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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
In the 1960s, as blacks and Latinos slowly integrated school and housing in American cities, many white middle-class families abandoned changing neighborhoods for newer, segregated suburbs. This created a fundamental shift in demography wealth and power as cities lost income and property while governed by new majorities of color in Detroit, Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, etc. Middle-class blacks sought new suburban options, while poor and older whites, often in ethnic enclaves, built uneasy defenses.
Gentrification later returned younger, wealthier whites to a dual city, but zones between the downtown and suburbs have been scarred by decades of neglect.
Industry:Culture
In the 1960s, Scandinavian design evoked clean lines, simple elegance and bright colors as statements of modernity in walnut, steel and glass for American suburban homes and sleek new offices. This trend coincided for some with images of Scandinavia as consisting of progressive liberal societies, whether in politics or pornography. Decades later, this design fad underwent a nostalgic revival, while IKEA has appealed to yuppie consumers in major metropolitan centers with new generations of Swedish design.
Industry:Culture
In the 1990s, American households include 60 million cats and an almost equal number of dogs, and myriad birds, fish, lizards, spiders, pigs, wolves and others that constitute an important symbiosis of person and animal. Domestic animals have long been part of American life, although today’s pampered companions might be surprised to know that they were once expected to work. Contemporary pets, however, also create a $20 billion industry in breeding, supplies and care.
This is coupled, unfortunately, with overpopulation. Strays and the constant demands on the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals underscore a careless surplus of domestic animals, whether feral dog packs or unwanted kittens. These, like problematic exotics such as overgrown Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs and declawed tigers, point to the cultural definition of the pet as a cute, relatively undemanding amusement for children and lonely people to adopt.
Pets are treated as members of the family or even surrogates for family and friends.
The idealization of suburban domesticity created a special niche for Spot the Dog, embedded in television and film even though cats passed dogs in popularity in the 1980s.
Yet, the convergence of surrogacy and affluence sets apart American pets. Foods grade them by age and demands (including diets and organic foods), accessories allow owners to spend $5,000 on a dog bed and medical services rival those provided for humans (pet insurance is a relatively late invention). Veterinarians, adapting their history in a farming nation, perform not only everyday tasks, but also offer kidney transplants for cats and tumor removal for fish. Bereavement counseling and pet cemeteries create a life cycle that eerily appropriates that of humans. Some civic groups, nonetheless, have stressed the importance of animals as service providers (e.g. guide dogs) and as companions for the elderly and sick when the human family has failed.
Evidently, pets are also display animals, where breeding and care echo social differentiation. These are celebrated in registered pedigrees, whether proffered as proof of value or tested in dog and cat shows—New York’s Westminster Kennel Club show receives national exposure. Meanwhile, as Vicki Hearne underscores in her insightful study of a “problem” bull terrier, Bandit (1991), this breed (identified as “pit bulls”) is identified with lower classes and race antagonisms through its role as a fighter. And the “mutt”—a mixture of breed and heritage—is often used as a symbol of the American melting-pot. Poodles, Afghan hounds, Siamese cats, cockatiels and koi carp have all transmuted economic surplus into pet status. As commodities, they are also subject to changing mores—guard dogs have risen in value in the security-conscious 1990s, while cats become ever more exquisitely bred and even reptiles and ferrets have their “own” magazines.
While animals in American television and film straddle the line between nature and culture, American pets cross the line of animal and human in both emotions and expenses, creating dilemmas for social critics, environmentalists and owners alike.
Industry:Culture
In the Chaneysville Incident (1967), novelist David Bradley equated variations in mass transportation with class and race in America. Air travel was elite—important people (generally white) going to important places quickly whatever the expense. Train travel from great urban stations was middle class and mixed. Buses and bus stations, for Bradley as for much of America, occupied the bottom rung with its cheap but uncomfortable travel, relegated to marginal travelers without cars—poor, rural Americans, blacks, Latinos and the elderly Two decades later, trains have declined and passengers complain that air comfort rivals that of buses. Yet buses remain icons of marginality Intercity bus travel initially expanded with interstate highways, competing effectively with trains in price and access to smaller towns. Rural bus stops could use existing crossroads, stores or restaurants (see Bus Stop, 1956). In cities, terminals became art deco monuments with tiles, glass and lighting that made train stations seem antiquated.
Greyhound Bus Lines, founded by Eric Wick-man to transport Minnesota workers in 1914, became a major interstate carrier in the 1920s. Despite Depression struggles, Greyhound became the official transportation carrier of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
Other smaller independent companies organized in 1936 as the Trailways system. Both were active in troop transport and development in the Second World War.
