From Social Movements to Social Change: Oakland and Twentieth-Century Urban America

Author(s):  
Chris Rhomberg
Author(s):  
Angela Towne ◽  
Elliot Ruggles ◽  
Betsy Crane ◽  
Meghan Root

In contemporary United States culture, young people may face contradictory gender-related pressures. Changing gender norms resulting from social movements in the latter half of the twentieth century (e.g., sexual revolution, feminism) collide with traditional expectations, such as female virginity until marriage. This study used cross-gender focus groups to examine young people’s gendered experiences in the wake of social change. Data were collected with 35 millennials (ages 18-27) in Pennsylvania who self-identified as having traditional views about relationships and sexuality. Participants articulated current traditional expectations, which included educational and career responsibilities for women as well as behavioral expectations that participants associated with hyper-masculinity. Such expectations were often paradoxical and frequently contrasted with lived experiences. Participants coped with conflicting pressures by keeping secrets and leading double lives. These findings may help educators and clinicians recognize the complex social reality millennials face and assist them in balancing conflicting pressures.


Author(s):  
Vike Martina Plock

By looking at Jean Rhys’s ‘Left Bank’ fiction (Quartet, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Good Morning, Midnight, ‘Illusion’, ‘Mannequin’), this chapter investigates how new operational procedures such as Fordism and Taylorism, which were introduced into the French couture industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, affected constructions of modern femininity. Increasingly standardized images of feminine types were produced by Paris couturiers while the new look of the Flapper seemingly advertised women’s expanding social, political and professional mobility. Rhys, this chapter argues, noted fashion’s ability to provide resources for creative image construction but she simultaneously expressed criticism of its tendency to standardize female costumes and behaviour. Ultimately, Rhys demonstrates in her fiction that the radically modern couture of the early twentieth century was by no means the maker of social change and women’s political modernity. To offset the increased standardization of female images that she witnessed around her, Rhys created heroines and texts that relied on an overt display on difference.  


Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton

Affluent democracies have experienced tremendous socio-economic changes since the mid- twentieth century, which has reshaped public opinion, party programs, and electoral choices. This chapter first summarizes the societal changes that have been a driving force behind the political changes described in this study. One pattern involves the longstanding economic issues of contemporary democracies, and shifting social positions on these issues. In addition, an evolving cultural cleavage and its ties to broader attitudes toward social change have altered citizen policy preferences. In most affluent democracies, the parties’ responses to these changing citizen demands have produced a realignment to represent both economic and cultural positions. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for the working of electoral systems and the democratic process more broadly.


Author(s):  
Barbara J. Risman

This final chapter suggests that the incompatibilities of expectations and realities at different levels of the gender structure create “crises tendencies” that may provide leverage that future activists can use to push for social change. While some contemporary social movements agitating for a more feminist and gender inclusive society appear to conflict with each other, Risman argues that using a gender structure framework allows seemingly contradictory feminist and gender inclusive movements to understood they are not alternatives but rather a tapestry, each one taking aim at a different level of our complex gender structure. The chapter concludes with a utopian vision: a call for a fourth wave of feminism to dismantle the gender structure. Since the gender structure constrains freedom, to move toward a more just future we must leave it behind.


Author(s):  
Rebecca S. Graff

Through archaeological and archival research from sites associated with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Disposing of Modernity explores the changing world of urban America at the turn of the twentieth century. Featuring excavations of trash deposited during the fair, Rebecca Graff’s first-of-its kind study reveals changing consumer patterns, notions of domesticity and progress, and anxieties about the modernization of society. Graff examines artifacts, architecture, and written records from the 1893 fair’s Ohio Building, which was used as a clubhouse for fairgoers in Jackson Park, and the Charnley-Persky House, an aesthetically modern city residence designed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Many of the items she uncovers were products that first debuted at world’s fairs, and materials such as mineral water bottles, cheese containers, dentures, and dinnerware illustrate how fairs created markets for new goods and influenced consumer practices. Graff discusses how the fair’s ephemeral nature gave it transformative power in Chicago society, and she connects its accompanying “conspicuous disposal” habits to today’s waste disposal regimes. Reflecting on the planning of the Obama Presidential Center at the site of the Chicago World’s Fair, she draws attention to the ways the historical trends documented here continue in the present.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document