<?page no="0"?> Jody Skinner Anglo-American Cultural Studies 3. Auflage basics <?page no="2"?> utb 3125 Eine Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verlage Brill | Schöningh - Fink · Paderborn Brill | Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht · Göttingen - Böhlau · Wien · Köln Verlag Barbara Budrich · Opladen · Toronto facultas · Wien Haupt Verlag · Bern Verlag Julius Klinkhardt · Bad Heilbrunn Mohr Siebeck · Tübingen Narr Francke Attempto Verlag - expert verlag · Tübingen Psychiatrie Verlag · Köln Ernst Reinhardt Verlag · München transcript Verlag · Bielefeld Verlag Eugen Ulmer · Stuttgart UVK Verlag · München Waxmann · Münster · New York wbv Publikation · Bielefeld Wochenschau Verlag · Frankfurt am Main <?page no="3"?> basics <?page no="4"?> Jody Skinner Anglo-American Cultural Studies 3., vollständig überarbeitete Auflage Narr Francke Attempto Verlag Tübingen <?page no="5"?> Jody Skinner lehrt angloamerikanische Kulturwissenschaft in Deutschland. Abbildungen Umschlaginnenseiten: United Kingdom portable atlas PAT Ian Mackey, United States National Park Service. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. DOI: https: / / doi.org/ 10.36198/ 9783838559407 3., vollständig überarbeitete Auflage 2022 2., überarbeitete Auflage 2016 1. Auflage 2009 © 2022 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. 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Internet: www.narr.de eMail: info@narr.de Satz: typoscript GmbH, Waldorfhäslach Einbandgestaltung: Atelier Reichert, Stuttgart CPI books GmbH, Leck UTB-Nr. 3125 ISBN 978-3-8252-5940-2 (Print) ISBN 978-3-8385-5940-7 (ePDF) ISBN 978-3-8463-5940-2 (ePub) www.fsc.org MIX Papier aus verantwortungsvollen Quellen FSC ® C083411 ® <?page no="6"?> Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 I: Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1 The Where (geography) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2 The When (history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) . . . . . . . . . . . 187 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) . . . . . . . . 222 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 II: Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 14 Gender: Wo-Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 16 culture and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 V Contents <?page no="8"?> Introduction Let ’ s begin this introduction with a few words about the title of our book. I use Anglo-American as an adjective to refer to both the United Kingdom and the United States. Why cover both the UK and the US? Especially since a book of this size would often just be able to skim the surface of such a big subject. It ’ s always a question of what ’ s better: cover a lot more by surfing the surface or dive into the waves like a deep sea diver at the cost of not seeing enough of the whole. I hope you ’ ll find it satisfying to see more of the surface and then use this UTB Basics book as a springboard to take your deep sea dives in places that you hadn ’ t thought of before. Through comparison I think we can gain more interesting insights than just by covering one country. Covering American Studies alone would leave out the interesting comparisons with Britain, which is still geographically closer to Germany even after leaving the European Union. Covering British Studies alone would leave out America, which, for better or worse, is a force to be reckoned with. American culture can be seen as a glorious promise or as a monstrous threat, but you would probably need less energy to try to understand America than to try to ignore it. And there is no other introductory book currently in print on both American and British studies written in English especially for German university students. I ’ ve written this book for different audiences. If you ’ re pursuing a degree in English that requires knowledge about the United Kingdom and the United States, you can read any of the chapters in Part I for an overview, which will help you prepare for examinations on American and British life. I ’ m also writing for interested people with a German background who want to understand aspects of American and British life that they find puzzling. I assume that you ’ re not interested in reading a tourist guide that only emphasizes positive things about both countries. While I hope that my enthusiasm is contagious, I ’ ll also try to encourage you to develop a critical perspective and deeper understanding of things American and British. both US and UK? intended audiences 1 Introduction <?page no="9"?> And what about the Cultural Studies part of the title? The subject called cultural studies has become very popular in publishing, teaching, and in research at universities in Britain and in the US since the 1960s and now too in other parts of the world. In Part II we ’ ll be looking at some of the same information covered in Part I from a different perspective, giving you the chance not only to review the “ facts ” but also to see how newer ways of looking at culture have changed our attitude towards these facts. In Part II we ’ ll be seeing how key words like identity and power and gender can lend a new light on things British and American. I hope that students doing degrees in English or sociology at German universities will find Part II useful as a springboard for a deeper exploration of cultural studies. I hope you ’ ll find both parts informative and entertaining. A few words about terminology. When you read the US (without the periods) or America, think of the United States although it makes up only about a third of the area of the continent of North America. Even noting that almost 75 % of the population of the entire continent lives in the United States wouldn ’ t justify ignoring Canada and Mexico. Perhaps another English noun will gradually come to be used as a substitute for America in the meaning of the United States. If Spanish continues to gain in importance, a new term will come into existence to clearly indicate the US without offense to Latin Americans. Estadounidense would be accurate but a bit long. The terminology connected with Britain is so complicated that it deserves its own subchapter as you ’ ll see in just a few pages. But for now use Britain to refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which currently includes Scotland and Wales. We ’ ll know by the next edition of this book if Britain has shrunk and perhaps needs a new name. Instead of always saying the British, I ’ ll sometimes use the very informal Brits, which is of course meant without any derogatory touch. But what about Anglo in the title, you might ask as an alert reader who thought Anglo referred to English? Well, Anglo-American as an adjective can refer to the US and the UK. A few big-name politicians have used it exactly in this sense. The term can be problematic, but it takes up less space than a more accurate version: Area Studies and Cultural Studies of the United States of America and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. You ’ ll perhaps be surprised about the style of writing, which - while startlingly informal (see Brits above) in comparison to acadecultural studies America? Britain? Anglo? me 2 Introduction <?page no="10"?> mic books in Germany - is actually not so uncommon in the cultural studies part of the Anglo-American academic world. Perhaps you ’ re used to reading academic books in German in which the author is supposed to be invisible and the reader is not addressed - a way of feigning objectivity. But the author always chooses the material he or she thinks is relevant and important, and simply avoiding “ I ” wouldn ’ t make the choice any more objective. Since subjectivity and identity play a very important role in cultural studies, I ’ ve taken the liberty of making my identity more explicit for reasons that I hope to make clearer in the course of our book. You ’ ll have also noticed that I address you the reader in the 2 nd person. By addressing you directly I hope to encourage as much of a dialogue as is possible. I ’ ve also used contractions throughout in order to set an informal tone. Those who are aware of some of the differences between American and British English will also notice that I ’ ve almost always chosen the American equivalent. You may ask yourself about which sources I ’ ve used. First of all: Almost nothing in this book is original except the way it ’ s written and my combination of Landeskunde facts in Part I with cultural studies approaches in Part II in one volume. Since UTB Basics are intended as an introduction for students, my goal isn ’ t to overload you with quick facts but to present fairly common basic knowledge about specific topics in Britain and America in addition to an introduction to the exciting world of cultural studies. If you wish to search for specific terms, you can easily use the search function in the digital version of this book and thus we can use all pages for real reading. Instead of a bibliography at the end, I ’ ve included recommendations at the end of the chapter in a special section called morsels & more. You can find many cross references marked with a bell that shows connections between chapters. While you don ’ t have to read chapter by chapter, I hope that you find the book interesting enough to read ideally from start to finish since I ’ ve incorporated a narrative with elements of surprise and a few intentional traps that work best that way. You ’ ll note that many - but not all - of the chapters follow the same pattern. The first three chapters provide fairly small appetizers about American and British geography, history, and special issues. Chapters 4 through 11 mostly deal with classic Landeskunde topics. After we ’ ve digested these topics, we ’ ll then be ready for an afterdinner discussion of cultural studies in Part II. you sources? morsels! Fig. 0.0 In the margin the notebook emoji signals websites, blogs, streaming; the books published sources; the popcorn movies, documentaries; and the bell should “ ring a bell ” . 3 Introduction <?page no="11"?> World-shaking events have necessitated major changes to most chapters in this third edition, tectonic shifts we could call ABC trinity with B for Brexit and C for the coronavirus. A is for the 45 th American president whose last - or first or middle - name doesn ’ t begin with an A but who is often described as extremely antagonistic and aggressive. In early 2022 the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent shock waves around the world and dislodged the pandemic and the effects of Brexit from headline news. If you find this book to be thought-provoking enough to continue your own exploration of things American and British, then I will have achieved one goal. If you also discover subversive ways of approaching Anglo-American cultural studies, then we ’ ll both have succeeded. “ Subversive? ” you might ask. But let ’ s take one step at a time. Fig. 0.1 4 Barbras (The Jewish Jackie Series). Look at this example of American art, a painting by Deborah Kass of Barbra Streisand, both of whom we ’ ll be meeting again. Listen to a few lines from “ Starting Here, Starting Now ” (Daniel Shire music, Richard Maltby Jr lyrics), which Barbra Streisand sang in Berlin after the turn of the millennium: Now take my hand For the greatest journey Heaven can allow Starting love Starting here Starting now goals for you … and me 4 Introduction <?page no="12"?> I: Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies Contents 1 The Where (geography) 6 2 The When (history) 37 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) 92 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) 114 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) 135 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) 162 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) 187 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) 222 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) 251 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) 269 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) 290 5 I <?page no="13"?> The Where (geography) Let ’ s cover geography and history in the form of easily digestible appetizers. You may be familiar with some of what you ’ ll try, some flavors may be new for you. We ’ ll be using the insights and facts gained from our survey in the first three chapters in the rest of our book. When you see a , imagine that your host is ringing a bell signaling a main course in a different chapter. You can then either go right to the main course or continue with the tapas. Bon appétit, as Americans would say. Our first very short question and answer: Should we begin on an island or on a continent? Let ’ s take the bigger one, the continent, first. Does the term continental US make sense? The first question is very easy to answer: No, the term continental US doesn ’ t make much sense. Since we decided to start with a continent, you may be somewhat surprised by a question that seems to imply that the United States is a continent. While the US is very big, the continent of North America is even bigger and includes Canada, the second largest country in the world. According to some geographers the continent also includes all of Central America, from Mexico to Panama, and even Greenland. If continental US doesn ’ t refer to an entire continent, then it would make sense to understand the term as referring to all states of the United States on the continent of North America, thus including the lower 48 below Canada and also Alaska, the largest state, separated by Canada from the lower 48, but still on the North American continent. The United States government defines continental US as including Alaska, but not all Americans listen to their government and some see the continental US as just the lower 48 as if Alaska wasn ’ t even part of the continent. The less common terms contiguous or conterminous are more difficult to pronounce but accurately refer to all the states on the North American continent that border one another. At least lower 48 or 49? 6 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="14"?> continental US could remind us of the fact that Alaska (number 49) - on the continent but far away from the other states - and Hawaii (number 50) - a long way from the continent - were each admitted to the US later than the other states, over sixty years ago. And the use of the term lower 48 could remind us of the special status of Washington DC, which isn ’ t yet a state at all; otherwise we would talk about the lower 49. Washington DC is not only not a state, it isn ’ t even classed as being in a state but in the specially created District of Columbia and is the capital of the entire country, a country that while absorbing millions of immigrants presented challenging physical barriers for the trip from east to west. Fig. 1.1 Continental US? Like all two-dimensional maps, this one looks distorted, just as some might claim that the United States ’ view of itself in the world can appear distorted to other nations. Note all the little red circles: there ’ s at least one state, a couple of commonwealths, and assorted islands, one of which we ’ ll be visiting soon. Effects of physical barriers on US settlement? An easy answer would be “ a lot ” since physical barriers have both restricted and defined settlement from the very beginning. We ’ re supposed to be answering geography questions here and not history, so let ’ s keep the answer short and just list the barriers from east to west starting with the Atlantic Ocean, the Appalachian (pronounced appalay-chin) Mountains from New England to the south, the Great Lakes if you stay north after crossing the Appalachians, then the Great oceans, mountains, plains, rivers, deserts 7 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="15"?> Plains - which you wouldn ’ t need climbing skills to cross but which require a great deal of perseverance: the Great Plains are thousands of kilometers of nothing but very plain Plains, and to get across the Plains you would first have to swim across the Mississippi and its tributaries (and during flooding, the Mississippi can be several kilometers wide). Only after surviving the great sameness of the Great Plains would you be faced with the sheer faces of the Rocky Mountains, which are rocky indeed with more than 60 peaks easily dwarfing Germany ’ s Zugspitze. Even after crossing the Rockies, settlers then have a few deserts to traverse, including one of the hottest places on the planet, Death Valley. Unlike the original settlers, modern-day travelers now have the opportunity for rest and refreshment at one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, Lake Mead, and for recreation in one of the largest desert cities, Las Vegas, in one of the least habitable places on Earth before finally arriving in the Promised Land of California. Modern-day travelers can continue past the Pacific coast to one of the most isolated islands in the world, Hawaii. Even further is one of the United States ’ few territories, the island of Guam, the most extreme western point of the United States. It ’ s so far west that it ’ s almost in the Far East, being only a couple of thousand miles (or a few more thousand kilometers: 1.6 kilometers = 1 mile) south-east of Japan (see the bottom of the elongated oval on the right side of the map 1.1). Guam is so far west it ’ s on the other side of the International Date Line and thus one day ahead of the rest of the US. We ’ ve now moved from the East coast all the way across the country and much of the Pacific Ocean and thus duplicated partly the original movement west, a movement that has been thought of in some periods of American history as Manifest Destiny, 6 a sign of divine will. Before we return from the other side of the world, let ’ s go back to our map. Can you see what looks a little like an Alaskan middle finger in the upper left-hand corner? Then look at the upper right-hand corner for the index finger shape in the easternmost tip of Russia. The US and Russia seem to be at separate ends of the world on our map but in fact they are only a few miles apart. When the water freezes during the Arctic winter, you could even walk from the American Little Diomede island to the neighboring Russian Big Diomede island (but would be sent back since it ’ s illegal to cross this international border). islands on the other side of the world walking distance to Russia 8 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="16"?> US size compared to European countries? The answer can be easy: the US is a lot lot bigger than any European country taken individually. The US is roughly sixteen times larger than France, the largest country in the European Union. On the other hand, the US is only about five times larger than Greenland, which although politically connected to Denmark isn ’ t part of the EU. (Joe Biden officially stated that the US wasn ’ t interested in buying Greenland a few years after Trump made headlines with talk of a possible US annex of the world ’ s largest island.) But the US is twentyseven times bigger than Germany and almost forty times bigger than the United Kingdom. But Germany is bigger than almost all of the states of the United States taken individually except the very big states of Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana. Well, you may ask, just how big is the US? Would you prefer the US Census Bureau ’ s figure of 3,809,525 square miles (including water) or the CIA World Fact Book ’ s figure of 9,826,630 or the United Nations ’ figure of 9,629,091 square kilometers? If you have a hard time imagining what these numbers mean, then what about comparing how long it would take you to drive from New York on the East coast, the largest city in the US, all the way across the country to the second largest city, Los Angeles, on the West coast? If you drove according to the old national speed limit of 55 miles per hour (which converts to a wonderfully leisurely 88 kilometers per hour), it would take more than 44 hours non-stop driving from the Big Apple to the City of Angels, comparable to driving from Cologne Cathedral southwest all the way through France and Spain right down to where Europe ends at Gibraltar and then back again including a final one-way trip to Frankfurt Airport. What would you see in the US on the 44-hour marathon from the east to the west? Some interesting and unusual US physical features? Do you like outdoor recreation? Wide open spaces? Wet or dry, cold or hot? Some of the same barriers we just mentioned that made the settlement of the continent so difficult have now become some of the top tourist attractions in the country. Interesting features might include the Great Lakes if you enjoy water recreation; the Rocky Mountains if you enjoy climbing, hiking, and skiing; or descending to the lowest point in North America at Badwater in Death Valley. Unusual physical features would certainly include the Grand Canyon 27 × Germany, 40 × UK how big exactly? mountains, valleys, canyons, lakes 9 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="17"?> in Arizona formed by the Colorado River over millions of years. The Grand Canyon National Park is one of the oldest in the US and extends from one man-made lake, Lake Powell, formed by the controversial Glen Canyon Dam in the mid 1960s, to Lake Mead, which you ’ ve just read about, formed by one of the largest dams in the world, the Hoover Dam, which when built in the mid 1930s was the largest concrete structure in the world. Of course there are also natural lakes; some of the largest in the world make up the Great Lakes, which partly form the border between Canada and the US and which have the illustrative names Lake Superior (the biggest, as the name implies), Lake Huron (named after the Huron Indians), Lake Michigan (forming part of the border of the state of Michigan and only one of the five completely within the US), Lake Erie (named after the Erie Indians), and Lake Ontario, the smallest and most easterly, which has the same name as the Canadian province on its northern banks. All five lakes taken together make up an area larger than the UK. What lies - or rather “ falls ”- between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario? The most famous waterfall in the US: Niagara Falls (the stress in Niagara is on the second syllable, unless you ’ re speaking German). Although the Grand Canyon wouldn ’ t exist without the Colorado River, the Colorado (the “ a ” pronounced “ ah ” ) isn ’ t even half as long as the Mississippi. If you can ’ t remember how many s ’ s and p ’ s are in Mississippi, then just call it Ol ’ Man River, its name in a famous song from the musical Show Boat. The Spanish explorer who “ discovered ” the Mississippi called it Río del Espíritu Santo or more simply Rio Grande, but we know it by the name given by the tribes who had been living there long before the Spanish came. The Mississippi River ’ s origin lies in the far north of Minnesota fairly close to the Canadian border, and when joined on the west by the Missouri River (the longest river in the US), and on the east by the Ohio, it drains most of the vast Great Plains in the center of the country before expanding into a delta area in New Orleans and flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Another great river also flows into the Gulf and forms a natural border between the US and Mexico, and here the name Rio Grande stuck. Americans not only crossed the enormous Great Plains on their movement westwards, they also managed to turn these vast open areas into fertile grazing and farming land and to exploit the mineral resources - in spite of extreme temperatures and lack of rain, which in rivers long and longer plain Plains 10 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="18"?> the worst of times can lead to conditions found in the Dust Bowl, a part of the southern Great Plains where extensive farming led to extreme soil erosion. Perhaps the most interesting and unusual physical feature of the US compared with Western Europe is the sameness of the landscape, clearly evidenced in the Great Plains: you can drive for hours and hours through Texas and not see anything else than fields so flat that on a clear day and with good eyesight you can almost persuade yourself that you can experience the curvature of the earth by staring into the distance (and since much of Texas is “ dry ” , meaning you can ’ t legally purchase alcohol, you ’ ll probably even be sober). If this book were only about interesting and unusual features, then we could continue westwards and describe in detail Pikes Peak, the Great Salt Lake Desert, Lake Tahoe, Mount Saint Helens, the Hawaiian Islands … , but let ’ s leave these to the tourist brochures and films and turn our sights to some of those aspects not usually on the ordinary tourist ’ s route. Effects of American civilization on the environment? A lot of environmentalists might be tempted to respond immediately with “ certainly not any good effects, ” but dam builders might respond with “ fantastic examples of feats of human engineering ” providing millions of Americans with electricity and water and recreation. You can probably find one example of environmental damage for each and every triumph of man over nature, and we ’ ll be looking at a few examples in more detail later. 9 Because the two main mountain ranges of the US, the Appalachians in the east and the Rockies in the west, run north to south, cold Arctic air from the north has no natural barrier and can flow into the very heart of the country, making places in the Great Plains much colder in winter than other places on earth with the same latitude. The southeastern region can also be hot and humid, with Florida ’ s peninsula extending a bit into the subtropics. Florida also has far milder winters than the northeast region of the US, which can experience heavy snowfall even close to the coast. Parts of the west coast are the only areas comfortably habitable without energy needed for central heating and air-conditioning. But even this temperate part of the US felt the effects of climate change with scorching temperatures in the early 2020s. 9 climate? extraordinarily varied 11 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="19"?> How have Americans learned to live with these climatic extremes? Amazingly well. Perhaps part of the American character involves the kind of resilience that can be seen in all the building and rebuilding of homes or buying new mobile homes until the next tornado blows them away: this ability to continually start anew seems American. Technological advances like central heating and air conditioning, the use of snow plows, the development of weather forecasting with special networks devoted to nothing else than descriptions of the next storm have enabled millions of Americans to spread across a continent that in amazingly large parts isn ’ t fit for comfortable human habitation. Even those areas fit for human habitation, like much of California, might not be fit much longer due to the results of human action or inaction, like the horrific wildfires of the 2010s and 2020s. 9 Where do most Americans live? Fig. 1.2 Don ’ t let the red color distract you, which has nothing to do with politics. 5 Counties are political units, but we ’ re focussing on population here. The dark areas are those with the most people per square kilometer (or square mile as the US census uses). You can thus probably identify fairly easily the major megalopolises (a fancy word for large urbanized areas, the Rhine-Ruhr area is a good example in Germany): BosWash wonders of technology? megalopolis 12 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="20"?> from Boston south to Washington in the northeast, ChiPitts from Chicago to Pittsburg, thus from the Great Lakes eastwards to Pennsylvania, and SanSan on the west coast from San Diego northwards through Los Angeles and ending in San Francisco. What about other splotches of color? We ’ ll be coming to other major urban areas a little later. The map shows us that Americans haven ’ t spread out evenly. On the other hand, they also move from place to place. We ’ ll use another map to see where they ’ re moving and learn something about political divisions at the same time. Fig. 1.3 This map shows one way in which the US is divided for political purposes, namely into 50 states. Each state is made up of congressional districts, each of which elects its own member to the House of Representatives. Change in congressional seats 2020 meant some states gaining additional seats, some losing seats so that the total remains 435. When you visit the census website, you can do the interactive part. Why did California lose one representative when the population actually grew by a few million? Because the population there didn ’ t grow as fast as it did in Texas. And the population growth was so slow in other states that they lost representatives. But Illinois and West Virginia are the only states with declining popluations, and they each lost one representative. 13 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="21"?> How is the United States divided for political purposes? With 435 districts and a total US population of roughly 330,000,000 each district should represent roughly 750,000 people. Since people tend to move a lot within the country, some areas lose population and others gain. Every ten years a national census takes place partly to see which districts need to be redrawn so that all districts more or less represent the same number of people. Redrawing districts becomes complicated when politicians try to ensure that their party can gain a majority. Much easier is the division for the Senate: each state has two Senators regardless of area or of population. 5 It shouldn ’ t be surprising that people have been moving from parts of the country with uncomfortable climate conditions and economic problems in the northeast or around the Great Lakes, an area sometimes called the Rust Belt, to parts of the country with sunshine and jobs like those in the south and southwest, areas that have become known as the Sun Belt. 6 What is somewhat surprising is the drop in the increase in American population - the Census 2020 shows the smallest increase in a century. American mobility has also decreased since the late 2010s with fewer Americans than ever before moving far from home. But will Covid 19 allow Americans to spread out more across the country untethered from their place of work? 6 Will fires and freezes make more countryside uninhabitable? 9 Let ’ s leave the bad weather and have another look at the last map again and now focus on state boundaries. When you look at the boundaries in the western two-thirds of the US west of the Mississippi, you can easily see that mostly straight lines form the borders between the states, evidence that the vast western part of the United States was settled in a different way than the area east of the Mississippi, which was settled earlier. Although the area of the contiguous United States is already nicely divided up into 48 sections, what will happen to the map when future states are added to the Union? A good question … What do you think will become the next state? Now that we ’ ve reminded ourselves of the 50 states in the US since the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, we can ask the question: Will there be a 51 st state? Additional states are certainly possible if the inhabitants apply for statehood and the Congress of the United States approves. Originally the capital of the United States, Washington DC states and districts climate and corona straight lines a 51 st state? DC? 14 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="22"?> had the shape of a square made up of land taken from the two states of Virginia and Maryland until Virginia took some of the land back. Washington isn ’ t in a state, it ’ s officially the District of Columbia, called DC by people who live there. They lacked representation until Congress in the 70s allowed them to elect one non-voting member to the House of Representatives. At least DC residents had already gained the right to vote for president when the 23 rd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in the 60s, and they can also vote for their mayor and city council. Reasons for the long lack of representation and power for DC residents include the fact that the daytime population is almost double the number of actual residents. The contrast between rich and poor, between those with power and those with little power, can still be seen as starkly in DC as anywhere else in the US. Crime and poverty levels haven fallen in the last couple of decades, and the movement for Washington DC to gain statehood status has become more popular. A bill to create the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth (named after Frederick Douglass, a historic Black leader you ’ ll be hearing more about in the next chapter) passed the House of Representatives twice. Resistance comes mostly from Republicans, who rightly fear that the citizens of DC would elect Democrats. 5 Outright racism also plays a role as well since the majority of DC ’ s 700,000 inhabitants are Black and growing at one of the fastest rates in the entire US. Even when the citizens of DC at last gain the same rights of Americans everywhere else by becoming citizens of the 51 st state, there ’ ll still be a federal capital called Washington, District of Columbia, just a lot smaller and including only the White House, the Capitol, other federal buildings and the National Mall (a park, not a shopping center), an area almost exactly the same size as the Regierungsviertel in Berlin (although the Kanzleramt is eight times larger than the White House). The corresponding area in London, the City of Westminster, is four times larger but contains more than just government buildings. In the past, states were added to the union in pairs. Statehood for DC or for Puerto Rico 6 won ’ t be likely until after the next elections. Let ’ s leave possible new states and turn to another political division in America, the city. State of Washington? Douglass Commonwealth 15 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="23"?> American latitudes compared with European cities? Comparing the size of the US with European countries isn ’ t very surprising since everyone knows the US is a really big country, so why not try and fool your friends with this question: If you were to draw a very straight line from Mainz (which conveniently lies directly on the 50-degree line of latitude) due west, which American city would be the first one you ’ d hit? (But don ’ t show them the map at the beginning of the chapter because for this question it ’ s accurate enough to spoil the surprise.) Answer: Regina (which curiously enough has almost the same population as Mainz) but only if you interpret the word American to mean North American and thus include the Canadian province of Saskatchewan with its capital city of Regina. Mainz and of course all other parts of Germany north of Mainz are further north than the entire contiguous US, the term we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Pick an American city and ask for the corresponding European cities. New York is on the same line of latitude as Madrid, Washington DC ’ s equivalent is Athens, and Miami ’ s would either be slightly south of the Canary Islands in the West Sahara desert or if you insist on a twin city of latitude for Miami, then you ’ d have to choose Dubai. What about another interesting question? What ’ s the most interesting most American city? What ’ s interesting is of course subjective; what ’ s most American is even more challenging to justify. You might want to begin to answer the question based on population. But here too there are problems: Should we take the population of the city within the city limits or the metropolitan area? The top three on both lists are the same: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Numbers four to ten of the top ten will vary if you consider just the population within the city (left column in the table) or if you consider the metropolitan area (right column). The 2020 census list looks a lot like the list ten years earlier of the ten cities with a population of more than a million. The metropolitan areas (not megapolis) range from 5 million for greater Phoenix to 20 million for New York-Newark. How many of the cities in the table had you never heard of? Which ones did you expect from what you learned from a previous question? Would you describe any of these cities as “ interesting ” ? The apparent stability in the list of largest US cities might not withstand the huge changes that are in store for metropolises across the country and further south … than you think metro to micro to CDP 16 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="24"?> around the world in the wake of Covid-19. Will large expensive metropolises lose population or will the migration of those born in the two decades before the turn of the millennium (the Millennials) result in a return to the city? Check back in ten years to see if the list above changes. In the meantime the US Census Bureau is thinking about inventing a new term, micropolitan, for those areas that have fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, the same minimum necessary in Germany for the term Großstadt. The Census Bureau already uses the technocratic term CDP, meaning census-designated place, for those places that aren ’ t a metropolitan area or a city. One notable city that has fallen dramatically in population from 1.8 million in the 50s to less than 700,000 in 2020 is Detroit, an example of a city located in the Rust Belt with its informal name Motown linking it both to music 11 and to motors, Detroit being the headquarters of the Big Three automobile manufacturers Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. Will Detroit remain Destroit, a slang term for the destroyed abandoned city, a heartbreaking example of urban decay caused by racism and corrupt government? Detroit could also represent the future of American cities with projects devoted to the greening of the city by turning old city blocks into gardens. Now having survived bankruptcy, Detroit could become a symbol of a hopeful American urban future with a renaissance of its historically important African American middle class. We ’ ll be discovering another historical Detroit connection between the Old and the New Worlds soon. 2 top ten largest cities / metropolitan areas in population 1 st New York New York-Newark 2 nd Los Angeles Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anahmein 3 rd Chicago Chicago-Npaerville-Elgin 4 th Houston Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington 5 th Phoenix Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land 6 th Philadelphia Washington-Arlington-Alexandria 7 th San Antonio Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach 8 th San Diego Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington 9 th Dallas Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta 10 th San Jose Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Detroit Destroit? 