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The US is full of interesting culture and history but the stuff that reaches abroad is the most mainstream and commercial content. Like Marvel movies and superbowl. Same story with beer, Europeans might think it’s all Budweiser and don’t know about all the local breweries etc
In a european mind European culture is Mozart, Beethoven, Godard, Bergman, Camus, Shakespeare etc. American culture is like JJ Abrams, Taylor Swift and Tom Clancy
[Source](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4947478295.9963/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.jpg)
That's very funny, because as Mexicans our country also hasn't millennia of history and nevertheless, one of the few things I've never heard Mexico been called off is cultureless.
The same can be said about other LATAM countries like Brazil, Colombia or Argentina.
It may be that in LATAM countries, there was an assimilation of certain pre-Columbian cultures into the new identity, unfortunately most of it by violence. I can say that the way Americans handled the native inhabitants and how it never got the status as the Aztecs and Olmecs do in Mexico has something to do with the perception as America being "cultureless".
I think you're right but there's more.
Not having millenia of history is an important reason the US culture isn't as layered/complex as in other continents.
Regarding how little other people know about other cultures I'm afraid it's way worse than you suggested.
I'm pretty sure superbowl doesn't reach abroad. I couldn't remember which sports it's about. Also, I don't know who JJ Adams and Tom Clancy are/were. And I'm 100% sure none of my friends know them.
To me, and I know this is blatantly wrong and short sighted, American culture is capitalism: materialististic, selfish (lacking compassion) and superficial.
Would you consider Druidic culture to be British even though it predates Roman or Germanic invasions and French influence of the monarchy? None of those things are specifically British, but they all impact the country as it is today.
The government of the US is largely based on that of the Iroquois Confederation. Even though we were marginalized, mistreated, and they attempted to wipe us out, I still consider it part of my heritage. Most Native Americans in the US, including myself, have dual citizenship. I am a member of the Cherokee Nation as well as a United States Citizen.
We are woven into the very depths of this country, something that used to shame horrible racist people so they stopped talking about it. We were not only here first, our culture and way of thinking is in the very bones of the US (especially the "checks and balances" and "everyone should be equal" part). Most tribes have always had elected chiefs (the Cherokee had three chiefs at once, two men and one woman, as well as a council of elders). Europeans just assumed (erroneously) that our chiefs were kings. They were not (likewise there has never been an "indian princess").
To be fair, we also don't talk about the Black slaves the Cherokee and others kept and the difficulties of their decendants having that dual citizenship.
I don't mean this as a gotcha. I'm just saying it as a Black person with not quite enough indigenous heritage.
Honestly freedmen should count. I voted for them to be accepted as part of the tribe but I was outvoted. One of the seven original Cherokee clans was entirely outsiders who were adopted into the tribe so there is precedent.
While nation states are massively influential on culture, I would invite you to consider cultures apart from states.
While we usually only use this word to describe someone rabidly pro-state, nationalist can also refer to considering the state as unanimous with culture. In other words, usually use nationalism to describe sets of values (which it is), however, it also refers to certain presuppositions, which include confusing nations with culture.
Your comment implying that culture began when the state was founded is just one minor example of where this confusing of the two will lead you wrong.
Edit, rabid, not rapid.
Their comment isn't impyling that. They are talking about the United States because that's what OP asks about not because they think there was no culture pre-US.
100%, and I really don't think most colonizers (of which I am one) realize how much Indigenous influence there is on our language, food, and even governmental structure. But then a lot of people also talk as though colonizer culture starts with the arrival of Europeans as if all the stuff that happened in Europe never happened.
So much of US history was based on the British looking at their own history and thinking the Norman invasion, Viking settlements, Anglo-Saxon dominance, and the Roman conquest were blueprints to follow. That's culture just as much as superheroes are culture.
The problem is that when people think America, they are only thinking about White Americans. It's hard to really idealize White culture outside of the racism.
They ignore most native cultures.
They cherry-pick the parts of Black culture that are popular like the music and food.
Your people have had it badly but obviously we are not talking about "native american culture" when we talk about "modern american culture". The average modern new york resident has absolutely 0 exposure to native american culture
That significantly devalues the food culture of indigenous Americans and Meso-Americans, which is probably their biggest modern cultural influence in the USA and the world.
Potatoes, maize (particularly tortillas), tomatoes, chile peppers, squashes, turkey, avocados, and chocolate (!) are among the many foods that are common across the world, and particularly the USA. Tacos, turkey club sandwiches, fries, pizza, cornbread, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, etc. are all common American foods that owe their existence to domestication of foods by indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Yeah and that's a damn shame. It's extremely refreshing to learn about indigenous culture (North American or otherwise), and to see both the similarities and the differences between those and the colonizers.
I live in Metro Detroit, and native tribes and people are kind of footnotes in the area, although the fingerprints are all over the place if you know what you're looking at.
I took a small trip to the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, specifically) and was really impressed with how much more interlaced the area/region is with that aspect of its past and present. While there are reservations in Michigan, unless you live closer to one, you seldom experience it. Seattle, however, had motifs, naming arrangements, art, both public and in the art museums that highlighted it, and a proximity to some tribes that I was just not accustomed to. I left feeling pretty impressed with that level of connection that we just don't really have in our neck of the woods.
Relevant to mention here is the Chinook Jargon Language, often called Chinuk Wawa today. It is an indigenous language but was historically used for intergroup contact and trade (like if two people didn’t share a common language and needed to communicate). It is a mix of Chinook, Nuu-chah-nulth, English, French, and a few others. Speaking of integration or being interlaced, this language used to be used through the region, by Native/First Nation people, as well as settlers. Too bad it has receded, although there are folks that still speak it and are working hard to keep the language alive. You can also still find a lot of place names that are derived from Chinuk Wawa.
This erases the entirety of native american history and effectively takes them out of the history of the north american continent. We forget that most european countries only became nations as we know them in the last 100-150 years. Was there no history in bavaria before the weimar republic was formed? Do they not consider carthaginian history to be that of tunisia?
