, and the Cherokees named this march the Trail of Tears.

Another major expansion occurred after the Mexican-American War. In 1848, Mexico was compelled to sell its northern territories to the United States. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo conceded California and what is now the Southwest, considerably expanding the continental United States and broadening its ethnic and linguistic profile.

In 1890, at the Battle of Wounded Knee, many of the Sioux were massacred, and the survivors were forced onto Pine Ridge Reservation. This battle marked the disappearance of the traditional Native American way of life. In the same year, the Census Bureau observed that the continental United States had been settled by whites in virtually every corner. The American frontier was considered closed.

National Identity. Often referred to as a melting pot, the United States is popularly regarded as a nation that assimilates or absorbs immigrant populations to produce a standard American. This is a powerful cultural idea. The word "American" conjures up an image of a person of white, middle-class status. All other residents, including the area's indigenous inhabitants, are "hyphenated" or characterized by an identifying adjective: African-American, Native American, Asian-American, Mexican-American. The national Census does not hyphenate Americans of European descent.

Huge waves of non-European immigration since the 1960s have made the United States the nation with the highest immigrant population in the world. This fact, combined with the many identity and civil rights movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, has created a new kind of cultural politics that challenges the country's Anglo identity and power base.

Ethnic Relations. From colonial times, indentured servants and other poor whites constituted a buffer between landowners and slaves, who made up the bottom rung of the social ladder. Poor whites self-identified as white to associate themselves with the powerful landowning class rather than see their common interests with slaves. This process accentuated the dominance of white racial identity over class identity.

The "whiteness" of buffer groups has been ambiguous, changing along with their position in the labor market. Although now considered white, the Irish immigrants who arrived in great numbers in the early nineteenth century occupied the lowest rungs of the labor force next to slaves and often were referred to as "white niggers."

Between 1848, when lands from Mexico were annexed, and the 1930s, Americans of Mexican descent were classified as white. As Mexicans became important as laborers in the expanding agribusiness sector, those people were reclassified as Mexican-American. The large waves of immigrants who poured into the country from Southern and Eastern Europe between 1880 and World War I made up a new buffer group. This group included large numbers of Jews who did not come to be considered white for several generations.

Relationships among racial and ethnic groups have been mediated by this association between status, whiteness, and position in the labor market. Between 1916 and 1929, African-American laborers migrated to the North to work in industrial jobs. Paid less than whites for comparable jobs, they were regarded by white workers as union busters and scabs. African-Americans also received less than their share of the social benefits extended to whites after World War II. Federal programs for returning veterans included housing and educational subsidies. Most of these white groups considered their own ascension into the middle class as being the result of sweat and determination.

Urbanism, Architecture, and the Use of Space

The United States is an urban and suburban nation whose numerous cities each tell a story about its historical and economic development. New York, founded by the Dutch as a trading colony, was once the hunting and fishing grounds of Native Americans. It became an important industrial center in the nineteenth century, but by the mid-twentieth century its industries had declined and much of its middle class population had relocated to the suburbs. As the twenty-first century begins, New York is a "global" city resurrected from decline by its role as a center of finance in the world economy. Like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have emerged as important cities in connected world.

Many cities are notable for their particular regional roles. Saint Louis, situated on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, was an important transportation hub in the nineteenth century before railroads replaced riverboats as the most efficient form of travel. Once known as the "Gateway to the West," it was the last outpost of civilization as the country expanded to the west. Today, it is possible to see the Arch, a monument to the expansionist past, from nearby Cahokia, which houses the ruins of one of the largest cities in the world of its time. Between 900 and 1300 C.E. , this city built by the indigenous Mississippian culture was larger than most contemporary European cities.

In colonial times, cities were divided along racial and class lines. The row house, a series of attached dwellings, was a common form of housing. It symbolized the defensive posture of early settlers, whose enclaves protected them from the untamed wilderness and its Indian inhabitants. The elites lived in the central city, often with slave quarters behind their homes. The working classes and urban slaves who eventually were allowed to live apart from their masters resided in peripheral areas and the early suburbs. In early American cities, there was no separation between the workplace and the home. Most goods were produced by artisans who lived and worked in the same building. As the country industrialized, home and workplace became distinct.

During the nineteenth century, the suburb was transformed from a space for social outcasts and the lower classes to a space for the elite. A number of factors led to the suburbanization that is central to modern American life. A romantic engagement with the countryside arose as the frontier expanded to the west and the wilderness receded from view in the East. The noise and pollution of the industrialized cities of the nineteenth century, as well as the presence of the working classes, made them less attractive to the elites. These factors combined with a transportation revolution made possible by cable cars and railroads.

Cities were stopovers for new immigrants, who soon began to move to the suburbs, and the permanent domains of the working poor and, until recently, black Americans of all classes, who were kept out of suburbs through discriminatory real estate and zoning practices. Suburbs were organized along class and ethnic lines, and cities became the repositories of the most disadvantaged.

The early suburbs of the elite classes were characterized by large and architecturally unique homes. Beginning in the early twentieth century, federal subsidies such as deductible mortgage interest and loan programs made suburban living a possibility for working-class and middle-class immigrants. Standard designs and quick building methods resulted in uninspired architecture but relatively inexpensive housing.

The use of the automobile and the growth of highways made possible a nationwide suburban sprawl of which shopping malls and motels are ubiquitous reminders. Americans have a complex relationship to the suburb. On the one hand, it represents success, family life, and safety from the chaos and danger of the city, fulfilling the peculiarly American promise that every family should be able to own its own home. On the other hand, the monotony of this landscape is a metaphor for cultural conformity, social isolation, and racism.

For women, suburban life is particularly ambiguous. The suburb promises a large home and yard and a safe and healthy place in which to raise children, but the single-family home isolates women from the extended family networks and friends that make child rearing less onerous.

Suburbs are often referred to as bedroom communities, suggesting that suburbanites depend on a nearby city for employment, services, and cultural activities. However, the growth of suburban industries and services that allow suburbanites to work in their own communities points to the declining dependency of suburbs on city centers.

By the 1970s, white flight from the cities created an urban-suburban landscape aptly described as Chocolate City/Vanilla Suburb, referring to the racial separation of blacks and whites. Cities were mythologized in the popular imagination as wild and dangerous places riddled with crime, gang violence, and drugs. Young black males and welfare mothers were the symbols of social problems.

Beginning in the 1980s, young urban professionals began to "reclaim" the cities, rehabilitating the aging and often decrepit housing stock. This process of gentrification turns cities into the new American frontier, where professionals drawn to major financial centers such as New York and Los Angeles are the "pioneers" and black and Hispanic residents are the "Indians."

Food and Economy

Food in Daily Life. Americans eat large amounts of processed, convenience, and fast foods. The average diet is high in salt, fat, and refined carbohydrates. It is estimated that 60 percent of Americans are obese. The preference for packaged and processed foods is culturally rooted. Americans as a whole enjoy the taste of hamburgers, hot dogs, and junk foods. Processed foods generally are perceived to be cleaner or more safe than unprocessed foods.

