ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the place of cultures, frameworks, theories, and models as these are features of the intellectual enterprise in the social sciences. The human construction of social reality received primary attention in the chapter of Democracy in America. There attention was given to how the manners and customs of the Anglo-Americans developed a system of order characteristic of a self-governing society on the North American continent and how such a system worked in achieving adaptive potentials under those conditions. The analysis in the chapter addresses the question of whether American society can effectively reproduce itself over succeeding generations into the indefinite future. Tocqueville's preoccupation, then, was with the social construction of human nature –the concern of Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky in Cultural Theory. Tocqueville's analysis unfolds in four steps in which he addresses patterns of thought; patterns of sentiments, feelings, and aspirations; and patterns of social relationships.
