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Relying on the approach by Maurice Halbwachs who argued that collective memory is based on contemporary interests and concerns, this article shows how Thanksgiving has changed over time in accordance with the ideas of the day. Aspects of the analysis support Barry Schwartz’s theory that commemoration reflects the historical past. Similar to the pilgrims’ celebration, many people commemorate Thanksgiving by, for example, feasting and praying. But in contrast to Schwartz’s thought, this paper also shows that there are other elements of traditions that have minimal connection with the original event. Forms of commemoration like the Macy’s Day Parade challenge the idea that commemoration and celebration contain some connection to the initial occasion. In general, the findings lend support to historical research and theories that implement social constructionist approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the international context in which American social science was institutionalized in the generation after the Civil War, following the foundation of the American Social Science Association in 1865. The ASSA was modelled on an influential British forum, founded eight years previously, the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. A comparison of these two organisations from the 1860s to the 1880s allows consideration of British intellectual and political influences on the first American social scientists. It also helps in the identification of the social and political attitudes of the well-born, cosmopolitan, and high-minded American reformers attracted to social science at this time. The theme of American exceptionalism has recently been emphasized when considering the motives and intentions of early social science in the United States. It is argued here that the replication in America of models of the new discipline which were first developed in Britain, is indicative also of a self-conscious internationalism among the American social-scientific community of this period. In addition to an institutional comparison, the article examines the careers and ideas of several representative figures in this process of Anglo-American liberal transference, among them the physician Dr. Edward Jarvis, the feminist Caroline Healey Dall, the jurist David Dudley Field, and the famed British interpreter of American experience, James Bryce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropological and ethnohistorical accounts of the Northwest Coast and Southeast Alaska have underemphasized the early and thorough industrialization of the area. This paper describes the transformation of Native fan. lies and community forms by small scale salmon-canning firms m the late 19th and early 20th century, beginning with the building of the first salmon cannery in Klawock, Alaska, in 1878. Attention to the unmaking of past forms of obligation and expectation leads to an understanding of the volatility of specifically local histories in Native villages. Totem poles and tricycle races are both locations of ambiguous cultural production that are tied to these histories in overlapping and complex ways, and as such, they serve as metaphors for the larger processes at work in these towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]