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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
Emerging in the 1980s and 1990s, this term describes the socio-economic segregation of urban society with special reference to New York. During the 1977–87 boom, the top 10 percent experienced a 20 percent gain in income (almost half of all gains), while the situation of lowest percentiles declined, and the numbers of poor and homeless increased.
Essentially this metaphor focused attention on a disappearing middle (mediating) class.
Industry:Culture
English band from Liverpool that dominated the American music market from their appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964 until their break up in 1970.
Inspired by Elvis Presley and other rock ’n’ roll musicians, the Beatles combined blues music with ballads popular among Motown’s girl groups and the Beach Boys (both of whom suffered from the “invasion”). Although the group’s popularity was threatened by John Lennon’s comment that they were almost as big as Jesus, fundamentalist backlash consolidated the Beatles radical chic. This radicalism was further enhanced by comments opposing the Vietnam War, and by Lennon’s protests with Yoko Ono on behalf of world peace.
Meanwhile, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967) and the “White Album” (1968) helped alter the direction of popular music. The former, one of the first “concept” albums, was the last major collaboration of Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Highlighting the band’s move into more orchestrated melodies with influences ranging from English music-hall ballads to Indian music, the album seemed to represent the holistic, optimistic aspects of 1960s counterculture. The more anarchic “White Album,” where each artist went off in his own direction, seemed to shatter all icons associated with “Sergeant Pepper’s,” a movement best summed up by McCartney’s “Helter Skelter” (later connected to the Charles Manson slayings).
Following the break up, each member went on to varying degrees of success as solo artists. Lennon, the most politically vocal, became a resident of New York City, NY (with his own lengthy FBI file) until his murder in 1981 at the hands of a deranged fan who believed he had “sold out.”
Industry:Culture
English television shows imported by PBS, beginning in the 1970s. The first show, Upstairs, Down stairs was a serial imported for many seasons, depicting the trials and tribulations of the Bellamy family and their many servants, set in Edwardian England.
With this production, the tone of the series was set; it brought “highbrow” television made abroad to a seemingly well-educated American public, dissatisfied with American fare. Always introduced by a literary or thespian celebrity (initially the intensely Mid-Atlantic Alistair Cooke), the series has gone on to other adaptations of English novels, notably Jewel in the Crown and the soon-to-be camp classic I Claudius.
Industry:Culture
Entering Seattle one is immediately struck by an all-pervasive vibrancy and sense of youthful optimism. Construction activity, whether related to fixing potholes, the elegant Symphony Hall, sports stadiums, or the Jimi Hendrix museum, suggests a city on the move. Before long, however, traffic, among the worst in the country is sure to ensnarl you. While stuck in traffic look east and stunning views of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains or sailboat-studded Lake Washington present themselves. Look west and the jagged peaks of the Olympic Mountains and Lake Union stare back. A glance south and majestic Mount Rainier mesmerizes. Winding one’s way through Seattle’s intentionally individual neighborhoods—staid, trendy or funky—one is sure to spot an expresso stand.
Named after Chief Seattle of the Duwamish tribe, Seattle’s beginnings as a white settlement date back to 1851. From log cabins at Alki Beach it grew as a sawmill town on a series of hills between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, soon becoming an important seaport, which it still is today. Despite its rainy reputation, Seattle’s 32 inch annual rainfall, less than that of many US cities, explains its picturesque, verdant landscapes.
The city’s population is just over half a million, with a sprawling metropolis of some 2 million. The residents generally pride themselves on being politically progressive, culturally tolerant, environmentally sensitive and global in outlook. In 1989 Seattle’s overwhelmingly white majority elected an African American mayor.
The city’s changing image emerges in comparing the 1937 movie Stage Door, in which Lucille Ball complains: “Am I supposed to apologize for being born in Seattle?”, to Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and Frasier (NBC, 1993–), in which single yuppies give the city an image envied by millions around the world.
Seattle’s rich cultural amenities reflect the eclectic, experimental tastes of its population, which encompass classical Western ballet, Asian American theater, African American poetry, Native American dance, Mexican American music, gay choirs, fringe theater and grunge music made internationally famous by several local celebrities, including Seattle bands Nirvana and Pearl Jam. While forward-looking, its active citizenry has fought vigorously to preserve historical landmarks such as the Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, the Space Needle and the Chittenden Locks.
Seattle’s postwar, Boeing-based economy was deliberately diversified to prevent the previously devastating boom-bust cycles. The economy now includes global giants like Microsoft, numerous spin-off high-technology companies, outdoor recreation stores like REI and Eddie Bauer, Starbucks coffee, Nordstrom department stores and biotechnology companies like Immunex.