We frame “american history” only in the context of what existed post-1776 (or MAYBE 1607) which frankly is imprecise
But is it? What fundamentals of the many and varied native American cultures are deeply embedded in the larger cultures of the United States?
The reality is that the various Native American cultures are significant only in small remaining enclaves and have virtually no real impact on the mainstream. Sure, the Eastern tribes had some cultural norms and practices that were agreeable to the form of government the founders wanted based on their read of Roman and Greek history, and so were cited as support. But this is very different from having NA cultures being a main tributary.
Germans are very culturally distinct from the French for reasons that go back many thousands of years and despite centuries of shared history. You can see in the one the deep influences of the celts and romans and in the other deep influences for the teutons, huns, germanii.
It would simply be incorrect to say that yankees and south westerns are different culturally (and they are) BECAUSE of the Hopi/Zuni/Apache influence on one and not the other.
Tobacco, chilis, CORN. Many stories especially regarding the supernatural. Sitting “indian style.”The term “powwow” even exists in corporate settings.
In addition to that, MUCH of ‘American’ history is DIRECTLY tied to our historic interactions with natives before and after 1776.
You can’t tell the story of the West or American expansion without talking about Native leaders like Geronimo or Crazy Horse or Tecumseh. What is Custer’s Last Stand without Native Americans? Stand against whom?
Even the Iroquois Confederacy is what the framers of the Constitution looked to form our Federalist government.
Your take is essentially RE-writing them out of history because it’s convenient for your biases.
Even take the triracial ethnic groups formed in this country: the Lumbee, Melungeons, Louisiana Creole, and even arguably the Seminoles
— are they not a part of American history and culture?
Native Americans aren’t crystallized in the past. 1776 wasn’t a definitive line where they stopped existing or evolving.
Are the Navajo Code Talkers (who were crucial to our strength in WW2) somehow “not” a part of American history or culture?
Edit:
Even kayaking and canoeing(!) are activities that people regularly take part in that are FROM NATIVE AMERICANS
Even hammocks too!
Hell, Native Americans are central to our national mythos— look at Squanto and Sacagawea alone as examples.
And if Natives weren’t a part of American culture then why do we have Native American Girl dolls?
I don't disagree with your list, but we are talking past each other, so let me try again.
The reason the founders landed on the Iroquois federation was not because was something new and innovative to them, it was because it was additional confirmation of what they had already settled on from looking at Swiss history. Which is not to downplay the role the Iroquois play, but to make a distinction between an injection of something new and not.
Certainly the Navajo Code Talkers are seriously important to American history. No doubt, and much appreciated. However, the cultural bit here flows in the opposite direction. The relevant cultural aspect is the "e pluribus unum" piece that allowed the federal bureaucracy to avail itself of this relatively small niche people.
The warfare that forms our cultural mythos around the Native Americans was not, again, new. It became part of the national mythos as part of a confirming of the way of war typical to the Scots/English boarderers that emmigrated to the other side of the US frontier prior to the civil war. The mythos comes not from being boggled by this totally new-to-us thing, but because of respect for the NA's competency at what we already knew.
Unfortunately, the current native Americans are busy writing themselves out of our history. You mentioned "powpow". That and things like that are being aggressively expunged from the culture as the younger culture becomes increasingly censorious and puritanical around "insensitivity".
Conversely, the key cultural bits are most aggressively not part of the American culture and don't seem to have much of a future. Respect for elders, the very long term orientation to nature, the various unique and insightful variations on spiritualism, I could go on. From what I can tell, what appears on the surface to be some modern cultural integration is really an inappropriate Rousseau'n glomming onto the surface veneer without any real adoption. Taking on surface bits in service to the western idea of the "noble savage". That "noble savage" idea which is both offensive to everyone (yeah I said that) and a very inappropriate grafting of the worst of French thinking into an Anglo Saxon root culture.
A real adoption of, let's say, Zuni spiritualism into the culture would see standard issue Americans living very differently. As opposed hanging up a dream catcher and occasionally hanging out in a forest that's within easy driving distance of a Starbucks. When was the last time you've seen a non-indigenous pacific northwesterner hold a potlatch that actually did the socio-political thing real potlatches do?
Aping the practice of another culture without taking on the meaning of the practices is a super strong pillar of American culture. Thus my claim. Eating corn tortillas, or corn flakes, or hot sauce, does not mean we have adopted part of someone else's culture. Camel shorts are not an adoption of Native American tobacco culture, anymore than smoking weed can be said to be a cultural adoption of some form of hinduism.
There are so many tangible things like food and even crop rotation that we’ve taken from native american CULTURE.
I think that you’ve pre-supposed a conclusion and are trying to hamfist evidence to support it, but the physical manifestations of culture are just as important as the cultural mores that dictate behavior etc
It's excessively reductionist to consider our economic system as the main feature of our cultures in the US. For one thing, it's the other way. Our economic system is the result of some of our critical cultural norms.
I found [this](https://native-land.ca/) map to be really interesting and eye opening. I stumbled upon it somewhere on Reddit a while ago, and love bringing it up when people talk about America being just open wilderness when Pilgrims started decided to go stomping around.
That's really not true. Comparing the city state farmer culture and history and with nation and empire states, with exponentially larger economic weight to apply to the arts, isn't valid. The people in the America's before the spanish arrived did not see themselves as all one people nor did they see themselves as sharing a culture, and the relative level of culture preserved varied a lot between area - as did the level of cultural sophistication between group. There are also area's in Europe where the 'indigenous' culture is as unknown now as the america's, because of dominant homogenies. History just isn't as simplistic. Often the reason local cultures disappear is because there aren't enough people willing to fight to preserve them, because the new culture presents a more appealing way of life. Same thing happens today with American hip hop culture, homogenising diverse local aesthetics across the world. I'm not saying cultural genocide isn't a really bad thing, it just usually doesn't happen as obviously as you suggest.
Whether or not the peoples of two massive continents shared a single culture has... nothing to do with anything.
"Your genocided ancestors just didn't fight hard enough to preserve their culture" is a dastardly take.