Industrial food producers use advertising to associate processed foods with the desirable modern and industrial qualities of speed, cleanliness, and efficiency. Speed of preparation was essential in a nation of nuclear family households where wives and mothers did not have relatives to help them and usually were solely responsible for food preparation.

However, gourmet, regional, and alternative styles of eating are highly influential. Gourmet foods, including high quality fresh and local produce, imported cheeses, fine coffees, and European kinds of bread, are available in every city and in many towns.

Regional cuisines, from cheese steaks in Philadelphia to the green chili stews of New Mexico and the grits of the South, are culinary reminders that the country encapsulates many different traditions.

An alternative tradition is the health food movement, which includes a preference for unprocessed foods and fruits and vegetables that have not been chemically treated or genetically altered. Some health food proponents are concerned primarily with avoiding the heavily processed foods that make up the bulk of the traditional diet. Others also see the consumption of organic products, which generally are produced by small, labor-intensive farms, as a way to fight the ecological damage caused by agricultural chemicals and challenge the corporate nature of food production.

Food Customs at Ceremonial Occasions. Americans have few occasions that they term ceremonial. In the case of weddings, funerals, and other rites, few fixed food rules apply. Most weddings, whether religious or secular, include a large tiered cake. After the wedding, the newlyweds feed each other a piece of the cake. At Jewish funerals, fish, usually smoked or pickled, and eggs may be served as symbols of life's continuation. Some Americans, particularly in the South, eat hopping john, a dish made with black-eyed peas, to bring good luck in the New Year.

Americans have many fixed food rituals to accompany events and occasions not generally considered ceremonial. Waking up is accompanied by coffee. Social occasions usually include alcohol. Hot dogs and beer are ubiquitous at sporting events, and popcorn and candy are consumed at movie theaters.

Basic Economy. The United States has an advanced industrial economy that is highly mechanized. The gross national product is the largest in the world. The country more than meets its own economic needs and is the world's leading exporter of food. Moreover, it is a dominant force in world finance.

The major challenges facing the economy are to maintain profits by keeping production costs low and to increase consumer markets. Besides mechanizing production to reduce labor costs, firms sub-contract production to less developed countries where those costs are much lower. At the same time, advertising firms that help market these goods to consumers at home and in other countries now constitute one of the biggest industries in the country.

The basic unit of currency is the dollar, with one hundred cents making one dollar.

Land Tenure and Property. Land tenure is based largely on private ownership, but the government owns an enormous amount of land. Private property is culturally valued, and this is best expressed in the high rate of home ownership. Historically, the United States was an agricultural nation, and it culturally has a romantic image of the small, independent farm family battling the elements on the prairie.

The ways in which federal lands were apportioned to settlers and developers constitutes a mixed legacy. Land grants made to pioneer families and the public universities in every state point to a democratic apportionment of land. However, many private companies gained access to large tracts of public lands. For example, federal land grants made to railroads in the nineteenth century resulted in the consolidation of wealth by railroad company directors who sold parcels of that land and by timber companies that bought large tracts of forested land from the railroads at low prices. Contemporary patterns of landholding in the Pacific Northwest reflect this legacy of land accumulation by a few large timber firms.

Commercial Activities. The vast majority of businesses are clustered within the service industry, including finance, advertising, tourism, and various professions.

Major Industries. Important manufacturing industries include petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, lumber, and mining.

The family farm is clearly on the decline. Most people who claim farming as their occupation work for an agricultural firm and do not own their own land. Since 1940, the United States has been the world's largest producer of wheat, corn, and soybeans, it produces over 40 percent of the world's corn and 45 percent of its soybeans. However, between 1940 and 1990, the number of farms fell from over six million to just over two million. Although occasional attention is paid to the "plight of the family farm," the growth of agribusiness has not resulted in major overt conflicts because most Americans see corporate growth as the fair outcome of free enterprise and competition.

Many environmental conflicts become battles between private developers and companies and the federal government. For example, endangered species are protected under federal rules. In the Pacific Northwest, this legislation mandated the protection of the spotted owl habitat, prohibiting logging in areas with owl nests. Loggers regarded owl protection as an assault on their livelihood and their constitutional right to private property.

Division of Labor. The labor force has always been divided on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender. Skilled jobs in manufacturing and management jobs typically have been more accessible to white men than to black men or women of any race. Within the service industries, there is a technological divide. Blacks and other minorities fill low-skill jobs such as food service and are found less often in managerial positions or the growing hi-tech industries.

Social Stratification

Classes and Castes. Most Americans do not believe that theirs is a "class" society. There is a strong cultural belief in the reality of equal opportunity and economic mobility. Rags to riches stories abound, and gambling and lotteries are popular. However, there is evidence that mobility in most cases is limited: working-class people tend to stay in the working classes. Moreover, the top 1 percent of the population has made significant gains in wealth in the last few years. Similar gains have not been made by the poorest sectors. In general, it appears that the gap between rich and poor is growing.

Symbols of Social Stratification. Stratification is visible in many facets of daily life. The social segregation of blacks and whites in cities mirrors their separation in the labor force. The crumbling housing stock of blacks in the inner cities contrasts with giant homes in gated suburbs all across the country. Speech, manners, and dress also signal class position. With some exceptions, strong regional or Spanish accents are associated with working-class status.

Political Life

Government. The United States is a federal republic composed of a national government and fifty state governments. The political system is dominated by two parties: the Republicans and the Democrats. One of the features of American democracy is low voter turnout. On the average, less than half the eligible voters participate in federal elections.

Also referred to as conservatives and liberals, respectively, Republicans and Democrats differ on certain key social issues. Republicans are generally conservative on social spending and moral issues. They support cuts in federally-sponsored social programs such as welfare. They believe in strengthening institutions such as marriage and the traditional family and usually are opposed to abortion and gay rights. Democrats tend to support federal funding for social programs that favor minorities, the environment, and women's rights. However, critics argue that these two parties set a very narrow range for political debate. Third parties that have emerged on both the left and the right include the Green, Socialist, Farm-Labor, Reform, and Libertarian parties.

The powers and responsibilities of the Federal government are set out in the Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. The national government consists of three branches that are intended to provide "checks and balances" against abuses of power. These branches are the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The executive branch includes the President and federal agencies that regulate everything from agriculture to the military. The legislative branch includes members elected to the upper and lower houses of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. At the state level, government is designed along the same lines, with elected governors, senators, and assemblymen and state courts. The smallest unit of government is the county, which has an elected board, but not all states have a system of county governments.

With the exception of the President, officials are elected directly, on the basis of popular vote. The President is elected by the electoral college. Each state has as many electors as it has senators and representatives, the latter of which are awarded according to population. Electors vote as a bloc within each state. This means that all electoral votes in a state go to the candidate with the plurality of the popular vote within that state. A candidate must win 270 electoral votes to win the election. This system is controversial because it is possible for a President to win a national election without winning a national majority of the popular vote, as happened in the presidential election of 2000.

Leadership and Public Officials. With the exception of local-level offices, politics is highly professionalized: most people who run for political offices are lifelong politicians. Running for a high-level political office is extremely expensive; many politicians in the House and the Senate are wealthy. The expense of winning campaigns requires not only personal wealth, but corporate sponsorship in the form of donations.

