Polarization in North America

We are currently confronted with disconcerting signs of polarization in the societies of many democratic countries of North America and Europe. The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, is only the tip of the iceberg of such developments. Conflicts are manifest in the relations between the generations and the genders, between ethnic groups in individual countries and between religious denominations, between migrants and the native residents of countries, between the so-called elite and the average citizens, between urban and rural populations. This interdisciplinary volume offers contributions by sociologists and historians, scholars in American, Canadian, German, and Romance literary and cultural studies, by linguists and philosophers, who, from a distinctly European perspective, analyze these highly topical areas of conflict. Historical views reveal that polarization in North America is not an exclusively recent phenomenon but has developed at least since colonial settlements in the New World in the seventeenth century. The contributions in this interdisciplinary volume analyze, for instance, the tension in the relationship between the United States and Canada in Canadian literary texts, the depictions of a polarized America in German prose narratives, and discuss the polarizing constructions of gender and ethnicity, the social and economic inequalities in the United States, as well as provocative political discourses, aggravating divisions in U.S.-American society, and the dissemination of dubious claims and misinformation in the realm of science. However, could one perhaps also speak from the angle of sociology of positive impulses of conflicts, which might lead to progress? Nevertheless, polarization continues to remain a significant element of and threat in U.S.-American political society and culture.