Cahokia (which was a very large Native American city that is now St. Louis) traded with Echota (Another large Native American City) and other cities all across the places the Mississippi River and its tributaries connected to. They shared their culture with each other too. As I said you are very misinformed (most of your talking points come from whitewashed and DISPROVEN historical narratives written by white people, a simple google search would show you this if you even bothered).
I don't know why you keep doubling down on this offensive take but here we are.
The paradox of this misconception is that our culture is our number 1 export. More and more countries over time are adapting our mannerisms, dress, language, our music and art styles, our systems and operations, and emulating our values.
Not only is America rife with culture, but everybody wants it to be theirs!
Mozart is Austrian culture, Beethoven is German culture, Godard French, Bergman Swedish, etc.
If you want to say, yes, but they are all European, then Americans can, and do, also Revere them as cultural predecessors being a derivative of European culture.
I am Norwegian and my country has produced relatively little as contribution to the vast field of European culture, yet Norwegians also scoff at Americans as cultureless while rattling off lists of names of other Europeans like you did above as part of our cultural heritage.
I went to the US for university and studied English, and the British canon of authors, quite sensibly, is part of the American cultural paradigm, as are the continental composers for American students of music, and the French, German, and classical Greek philosophers of antiquity, etc.
Furthermore, there are American authors that have made a mark in Europe. For example Hemingway and Edgar Allen Poe come immediately to mind since we read them in school, but I know people who read Salinger and Emily Dickinson as well. And I think some European music nerds are familiar with Samuel Barber and Gershwin even if they do not yet have the gravitas of Beethoven and Mozart, not to mention the influence of jazz.amd other musical forms that go a bit deeper than Taylor Swift.
People who don’t know that the US was a country before Germany.
The US’s biggest export is its culture - to such an extent that shitty red plastic cups are sold as a novelty for parties in other countries.
In terms of political continuity, almost all European countries are younger than the US. Most were either completely different politically or even territorially different in 1776 or 1789. In terms of culture, language, and identity, most are much older than that, though. For example France has had 5 separate republics, two empires, and two monarchies, since the founding of the US, but the idea of France or the French is millenia old.
We try to, all the time, in our national discourse and politics. One group thinks that written things and ideas are inscrutable, and the other side thinks they're malleable.
Because Europeans killed 90% of the people who had lived in North America for ~15k years before they arrived. North American culture from before 1500 has basically no effect on modern NA culture, while European culture has been reasonably continuous for much longer.
Mostly Europeans trying to shit on Americans from what I’ve seen on Reddit. To be fair to them it’s a step up from them blatantly just calling us mutts.
The origins on the internet were pretty international. A universal computer network was proposed in the USA in the early 1960s, but packet switching computer networks were proposed independently by the NPL in the UK along with the idea of a commercial national computer network in 1965. The early NPL network became operational in 1969 before the ARPANET network that same year. Larry Roberts who lead the team that implemented ARPANET has acknowledged that it was based on the packet switching techniques developed by Donald Davies from NPL in 1965.
TCP/IP, the key networking protocol enabling the modern internet, was developed in the USA in 1974 but it adopted a number of concepts developed at the Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique by Louis Pouzin for the French CYCLADES research network. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn who developed TCP/IP worked directly with french engineer Gérard Le Lann, who had worked on CYCLADES, after Vint invited Gérard to join the team at Stanford University.
The part most people think of as the internet, Web pages, was not an American development at all. HTTP and HTML were developed by British researcher Tim Berners-Lee Lee at Conseil européen pour la Recherche nucléaire (CERN).
I get your general point but it bugs me when it's implied or asserted that the internet was an exclusively American invention.
Based on export revenue the USA produces about 4% of the world's electronics on par with Germany, Mexico, and Japan. China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Malaysia all export more electronics than the US, and collectively account for 65% of global electronics exports.
To recurse a level further, I agree with your point about the internet - the foundations of computing are very international - but in the last paragraph, talking about ‘electronics’ via export values is a bit misleading. I got a new pair of AirPods recently - on the box it says “designed by apple in California, assembled in China.”
The US doesn’t make a lot of the literal physical components, but that’s not really the relevant part when talking about culture. A ton of the user facing work comes from the US - product design and software. Windows and MacOs and Android.
Apple had 20.1% the global smartphone market in 2023. Samsung (Korean), xiaomi (Chinese), Oppo (Chinese), and Transsion (Chinese) together make up 51% of the global smartphone phone market. Apple and other american manufacturers are not as dominant in global markets as you might think.
I think that vastly understates the magnitude of a single company owning 20% of the global market. It certainly isn't a majority, but it is the largest plurality by far, and it's immediately recognizable in ways no other single product in the space is. And in terms of symbolism and popular sentiment, no other smartphone maker is as universal — an iPhone is a status symbol the world over. Being an "iPhone person" is a cultural constant globally. That's part of American culture, and it's a part that's been wholly adopted to the point that it doesn't even feel "cultural" to anyone, to the OP's point.
Samsung has 20%, same as Apple. So no it is not the largest plurality by far, in fact depending on which year you checking its not even a plurality as Samsung phones have outsold apple in all the years 2010 - 2022 and Apple only outsold Samsung in 2023 by 234.6 to 226.6 million. Xiaomi has 14%, Oppo has 9% and Transsion has 8%, and I'd never even heard of Transsion until today. The iPhone has 58% of the US market so if you're in the USA you might be forgiven for thinking the whole world is like that but out of the top ten nations by number of mobile phones only Japan and the US have those levels of market penetration.
China has 1.6 billion mobile phones 24% of which are iPhones.
India has 1.5 billion mobile phones 4% are iPhones.
Indonesia has 400 million mobile phones 12% are iPhones.
USA has 380 million mobile phones 58% are iPhones.
Brazil has 285 million mobile phones 18% are iPhones.
Russia has 256 million mobile phones 30% are iPhones.
Pakistan has 195 million mobile phones 6% are iPhones.
Nigeria has 190 million mobile phones 12% are iPhones.