An offshoot of the enormous success of these home-grown businesses is the emergence of uncharacteristically young millionaires and billionaires like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and an unprecedented wave of philanthropy and civicminded activism that will undoubtedly leave a lasting imprint on the city.
Industry:Culture
Epithet applied to the innovative (often live) developmental period of network television from 1948 to 1960. Among the shows taken as high points of this period are dramas like Studio One, Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theater and other sponsored theater shows in prime time. Certainly, this produced many fine pieces in writing, acting and directing, including Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty, which later won an Oscar as a cinematic production.
Many viewers and critics also fondly recall early comedy—both variety shows with Milton Berle or Sid Caesar and sitcoms like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, etc. Finally this period was also taken as a high point for news, with the towering figure of Edward R. Murrow. In all these choices (which omit the hours of dross over the decade), one also sees standards set by New York urbane sensibilities that were challenged by television’s growing ties with Hollywood as well as its national expansion and appeal to new audiences. Robert Thompson, in Television’s Second Golden Age (1996), argues that the 1980s produced more complex and broader medical, crime, law and other dramas that better merit such accolades.
Industry:Culture
Espionage is the practice of spying to secretly observe something or someone. This ancient, universal activity is summed up in the cliché “the second oldest profession.” Contemporary American culture incorrectly associates espionage with the Cold War and the CIA’s creation in 1947; yet America has a rich history of espionage between Nathan Hale and the appointment of Rear Admiral Sidney Souers, the first director of the CIA.
Espionage studies may concern organizational development, composition, culture and ethics, domestic and foreign powers and functions, missions, methods, performance, management, reform and reorganization. American espionage is also influenced by its enemies and its allies. For example, America began covert operations in Europe in response to Soviet subversion. America’s pre-eminent ally Britain, played a decisive role in educating a generation of American intelligence officers during the Second World War; consequently the Anglo-American intelligence alliance remains unique. The US also has espionage relationships with other states such as Israel, with alliance partners in NATO, coalition partners and the UN. Intelligence sharing is a key issue in America’s post-Cold War security agenda. Spies may steal political, diplomatic, military, economic, scientific and technological secrets. Non-governmental organizations, such as corporations and multi-nationals, also conduct economic, commercial, scientific and technological espionage. Espionage and counter-espionage are also subject to US and international laws.
In fiction the spy like the hunter, the scout and the detective, becomes an American icon, revealing American hopes and fears, and political, moral and cultural attitudes towards espionage. Espionage conspiracy theories reveal alienation, anxiety and a rejection of rationalism, symbolized by the popularity of The X Files. Spy fiction’s glamour and thrills distort the spy world, whether the spy is a hero or villain. Reality is more ordinary. The spy’s survival kit contains clandestine techniques, courage, political savvy good luck and a sense of humor.
Espionage excites political and ethical debates because espionage requires secrecy and democracy requires openness. American democracy has been acutely sensitive to these issues since the mid-1970s. Consequently the US pioneered democratic oversight of espionage and leads the field in historical declassification. Intelligence practitioners debate the relative merits of espionage and technical intelligence collection, and espionage and open-source information. Sherman Kent, America’s leading theorist of strategic intelligence, doubted clandestine techniques and argued for open sources and social-science methods. During the Cold War, American espionage supported containment, a political, military, economic and psychological strategy designed to contain Soviet power and protect Western values, not least the right to self-determination and diversity. In the post-Cold War period, globalization, openness and the communications revolution revived the debate between open and secret sources, and human and technical means. All-source, real-time intelligence was the first line of defense in the new world disorder. Paradoxically as American technology surged ahead, America faced difficult security challenges in Somalia and Bosnia, which flagged up the need for human intelligence. Espionage will remain part of American statecraft, continue to exercise America’s conscience and engage America’s allies and enemies.
Industry:Culture
Established in 1911 by white and African American civil-rights activists, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People led the assault on segregation in the South. The Crisis (founded 1911), edited by W.E.B. Du Bois, was for many years the most widely read journal among African Americans. The legal defense fund, led by Charles Hamilton Houston, a Howard University Law School professor, began the effort to overturn the 1896 Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, which had established the practice of “separate but equal.” Houston’s protégé, Thurgood Marshall, won the landmark victory against segregation, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which asserted that separate is “inherently unequal.” Often viewed as biased towards elite and northern blacks, the work of E.D. Nixon, a union organizer and local leader in the NAACP, and Rosa Parks, secretary of an NAACP chapter, in bringing about the Montgomery bus boycott highlights the strong grassroots element of the organization.