17 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="25"?> If you ’ ve visited American cities, you ’ ve probably noticed the lack of a center, common in most German or British cities, and you ’ ve no doubt noticed that downtown business areas organized like a grid are strictly separated from residential areas in the suburbs with winding streets. You may have been surprised by the European character of American cities not found in the top ten table above like Boston and San Francisco. You would certainly have been astonished by the ethnic variety of New York or the wide boulevards and elegant memorials and shopping malls of Washington DC surrounded by areas of shockingly visible poverty. Maybe you wondered where Los Angeles begins and ends if you drove down one of the freeways with their unending stretches of numbingly similar single family houses. You most certainly would have missed the availability of public transport in most cities with a population of less than a million or maybe have enjoyed the luxury of some light rail connections with air conditioning and wifi in some of the environmentally friendlier cities like Portland in Oregon or Seattle on the west coast or between the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota. Otherwise American cities seem to have been built for automobiles rather than for pedestrians. With the widespread popularity of shopping malls with chain stores and huge parking lots, very many American cities have no distinctly individual look in the way that some British and many European cities do. Those who ’ ve only visited the cites most popular for tourists probably won ’ t be able to easily describe the most American city. But trying to find the most American city is very important to companies testing new products. One city not mentioned above often used by retail and food market testers as the typical American city is Columbus, Ohio. Another city regarded as most typical based on age, education, ethnicity: New Haven, Connecticut. A study using a wider range of factors chose Nashville, Tennessee, and Indianapolis, Indiana, as cities that mirror America better. One city that mirrors contradictions across America was named by French settlers for a medieval king and saint, has a Gateway Arch monument celebrating westward expansion, the place from which the displacement of many Native Americans 7 was planned. St. Louis, Missouri, lies near the confluence of the two largest rivers in the US, which you now know are the Mississippi and the Missouri. St. Louis was a place for 19 th century social reformers from Germany and for unions that fought together to improve conditions for workers downtown, suburbs, rich, poor cars, cars, cars, … and light rail most American? St. Louis mirror of American contradictions 18 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="26"?> regardless of skin color, the place where ragtime music was born and where brutal murders of Black Americans took place in the early 20 th century, and one of the places where the Black Lives Movement started and where citizens elected their first Black female mayor in the early 2020s. The two cities at the very bottom of lists of typically American cities are at the very top of tourists ’ lists: San Francisco and New York. Other surprising details about American cities? Whenever you ’ re asked to associate a country with a city, you usually think of the capital. Washington isn ’ t on the list of the ten largest cities (unless you take the metropolitan area into account). More than two centuries ago the US Constitution designated land to be set aside for the official capital of the newly founded nation partly in order to solve conflicts among states that wanted to have the national capital. The capital had temporarily been cities like New York and Philadelphia and also smaller places like Princeton in New Jersey and Annapolis in Maryland. Many state capitals are, strangely enough, not the most populous or the most famous cities in their states. To name just a few: Austin, Texas; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Lansing, Michigan; Sacramento, California; Tallahassee, Florida; and Topeka, Kansas. US population compared to European countries? You might think that since the United States is so much bigger than individual European Union countries in area, it must also have a far higher number of inhabitants. Not quite. Let ’ s first of all compare the population density of a few European countries. The most densely populated country in the European Union is Malta, the smallest EU country. The Netherlands has around 400 people per square kilometer, Germany a little more than 200. The EU as a whole has about half the density of Germany. The US as a whole is much less densely populated. If you round up the size of the US in square kilometers (look for “ how big exactly? ” in the margin of an earlier page) and know that the US 2020 Census Bureau came up with 330 million inhabitants, then you can figure out that the current population density has to be more than 35 people per square kilometer. The EU has around three times more people per square kilometer. Of course the average number can be very misleading and ranges in the US from 11,000 people per square mile (since miles are common in the US) in DC to little more than 1 person per square mile in Alaska. capitals: national and state population … not so dense 19 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="27"?> If we compare the populations of American states and European countries, the most populous state California with 40 million has about as many inhabitants as Poland, the sixth-largest EU country in population. The second most populous state is Texas with 30 million followed by Florida and New York, each with around 20 million. The comparison becomes interesting when we compare the smallest states by population. Wyoming has the fewest inhabitants, a state almost exactly the same size in area as the United Kingdom, but with roughly the same number of inhabitants as Bremen. Alaska is more than four times bigger in area than Germany but has fewer inhabitants than Frankfurt. Or to make another comparison that shows just how undemocratic the US Senate is: Wyoming ’ s two senators represent around ½ million citizens, California ’ s senators represent … the number above, very many more. And the future? The 2020 Census showed the slowest population growth in a century, and for the first time ever the number of White non-Hispanic Americans declined. Without immigration the population of the US will begin to shrink since the fertility rate and immigration have also dramatically dropped. The pandemic took a horrible toll of more than 1 million American deaths. What environmentally conscious people could see as positive doesn ’ t fit in with the image of growth as part of the American Dream. Languages spoken as mother tongues? The easiest answer to this question is: Almost all languages known to humankind. Such an answer should come as no surprise to those who know the United States as a nation of immigrants from around the world. 7 While there has never been an official national language, some states have declared English to be the official language - partly as a response to the fast-growing bilingual parts of America where English and Spanish are spoken. Surprising perhaps is that German was the third most spoken language in American homes in 1980. Although it ’ s now fallen to the bottom of the top 10, at least a very large percentage of German speakers in the US claim they can speak English very well. And on this proud note (at least for German speakers of English in the United States), let ’ s leave the continent and travel across the ocean to our beloved island kingdom, which is actually a kingdom made up of more than 5,000 islands. state populations … fair representation? shrinking US? all languages … German too 20 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="28"?> (Great) Britain, British Isles, England, United Kingdom? It ’ s not easy to distinguish between these terms; and some of them will seem just as confusing as the term continental US from the beginning of this chapter. But as with continental US all these terms about Britain are commonly used even though they ’ re problematic. We could start with the term British Isles; after all I just promised you more than 5,000 islands although you might have only expected two: namely the larger island called Great Britain and the somewhat smaller island called Ireland. What about the Hebrides, the Orkney Islands, or the Shetlands (the northernmost point of the UK), which lie off the west and north coasts of Scotland? Or the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales, which became a center of Druidism. 8 Or the Isles of Scilly (pronounced “ silly ” ), which weren ’ t silly to the captains of the many ships that were wrecked off rocky coasts there. The Scilly Isles are the southernmost place in the UK, more than 50 kilometers further south and west than Land ’ s End in Cornwall. The Isle of Man is midway between the English, Scottish, and Irish coasts at the geographical center of the British Isles. In spite of its central position, the Isle of Man isn ’ t part of the United Kingdom as a Crown Dependency. Other Crown Dependencies are far to the south, just off the coast of France: the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey. 6 So far so good. It gets complicated when you start to use commonly known terms. You can even insult some of the inhabitants of Wales and Scotland if you say England and mean Britain. Compare the name Great Britain with Britain - which is bigger? Since you probably think this is a trick question, you ’ d probably guess Britain and be right. The confusion is basically one of using geographical and political terms interchangeably. Britain is widely used instead of the formal political name The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, very long and in use only since 1922. 2 Great Britain isn ’ t bigger than Britain (in the meaning of the UK) when you use the name Great Fig. 1.4 The “ British ” Isles. I ’ ve marked with little arrows all the little islands mentioned. The two color shades have nothing to do with geography but everything to do with politics. big and small islands (Great) Britain United Kingdom 21 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="29"?> Britain as the geographical name of the island made up of the three countries of England, Wales, and Scotland. England is the largest country of the three in area and also has by far the largest population as we ’ ll see a little later, which is why foreigners like Germans or Americans sometimes say England when they mean Britain or at least Great Britain. Even Deutsche Bahn made this mistake on the packages of chocolates given to passengers during the World Cup in 2006: The English St. George ’ s flag filled up the entire map of the island of Great Britain. 12 You could read that England covers an area of 130,395 square kilometers, exact and correct, and a population of 60,441,457 - very exact for the time and very wrong, unless you translate DB ’ s England as the United Kingdom. Let ’ s use a summary table and a map to help make us aware of the complications connected with names from a political and a geographical perspective. names and terms political geographical British Isles a politically loaded term avoided by those who don ’ t consider Ireland as British British Islands a legal term not commonly used to refer to the United Kingdom and the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man British Isles a politically neutral term referring to the island of Great Britain, the island of Ireland, and many other islands; other terms less commonly used: Britain and Ireland, British-Irish Isles United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Great Britain and Northern Ireland the entire island Great Britain and the northeastern part of the island of Ireland England Scotland Wales Northern Ireland Ireland as an island with the countries of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland Republic of Ireland Isle of Man Crown Dependency Isle of Man island in the Irish Sea Channel Islands Crown Dependencies Channel Islands including the islands of Guernsey, Jersey, and other smaller islands off the coast of France … many other geographical islands considered part of the political entities in the left-hand column 22 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="30"?> Fig. 1.5 “ British ” Isles terminology … Does this help more than the table? At least you can use it to identify some of the islands my little red arrows pointed to in the previous map. Maybe the easiest term to understand at first glance is the British Isles, a geographical term that includes not only the biggest island, Great Britain, but also the second biggest, Ireland, and many more. Unfortunately what seems to be a clearly geographical term is also a political term: the Irish could very well object to having their Emerald Isle called British or English; and as we ’ ll see later in the history chapter, there are lots of good reasons for this. The British Isles also include the smaller Isle of Man, located in between the two bigger islands, as well as the Channel Islands, which are much much closer to France than to the “ precious stone set in the silver sea ” as Shakespeare famously described England (but meaning of course Great Britain). The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are part of the British Isles although they aren ’ t part of the United Kingdom, as you now know. Could the political and terminological complications be simplified if the island of Ireland became one unified Ireland instead being divided between the north and south? If Scotland becomes independent, then British? Isles 23 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="31"?> the big island called Great Britain would become divided politically between north and south. 5 Effects of Britain ’ s geographical location on its history? Just as with our second American geography appetizer, let ’ s keep the history answer short. Britain, as we ’ ve just seen, can be looked at geographically as a group of islands, the biggest of which, Great Britain, just makes the top ten of the world ’ s largest islands in terms of area (but is number 1 in Europe). Since Great Britain is less than half as wide as it is long and has a highly indented coastline, any given point on the island is at most only around 125 kilometers from the sea, starting at the North Sea (which in spite of its name is east of Great Britain) and the Atlantic Ocean. Heading counterclockwise over and around the tip of Scotland we come to the narrow North Channel, the Irish Sea, St. George ’ s Channel in between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, (to the west of the island of Ireland lies the Atlantic Ocean), the Celtic Sea off the coasts of Wales and Cornwall, the Atlantic Ocean off the southwestern extremities of the Isles of Scilly, and the English Channel in between England and France with its narrowest point at the Strait of Dover, which separates the English Channel from the North Sea. Life on an island can be idyllic - if you like sunny weather and choose an island in the Pacific - or can contribute to a sense of identity if the island is small enough, or can lead to increased emigration if the inhabitants suffer from claustrophobia. Life on an island can encourage the inhabitants to develop special talents Fig. 1.6 Isles and Seas … If you ’ re a little seasick from all the seas mentioned, maybe this map will help you “ see ” more clearly not only the seas but the isles with names now that aren ’ t politically controversial but mere places. many seas island life 24 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="32"?> useful for emigration or colonization, like shipbuilding. We ’ ll be seeing examples of insular character throughout the book. Since this geography question deals just a little with history, maybe it ’ s useful to remember that Great Britain hasn ’ t always been an island. Around 10,000 years ago the narrow English Channel was so narrow that people could walk across. After the ice of the last Ice Age melted and turned what had been a peninsula into the island of Great Britain, crossing the Channel meant either sailing or rowing or swimming until … Connections old and new? The Channel Tunnel, inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth and the French president Mitterrand in 1994, was at first called Chunnel by the Brits with their typical love of nicknames. While plans for a tunnel to connect the island and the continent can be traced back at least a couple of hundred years, engineering challenges weren ’ t the only reason why it took so long. Britain (geographically Great Britain) had been an island longer than any of its inhabitants can trace back their roots. Could a tunnel change this special island status? Less debatable are the results of the Chunnel: distance, speed, and enormous cost. The organization running the tunnel has been on the verge of bankruptcy now for almost as long as it ’ s been open, especially intensified by a dramatic drop in business due to the combined wallop of Brexit and Covid. This connection between mainland Europe and the island of Great Britain might remain - at least until either the next Ice Age or global warming changes the geographical face of northwest Europe. But what was a link between two members of the European Union is now an international border between a continent and a large island. As the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson proposed a bridge linking England and France because he paradoxically claimed that after Brexit more than just the Channel Tunnel would be needed. Boris Johnson as prime minister shifted focus from the UK and the EU to connections between Scotland and Northern Ireland and England, proposing a bridge or tunnels to connect three nations that were in danger of drifting apart politically. The tunnels would be linked by a typically English roundabout under the Isle of Man, which as we know has never been part of the EU or the UK. Critics mocked the project and called one of Johnson ’ s tunnel proposals Boris ’ Chunnel “ Boris ’ Burrow ” 25 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="33"?> Burrow. They say that the chances of building even one of Boris ’ s proposed tunnels is probably as high as the chances were for his doomed proposal as mayor of London for a pedestrian Garden Bridge with trees and grass over the Thames or for a new London airport on an artifical island in the Thames estuary, nicknamed Boris Island. UK size compared to European countries? We ’ ve already found out that the United Kingdom covers all of the island of Great Britain plus a smaller part of the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland, plus a few thousand smaller islands. Using rounded numbers in square kilometers (in spite of the British preference for miles): United Kingdom 250,000; England 130,000; Wales 20,000; Scotland plus lots of islands way up north 80,000; Northern Ireland 15,000. A comparison: Germany is considerably larger than the United Kingdom at more than 350,000 square kilometers, and France as well as Spain are individually more than twice as big as the UK, which made up only about 5 % of the entire area of the EU, so Brexit didn ’ t reduce the area of the European Union by much. But as we learned above, the island of Great Britain is the largest in Europe (if we agree with the geographers who think Greenland is part of North Fig. 1.7 Does this look like part of the previous map 1.6? Twitter user and English folk singer John Spiers certainly thinks so. The American travel writer Paul Theroux famously described the outline of the island of Great Britain as a witch riding a pig (with the witch ’ s head in Scotland and the pig ’ s head forming the Welsh coastline). how big (more or less)? 26 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="34"?> America as you might remember from the beginning of the chapter) and more than twice as big as Iceland (and considerably more pleasant climate-wise as we ’ ll be seeing a little later on). Some interesting and unusual physical features of the UK? For those who like hiking, the Pennine Way was Britain ’ s first official trail and follows the Pennine Mountains, often said to form the backbone of England, which stretch from the Peak District (also the name of a national park) up past the border to Scotland. But don ’ t let the word “ mountains ” mislead you: the highest peaks in the Pennines are barely 900 meters, less than a third of the Zugspitze. If you want higher mountains, you have to go northwest to the Highlands of Scotland, where you can find the highest point in the United Kingdom, called Ben Nevis, which is however still less than half as high as the Zugspitze. The highest mountain in Wales is Snowdon (in the national park area called Snowdonia) at just over 1,000 meters. While the Highlands might be the favorite for mountain-climbing tourists, most British people live in the Lowlands, which comprises all the land that isn ’ t part of the Highlands and includes most of England. While some of the Lowlands is hilly, some is flat with the lowest point in Britain in the Fens on England ’ s east coast. We ’ ll be finding out more about some of the more famous areas of Britain that have been set aside as National Parks 9 later. The Jurassic Coast isn ’ t a national park but is England ’ s first natural World Heritage Site and offers a geological walk through time along the southern coast of England. There aren ’ t any dinosaurs, but if you ’ re not careful, you could get caught by the tides 9 coming in. Another famous attraction along the coast and another World Heritage Site off the coast of Northern Ireland is Giant ’ s Causeway, a collection of basalt formations shaped like columns left over from volcanic eruptions many millions of years ago, formations which appear to be stepping stones leading from the coast into the sea. Giant ’ s Causeway is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Northern Ireland and belongs to the National Trust. 9 Three important and interesting rivers in Britain? Most probably the one river that everyone would immediately think of - but might not be able to pronounce correctly - is the Thames, which in spite of the spelling is actually easy to say if you remember one syllable only and no difficult “ th ” : temz. While the mountains, hills, coasts, parks Thames, Severn Bore not boring, Tweed 27 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="35"?> Thames may be the most famous and was one of the reasons that the Romans established a camp they called Londinium at the place where this important river was narrow enough to build a bridge, the Thames isn ’ t the longest river in the UK. The River Severn forms the boundary between Wales and England and can be surfed on if the Severn Bore is high enough, caused by unusually high tides from the Bristol Channel racing up the river. The Severn is a bit longer than the Thames but still only a fourth as long as the Rhine. We ’ ve now mentioned two important rivers in England, one of which also flows through parts of southern Wales. What about an interesting river in Scotland? If you think of a particular kind of material when you hear the word Scotland, then you ’ ll find it easy to remember a beautiful but not very long river that flows in the Borders area between northern England and Scotland, the River Tweed. This question only asked for three rivers, but no one will mind if we mention just one lake, the biggest lake in the UK, Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland (hard to spell, easy to pronounce: lok-nay). Historical and contemporary importance of forests? If you hear the words England and forest, you might immediately think of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest, but there are other forests left in the United Kingdom although Britain is one of the least-forested countries with just over 1/ 10 compared to EU countries like Germany with more than double that percentage. Large parts of England were once covered by huge oak forests, but wood was needed not only to build ships - essential for island people who want to travel - but also to build and to heat castles and later to build and heat factories. Monarchs and land-owning aristocrats used forests for hunting. Nowadays tourists make non-consumptive use of British forests, but ancient forests are in competition with building development. The New Forest in heavily populated southeast England just across from the Isle of Wight (one of the many other islands of the British Isles) is a good example of how forested areas have changed over the last thousand years. The New Forest belonged to William the Conqueror and was first recorded in the Domesday Book. 2 The forest was used for royal deer hunting and also as a source of timber for the royal navy and later used as a training area in World War II. The New Forest is one of the newest national parks 9 in Britain. old forests long gone The New Forest 28 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="36"?> How could you briefly describe the climate of the UK? Let ’ s first dispel a myth about the English climate. No, it doesn ’ t rain more in England (or in Wales or Scotland) than anywhere else (except the Sahara). In fact Milan, Italy, has more rainfall annually than London. Why then does English weather have such a bad reputation? Although, as we ’ ve learned, Great Britain is the largest island in Europe with ten degrees of longitude from north to south, there are only at the very most four degrees of latitude from east to west, making Britain a long rather skinny island. One result of this narrowness and the lack of mountains near the coast to stop the winds is the changeability of weather. So if you don ’ t like the weather, just wait for it to change. Changeable weather makes a great conversation topic. Even if it seems to rain every day - and often does - it doesn ’ t often rain for days on end. Those who think of Britain as cold and wet probably wouldn ’ t expect palm trees, but in the southwest of England from Devon to Cornwall all the way west to the Isles of Scilly you can find palm trees and other vegetation usually only associated with tourist countries of the Mediterranean. Keeping in mind how far north Britain is by remembering what we learned about US and European latitudes earlier in this chapter, you might ask yourself why it ’ s not colder there. The Gulf Stream is responsible for mild climate of the British Isles and also for the successful fishing industry. 6 How is the United Kingdom divided? The most obvious political division in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is between the four countries sometimes called home nations (from largest to smallest in population): England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Each country has varying degrees of power over education and taxes. 5 We could zoom out from Britain and take a global view of the Commonwealth Fig. 1.8 Palm tree here? Look closely to see where and remember the name for “ educational ” purposes. rain? and palm trees? ! commonwealth, countries, or home nations … 29 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="37"?> as the biggest example of political division and imagine its historical size with the famous saying that “ the sun never sets on the British Empire. ” 6 Just as the US is divided into congressional districts with one district sending one representative to the House of Representatives, Britain is also divided into constituencies with each constituency sending one member to the House of Commons in Westminster. 5 There are also older divisions into counties or shires, some of which like Essex, Sussex, and Kent go all the way back to Anglo-Saxon times. 2 Especially in the English Midlands you can see the old name for county - “ shire ” - in the county names of Leicestershire (easily pronounced in three syllables les-tuh-shuh), Nottinghamshire, where Robin Hood came from, and Worcestershire (wu-stuh-shuh), where the famous sauce of the same name still comes from. The British government has attempted to reform the complicated local government system and has created new unitary authorities or unitary councils, which haven ’ t always been accepted by people used to old county names. You can still often connect old cities with their corresponding counties: Gloucester with Gloucestershire, Nottingham with Nottinghamshire, and Leicester (les-tuh) with Leicestershire. The connection between city and county names can thus be quite simple sometimes although the political divisions of power and responsibility are complicated. Fig. 1.9 Westminster sign shows that a borough can be called a city too - at least in London. Check back to a previous US appetizer about the 51 st state for the size of the City of Westminister. There are also divisions within larger cities, the most famous perhaps are the boroughs of London like the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea or Westminster. Actually the City of Westconstituencies, counties, shires … … and boroughs 30 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="38"?> minster is also a borough in spite of its name. Keep Westminster in mind; you read earlier about its size and you ’ ll be hearing about it again in several different contexts later. What ’ s the most interesting British city? We ’ ve had some practice now with this kind of question for American cities, but we have an additional problem with British cities: the official definition of city in Britain is complicated by the fact that the monarch can simply grant an area city status. Some cities have been cities since time immemorial. Others compete for the coveted status, which is awarded only on special occasions like royal jubilees. 5 Size doesn ’ t always play a role. Milton Keynes, founded in the 1960s to relieve congestion in London, has around ¼ million inhabitants but wasn ’ t granted city status until the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022. The beautiful city of Wells with a population of around 10,000 advertises itself as the smallest city in England and has a famous cathedral. London isn ’ t really a city at all but is made up of lots of boroughs like the one we just saw, the City of Westminster. In spite of its very small size the City of London has St. Paul ’ s Cathedral and the Bank of England and is situated near the heart of the sprawling metropolis called London. Since the sea has always been very important for Britain, we could pick port cities like Portsmouth in the southeast or Plymouth in the southwest. Other important ports are Bristol, just across the mouth of the River Severn near the English-Welsh border, and Newcastle, not far from the border to Scotland. Seaside resorts include Brighton in the south, Blackpool in the northwest, and Scarborough in the northeast. Tourist centers which advertise their historic roots include York and Chester and Bath. And then there are the ancient university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, both near London. But would you call any of these cities British? They ’ re all in England! And what about cities like Glasgow in the west and Edinburgh near the east coast of Scotland? Or Cardiff and Swansea in Wales or Belfast in Northern Ireland? As you might notice, there ’ s a problem with the question itself since city identity like national identity is problematic in a kingdom made up of four countries. Yet another problem lies in determining the population of any of these cities. Even the official Office of National Statistics links to research that admits that it ’ s hard to new and small ports and resorts most British? population? 31 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="39"?> count the population of Britain ’ s cities. Everyone seems to agree on Britain ’ s top two cities in terms of population size, the only two with more than a million inhabitants. Other than Greater London (the City of London only has a few thousand) and Birmingham, the following English cities are among the ten biggest (listed here alphabetically): Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield. In Scotland Edinburgh (the capital) and Glasgow are the largest cities (both also make Top 10 UK cities lists). The largest city in Wales (and the capital), Cardiff, doesn ’ t make all these lists, but Cardiff is larger than Belfast, the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland, which has a population of around 300,000 or maybe more than double that many if you consider the Belfast Metropolitan Area. Since there are no official registration offices in Britain - just as there are none in the US - the exact numbers may vary, depending on who ’ s counting when and where to draw the city limits. And although calculating the exact size of Britain ’ s biggest cities individually can prove to be difficult, it is somewhat easier to determine where most people live when we look at the nation as a whole. And where do most British people live? As you might remember, the UK as a whole is only slightly more densely populated than Germany, England with more than 400 people per square kilometer is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. And as you might expect, some areas of London far exceed this figure with more than 16,000 people per square kilometer. Conurbations, similar to American megalopolises, include cities. Although just where conurbations begin and end isn ’ t clearly defined, the vast majority of the population of Britain lives in heavily urbanized areas. In the northwest lies the urbanized area around Scotland ’ s largest city, Glasgow. Continuing south on the east coast we have Newcastle, which isn ’ t on any of the top ten lists of cities according to population but which we heard about as one of the ports on the northeast coast of England. In the middle part of England, the Midlands, we have the dark spots indicating the large metropolitan areas which grew during the industrialized 19 th and 20 th centuries and which now form a belt across England: Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield. You can also see in the southwest indentation the Bristol urban area and in the southeast the largest spot, Greater London, where roughly 20 % of the entire population of population … dense in urban areas 32 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="40"?> England lives. London with more than 9 million inhabitants was the largest city in the European Union. After Brexit Berlin became number 1 in the EU. London has roughly the same number of inhabitants as New York, the largest American city. UK population of compared to European Union countries? After challenges with reliable figures for cities, we now have a much easier task. If we use rounded numbers, then we have Germany in first place among EU countries and France coming in second. The UK had the decennial (fancy word for every ten years) census in 2021, but the results won ’ t be published until later or much later. It apparently takes a long time to count almost 67 million inhabitants (according to the latest 2019 estimate available), which puts the UK either slightly ahead of or slightly behind France, but with the UK no longer part of the EU, France is a clear number 2 in the EU. We chose a few American states to compare populations, but we can easily cover all four countries in the United Kingdom. As you probably could ’ ve guessed, England is number one with 56 million inhabitants with over 80 % of the entire UK population. Scotland is second with 5.5 million, Wales third with 3 million, and Northern Ireland fourth with 2 million. Why does England have so many more inhabitants than the other three countries? One reason: population movement. How to describe population movement in Britain? Two terms describe the same movement towards the southeast of Great Britain: the North-South Divide and the Celtic Fringe. The Fig. 1.10 UK urban density. Try and match the cities mentioned in the previous appetizer to my inkblots on the map. censuses and comparisons North-South, Celtic Fringe, Covid 33 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="41"?