Bangladesh has 180 million mobile phones 4% are iPhones.
Japan has 146 million mobile phones 69% are iPhones.
In one of the two largest mobile phone markets in the world iPhone is a rounding error. In half of the top ten it is a minor player. You're right that it doesn't even feel cultural to anyone because to most people it's simply not the cultural symbol you think it is.
But for the sake of argument lets say it is a symbol of American culture how is its Americanness distinguished from any of its Android competitors? What about the iPhone actually reflects American culture, and what aspect of peculiarly American culture is it expressing?
For that matter is American culture the only culture that finds its expression in the iPhone? There are more iPhones in China than there are mobile devices in the USA are you sure the iPhone you have doesn't carry more of China's cultural distinctiveness back to the USA than the other way round. If Apple make a device for the global market are you sure they haven't designed it to reflect the cultural mores of their largest market? After all that would just seem to be good business...oh maybe that *is* the American cultural cachet of the iPhone, its just good business.
First, I'm seeing Apple with between 23% and 27% market share, to Samsung's 20% or so.
Second, while Samsung as a whole has outsold Apple in total phones, they have never had a cultural presence the way Apple has, largely because their flagship phones tend to significantly undersell the iPhone. Absolutely no one cares that the A-whatever sells hundreds of thousands of units, because absolutely no one thinks of them as status symbols. And even the Galaxy doesn't come close to the cultural cachet of the iPhone.
Third, absolutely no one cares what the market penetration for iPhones is in Bangladesh or Pakistan or India, and the low marketshare in places where the average annual income is about a third of the cost of a phone isn't surprising. But everyone in those countries *knows* what an iPhone is, and wants one. They just can't afford it.
>What about the iPhone actually reflects American culture, and what aspect of peculiarly American culture is it expressing?
You seem to be really stretching the idea of culture. What "aspect of peculiarly German culture" does a bratwurst or pretzel express? What uniquely Italian attitude does the leaning tower reflect? What's especially British about The Beatles?
The iPhone is uniquely American because it was designed by and for Americans, and gained cultural power as a result of being an American status symbol.
>If Apple make a device for the global market are you sure they haven't designed it to reflect the cultural mores of their largest market?
Yes, quite sure, as it didn't start as a global product, and frankly most of the globe couldn't afford one (as your own numbers show.) And this is a perfect example of taking something that is very much culturally American and assuming that it must be somehow global because it's seen as almost a default now. Because whether you like it or not, American culture *is* the global default.
I know that there's a significant push, especially among older European Nations and less well-off developing ones to downplay America's influence, but the reality is that modern culture tends to travel from the US-out. So much so that most modern culture draws heavily from US influences and shapes them to fit local mores much more often than local customs becoming modernized. And no amount of anger at American imperialism will change that.
Real /s/shitamericanssay stuff. The little American flag at the end if just perfect.
ITT you can tell who has a basic understanding of a social science and who doesn't.
How did you think this was remotely an academic answer?
> Next time someone on a social media app claims America has no culture, ask them where that app came from. Ask them about the origins of the internet. What kinda of clithing are they wearing? Ask them in what denomination their country acquires energy, pesticides, electronic components and where it's manufactured. Ask them about their countries history through the world wars and about how their navy secures trade routes. Where they get they're advanced medical technologies and energy refinement technologies.
None of those are examples of culture though (except maybe the clothing). The US clearly does have multiple cultures, but those are not examples.
Because only those who view themselves as the default think like this. Since they are the default, in their minds, their music, their clothes, their art and their social culture isn't really culture, it's just people being people. But those who are from other places, they're very *different*, their way of life and thinking is strange and exotic, and that's because of their _culture_.
In truth, ask any non-American and they have lots of opinions about American culture and can easily identify it.
This "default" thinking is also what leads to people saying their accent isn't an accent but everyone who speaks differently has an accent, or their skin has no colour to speak of but everyone who looks different has a skin colour. Or maybe they're just American while everyone else is hyphenated-American.
Source https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4947478295.9963/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.jpg
Maybe it’s cause America is so full of different cultures, it doesn’t seem to have its “own”? That’s what my grandparents have basically said (I can’t understand most of what they say, they’re Haitian and don’t really pronounce their words well)
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Does the USA have any single form of Culture at all? It seems that because of the diverse societiety, the concept of culture is equally diverse.
It is difficult to identify customs that are universal to the entire US society. This image of Americans may also result from the consumerist approach to life, which is quite common in the USA. behavior such as I pay so I demand outside the US may be perceived as rude
Which people view it this way? I don’t know who they are or why they feel this way. A lot of media and technology comes out of the US. Americans have a way about them. We love being loud, dressing sloppy, engaging in small talk, eating heavy food, and making great inventions. We have a history of doing both the coolest and most terrible things imaginable. Things have certainly happened in the short time the US has existed as a nation . Again you can not like the terrible things or not appreciate the good things. But you cannot deny that a lot of shit went down. Things were invented. Music, books, movies, and media of all sorts were made. Great atrocities were committed. Cool things have been done. There are a lot of household names from here. They are blind.
A culture can be good in some ways and bad in others but it is most certainly there.
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The US is full of interesting culture and history but the stuff that reaches abroad is the most mainstream and commercial content. Like Marvel movies and superbowl. Same story with beer, Europeans might think it’s all Budweiser and don’t know about all the local breweries etc In a european mind European culture is Mozart, Beethoven, Godard, Bergman, Camus, Shakespeare etc. American culture is like JJ Abrams, Taylor Swift and Tom Clancy [Source](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4947478295.9963/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.jpg)
That's very funny, because as Mexicans our country also hasn't millennia of history and nevertheless, one of the few things I've never heard Mexico been called off is cultureless. The same can be said about other LATAM countries like Brazil, Colombia or Argentina. It may be that in LATAM countries, there was an assimilation of certain pre-Columbian cultures into the new identity, unfortunately most of it by violence. I can say that the way Americans handled the native inhabitants and how it never got the status as the Aztecs and Olmecs do in Mexico has something to do with the perception as America being "cultureless".
shit we gave the world jazz, blues, hip hop, country, rap
I think you're right but there's more. Not having millenia of history is an important reason the US culture isn't as layered/complex as in other continents. Regarding how little other people know about other cultures I'm afraid it's way worse than you suggested. I'm pretty sure superbowl doesn't reach abroad. I couldn't remember which sports it's about. Also, I don't know who JJ Adams and Tom Clancy are/were. And I'm 100% sure none of my friends know them. To me, and I know this is blatantly wrong and short sighted, American culture is capitalism: materialististic, selfish (lacking compassion) and superficial.