Social Problems and Control. Although crime rates have decreased, the United States remains the most violent industrialized nation in the world. The capital city, Washington, D.C., has the highest per capita crime rate in the country. In the nation as a whole, African-Americans, the poor, and teenagers are the most common victims of violent and nonviolent crime.

The country has more people in prison and more people per capita in prison than any other industrialized nation. The prison population is well over one million. These numbers have increased since 1980 as a result of mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes. Although African-Americans make up only about 12 percent of the population, they outnumber white inmates in prison. Both African-American and Hispanic men are far more likely to be imprisoned than are white men. Although rates of imprisonment are on the rise for women, women are far less likely to be imprisoned than men of any race or ethnicity. The United States is also the only Western industrialized nation that allows capital punishment, and rates of execution for African-American men are higher than those of any other group.

Cities are perceived to be very dangerous, but crime rate is not consistently higher in urban areas than in rural areas. The elderly tend to be the most fearful of crime but are not its most common victims. Tough penalties for violent crime are often perceived to be a solution, and it is on this basis that the death penalty is defended. Interestingly, Florida and Arizona, which have the death penalty, have the highest rates of violent crime in the country.

Historically, immigrant groups that constituted the urban "rabble" of their day were the subject of intense policing efforts and were believed to have propensities for vice and crime.

Military Activity. The country has officially been at peace since World War II but has unofficially been in almost continuous military conflict. These conflicts have included frequent interventions in Central and South America, the Middle East, and Africa. During the period between the end of World War II and the breakup of the Soviet Union (1989), military interventions frequently involved Cold War motivations. Since that time, the country has used its military forces against Iraq and has supported efforts by other governments to fight the drug war in Central America.

Social Welfare and Change Programs

The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until World War II, posed a real threat to the legitimacy of the American economic model in the eyes of citizens. During that period, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established a series of social programs collectively known as the New Deal. Many of those programs, including government-backed pension programs, banking insurance, and unemployment benefits, are still in place. These programs, which were intended to provide a buffer against the inevitable downturns of economic cycles, were also a response to serious social unrest, including strikes and socialist organizing.

Americans generally are not opposed to social benefits such as social security pensions and the insurance of bank deposits. However, general relief programs for the poor, known popularly as welfare, have been very controversial. In a country that believes that all its citizens have an equal chance, where opportunity is unlimited, and where only the lazy are poor, programs for mothers and children and the indigent have been vulnerable to cutbacks. Recently, the federal government made sweeping reforms to the welfare laws that require mothers on welfare to work in order to receive benefits.

Nongovernmental Organizations and Other Associations

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) are not as influential as they are in less wealthy nations. Among the NGOs that operate within the country, the most notable is Amnesty International, which has made both political prisoners and torture within American prisons major issues in recent years.

More influential than NGOs are the many nonprofit institutions. These groups are not associated with government agencies or corporate interests. They include a wide spectrum of advocacy and public interest groups that deal with consumer, environmental, and social justice issues. Nonprofits are a main locus for alternative views and left-wing politics. Examples include the American Civil Liberties Union, the various Public Interest Research Groups, Fairness and Accuracy in the Media, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization of Women.

Gender Roles and Statuses

Division of Labor by Gender. Although most women work outside the home, household and child-rearing responsibilities are still overwhelmingly the responsibility of women. The "double day" of women consists of working and then returning home to do domestic chores. This situation persists in spite of the cultural belief that men and women are equal. Studies carried out in middle-class homes, in which couples claim to share household duties, show that women still do the vast majority of domestic work. Although young women as a whole spend much less time on domestic chores than their mothers did, this is attributable not to the fact that men do a significant share of domestic work, but to the fact that women spend less time cooking, cleaning, and caring for children than they did in the past.

Women are paid seventy cents to every male dollar for comparable jobs. Occupations continue to be defined along gender lines. Secretarial or low-level administrative jobs are so overwhelmingly female that they have been termed pink-collar jobs. In the white-collar world, women often occupy middle-management positions. With a few exceptions, the "glass ceiling" keeps women out of high management positions. This situation is justified on the grounds that women take time from their working lives to raise children and therefore do not spend the same amount of time developing their working careers that men do. Occupations requiring nurturing skills, such as teaching and nursing, are still predominantly female.

Within the blue-collar sector, women are underrepresented in jobs considered to require physical strength, such as the construction industries and firefighting. Women often fill low-paid positions in industry, such as assembly-line work, sewing, and electronics assembly. This is justified on the basis that women are by nature more dextrous and that their small hands suit them to assembly-line work. It is more likely that the low wages offered by these factories explains the recruitment of female laborers, whose other options may include even less desirable seasonal and temporary work.

The Relative Status of Women and Men. In legal terms, women have the same formal rights as men. They can vote, own property, choose to marry or divorce, and demand equal wages for equal work. They also have access to birth control and abortion. The status of women in relation to men is very high compared to the situation in many other countries.

However, women as a whole do not receive the same social and economic benefits as men. Women are greatly underrepresented in elected political offices and are more likely to live in poverty. Female occupations both in the home and in the workplace are valued less than men's. Women are more likely than men to suffer from a sense of disempowerment and to have a distorted or low self-image.

Marriage, Family, and Kinship

Marriage. Marriage is formally a civil institution but is commonly performed in a church. Statistically, marriage appears to be on the decline. Half of all adults are unmarried, including those who have never married and those who are divorced. Rates of marriage are higher among whites than among blacks.

With the exception of Vermont, civil unions are legal only between heterosexual adults. However, gay marriages are increasingly common whether or not they are formally recognized by the state. Some religious denominations and churches recognize and perform gay marriages. The high rate of divorce and remarriage has also increased the importance of stepfamilies.

Domestic Unit. The typical model of the family is the nuclear family consisting of two parents and their children. Upon marriage, adult couples are expected to form their own household separate from either of their biological families. The nuclear family is the cultural ideal but is not always the reality. Immigrant groups have been reported to rely on extended family networks for support. Similarly, among African-American families, where adult males are often absent, extended kin ties are crucial for women raising children.

Inheritance. Americans trace their ancestry and inherit through both the maternal and paternal lines. Surnames are most commonly adopted through the paternal line, with children taking the father's name. Women usually adopt the husband's surname upon marriage, but it is increasingly common for women to keep their own surnames and for the children to use both the father's and the mother's last names.

Kin Groups. Family can refer to a nuclear family group or an extended kin group. The "ideal" family consists of a mother, a father, and two or three children. Americans often distinguish between blood relatives and relatives through marriage; blood relatives are considered more important. Ties among nuclear families generally are closer than ties among extended family members. Adoption is common, but reproductive technologies that allow infertile couples and gay couples to reproduce are highly valued. This reflects the importance of the concept of biological kinship in the culture.