> North-South Divide is a political and economic division in England between the older industrialized north including most of the inkblots on our population density map and the richer services-oriented southeast. Just as the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt in the US show, people move to where the economic conditions are better. The Celtic Fringe is a term sometimes used negatively to describe the areas in southwest England, like Cornwall, and Wales and Scotland, areas that are actually much larger than the word fringe indicates. But fringe refers not to geographical areas but to parts of Britain characterized by economic troubles and decreasing population. While there was considerable movement from north to south between the 70s and the 90s, some of the movement has been reversed since the turn of the millennium. People have started to move away from heavily urbanized areas, perhaps due to much higher property costs or new jobs in other parts of the country or simply the desire to escape the hectic life in crowded cities. And Covid might have effects on population movement in the UK as in the US, but the 2021 Census probably won ’ t have the full story yet. Languages spoken as mother tongues? Just as for the US, here too an easy one word answer is all. But there are other interesting comparisons and contrast. While only the languages of the American Indians could be looked at as indigenous languages in the US and most are extinct, there are a few comparable indigenous languages still spoken in Britain, and they are still very much alive in defining identity. We just mentioned the Celtic Fringe as a critical term, but there is also evidence for a revival of Celtic identity, culture, and music including increased awareness of the Celtic languages. The increase of political power in Wales and Scotland 5 has been mirrored in more people learning Welsh, an official language in Wales, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, the ancient language spoken in Cornwall, or Manx, another Celtic language spoken on the Isle of Man. Our last appetizer in the US geography section mentioned German spoken in the US. After you finish reading the next chapter you will know something about royalty in the UK with very strong German roots, but you can easily find evidence now online of the late Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, speaking fluent German! Of course we could mention the very many mother tongues of the Celtic languages too German for Royals? ! 34 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="42"?> immigrants to Britain, 7 and find remnants of English regional accents of the 18 th century in one of the most popular places to emigrate to a few hundred years ago - namely the New World. And it ’ s the New World that we want to turn our attention to next. But first the first recommendations for further reading and watching as promised in the introduction. And after our first Morsels & More, a couple of exercises for those who ’ d like to review before continuing. Even more than a decade after first appearing on the American television network History How the States Got Their Shapes is still an entertaining series to watch. We ’ ve already seen in this chapter how difficult it is to separate geography from history, and one important aspect of political geography is lines and borders. This 24-part series has evidence of both American patriotism and humor, which is hard to imagine in the poisoned partisan atmosphere of 2020s America. You can watch it on video-sharing platforms, stream it, or buy the DVD version (for those who still have DVD players). The BBC documentary series Coast is somewhat more than a morsel. It would take a couple of weeks of binge watching with lots of popcorn to see just all the episodes only about Great Britain and Ireland, but you don ’ t have to watch everything. Each episode is made up of smaller segments - real morsels - with a geographical, historical, or anthropological focus guided by television hosts who have become celebrities because of the series. Nicolas Crane is the lanky geographical specialist with the typical English umbrella, anthropolgist Alice Roberts ’ red hair will brighten up the screen, and historian Neil Oliver ’ s musical Scottish accent is a joy to listen to, even if you don ’ t understand everything. The website of the US Census has not only provided us with copyright free maps and numbers galore but also neat projects for American schools, with a little adaptation usable in German schools too. Finally, what ’ s geography without maps? And what ’ s cultural studies without looking at power and interpretation? Mark Monmonier ’ s classic How to Lie with Maps has been updated in a 3 rd edition, which also includes Google Maps. 35 Chapter 1 The Where (geography) <?page no="43"?> Exercises 1. Download an outline map of the US and / or UK and sketch in all the physical features and cities mentioned in this chapter. 2. Tables are supposed to make learning easier. How many of the items do you remember from the tables in this chapter? Surprised at how few? Can you remember at least how many tables were used? What ’ s definitely proven is that having expectations makes learning much easier. Which of these cities and geographical terms in the tables would you expect to hear more about later in the book? What context? If you take the time to write down your expectations and then see if these are right later, you ’ ll remember the contents much more easily. 36 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="44"?> The When (history) After learning about where, let ’ s turn to when. Part I of this chapter will deal with American history (it ’ s shorter) and Part II with British history, each divided into four sections. As with the geography appetizers, we ’ ll be using information from this chapter later in the book. The bells connect with details in another chapter or remind you of what we ’ ve already covered. Early America to End of Democracy? From Colonies to Continent When was the very beginning? Remember how close Alaska and Russia are now? 1 There was a time when they were joined together, and people could walk from one continent to the next. The first humans could have come over land bridges from Asia around 10 - 15 thousand years ago or - according to fossilized footprints found in southwest of what is now the US - thousands of years earlier. Perhaps the first peoples came in boats along the Pacific rim as far back as thirty thousand years ago. An “ Ice Age Columbus ” might have travelled across a frozen North Atlantic, but Vikings visited parts of what is now Canada a thousand years ago. We could begin with the one date that probably every American school child was taught in the past: 1492, when the historical Columbus “ discovered ” the New World. But there are problems with this date. Columbus didn ’ t actually set foot on any of the land that was later to become the United States (unless Puerto Rico becomes a state). And if we started with 1492 and Columbus, we aren ’ t paying tribute to the people who had been living there for thousands of years and who later would become known as Paleo-Americans, among many other names. 7 thousands of years ago … or 1492? 37 Chapter 2 <?page no="45"?> In the 2020s we have different dates in discussions about when to begin American history. Never has the famous quote of the famous American novelist William Faulkner been more relevant: “ The past is never dead. It ’ s not even past. ” Difference between 1619 and 1776? While 1776 rightly appeared in the first two editions of this book as the year of the Declaration of Independence, another significant date, 1619, was ignored altogether. Now many more Americans would no doubt respond to both dates far more emotionally than non-Americans might expect. In 2019 the Black American investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones published details from a project to examine the legacy of slavery. It was timed to coincide with the 400 th anniversary of the first African slaves arriving in the English colony named Virginia, which had just been settled a few years earlier. This project has grown from essays to podcasts to a documentary series and has opened the eyes of Americans to a past they weren ’ t taught in public school. Some Americans now believe that their history has for too long been concerned with myths, other Americans are infuriated at what they see as an attack on their American Dream. Hannah-Jones and her colleagues ’ premise is that slavery and suppression has been an integral part of American history from the very beginning. Other historians and politicians, mostly male, White, and conservative, have attacked parts of the project as factually incorrect and unpatriotic. President Trump, who used the controversy to inflame the fears of his supporters that their country was being taken over and their history rewritten, mentioned 1492 as the date he learned at school. He started the 1776 Commission to repudiate the findings of the 1619 project. It was as if opponents believed the 1619 project was trying to question the validity of 1492 and 1776 rather than seeking to establish a third date of national importance. The Biden administration has seen the project as inspirational. Some states have incorporated the project in their schools, others have passed laws forbidding its use. Deciding how to start American history will no doubt remain a crucial 21 st century question. There has probably never been a higher percentage of Americans who are now conscious of the racist structure of their society with hope for a better future for all. Mostly White and mostly Republican Americans find that this focus on shameful aspects in Project 1619 38 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="46"?> American history contradicts their deeply ingrained belief in the American Dream ideology. While Americans will no doubt be arguing for a while about the role slavery played in the founding of America, most would agree on who was there first and who came later. Who was there, who came later to what is now the US? You don ’ t have to be a Karl May fan to have heard about Indians, but knowing German gives us two different words for the two different peoples with the same name in English. According to popular legend, the Italian Christopher Columbus, who sailed in the service of the Spanish crown, thought that the inhabitants of America were those of another continent many thousands of kilometers further westward. The word Indian in English still refers both to all those people who originally lived in North America and to the inhabitants of a former British colony that is now the second most populous country in the world, India. We ’ ll be reading much more about both kinds of Indians in different contexts later. 7 Speaking of names, another Italian exploring on behalf of Spain and then Portugal, Amerigo Vespucci, named the continent he saw the New World. (Columbus had called it Asia.) But a German mapmaker, Martin Waldseemüller, honored Vespucci ’ s discovery by naming the continent after a Latin version of the Italian ’ s first name Amerigo. “ America ” then later came to refer to both continents. Fig. 2.1-1 Martin Waldseemüller ’ s world map complete above. Can you see America in the lowest far left box? Probably not, so here ’ s a close-up. Indians and Indians, Italians and a German 39 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="47"?> Fig. 2.1-2 The world ’ s largest library, the US Library of Congress, claims that this was the very first occasion of the name America being used. Countries like Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and England actively encouraged settlement and colonization from the 16 th century onwards as part of their policy of enlarging their territories and increasing their power. While everyone has heard of Christopher Columbus, fewer people have heard of the Spanish explorer Ponce de León, who arrived just a few years later and actually landed on what was to become much later the United States, establishing in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest European settlement. Other Spanish explorers came for God (Christianizing the natives) and gold. For example, Coronado discovered the Grand Canyon and explored what would later become part of the southwest US; De Soto discovered the Mississippi River. French explorers and traders settled around the Great Lakes; De Cadillac founded a fort that he called Detroit. And Cadillac became the name of an American luxury auto built in Detroit a few hundred years later. The Dutch West India Company claimed a chunk of what would become the states of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and named it New Netherland. The famous Dutch colonial governor Peter Stuyvesant conquered the small neighboring colony of New Sweden but later was forced to surrender the entire colony as well as the settlement called New Amsterdam to the English, who then renamed it New York. Schools and neighborhoods were named after Stuyvesant until in the 2020s he also became known as the largest slaveholder in New Netherland. Have you noticed that all these names of places are based on those who arrived from Europe as conquerors? Do you remember one river not named after something European? 1? We ’ ll be coming later to other place names that the conquering Europeans didn ’ t impose but adopted. 7 Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedes … 40 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="48"?> Fig. 2.2 Castillo in St. Augustine, Florida. Note the use of “ continental United States ” 1 in the description. Almost a hundred years before the English renamed Nieuw Amsterdam New York, Sir Walter Raleigh, an adventurer and explorer for Elizabeth I, had founded the first English settlement on Roanoke Island off the coast of what would later become North Carolina. When a successor to Raleigh returned to Roanoke after being delayed by the Spanish Armada, the settlement had mysteriously vanished and the legend of the “ Lost Colony ” began. The first permanent English settlement that didn ’ t disappear was made a few years later in Jamestown further north along the coast in an area that later would become the state of Virginia, and soon afterwards the first Black slaves arrived there, as we learned at the beginning of this section. Some events leading to the American Revolution? We ’ ve just heard about three different English settlements: the Lost Colony, Jamestown, New York (in chronological order). In the century and a half after the founding of Jamestown in 1607, colonies were established up and down the east coast, from the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Plymouth in the northeast founded by the Pilgrims, a group looking for religious freedom, to Georgia in the far south, a colony founded for prisoners from England. The relations became strained when the colonists began to resent having to pay taxes to their native country, where they had no voice in Parliament. The protest slogan “ no taxation without representation ” became common from the middle of the 18 th century. The increasingly violent nature of the conflict was echoed in phrases like the passionate patriot Patrick … and the English 13 colonies 41 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="49"?> Henry ’ s “ give me liberty or give me death. ” What later became known as the “ shot heard round the world ” was fired near Boston and marked the beginning of a war that was to last for eight years. After the first couple of years of armed conflict, some of those who later came to be called the Founding Fathers decided for a complete break with Britain and signed the Declaration of Independence, a document with the bold claim: “ We hold these truths to be selfevident, ” truths that were revolutionary at the time: “ That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. ” At the bottom of the document is the huge signature of John Hancock - legend has it that Mr. Hancock signed extra large so that King George wouldn ’ t need spectacles (a formal British word for “ glasses ” ) to see the signature. The main author of the Declaration was Thomas Jefferson, who was later to become the third president. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous of the many documents that paved the way for the establishment of the United States of America. The date of the official signing of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776, became known as Independence Day, and the Fourth of July is now celebrated as the most important patriotic American holiday. What isn ’ t celebrated on the 4 th of July is that the use of the phrase “ all Men are created equal ” definitely referred to males only and that one of the accusations against the English king was that he incited “ merciless Indian savages ” to fight the colonists. What Americans do remember and what was certainly a huge sign of progress was the belief that at least white English male colonists had the right to the “ pursuit of happiness. ” On the other hand and in spite of sexism and White supremacy, the Declaration of Independence was a model for other revolutionary ideas about humanity and power that upended the view that only an all-powerful ruler could ensure that life didn ’ t have to be “ solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short ” as the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously wrote a century and a half before Jefferson penned his famous declaration. The term American Revolution can be used to refer not just to the War of Independence but also to the time before and after the colonies became states of the United States of America. The group known as the Federalists, one of whom was the important founding father George Washington, eventually convinced the states to sign the Constitution of the United States, which took effect in 1789. 5 Life, Liberty … Pursuit of Happiness males only, savage Indians … but model for revolutions 42 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="50"?> Examples of territorial expansion? The area originally recognized as the new United States of America extended from the Atlantic coast in the east to the Mississippi River in the west. We ’ ve already heard that France was present in the New World almost from the start and settled the area around the Great Lakes. The French also claimed large portions of the interior of the continent along the Mississippi River, lost these to Spain, and then won them back again. To solve his financial problems Napoleon decided to sell the vast area called Louisiana, which Jefferson agreed to buy. The Louisiana Purchase was a very good buy, doubling the size of what was then the United States. Shortly after the turn of the 19 th century the deal was signed, and then two explorers named Lewis and Clark set off to see exactly what the new land was like and also to find a way through the mountains to the Pacific, assisted by a Shoshone Indian woman named Sacajawea, who would embellish a US dollar coin two hundred years later. The famous term manifest destiny was used in the middle of the 19 th century to justify first the annexation of Texas (light blue on the map on the next page) during the Mexican- American War and then the gradual turning of all land right up to the Pacific Ocean into American territory and then into American states. 6 But we ’ re getting ahead of ourselves now, so let ’ s return to 1812. Fig. 2.3 The image of Sacagawea on a $1 coin was designed by Glenna Goodacre, who became wellknown for her public sculptures. We see the young guide Sacagawea with her son on her back. She was not only a translator but also insured peaceful treatment by the tribes that the Lewis and Clark expedition encountered. The native inhabitants assumed that any group accompanied by a young mother with her son couldn ’ t have been interested in conflict. 43 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="51"?> Fig. 2.4 Territorial expansion map with the large white area in the middle of the map as the Louisiana Purchase. The area that would later become the state of Louisiana is only a small part of this great expanse of land (on the coast). Other shaded areas show land areas that were to become part of the United States by acquisition such as Florida, acquired from Spain twenty years after the Louisiana Purchase, or large portions of the west taken from Mexico. Don ’ t forget Seward ’ s Icebox (Alaska) in the bottom left-hand corner. Seward was Secretary of State and negotiated a purchase of this huge (which appears very small on this flat map) area from the Russian Empire shortly after the American Civil War. Effects of the War of 1812 and the Monroe Doctrine? The War of 1812 is sometimes called the Second War of Independence; the US, still a very young nation, was again at war with Britain. Washington DC, the new national capital, was burned to the ground. The bombardment of Baltimore inspired the young poet Francis Scott Key to write “ The Star-Spangled Banner, ” which would much later become the national anthem of the US. Although neither expansionism isolationism 44 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="52"?> the US nor Britain won the war, which lasted until 1815 in spite of its name, Americans did develop a greater sense of national identity and were able to pursue both expansionism across the country as well as increasing isolationism towards Europe, a prime example of which is the Monroe Doctrine. During an address to Congress in the 1820s James Monroe, the fifth US president, described the policy that would later become known as the Monroe Doctrine: the Western Hemisphere was closed to any further European colonization, but the US wouldn ’ t interfere either in the colonies already existing in the Western hemisphere or in any European conflicts. 6 Political and social reforms of the time Andrew Jackson was the first president to have come from humble roots in the backwoods of the Carolinas. He came to be associated with the spoils system, the name for politics based on rewarding loyal party members with government positions. Donald Trump saw Jackson as a role model and had a portrait of Old Hickory, as Jackson was known to his followers, in the Oval Office of the White House. Jackson ’ s enemies called him King Andrew I for his autocratic style. Before he became president, Jackson became famous as a military officer in the War of 1812 and played a critical role in brutally driving the Indians westwards. 7 One important meeting that raised issues that remain relevant to this day took place at a Wesleyan Church chapel 8 in a small town with the idyllic name Seneca Falls in upper New York state. The Seneca Falls Convention took place in 1848, a year that most Europeans would connect with revolutions of a very different sort. One result of the Convention was the Declaration of Sentiments, which sought to have the same effect as the Declaration of Independence and which echoed the famous line “ all men are created equal ” with an important addition: “ all men and women are created equal. ” 14 While the founding mothers of feminism didn ’ t live to see women gain the right to vote, which came more than seventy years afterwards, one woman who did live to see some of her attempts succeed was Dorothea Dix, who became famous for trying to improve conditions in prisons, hospitals, and insane asylums. The reformers weren ’ t only women, there was a man too, whose name conveniently enough was role model for Trump Seneca Falls Convention: women ’ s rights improvements - prisons, hospitals, education 45 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="53"?> Mann. While Horace Mann ’ s ancestors didn ’ t come from Germany, he did travel to Prussia to learn from reformers there and believed in equal and free education for all 4 and thus became the first important reformer of the American school system. Mann was also an ardent supporter of women ’ s rights and the abolition of slavery but died before the abolitionist movement really became an important force. The 19 th century wasn ’ t only a century in which the US expanded across the continent with reforms taking place in many areas of life, it was also the century of the bloodiest of all American wars, fought for the right to own slaves and the right for states to secede from the union. These issues threatened to tear apart the United States before the country could celebrate the first full century of its existence. Fig. 2.5 We could link our first two sections of American history with two $20 bills and a 21 st century controversy. Andrew Jackson, whom you just met, was put on the US $20 bill about a century ago. Criticism of Jackson ’ s treatment of American Indians and his corruption increased after the turn of the millennium, and a movement for a new design began. Obama supported replacing Jackson with Harriet Tubman, whom you ’ ll be meeting in the next section. Trump was a big fan of Jackson and “ tradition ” and stopped the redesign. Soon after his inaugural Joe Biden and his treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, resumed the process. Jen Psaki, Biden ’ s press secretary, said, “ It ’ s important that our money reflect the history and diversity of our country. ” 46 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="54"?> The Civil War to Closing of the Frontier What was the Underground Railroad? The Underground Railroad was neither literally underground nor a railroad but instead a metaphor for a network of abolitionists with the goal of freeing slaves by establishing escape routes from slave states to free states. The “ conductors ” were those abolitionists who helped the “ passengers, ” the runaway slaves, to escape to freedom. Those involved in the Underground Railroad could be imprisoned since they were in effect breaking the Fugitive Slave Law, which had been passed as part of one of many compromises between the North and the South in the years before the Civil War. This strict law was supposed to help slave owners more easily re-capture their “ property ” but in effect resulted in increased support on the part of Northerners opposed to slavery. The trauma and the hope of this time is conveyed convincingly in The Underground Railroad, a Pulitzer-prize winning historical novel and an American streaming television series from the early 20s, more evidence that the “ past is never dead. ” Important interesting influential people? Two famous Northerners who became “ conductors ” shared the same first name Harriet. Harriet Tubman was a former slave who escaped and received the name Moses for her role in helping many other slaves “ travel ” along the Underground Railroad to freedom. She has become an American icon and a living bridge from one era to another, partly due to her age: she lived for almost a half century after the Civil War ended. Now she ’ s set to become the one of the first women ever portrayed on regular American currency, as you could just see. The other Harriet was a small White lady with the full name Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote one of the most famous novels in American history, Uncle Tom ’ s Cabin, which portrayed graphically the cruelty of slavery. According to legend, President Abraham Lincoln greeted Stowe with the words: “ So you ’ re the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War! ” Whether or not Lincoln actually said these words, historians believe that Stowe ’ s novel convinced many Northerners of the wrongs of the slavery system. Other famous people of the period include the radical abolitionist John Brown, who with his supporters attempted to take over a US arsenal with the goal of arming freed slaves. Although he was hanged neither underground nor railroad two Harriets John Brown, Julia Ward Howe, Frederick Douglass 47 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="55"?> for treason for the raid, his actions led to the Civil War. His name became immortalized in connection with the “ Battle Hymn of the Republic, ” the rousing anthem adopted by Union forces during the Civil War. The author who wrote the lyrics to this well-known song, which would later be sung during the Civil Rights movement, was Julia Ward Howe, yet another abolitionist. In contrast to the former slave Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, and Julia Ward Howe were all White. A famous Black abolitionist, author, journalist, statesman, and reformer was Frederick Douglass, whose life began in slavery. Douglass became one of the greatest public speakers in American history, wrote one of the classic American autobiographies, participated in the Seneca Falls Convention and supported women ’ s rights, founded a weekly newspaper, and became a well-known journalist. Just like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass has also been portrayed on two American stamps. And if the citizens of Washington DC are granted their wish, Douglass Commonwealth will become the name of the 51 st state. 1 One person who hasn ’ t yet been portrayed on an American stamp but who had a huge effect on American history was yet another slave, whose story didn ’ t have the same happy ending as those of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Results of the Dred Scott decision? The word decision is a clue that we ’ re talking about the Supreme Court here, 5 and this decision is considered the worst in history. Dred Scott was a slave whose master traveled quite a bit, including stays in free states where slavery was illegal. After Scott ’ s former owner attempted to sell him to a new owner, Scott sued for his freedom, first at the state and then the federal level and finally before the Supreme Court, which ruled that not only did Dred Scott have no claim to freedom but also that no other slave or any other person Fig. 2.6 Frederick Douglass portrayed on the cover of Harper ’ s Weekly, a very popular magazine of second half of the 19 th century. Try and keep this magazine in mind for later 5 10 reference. slaves as property 48 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="56"?> descended from Black Africans even had the right to sue in court, much less the right to freedom. Slaves were property and not citizens. Although Scott ’ s new owner voluntarily freed him, the most famous slave in the US lived for less than a year in freedom, dying of tuberculosis a few years before the start of the Civil War. The results of the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision were to long outlive the man himself. The sense of outrage at the Court ’ s decision also led to the growth of the Republican party, which had been founded as an antislavery party a few years earlier with a strong belief that slavery should not be allowed in the new states that were being added as settlers moved westwards. The Republican party of the 2020s is linked not to anti-slavery but to White supremacy. Admission of new states and secession of old ones? The admission of new states to the Union caused a major problem: it upset the balance in the Senate, where each state is represented by two senators. 5 As long as the number of slave and free states was equal, a balance of power between the two groups in the Senate was maintained. To maintain this balance states were usually admitted in pairs, starting with the Missouri Compromise. The balance was finally lost in the 1850s. A decade later the states called (then as now) the Deep South, stretching from South Carolina to Texas, seceded from the Union and proclaimed themselves to be part of a new union, no longer the USA but the CSA, the Confederate States of America. Some border states were torn between their loyalty to preserving the Union and to upholding their laws, which allowed slavery. After Virginia seceded from the Union, part of the state seceded from Virginia to become the state of West Virginia and to remain in the Union. We ’ ve now heard about some individual causes of the Civil War starting with the abolitionist movement including John Brown ’ s raid, the heroism of the conductors on the Underground Railroad like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, the shock caused by Harriet Beecher Stowe ’ s portrayal of slavery in Uncle Tom ’ s Cabin and by the Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford. All these aspects are connected to the slavery issue. We can add two other broad issues that also separated two parts of the US. The southern states relied on agriculture and the need for low taxes on imported goods versus the northern states ’ industrialization and their need for protection USA vs. CSA slavery, tariffs, right to secede 49 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="57"?> against imports from abroad. And there was one question that the North and the South answered very differently: Did a state have the right to secede from the Union? South Carolina believed it had the right to secede, and that is exactly where the first shots of the Civil War were heard. Names, places, events associated with the Civil War? If we start with the first shots, we ’ d have to begin at a small island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, with a fort manned by Union, or Northern, forces, who refused to give up the fort. The first shots fired at Fort Sumter in 1861 are seen as the start of the war. Two years after the beginning of the war, the President of the Union, Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation wasn ’ t supposed to free all slaves at once and everywhere - Lincoln was an astute politician who wanted more than anything to restore the Union - but only in those Confederate states that didn ’ t return to the Union by a certain date, in effect an attempt at political blackmail. Perhaps slavery would ’ ve continued had the southern states given in to Lincoln ’ s demands and returned to the Union. But no Confederate state was willing to take up Lincoln ’ s offer, and so slavery was forbidden as of 1 January 1863 in all Confederate states not then under Union control. It wasn ’ t until the passage of the 13 th Amendment after the end of the Civil War that slavery was also prohibited in the slave states that had not seceded from the Union like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. Almost three years after the first shots at Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln made history, speaking in a small town called Gettysburg in Pennsylvania near the bloodiest battlefield of the entire war. The Gettysburg Address was only a few lines long and began with the birth of the nation a mere 87 years earlier “ four score and seven years ago, ” then echoed the Declaration of Independence, saying that “ a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, ” was now engaged in a “ great civil war ” that was testing whether this nation “ can long endure. ” Lincoln concludes by dedicating himself to the “ great task ” remaining, “ that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ” Although the Battle of Gettysburg was considered the turning point from Fort Sumter to the Emancipation Proclamation Gettysburg Address to Appomattox 50 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="58"?> of the Civil War with Union forces (uniforms in the color blue) defeating the Confederacy (uniforms in the color gray), the Civil War was to continue after this bloodiest battle for almost another two years until Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant near the small town with the somewhat strange-sounding name of Appomattox Court House. The formal ceremony of surrender involved no cheering. The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation ’ s history, ended in April 1865 not with a celebration but with an act of mourning. The war was over; the reconstruction of the Union was, however, just beginning. During the commemorations of the 150 th anniversary of the Civil War between 2011 and 2015, you could see that the effects of the Civil War are still present in American life in the 21 st century. I can remember overhearing a White tour guide telling a White tourist at the Fort Sumter monument during the commemoration of the 150 th anniversary of the Civil War: “ Yes, it ’ s like walking on eggshells now. ” How does a nation commemorate a civil war that some would claim still isn ’ t really over? Which monuments to the Civil War should remain and which should be removed? Joe Biden referred to the Civil War in his inaugural address in 2021 both by naming it several times and in his exhortation: “ We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. ” Red against blue, you might ask, weren ’ t blue and gray mentioned above? Very good close reading, keep red and blue in your mind until we get to the chapter on politics. 5 We now need to return to what happened - and didn ’ t happen - after the Civil War. Why did the Constitution have to be changed? If you remember the Dred Scott decision and know that Supreme Court decisions can only be changed by new decisions or by changes to the Constitution, you ’ ll see the need for amendments. The 13 th abolished slavery; the 14 th overturned the Dred Scott decision and ensured that almost all those people born or naturalized in the United States had the full rights of citizens. (Native Americans weren ’ t yet included.) The 15 th Amendment guaranteed that no citizens (meaning no males) of the United States could be denied the right to vote because of “ race, color, or previous condition of servitude. ” Civil War then … and now slavery abolished, civil rights gained 51 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="59"?> Winners and losers of Reconstruction? At least one winner and one loser of the Civil War is easy to determine: the Union forces of the North beat the Confederate forces of the South. The other winners and losers aren ’ t as clear. The former slaves were freed in name but often were faced with poverty and harassment. Former slave owners became bitter extremists; the grand plantations lay in ruin. While the sense of loss remained in the South - I can remember hearing as a boy in the Deep South the saying “ the South will rise again ” one hundred years after the end of the Civil War - the United States had remained united, the Union that Lincoln had sought to maintain would not be questioned again - at least not until the 2020s. A political deal mirrored in many ways the political corruption that had come to be associated with so many aspects of the decade after the war, a period referred to as Reconstruction for the reconstruction of the union by readmitting the states of the Confederacy. In the 1876 presidential election the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who didn ’ t win the popular vote, gained support in the electoral college 5 from three states in the South in exchange for the promise to withdraw federal troops from the former states of the Confederacy, thus ending Reconstruction and also delaying the attempts to give fully equal rights to the newly-freed slaves. The promise of equal rights for African Americans was put on hold for nearly one hundred years until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But not only was the promise of equal rights delayed, thousands of Black people were lynched in the decades after the end of the war. One result of the unsuccessful attempt of White Trump supporters to overturn an election in the Capitol Insurrection of 2021 5 was the publication of numerous articles about a successful coup at the end of the 19 th century in Wilmington, North Carolina. After a biracial local government was legally elected, White vigilantes forced legally elected Black officials to resign and murdered numerous Black citizens. No one was convicted or even accused of any crimes, the government installed by the White supremacists remained in power. For a hundred years this coup d ’ état was viewed only as a race riot. Exactly one hundred years before the Capitol Insurrection a massacre took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where an armed mob of White people supported by officials reportedly murdered hundreds of economically successful Black citizens and made thousands homeless by burning Blue beat Gray, Union maintained political corruption, civil rights denied from the Wilmington Insurrection to the Tulsa Race Massacre 52 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="60"?