Ideology and the New Deal `fact film' Power and the Land

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald R. Kline
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Rural Electrification ◽  
The Public ◽  
Diffusion Of Knowledge ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The New Deal

This paper examines the making of the US government documentary film, Power and the Land (1940), in terms of how views about science and technology are communicated to the public. The paper argues that the film was shaped by a complex ideology of technical progress shared by the film's maker and sponsors (the Rural Electrification Administration; the short-lived US Film Service, headed by the award-winning director, Pare Lorentz; and Joris Ivens, an internationally acclaimed Dutch director and leftist), tensions between goals of producing a `factual' and `propagandistic' film, and perceptions of the rural audiences' response. This paper thus argues against the view that science and technology communication is simply the mediated diffusion of knowledge from scientists and engineers to the public (in this case, knowledge about the social and economic aspects of rural electrification) and supports an interactive model. The paper also compares Power and the Land with the better known documentaries by Lorentz, The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River, and with other `fact films' of the New Deal era that portray a relationship between technology and social change.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

After the Critical Election: Presidential Leadership, Competition and the Consolidation of the New Deal Realignment

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. STEPHEN WEATHERFORD
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Quantitative Information ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Strategic Competition ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Consolidation Phase ◽  
National Coalition ◽  
Mass Opinion ◽  
The New Deal

The concept of critical realignment has shaped much of the thinking of political scientists and historians about the processes and patterns of change in American politics. Research on re-alignment has, however, tended to focus on successful cases and to concentrate on the electoral breakpoints rather than the process of regime formation, with the result that little systematic thinking has been devoted to the question of why some electoral upheavals lead to party realignment while other large vote shifts do not. This article begins from the proposition that the election does not so much constitute the realignment as offer the opportunity and the momentum for the new party to build a lasting national coalition. Whether the party capitalizes on this potential depends on processes and events that follow the critical election, during what could be called the ‘consolidation phase’ of the realignment. The question is ultimately one about public opinion, but the concept of consolidation needs to take in the interaction between the public and political elites, since mass opinion is formed in the context of elite initiatives and interpretations. The model of consolidation depicts two interrelated processes. The first involves strategic competition among elites, including elected officials and organized societal interests, who frame the conflict, by prioritizing issues and cleavages, and by relating policy proposals to group identities and widely-shared values. The second focuses on the public. Their standing loyalties disrupted by the crisis and the incumbents' inability to deal with it successfully, citizens engage in a process of experiential search as they seek to re-establish the stable political orientation given by attachment to a political party. The article draws on qualitative and quantitative information from the New Deal to illustrate the model of consolidation.

The Effect of New Deal Policies Revisited

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yangyang Ji
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Aggregate Demand ◽  
American Economic Review ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Natural Rate ◽  
Jel Codes ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
The New Deal

Abstract Eggertsson (2012, American Economic Review, 102, 524–55) finds that when the nominal interest rate hits the zero lower bound, the aggregate demand (AD) curve becomes upward-sloping and supply-side policies that reduce the natural rate of output, such as the New Deal implemented in the 1930s, are expansionary. His analysis is restricted to a conventional equilibrium where the AD curve is steeper than the aggregate supply (AS) curve. Recent research, however, demonstrates that an alternative equilibrium arises if the AD curve is flatter than the AS curve. In that case, the same policies become contractionary. In this article, I allow for both possibilities, and let data decide which equilibrium the US economy actually resided in during the Great Depression. Following the work of Blanchard and Quah (1989, American Economic Review, 79, 655–73), I find that there is a high probability that New Deal policies were contractionary. (JEL codes: E32, E52, E62, N12).