Industry:Culture
Evangelical Christian denomination, founded from within the Anglican Church by John Wesley and George Whitefield in the mid-eighteenth century whose largest group of adherents, white and African American, live in the United States. Methodist denominations, while low church in ritual, are centralized and organized under the direction of bishops who supervise their own regions. This has allowed the denomination to be expansive, sending missionaries into new territories and countries previously unprovided for; it has also made it prone to schism and internal division.
The issue of race has been one of the major forces of tension among American Methodists. Both the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Philadelphia, PA and the AME Zion Church in New York City, NY were established in the nineteenth century by black men and women who could no longer abide the discriminatory seating practices in Methodist Churches. This division between white and black Methodists has remained, African Methodists now comprising as many as 4 million separate congregants in the United States.
Race caused another fundamental split in the mid-nineteenth century when Southerners resisted the eradication of slavery breaking away in 1844 to establish their own denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After the end of slavery the MEC, South formed segregated churches for their “colored” brethren, which became, in 1870, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (later called Christian ME).
By the twentieth century, with pressure coming from other denominations that were growing more quickly—the more elite churches like Episcopalians and Presbyterians attracting wealthier Americans, the Baptists and Spiritualist churches appealing to poorer Protestants, and the Catholic church growing among immigrants—many Methodists felt the need for consolidation. In 1939, therefore, the MEC and MEC, South reunited, and then in 1968 the United Methodist Church (UMC) came into existence by combining the Methodists and other liturgically similar Protestant denominations. In the early 1990s, the UMC alone had a worldwide membership of about 50 million, 11 million of whom resided in the United States. Overall, Methodism was the third-largest affiliated Christian denomination in America with 13 million members and over 52,000 churches.
Besides a church organization conducive to expansion, Methodism has also increased its appeal by avoiding extremes, at least theologically. Once political issues that divide Methodists diminish in importance, then other differences can be smoothed over. The racial divide, however, is not one that Methodists can easily overcome.
Industry:Culture
Even before cable made 24-hour television a national reality network programming adapted to and changed daily cycles. Prime time denoted highly competitive evening hours, while daytime offered a melange of soap operas, game shows and occasionally children’s programming, targeting a female householder, and late-night television became the province of talk and movies. Within this clock, early morning weekday television became the moment to capture viewers with useful information and ephemera that provide backgrounds for breakfast and departures. Morning television, then, has produced a curious combination of news, weather, financial information, sports and chat that has become one of the established features of contemporary television, local and national, and an area of growth (12.8 million viewers) even against cable competition in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
NBC’s Today show, running since 1952, is the most successful model. Perhaps preceded by local farm reports, children’s programming, or news, it takes over the screen from 07:00 till 10:00. Although current watchers may not remember that the first host, Dave Garroway, was paired with a chimp (1953–77), both the team formula and established rhythm of repetitious information and coffee-cup chat survive. Successive hosts/partners, including Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, Jane Pauley, Bryant Gumbel, Debra Norville, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, have updated the formula, with comic relief supplied by weathermen like Willard Scott (1980–). The show opened its glassenclosed studios to New York (a 1950s strategy revived in 1994) and has gone on location around the world. Authors, sports people and politicians have used it as a forum, and have been caught by questions not necessarily expected in “infortainment.” Other network pairings have competed on ABC (Good Morning, America) and CBS (CBS This Morning), in 1999 they snare only half the market and 75 percent of Today’s advertisement revenues.
Later morning television provides a transition to daytime as local shows and syndicated talk continue the coffee and conversation format. Daytime talk shows have stirred a great deal of public debate with their focus on controversial, lurid topics of sex and violence. In 1999 networks also began exploring this space. Public television generally provides an early morning alternative in children’s programming (Sesame Street, PBS, 1969–).
Weekend differences are clearly marked as well. Saturday morning, with school out, is the terrain of kids (sometimes mimicking the infotainment format of the 1990s). Sunday, meanwhile, has been a graveyard of public service, press interviews and reflective television (Charles Kurault’s essays or the political forum of Meet the Press, NBC, 1947), while “real” Americans are at church or play.
Industry:Culture
Exact numbers of Ukrainian immigrants in the US are difficult to determine as immigration authorities often used labels such as “CarpathoRussian” or “Galician” to describe Ukrainians. The official number is about 250,000, but the real number may be double this. Many Ukrainians fled to the US during the Russian Civil War (1918–21).
Unlike some other Slavic Americans, the Ukrainians have maintained a fairly strong ethnic identity; many people are proud to identify themselves as being of Ukrainian descent, even if it is mixed with that of other groups. A number of cultural and political organizations have been formed: the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America represents Ukrainian political interests; and the Washington Group (established in 1984) informs the public about issues of concern to Ukrainian Americans.
Industry:Culture