> their homes. Until the centenary of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history, the event also had been known as a mere race riot. Violence against Black people across the south after the Civil War was common, the Wilmington Insurrection was a successful coup and the Tulsa Massacre one horrific example of the triumph of White supremacy across the entire south, examples that painfully reveal the true losers of Reconstruction: Black Americans. What was the Homestead Act and Promontory Summit? Those of you who are keeping track of chronology might ask yourselves what the Homestead Act is doing in a section entitled Reconstruction since the first Homestead Act was passed at the height of the Civil War in 1862. The greatest impact of this legislation, however, wouldn ’ t take place until almost a half century later when the government gave away vast amounts of land to encourage rapid settlement of the newly acquired territories in the western half of the US. You may have heard the saying “ Go west ” in other contexts; the full sentence, “ Go west, young man, and grow up with the country ” was first made popular by the journalist and politician Horace Greeley 10 and symbolized the promise of a new beginning that some thought the open plains would provide, open spaces that extended by the end of the 19 th century to the far frozen north as you might remember from Seward ’ s Icebox, shown on a map earlier in this chapter. After beginning our glance at the Civil War with the metaphorical Underground Railroad, we end this section with the union of two real railroads. President Lincoln started the project during the Civil War and was perhaps hoping that uniting the country by railroad would also lead to a re-uniting of the divided country. The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads met in northern Utah near a place called Promontory Summit a few years after the end of the Civil War. The president of one of the railroad companies hammered the last spike and thus completed a transcontinental railway network that provided transportation for goods and people across the entire country, which now spanned the continent. With the event of hammering in the last spike at Promontory Summit in 1869 was an important symbolic “ closing of the frontier, ” a phrase the Census Bureau used to indicate that there was no longer a clear border beyond which vast vacant land was still available to settle. Historians have stressed the importance of Go west … … and take the train 53 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="61"?> frontier not as a clear line but as an abstract vast space of possibilities for growth and development in trying to understand American character. By the end of the 19 th century these real vast open spaces of land were already being divided into parts separated by barbed wire, invented at this time as the only cheap way to establish borders in the vast grasslands that had been previously open for all to cross. The growth of the railroad across the country was an important economic factor as well as a last encroachment of the White man into Indian territory with the locomotive, the “ Iron Horse, ” ultimately winning against the Indian buffalo and deciding the fate of the remaining Indians. 7 From the Gilded Age to Watergate Was the Gilded Age golden? If we set the closing of the frontier at 1890 with the Census Bureau ’ s decision to stop tracing westward movement and with the last Indian battle at Wounded Knee, 7 then we could start our next era in American history just before the beginning of the 20 th century. The Gilded Age was a golden age for a select few either praised as “ captains of industry ” or damned as “ robber barons ” with famous names like Astor, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt. The name Gilded Age comes from the title of a novel by Mark Twain, which sarcastically criticized the greed of the few in stark contrast to the poverty of the many. While the term Gilded Age has a negative connotation, the name Jazz Age is more positive and is based on the title of another literary work, F. Scott Fitzgerald ’ s collection Tales of the Jazz Age. Many of the technological advances that have forever changed the way human beings around the world live and work were first invented in the US during this time, also known as the Age of Edison, named after one of the world ’ s greatest inventors, Thomas Alva Edison, who invented the light bulb and who also significantly improved the telephone, invented a few decades earlier by Alexander Graham Bell. The elevator was invented earlier in the mid 19 th century and improved by Werner von Siemens and made safer by Charles Otis in the late 19 th century. Henry Ford invented the Model T Ford automobile and also changed the way the world worked with his assembly line method of production. The Gilded Age was the age of inventions and of hard work and of the riches earned by those who worked hard or by those who exploited others. 6 gilden not golden but jazzy inventors and inventions 54 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="62"?> Theodore Roosevelt became known for his Square Deal and as a Trust Buster and even lent his name to a stuffed animal which millions of children go to bed with each night. But Teddy Roosevelt wasn ’ t a teddy bear to some of the powerful captains of industry and robber barons. He initiated government action to limit some of the power that monopolies and trusts had acquired. He proclaimed: “ We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less. ” Teddy Roosevelt was also known for his love of the open expanses of the west and his support of national parks. 9 Results of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision? Remember the Dred Scott decision, a decision by the Supreme Court that contributed to the beginning of the Civil War? About fifty years later at the very end of the 19 th century, the Supreme Court ruled in another controversial decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, that separate facilities (in this specific case separate railway cars for Blacks and Whites) weren ’ t per se unconstitutional as long as the facilities were of equal quality 7 and thus sanctioned strict segregation of White and Black Americans until yet another Supreme Court decision another fifty years later recognized that in practice “ separate ” hardly ever means “ equal. ” “ Remember the Maine ” and “ Remember the Lusitania ” ? These phrases refer to two ships and two wars, a little and a very big one. The little war took place at the very end of the 19 th century between the US and Spain with the sinking of an American ship, the Maine, in Havana harbor. “ Remember the Maine and to Hell with Spain! ” became the battle cry. The US won the Spanish-American War and gained Puerto Rico and the Philippines. 6 A much bigger war began about a generation later: World War I, which the US entered late. One reason for American involvement was the sinking of yet another ship, this one a passenger ship called the Lusitania. Another reason for the US to enter the “ Great War ” was the publication of the Zimmermann telegram, an attempt by the German Foreign Secretary to persuade Mexico and Japan to attack the United States. After the US and the Allies won World War I, President Woodrow Wilson received the Nobel Peace Prize for his attempts to Teddy and his Square Deal separate and equal? a little and a big war 55 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="63"?> create “ a peace without victory ” and “ to make the world safe for democracy ” although the US chose not to join the League of Nations. What is suffrage? Prohibition? “ Suffrage ” doesn ’ t have to do with “ suffer ” except for those people who don ’ t like politics at all; “ suffrage ” now simply means having the right to vote, which women didn ’ t gain until the 19 th Amendment was passed in 1920. 14 Now you know why the original intention was to introduce a redesigned $20 bill with Harriet Tubman in 2020 for the 100 th anniversary of the right to vote for women. The Jazz Age wasn ’ t only characterized by new music, new rights, and new dances but also by people who thought nothing was more evil than alcoholic beverages and who amended the Constitution to prohibit “ the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors. ” Prohibition was repealed less than fifteen years later with yet another Amendment, passed after the event that is usually considered to have ended the Jazz Age: the stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing economic collapse that became known as the Great Depression. But wouldn ’ t it be better to end the Jazz Age with a bottle of champagne to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition than with a Great Depression? New Deal? Remember Theodore Roosevelt ’ s Square Deal? Teddy ’ s cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt or FDR for short, was faced with the massive problems of the Great Depression. He developed the New Deal, to tackle the problem of millions of Americans faced with economic hardship of a kind not known before in the “ Land of Opportunity. ” The New Deal wouldn ’ t have been new to German Chancellor Bismarck, who had propagated many of the revolutionary elements of FDR ’ s New Deal more than a half century before. We ’ ll be returning to FDR ’ s New Deal soon. 3 In spite of or because of the economic crisis, FDR served longer than any other president - being elected four times with his administrations stretching from the Great Depression almost to the end of World War II. The 22 nd Amendment to the Constitution would later prohibit presidents from serving more than two terms. politics and liquor FDR and his New Deal 56 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="64"?> Influential people and events in the 50s and 60s? Their names may sound familiar, and they both had their greatest defeat in the same decade of American history; but one could be looked at as an American hero and one could be demonized as an American devil. General Douglas MacArthur was a hero in World War II but was relieved of command in the Korean War. Senator Joseph McCarthy became famous for his accusations of communist infiltration in the government and within a few years was responsible for ruining the political and artistic careers of many people. 6 Remember the last decision mentioned at the end of the 19 th century, separate but equal? It had become more and more obvious that the “ equal ” part of the doctrine was only on paper. At the beginning of the 1950s in a small town in Virginia, a young girl named Barbara Rose Johns led a student strike to highlight the crass inequalities between schools for White children and the ones like hers for Blacks only with roofs that leaked and poor heating. Her actions with others across the country led a few years later to another famous Supreme Court decision, this one ending official segregation in schools 7 and not named for Johns but for the father of another young Black girl in Kansas. Fig. 2.7 Part of the Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, is dedicated to the young student who helped to bring about the end to segregation in American schools. Barbara Johns ’ s sign simply reads “ We want an equal education. ” But in 1950s America equal education for Black Americans was indeed “ reaching for the moon. ” General MacArthur, Senator McCarthy separate not equal in education 57 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="65"?> Around the same time a Black teenager from Chicago visiting relatives in a small town in Mississippi was abducted, tortured, shot in the head, and dumped into a river because he had dared to speak to a White woman in a grocery store. Emmett Till ’ s mother Mamie Till Mobley insisted on an open-casket funeral “ so that the world could see what they did to my boy. ” The African American magazine Jet published the photos that galvanized the civil rights movement. His White murderers were acquitted by an all-White jury but then months later confessed to the murder in a paid interview given in Look magazine claiming the boy had deserved it. Rosa Parks thought of Emmett when she decided not to sit in the back of the bus a few months after his murder, Martin Luther King gave his iconic “ I Have a Dream ” speech exactly eight years later during the famous March on Washington. A museum and planned national park, memorial signs, poems, plays, documentaries, books, and paintings during the last seventy years serve as testimony not only to racism of the past and the origin of the civil rights movement but also to racism of the present and the inability of some Americans to accept responsibility for their history. Fig. 2.8 Black painter Lisa Whittington ’ s 2012 rendering of the famous photographs of Emmett Till as a joyful young boy and of his mutilated body is entitled How She Sent Him and How She Got Him Back. The painting is at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC has a special room dedicated to Emmett Till including his glass-topped casket from 1955 and a bullet-ridden vandalized historical marker from 2021 that had been placed near the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi in remembrance of Emmett Till. “ see what they did to my boy ” 58 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="66"?> Two and a half years before MLK ’ s stirring speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, another young man, who would also become known by three initials, JFK, had spoken on the steps of the Capitol immediately after taking the oath of office to become the youngest president of the US: “ Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. ” The very first test of strength and sacrifice happened less than two years after JFK ’ s inaugural address. The Cold War was the roughly forty years of tension between the Soviet Union and its allies around the world on the one side and the United States and Western Europe on the other, a cold war that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Perhaps the most dangerous near confrontation didn ’ t take place in Europe or in Asia but on and around Cuba, barely 100 kilometers from the tip of Florida. 6 The threat of nuclear war between the US and the USSR marked the beginning of the 1960s as the threat also marked the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. In the course of the 1960s the phrase “ make love not war ” became a key slogan for the younger generation. Hundreds of thousands of young people came to a farm about fifty kilometers from the small town of Woodstock, New York, to enjoy the music of some of the greatest musicians of the time; the celebration became world famous and a symbol of the 60s. 11 Perhaps you ’ re surprised about my choice of influential events from this time and expected some events taken from the most devastating experience in 20 th century American history. The Vietnam War deserves its own question. Effects of the Vietnam War on American society? Photos of the public execution of a North Vietnamese soldier and of naked children running away from an American attack were iconic images that began to turn public opinion against the war. Americans were shocked by the details of the My Lai Massacre, during which American soldiers killed hundreds of civilians in the village of My Lai. Student protests increased, and in 1970 students were killed during a demonstration at Kent State University. Television news also included Henry Kissinger, President Nixon ’ s National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State, who represented the Americans in the Paris Peace Talks and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Kissinger ’ s thick German accent was a reminder of his roots in Bavaria, which he fled JFK and MLK from the Cuban Crisis to Woodstock power of the media, American loss(es), stark memorial 59 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="67"?> as Jewish refugee before World War II. Nixon won a landslide reelection in 1972, but as details emerged of the scandal that became known as Watergate, Congress increased its resistance to further funding of the war. The last US troops left Vietnam in March 1973, and in less than two years, the North Vietnamese had attained their goal of uniting the country. The scenes of US Marines being evacuated in helicopters from the rooftop of the American embassy in Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, leaving behind those who had worked for the Americans, provided a final image of humiliation. The cost in lives and in money was enormous. Americans and their military officials learned that the power of the media to turn the tide of public opinion was paramount, and American veterans were not welcomed home as returning heroes as in previous wars. The healing process between supporters and opponents of the war took years. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by Maya Lin with its black polished stone wall bearing the names of those Americans killed or missing was a stark contrast to other memorials in Washington DC and was upon completion at first controversial. Now millions visit it each year. Effects of Watergate on American political life? Another place in Washington DC provided the name of the scandal that led to the resignation of President Nixon in the mid 70s: Watergate. The effects in two words: traumatic and then reassuring. You might associate “ scandal ” automatically with former presidents like Clinton or Trump. But the Clinton scandal known as Zippergate and the numerous Trump scandals weren ’ t as significant as Watergate. The Watergate is an apartment and office building complex in Washington, in which the Democratic Party had its campaign offices in preparation for the 1972 presidential election. A few months prior to Nixon ’ s landslide win, several men were caught trying to break into the Democratic Party offices. Due to the tenacity of Washington Post investigative journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, 10 slowly but surely it became evident that President Nixon had known about and approved of the attempted cover-up of the Watergate breakin. Almost two years after his reelection, Nixon became the first president to resign in order to avoid impeachment and removal from office. The discovery that corruption had extended into the highest levels of power didn ’ t result in a bloody revolution but in an orderly Watergate, first of the -gates 60 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="68"?> transfer of power. One of the effects of the Watergate scandal was to make more information available to the public. Americans ’ trust in their government was certainly shaken greatly by Watergate, but with the help of a free press and the possibility for political change there wasn ’ t the revolution that such a scandal could have caused. Public scandals since Watergate have been marked by the -gate suffix, scandals that relate to American politics (Irangate, Monicagate), to the British monarchy (Camillagte), or to the merlely embarrassing unintentional nudity on television (humorously called Nipplegate). Trump and the End of American Democracy? We ’ re skipping to Trump? What about the time between Watergate and the year 2000? What about Ronald Reagan and the Clintons and the Bushes? And of course what about the defining moment that ended the old millennium, the event called 9/ 11 (spoken: nine eleven), a sequence of numbers that happens to coincide with the telephone number of the American emergency helpline 911 (spoken: nine one one). What about the end of the longest war in American history? These are some of the topics that we ’ ll be looking at in other parts of the book. We began our look at American history with “ From Colonies to Continent, ” continued with “ The Civil War to Closing of the Frontier, ” followed by “ From the Gilded Age to Watergate. ” The final section isn ’ t divided into question appetizers as the three previous sections were but as a whole is the attempt to answer the question given in the title. Usually by midnight Eastern Standard Time on election day (or six the next morning Central European Time) the whole world knows who won the US presidential election. As one of very many people across Europe I too shed tears of relief and joy early on the November morning in 2008 when it became evident that Barack Obama had won enough states to be elected the first Black American president. Based on the polls and general opinion I felt confident on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2016 that Hillary Clinton would become the first female American president. Along with millions of people around the US and across the world I watched with a sinking heart as the returns from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin showed that Donald Trump had won a total of around 70,000 more votes in these states and thus the presidential election. An openly racist, sexist, xenophobic reality TV celebrity with no political presidential elections 2008 vs. 2016 61 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="69"?> experience had become the leader of the United States. The pride I felt eight years previously turned to shame. Who were we Europeans now supposed to turn to for inspiration? Had I been so blinded by the American Dream ideology I ’ d taught for years at German universities that I had become unable to see an ugly American reality? The 45 th president, Donald J Trump, had a grandfather called Friedrich, who was born in Kallstadt, not too far from another German city mentioned before, 1 and emigrated to the US where he made money running hotels and brothels on the west coast during one of the gold rushes at the turn of the 20 th century. He returned a rich man to Germany with a homesick wife and would have remained, but the authorities determined he had originally left in order to evade military service and thus stripped him of his German citizenship. You could thus blame the Prince Regent of Bavaria for forcing Friedrich to return to the US. One result around 111 years later: his grandson was elected president although he received almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton nationwide. 5 Tens of millions of Americans voted not just once in 2016 but again in 2020 for someone who shattered many American traditions and laid bare racist undemocratic elements of American society that had been hidden by the American Dream mythology and by the election of the nation ’ s first African American president. One explanation for Trump ’ s election victory in 2016 and the many millions of votes he won in 2020 stems from the tectonic shifts in American society with White Americans rapidly on the way to becoming a minority. Trump managed to unite large portions of the American electorate who were afraid of losing the power that they had always enjoyed through their majority numbers alone. Barack Obama ’ s election had not been a signal that the US had reached a postracial era but instead for many it was a shocking sign that American society was changing much more rapidly than large numbers of Americans were comfortable with, especially Americans without a college education. 4 Many books have already been written and even more will be written about Trump ’ s presidency and how it has drastically changed the United States in the eyes of Americans and in the eyes of the world. We ’ ll be dealing with these manifold changes throughout the rest of our book. Yet again on Tuesday 3 November 2020 I felt reasonably certain that a decisive majority of Americans would reject a president who had praised White supremacists and dictators of Russia and North German roots why why why? presidential election 2020 62 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="70"?> Korea, had claimed that drinking bleach could be a cure for Covid 19, the disease which had at the time killed more in the United States than in any other country, a president who had supported a tax break for the richest Americans and had rolled back environmental regulations. The initial results seemed to show that the opinion polls, which had predicted a Biden victory, were inaccurate, and I turned off CNN 10 late at night with the dreaded feeling that Trump would be reelected. Most presidents who run for a second term are reelected. 5 The next morning gave cause for hope as the counting continued, and three days later Joe Biden was declared the winner by the major news outlets. But the joyous spontaneous partying in the streets of major American cities wasn ’ t able to temper the shock that more Americans had voted for Trump than for any presidential candidate in any previous election. And even though seven million more Americans voted for Biden than for Trump, if only forty thousand voters in three states had changed their vote, Donald Trump would ’ ve been reelected thanks to the Electoral College. 5 Donald Trump had already laid the framework for falsely claiming that the election was fraudulent before voting had even begun. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, a majority of Republican voters believe that Joe Biden wasn ’ t fairly elected and the election was “ stolen ” from Trump. Officials at the state level acted professionally in the 2020 election, but the Republican party has now replaced some of these officials with others who publicly support the lies about the 2020 election. What happens when a majority of voters in a state support the Democratic candidate for president or vote for a Democratic senator but the officials with the responsibility of certifying the vote decide that they would prefer the Republican candidate? As we ’ ll see later, 5 some politicians have criticized the word democracy and claim that the United States is a republic instead. The last decade has revealed that apparently for many Americans the end of democracy doesn ’ t sound bad at all. But will democracy really be ending for the US? Since this chapter is about the past, I can ’ t answer the question here, but you will be able to find some good clues in later chapters on politics and in Part II, which covers identity and power. Even if Trump had not been elected in 2016, two other events have changed the US and the world fundamentally in ways that make the previous editions of this book seem as if they came from another era. Towards the end of 2019 news reports picked up on a new disease in China, a variation on previous respiratory illnesses caused by the elections “ stolen ” ? end of democracy? Covid-19 63 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="71"?> corona virus that had spread globally. Billions of people around the world can now define their lives before and after the COrona- VIrusDisease, discovered in 2019, which became known as Covid- 19. Responses to the pandemic in the US became as polarized as so much of American life in the 21 st century. Political affiliation played a very important role in deciding on whether to get vaccinated and whether to support government mandates on wearing masks. Donald Trump ’ s denial of the seriousness of the pandemic was due to his fear of not winning reelection and was the catalyst for a majority of Republicans believing that refusing to vaccinate or even to wear masks was a personal freedom they would rather die for than give up. More have died from the disease in the US than in any other country in the world and more than from the Spanish flu a century earlier in spite of huge government efforts in medical research and the wide availability of vaccines. We will be seeing in the upcoming chapters how Covid-19 has changed American society. On a day in late May 2020 in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a Black American died face down on the street under the weight of a White police officer ’ s knee. Among those present was a young girl who uploaded what she filmed on her cellphone to Facebook, turning an entire nation and then the world into witnesses of the last ten minutes of George Floyd ’ s life. His words “ I can ’ t breathe ” became a rallying cry for millions of Americans who took to the streets for the largest nationwide demonstrations in US history. The protests lasted for weeks and spread across the United States to the UK and to other countries around the world including Germany. Possible reasons for this awakening to issues of systemic racism and police brutality that had existed for years, especially towards Black Americans? Perhaps as a result of being forced to stay at home due to the pandemic, millions of people focussed on news that could ’ ve been lost in the flow and hustle of normal everyday life. The video showing in graphic detail how a White policeman slowly murdered a Black American shocked the world in ways that other equally brutal police murders without video evidence hadn ’ t. Also, perhaps the need for human beings to reconnect outdoors with one another and shout out their pent-up frustration contributed to the size of the public protests. What happened afterwards? The White policeman was convicted of murder and sentenced to a long prison term. The vast majority of attempts at convicting police officers involved in the death of Black Americans had previously resulted in acquittals. The Black Lives “ I can ’ t breathe. ” summer of 2020 effects 64 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="72"?> Matter movement 7 13 became more popular and accepted. The events following Georg Floyd ’ s death raised awareness of systemic racism and inequality in American society. The Spanish flu pandemic a hundred years ago was followed by the Roaring Twenties, which we just touched upon above as part of the Jazz Age. After the first decade of the new millennium (called aughts by Americans or noughties by the Brits) and the 2010s, what will the Twenties bring? While we have to end this part of “ The When ” with an open-ended question, we can mention an assurance that the rest of this book - at least the parts of it that deal with the United States - will present what is generally thought to be important for German students to know about America. We ’ ll be referring again and again to some of the facts and insights possible from a geographical and historical point of view. But first we need a transition from the United States in the 21 st century to the beginnings of the United Kingdom. The Queen herself provided one in 2007 when she made international news by visiting a place we also visited at the beginning of this chapter: Jamestown, Virginia. The Queen helped mark the quadricentennial (a fancy word for 400 th year) anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in North America. However, we obviously need to start much earlier than 2007 or 1607. From Early Britain to End of the UK? From before the Normans to after the Roses When to start British history could be as easy - or as difficult - as the decision about when to start American history: If we stick pedantically to the term “ British ” , we would need to begin with the birth of Britain as a union of England with Wales and then with Scotland … But then we would miss too much that happened before. So let ’ s opt for English history and see where that takes us. Beginnings of English history and earliest Britons? Well, you could start with 1066 (spoken as “ ten sixty six ” ) as indicated in a wonderful parody of school-book history first published in the 1930s: 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 … and the 20s? 1066 and all that … 65 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="73"?> Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates. Or we could begin history when Britain became an island, around a few thousand years ago although remains of human settlement in the area that was orginally connected to Europe have been dated back several hundred thousand years. As you remember from our start of American history, the first people came from somewhere else, most probably Asia. Where did the first people in Britain come from? Well, archaeologists have found archaic human stone tools and footprints that date back one million years in Norfolk - the earliest trace of human habitation in Europe! A leg bone and two teeth dated half a million years later show traces of the human species called Homo heidelbergensis, named such not because they came from Heidelberg but bones of this species were first found there. Neanderthals - remains of whom were first found in Neanderthal near Düsseldorf - seem to have traveled to and from Britain for hundreds of thousands of years, their movements depending on the climate, which ranged from cold to unbearably cold. What is now the island of Great Britain was a European peninsula again and again as the glaciers came and went. When the glaciers last melted around ten thousand years ago, the island we know today began to take shape and since then humans have lived there continuously. The Neanderthals died out, and modern humans took their place. If we now jumped from Ice Age to the Stone Age, then you might immediately think of one of the most famous monuments in the UK: the odd-looking collection of huge stones arranged in somewhat circular fashion in the southern part of England. But Stonehenge isn ’ t the only or even the largest monument built at least partly by people from the Stone Age. Not too far from Stonehenge is another less wellknown but even larger monument: the stone circle at Avebury. And there are hundreds more scattered all over the British Isles. In addition to stone circles, mounds of earth are also testimony to the inhabitants of ancient Britain. Beakers, drinking vessels made out of pottery, point to the fact that a prehistoric people who had populated much of Western and Southern Europe had also found their way to Britain. And finally, beautiful gold jewelry and coins as well as weapons made of iron or bronze are silent testimony to the Celts as inhabitants of Britain. You can still find spoken testimony to the Celts in Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall as well as in Ireland, as you ’ ve already learned. 1 a million years ago Ice Age to Stone Age cultivated immigrants from Europe 66 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="74"?> Historical evidence of the Roman conquest of Britain? The Roman conquest provided us with the first written records about the inhabitants of Britain. As we ’ ve just seen, pre-Roman inhabitants left stone circles, hills of earth, and jewelry but no written records. Famous Romans like Caesar and Tacitus wrote about the natives. We can see other evidence just by glancing at any given map of Britain and noting the place names, starting with Britannia, a Latin name for much of the British Isles, a name that replaced the earlier Albion. 5 Look at towns and cities like Colchester (claims to be the oldest town in Britain), Chester (with its medieval city walls), Gloucester (a test of your knowledge of English pronunciation - two syllables only), Cirencester, Lancaster (keep “ the red rose ” in mind for later), Manchester. 11 The suffix caster or chester is derived from the Latin word castrum, meaning camp or fortification. The suffix also helps us to see that the Romans were pretty much everywhere in England. Those who ’ d like to see remnants of one of the largest stone walls built in the whole Roman Empire can find Hadrian ’ s Wall, parts of which are still standing today more or less along the present border between England and Scotland. Hadrian ’ s Wall makes up the northwestern part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site called Frontiers of the Roman Empire, which includes the Limes walls in Germany. For those who like dates, Caesar first arrived in Britain in 55 BC and the Romans left Britain in the early 6 th century AD, so the Romans were in Britain for around 500 years. Evidence of the Anglo-Saxons and King Arthur? You could argue that the history of England begins with the Anglo- Saxons since they gave England its name. The Anglo-Saxons were various tribes who came from the continent, many from the area that is now Germany, and after some time together gradually began to call themselves English and also shared the same Christian religion. The Anglo-Saxons are also still present in the county names that end in shire from Buckinghamshire in the southeast to Wilshire in the south (where Stonehenge is) to Worcestershire (as you might remember from our spicy geography appetizer) in the West Midlands to Yorkshire in the north. And then there are the regions Essex (still a county name), Wessex (no longer a county), and Sussex (still used in the county names of East and West Sussex) named for the East, the West, and the South Saxons in England. place names, one big wall even more place names 67 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="75"?