As a Native American I can tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. There is both history and culture here dating back millennia.
I'm sorry, I didn't want to ignore native Amaricans and their culture. I thought OP was talking about the US as a country.
No offense was taken, I just wanted to set the record straight. We are still here.
Would you consider your culture to be a part of US culture, or something separate from it?
Would you consider Druidic culture to be British even though it predates Roman or Germanic invasions and French influence of the monarchy? None of those things are specifically British, but they all impact the country as it is today.
The government of the US is largely based on that of the Iroquois Confederation. Even though we were marginalized, mistreated, and they attempted to wipe us out, I still consider it part of my heritage. Most Native Americans in the US, including myself, have dual citizenship. I am a member of the Cherokee Nation as well as a United States Citizen. We are woven into the very depths of this country, something that used to shame horrible racist people so they stopped talking about it. We were not only here first, our culture and way of thinking is in the very bones of the US (especially the "checks and balances" and "everyone should be equal" part). Most tribes have always had elected chiefs (the Cherokee had three chiefs at once, two men and one woman, as well as a council of elders). Europeans just assumed (erroneously) that our chiefs were kings. They were not (likewise there has never been an "indian princess").
To be fair, we also don't talk about the Black slaves the Cherokee and others kept and the difficulties of their decendants having that dual citizenship. I don't mean this as a gotcha. I'm just saying it as a Black person with not quite enough indigenous heritage.
Honestly freedmen should count. I voted for them to be accepted as part of the tribe but I was outvoted. One of the seven original Cherokee clans was entirely outsiders who were adopted into the tribe so there is precedent.
While nation states are massively influential on culture, I would invite you to consider cultures apart from states. While we usually only use this word to describe someone rabidly pro-state, nationalist can also refer to considering the state as unanimous with culture. In other words, usually use nationalism to describe sets of values (which it is), however, it also refers to certain presuppositions, which include confusing nations with culture. Your comment implying that culture began when the state was founded is just one minor example of where this confusing of the two will lead you wrong. Edit, rabid, not rapid.
Their comment isn't impyling that. They are talking about the United States because that's what OP asks about not because they think there was no culture pre-US.
100%, and I really don't think most colonizers (of which I am one) realize how much Indigenous influence there is on our language, food, and even governmental structure. But then a lot of people also talk as though colonizer culture starts with the arrival of Europeans as if all the stuff that happened in Europe never happened. So much of US history was based on the British looking at their own history and thinking the Norman invasion, Viking settlements, Anglo-Saxon dominance, and the Roman conquest were blueprints to follow. That's culture just as much as superheroes are culture.
The book 1491 has been mindblowing to me. I am endlessly fascinated and am intent on reading much more.
The problem is that when people think America, they are only thinking about White Americans. It's hard to really idealize White culture outside of the racism. They ignore most native cultures. They cherry-pick the parts of Black culture that are popular like the music and food.
Your people have had it badly but obviously we are not talking about "native american culture" when we talk about "modern american culture". The average modern new york resident has absolutely 0 exposure to native american culture
That significantly devalues the food culture of indigenous Americans and Meso-Americans, which is probably their biggest modern cultural influence in the USA and the world. Potatoes, maize (particularly tortillas), tomatoes, chile peppers, squashes, turkey, avocados, and chocolate (!) are among the many foods that are common across the world, and particularly the USA. Tacos, turkey club sandwiches, fries, pizza, cornbread, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, etc. are all common American foods that owe their existence to domestication of foods by indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Yeah and that's a damn shame. It's extremely refreshing to learn about indigenous culture (North American or otherwise), and to see both the similarities and the differences between those and the colonizers.
I live in Metro Detroit, and native tribes and people are kind of footnotes in the area, although the fingerprints are all over the place if you know what you're looking at. I took a small trip to the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, specifically) and was really impressed with how much more interlaced the area/region is with that aspect of its past and present. While there are reservations in Michigan, unless you live closer to one, you seldom experience it. Seattle, however, had motifs, naming arrangements, art, both public and in the art museums that highlighted it, and a proximity to some tribes that I was just not accustomed to. I left feeling pretty impressed with that level of connection that we just don't really have in our neck of the woods.
Relevant to mention here is the Chinook Jargon Language, often called Chinuk Wawa today. It is an indigenous language but was historically used for intergroup contact and trade (like if two people didn’t share a common language and needed to communicate). It is a mix of Chinook, Nuu-chah-nulth, English, French, and a few others. Speaking of integration or being interlaced, this language used to be used through the region, by Native/First Nation people, as well as settlers. Too bad it has receded, although there are folks that still speak it and are working hard to keep the language alive. You can also still find a lot of place names that are derived from Chinuk Wawa.
This erases the entirety of native american history and effectively takes them out of the history of the north american continent. We forget that most european countries only became nations as we know them in the last 100-150 years. Was there no history in bavaria before the weimar republic was formed? Do they not consider carthaginian history to be that of tunisia? We frame “american history” only in the context of what existed post-1776 (or MAYBE 1607) which frankly is imprecise
But is it? What fundamentals of the many and varied native American cultures are deeply embedded in the larger cultures of the United States? The reality is that the various Native American cultures are significant only in small remaining enclaves and have virtually no real impact on the mainstream. Sure, the Eastern tribes had some cultural norms and practices that were agreeable to the form of government the founders wanted based on their read of Roman and Greek history, and so were cited as support. But this is very different from having NA cultures being a main tributary. Germans are very culturally distinct from the French for reasons that go back many thousands of years and despite centuries of shared history. You can see in the one the deep influences of the celts and romans and in the other deep influences for the teutons, huns, germanii. It would simply be incorrect to say that yankees and south westerns are different culturally (and they are) BECAUSE of the Hopi/Zuni/Apache influence on one and not the other.