Socialization

Infant Care. Infant care varies by class. In New York City, it is common to see women of Dominican and West Indian descent caring for white children. Wealthy people often employ nannies to care for infants. Nannies, who often have children of their own, may have to rely on family members or their older children to watch over their infants. Wealthy or poor, the majority of mothers work outside the home. This, coupled with the fact that many people cannot rely on their extended families to help care for their newborns, makes infant care a challenge. Some employers offer short maternity leaves for mothers and increasingly, paternity leaves for fathers who are primary caregivers.

Child Rearing and Education. Child rearing practices are diverse, but some common challenges apply to all families. It is common to put children in day care programs at an early age. For wealthy families, this entails finding the most elite day care centers; for less wealthy families, it may involve finding scarce places in federally-funded programs. For all working families, day care can be a cause of anxiety and guilt. Negative media stories about child abuse at these centers spoke more to these anxieties than to the actual quality of care. The country makes few provisions for the care of young children considering the fact that most mothers work outside the home.

From age five to age eighteen, public schooling is provided by the state and is universally available. School is mandatory for children until the age of sixteen. Public school education in suburban areas and small cities and towns is usually adequate or excellent.

Inner-city schools are underfunded and have a high proportion of minority students. This reflects a history of white flight to the suburbs and a system in which schools are funded through local property taxes. Thus, in cities abandoned by wealthier whites, both tax bases and school funding have declined. The reputation of inner-city schools is so poor that families that live in cities send their children to private schools if they can afford it. Private schools are mostly white enclaves.

Access to equal education has long been an issue for African-Americans. Until the Supreme Court struck down the doctrine of "separate but equal" in 1954, all educational institutions in the South were segregated on the basis of race. However, the legally permitted segregation of the past has been replaced by the de facto segregation of the present.

Higher Education. The level of educational achievement is high. Most Americans complete high school, and almost half receive at least some college education. Almost one-quarter of the population has completed four or more years of college. Rates of graduation from high school and college attendance are significantly lower for African-Americans and Hispanics than for whites.

The quality and availability of colleges and universities are excellent, but a university education is not funded by the state as it is in many Western industrialized nations. The cost of higher education has soared and ranges from a few thousand dollars annually at public institutions to more than ten thousand dollars a year at private institutions. In elite private colleges, the cost of tuition exceeds $20,000 a year.

Among the middle classes, paying for college is a source of anxiety for parents from the moment their children are born. Students from middle-income and low-income families often pay for college with student loans, and the size of these debts is on the increase.

Personal comportment often appears crass, loud, and effusive to people from other cultures, but Americans value emotional and bodily restraint. The permanent smile and unrelenting enthusiasm of the stereotypical American may mask strong emotions whose expression is not acceptable. Bodily restraint is expressed through the relatively large physical distance people maintain with each other, especially men. Breast-feeding, yawning, and passing gas in public are considered rude. Americans consider it impolite to talk about money and age.

Religious Beliefs. The overwhelming majority of the people are Christian. Catholicism is the largest single denomination, but Protestants of all denominations (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and others) outnumber Catholics. Judaism is the largest non-Christian faith, followed by Islam, which has a significant African-American following. Baptism, the largest Protestant sect, originated in Europe but grew exponentially in the United States, especially in the South, among both whites and blacks. Aside from the many Christian movements from England and Europe that reestablished themselves early in the nation's history, a few religious sects arose independently in the United States, including Mormons and Shakers.

Another trend is the growth in New Age religions, which blend elements of Eastern religions and practices, such as Buddhism, with meditation, yoga, astrology, and Native American spirituality.

Religious Practitioners. In addition to the practitioners of world religions such as priests, ministers, and rabbis, the United States has a tradition of nonordained and nontraditional religious practitioners. These people include evangelical lay preachers, religious leaders associated with New Age religions, and leaders of religious movements designated as cults. Women are increasingly entering traditionally male religious positions. There are now women ministers in many Protestant denominations and women rabbis.

Rituals and Holy Places. The country does not have religious rituals or designated holy places that have meaning to the population as a whole. However, Salt Lake City is a holy city for Mormons, and the Black Hills of South Dakota and other places are sacred native American sites.

There are many shared secular rituals and places that have an almost religious importance. Secular rituals include baseball and football games. Championship games in these sports, the World Series and the Super Bowl, respectively, constitute major annual events and celebrations. Important places include Disneyland, Hollywood, and Grace-land (Elvis Presley's estate).

Death and the Afterlife. Americans have an uncomfortable relationship with their own mortality. Although most residents are Christian, the value placed on youth, vigor, and worldly goods is so great that death is one of the most difficult subjects to talk about.

Death is considered a sad and solemn occasion. At funerals, it is customary to wear black and to speak in hushed tones. Graveyards are solemn and quiet places. Some people believe in an afterlife or in reincarnation or other form of continuity of energy or spirit.

Medicine and Health Care

The dominant approach to medicine is biomedical, or Western. Although many people are interested in alternative approaches such as acupuncture, homeopathic medicine, and other therapies, the United States continues to be less medically diverse than most other countries. Biomedicine is characterized by the frequent use of invasive surgeries such as cesarean sections and high doses of psychotropic drugs. With the exception of limited government care for the elderly and the disabled, health care is private and profit-based. This makes the United States distinct from other wealthy, industrial nations, nearly all of which provide universal health-care coverage.

Secular Celebrations

A number of secular national holidays are celebrated but are regarded less as celebrations of patriotism than as family holidays. The fireworks displays of the Fourth of July mark the Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1776, but this is also a time for summer outings such as picnics and camping trips with friends and family members.

Thanksgiving is part of the national history that is understood by every schoolchild. This annual feast celebrates the hardships of the early colonists, who were starving in their new environment. According to the legend, American Indians came to their aid, sharing indigenous foods such as maize and turkey. Thanksgiving is important not primarily because of its symbolism but because it is the most significant family holiday of the year, one of the few large and elaborate meals that families prepare.

The Arts and Humanities

Support for the Arts. The level of public support for the arts is much lower than it is in other wealthy nations. Patronage for unknown individual artists, writers, and performers is scarce. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has a very small operating budget with which it funds everything from public broadcasting to individual artists. In recent years, the NEA has been under attack from Congress, whose conservative members question the value and often the morality of the art produced with NEA grants.

Support also comes from private donations. These donations are tax-deductible and are a popular hedge among the wealthy against income and estate taxes. Generous gifts to prestigious museums, galleries, symphonies, and operas that often name halls and galleries after their donors are essential means of subsidizing the arts.

Literature. Much of American literature revolves around questions of the nature or defining characteristics of the nation and attempts to discern or describe the national identity. American literature found its own voice in the nineteenth century. In the early decades of that century, the essayists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson set out the enduring themes of personal simplicity, the continuity between man and nature, individualism, and self-reliance. Walt Whitman celebrated democracy in his free verse poems.

Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain, articulated moral and ethical questions about the new country and were particularly influential for their critique of American puritanism.