> You ’ ve probably heard of King Arthur and his round table and of the sword Excalibur, the tragic knight Lancelot and the love-torn Guinevere, and the search for the Holy Grail. You might wonder what a question about King Arthur is doing in a section on British history since historians have as yet found no evidence that King Arthur was a real person. Legends are often more important than historically sound facts in the formation of a nation ’ s identity, and King Arthur plays a big role as a defender of the Celts in post-Roman Britain in their struggle against the Saxon invaders. Perhaps you ’ ve also had the chance to see one of the many film or stage versions of the King Arthur legend, ranging from the popular stage musical and film Camelot to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. For those who don ’ t like dates, just remember that the Anglo-Saxons ruled in Britain just about as long as the Romans did, roughly 500 years. What about King Alfred the Great? While Alfred the Great was definitely a real king in contrast to the legendary King Arthur, a lot of people associate a particular legend with Alfred. A peasant woman who didn ’ t recognize Alfred asked him to watch some cakes while she was away. Alfred was more concerned about the many problems his Kingdom of Wessex was facing and let the cakes burn. When the woman returned, she scolded Alfred but then apologized when she discovered who he was. Alfred said that he was the one who should apologize. This well-known story is supposed to show Alfred ’ s humility in spite of his accomplishments. He was the first king to unite large parts of what was to become known as England and defend it successfully against the Scandinavian invaders including the much feared Vikings, who would travel to North America a century later as you might remember from the beginning of Part I of this chapter. Alfred is the first and only monarch to have been given the title “ the Great, ” partly based on the scholarship that made his court famous. He was also the first in England to use ships (against the Vikings) and thus is considered to be the founder of the English navy, important for an island country. For those who like dates, Alfred died around 900. Causes and effects of the Norman Conquest? From the only king with the title “ the Great ” to the only king with the title “ the Conqueror, ” who was a foreigner - there ’ ll be many legend of King Arthur uniter, scholar, founder Battle of Hastings, Domesday Book 68 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="76"?> others later. And the one date that practically everyone who has ever heard anything about English history knows and that you now know how to say: ten sixty-six. In the century and a half between Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror there were many monarchs with short reigns and all with similar-sounding names like Edward and Edmund and Edgar. There were a couple of Danish kings who ruled England named Sven and Canute although Alfred had done his best a century before to rid the island of all Danes. The last and most important of the Edwards, named the Confessor, had Westminster Abbey completed in time for his burial. Unfortunately Edward the Confessor didn ’ t leave any clear choice of heirs to the throne. The resulting confusion was William ’ s victory near Hastings in 1066 and his coronation shortly thereafter as the first king of England of the Norman dynasty. The effects of William ’ s conquest were enormous. He severed England ’ s ties with Scandinavia in favor of close ties with his homeland France, and he promoted church reform, strengthening the power of the monarch. French became the language of the nobles, the government became hierarchical and feudal. His effective and efficient taxation was based on the information about property given in the Domesday Book, a detailed description of property and livestock, which still provides valuable details about life at the beginning of the Norman dynasty. Fig. 2.9 Small excerpt from the very long (70 meters) famous Bayeux Tapestry illustrating events leading up to the Norman Conquest. Can you see Willem (short for Willemus in Latin) on the far left and guess what Hesteng on the right might mean? You might remember a word similar to ceastra on the far right as part of many British place names. Want to see the real thing? It ’ s still in a museum in Bayeux, France, but you can also view very high resolution digital close-ups on the museum ’ s website. You can also of course find lots of images (like this one) in the public domain on Wikipedia with links to many explanations of this iconic work of 11 th century art. 69 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="77"?> Dynasties or royal family trees have coats of arms, sometimes without the typical aggressive military symbols you might expect. The name Plantagenet comes from the Latin name for a yellow flowering plant that became the symbol for the dynasty that descended from the Normans. Importance of Henry II ’ s reign? The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, attempted to increase the power of the church over that of the state and was then murdered in his own cathedral supposedly at Henry ’ s request. While Henry didn ’ t succeed in subjugating the church, he did succeed in reforming the legal system and laid the groundwork for modern English common law. His reign is also seen as the beginning of English rule over parts of Ireland. Henry ’ s son Richard I, famously known as the Lionheart, spent most of his time on Crusades in the Holy Land. Richard ’ s younger brother John eventually became king but also became so unpopular that the barons forced him to sign one of the most important documents of what would become the British Constitution, the Magna Carta. 5 John ’ s nickname was Lackland because as the fourth son he wasn ’ t expected to inherit much land, and he ended up losing land in France. John is one of the few monarchs whose name wasn ’ t used again. Both John ’ s father and his son had the far more popular royal name Henry (there will be more to come), and John ’ s grandson was one of many Edwards. Scotland and Wales and two Edwards Despite his name, Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, didn ’ t quite succeed in conquering the Scottish kingdom to the north, but he did conquer most of the little kingdom to the west of England, Wales. According to a famous legend, his answer to the Welsh who complained about having to accept a ruler who spoke English was to hold up his baby son, who was born in Wales, and proclaim: “ My son, the Prince of Wales, was born in Wales and doesn ’ t speak a word of English and is thus fit to be the Prince of Wales. ” The eldest son of each English monarch has been called Prince of Wales ever since. Even after Edward I had practically annexed Wales, the Welsh rebelled again and again, most famously under Owain Glynd ŵ r (you ’ ll still sometimes find the Anglicized version Owen Glendower), who also claimed the title Prince of Wales about a hundred years after Normans to Plantagenets Archbishop Thomas vs. King Henry Hammer of the Scots and Prince of Wales Welsh and Scottish heroes 70 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="78"?> it was given to Edward II. While Glynd ŵ r didn ’ t ultimately succeed in freeing Wales from English control, he was also never captured by the English and thus did succeed in becoming a great Welsh hero. Mel Gibson ’ s Braveheart certainly made many curious about Scottish and English history and celebrated the Scottish hero Sir William Wallace even if the movie wasn ’ t historically fully accurate. Neither Edward I nor the II was able to do much more than win a few of the many battles they fought against the Scots. Under Edward III the Scots finally more or less asserted their independence and peace was more or less achieved, but the hatred between the English and the Scots would continue. Fig. 2.10 You can see a statue of what one sculptor thought Glynd ŵ r could have looked like in Cardiff ’ s City Hall. You may remember from one of our geography appetizers that Cardiff is the capital of Wales and thus a fitting location for the greatest Welsh hero. Look at what Glynd ŵ r has in his hands: a sword and a scroll to show his role as soldier and statesman. David Lloyd George, whom you ’ ll be meeting towards the end of the chapter, was War Secretary when he unveiled this statue as well as ten other Welsh heroes displayed in the Marble Hall in Cardiff City Hall. The little that is known about the historic figure of Owain Glynd ŵ r has allowed legends to flourish similar to those surrounding King Arthur. AWelsh-language TV 10 documentary used this 20 th century statue as a starting point in trying to imagine what Glynd ŵ r really looked like. 71 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="79"?> Effects of the Black Death and the Wars of the Roses? Edward III is also associated with a very long war with France, which became known as the Hundred Years War and lasted double the length of Edward III ’ s reign. Edward III along with Henry III, whom we just passed over, and George III, whom we ’ ll be meeting soon, were among the longest-reigning monarchs. Edward III managed to reign for half a century in spite of an epidemic that cut short the lives of many of his subjects: the Black Death or the Bubonic Plague, which dramatically reduced the population within just a few years. Since the Plague destroyed people and not possessions, those left alive were wealthier; the few workers left could also demand higher wages although these demands led to revolts. The power of the Roman Catholic Church was shaken since the Church was unable to provide help; the persecution of the Jews and other minority groups, who were often blamed for the outbreak, increased. Just as the horrors of the Black Death were beginning to subside, the quarrels between the two Houses of York and Lancaster were beginning. Earlier in this section we heard about the yellow blooming plant that came to be seen as a symbol of the Plantagenet dynasty, and we ’ ll end this first section with two more colors of a plant with flowers and thorns. There were Henrys and Edwards and a Richard too and two lines of descendants: the House of Lancaster used a red rose as royal badge and the House of York a white one. Those who are interested in the complicated times in the mid 15 th century will enjoy Shakespeare ’ s English history plays, which deal with the intrigues during the rule of eight kings (there are also movie adaptations). We just have time to mention one battle and one wedding here. At the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III. Henry Tudor from the House of Lancaster wisely married Elizabeth of York and thus not only ended the Wars of the Roses but also strengthened the crown since many of the nobles had been killed in the battles. Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, started a new dynasty, the Tudor dynasty, and used a new badge combining a white and a red rose. From Henry VIII to the Hanovers Although men form the bookends for this section, women actually played at least as important a role. A great irony of English history is that Henry VIII ’ s desire to have a son was so strong that he was busy marrying, divorcing, beheading wife after wife most of his life. His long reigns, short lifespans House of Lancaster vs. House of York: Wars of the Roses stuff of drama … and soap opera 72 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="80"?> only son, the weak and sickly Edward, barely reigned before dying and leaving the throne to Henry ’ s two daughters, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth. And yet another Mary from a different dynasty, the Stuarts, was also to play a role far more important than many of the males of the time. Sounds like a great soap opera? I remember being hooked as a child on the very popular BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII (with six episodes, one for each wife) and Elizabeth R (with a dazzling Glenda Jackson as the first Elizabeth); forty years later around the 2010s another hit television series The Tudors made history come alive for audiences in the UK, the US, and in Germany. Role of religion in the mid 16 th century? England had changed from a Roman Catholic country to a country whose monarch became the head of his own church. One of the most prominent victims of this change was a Thomas, the renowned philosopher and statesman and author of Utopia, Sir Thomas More, who was beheaded when he refused to sign the Act that would make Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church in England. Henry rewarded those who supported him by granting them much of the property and goods he and his minister, another Thomas, this one named Cromwell, had confiscated from the monasteries. The Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which then regulated the power struggle between Church and State that had begun with one bishop being murdered in the Cathedral (Thomas Becket, as you might remember from our look at Henry II) and ended with many more executions 350 years later. Religion played a very important role in family life for Henry, his first wife Catherine of Aragon, and their first daughter Mary Tudor. When Mary Tudor became Queen Mary, she attempted unsuccessfully to introduce Roman Catholicism again after her father ’ s break with Rome. Mary Tudor ’ s marriage to the Catholic King Phillip of Spain didn ’ t result in any children. Mary Stuart was also Catholic but belonged to a different dynasty and ruled two different countries. One way to distinguish the two 16 th century Marys: Mary Tudor became known as Bloody Mary (unfairly since the rest of her family - father and sister included - executed just as many as she did); Mary Stuart is also known as Queen of Scots because she became Queen of Scotland in addition to Queen of France (at least for a little while). Since Mary Stuart had a justifiable claim to the English throne and was probably King as Head of Church and 3 × Thomas Mary Tudor Queen of England, Mary Stuart Queen of Scots 73 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="81"?> involved in some of the unsuccessful plots to overthrow her cousin Elizabeth, Mary Stuart was imprisoned for many years and then finally beheaded. Another irony of this period: Mary Stuart ’ s son, James, later became king since Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, had no children. Glorious Elizabethan England and Spanish Armada? In the long reign of Elizabeth I the full glory of the Tudor dynasty became evident with theatre (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson), music (both Henry VIII and Elizabeth were accomplished musicians themselves), architecture (the building of great houses began to rival that of great churches), and exploration. We ’ ve already heard about Walter Raleigh as one of Elizabeth ’ s explorers who founded what became known as the mysterious Lost Colony off the east coast of North America. But Walter Raleigh wasn ’ t the only adventurer and explorer sailing - and plundering - for the Virgin Queen. Francis Drake was also involved in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Fig. 2.11 The Drake version of the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth, one of three similar portraits that were once attributed to the famous Elizabethan painter George Gower. Research has shown that he probably didn ’ t paint any of them. This version, recently restored, hangs in one of the Royal Museums in Greenwich near the birthplace of the Virgin Queen. You can see the victorious English ships on the left in sunlight and the destroyed Spanish ones on the right in gloomy darkness. Her hand resting on a globe signifies victory and the future, with her fingers covering the New World, where she ’ d sent Francis Drake to fight the Spanish. The chains of pearls could have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, who had already been beheaded by the time this painting was created. Elizabethan Golden Age 74 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="82"?> In a previous item from earlier English history we dealt with a legendary figure, King Arthur, whom the English are very proud of. Here we have another legend, which is historically documented and has also become part of national identity: the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. The Armada was a great fleet of ships built by Phillip II of Spain (who you remember had been married to Mary Tudor, Elizabeth ’ s half-sister) to invade England not only to avenge the death of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots but also to fight against the English pirates supported by Elizabeth. The skill of English sea captains combined with a lot of bad weather and bad luck defeated the Armada and thus banished the Spanish threat of an invasion of England. The defeat increased national pride, cemented the role of the Protestant religion, and helped to make the English navy famous. You could say that the Spanish Armada was just the legend England needed to provide what sailors on an island need: invincibility. Elizabeth was to reign for another fifteen years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and she had as a “ Virgin Queen ” no children. Her nearest relative was James, who, as we ’ ve just heard, was the son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. It was this James who became James I of England after already having been crowned James VI of Scotland. James thus became the first monarch ever to rule both Scotland and England and was also the first king of a new dynasty: the House of Stuart. After the problems with religion had been more or less solved with the monarch winning and Roman Catholics losing, the next conflict began to get worse: the conflict between the monarch and parliament, which was to lead to a Civil War during the reign of Charles I, James ’ son. Some causes and results of the Civil War? You may be surprised to have this question in the British history section since perhaps you had only heard of the American Civil War. I can remember seeing the movie Cromwell as a young boy and being horrified by the scene of the beheading of Charles I. So now you already have one grisly result of the Civil War: Charles I was the first European monarch to have been formally tried and then executed as a traitor. Causes of the Civil War were Charles ’ rule without the consent of Parliament, his illegal taxation, and the increasing power of Oliver Cromwell, who led the Parliamentarians - also called Roundheads Spanish Armada in English history? union of the crowns Scotland + England Charles vs. Cromwell Cavaliers vs. Roundheads 75 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="83"?> because of their short haircuts as a sign of their devout Puritan status - against the King, whose supporters, the Cavaliers, had longer fashionable hair styles. After Charles ’ execution a republic was declared, called the Commonwealth of England, which then became a “ Protectorate ” - but who was being protected from whom? Cromwell began acting more and more like a king and dictator. The English soon had enough of the Puritan tradition that Oliver Cromwell had started and that his (less competent) son Richard had continued, and they longed for a monarchy again. Remember Henry II? He had conquered a part of Ireland and established English rule over the Irish. Five hundred years later in the middle of the 17 th century Oliver Cromwell continued the English policy of confiscating land and encouraging English and Scottish Protestants to settle especially in the northern part of the island (only the narrow North Channel separates northeastern Ireland from southwestern Scotland). This part of Ireland had already become known as the Ulster Plantation, and the name Ulster, originally an ancient name for the northernmost part of Ireland, is still used today as a synonym for Northern Ireland and as an indication of the long history of Protestant settlement. Cromwell was hated in Ireland for the brutality with which he subjugated the Catholic Irish. The violence between the Irish Catholics and the Protestant emigrants was to continue for another few centuries. 7 Effects of Great Plague and Great Fire on London? We ’ ve already heard about a pandemic called the Black Death that ravaged the island of Great Britain - and much of Europe too - in the middle of the 14 th century. In 1666, one year after an epidemic called the Great Plague swept through London, the Great Fire not only destroyed the carriers of the plague but also a great part of London. Sir Christopher Wren, England ’ s greatest architect of the time, was in charge of rebuilding the city and not only left his mark in St. Paul ’ s Cathedral but also in modernizing London with broad streets and stone houses instead of the medieval walls, narrow lanes, and wooden houses that had characterized London before. 11 Religion: the “ Glorious Revolution ” and German imports We ’ ve already seen how religion wreaked havoc in the lives of the Tudors. Charles II (son of Charles I) restored the monarchy after English vs. Irish: Ulster Plantation Wren ’ s London Catholic problem again 76 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="84"?> Cromwell ’ s so-called Republic, and his brother, who later became James II (grandson of James I), at first seemed Protestant enough to please Parliament. But after James ’ first wife died, he married a Catholic and openly converted. Parliament wasn ’ t able to prevent James from becoming king, and when James ’ first son was born, the danger that the monarchy would then have a Roman Catholic succession became real. James ’ autocratic style of rule had also alienated enough of his supporters to make them begin a revolution. Revolutions usually have something bloody about them - lots of executions and at least a good battle or two. But the winners of this one called it the Bloodless (or Glorious) Revolution - a bit unfairly perhaps since there was some bloodshed involved. What happens to monarchs in Britain who seem a bit too Catholic? Well, either they have to gain power and execute their enemies, as Mary Tudor did, or they have to leave the country fairly quickly, as James II was forced to do. Britain didn ’ t want to return to a republic, so what can the government do if there are no Protestant relatives in the immediate royal family? They can look around and see what the rest of Europe has to offer. Since James II ’ s first wife was Protestant and their oldest daughter, Mary, had conveniently married a Protestant, King William of Holland, Parliament invited Mary and William to take the throne in 1688. Consequently, with the Dutch navy and army ready to fight for William and with no support in Parliament, James II gave up the throne and fled to France, where he lived most of the rest of his life except for one last attempt to regain power. In the famous Battle of the Boyne in Ireland, William defeated James II. As a result of the Glorious Revolution, an important bill was passed in Parliament and later became part of the British Constitution: the Bill of Rights, not to be confused with the part of the United States Constitution with the same name that was written exactly one hundred years later. 5 George I was proof of how much the English hated Catholics. Although neither William nor Mary were called “ Virgin ” like Elizabeth, they also had no children. And Anne, Mary ’ s sister, who became queen after William ’ s death, also died with no heirs to the throne. Since the nearest relatives were Catholic, Parliament came up with an Act of Settlement, which in effect passed on the throne to some distant German cousins, who all were Protestant and had to remain Protestant if they wanted to become English kings or queens. The first such “ import ” was someone called George, or more precisely Georg Ludewig von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, who also William and Mary German King George, First Minister Walpole 77 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="85"?> started the House of Hanover (traditional spelling in English). Since Georg ’ s English wasn ’ t the best, he didn ’ t particularly enjoy attending meetings of his ministers and turned over much decision-making to one of his ministers, the highly capable Robert Walpole, whose long years as minister helped change the structure of the way Britain was ruled and created in effect the position of the prime minister. 5 End of the Stuarts: Bonnie Prince Charlie? Bonny (or bonnie), meaning attractive or beautiful, is a dialect word still used in Scotland and North-East England, and well-known nicknames can be helpful in distinguishing the many Charles and James in English history. We just met James II, who belonged to the Stuart dynasty and in addition to his daughter Mary - by the way William and Mary became the only couple ever to jointly rule England - also had a son, as we just heard, whom he named - yes, I ’ m sorry but the English monarchs seemed to have been very conservative in giving names to their children - James. This James became known as the Old Pretender to the throne by those who thought he had no right to claim the throne. He had a son named not James but Charles. It is this very Charles who became known as Bonnie Prince Charlie and who led the last attempt by the Catholic Stuarts to regain the Protestant British throne. This movement, by the way, was called Jacobite after the Latin form of the name James. What would you call the son of an Old Pretender if you thought he too had no right to the throne? The Young Pretender of course, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, tried to regain England and, with some help from Scotland, came with an army to Culloden, a town close to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, where the last battle on British soil was fought. The forces of George II defeated Bonnie Prince Charles ’ army and thus ended all Stuart hopes of regaining the throne. George II, as you can imagine, was the son of George I, the German we just met, and one of many Georges to come - a relief after all the James and Charles. But before we leave all the James and Charles for good (or at least up until the present Charles, Prince of Wales, who may become Charles III if he becomes king), you may perhaps ask about Bonnie Prince Charles ’ nickname. Evidently Bonnie Prince Charles was so pretty that disguised as an Irish maid he was able to escape from George ’ s troops, who chased him all over Scotland. many James, many Charles one Bonnie Prince, one last battle at Culloden 78 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="86"?> Fig. 2.12 You can find this portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh not far from Holyrood Palace, where he ruled briefly before the illfated invasion of England to restore his family to the British throne. You can see the English Garter Star on his chest with the cross of St. George, the English patron saint, instead of the Scottish thistle, which you might have expected from a portrait painted in Edinburgh by the most famous 18 th -century Scottish artist Allan Ramsay. The portrait was intended to show the Young Pretender as an English prince who deserved the English crown. Some results of the Industrial Revolution in Britain? We ’ ve just looked at one unsuccessful rebellion after one Glorious Revolution. We need to glance at yet another revolution that started roughly in the middle of the 18 th century and continued throughout the next century. It began in the northern part of England and ultimately not only changed Britain but also the entire world. The Industrial Revolution made the North of England the manufacturing center of Britain and for a while at least “ the workshop of the world. ” During the 19 th century this area led the world in many industrial fields: iron, steamships, railway engineering, bridge-building, industrial machinery, iron and steel production as well as textile production. The first railroad connection between Liverpool and Manchester allowed goods and people to be transported at speeds not known before. Scotland and Wales also played a part: Glasgow as a “ dear dirty inventions, innovations, environmental destruction, poverty 79 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="87"?> city ” and the valleys of iron and steel in south Wales. Production grew rapidly as the economy changed from an agrarian handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and manufacturing. Increased population led to increased demand. Inventions like the steam engine and spinning machines greatly increased efficiency. Innovations included replacing animal sources of power with engines, and human skill and strength with machines. There were also new methods of making iron and steel and new ways of organizing work in large factories and mills. The Industrial Revolution brought an increase in wealth and commercial and political supremacy to Britain, but it also included destruction of the environment, the growth of slums in industrial cities, bad conditions for factory workers, and child labor. Important Acts of Union up to 1801 The attentive reader might have noticed that I seem to be using the words England and English and Britain and British almost interchangeably. But there are big differences, as we learned from the last chapter. We can trace one historical difference back to the passing of the Act of Union in 1707, which united the Parliaments of the previously independent kingdoms of Scotland and England and created the new country of Great Britain. England and Scotland had already shared the same monarch since James created the Union of the Crowns, as we heard. Each monarch after James thus had two crowns, one for Scotland and one for England. England and Scotland agreed to an Act of Union because of England ’ s practical need to safeguard itself from possible Jacobite attacks (no one could know that the Battle of Culloden would indeed be the very last failed attempt of the Catholic Stuarts to regain the crown) and Scotland ’ s need for economic assistance. England promised free trade, and Scotland agreed to be ruled in future by Protestant Hanoverian monarchs. The Scots were allowed to keep their own church, their own school system, and their own legal system. Since Anne (the last of the Stuarts, younger sister of Mary, as we ’ ve already heard) was the queen both before and after the Act of Union of 1707, she was thus the last Queen of England (and Scotland) and the first Queen of Great Britain. Queen or King of England have been used ever since although actually for almost the entire 18 th century the correct term would have been Queen or King of Great Britain. union England + Scotland 80 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="88"?> Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland became the proper title in 1801 in another Act of Union when Ireland was forcibly joined to Great Britain against the will of many Irish Catholics. The unification of the two main islands of the British Isles created the largest free-trade area in Europe with no internal borders or local tariffs and contributed to the spread of the Industrial Revolution. But we also need to mention the first Act of Union, the origins of which go back to the time of Edward I and his son, the first Prince of Wales. It wasn ’ t until King Henry VIII, with whom we began this section, and the Act of Union of 1536 that Wales was (forcibly) united with England. You can still see the lack of importance of Wales in the Union Jack flag. While both Scotland and Ireland are represented through crosses and colors, the Welsh dragon simply doesn ’ t appear. It ’ s doubtful if the Welsh took comfort in the fact that the House of Tudor was of Welsh origin. After all these acts and forcible unions, let ’ s finally end this section on a positive note. After so much conflict based on religion, at the end of the 1820s the Catholic Emancipation Act - just one more act - was passed. The Catholic Emancipation Act? If you look back a few hundred years and go back a few pages to the first section “ From before the Normans to after the Roses, ” you can see that one of the early struggles between Church and State started with Henry II. Struggles between Catholics and Protestants characterized this second section “ From Henry to the Hanovers ” and resulted in many a death. While religion can still play a violent role in Northern Ireland, we can look at one government act as the end of most of the violent problems between Catholics and Protestants in England, Scotland, and Wales if tragically not at all in Ireland. One of the most influential figures of the 19 th century and a British (accurately using the term British) prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, persuaded Parliament and a reluctant King George IV to pass an act that gave Irish and English Catholics all political rights including the right to almost all government posts, except to the monarchy, which was still in the hands of the Protestant German Georges. union Great Britain + Ireland first forced union: England + Wales Catholics: rights restored 81 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="89"?> From Victoria to Churchill The previous section of British history had male bookend names: Henry and the Hanovers. And we started it with a look at some of the important women of the time - the queens. This (our penultimate) section begins with another queen, the second-longest-reigning English monarch of all time, Queen Victoria (her record for the longest reign was broken in 2015), whose name became that of an entire age, the Victorian Age. But we ’ ll begin this section with a man: not with Winston Churchill, who ’ ll come later, but with Benjamin Disraeli. Britain under Disraeli? Disraeli doesn ’ t sound like your common English name, and Benjamin Disraeli wasn ’ t your common Englishman. His name reveals his Italian-Jewish descent, but his family converted to Christianity when he was young. Disraeli was a novelist and at least at the beginning of his political career was better known in literary and social circles than in political ones. Nonetheless, he became Conservative party leader and later prime minister and was instrumental in extending the right to vote to the working classes and in passing legislation that improved housing and working conditions for the poor. His greatest triumphs were in foreign policy. Disraeli enhanced Britain ’ s imperial power, helped Britain control the important trade route through the Suez Canal, and convinced Parliament to declare Queen Victoria Empress of India. After Disraeli ’ s death but before the end of the Victorian era, Britain ’ s foreign policy was characterized by aggressive colonial expansion with “ Great Imperialists ” like Joseph Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes making colonial acquisitions in Rhodesia, South Africa, and Nigeria in a “ scramble for Africa ” among the European powers Britain, France, and Germany. At home in Britain and partly due to some of the results of the Industrial Revolution - a dramatic increase in population and the phenomenal rise of the middle class - important intellectuals began to look for ways to solve the problems of the gap between rich and the poor. Founding of the Labour Party? At the beginning of the 19 th century political authority was in the hands of landowners, merchants, and aristocrats in Parliament, but Empress of India to Scramble for Africa growing power of workers 82 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="90"?> by the end of the century much had changed. In addition to the extension of the franchise (the right to vote) to the working classes, another reform was the legalization of trade unions. The Fabian Society, founded by a group of influential socialists like the authors H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, believed that the whole community should own a country ’ s land, natural resources, and wealth. The growing power of the workers led to the founding of the Labour Party around the turn of the 20 th century with its goals of moderate socialism under the guidance of Parliament. Before we leave the 19 th century for good, we have to return to a topic that has been a leitmotif throughout British history. Ireland from Great Famine to Free State? Perhaps the one event that most people would associate with Ireland and the 19 th century is the Great Famine, which resulted in the deaths of over a million people and mass emigration especially to the US. 7 Many Irish lived on farms owned by British landlords. The Irish sold their grain and cattle to the English to pay the rent, leaving potatoes as their only food. When a disease destroyed the potato crop in the 1840s, people began to starve to death; but the British government was slow to react. Prime Minister William Gladstone attempted to resolve the Irish question by a Home Rule Bill, which would give an Irish Parliament the right to appoint a leader. The Easter Rebellion in Dublin occurred after World War I and eventually led to Ireland ’ s independence, at least for most of the southern and western parts of the island. British Parliament then gave the part of Ireland that became known as the Irish Free State the status of a dominion, an independent country within the British Commonwealth of Nations with the British monarch as the official head of government. The counties in Ulster in Northern Ireland remained part of what then became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Irish Free State later declared itself independent, was neutral during World War II, officially left the Commonwealth and became the Republic of Ireland in the late 1940s. Why change Hanover to Windsor? What happened to the German names of British royal houses? Queen Victoria had died just one year after the turn of the century and was the last monarch of the House of Hanover. Before she died, starving to death Irish Free State vs. Ulster House of Hanover to Castle of Windsor 83 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="91"?> she married off most of her many children and grandchildren to various other European royal houses and thus became known as the “ grandmother of Europe. ” Her son, Edward VII, began the very shortlived House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. This dynasty with its very German-sounding name - German and British nobility had been intertwined for centuries - lasted only until World War I. Because of anti-German feeling, the name was changed to Windsor, the name of the largest inhabited castle in the world and home to English and British kings and queens for almost a thousand years. In spite of the name change, the faces remained the same, including the face of Edward VIII and his very romantic entanglements. 