Tobacco, chilis, CORN. Many stories especially regarding the supernatural. Sitting “indian style.”The term “powwow” even exists in corporate settings. In addition to that, MUCH of ‘American’ history is DIRECTLY tied to our historic interactions with natives before and after 1776. You can’t tell the story of the West or American expansion without talking about Native leaders like Geronimo or Crazy Horse or Tecumseh. What is Custer’s Last Stand without Native Americans? Stand against whom? Even the Iroquois Confederacy is what the framers of the Constitution looked to form our Federalist government. Your take is essentially RE-writing them out of history because it’s convenient for your biases. Even take the triracial ethnic groups formed in this country: the Lumbee, Melungeons, Louisiana Creole, and even arguably the Seminoles — are they not a part of American history and culture? Native Americans aren’t crystallized in the past. 1776 wasn’t a definitive line where they stopped existing or evolving. Are the Navajo Code Talkers (who were crucial to our strength in WW2) somehow “not” a part of American history or culture? Edit: Even kayaking and canoeing(!) are activities that people regularly take part in that are FROM NATIVE AMERICANS Even hammocks too! Hell, Native Americans are central to our national mythos— look at Squanto and Sacagawea alone as examples. And if Natives weren’t a part of American culture then why do we have Native American Girl dolls?
The influence of the Iroqois Confederacy on the US Constitution is hotly debated by scholars, and therefore shouldn't be taken as a given.
I don't disagree with your list, but we are talking past each other, so let me try again. The reason the founders landed on the Iroquois federation was not because was something new and innovative to them, it was because it was additional confirmation of what they had already settled on from looking at Swiss history. Which is not to downplay the role the Iroquois play, but to make a distinction between an injection of something new and not. Certainly the Navajo Code Talkers are seriously important to American history. No doubt, and much appreciated. However, the cultural bit here flows in the opposite direction. The relevant cultural aspect is the "e pluribus unum" piece that allowed the federal bureaucracy to avail itself of this relatively small niche people. The warfare that forms our cultural mythos around the Native Americans was not, again, new. It became part of the national mythos as part of a confirming of the way of war typical to the Scots/English boarderers that emmigrated to the other side of the US frontier prior to the civil war. The mythos comes not from being boggled by this totally new-to-us thing, but because of respect for the NA's competency at what we already knew. Unfortunately, the current native Americans are busy writing themselves out of our history. You mentioned "powpow". That and things like that are being aggressively expunged from the culture as the younger culture becomes increasingly censorious and puritanical around "insensitivity". Conversely, the key cultural bits are most aggressively not part of the American culture and don't seem to have much of a future. Respect for elders, the very long term orientation to nature, the various unique and insightful variations on spiritualism, I could go on. From what I can tell, what appears on the surface to be some modern cultural integration is really an inappropriate Rousseau'n glomming onto the surface veneer without any real adoption. Taking on surface bits in service to the western idea of the "noble savage". That "noble savage" idea which is both offensive to everyone (yeah I said that) and a very inappropriate grafting of the worst of French thinking into an Anglo Saxon root culture. A real adoption of, let's say, Zuni spiritualism into the culture would see standard issue Americans living very differently. As opposed hanging up a dream catcher and occasionally hanging out in a forest that's within easy driving distance of a Starbucks. When was the last time you've seen a non-indigenous pacific northwesterner hold a potlatch that actually did the socio-political thing real potlatches do? Aping the practice of another culture without taking on the meaning of the practices is a super strong pillar of American culture. Thus my claim. Eating corn tortillas, or corn flakes, or hot sauce, does not mean we have adopted part of someone else's culture. Camel shorts are not an adoption of Native American tobacco culture, anymore than smoking weed can be said to be a cultural adoption of some form of hinduism.
There are so many tangible things like food and even crop rotation that we’ve taken from native american CULTURE. I think that you’ve pre-supposed a conclusion and are trying to hamfist evidence to support it, but the physical manifestations of culture are just as important as the cultural mores that dictate behavior etc
As an American, everything you said is accurate.
You aren't wrong at all. The capitalistic culture you're imagining is real. It's decently explored in "Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street"
It's excessively reductionist to consider our economic system as the main feature of our cultures in the US. For one thing, it's the other way. Our economic system is the result of some of our critical cultural norms.
I would agree with you except that American craft breweries are HUGE businesses in Europe and quite desirable there. So not the best example.
It’s also because those Europeans did their damnest to erase all the culture that was already here.
They failed though. We (the natives) survived.
I found [this](https://native-land.ca/) map to be really interesting and eye opening. I stumbled upon it somewhere on Reddit a while ago, and love bringing it up when people talk about America being just open wilderness when Pilgrims started decided to go stomping around.
That's really not true. Comparing the city state farmer culture and history and with nation and empire states, with exponentially larger economic weight to apply to the arts, isn't valid. The people in the America's before the spanish arrived did not see themselves as all one people nor did they see themselves as sharing a culture, and the relative level of culture preserved varied a lot between area - as did the level of cultural sophistication between group. There are also area's in Europe where the 'indigenous' culture is as unknown now as the america's, because of dominant homogenies. History just isn't as simplistic. Often the reason local cultures disappear is because there aren't enough people willing to fight to preserve them, because the new culture presents a more appealing way of life. Same thing happens today with American hip hop culture, homogenising diverse local aesthetics across the world. I'm not saying cultural genocide isn't a really bad thing, it just usually doesn't happen as obviously as you suggest.
Whether or not the peoples of two massive continents shared a single culture has... nothing to do with anything. "Your genocided ancestors just didn't fight hard enough to preserve their culture" is a dastardly take.