Greyhound’s postwar slogan, “Go Greyhound, and Leave the Driving to Us,” reveals its killing competitor—the private, family car. In the 1950s, interstate bus travel also became a site of protest in the civil-rights South, facing down segregation. As mass aviation expanded, bus travel became identified with the carless, and decaying stations evoked specters of dirt, crime and hustling (e.g. Midnight Cowboy, 1969). 1980s deregulation also challenged markets. By 1990 Greyhound faced bankruptcy reorganization.
At the end of the decade, Greyhound, Trailways and other lines have coordinated more effectively with revenues exceeding $1 billion. Targeted consumers include students, senior citizens, leisure travelers, military personnel and rural dwellers (Greyhound serves 3,700 destinations with over 22 million passengers). Regional charter companies offer regional tours adapted to group schedules. Intensive routes—for example those connecting New York City, NY or Philadelphia, PA and casinos in Atlantic City, NJ— also have permitted renewed competition, even if subordinate to car travel.
Urban buses have echoed the travails of intercity buses. While offering advantages in terms of infrastructural investment and flexibility buses have competed unsuccessfully with cars for the suburban commuters. In most cities, buses have become municipal responsibilities, integrated with other mass transportation options, rather than private corporations; some cities (notably in the Sunbelt) have effectively eliminated this service. The 1994 thriller Speed contrasts Los Angeles’ sleek, expensive new subway with the bus where the action takes place, which is occupied by minorities, the elderly and eccentrics. Minibuses have been proposed for special uses—transporting the disabled or elderly for example. In addition, immigrants in densely populated areas like New York operate illegal systems to connect workers, jobs and shopping areas.
Public schools also operate extensive bus systems; their bright yellow buses evoke memories and caution in passing drivers. If public schools remain crucibles of democracy so do these buses (which may also serve private schools and aftercare). Court-ordered busing, as a remedy for de facto segregation, however, also made these buses targets of hatred.
Industry:Culture
In the early twenty-first century one-third of American homes have guns (pistols, revolvers, shotguns or rifles), representing approximately 200 million firearms. In the late 1990s, the number of deaths from bullets declined, but still averaged eighty-seven deaths per day in America.
Firearms were introduced to America by the first European explorers, traders and settlers to hunt and fight. Most colonial towns required able-bodied males to own a musket and train with the local militia. Their skill and prudent use of guns to hunt, protect the family and town, and project the community’s power affected men’s social and political prestige; this attitude is still held by many Americans. After the Revolution, Americans, surrounded by monarchies and wary of despots who might rise from among their own ranks, guaranteed the personal ownership of guns to allow the people to retain control of their new Republic. The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution (see Bill of Rights) became the backbone of gun-rights legislation for two centuries.
In the nineteenth century the western frontier required continued gun ownership and skills until each area became settled. Post-emancipation blacks used firearms to protect their families, and rural Americans continued to hunt with firearms. As industrialization and urbanization progressed, the new city dwellers had less need for guns. A small percentage of men and women owned them for protection, crime, sports and collecting.
By the end of the twentieth century 80 percent of the American population lived in cities.
At the same time, Americans’ spectrum of attitudes towards guns became a divisive force as a strong movement grew to limit, if not eliminate, the private ownership of firearms. It was fueled by an increase in the misuse of guns, especially by younger Americans, the use of more deadly 9mm handguns, children caught in the crossfires of inner-city drug wars, the crippling of President Reagan’s Press Secretary James Brady and school massacres. Lobbyists, like Handgun Control, fought for more laws to restrict the number of privately owned guns through registration and prohibition. By the end of the century they were successful in passing federal laws to eliminate the sale of many military-style rifles and to require a check and waiting period for would-be handgun owners. Some cities and states enacted more restrictive gun laws or even sued gun manufacturers. Other groups sought to diminish gun violence in the media.
The opposition, generally led by the National Rifle Association, sometimes joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, has been powerful. Stressing personal defense, sports and the 2nd Amendment, they have fought many successful legal actions on local, state and federal levels. While many people oppose further gun regulation because they see it as a first step in the government confiscation of all firearms, they have pushed for tougher legal prosecution and sentences for people who use guns in crimes.
Industry:Culture
In the early twenty-first century there are a number of different American “Lefts” that are united primarily by their commitment to achieving more social and economic equality in American society Although these Lefts remain quite fragmented and marginal in an organizational sense, each one has produced vehement and incisive critiques of capitalism, liberal individualism and the commodification of social relations. They have, for the most part, abandoned or deeply problematized the Marxist and “scientificsocialist” approach of the pre-Second World War American “old” Left, and abhor the Bolshevik or Leninist model of revolution and social transformation. It is only in these senses that it is possible to speak of the American Left in the singular.