8 Unfortunately we have no time for romance but must proceed with the two wars that would define the 20 th century as the bloodiest in all of human history. Fig. 2.13 You can immediately recognize George V, whose grandfather Albert had been born in Germany, trying to sweep all German titles away from the British monarchy just before World War I ended. Perhaps you thought “ made in Germany ” was a newer advertising logo? While you might not know the British weekly satirical magazine Punch, which finally stopped publication at the beginning of the 21 st century, it was very popular in the 19 th and 20 th centuries and helped popularize cartoons as political caricatures. This one is titled A Good Riddance. A few British leaders during the two World Wars? The first two British wartime leaders aren ’ t nearly as famous as the last two. But H. H. Asquith is not only worth mentioning because he Asquith and Lloyd George 84 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="92"?> was the prime minister during the first half of World War I but also because of his success in limiting the power of the House of Lords 5 and in laying the framework for what would become the welfare state with the help of his successor as prime minister, David Lloyd George, who admired the German system of insurance benefits. 3 Lloyd George is even better known for his part in the Treaty of Versailles and ending World War I and for his helping to end British repression in Ireland. Perhaps Lloyd George, whose native language was Welsh, was more understanding of the Irish than earlier leaders because of his own Celtic background. You can find one statue of him in a dramatic pose near Cardiff City Hall, and another in London not far from the most famous prime minister, whom we ’ ll meet at the end of this section. Fig. 2.14 Here is David Lloyd George, whose name should ring a bell for the readers who like the graphics in this chapter and remember the captions. This statue on Parliament Square in London presents him with outstretched arm and billowing cape and one foot already walking off the pedestal. Befitting George ’ s Welsh background - he remains the only Welsh prime minister ever - the memorial has a base of slate from North Wales and was made by Welsh artist Glynn Williams. The Prince of Wales was the main speaker for this statue ’ s unveiling in the early 21 st century. 85 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="93"?> A reader with a knack for names might remember someone instrumental in expanding the British Empire, Joseph Chamberlain. The key word appeasement could make you think of Neville Chamberlain, Joseph ’ s son, who returned from a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich and promised the British “ peace with honour ” and “ peace for our time. ” As we all know, Chamberlain wasn ’ t able to prevent the world war he desperately wanted to avoid. After the first year of the war brought no victories for the UK, Chamberlain was forced to resign, handing over to the most famous of all the more than fifty prime ministers in British history. In his very first speech as prime minister, Winston Churchill famously claimed: “ I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. ” Other stirring speeches were to follow, evidence of Churchill ’ s skills as an orator and as a writer. While you may not be surprised at Churchill being a Nobel Prize winner, would you have expected him to win the Nobel Prize for literature? If you think about another British prime minister mentioned at the beginning of this section, you might Fig. 2.15 Winston Churchill ’ s statue on the spot that he himself chose on Parliament Square. In stark contrast to the figure of David Lloyd George, a massive Churchill strikes a more traditional pose, dressed in a thick overcoat, perhaps showing defiance at the beginning of World War II. Although it wasn ’ t the first statue to be dedicated on Parliament Square, it ’ s perhaps the most prominent. You can see an animated version of it in the wonderfully humorous video opening to the 2012 Olympics. The statue has also been at the center of demonstrations and protests. The large base seems almost to invite commentary and “ racist ” was sprayed there in the summer of 2020, reflecting an increasingly critical view of the war hero. Chamberlain ’ s fatal mistake: appeasement “ blood, toil, tears, and sweat ” 86 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="94"?> even think literary accomplishment was part of the job. Instead of “ from Victoria to Churchill ” we could have named this section just “ Churchill ” since his public service spanned the period from the reign of Victoria to the Cold War. Churchill lived until the age of 90, was voted the greatest Briton of all times in a BBC poll, and regularly appears at the top of lists of the most effective prime ministers. One of the many statues you can find of him across Britain is not far from David Lloyd George, directly across the street from Parliament in London. The prime minister who succeeded him, Clement Attlee, certainly isn ’ t as famous but could be judged to have had an even greater impact on contemporary Britain. Why? To answer that question, we need to begin our final section in British history. End of Empire to End of the UK? Our very last topic about British history (and the very last one here about Anglo-American geography and history) sounds suspiciously similar to the last section in American history, which also began with a question about the possible end of something. Some principles of the welfare state? While the horrors of World War II were still dominating the headlines, the British politician Rab Butler was working on a radical change in policy towards education, with the government promising its people free secondary education and more kinds of further and higher education. We ’ ll see later 4 just how well the government kept its promise. Also during World War II, the British economist and social reformer William Beveridge proposed a radical change in policy towards government ’ s role in helping the unemployed, the sick, and the retired. More than anyone, Beveridge brought the welfare state to Britain. Although Churchill warned the British not to expect too much from their government, he called himself a supporter of a “ national compulsory insurance for all classes, for all purposes from the cradle to the grave. ” 3 Partly because the Labour Party was even more forceful than Churchill in promising social reform including implementation of the Beveridge Report, Labour won the first postwar general election. Churchill, the Conservative prime minister who reforms in education from the cradle to the grave 87 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="95"?> won the war, was defeated by Clement Attlee, the first Labour prime minister to also have a majority in the House of Commons. Disintegration of the Empire, devolution of the UK? The very first event leading to the disintegration of the British Empire was the Anglo-American War (from the British point of view) or the War of Independence (from the American perspective). But we ’ re now in the section on contemporary Britain, so we ’ ll have to fast-forward to the countries that declared themselves independent of Britain, shrinking the British Empire very quickly. India and Pakistan were the first, just after the end of World War II, followed by other colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. The handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 was regarded as the end of the Empire. There are still some scattered territories to be mentioned as well as at the present status of the Commonwealth, in some ways the successor to the British Empire, in a later appropriately named chapter. 6 “ Devolution ” rhymes with “ revolution ” (at least in American English) and the effects of devolution could very well bring about the first true revolution in the United Kingdom since the Glorious Revolution more than three centuries ago. Could the United Kingdom become the “ Untied ” Kingdom? It could if the individual countries loosen - and then lose - their ties to one another. We ’ ll be looking at other aspects of devolution a little later. 5 We ’ re skipping to the pandemic already, you might ask? What about Margaret Thatcher? Princess Diana? The London Olympics? Harry and Meghan? And most importantly, what about Brexit? These are some of the topics that we ’ ll be looking at in other parts of the book, and Brexit deserves detailed treatment. 6 The last two issues in the British half of our history chapter echo those in the American half. One of the many similarities between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson was their initial reactions to the coronavirus. The British government under Johnson at first were reluctant to impose any restrictions, Johnson apparently thought that the virus was mostly affecting the elderly and that the cost in lives for achieving herd immunity was lower than the economic damage through a lockdown. Only when it seemed that the National Health Service 3 was in danger of being overwhelmed by intensive care patients did the government agree to enforce restrictions. end of the Empire not United but Untied Kingdom? Covid-19 88 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="96"?> The UK made positive world news with the first vaccinations in December 2020, earlier than in EU nations and in the US. Johnson ’ s government falsely claimed that not being part of the EU gave the British government the freedom to approve and administer the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, Astra-Zeneca, whose name was also given to the vaccine widely used in the UK. But before this positive news, the UK had had a higher absolute number of deaths than any EU country including the very hard-hit countries of Italy and Spain. A report by the House of Commons in late 2021 sharply criticized the official government stance, which had led to more avoidable deaths and one of UK ’ s worst-ever public-health failures. There were demonstrations against government-ordered shutdowns or against mask-wearing in the UK as around the world, but the response to the pandemic didn ’ t split along political party lines as clearly as in the US. Huge demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd ’ s murder also took place in the summer of 2020 across the UK. You might remember “ racist ” being sprayed on Churchill ’ s statue. Just as in the US statues were torn down; in Bristol 1 the statue of a slave trader was thrown into the harbor, with the role of racism in British history and life becoming front page news. We ’ ll be returning to racism and identity in the UK, to the effects of Covid-19, and to Brexit, as a defining moment in British history, again and again throughout the book. Will future historians see “ British ” history as ending with Brexit, with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shrinking to become only England, after Scotland and Wales vote to leave the UK and Northern Ireland decides to unite with the Republic of Ireland? Since this chapter is about the past, I can ’ t answer that question here, but you will be able to find some good clues in later chapters on politics and in Part II on identity and power. I originally designed the first edition of this book with geography and history appetizers as part of a meal motif; but the zeitgeist has changed a lot in the past few years, and to refer to many of the newer, disturbing entries in this book merely as “ appetizers ” would be inappropriate. Many Britons were shocked at the decision to withdraw from the EU, many Americans at the election of a racist misogynist xenophobic reality TV star with no political experience. Climate change, a worldwide pandemic, and the rise of authoritarian and populist movements around the world would fill any crystal ball with dark, threatening clouds. Is there hope for the future? History early successes, later failures … and the 20s? historic unsettling frightening hopeful times 89 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="97"?> points to possible positive revolutions to come, and hope springs eternal, as you ’ ll read later. After looking at Britain and America from a spatial and a temporal angle, we ’ ll turn to issues in the next chapter that can mystify foreigners, sometimes especially Germans. We ’ ll deal with these issues mostly alphabetically (from A for Abortion to W for Welfare State and ending with P for Populism). While you may not have heard of the name Ken Burns before, although he ’ s one of the more famous American filmmakers, you ’ ve all experienced what ’ s become known as the Ken Burns ’ effect in almost any documentary of the last half century. Documentaries made by Ken Burns take lots of old photographs and turns them into mesmerizing films about the American Civil War or the Vietnam War, the history of jazz or of country music or of baseball. They look at the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty as problematic and inspiring monuments or idealize US national parks as “ America ’ s best idea. ” Traditional academic historians may criticize Burns, at times perhaps because he reaches an audience far wider than writers of tomes can. You can watch some of the older documentaries on videosharing sites, you can read and watch clips on the website of the Public Broadcasting Service 10, which has funded his documentaries, which often take years to complete. Ken Burns is outspoken and has warned that the US of the 2020s is now facing problems of the same magnitude as the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. We don ’ t have a television emoji, but how many of you actually watch TV on a screen that doesn ’ t provide many other services like internet, streaming, and social media anyway? History (formerly the History Channel) was a traditional US cable television network 10 available only to paid subscribers is now available also via streaming services. As the name indicates, History is about history with lots of documentaries of widely varying quality. What ’ s especially useful about the network is the debate it ’ s provoked on criteria for just what is history. Have a look at Wikipedia articles for the history of the network, for links to some of the controversies and then to a list of documentaries aired. You ’ ll notice perhaps a bias towards the US, but you can also find documentaries on British history, too. 90 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="98"?> One of the many essays in the The Blackwell Companion to Television anthology is very relevant for this chapter. Edgerton ’ s “ The Past Is Now Present Onscreen: Television, History, and Collective Memory ” looks mostly at American television, but he also mentions some wonderful British documentaries and topics in British history that make the essay fully relevant for the content of our entire “ The When ” chapter. Exercises 1. Create a timeline with all the people mentioned in American history and underline the presidents. 2. Create some royal family trees, one for each dynasty. Which aspects do you think would be relevant in understanding British people today? 3. Compare the maps in this chapter “ The When ” with maps in the first chapter “ The Where. ” 4. Which topics would you consider relevant for those in Britain who long for a return to the past and who voted for Brexit? Which topics provide evidence for those who voted remain in the referendum? 5. Finally, without looking back: What do you remember about the graphics? (relatively easy) What could you criticize about the choice of many of them? (difficult perhaps until after you ’ ve read chapter 13) 91 Chapter 2 The When (history) <?page no="99"?> ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) While we can ’ t cover the whole alphabet in just one chapter, we can look at a few issues in American and British society that can puzzle those looking at the US and the UK from the outside. The British and the Americans themselves don ’ t always agree on the role and responsibility of the government or on the scope and limitations of individual freedoms. The following topics aren ’ t at all as “ easy as ABC ” to understand, but knowing about them is crucial for anyone interested in “ reading ” American and British society well. Abortion To understand American attitudes towards abortion we need to begin with a famous decision that has since been a battle cry for the two opposing groups. In the early 70s the Supreme Court ruled in the Roe v. Wade case that states must allow women to have an abortion within the first six months of pregnancy. Although most states had allowed pregnancies to be terminated for a number of different reasons, some states allowed abortion only when the pregnancy meant the mother ’ s life was at stake. The Supreme Court decision was based on the belief that the state had an obligation to ensure that women had access to abortions performed safely since illegal abortions were often dangerous. The Court also ruled that women and their doctors had a right to privacy, that government had no power to intrude into the home without good reason. But this right to privacy wasn ’ t absolute - people couldn ’ t do with their bodies whatever they wanted - and the fetus also had rights to be protected. Thus state laws that prohibited abortion in the later stages of pregnancy were constitutional. In later court cases, other justices have modified the results of the Roe v. Wade decision. The issue of abortion remains one of the most divisive in the US. Americans have very different attitudes about a general right to abortion or the degree to which the government should regulate abortion or when the fetus should be considered a Roe v. Wade divisive issue 92 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="100"?> person deserving the protection of the law: at conception, in the third trimester of pregnancy, or at birth. In general Republicans and Catholics have supported the movement that has come to be called pro-life; Democrats and some liberal Protestant churches support the pro-choice movement. A large minority of Americans hold the two extreme viewpoints roughly equally - the state should prohibit all abortions for whatever reason or the state has no right whatsoever to regulate abortion. A majority of Americans believe that the state should have some regulatory power but differ as to the details. Antiabortion Americans demonstrate in front of abortion clinics, doctors who performed abortions have even been murdered. A Texas state law in the early 2020s had the goal of preventing all abortions and gave all citizens the right to sue anyone involved in any way whatsoever in abortions. Another controversy is whether government funding should be used for Planned Parenthood and whether parents must give their consent for their daughters to have an abortion. Since regulation of abortion is a matter left to the states and not to the federal government, abortion laws can vary. A majority of all Americans believe that abortion at least in some form should be accessible and legal. Accessibility is becoming easier through an abortion-inducing pill that is available online, but some states governed by pro-life Republican governments are attempting to prohibit access to such medication. Regardless of future court decisions or new laws, the Fig. 3.1 The official logo of the non-profit organization Planned Parenthood founded a century ago by Margaret Sanger, a supporter of women ’ s rights and the person who coined the term birth control at a time when any distribution of information about contraception was illegal in the United States. Sanger fought for easier ways for women to prevent unwanted pregnancies and lived to see “ the pill ” become the first oral contraceptive in 1960. In recent years Sanger ’ s support of eugenics, the belief that the human race can be improved through restricting certain groups from reproduction, and her association with White supremacist groups in addition to her support of Black leaders like W. E. B. DuBois 7 has complicated her legacy and led to Planned Parenthood reevaluating its founder and the use of Sanger ’ s name. funding, future, abortion pill 93 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="101"?> issue of abortion will most probably continue to be just one more example of how divisive American politics and values and perceptions have become. In June 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the decision Dobbs v. Jackson, allowing individual states to declare abortion illegal and thus depriving millions of American women of a right that Roe v. Wade had certified half a century before. This new and equally historic Supreme Court decision made headlines around the world and ensured that the debate over abortion would intensify in a polarized America through the 2020s. Abortion isn ’ t controversial in Britain, where the majority of the British feel that abortion should remain legal. The Abortion Act of 1967 made abortion within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy legal and available through the National Health Service, which we ’ ll be reading about a little later in this chapter, in England, Scotland, and Wales. Abortion remained illegal in Northern Ireland until 2019 when the UK Parliament passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage and liberalize abortion in line with the rest of the UK during a period in which the Northern Ireland Assembly, 5 which had previously been opposed to making abortion legal, was suspended. Capital Punishment Abortion is a matter of life and death. Some Americans who support the role of the state in protecting the life of fetuses also support the state ’ s absolute right in ending the life of adults, providing one of the many contradictions that make studying American society challenging. The United States is the only Western industrialized country to still apply the death penalty, also known as capital punishment. While the trend worldwide in the last half century has been to abolish capital punishment, the United States is still among nations like China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan with the highest annual number of executions. As with abortion, the laws about capital punishment vary from state to state although the federal government can also impose the death penalty as a punishment for some crimes like treason. In more than half of all states capital punishment is legal although the vast majority of executions have taken place in only five: Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Florida. As with abortion, to understand American attitudes towards capital punishment we need to start with a Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson legal in UK US alone Supreme Court decisions 94 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="102"?> made in the same year as the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. In Furman v. Georgia a narrow majority of justices ruled that the state laws in Georgia violated the 8 th Amendment to the Constitution that prohibit “ cruel and unusual punishments ” and the 5 th Amendment that prohibit the government from depriving citizens of “ life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. ” After Georgia and other states revised their laws to take into account this decision, the Supreme Court ruled just a few years later in Gregg v. Georgia that capital punishment as applied under these new laws was constitutional. The first execution after this decision took place in Utah in the late 70s: Gary Gilmore chose to be executed by firing squad, a rare but constitutional method of execution. The term capital comes from Latin for “ of the head ” and referred to beheading as a common form of execution in earlier times. 2 Lethal injection has been used in the overwhelming majority of executions in the last decade. In more recent cases the Supreme Court has further restricted capital punishment using the principle of “ evolving standards of decency ” and declaring the execution of minors and the mentally retarded to be unconstitutional. Although there is evidence that race plays a role in convictions and executions, the Supreme Court has mostly ruled in favor of execution if racial discrimination can ’ t be proved while acknowledging that the way capital punishment is applied could indicate this kind of discrimination. The Court has upheld laws permitting the use of lethal injections as long as the injections don ’ t inflict unnecessary pain - “ cruel and unusual punishment ” is as we saw above prohibited by the 8 th Amendment. Capital punishment is still supported by a majority of Americans although the results of opinion polls depend on how the questions are asked. Overall support has declined substantially in the last couple of decades. Because all people convicted have the right to appeal and because the appeals process starts at the state level and can proceed through all the higher courts to the Supreme Court, there is often a long waiting period between conviction and execution. While some laws have been passed to speed up the process between conviction and execution, widespread use of DNA evidence has also helped to reverse convictions of people on death row (the area reserved for those waiting to be executed) and has led to moratoriums on the use of capital punishment. Since the turn of the millennium a dozen states have formally abolished the death penalty and the number of death sentences and executions nationwide has dramatically decreased. declining popular support, increasing abolition in states 95 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="103"?> More than 150 executions took place in Texas when George W. Bush was governor; as president he also clearly supported capital punishment. Barack Obama criticized the way in which the death penalty was administered but also justified its use for certain crimes that society considered outrageous. The federal government executed more people in the last few months of the Trump administration than in the previous fifty years. Joe Biden supported capital punishment through most of his career as senator but has now become the first president to openly oppose the death penalty. Republican politicians are overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining capital punishment and open to other forms of execution if current problems in securing ingredients for lethal injections continue. Explanations for American support of capital punishment include deterrence, sense of justice for the victims ’ families, and prevention of further harm to others. Other reasons could include an American frontier mentality with general beliefs in clear-cut guilt or innocence, perhaps an American tendency to want quick solutions to complex problems. Since the use of capital punishment falls under the jurisdiction of each individual state and and - for federal crimes - the jurisdiction of the federal government, only the Supreme Court could ban its practice everywhere on constitutional grounds, an unlikely event in the near future. The death penalty will thus most probably remain one of the issues that clearly makes the US different from Europe. Although capital punishment wasn ’ t completely abolished in the UK until the late 90s, the last executions took place in the mid 60s. While some polling seems to indicate support for reinstating capital punishment in Britain, those against the death penalty point to wellpublicized cases of people executed whose innocence was proven too late. A return to the death penalty would be impossible as long as the UK remains a member of the Council of Europe (which is not an EU institution) after ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights, which strictly forbids capital punishment in all circumstances. Class System UK Maybe when you hear the word class, you might immediately think of school, but you ’ ll have to wait until the next chapter for this meaning of class. If you think of the upper or working class, a posh politics and politicians reasons for supporting the death penalty UK with majority of the world 96 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="104"?> English accent, maybe titles like baroness or earl, then you ’ re on the right track for this topic: social class. Let ’ s start at the top with the top of the upper class, namely with those aristocrats who have titles like duke, earl, or baron. This old upper class, the aristocracy, derives its power and influence from as early as the Norman Conquest. 2 Both the power and the number of aristocrats with titles were increased especially during the 17 th century under the Stuart monarchs. 2 You can divide the peerages historically into the names of the countries: England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, which all finally became the United Kingdom. Examples of English peerage include the Duke of Cornwall - the eldest son on the monarch - and the Earl of Sandwich, whom we ’ ll be hearing about in an entirely different context later. 11 Another important aristocrat was the Duke of Edinburgh, also known as Prince Philip, the Queen ’ s late husband. You ’ ll be hearing about other people with titles and exoticsounding names like Lord Alli and Baroness Dunn. 8 While hereditary peers inherit their titles from their parents and pass them on to their children, all other peers are life peers only and thus are a bit lower in the upper class. Almost all peers used to have the right to sit in the House of Lords 5 - the only unelected parliamentary chamber in Europe. Big names in industry and business and law have now also become part of the new upper class, sometimes called the superclass. These people not only have money but more importantly the family background and contacts provided by their public school and later Oxbridge education. 4 The upper classes make up only a very small percentage of Britain ’ s entire population. The majority belong to the middle classes where professions, education, and a degree of wealth are more important than family background. Characteristics of what ’ s sometimes called the upper-middle class are a university education and a highly qualified job with a good salary: architects, business executives, or doctors are typical upper-middle class professions. Salaried professionals, white-collar workers like shop assistants and office clerks, and the self-employed are also considered part of the middle class without as much social prestige as the upper-middle class. The traditional working class in Britain is going through dramatic changes. The old image of the typical working-class man as White and a trade union member who lived in government-subsidized housing and whose wife stayed at home is no longer accurate. More working-class upper-class aristocrats life peers, superclass upper middle, middle, working, underclass 97 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="105"?> members are buying their own homes, many members of ethnic minorities who began immigrating to Britain in the 1950s 7 are now members of the working class, the connection to trade unions has been weakened due to Thatcherism in the 80s, 6 and the oldfashioned division of labor with the husband doing manual labor and the wife staying at home is disappearing as women now make up a substantial percentage of the workforce. The shift of working-class votes from Labour to Conservative was also a major factor in the Conservative party ’ s success from the late 70s through the early 90s and then again in the 2019 election, when Boris Johnson ’ s Conservatives won many long-held Labour seats. Economic politics during the Thatcher era was the growth of what is sometimes called the underclass or the poor and includes elderly people living on limited pensions, single-parent households, members of ethnic minority groups with low-paid work, people living off government benefits, and the homeless. While we ’ ve been looking at class mainly using the criterion of family background, education, profession or job, we also need to glance at other markers of class in Britain like accent, housing, and use of mass media. The upper classes tend to use a kind of English that BBC presenters were famous for using (BBC English) 10 and is still the way the Queen speaks. Nowadays, though, the BBC tends to use regional accents. And what was only a working-class accent in the past is being adopted by young people with a middle-class background. Members of the upper classes usually live in larger estates as you might indeed expect; members of the working class have become able to buy houses from local governments. The distinction between quality and popular press is an indication of class differences between their readers. More of the upper and middle classes read the Times and the Guardian and more of the working class read the Sun. 10 A huge survey conducted a decade ago shows that class is still very important and more complicated than described above. The Universities of Manchester and of York and the London School of Economics worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to ask more than 160,000 people about their economic, social, and cultural capital based on the theories of the French cultural studies scholar Pierre Bourdieu. 13 Using not only wealth, education, and family but also cultural interests and activities, the survey divided the British into seven classes ranging from the elite, with the most privileged people, to the precariat with the poorest and most class markers Great British Class Survey 98 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="106"?> deprived people. In between the researchers defined an established middle class as the largest group and a technical middle class, a traditional working class and new affluent workers as well as emergent service workers. This survey indicates that class structures are in transition. Other evidence of some breaking down of the class system in Britain came when Labour politicians in Tony Blair ’ s administration famously declared in the late 90s: “ We ’ re all middle class now. ” You ’ ll read humorous expressions like “ champagne socialists ” for liberal middle-class members, and “ toffs ” for the upper class. But issues of class will remain a serious topic as long as institutions like the universities involved in the huge class survey and the BBC find class an appropriate topic to study in depth. And as long as the House of Lords and public schools exist and until the ethnic minorities gain full power and representation, the issue of class will remain a fascinating part of trying to describe British life. Class System US You might be surprised to find that this topic also has a US component. Some Americans also think that their country doesn ’ t have a class system and perhaps point to the American Dream open to all immigrants, starting with those who were fleeing the restrictions of class a couple of hundred years ago. Or maybe you would just point to a very simple class system with the rich, a huge middle class, and the poor? Most researchers think that the US does indeed have a class system although different from that found in the UK. As in the UK, the most common class characteristics in the US are based on wealth, job, and education but also include factors such as race and obesity. Unlike in the UK, aristocracy has not played a role in the US although some famous political families like the Kennedys or the Bushes or the Clintons are sometimes regarded as America ’ s unofficial nobility. It isn ’ t aristocracy but another kind of -cracy that is often used to describe America ’ s social class system: meritocracy, the belief that individual achievement is important. An expression often used in German to refer to the opportunities for great economic and professional advancement in the US translates as “ from dishwasher to millionaire, ” which nicely sums up what Americans mean by the “ rags to riches ” part of the American Dream. Prosperity was considered a sign of God ’ s blessings within the Puritan work ethic, which has had such an important effect on American life. 8 class in the US? meritocracy 99 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="107"?> But the other side of the meritocracy coin is the stark evidence of those who don ’ t make it: the working poor or those dependent on government aid or the homeless. Members of this lower class can make up as much as 15 to 20 % of the entire American population (depending on which statistics you use) and can be seen in urban ghettos or even on downtown streets. Race and ethnicity, a defining aspect of American social class from the very founding of the country, plays a very important role in these lower classes with a disproportionate number of African Americans and Hispanics. Due to problems establishing a nationwide health insurance or job security, members of the middle classes have experienced social mobility in a downward direction, making possible a nationwide discussion on the role of the state in the lives of Americans, a role that has been limited in times of prosperity for the majority, as we ’ ll see later in this chapter. The renowned American scholar Joan Williams has shown that most Americans identify as being middle class in spite of fundamental differences in income and values between workers with high school education in blue-collar jobs 6 and a professional elite with college degrees. Respect for manual labor has declined, deepening divisions in the US, which are no longer defined only by race and ethnicity but also extend to choices in food, for example. 11 Williams also sees class explanations for support for abortion, a special issue we just covered, being stronger among women with career ambitions than among women who view their main roles as mothers and wives. Williams views the right to own guns, our next special issue, also through the lens of gender and class. Gun Control One of the most difficult aspects of American life for Germans to understand lies embedded in the Constitution ’ s 2 nd Amendment: “ A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. ” If you find this sentence difficult to understand with its absolute phrase at the beginning and ask yourself what a militia has to do with modern America, then you ’ re not alone. Many Americans believe that owning a gun is a right guaranteed in the Constitution and a freedom as sacred as the freedom of speech. Many Americans also think that the government has the responsibility for ensuring its citizens ’ safety. Understanding American fascination and obsession with weapons starts by reminding ourselves that only a few generations ago settling lower class (almost) all middle class (? ), stark divisions 2 nd Amendment hunting animals, shooting people, slavery relic, rural masculinity 100 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="108"?