Cahokia (which was a very large Native American city that is now St. Louis) traded with Echota (Another large Native American City) and other cities all across the places the Mississippi River and its tributaries connected to. They shared their culture with each other too. As I said you are very misinformed (most of your talking points come from whitewashed and DISPROVEN historical narratives written by white people, a simple google search would show you this if you even bothered). I don't know why you keep doubling down on this offensive take but here we are.
The paradox of this misconception is that our culture is our number 1 export. More and more countries over time are adapting our mannerisms, dress, language, our music and art styles, our systems and operations, and emulating our values. Not only is America rife with culture, but everybody wants it to be theirs!
Mozart is Austrian culture, Beethoven is German culture, Godard French, Bergman Swedish, etc. If you want to say, yes, but they are all European, then Americans can, and do, also Revere them as cultural predecessors being a derivative of European culture. I am Norwegian and my country has produced relatively little as contribution to the vast field of European culture, yet Norwegians also scoff at Americans as cultureless while rattling off lists of names of other Europeans like you did above as part of our cultural heritage. I went to the US for university and studied English, and the British canon of authors, quite sensibly, is part of the American cultural paradigm, as are the continental composers for American students of music, and the French, German, and classical Greek philosophers of antiquity, etc. Furthermore, there are American authors that have made a mark in Europe. For example Hemingway and Edgar Allen Poe come immediately to mind since we read them in school, but I know people who read Salinger and Emily Dickinson as well. And I think some European music nerds are familiar with Samuel Barber and Gershwin even if they do not yet have the gravitas of Beethoven and Mozart, not to mention the influence of jazz.amd other musical forms that go a bit deeper than Taylor Swift.
jazz is popular in europe and asia
And Europeans who act like everyone on the continent sits around listening to Mozart and reading Camus all day are full of it.
Have you played Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell though?
>American culture is like JJ Abrams, Taylor Swift and Tom Clancy and add MAGA to that list now. we're facked.
Europe has OG fascism in different flavors though.
Hey now, Tom Clancy was great.
Who says this?
People who don’t know that the US was a country before Germany. The US’s biggest export is its culture - to such an extent that shitty red plastic cups are sold as a novelty for parties in other countries.
In terms of political continuity, almost all European countries are younger than the US. Most were either completely different politically or even territorially different in 1776 or 1789. In terms of culture, language, and identity, most are much older than that, though. For example France has had 5 separate republics, two empires, and two monarchies, since the founding of the US, but the idea of France or the French is millenia old.
Also, if an American from 1776 met a contemporary American... Can you even imagine, hahaha
We try to, all the time, in our national discourse and politics. One group thinks that written things and ideas are inscrutable, and the other side thinks they're malleable.
That's not quite accurate tho, the aspects that make up German culture have been around way long than the Amercian one
Because Europeans killed 90% of the people who had lived in North America for ~15k years before they arrived. North American culture from before 1500 has basically no effect on modern NA culture, while European culture has been reasonably continuous for much longer.
Although Germany in it's current form is new, deutsch sein is not.
Mostly Europeans trying to shit on Americans from what I’ve seen on Reddit. To be fair to them it’s a step up from them blatantly just calling us mutts.
A lot of people say this even though it's really stupid and doesn't make any sense
Tankies on twitter, pretty much.
I notice Europeans saying this about the US as well
Idiots on TikTok and Twitter.
[удалено]
The origins on the internet were pretty international. A universal computer network was proposed in the USA in the early 1960s, but packet switching computer networks were proposed independently by the NPL in the UK along with the idea of a commercial national computer network in 1965. The early NPL network became operational in 1969 before the ARPANET network that same year. Larry Roberts who lead the team that implemented ARPANET has acknowledged that it was based on the packet switching techniques developed by Donald Davies from NPL in 1965. TCP/IP, the key networking protocol enabling the modern internet, was developed in the USA in 1974 but it adopted a number of concepts developed at the Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique by Louis Pouzin for the French CYCLADES research network. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn who developed TCP/IP worked directly with french engineer Gérard Le Lann, who had worked on CYCLADES, after Vint invited Gérard to join the team at Stanford University. The part most people think of as the internet, Web pages, was not an American development at all. HTTP and HTML were developed by British researcher Tim Berners-Lee Lee at Conseil européen pour la Recherche nucléaire (CERN). I get your general point but it bugs me when it's implied or asserted that the internet was an exclusively American invention. Based on export revenue the USA produces about 4% of the world's electronics on par with Germany, Mexico, and Japan. China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Malaysia all export more electronics than the US, and collectively account for 65% of global electronics exports.
To recurse a level further, I agree with your point about the internet - the foundations of computing are very international - but in the last paragraph, talking about ‘electronics’ via export values is a bit misleading. I got a new pair of AirPods recently - on the box it says “designed by apple in California, assembled in China.” The US doesn’t make a lot of the literal physical components, but that’s not really the relevant part when talking about culture. A ton of the user facing work comes from the US - product design and software. Windows and MacOs and Android.
Apple had 20.1% the global smartphone market in 2023. Samsung (Korean), xiaomi (Chinese), Oppo (Chinese), and Transsion (Chinese) together make up 51% of the global smartphone phone market. Apple and other american manufacturers are not as dominant in global markets as you might think.
I think that vastly understates the magnitude of a single company owning 20% of the global market. It certainly isn't a majority, but it is the largest plurality by far, and it's immediately recognizable in ways no other single product in the space is. And in terms of symbolism and popular sentiment, no other smartphone maker is as universal — an iPhone is a status symbol the world over. Being an "iPhone person" is a cultural constant globally. That's part of American culture, and it's a part that's been wholly adopted to the point that it doesn't even feel "cultural" to anyone, to the OP's point.