Turn-of-the-century writers such as Edith Wharton, Henry James, and Theodore Dreiser picked up on those themes but were particularly concerned with social class and class mobility. They explored the nature of American culture and the tensions between ideals of freedom and the realities of social conditions.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway began to question the values earlier writers had represented. Fitzgerald questioned the reality of the American dream by highlighting the corrupting influence of wealth and casting doubt on the value of mobility and success. Hemingway, like other modernists, addressed the issue of how one ought to live once one has lost faith in religious values and other social guidelines. Other early twentieth-century writers, such as Zora Neil Hurston, Nella Larsen, and William Faulkner, introduced race and racism as central themes in American literature.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression inspired authors such as John Steinbeck and Willa Cather to write about rural America. Their novels romanticized the hard work of poor rural whites. Implicit in these novels is a critique of the wealth and excess of the urban metropolis and the industrial system that supported it. Although these novels are permeated with multiethnic characters and themes, Anglos are generally the focal point.

Issues of identity and race were explored by earlier American black writers. A generation of black authors after World War II made these permanent themes in American literature, illustrating the poverty, inequality and racism experienced by American blacks. Many black writers explored the meaning of living inside a black skin in a white nation with a legacy of slavery. These writers included James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. Perhaps the most influential contemporary writer who deals with these themes is Toni Morrison.

Beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s, a generation known as the Beats challenged the dominant norms of white American masculinity. They rejected conventions of family and sexuality, corporate success, and money. Among the Beats were William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Allan Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

Starting in the 1960s, women writers began to challenge the notion that women's place was in the home. Early feminist writers who critiqued the paternalism of marriage include the nonfiction writer Betty Friedan, the novelist Marge Piercy, and the poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

Feminist themes, along with issues of ethnicity and otherness, continue to be important in American literature. Gloria Anzuldúa and Ana Castillo show how female and Latina identities intersect. Novels by Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko illustrate how Native American families attempt to survive and reclaim their traditions amid poverty and discrimination.

Other contemporary novels try to deconstruct the experience of the "norm" in American culture. Ann Tyler's characters are often empty and unhappy but cannot locate the sources of those feelings. Don Delillo writes about the amoral corporate world, the American obsession with consumer goods, and the chaos and anxiety that underlie the quietness of suburban life. Joyce Carol Oates is attracted to the sinister aspects of social conformity.

These novels are not the most widely read looks in the United States. Much more popular are genres such as crime and adventure, romance, horror, and science fiction. These genres tend to repeat valued cultural narratives. For example, the novels of Tom Clancy feature the United States as the moral victor in cold war and post–Cold War terrorist scenarios. Harlequin romances idealize traditional male and female gender roles and always have a happy ending. In horror novels, violence allows for catharsis among readers. Much science fiction revolves around technical-scientific solutions to human problems.

Graphic Arts. The most influential visual artists are from the modern period. Much early art was imitative of European styles. Important artists include Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol. Warhol's art documented icons of American life such as Cambell's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. His work was deliberately amusing and commercial. Most graphic art is produced for the advertising industry.

Performance Arts. Performance arts include many original genres of modern dancing that have influenced by classical forms as well as American traditions, such as jazz. Important innovators in dance include Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and Alvin Ailey. Theaters in every town that once hosted plays, vaudeville, and musicals now show movies or have closed. In general, performance arts are available only in metropolitan areas.

The United States has produced several popular music genres that are known for blending regional, European, and African influences. The best known of these genres are the African-American inventions blues and jazz. Among the most important jazz composers and musicians are Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonius Monk. Although now considered classics, blues and jazz standards were the popular music of their day.

Music fits into "black" and "white" categories. Popular swing jazz tunes were standardized by band leaders such as Glenn Miller, whose white band made swing music hugely popular with young white people.

Rock 'n' roll, now a major cultural export, has its roots in these earlier popular forms. Major influences in rock and roll include Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Bruce Springstein. Although rock 'n' roll is primarily white, soul and Motown, with singers such as Aretha Franklin, the Supremes, and the Temptations, produced a popular black music.

Country music, another popular genre, has its roots in the early American folk music of the Southeast now termed country or bluegrass. This genre reworked traditional gospel songs and hymns to produce songs about the everyday life of poor whites in the rural Southeast.

Popular music in the United States has always embodied a division between its commercial and entertainment value and its intellectual or political values. Country and folk, blues, rock 'n' roll, rap, and hip-hop have all carried powerful social and political messages. As old forms become standard and commercialized, their political edge tends to give way to more generic content, such as love songs.

The State of the Physical and Social Sciences

The United States is a leading producer and exporter of scientific knowledge and technology. Major areas of scientific research include medicine, energy, chemicals, weapons, aerospace technology, and communications. Funding for research comes from government agencies and universities as well as the private corporate sector.

The role of private corporations in research is controversial. Pharmaceutical companies often fund research that leads to cures and treatments for diseases. One consequence is a dearth of research on diseases particular to poor countries. Another consequence is that medicines are marketed at costs that are prohibitive to the poor both inside and outside of the country.

In the face of technology and science as being culturally valued, an increasing cause of social concern is the fact that American schoolchildren do not do well on standardized tests in the sciences.

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The American Culture

Nov 30, 2014

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The American Culture. Outline. Review about last class Brief History of US Character of Americans. Think about. American population: Race and ethnicity American flag Five symbols of American culture List some major cities. Demographic information.

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• great civil war
• 1968 civil rights movement

Presentation Transcript

Outline • Review about last class • Brief History of US • Character of Americans

Think about • American population: • Race and ethnicity • American flag • Five symbols of American culture • List some major cities

Demographic information • 美利坚合众国 (United States of America) 从大西洋到太平洋，几乎横跨整个北美洲大陆，仅次于俄罗斯、加拿大和中华人民共和国，排名第四。 • 310 million people as of October 2010, and is projected to reach 400 million by 2039 and 439 million in 2050

U.S. Census BureauPopulation projections

Flag • Stars = the 50 States • Stripes = the 13 colonies

Five famous symbols of American culture

American history • Who found North America? When? • Other important events in American history? • Names of some American presidents?

Christopher Columbus • (c. 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer • He initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World".

Colonial period • After a period of exploration by people from various European countries, Spanish, Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and Portuguese settlements were established.

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) or American War of Independence

The Declaration of Independence IN CONGRESS, JULY 4,1776 THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERAICA • We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 我们认为下述真理是不言而喻的： 人人生而平等，造物主赋予他们若干不可让与的权利，其中包括生存权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among them, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. • 为了保障这些权利，人们才在他们中间建立政府，而政府的正当权利，则是经被统治者同意授予的。任何形式的政府一旦对这些目标的实现起破坏作用时，人民便有权予以更换或废除，以建立一个新的政府。新政府所依据的原则和组织其权利的方式，务使人民认为唯有这样才最有可能使他们获得安全和幸福。

乔治·华盛George Washington (1789—1797)

John Adams 1797－1801 约翰·亚当斯（1735年10月30日－1826年7月4日）是美国第一任副总统（1789年－1797年），其后接替华盛顿成为美国第二任总统。亚当斯亦是独立宣言签署者之一，被美国人视为其中一位开国元勋。他的长子约翰·昆西·亚当斯后当选为美国第六任总统。

American Civil War • The American Civil War (1861–1865), also known as the War Between the States • Eleven Southern slave states formed the Confederate States of America, also known as "the Confederacy." Led by Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy fought against the United States (the Union) • Gone with the wind

Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 19, 1863 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. …

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) Civil rights movement • August 28, 1963 • Martin Luther King: • I have a dream • "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" • "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." • "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

World War I and 1920s • Industrialization • Join the WWI in 1917 • 1920 business boom • Henry Ford • 1929 economic crisis

Great Depression and World War II 富兰克林·罗斯福 Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933—1945) • New Deal

Cold War 约翰·F·肯尼迪 John F. Kennedy (1961—1963) • The Cold War primarily between the USA and the USSR after World War Two. many major crises occurred - the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Hungary and the Berlin Wall being just some.

