Nineteenth-Century Utopianism and the American Social Imaginary

Religious sectarianism played a significant role in the early settlement and social development of the United States. Although historians have minimized what these societies contributed to the creation of a uniquely American "social imaginary," this era of social experimentalism drew the attention of highly influential European writers including Goethe, Tolstoy, Marx, and Weber. More recent social thinkers like Benedict Anderson, Charles Taylor, and Robert Wuthnow emphasize the importance of dis