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Space and Culture
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The Meaning of Protestant-Calvinist Imagery in Urban America

An Interpretation of the City-Suburb Structure

Matthias Hardinghaus

Anglia Ruskin University

Inspired by Max Weber's Protestant Ethic, and applying a social-geographical framework, this discourse analysis inquires into the influence of religious imagery on a characteristic settlement structure in modern America. Cultural guiding images such as the Garden of Eden and the frontier, built in a tradition of Protestant, Calvinist Puritanism, are linked with a specifically Christian corpus of broadly biblical orientations. They are integral parts of the American way of life and had a lasting impact on modern urban development, particularly in America. Although the dispersed suburbs are supposed to carry on the political ideal of a decentralized society, the topologies of the centralized cities are the hubs of business activity, places of economic assertion. Calvinist imagery plays an important part in this: on one hand, it reflects the desire for a way of settlement that was originally agrarian motivated; on the other, the need for a centralized settlement for economic purposes.

Key Words: imagery • Calvinism • lifestyle • suburbs • city • United States

This version was published on November 1, 2008

Space and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 4, 422-436 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331208314782
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