Cold War Richard M Nixon Ronald Reagan

Recent presidents

President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address • We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

The American Dream • Land of opportunity • (1) individual freedom of choice in life styles • (2) equal access to economic abundance • (3) the pursuit of shared objectives mutually advantageous to the individual and society

Character of Americans • What comes to your mind?

个人主义(individualism) • 个人主义是美国文化的核心。 • 个人隐私(privacy) • 个人进步

“独立”与“合作”independence and collaboration • 美国人有强烈的自我意识和独立意识. • 但美国人又十分重视合作精神，他们遵循“少数服从多数”的原则.

数字与价值 numbers and value • 美国文明中，物质文明占很大的比重。美国人倾向于以数量来评价几乎所有一切事物。

务实 be practical, down to earth • 美国人思想观念中的数量观念很大程度上反映了他们的务实精神。

“金钱”与“精神”moneyand spirit • 在美国，金钱是衡量一个人成功与否的重要尺度， • 但美国也并不是“一切向钱看”的社会，绝大多数的美国人信奉宗教，以基督教(Christianity)为主。

宽容性tolerance • 美国是个移民之国 • 美国人的文化习俗中形成了较高程度的宽容性（tolerance），对异质文化和不同评议持容忍、可接受的态度。

“多民族融合”与“种族歧视” melting pot and racial discrimination • 美国是一个多民族的大熔炉(melting pot) //salad bowl • 但是隐形的种族歧视依然存在。

批判精神be critical • 对权威质疑，挑战。

爱搞实验experimental • 美利坚民族性格中，爱搞实验是她的一个重要特点。美国都被看作是“机遇之地”（land of opportunity），因而可以在那里展开实验 • 从深层意义上讲，美国人爱搞实验的秉性和由之衍生的开拓精神都源于美国人的乐观主义思想。 • 美利坚民族性格中滋生出了强烈的事业开拓精神。 • 美国人乐意向新事物进行挑战。他们厌恶因袭守旧的观念，

标新立异 dare to be different • 美国人可能是世界上最热衷于、也善于标新立异的民族。

宗教与信仰religion and belief God was left out of the Constitution but was furnished a front seat on the coins of the country. － American humor

questions • What do you know about religion in the United States? • Do many Americans believe in God? • What religion is most popular in the United States? • Do Americans have a national religion? • How has religion shaped American values? • What are the main religious problems in American life? • What are some of the major religious bodies and their characteristics in the United States?

Muslim 穆斯林教 • Taoism 道教 • Confucianism 儒教 • Shintoism 神道教

How religious are Americans? • 93% of Americans say they believe in God • 87% of Americans are Christians • 46% attend church every week or almost every week • 63% think that religion can answer all or most of today’s problems • 68% claim that they are a member of a local church • 7% say they have no religious preference or beliefs

The reasons for Americans to be so religious • Religion in America has never been identified with an oppressive or dominant social class or set of political institutions. • Most people want to identify themselves with dominant values, and going freely to the church of one’s choice is a way of doing so, and of gaining acceptance in the face of a subtle demand for conformity. • The church is a place where people can meet others with whom they would like to make friends.

Religious preference in the U.S. • Protestant 新教 59% • Catholic 天主教 27% • Judaism 犹太教 2% • Eastern Orthodox 东正教 1% • Other 4% • None 7%

Ten recognizable group of denominations • Roman Catholic 罗马天主教 • Eastern Orthodox 东正教 • Liberal Protestant 自由新教 • Conservative Evangelical 保守新教 • Holiness 教皇教 • Pentecostal-Charismatic 五旬节教派 • Judaism 犹太教 • Islam 伊斯兰教 • Buddhism and Hinduism 佛教，印度教 • Native American Religions 土著美国宗教

Factors in the shaping of American religious patterns • Immigration 移民 • Proselytism 宗教劝诱 • Denominationalism 宗派主义 • Religious freedom 宗教自由

The Protestant Heritage: Self-Improvement • All of the Protestant denominations share a common heritage that has been a powerful force in shaping the values and beliefs of Americans. • One of the most important values associated with American Protestantism is the value of self-improvement. • Protestantism encourages a strong and restless desire for self-improvement.

Self-Improvement The need for self-improvement, once established, reaches far beyond self-improvement in the purely moral or religious sense. It can be seen in countless books that explain how people can be happier and more successful in life by improving everything from their vocabulary to their tennis game, or even their whole personality. Books of this type are often referred to as self-help books. They are the natural products of a culture in which people believe that "God helps those who help themselves."

Material Success, Hard Work, and Self-Discipline • Theachievement of material success is the most widely respected form of self-improvement in the United States. • Some of the early European Protestant leaders believed that people who were blessed by God might be recognized in the world by their material success. • American Protestantism has never encouraged the idea of gaining wealth without hard work and self-discipline. • Protestants also believed that the capacity for self-discipline was a holy characteristic blessed by God.

Volunteerism and Humanitarianism • The Protestant idea of self-improvement includes more than achieving material gain through hard work and self-discipline. • It includes the idea of improving oneself by helping others. Individuals, in other words, make themselves into better persons by contributing some of their time or money to charitable, educational, or religious causes that are designed to help others. The philosophy is sometimes called volunteerism, or humanitarianism.

The motive for humanitarianism and volunteerism is strong: Many Americans believe that they must devote part of their time and wealth to religious or humanitarian causes in order to be acceptable in the eyes of God and in the eyes of other Americans. Many businesses encourage their employees to do volunteer work, and individuals may get tax credits for money given to charity.

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Yo! Yo! Welcome to our Guide to American Culture, Etiquette & Business Practices

The usa is a real patchwork of cultures, languages, identities and customs. what actually is "american" culture, what will you learn.

You will gain an understanding of a number of key areas including:

• Religion and beliefs
• Culture and society
• Social etiquette and customs
• Business culture and etiquette

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• Facts and Statistics
• Language in the USA
• American Culture & Society
• Social Customs & Etiquette
• Business Culture & Practice

STEREOTYPING

Remember this is only a very basic level introduction to American culture and the people; it can not account for the diversity within US society and is not meant in any way to stereotype all American people you may meet!