The modern American Left can trace much of its origins to the so-called New Left that emerged in the 1960s. This New Left was primarily university based, and, at least in its beginnings, abandoned what C. Wright Mills called Marx’s “labor metaphysic” (which considered the working class to be the primary vehicle for revolutionary consciousness).
For the New Left, alienation did not result primarily from an individual’s relation to the means of production, but was instead created by a lack of democratic participation in the central institutions of American culture: primarily universities, the state, corporations and the military The New Left was deeply influenced by the civil rights revolution and the feminist awakening of the 1960s and 1970s. These movements asserted that the traditional Left was unable to offer convincing explanations of racism and the continued subordination of women.
Broadly speaking, it is possible to trace two primary intellectual formations that emerged out of the successes and failures of the New Left. What may be called a socialdemocratic Left maintains that continuing problems of poverty and racism can begin to be addressed primarily through statist economic reforms, political mobilization within the existing framework of the American party system and the revival of an energetic laborunion movement. This social-democratic Left recognizes the importance of class in political and historical analysis, but is wedded to more-or-less traditional majoritarian and “realist” methods to achieve incremental change.
The other, so-called “cultural Left” is a quite complex phenomenon. It has been nurtured by several powerful philosophical critiques of modernism and Enlightenment rationality that were first articulated in Europe during and following the Second World War. For these critics and philosophers, including such diverse figures as Horkheimer, Adorno, Foucault, Irigary and Kristeva, the rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century was the end result of a rationalist innerlogic of Western culture that first gained cultural hegemony in the West in the seventeenth century. The “cultural Left” critical formation scorns all forms of foundational metaphysics, Enlightenment universalism and economic determinism. The cultural Left celebrates the autonomy of dissident cultures of race, gender and ethnicity, and relentlessly historicizes routine assumptions about hierarchy and order. It is heterodox, particularist and perspectivist in orientation. It has been unjustly criticized as mere “identity” politics that has little to say to the “majority of Americans,” and, while it shares many of the objectives of the social democratic Left, its analysis and methodology are obviously quite different.
In an era in which capitalism is more powerful than ever in world politics, it remains to be seen whether the different American “lefts” can create a compelling vision of an alternative social order.
Industry:Culture
In the largely heterosexual context of American society the process of revealing oneself as a homosexual or bisexual individual is termed “coming out of the closet.” Coming out is, strictly speaking, a never-ending process, because there are always more people to tell.
However, coming out is commonly understood as the period of time in which individuals first begin to tell people about their sexuality Individuals generally make different decisions about which people in their lives they should tell about their sexuality according to their personal situation.
Industry:Culture
In the last fifty years, and especially during the most recent presidential administrations, the office of the vice-president has grown from a position of relative powerlessness to one of some importance. The vice-president’s official responsibilities are few: should the president die or be deemed unable to fill his or her position, the vice-president takes on the role of president; the vice-president is also the official head of the Senate and has the power to cast a tie-breaking vote. In recent times, however, presidents have begun to allow their vice-presidents to become more involved in the policy process and have allowed them greater access to White House resources.
The vice-president now meets often with the president, has an office in the White House and a staff of his or her own. Although these are privileges granted by the president and could be removed at any time, the likelihood that this will happen decreases as the practices become more institutionalized. It has been suggested that the fact that these privileges were retained during the tenure of Dan Quayle (George Bush’s vicepresident), who was widely regarded as a poor choice for the job, indicates their likely permanence.
The manner and method of choosing the vice-president have also changed over the years. For almost the whole first half of the twentieth century vice-presidential candidates were chosen by party bosses. This changed in 1940 when Franklin Roosevelt insisted on choosing his own runningmate. This practice has remained in place allowing presidents to choose vice-presidents with whom they are compatible. Before this time, it was not unusual for vice-presidents to disagree openly with presidents under whom they were serving; it is almost unheard of today The greater compatibility between vice-president and president has also facilitated the expansion of the vice-president’s powers and responsibilities.
Many vice-presidents have gone on to run successfully for the presidency. Holding the office of vice-president can aid a politician by providing national name recognition and executive experience; however, there are also drawbacks. Because vice-presidents are expected to support the president, it can be difficult for them to create their own political identity in the eyes of the public. It was widely believed that George Bush suffered from this problem. Although Reagan was very popular, Bush was often regarded as unable to form opinions independent of the president. Matters became even more complex as questions arose regarding Bush’s role in the Iran-Contra affair. Al Gore, who has longstanding presidential ambitions, has faced a similar dilemma in dealing with the scandals surrounding Bill Clinton; he had to support the president while distancing himself from Clinton’s actions. This balance is difficult to maintain and can make it especially difficult for former vice-presidents to run for president.