> a wilderness necessitated the use of guns - whether to be used against wild animals, robbers, or American Indians or for simply being able to feed the family. Hunting is also one of the most popular American pastimes, 11 and who can imagine American hunters without rifles and shotguns? But in addition to school and campus shootings, 4 firearms were involved in the presidential assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy, the politician Robert F. Kennedy, of civil rights activists Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and the former Beatle John Lennon as well as the attempted assassinations of presidents Jackson, Truman, Ford, and Reagan. Another explanation for Americans ’ deep-rooted devotion to guns could come from the more distant past. Black slaves vastly outnumbered their White owners in states that permitted slavery. Owning guns gave the White minority power over a Black majority. Guns have become an essential part of masculinity especially for mostly White American men who live outside of major urban areas and whose deep-seated fear of having their guns taken away is often exploited by Republican politicians. In the wake of mass shootings that occur with numbing regularity across the US, Americans usually begin to discuss whether gun control is necessary and usually decide that while some control would be good, concrete laws restricting gun ownership wouldn ’ t be. Even after the deadliest mass shooting ever by one individual in Las Vegas in 2017 during which 60 people were murdered and hundreds were injured, Americans remain in favor of the right to bear arms, using slogans like “ guns don ’ t kill people, people do ” and pointing to the 2 nd Amendment. Sometimes it takes years for a bill restricting gun use to pass through Congress and finally become law. President Reagan ’ s press secretary James Brady, who was seriously injured during the assassination attempt on Reagan in the early 80s, became a supporter of stricter gun control. The Brady Bill wasn ’ t passed until thirteen years after the assassination attempt; it regulates that the legal sale of handguns can only take place after a check on the prospective buyer. Although gun control advocates and many American cities have attempted to regulate the ownership of firearms, the Supreme Court ruled in a narrow 5 - 4 decision that the 2 nd Amendment clearly gave Americans the right to possess guns for hunting and for self-defense and wasn ’ t only limited to members of a militia as some supporters of gun control had argued. In the early 2020s the White teenager who shot and killed two people during demonstrations in Wisconsin was mass shootings, Supreme Court decisions 101 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="109"?> acquitted on all counts, a decision that some fear will encourage gun violence all the more. The National Rifle Association (NRA), a large and powerful nonprofit organization founded after the American Civil War, plays an important role in defending what its three to four million members see as their constitutional right to bear arms. The NRA argues that owning a weapon not only is part of American tradition but also that law-abiding citizens need weapons for personal safety. In addition to political activity, the NRA sponsors courses and events designed to educate people in the correct use of firearms. Increasing criticism, lawsuits, and a risk of bankruptcy at the beginning of the 2020s have exposed weaknesses so serious as to make the future of the NRA as an organization questionable. Other groups like the Gun Owners of America are ready to support everyone who believes in the absolute right to own and use weapons. In the early 2020s families of the children murdered in a mass shooting a decade earlier received millions of dollars from Remington, the maker of the assault weapon used in the attack at Sandy Hook elementary school. Perhaps this successful lawsuit is an indication of another way to combat gun violence: making the manufacturers of the weapons pay. Predictions for the future: the bankruptcy of the NRA will not be enough to begin a real change in American attitudes and a conservative Supreme Court probably won ’ t agree to any common-sense restrictions on interpreting the 2 nd Amendment since there are other deep-seated reasons for American ’ s gun fetishism, as we ’ ve seen. Ownership of almost all kinds of handguns has been prohibited in Britain since Parliament passed one of the strictest gun control laws in the wake of the Dunblane school shooting massacre in the late 90s. The National Rifle Association in the UK is older but much smaller than its namesake in the US and has little political influence. Public support of gun control is high. One result of the right to bear arms not being an issue in the UK: mass shootings are extremely rare. Statistics showing an increase in violent crime could indicate a more violent society in Britain or could point to an increase in the number of crimes reported. Welfare State US Many Americans wouldn ’ t call their own country a “ welfare state ” because of some of the negative connotations the term welfare has in NRA UK strict gun control welfare state US? 102 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="110"?> American English. America ’ s pioneer culture with the emphasis on individual achievement and on privately organized charities and church support has always been suspicious of government-organized programs. It was only when the middle classes began to be affected by risks like unemployment and poverty caused by long-term illnesses - risks that the government in other Western countries protect their citizens from - that Americans began to see an increased role of the government as helpful and at times even necessary. Americans tend to want to get rid of welfare programs that don ’ t work effectively. They also don ’ t like programs that might be seen as encouraging too much reliance on government. But Americans themselves aren ’ t sure about exactly what role the government should play in providing social services and have been changing their minds again and again. Since the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran as a presidential candidate twice and calls himself a democratic socialist, and has had an effect on American attitudes towards the role of the government, younger Americans in particular are in favor of a bigger role of the government in ensuring less economic inequality. The term socialist no longer has the intensively negative connotation it once had. You can trace the roots of what Sanders and his many supporters advocate back to Germany more than a century and half ago. But it was only during the Great Depression fifty years after Bismarck ’ s social reforms that American attitudes changed towards the role of the government in providing services like unemployment and retirement benefits. Remember Teddy Roosevelt ’ s Square Deal, government programs designed to restrict the power of the captains of industry in their attempt to amass wealth and influence? And the New Deal that another Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, introduced? 2 FDR set up government agencies, many of them acronyms with three letters, which became known as the alphabet agencies - perhaps appropriate for a president whose name was also made up of three letters. A few of the agencies have survived to this day like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 10 and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). 9. Most relevant for our topic is the Social Security Administration (SSA), which ever since the New Deal has provided government funding for Americans who retire after working many years. The SSA also includes unemployment benefits, now collectively known as Social Security. The debate about the future of Social Security, especially about the future of payments to retired people, has democratic socialist, Bismarck, Deals Square and New Social Security 103 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="111"?> intensified in recent years. As in most other industrialized countries but because of the numbers of younger immigrants not to the same degree, the US is faced with an aging population. Predictions are that the money collected for Social Security through taxes on income (similar to the system in Germany) will not meet the needs of those who retire or qualify for benefits. Some politicians are calling for partial privatization of the system in spite of the huge financial problems an unregulated financial system has caused in the US. Other possible reforms include raising the age when people can begin getting retirement benefits to 70 or having richer people pay more into the system. Some of the benefits of FDR ’ s New Deal in the 30s and 40s were expanded during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson (also known by his three initials LBJ) in the 60s. In what came to be known as the Great Society, Johnson introduced unprecedented government programs to eliminate poverty and racial injustice at a time of economic prosperity. LBJ expanded the Social Security program first initiated by FDR ’ s New Deal to include governmentfunded health care with very similar-sounding names: Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare provides federal funds for the health costs of all Americans over the age of 65. Medicaid provides federal and state funds for the health costs for some Americans with low incomes under the age of 65. Since Medicaid is administered by the states individually, eligibility requirements vary from state to state. Here again we can see the importance and power of the individual states within the federal system of American government as we ’ ve already seen in the issues of abortion, capital punishment, and gun control. Both Medicare and Medicaid are faced with the same problem that confronts Social Security - rapidly increased spending because of demographics - in addition to the fast-growing expense of medical treatment. The famed director Michael Moore critically analyzed the right to possess guns in the documentary Bowling for Columbine. His film Sicko sharply criticizes the lack of American health care for all and claims the health care system in Canada, the UK, and France is much better. Some aspects of health care have changed in the last couple of decades, but Sicko is still relevant for showing that Moore ’ s criticism is something typically American - and typically optimistic: the belief that a more perfect union (to use the ungrammatical expression of the Founding Fathers in the Preamble to the Constitution) or better Medicare Medicaid government v. individual 104 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="112"?> health care, less crime, more just punishment, and an answer to when life begins is possible. The underlying question has always been about the degree to which government should limit the risk of citizens losing their jobs, getting sick, retiring poor compared to the degree to which the individual alone should be responsible for dealing with these risks. In general the Republican party regards health care as a private matter while Democrats are in favor of government supported insurance for everybody. Although Hillary Clinton ’ s plan for nationwide health insurance for all Americans failed in the early 90s when she was First Lady, she made the issue one of the most important in her presidential campaign of 2008. Two years into his first term, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into law. The long name of the act details the content: Americans are guaranteed a right to affordable insurance regardless of previous health conditions. How Americans are supposed to actually apply and receive affordable insurance under the PPACA is even more complicated than the clumsy name partly because of the complicated division of federal and state supervision of the program. Opponents of the PPACA named it Obamacare to indicate their intense criticism of what they saw as ineffective and unconstitutional. Obama himself adopted the name in his 2012 presidential campaign, thus changing the insult into a badge of pride. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that Obamacare is constitutional, and attempts by Republicans to repeal the program failed even when the party held the White House and both chambers of Congress from 2016-2018. Obamacare will no doubt remain a part of the 21 st century American social welfare system. In most advanced countries, citizens are guaranteed access to health care by their government; but the majority of insured Americans still get health care through their employer, which also signifies the importance of work in American life. 6 In the first two decades of the 21 st century an opioid epidemic resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans through addiction and overdoses due to a combination of well-meaning attempts to reduce pain through medication and aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies underpinned by American expectations of easy solutions to difficult problems. A health care system based on dealing with a maximum number of patients as briefly as possible combined with advertisements directed towards patients as consumers resulted in widespread opioid use. Private health insu- Obamacare + New New Deal opioid epidemic … 105 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="113"?> rance covered the cost of quick pain medications as opposed to more time-consuming pain management, and pharmaceutical companies encouraged individuals to ask their doctors for medication. One harrowing result of widespread abuse was a decline in life expectancy in stark contrast to other advanced industrialized countries. Thousands of law suits are now trying to force large pharmaceutical companies to accept responsibility for their role in a health crisis that in its extent is unique to the US. In contrast to the American opioid epidemic, the Covid-19 pandemic has of course affected the entire world but has caused more infections and deaths in the US than in any other country. Why? The extreme polarization of a health crisis with many Americans, especially Republicans, seeing vaccination and mask-wearing as an infringement on personal freedom, Donald Trump ’ s failure to take the virus seriously, an historically understandable lack of trust of Black Americans in government vaccine mandates, a belief that the risk of economic damage was higher than health risks in spite of one million American deaths. The spread of misinformation on social media 10 15 resulted in fact-free theories, some of which disputed the dangers of Covid-19 and the enormous number of deaths. Covid-19 magnified typically American tensions between individual freedom and responsibility for others. The pandemic provided evidence of the ugly selfish side of human nature and with inequalities and racism in American society more painfully visible alongside a typical pioneer American trait of helping one another. Food banks funded by churches and charities helped people suffering from food insecurity, a euphemism for hunger. The long lines of cars at food banks hit the headlines and pointed to another absurdity in America: even people who don ’ t have enough money to feed their families have automobiles. Joe Biden ’ s plan to emulate FDR ’ s original New Deal through Build Back Better legislation was hindered by the Democrats ’ slimmest of majorities in Congress. In spite of a majority of Americans in favor of government assuming a more active role, too many Republican politicians still are reluctant to pass any legislation that they fear would encourage Americans to rely on the state instead of assuming personal responsibility. Build Back Better would provide government programs like paid leave for parents with tax breaks for each child, leave for medical care, free preschool instruction, health care subsidies for people with low-income, services that are completely normal in other developed countries. Just as most people have come … Covid-19 pandemic Build Back Better, but when? 106 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="114"?> to accept Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, perhaps future generations of Americans will regard government support found across the industrialized world to be normal. Welfare State UK You might remember when government sponsored health care began in the UK. 2 But we ’ d have to go back a few centuries earlier if we wanted to have a look at other ways that the state began to look after its subjects. And if the word subjects makes you think of monarch, then you might not be surprised that the first of many Poor Laws was passed at the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I 2 and provided support at a local level for the aged, the sick, and the poor. As poverty increased dramatically during the Industrial Revolution, other Poor Laws established work houses - fans of Dickens will remember how cruel these could be. Attitude towards poverty changed in the 19 th and 20 th centuries: instead of being seen as a sign of laziness or immorality, it became a social issue. And during the dark days of World War II some British leaders were making plans for a post-World War II society in which government would be looking after its citizens “ from the cradle to the grave. ” The welfare system in Britain today consists of three main parts: social security, which provides unemployment and retirement benefits; social services, which provide care for the elderly and disabled; and the National Health Service (NHS). The National Health Service (NHS) provides health care throughout the United Kingdom in various ways. The central element is the system of family doctors, called GPs or general practitioners, who are the first point of contact for patients and who refer patients to other more specialized services and hospitals. All individuals must first of all choose a GP in their area of residence, and the GP must be willing to add a new patient to the list, which for some GPs can be very long indeed. The government pays the GPs according to the number of people registered with them. All services with the GPs are free of charge. Some charges must be paid for dental services, for medicine, and for eyeglasses depending on the age and financial status of the patient. Currently the NHS is almost entirely financed through general taxes, a small part of which (similar to Germany) is collected from both employers and employees and then paid into a National Insurance Fund. Private medical insurance is available but expensive. from the cradle to the grave in the UK National Health Service (NHS) 107 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="115"?> The NHS sometimes makes the news with scandalous headlines about patients dying because the waiting lists for patients prevented necessary surgery in time or, pre-Brexit, about German doctors flying to Britain for lucrative weekend duty. These stories tend to eclipse - some would say unfairly - the successes of the NHS, which provides equal treatment to every citizen in Britain and which prevents the financial ruin that can result from a lack of insurance as was the case in the US before Obamacare. But waiting for treatment, the condition of some hospitals, and the increasing costs of modern health care has put an increasing strain on the system. With increasing devolution 5 the once centralized NHS has been reorganized into four systems, one each for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland with some differences in the scope of health care in each nation. One major reform of the National Health Service in England took place in the early 2010s, the Health and Social Care Act, passed by one of Britain ’ s rare coalition governments. 5 Critics condemned the controversial legislation as the death of the NHS; supporters praised it as a necessary evolution. Effects of the reform Fig. 3.2 For some the NHS remains an old building under construction and in need of repairs, but people praised the actions of NHS employees during Covid-19 as heroic, and the Queen herself awarded the St. George ’ s Cross 13 to the NHS to mark 70 years of public service at the height of the pandemic. The hospital St. Thomas in this photo taken from Westminster Bridge was in headline news when Prime Minister Boris Johnson nearly died of Covid-19 there in spring 2020. He thanked his nurses Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal by name on television. changes and challenges and enduring praise 108 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="116"?> are a restructuring of funding and responsibility and an increase in competition. While no one denies that the NHS is facing daunting challenges, and everyone expects further changes and reforms, the NHS still represents - more than 70 years since its founding - an important aspect of British identity. One of the scenes of the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games in London celebrated the NHS with dancing nurses and happy children jumping on moving hospital beds. The segment may have puzzled foreign audiences, but the illuminated NHS sign was immediately understandable to all British viewers. Populism US and UK Some readers might immediately ask themselves what happened to the alphabetical order of the issues in this chapter? And why cover both countries at once instead of following the same pattern as all other issues? Very good introductory questions about this issue, which wasn ’ t a topic in the first two editions of our book. The word populism itself might at first sound positive: who wouldn ’ t want to be popular? Maybe you ’ ve heard the expression vox populi - the voice of the people. Populism does have something to do with being popular and, seemingly at least, listening to the people. The People ’ s Party in the US was a reaction to the crass inequality of the Gilded Age 2 and was led by a charismatic politician named William Jennings Bryan, who was in favor of public ownership of railroads, for example. Remember the name of a US senator who called himself a “ democratic socialist ” from earlier in the chapter? What populist politicians share with all successful politicians is charisma, 13 which makes celebrities and some politicians attractive: overtly populist politicians like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump as well as other American politicians like FDR, JFK, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama, who didn ’ t use other aspects of populism. Populism is built on the principle that the people are in a struggle against another group, usually composed of powerful and corrupt elites. With the rise of social media turning consumers into producers 10 15 and the rise of conspiracy theories like QAnon, 10 the importance of traditional experts like established news sources has declined. American ’ s strong belief in individualism and freedom and a mistrust of “ experts ” has intensified in the last decade with fatal results: the million deaths related to Covid-19 were also partly due to ignoring expert advice about vaccination and mask wearing. Before populism as popular and charismatic us vs. them, simple solutions 109 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="117"?> Brexit populist British politicians were always ready to blame the bureaucrats in Brussels for problems. Donald Trump won the presidential election by putting the blame for America ’ s problems on traditional politicians like Hillary Clinton and on minorities like Blacks and Hispanics. He later called the coronavirus a “ Chinese ” or “ foreign ” virus. Both American and British society are changing before our very eyes. Older class differences, as you ’ ve read, are changing. Now the dividing factors are age, gender, and education. Americans with a college degree 4 now support Democratic candidates and policies in numbers never seen before; younger female British people voted in large numbers to remain in the EU. Change in status and power is terrifying especially to those who risk losing their status and power. Populists respond to this fear by promising a return to a past golden age. Another common feature of populists is their appeal to simplesounding solutions: Britain would automatically be better off if it simply left the EU, the US simply has to return to a golden era when male White high school graduates had undisputed political and economic power. Most countries aren ’ t able to get rid of populist leaders after just one term. If a few of the judges and state officials had been willing to play along with Trump ’ s lies about a stolen election, then maybe Trump would have become the first president to have lost both the popular and electoral vote but still have clung to the presidency for another term. Boris Johnson, whom Joe Biden referred to as the physical and emotional clone of Trump, could be one of the last prime ministers of the United Kingdom as we know it. Many younger people in Scotland are in favor of a new referendum, and polls showed that a majority of Conservative voters in England were in favor of Brexit even at the cost of Scottish independence. While the other issues in this chapter pose more problems in understanding for those who haven ’ t grown up in the US, the election of Donald J. Trump as president and the more than 70 million votes for his failed attempt at a reelection shocked and mystified very many Americans. While critiques of “ Europe ” have played a role in British politics and life for the last fifty years, many British people were shocked by the results of the referendum decision to leave the European Union, including the Conservative politicians who had promised the referendum while assuming that a majority would vote to remain. populism as return to a golden age past and the future? issues for Americans and British, too 110 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="118"?> For our last special issue we could have used two other words that also start with P, and they are a direct result of the kind of populism that has beset both the US and UK in the last decade: polarization and partisanship. Party affiliation in both countries now have become more divisive: the American Republican and the British Conservative parties both boast of a glorious past that they promise to bring back and both gain support from the less educated (in the US) or the working class (in the UK), groups who had traditionally supported the Democrats (in the US) or Labour (in the UK). Political identity has become an essential part of personal identity. In the US the combination of widespread ownership of weapons and passionate belief that the other party is a serious threat not only in a political but also in a personal sense makes the future look dangerous. We ’ re thus ending this chapter with populism and not with welfare because the future of populist politics in the US and the UK will no doubt have an effect on the welfare not only of these two countries but also of the rest of the world. Jane Roe is the female equivalent of John Doe, both names used to hide personal identity in lawsuits. Not long after the decision, Norma McCorvey revealed she was the Jane Roe of the famous Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. McCorvey ’ s own life could serve as a complicated, tortured, and ambivalent reflection of American attitudes towards abortion. McCorvey suffered an abusive childhood and marriage, put her children up for adoption and never had an abortion, came out for decades as a lesbian, and originally supported the pro-choice movement. Later she became pro-life and a born-again Christian and then, in a documentary released after her death, claimed her conversion was an act at least partly due to financial needs. You can watch Nick Sweeney ’ s 2020 documentary AKA Jane Roe and meet McCorvey herself or read about her and her own daughters in Joshua Prager ’ s acclaimed 2021 book The Family Roe: An American Story, which covers gripping personal details in the broader context of the abortion debate and extends to issues of gender and sexuality, class and religion. The book ’ s cover evocatively shows the rift running through American society on this subject. You can find a highly readable excerpt entitled “ The Roe Baby ” in the magazine The Atlantic. You can watch interviews with the author as well as historical footage of McCorvey across video-sharing platforms. populist, partisan, polarized 111 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="119"?> The Death Penalty Information Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing information about the death penalty in the US, and the website deathpenaltyinfo.org has data on all aspects of capital punishment, including a curriculum for use in American schools and universities. Groups in favor of capital punishment cite the DPIC for its breadth and depth of data but criticize it for not adequately presenting pro-death penalty argumentation. DPIC critics haven ’ t been able to answer the question: Why are there no equally respected and comprehensive data-driven websites to support capital punishment? Perhaps some of you know Educating Rita from school and would have expected this morsel in the next chapter. The movie deals with class even more than with the Open University, which you ’ ll read about in the next chapter. If you note the accents, word choice, watch for details about income, clothing, jobs, and food in the movie, you ’ ll experience the British class system with American Dream elements of working your way up combined with a very liberal acceptance of class identity. For a very different kind of multimedia experience, watch and listen to the music video “ This is America ” by the rapper David Glover under his stage name Childish Gambino, a number 1 hit that won critical acclaim as well as numerous awards for its brutally realistic way of combining gun violence and racism in a uniquely American environment. Exercises 1. Review the topics connected to the UK and the US in this chapter. Which country gets a more detailed treatment? Not so trivial question: Why? 2. Which two issues are clearly divided into a US and a UK section? Another not so trivial follow-up question: Why? 3. Do you wonder how the US Supreme Court could decide that the death penalty isn ’ t an example of a cruel punishment? Do a little research on the reasons behind the two decisions mentioned above. 4. What about a title and a seat in the House of Lords? It ’ s possible for German-born politicans like Baroness Gisela Stuart, who earned her title. For details about how you get a title and a seat more quickly, do a little research on Cash-for-Honours scandal and you might come across a connection to the Prince of Wales. 112 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="120"?> Possible project: Pick any of the issues we ’ ve glanced at in this chapter and formulate concrete questions that you ’ d like people in the US or in Britain to answer. Contact as many as you can and compare the answers you get with some of the generalizations given above. Other topics would have also been interesting and relevant, maybe for a future much enlarged edition of this book: … the American ideal of beauty; youth violence and knife culture in Britain; poverty in the US; ghettos and homelessness in the UK and US; gated communities; crime and punishment other than capital punishment; teenage pregnancy, sex education and attitudes towards sexuality; the court system; behavior of British and American tourists abroad; the importance of privacy in British (and in American) life; the use of closed-circuit television systems in British public places; gangs, football hooliganism; binge drinking; typically American or British diseases and ailments; obesity and declining life expectancy in the US; challenges of the first ever huge generation of very old people, eldercare, … We ’ ve now completed the appetizers in geography and history and have digested some of the things that could cause heartburn or stomachache for readers previously unaware of all these different and sometimes disturbing aspects of life in Britain and America. We ’ ll be needing these insights throughout the rest of the book and will be coming back to some of these details in later chapters. But now we ’ ll move on to the first main course, one of the classics on any menu of American or British Studies: education. 113 Chapter 3 ABCs UK & US Life (special issues) <?page no="121"?> Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) Never let your schooling interfere with your education. attributed to Mark Twain Open to people, places, methods and ideas. @OpenUniversity (bio) Probably you ’ ve all experienced some aspects of education in the United Kingdom and the United States even if you ’ ve never set foot in an American or English school. We ’ ve all seen pictures of cute British school students in uniforms smiling into the camera just as we ’ ve all seen pictures of ethnically different American school students illustrating the many different minority groups in America. We can look at the educational system as a whole in both countries as being astoundingly uniform with primary, secondary, tertiary, and continuing education playing a similar role both in Britain and in America. We can also see an astonishing number of different types of schools and universities in both countries, at times representing different attitudes towards and motives behind getting an education. When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ kinds of schools, colleges, and universities in the UK and US, ▶ kinds of exams and degrees given at all levels, ▶ those in charge of education, ▶ differences between Britain, the US, and Germany, ▶ controversial topics in British and American education. We ’ ll be looking first at education in the UK and then in the US. Before we begin, why not start a chapter on education with an exercise as given in Fig. 4.1? While you might have heard the word reception in connection with hotels or formal parties, the word also refers to the beginning of primary education in an English educational context. And while you might know “ infant ” as a synonym for “ baby, ” infant schools are for children aged four to seven. Let ’ s keep the British school system as simple as possible and first divide schools into two types based on funding: state and independent. We ’ ll concentrate on England and UK: reception in England 114 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="122"?> just mention that schools, colleges, and universities can be quite different in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Children aged between three and four years old can receive parttime nursery or preschool education before they begin the reception year. These first two years taken together comprise the Foundation Stage during which learning is done through play. The six years of primary school that follow are divided into two Key Stages during which students are taught English, history, science, mathematics, and other subjects. Two important state-run tests (standard assessment tests: SATs) are taken during primary school. Usually at the age of 11 in Year 7 students begin secondary school and continue until age eighteen. The five years of secondary school are like primary school divided into Key Stages during which students take courses in many subject areas with important assessments and finally external exams, which we ’ ll be covering later. We ’ ve dealt so far with state schools, which have no tuition fees and are open to everyone. You may remember the name Rab Butler. 2 The Butler Education Act radically changed the system of state education towards the end of World War II, making education until the age of 16 free and available for all and setting up a tripartite system (similar to the German school system) with grammar schools, secondary modern schools, and technical schools. Students took an examination at the end of primary school to determine which Fig. 4.1 What questions could you ask based on this “ schools and colleges collage ” ? Can you already tell which are in the UK, which in the US? Which one would you be able to apply to as a prospective student? By the end of the chapter careful readers will know more about all the schools and colleges in this collage. state primary school England state secondary schools from tripartite to comprehensives 115 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="123"?> school type they could attend. Most students went to grammar and secondary modern schools as there were few technical schools established. Over the next half century elements of the Butler Act were changed. Dissatisfaction with the system led to comprehensive schools open to all primary school students and eventually became the school type for the vast majority of students. A national curriculum was the attempt to ensure that all state schools were meeting the same standards. The national curriculum includes core subjects like English, math, and science and foundation subjects like art, computing, geography, history, music, and physical education. A newer foundation subject named Citizenship provides us with one interesting example of what ’ s taught at school. Citizenship should give students a sense of topical political, spiritual, moral, social and cultural issues, and events. Students should learn to identify the role of the legal, political, religious, social and economic institutions and systems that influence their lives and communities. Sounds like the goals of this book! But it ’ s not always easy in a multicultural country to agree on what important spiritual and moral issues should be covered 7. The national curriculum itself has been criticized for exerting increased pressure on students throughout primary and secondary school. Pressure on teachers includes what some see as an overemphasis on “ teaching to the test ” and more work. The original purpose of the curriculum along with the changeover to comprehensive schools was to provide quality education for all, regardless of class differences. Quality education sounds good, but what about the content of history lessons, for example? One of the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement 2 7 13 is including Black lives in the content of history lessons in English schools, which could cover the situation of Blacks in Britain. Schools ignoring Black contributions to society can lead to injustice like the Windrush scandal 7. An additional subject required in all state schools is religious education, which covers all religions but reflects the predominant status of Christian religion. Parents have the right to withdraw their children from taking this subject and from the collective worship that is usually part of Assembly, the regular gathering of teachers and students at the start of each school day. Should faith schools run by religious organizations be financed by the state? The question is relevant in a multicultural and multi-religious Britain. The vast majority of schools in Britain are either secular or associated with national curriculum: purpose and controversy controversies: faith schools 116 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="124"?