In this sweeping reinterpretation of American political culture, James Block offers a new perspective on the formation of the modern American self and society. Block roots both self and society in the concept of agency, rather than liberty, and dispenses with the national myth of the "sacred cause of liberty"--with the Declaration of Independence as its "American scripture." Instead, he recovers the early modern conception of agency as the true synthesis emerging from America's Protestant and liberal cultural foundations.

Block traces agency doctrine from its pre-Commonwealth English origins through its development into the American mainstream culture on the eve of the twentieth century. The concept of agency that prevailed in the colonies simultaneously released individuals from traditional constraints to participate actively and self-reliantly in social institutions, while confining them within a new set of commitments. Individual initiative was now firmly bounded by the modern values and ends of personal Protestant religiosity and collective liberal institutional authority. As Block shows, this complex relation of self to society lies at the root of the American character.

A Nation of Agents is a new reading of what the "first new nation" did and did not achieve. It will enable us to move beyond long-standing national myths and grasp both the American achievement and its legacy for modernity.

For the Suya, a Ge-speaking tribe of Central Brazil, nature and culture are perceived as fundamental opposites. Yet surprisingly few basic principles seem to underlie both Suya cosmology and society on their various levels—from the construction of villages and the classification of animals and humans to body ornamentation, dietary restrictions, myths, and curing chants.

In this integrated and far-reaching analysis, Anthony Seeger makes a significant contribution to the structural inquiry into lowland South American cosmologies begun by Levi-Strauss. He delineates various strata of the Suya world—perceptions of time and space, kinship, politics and medicine, groupings of animals, plants, and humans—and evolves a simple set of beliefs about nature and transformation that seems to govern all of them. His is an extremely rich and lucid account of the field methods, experiences, and observations that comprised the exploration into a hitherto unfamiliar tribe.