FACTS AND STATISTICS

• Location:  North America, bordering both the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Pacific Ocean, between Canada and Mexico
• Capital: Washington, DC
• National anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner
• Nationality:   American
• Ethnic Make-up:   White American (72.4%), African American (12.6%),  Native American (0.9%), Asian American (4.8%) (2010 Census)
• Population: 328+ million (2019)
• Population growth rate: 0.75%
• Climate: mostly temperate, but tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, semiarid in the great plains west of the Mississippi River, and arid in the Great Basin of the southwest.
• Time Zone: There are 4 standard times zones as follows -  Pacific Time UTC -8:00 / -7:00 : Mountain Time UTC -7:00 / -6:00 : Central Time    UTC -6:00 / -5:00 : Eastern Time UTC -5:00 / -4:00
• Currency: US Dollar
• Government: Constitution-based federal republic
• Internet penetration: 84.2%
• Business Culture : Ranked 19th by the Business Culture Complexity Index™

LANGUAGE IN AMERICA

There is no official language in the USA although English (specifically American English) is the primary language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements.

Out of 50 states, 30 have established English as the only official language, while Hawaii recognizes both English and Hawaiian as official and Alaska has made some 20 Native languages official, along with English.

Due to the large number of immigrants that make up the population America is very much a multilingual nation. Per the American Community Survey 2011, endorsed by the United States Census Bureau, the top 5 spoken languages in America are:

• English – 230 million
• Spanish – 37.58 million
• Chinese – 2.88 million
• French – 2.05 million
• Tagalog – 1.59 million

There are laws requiring documents such as ballots to be printed in multiple languages when there are large numbers of non-English speakers in an area.

American Sign Language (ASL) is the most common sign language in the United States.

The rodeo is synonymous with the American spirit - brave, skillful and daring. Photo by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash

AMERICAN CULTURE & SOCIETY

Religion & beliefs.

• The vast majority of people in the USA are Christian – around 70-78%.
• Catholicism is the largest single denomination however Protestants of all denominations (i.e. Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc) outnumber Catholics.
• Judaism is the largest non-Christian faith (around 1.6%) , followed by Islam (0.5%) as well as all other major faiths such as Buddhism , Sikhism , etc.
• The USA has also produced its own Christian movements such as the Mormons and Shakers.
• Around 15% of Americans consider themselves atheists.
• Although a secular country, religion plays a large role in politics especially at Presidential level.

Major Celebrations/Secular Celebrations

There are many holidays and celebrations in the USA both as national and state level.

The federal holidays are:

• January 1 New Year's Day
• January 15–21 (Floating Monday) Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
• February 15–21 (Floating Monday) Washington's Birthday
• March 29 National Vietnam War Veterans Day
• May 25–31 (Floating Monday) Memorial Day
• July 4    Independence Day
• September 1–7 (Floating Monday) Labor Day
• October 8–14 (Floating Monday) Columbus Day
• November 11 Veterans Day
• November 22–28 (Floating Thursday) Thanksgiving Day
• December 25 Christmas Day

Pumpkin Pie is a Thanksgiving favourite in the USA. Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

• The family unit is generally considered the nuclear family, and is typically small (with exceptions among certain ethnic groups).
• Extended family relatives live in their own homes, often at great distances from their children.
• Individualism is prized, and this is reflected in the family unit.
• People are proud of their individual accomplishments, initiative and success, and may, or may not, share those sources of pride with their elders.

Social Stratification

• America in theory is not a ‘class’ based society.
• ‘The American Dream’ is based on the premise that anyone, from any background can achieve anything.
• ‘Rags to riches’ stories are very popular in the US as a result.
• In reality some social stratification does exist mainly based on economics and ethnicity.
• Poor areas are clearly visible in the US as are distinctions between where people of a certain colour or race might live.
• Although ‘class’ per se does not exist, elements of it can be seen through discrimination over accents, clothing, manners, etc.

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Gender Roles

• In theory genders are equal within American society and law.
• Women as a whole however do not receive the same social and economic status or benefits as men.
• Although most women do work, they are also generally still responsible for areas such as child-rearing, cooking and housecleaning.
• Occupations tend to be defined along gender lines with secretarial or low-level administrative jobs overwhelmingly staffed by women.
• Within the blue-collar sector, women are underrepresented in jobs considered to require physical strength, such as the construction industries and firefighting.
• Women are greatly underrepresented in elected political offices and are statistically more likely to live in poverty.

Socialization

• Infant care depends on economic status first and foremost.
• Less affluent families rely on the mother or extended family to look after and raise children.
• Wealthier families will often have nannies or use day care centres.
• Children can attend school from the age of age five to eighteen, with it being compulsory until the age of sixteen.
• The United States has an advanced industrialised economy with the largest GNP in the world.
• Most business activity takes places within the service industry including finance, advertising and tourism.
• Manufacturing industries include petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, food processing, lumber and mining.
• The country is more than self-sufficient in terms of its economic needs and is the world's leading exporter of food.

The drive-through (drive-thru) is a perfect illustration of American culture in practice - convenience, speed, efficiency. Photo by Eric Mclean on Pexels.

• Americans as a nation eat a lot of food.
• They consume large amounts of processed and fast foods such as hamburgers, hot dogs, subs, etc.
• As a result, the diet is one that is high in fat, salt, sugars, preservatives and refined carbohydrates.
• 60% percent of Americans are considered to be obese.
• The tendency towards ‘junk foods’ is cultural – convenience/processed food is quicker, cheaper, larger, cleaner, tastier and therefore better.
• Healthy-eating of course does exist across the States with a liking for local produce, fine teas and quality breads not uncommon in most cities.
• Cuisines can differ from region to region. Cheese steaks are synonymous with Philadelphia whereas fajitas and chili stews are much more New Mexico.
• Within cities it is also possible to find food from around the world as well as representative of the many immigrant communities from Europe, Africa and Asia.

Arts, Humanities & Popular Culture

• America’s contribution to the world through its arts, humanities and pop culture cannot be summarised in a few sentences.
• American literature very much came to the fore in the nineteenth century and continued ever since. Famous American writers include Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
• Sport is very popular in the USA with American football, baseball, basketball and ice- hockey being the most popular.
• The USA traditionally does very well in the Olympics.
• Jazz, Rock, Grunge, Country, Hip-Hop, RnB are but some of the many genres of music created in the USA and still listened to today.
• Art is very popular in the US with galleries to be found nationwide. Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol are two of the country’s globally recognised artists.

AMERICAN SOCIAL CUSTOMS & ETIQUETTE

Naming conventions.

• Family, friends and colleagues use first names.
• Nicknames are also common.
• In formal situations you would use your name & surname or that of the person you are introducing, for example, “Please meet Jane Doe.” Mr or Mrs may also be used in more conservative states.
• Within work situations use professional titles when addressing others, i.e. “Nice to meet you Professor Lacey.”
• Do not use professional titles when introducing yourself.

Meeting & Greeting

• American greetings are generally quite informal and casual.
• It is becoming more common in social situations not to shake hands upon meeting and simply smile or nod.
• When people are introduced handshakes are common accompanied with a “How d’ya do?”, “How you doing?” or “How are you”? depending on where in the US you are.
• Within business handshakes are generally expected when meeting and leaving.
• Pleasantries are exchanged out of courtesy rather than being genuine.
• Rather than say “bye” Americans may also use terms such as “call me some time,” “let’s do lunch” or “see you around” as politer ways of departing.
• If introducing someone, use their full name and a bit of information about them, for example, “This is Larry Whyte; he works at the local school as a science teacher.”

