Citizenship in Cold War America

Andrea Friedman. Citizenship in Cold War America: The National Security State and the Possibilities of Dissent. University of Massachusetts Press, 2014.

In the Introduction, Friedman admits that her book "tell citizenship stories that at first glance seem only loosely related, although a close reading will reveal the many ways in which they overlap and intertwine." (12) There is much to admire in her book, but in the end even a second or third look will likely leave the reader feeling that the commonalities between the five chapters are not strong enough or convincing enough to justify the title or the contention that there is a large truth about citizenship being told here. If one sets aside the claims made in the Introduction and the even-less-convincing Conclusion, however, the reader can profit from this book as a collection of five Cold War-era case studies in which a handful of themes recur to varying degrees.

The problem with Friedman's attempt to turn this collection of case studies into a cohesive argument is that she shifts the center of her interpretive framework back and forth through the book. While Chapter 1 puts the emphasis squarely on Cold War psychology, later chapters will focus more on the concept of state violence and its legitimization as well--the psychological focus is still there, but it's hard to see how much the chapter on juvenile delinquency and comic books has to do with Cold War citizenship. The commonalities that actually do tie Chapters 2 through 5 together have more to do with the ways in which psychology was used to either resist or justify state violence against various groups and individuals than with Friedman's argument on the shaping of citizenship by dissent.

There are many interesting tangents in this book--considerations of how Communism was defined in contrast to "healthy" psychologies; the role of masculinity and aggression in defining Cold War citizenship; the degree to which state violence was justified and masked by the emerging security state; and more. Friedman might have been better off dividing this study into more than one book, as some of the chapters only hint at what might be a more fleshed out narrative given time and space to provide context. Also, she sometimes fails to make it clear where the reader's focus should be. Chapter 4, a study of Puerto Rican nationalism, does not focus on the ostensible subject until more than halfway through.