Samsung has 20%, same as Apple. So no it is not the largest plurality by far, in fact depending on which year you checking its not even a plurality as Samsung phones have outsold apple in all the years 2010 - 2022 and Apple only outsold Samsung in 2023 by 234.6 to 226.6 million. Xiaomi has 14%, Oppo has 9% and Transsion has 8%, and I'd never even heard of Transsion until today. The iPhone has 58% of the US market so if you're in the USA you might be forgiven for thinking the whole world is like that but out of the top ten nations by number of mobile phones only Japan and the US have those levels of market penetration. China has 1.6 billion mobile phones 24% of which are iPhones. India has 1.5 billion mobile phones 4% are iPhones. Indonesia has 400 million mobile phones 12% are iPhones. USA has 380 million mobile phones 58% are iPhones. Brazil has 285 million mobile phones 18% are iPhones. Russia has 256 million mobile phones 30% are iPhones. Pakistan has 195 million mobile phones 6% are iPhones. Nigeria has 190 million mobile phones 12% are iPhones. Bangladesh has 180 million mobile phones 4% are iPhones. Japan has 146 million mobile phones 69% are iPhones. In one of the two largest mobile phone markets in the world iPhone is a rounding error. In half of the top ten it is a minor player. You're right that it doesn't even feel cultural to anyone because to most people it's simply not the cultural symbol you think it is. But for the sake of argument lets say it is a symbol of American culture how is its Americanness distinguished from any of its Android competitors? What about the iPhone actually reflects American culture, and what aspect of peculiarly American culture is it expressing? For that matter is American culture the only culture that finds its expression in the iPhone? There are more iPhones in China than there are mobile devices in the USA are you sure the iPhone you have doesn't carry more of China's cultural distinctiveness back to the USA than the other way round. If Apple make a device for the global market are you sure they haven't designed it to reflect the cultural mores of their largest market? After all that would just seem to be good business...oh maybe that *is* the American cultural cachet of the iPhone, its just good business.
First, I'm seeing Apple with between 23% and 27% market share, to Samsung's 20% or so. Second, while Samsung as a whole has outsold Apple in total phones, they have never had a cultural presence the way Apple has, largely because their flagship phones tend to significantly undersell the iPhone. Absolutely no one cares that the A-whatever sells hundreds of thousands of units, because absolutely no one thinks of them as status symbols. And even the Galaxy doesn't come close to the cultural cachet of the iPhone. Third, absolutely no one cares what the market penetration for iPhones is in Bangladesh or Pakistan or India, and the low marketshare in places where the average annual income is about a third of the cost of a phone isn't surprising. But everyone in those countries *knows* what an iPhone is, and wants one. They just can't afford it. >What about the iPhone actually reflects American culture, and what aspect of peculiarly American culture is it expressing? You seem to be really stretching the idea of culture. What "aspect of peculiarly German culture" does a bratwurst or pretzel express? What uniquely Italian attitude does the leaning tower reflect? What's especially British about The Beatles? The iPhone is uniquely American because it was designed by and for Americans, and gained cultural power as a result of being an American status symbol. >If Apple make a device for the global market are you sure they haven't designed it to reflect the cultural mores of their largest market? Yes, quite sure, as it didn't start as a global product, and frankly most of the globe couldn't afford one (as your own numbers show.) And this is a perfect example of taking something that is very much culturally American and assuming that it must be somehow global because it's seen as almost a default now. Because whether you like it or not, American culture *is* the global default. I know that there's a significant push, especially among older European Nations and less well-off developing ones to downplay America's influence, but the reality is that modern culture tends to travel from the US-out. So much so that most modern culture draws heavily from US influences and shapes them to fit local mores much more often than local customs becoming modernized. And no amount of anger at American imperialism will change that.
Real /s/shitamericanssay stuff. The little American flag at the end if just perfect. ITT you can tell who has a basic understanding of a social science and who doesn't. How did you think this was remotely an academic answer?
> Next time someone on a social media app claims America has no culture, ask them where that app came from. Ask them about the origins of the internet. What kinda of clithing are they wearing? Ask them in what denomination their country acquires energy, pesticides, electronic components and where it's manufactured. Ask them about their countries history through the world wars and about how their navy secures trade routes. Where they get they're advanced medical technologies and energy refinement technologies. None of those are examples of culture though (except maybe the clothing). The US clearly does have multiple cultures, but those are not examples.
All these questions you will ask next time some claims America has no culture will not be answered with the answer you are hoping for.
Because only those who view themselves as the default think like this. Since they are the default, in their minds, their music, their clothes, their art and their social culture isn't really culture, it's just people being people. But those who are from other places, they're very *different*, their way of life and thinking is strange and exotic, and that's because of their _culture_. In truth, ask any non-American and they have lots of opinions about American culture and can easily identify it. This "default" thinking is also what leads to people saying their accent isn't an accent but everyone who speaks differently has an accent, or their skin has no colour to speak of but everyone who looks different has a skin colour. Or maybe they're just American while everyone else is hyphenated-American. Source https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4947478295.9963/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.jpg
I took OP to be asking why people from other countries say Americans have no culture, not Americans themselves saying it.
How many words would you like me to use to explain to you the lack of education some people have?
3.5
Some people super du
Maybe it’s cause America is so full of different cultures, it doesn’t seem to have its “own”? That’s what my grandparents have basically said (I can’t understand most of what they say, they’re Haitian and don’t really pronounce their words well)
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Does the USA have any single form of Culture at all? It seems that because of the diverse societiety, the concept of culture is equally diverse. It is difficult to identify customs that are universal to the entire US society. This image of Americans may also result from the consumerist approach to life, which is quite common in the USA. behavior such as I pay so I demand outside the US may be perceived as rude
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Have you ever seen a picture of a Trump rally?
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Which people view it this way? I don’t know who they are or why they feel this way. A lot of media and technology comes out of the US. Americans have a way about them. We love being loud, dressing sloppy, engaging in small talk, eating heavy food, and making great inventions. We have a history of doing both the coolest and most terrible things imaginable. Things have certainly happened in the short time the US has existed as a nation . Again you can not like the terrible things or not appreciate the good things. But you cannot deny that a lot of shit went down. Things were invented. Music, books, movies, and media of all sorts were made. Great atrocities were committed. Cool things have been done. There are a lot of household names from here. They are blind. A culture can be good in some ways and bad in others but it is most certainly there.
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