Communication style

• Americans can come across as self-interested, aggressive and rude to some outsiders.
• This is down to the US communication style which is influenced by the need to be direct, clear, transparent and open about matters.
• Plain and simple talk is very much valued in America.
• Americans see coded, indirect communication which relies on body language as confusing and unnecessary.
• The emphasis within communication is on the facts at hand and not the relationships – thus the term, “It’s just business.”
• Americans are much more open in conversation about private affairs than many other cultures and do not shy away from asking direct questions.

The American communication style is heavily influenced by the pursuit of freedom and liberty. Photo by Reno Laithienne on Unsplash

Personal Space

• Americans do not tend to like close contact with others.
• 2-3 feet of personal space during conversations is the norm.
• For most Americans there is little or no touching ever with others although within some communities this may be much more common within the community itself.  This will also be different between good friends and family.
• In public, such as in parks or on the bus, people try to give one another space.

Gift Giving

• Americans do not really have any customs or taboos concerning gifts.
• Gifts are usually given for special occasions or between friends and family.
• Gifts within business are generally discouraged due to anti-bribery policies.
• Cash should never be given as a gift.
• If visiting a house, bring flowers, a potted plant, a fruit basket, chocolate, wine, a book or a small household ornament like a vase.

Dining & Food

• Americans socialise and do business over breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• If business is the goal, then socializing is kept to a minimum at the start and end.
• Social meals are more about eating that chatting and taking hours over the food.
• If you invite someone to a restaurant, you should pay.
• The fork is held in the left hand facing down with the knife is held in the right hand.
• Napkins if provided are placed on the lap.
• A toast might take place at the start of a formal meal or for a special occasion/guest.
• Feel free to refuse specific foods or drinks without offering an explanation.
• Many foods are eaten by hand.
• Food is often served family-style, which means that it is in large serving dishes and passed around the table for everyone to serve themselves.
• Do not begin eating until the hostess starts or says to begin.
• Remain standing until invited to sit down.
• Do not rest your elbows on the table.

Visiting a home

• Being invited to an American’s home can be fairly informal.
• One should dress casually but also smart and arrive no later than 10-15 minutes late without notifying your host that you will be late.
• If an invite says 6pm-8pm it is polite to leave as close to 8pm as possible.
• It is a good idea to bring a gift or if there is going to be some food, then some drinks.
• Send a note of thanks after the occasion to your host.
• Do not spit.
• Do not discuss race, religion, politics or sex.
• Do not swear.
• Do not discuss the wrong/rights of abortion.
• Do not assume you can smoke anywhere, even outside.

Much of what you experience in America is determined by where in the country you are. If you are dealing with a New Yorker you are going to hear a very different accent and witness a very different approach to say, a Californian. Regional differences can sometimes be very acute. Photo by Anelale Nájera on Unsplash

AMERICAN BUSINESS CULTURE, PRACTICES & ETIQUETTE

New to the USA? Working with Americans? Visiting the USA on business?

If you're looking for expert guidance on how to navigate the business culture, click here to learn more about our customized webinars .

What to wear

• Dress code depends on where in the USA you are doing business. The weather and local culture will determine what is appropriate or not.
• In general, people in the East dress more formally, while people in the West are known for being a bit more casual.
• It is best to always dress conservatively until it is clear what the accepted dress code is.
• Men should wear shirts with suits and shoes. Ties are generally worn but not in all States. Colours should be traditional such as black, blue, grey, etc.
• Women should wear modestly with not too much make-up or jewellery.  Low-cut blouses, short skirts and tight clothing are not appropriate.
• ‘Casual Friday’ is common in many companies. High technology companies often wear casual clothes every day.    
• Most Americans move to a first name basis pretty quickly.
• Always start by addressing people using Mr/Mrs/Miss + surname until you are invited to call them otherwise.
• Some, such as Doctors, will use their professional titles.

Business cards

• Americans have no etiquette when it comes to giving and receiving business cards.
• They are swapped with no fanfare.
• It is quite common for the recipient to put your card in their wallet, which may then go in the back pocket of their trousers. This is not an insult.

Depending on where you're doing business, and who with, the USA can be really informal as well as very formal. If you're new to the country, always err on the side of caution and avoid being too casual. Photo by Jeremy McGilvrey on Unsplash

• Arrive on time for meetings since time and punctuality are so important to Americans.
• In the Northeast and Midwest, people are extremely punctual and view it as a sign of disrespect for someone to be late for a meeting or appointment.
• In the Southern and Western states, people may be a little more relaxed, but to be safe, always arrive on time, although you may have to wait a little before your meeting begins.
• Meetings may appear relaxed, but they are taken quite seriously. If there is an agenda, it will be followed.
• At the conclusion of the meeting, there will be a summary of what was decided, a list of who will implement which facets and a list of the next steps to be taken and by whom.
• If you make a presentation, it should be direct and to the point. Visual aids should further enhance your case.
• Use statistics to back up your claims, since Americans are impressed by hard data and evidence.
• With the emphasis on controlling time, business is conducted rapidly.
• Expect very little small talk before getting down to business. It is common to attempt to reach an oral agreement at the first meeting.
• The emphasis is on getting a contract signed rather than building a relationship. The relationship may develop once the first contract has been signed.

Do you have to email clients or colleagues in the USA?

Click here to learn about the Dos and Dont's of Email Etiquette in the USA .

Negotiating

• Final decisions are usually made from the top down although group consensus is valued.
• Hard selling tactics are used from time to time.
• The deal at hand is always more important than then personal relationship.
• Americans sometimes start negotiations with excessive demands or a low price.  They are usually taking a starting position that gives them room to bargain.
• Negotiations may seem rushed – always  remember that "time is money" to Americans.
• Read more about the Negotiation Style in the USA .
• In the U.S.A, there is a sense that all people in the organization have an important role to play and all are valued for their input.
• Employees expect to be consulted on decisions that affect them and the greater good of the organization.
• American managers are viewed as facilitators--people who help employees do their best work--and not simply decision makers.
• Missing a deadline is a sign of poor management and inefficiency.
• Read more about USA Management Culture.

Quiz: Test Your Knowledge of the USA!

Take the Culture Vulture's Quiz on the USA and see how much you have learnt about the country, its people and culture.

If you can score above 80% then you know your stuff!

Go on, test yourself!

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34 New House, 67-68 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8JY, UK. 1950 W. Corporate Way PMB 25615, Anaheim, CA 92801, USA. +44 0330 027 0207 or +1 (818) 532-6908

34 New House, 67-68 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8JY, UK. 1950 W. Corporate Way PMB 25615, Anaheim, CA 92801, USA. +44 0330 027 0207 +1 (818) 532-6908

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Social Studies Subject for Elementary - 5th Grade: Geography of the United States

Social studies subject for elementary - 5th grade: geography of the united states presentation, free google slides theme and powerpoint template.

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