The Way to Waimanalo

Runaway ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Chaney
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Office Of Strategic Services ◽  
Morphology Learning ◽  
The Way

The narrative setting for this chapter is the new Oceanic Institute and its sister facility, Sea Life Park, in Waimanalo, Hawaii, in the early 1960s, where Bateson is studying the way dolphins communicate with each other. Among his colleagues – pioneers in dolphin training for public performance and ocean scientists with military contracts – Bateson was beloved but misunderstood. At issue was Bateson’s deep scorn for modern utilitarian science and B.F. Skinner behaviorism. The source of this scorn can be found in Bateson’s background: his youth in British naturalism and as the son of the founder of genetics William Bateson; his 1936 marriage to Margaret Mead, their work in Papau New Guinea and Bali, and their part, along with Ruth Benedict, in Boasian cultural relativism and the culture and personality school of anthropology; Bateson's anthropological morphology, learning theory, and concept of schismogenesis; and his black ops work with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II. In the aftermath of the war, the US government opened its doors to the social sciences to aid in its Cold War policies. Bateson’s marriage to Margaret Mead crumbled amidst his refusal to accompany her through these doors.

Coda

2021 ◽  
pp. 156-158
Author(s):  
Robert Volpicelli
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Academic Institution ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The University ◽  
Lecture Tour ◽  
Social Engagements

The coda to this book uses modernist authors’ diverse engagements with academic institutions on the US lecture tour as an opportunity to reconsider long-standing scholarly narratives about modernist institutionalization. In particular, it argues that the academic institution is not the closed, autonomous space that critics frequently make it out to be and that modernism’s relocation into the university during the postwar period should not be seen as a retreat from the social world. After highlighting several scenes from this book that reflect an alternative perspective on modernism’s relationship with the university, the coda makes a final call for us to model our contemporary institutions on the US lecture tour’s diverse social engagements as a way of furthering recent efforts in the public humanities.

Family Planning

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-65
Author(s):  
Emily Klancher Merchant
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Human Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Demographic Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The New Deal

Chapter 2 documents the establishment of demography, the social science of human population dynamics, in the United States during the 1930s. It contends that this interdisciplinary field was able to build an institutional structure because of support from eugenicist Frederick Osborn, who saw in demography an ally for the creation of a postracial democratic version of eugenics. Osborn’s new brand of eugenics emphasized birth control rather than sterilization and worked through the private sector rather than the public sector. He fused birth control advocacy with eugenics in a strategy he termed “family planning,” which signaled reproductive autonomy in the context of social control. Osborn secured patronage for demography from the Milbank Memorial Fund and the Carnegie Corporation, and an audience for demographic research in the New Deal welfare state. He leveraged his influence to focus demography’s research program on producing support for his family planning–based eugenic project.

Building the World War II Memorials, 1945–1960

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-221
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Conner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The Creation

This chapter looks at the longer aftermath of WWII and traces the creation of the second generation of ABMC sites. Focusing on the process of securing grounds overseas, allowing family members to decide where their loved ones would be buried, and obtaining US government clearance on designs, the account is reminiscent of the start of the ABMC and its first project. By 1960, fourteen cemetery memorials had been dedicated. This chapter also highlights the leadership of the agency’s second chairman, General George C. Marshall, and his direction of the building of memorials in eight countries to remember the 400,000 Americans who had died and the 16 million who had served in WWII. Marshall’s high standing in the US government and in the public esteem, just as was true of Pershing, greatly helped the agency to fulfill its renewed mission. The special treatment shown the grave of General George S. Patton in the Luxembourg American Cemetery is also detailed.

Fostering Public-Private Partnership

2020 ◽  
pp. 237-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasaki Ponnusamy ◽  
N. Z. Jhanjhi ◽  
Mamoona Humayun
Keyword(s):  
Developing Nations ◽  
Public Private Partnership ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Partnership ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Digital Infrastructure ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government

This chapter intends to provide a review of cooperation between public and private sectors towards cybersecurity governance. With the partnership, government can have confidence towards the safety and protection of their national critical digital infrastructure. The goal of this chapter is achieved by analyzing some of the cybersecurity frameworks adopted by the developed and developing nations. The analysis is further carried out by investigating the public-private policy initiatives in their national cybersecurity framework. The chapter also investigates the effectiveness of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST) adopted by the US government.

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