Industry:Culture
In the period since the Second World War, golf in the United States has gained in popularity both as a spectator and participatory sport. In the late 1940s and 1950s, golf began to gain appeal as a status sport associated with the wealthy and with business. The obsession of President Eisenhower with the game—he played over 800 rounds while in office—symbolized a sport which was viewed as a pastime of the elite.
Just as golf was beginning to become a staple of televised sports, the arrival in the early 1960s of a new breed of professional golfers—young, athletic and charismatic—fed a new fascination with the game. No player symbolized the new feeling associated with golf more than Arnold Palmer. Palmer was blessed with both an excellent game and an easy-going charm which together won him a devoted following known as “Arnie’s Army” Palmer, from Western Pennsylvania, rose from humble beginnings, encouraging others to reassess the view that golf was just a game for the well-off. At the same time, a younger golfer named Jack Nicklaus emerged as a foil for the more popular Palmer. In time, Nicklaus would eclipse Palmer and become the most accomplished American golfer of all time.
As a result of the professional game’s increased visibility public and resort golf-course construction became a growth industry in the 1970s and 1980s as the middle class clamored for a place to play the game at a price within their reach. This period saw the continued rise in the profile of the professional game, and a host of new stars, including Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw and Curtis Strange.
The 1990s, while still a boom time for the men’s circuit, saw the rise of a second tour, the Senior Your for men fifty years and older, as well as a somewhat more vitalized women’s tour. Women constituted the largest group of new golfers in the 1990s.
However, exclusionary practices still exist to bar women from some of the more prominent private clubs. Moreover, public courses sometimes discourage women’s play with the result that women also constitute the largest percentage of golfers who give up the game. The practice of minority exclusion continues as well, although the subject has become more hotly debated in the last few years. In 1991 the Professional Golfers’ Association threatened to move its championship tournament from the Shoal Creek Golf Club because of the club’s practice of exclusion, and a number of other clubs have been dropped from the professional tour for failing to recruit African Americans to their membership. Most recently a young star named Tiger Woods has emerged who claims both African and Asian ancestry. His prominence may spur further re-examination of the membership practices at private clubs across the nation, and may encourage more minority youths to take up what has until now remained a sport played mostly by whites.
Industry:Culture
In the typical American house, the kitchen is centrally located with direct relationships with both living and dining areas, which allows for ease of service for both daily life and occasional entertaining. This centrality has led to recent characterizations of the kitchen—particularly the kitchen table—as the new hearth of the American home. This phenomenon is reinforced by representations of the American family on television, including generations of sitcoms and soap operas in which many important family issues are debated and resolved at the kitchen table.
In this construction of the traditional family the kitchen is largely associated with female domesticity especially in the postwar suburban context. The role of advertising as well as the publication of cookbooks and mass media helped to define a mythic image of American women surrounded by stove, oven and refrigerator—perhaps with a pantry laundry or storage nearby—which is still invoked by cultural conservatives. Servants, however, were already treated as unusual—the woman ran her own appliances, budget and household regime. This image also generated periodicals, such as Redbook, Family Circle, Ladies’ Home Journal and Better Homes & Gardens, targeted at women and their kitchens. Industry-related publications, such as Bath & Kitchen or Metropolitan Home, have also successfully marketed clean, bright kitchens as indicators of a healthy home life and as coveted status symbols.
Kitchen spaces have also changed in the last five decades. The rise of the “island” in kitchen design is associated with greater flexibility and changing habits in food production and consumption. The late-twentieth-century phenomenon of singleparent homes or families in which both parents work has also contributed to a shift in kitchen design towards layouts that accommodate shorter meals, faster preparation and spaces used primarily for entertaining. In urban settings, the restaurant kitchen may replace the cultural associations of the domestic one, as indicated by an increase in exposed kitchens and comfort food on menus.
The competitive appliance market also has been crafted to determine preferences and ascribe status to the niche industry of kitchen remodeling. Basic stoves can be replaced with elaborate grills; refrigerators with Sub-Zeros or additional freezers; and dishwashers, trash compactors, disposals and other appliances converted to necessities.
Often undertaken as a substitute for a complete home renovation, upgrades in appliances or changes in color schemes are generally seen as indicators of recent affluence or a change in the dynamic of the family. In lieu of traditional architects and designers, the aestheticization of the kitchen is being realized by home centers, spec-kitchen showrooms and cultural figures such as Martha Stewart. This emphasis on the kitchen as the epitome of the home has also generated a cultural counterpoint of more illicit behavior in the kitchen, as represented by films such as Fatal Attraction (1987) or 9½ Weks (1986)
Industry:Culture