> the Church of England 8 like the Burdett-Coutts CE primary school in London (CE as you can guess stands for Church of England). But there is also a small but growing number of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu faith schools 8 with at times restrictive policies regarding student intake and teacher qualifications. As is usually the case in life, the people who pay are the ones in charge. And since the government funds state schools, the government decides what ’ s to be taught and who ’ s to be hired. More specifically, the government department responsible for schools was first called the Ministry of Education, which changed to the Department for Education and Science, then to the Department for Education and Employment, then to the Department for Education and Skills, which as the result of yet another cabinet reshuffle 5 was divided into two ministries: the Department for Children, Schools and Families; and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Finally a decade ago the name was simplified to the Department for Education. The Office for Standards in Education, Children ’ s Services and Skills (Ofsted) has had this name since the early 90s and inspects schools and has the goal of “ raising standards and improving lives. ” Local Education Authorities (LEA) are responsible for funding and hiring teachers for almost all the schools in their area. In an attempt to improve education, foundation schools, for example, were created as state-funded schools that are mostly independent of LEAs and can hire their own teachers, as can the state-funded faith schools. As you can see, there are varying degrees of government control in state schools. But let ’ s turn to a completely different type of school. Private schools in England are called either independent schools or - confusingly - public schools. The former are expensive and prestigious, the latter are very expensive and very prestigious. And although fewer than a tenth of all English students attend independent schools, if you were asked to name a few English schools, you ’ d probably be able to name a few of the most exclusive public schools like Eton, where the royal princes William and Harry as well as Boris Johnson went to school, or Harrow, which Winston Churchill attended, or Westminster, where Henry Purcell 11 and Marcel Theroux - the son of someone you might remember 1 - went to school. Although I ’ ve listed only famous male graduates (Eton and Harrow only admit boys), some public schools are co-educational and a few are only for girls. Tuition fees for public schools are very high, a state schools: Ofsted, LEA, foundation schools independent schools: private and public 117 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="125"?> bit ironic considering that many famous schools were originally founded in the Middle Ages often by kings and queens as charitable institutions to provide free instruction for poor boys, thus the name “ public ” in contrast to the private fee-paying schools of the time. Public schools are evidence of a continuing class system in British education, and not only because of the very high fees: their students have a much better chance of gaining a place at a prestigious university, and of getting a position of power in government and the world of business. Fig. 4.2 Can you immediately see differences between those on the left and the right? Readers who remember terms used for classes in the UK 3 would understand the name of a jigsaw puzzle version of the photo: “ Toffs and Toughs. ” Although the photo was taken in the 1930s, it ’ s been used again and again to exemplify English class distinctions, usually critically with the goal of reforming English education. Do the facial expressions of the boys from a nearby state-funden school indicate class conflict? A century later the chasm between public and state schools still exists and is evidence of the existence of a continuing class system 3 in British education. Parents who are dissatisfied with the quality of education at state comprehensive schools can choose independent schools that aren ’ t as prestigious or as expensive as the old famous public schools. Some independent schools are grammar schools left over from the original grammar schools, academies 118 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="126"?> tripartite system mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Grammar schools, which are intended for students planning to attend university, can select students based on achievement. Some independent schools, such as city technology colleges or academies, charge no fees and are funded by the government and by industry. Supporters of these schools argue that education can improve by allowing schools more independence from government control and from the LEAs. Pupils at both state and independent schools wear the obligatory school uniform, which supporters say serves the purpose of encouraging a sense of school spirit and community and also helps to eradicate class differences. Others claim that class differences shine through anyway and that conflicts between school loyalty and religious identity symbolized by veils and religious jewelry have become more common. Do uniforms reinforce differences in race and gender and stifle individuality and promote bullying? These questions will no doubt keep the old topic of traditional school uniforms in the news. Sixteen-year-olds who decide to remain in full-time education go into something called the sixth form. The others can do an apprenticeship or combine part-time education with employment or volunteering. You may wonder why the equivalent of the German Oberstufe is called the sixth form in Britain although it actually involves two years: 12 (lower sixth) and 13 (upper sixth). “ Form ” was used for each year of the five years of secondary school. The sixth year of secondary school was called the lower sixth and the seventh the upper sixth, and sixth form is still used for the last two optional years of education, which lead to Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced Level examinations. Some state schools and most independent schools have a sixth form. Students can also attend special sixth form colleges or further education colleges. We ’ ve already heard about the key stages in primary and secondary school. In the old days learning about common examinations in English schools was as simple as A and O. O stood for Ordinary Level examinations taken at the age of sixteen; those who continued through the sixth form took their A-Levels or Advanced Level examinations and were thus qualified to apply to university. But who wants to say they ’ re only “ ordinary ” ? With the sweeping reforms in education in Britain in the 80s the O-Level was changed to the General Certificate of Secondary Education. The A-Level has the controversies: school uniforms sixth form A to A2, O to GCSE 119 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="127"?> Advanced Subsidiary during the first year of sixth form and the A2 Level during the second year, both together forming the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level, which students need to apply to university. Before we look at universities in Britain, we need to clarify some very confusing terms. We ’ ve already read about city technology colleges, colleges of further education, and sixth form colleges. Some public schools are called colleges, like the very famous half-millennium-old Eton College or 150-year-old Dover College, which offers both day school and boarding school for students aged between 3 and 18. But there are also colleges of higher education that provide courses at the university level. And there are also institutions called university colleges that provide courses but aren ’ t recognized as full universities and can ’ t award degrees. Yet another use of the word college points to one of the differences between Oxbridge (explained below) and other universities. Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge are names for communities of students and teachers who work together. Do you think only of the US when you hear “ high school ” ? Sacred Heart High School is a Catholic state-funded all-girls secondary school in London. “ School ” usually refers to primary and secondary education like the Church of England state-funded Burdett-Coutts Primary School or the City of London School, a very old independent school, which Daniel Radcliffe attended. But then there ’ s the famous London School of Economics, which is part of the University of London. “ College ” and “ school ” in British English (and in American English as we ’ ll soon see) can thus refer to very different institutions. But at least “ university ” has only one meaning although there are quite a few different kinds of universities in Britain. If you read the few pages devoted to university education in most introductions to British studies, you ’ ll find the same names for different types of universities. First there was “ Oxbridge ” (a word that linguists call a blend), which is not a real university at all but just a short way to refer to the two most famous institutions Oxford and Cambridge. These two medieval universities - among the oldest in Europe - were the only ones in England until in the 19 th century when a growing population and industry 2 increased the need for an educated populace. The result was the founding of what came to be called redbrick universities, although they don ’ t always have buildings made of red bricks. These universities were founded in the large industrial cities like Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester and still specialize in engineering. colleges and colleges and … … high schools? ! Oxbridge to redbrick to plate glass to new universities 120 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="128"?> Much later, in the 1960s, plate glass universities, not always made of glass and chrome, were founded to meet increased need for more university educated employees in places like Essex, Sussex, and York, and specialize in the social sciences. Institutions originally called polytechnics (similar to German Fachhochschulen) gained university status in the early 90s and are now sometimes still called new universities. The enormous growth in universities in the last few decades has resulted in more than a hundred universities in England alone, with many larger towns and cities having two or more. In addition to Oxford and Cambridge another British institution of higher learning has an international reputation as one of the largest and most successful universities in the world. You might remember Educating Rita as a morsel. 2 You can of course use the movie not only to learn about class but also about the Open University (OU), an institution that gives working-class hairdresser Rita the possibility of higher education. The Open University, founded in the 70s, is open to all interested students in Britain with no previous qualifications required. Most courses are done via distance learning and the programs are open to students who have to work in addition to their studies. The OU provided expertise on their website for free after the pandemic turned distance learning into a global phenomenon. The OU maintains several centers in Germany for interested prospective students. The OU ’ s philosophy is in stark contrast to the elitism in the public school system: the cost of studying varies depending on the type and length of courses. Speaking of costs in general … As the debate about university tuition fees in Germany was just beginning, tuition fees were introduced in England and Wales and have increased since the turn of the millennium to £10,000 per year. Attempts to create extra revenue for universities and apply fees that take into account differences in student income have resulted in a new system that delays payment until after graduation. The Welsh government pays part of the tuition fees for Welsh students at Welsh universities, and the Scottish government pays all fees for Scottish students at Scottish universities. English students must pay even more than EU students to study at some of the ancient prestigious universities in Scotland that we can mention now in passing: St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. And what do you get for your money and if you pass the courses and examinations? While there used to be a limited number of names for qualifications, now there is a daunting variety of certificates and Open University tuition fees qualification and degrees 121 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="129"?> diplomas. If we limit our overview to major university degrees awarded in England and Wales (Scotland uses a different system), then we begin with the bachelor ’ s degree, abbreviated according to the subjects studied: a BA for example is a degree with a specialization in the arts or humanities, a BSc in the sciences. Students with very good grades can receive their degree with first-class honours, while the lower grades are called a 2: 1 (for upper second-class honours) or a 2: 2. A master ’ s degree is an advanced degree for further specialization. The highest degree granted in Britain is the doctorate, usually abbreviated as PhD for doctor of philosophy, even for those who study English or German or history. In the Middle Ages philosophy was the name for all subjects other than theology, medicine, and law. Some universities award an MD degree in medicine or an LLD in law. Now that we ’ ve reached the highest degrees in Britain, we should move on to the US and go back almost two centuries. Perhaps you remember Horace Mann as one of the reformers in 19 th century America. 2 The “ Father of American Public Education ” founded the first state board of education in Massachusetts in the 1830s and believed that the government should provide education free of charge to children of all religious, social, and ethnic backgrounds and that children should be taught by professionally trained teachers, education being central to becoming good citizens. Mann wasn ’ t German but believed that America should learn from Prussian views of education. Margarethe Schurz, wife of the German-born and influential American statesman and reformer Carl Schurz, started the first American kindergarten in the mid 19 th century. In spite of a variety of schools, education in the US is more homogeneous than in the UK although there ’ s no national curriculum and each individual state is responsible for most educational matters. Since all schools in the US are organized in a very similar pattern called the K-12 system, we won ’ t look at schools chronologically except to note that, as in Britain, you can find two main levels, primary and secondary, though with different names. Elementary school lasts for the first four or six years, begins with kindergarten (the K of the K-12 system), and continues with first grade. Secondary school is called high school (often divided into junior and senior high) and continues until the age of 18 and twelfth grade (the 12 of the K-12 system). The vast majority of schools in America are public schools offering similar subjects with students attending who live in the area. Public schools are financed by each state and to a much lesser degree also by US education: German roots US K-12 system controversies: teaching creationism, critical race theory 122 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="130"?> the federal government. There are also private schools, which mostly have a religious orientation and are funded at least partly through tuition fees. Parochial schools are run by the Catholic Church. We ’ ll be dealing later 8 with the separation of church and state, which is different in the US than in the UK. While prayers at school have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and thus are forbidden, the debate on teaching creationism in addition to evolution is still ongoing. Mostly Christian evangelical fundamentalists believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and want their children to learn about creationism as well as about evolution, seeing both as non-provable theories of the origin of the world and of life. In the 2020s Republican politicians claimed Democrats were in favor of teaching critical race theory at school although this complex branch of sociology 16 isn ’ t taught at school at all. To what degree is American society and history inherently racist and to what degree should parents determine what their children learn at public schools? These questions exemplify the partisan chasm in American society. Public education in the US as in Germany is in the hands of the individual states. The states set the general curriculum and standards. Elected or appointed school boards have varying degrees of control over public schools in their school districts. A famous Supreme Court decision involved one of these boards. 2 7 Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) also have a say in school policy. Education in the 2020s has become as politically polarized as much of American life, with Republicans in favor of more parental control and of schools teaching patriotism. Federal funding of schools is very limited. Most of the money necessary to run schools comes from the state and local governments with property tax playing a major role. Districts with high-value property thus have more income to be used for schools than poorer districts. This inbuilt inequality isn ’ t the only controversy: some people also find paying property tax for school funding unfair if they don ’ t have children in school or if they send their children to private schools. School vouchers were originally introduced in the 60s as a way for white families to avoid sending their children to integrated schools. Now some states provide vouchers that parents can use as payment for tution for the private school of their choice. Those who support vouchers point to parental choice and how free-market competition could improve public schools. Opponents claim that offering free education is a responsibility of the state and that using public money school boards and funding of inequality controversies: school vouchers 123 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="131"?> for private schools would result in the financial ruin of the public school system. Since many private schools are religiously run, providing money for vouchers in effect provides government money for religious schools. The issue of vouchers points to the tension between state responsibility and individual choice. One extreme of individual choice is homeschooling, where parents or tutors hired by the parents educate children at home, often for religious reasons 8. While homeschooling is legal in all states, rules and standards vary considerably across the country. Critics claim that students educated at home lack contact with peers and the social opportunities that only schools can provide. Research has not proven consistently lower scoring in standardized tests of students taught at home, and homeschooling is a trend that has been increasing in the Fig. 4.3 Current debates about what schools should teach are nothing new. This century-old caricature by Pulitzer Prize-winning 10 cartoonist Rollin Kirby shows a teacher bound and gagged, forced to teach that the world is flat. The fictitious Bryan University parodied is named after William Jennings Bryan 3, a famous lawyer and unsuccessful presidential candidate, who prosecuted the biology teacher John Thomas Scopes for teaching evolution in defiance of Tennessee ’ s Butler Act, which prohibited public schools from contradicting the Biblical account of human origin. A backlash against the prohibition of teaching widely acceptable scientific theories resulted in evolution being taught widely across the US. Attempts continue a century later to force schools to treat creationism as an equally valuable theory as evolution. School boards across the country also continue to ban books that describe the horror of slavery or critically examine inherent racism in US society. controversies: homeschooling and unequal remote learning 124 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="132"?> past couple of decades. The pandemic led to an increase in both traditional homeschooling as well as mandated distance learning due to school closures. More Black parents especially chose homeschooling as an option, perhaps because poorly funded schools weren ’ t able to provide the technical infrastructure for students to learn from home. The inequality of funding based on property tax, as you ’ ve just read, became even more entrenched since remote learning required multimedia devices and internet connections, which homes with lower income simply couldn ’ t provide. Will homeschooling become more common or will those parents who have experienced the challenges of teaching their own children never want to again? Will the pandemic result in digital progress for all public schools or an increasing funding gap between schools? The effects of Covid-19 on education will no doubt be the subject of research for years to come. There is already some parental choice within the state school system. Magnet schools are public schools that should function as magnets, drawing not necessarily those children who live near the school but those children who share the same talents. Charter schools aren ’ t bound by all the same regulations that apply to traditional public schools. They have more control over their curriculum and how they spend funding but must prove an increase in quality in return. Reminds you of a similar school type in England? The answer “ foundation school ” would get you a good grade. And speaking of grades … Courses at American schools are assessed through many factors including tests and assignments. Students receive a grade for each course and for each term. Report cards are issued after each school term, the length of which varies from school district to district, and some parents can also access their children ’ s grades online. These high school transcripts are important for applications to college. Letter grades from A-F with A as the best are transferred into numbers in the grade point average (GPA), a number that indicates overall achievement, with 4.0 being a perfect grade in all subjects. All states require students to pass courses in English, science, history, and mathematics. But there is no national curriculum that prescribes these requirements as in England and Wales. And the variety of courses students can choose from (called electives in contrast to the required courses) is huge, with everything from photography to music to driver ’ s education. Some of these courses have content similar to the important extracurricular activities offered after class in school types: magnet and charter assessments, electives, school days, diplomas 125 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="133"?> the afternoons. School days last from the morning until midafternoon and have three-month summer breaks usually from June until early September. Whether Americans go to state-run public schools, to church-run private schools, to Catholic parochial schools, or are taught at home, the goal is always the same: graduation with either a high school diploma or an equivalent after 12 years of school. While high school diplomas used to be granted to all students after having passed a certain number of courses, some states have instituted a centrally administered high school exit examination. People who have dropped out of high school can also earn a high school diploma by passing the General Educational Development (GED) tests. A majority of students who graduate from high school decide to continue their education at college or university. Before we turn to American higher education in detail, we need to glance at two horrible characteristics of American education. In 1999 Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado, became associated with one of the worst school shootings in American history with more than a dozen people dead. In spite of the horror documented in director Michael Moore ’ s award-winning film Bowling for Columbine 3 the list of deadly school schootings grew longer at a sickeningly regular pace thoughout the first two decades of the 21 st century with massacres known just by the place name of the atrocity, like Columbine or Newton (deadliest shooting at an elementary school) 3 or Parkland (high school mass shooting twenty years after Columbine). And more than two hundred other school shootings since the turn of the millennium didn ’ t always make headline news. The Virginia Tech massacre less than a decade after Columbine was the deadliest shooting on an American college campus. All these acts of violence since the 1960s have led to an increased debate about gun control 3 and about the use of metal detectors and security guards, who are still unable to prevent the massacres. Sometimes it seems that Americans have become numb to violence, even violence against children and young adults in places that should provide safety. Since a high school diploma doesn ’ t give students automatic qualification, those who wish to attend college must apply. As part of the application process colleges and universities used to compare applicants ’ intellectual abilities through scores in standardized tests like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as well as additional information provided by essays or by interviews or recommendations. Standardized tests had always been criticized for favoring those who never-ending violence applying to college 126 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="134"?> can afford additional tutoring. Covid-19 has perhaps dealt the deathblow to all standardized exams, and many universities dropped the requirement once it became impossible to hold in-person exams. You ’ ve probably all heard about expensive American university education. Americans regard education as a consumer good, and the consumers - the students and their parents - regard it as a service. Often parents open a savings account for their children upon birth so that they can cover the ever increasing costs years later. State residents of state universities pay less than students coming from other states, and the majority of students attend institutions that charge less than $20,000 per year. Even though Harvard charges more than $50,000 per year, it also provides a majority of all students with financial aid. Ideally, education isn ’ t supposed to be limited just to the wealthy or to those who ’ ve been able to save enough. Some parents take a strong interest in their children ’ s educational career and needs, hovering over them like helicopters, always ready to help or to intervene if necessary. But applicants have to be accepted. In the early 2020s a federal investigation entitled Operation Varsity Blues made headline news. Wealthy parents including television celebrities used the services of a former coach and college counseler to have their less qualified sons and daughters admitted to elite colleges and universities like the University of Southern California, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown. The investigation revealed cheating on admission tests and bribing coaches to accept applicants as sports students. Varsity originally was a shortened form of university and now refers to the best sports teams. The federal investigators named the operation after a 90s sports movie; a Netflix 10 documentary used the name for a portrayal of the scandal. Some parents and coaches paid fines or went to prison. Operation Varsity Blues didn ’ t just satisfy the schadenfreude of people neither wealthy nor famous but also raised questions about the fairness of an admission system that should guarantee high-quality higher education to Americans regardless of income. Operation Varsity Blues shows how important extracurricular activities are as a part of college life. Intramural sports - sports done “ within the walls ” or just within the college - are popular but not as lucrative as intercollegiate team sports such as football or basketball played in competition with other college and university teams. The general belief is that education is supposed to turn children into good citizens. Extracurricular activities like being in a band, working tuition fees … … and application scandals college sports 127 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="135"?> together on the school newspaper, website, or radio station, and especially playing team sports like football or basketball 11 are important to increase a sense of community and school spirit. Sports not only lure alumni (graduates) back to their alma mater (school they graduated from), but also generate lots of money from broadcasting rights. The debate about whether these revenue-generating sports are good for universities or can lead to corruption and to the exploitation of college athletes, who sometimes due to poor academic records can ’ t graduate, will no doubt continue making headline news. You might have noticed two Latin-looking words above, both commonly used at American colleges: alumnus and alma mater. Student organizations with Greek letters for names are fraternities, for mostly undergraduate men, and sororities, mostly for women. These organizations have been part of American college life since colonial times, when Greek and Latin were common subjects at college. Also called Greek-letter organizations, fraternities and sororities serve social and academic functions. You ’ ve probably seen some of their wild parties and silly or dangerous initiation rites in popular American movies. Fraternities have been criticized in the past for hazing - the humiliation and bullying of new members - and for encouraging binge drinking. While some colleges have banned all fraternities, they can serve a useful function in providing both inexpensive accommodations in residence halls as well as a network of support for young people living away from home and from their parents for the first time. In addition to social fraternities, there are also other kinds of societies open to both men and women and limited to students who do very well, academically such as the famous honor society Phi Beta Kappa. Other fraternities are limited to those studying and working in a certain field such as law, like Phi Delta Phi. As in Britain, the word college has many different meanings in America. Community colleges, also called junior colleges, are small public colleges serving the local population with courses in a wide variety of areas (somewhat similar to German Volkshochschulen or to British colleges of further or higher education). Liberal arts colleges are four-year public or private institutions. Sometimes colleges become universities like Loyola College in Maryland, now Loyola University Maryland. As you might guess, “ Maryland ” is used to distinguish this Loyola from the larger and better known Loyola College in Chicago. Both are private Jesuit universities as you can also guess from the name Loyola. Parts of large universities are often called fraternities and sororities and more controversies colleges and schools and colleges 128 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="136"?> colleges or schools. Loyola University Maryland, for example, is made up of the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Education, and the School of Business and Management, for example. As you can see, school is yet another word with multiple meanings. The term graduate school refers to an institution that provides courses and support for students who have already earned their undergraduate degree. This term has been translated literally into Graduiertenschule and is now used as part of the reformed German university system. This use of the word Schule for postgraduate study at a university might sound strange in German, but Americans often informally use the word school when they mean college or university. Technical and community or junior colleges provide vocational and general education courses. State universities are an example of the influence of the federal government with the Morril Act from the mid 19 th century, which granted federal land to the states to found and fund colleges and universities for more people. The motives were similar to those for the founding of the redbrick universities in Britain. The American equivalent of Oxbridge is the Ivy League with eight very prestigious and wealthy and expensive universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all located in the northeastern part of the US. Two big differences between the Ivy League and Oxbridge: the American universities have much more money and generally fewer students than the old English universities. We ’ ve already learned the names for university degrees in the United Kingdom. The names are the same in the United States even if the time required to earn a degree differs somewhat. A uniquely American degree is the Associate of Arts (A. A.) or Associate of Science (A. S.), which students can earn after two years of study at a community college by passing general courses in the humanities and in the sciences. Just like in Britain, American students can receive a bachelor ’ s or master ’ s degree with the highest degree being the doctorate. Yet another German influence in education in addition to kindergarten and the Prussian influences on the American school system: the American bachelor ’ s degree, based on Wilhelm von Humboldt ’ s belief in the importance of a general all-round education. While a British bachelor ’ s degree is more specialized, an American bachelor ’ s degree isn ’ t meant to qualify graduates for any kind of job: training comes later on the job, or for those who decide to pursue an academic career, in the graduate master ’ s and doctoral degree programs. Neither Americans nor British people put as much from community colleges to Ivy League universities degrees 129 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="137"?> emphasis on titles as people in Germany do. The teaching profession isn ’ t as highly esteemed either. An old saying goes: “ If you can ’ t do, teach. ” You could continue the saying with: “ And if you can ’ t teach, become a professor ” to indicate the social status of academics in some parts of the Anglo-American world and help explain the status of experts in a polarized American environment. 3 American and British universities have been using evaluations of teaching at the university level for promotion and granting tenure for many years. Tenure is job security with the right to academic freedom and is supposed to ensure that professors aren ’ t afraid of doing research that could offend those in power. Tenure track positions at American colleges are those that lead to guaranteed life-long employment and involve up to seven years of teaching, researching, and appraisal. Since tenure can often be based on the number of articles and books published, the slogan “ publish or perish ” illustrates the pressure on academics in tenure track positions. When you are given difficult articles to read as part of your studies, have a little bit of pity on the authors. What else would you expect from a system that rewards quantity over quality? And although with electronic publishing much electricity is needed to keep servers around the world online and cooled off, at least there ’ s not the same waste of trees for paper journals as in the past. Two very Latin-sounding words mentioned earlier play a very big role in American universities from admission until long after graduation. The graduates from universities are called alumni - the Latin root is related to nourishment and support - and the universities they graduate from are often called alma mater, meaning literally the mother who nourishes or supports. Universities provide students with support and then expect the alumni to support their alma mater. The common spirit and sense of community that should develop during “ time at school ” - as Americans often refer to their studies at college and university - should last beyond graduation. Alumni can thus connect their professional and personal lives after graduation with the time as students. Universities arrange homecomings with special football games or other sporting events designed especially to welcome back graduates, who not only are a source of financial support but who can also provide helpful networking for current students. These personal ties are especially important in such a highly mobile society where graduates move to other parts of the country or the world but still have the need to keep connected to their past. on the tenure track to publish or perish alumni and their alma mater 130 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="138"?> British and German universities are learning that the investment in developing structures that encourages a closer relationship between alma mater and alumni can pay off later. It may seem a bit odd to German students who are accustomed to free university education that at first Americans pay high tuition fees and then after graduation are expected to support their alma mater further with financial donations. But Americans also demand service and support from their universities as service institutions. This very different attitudes towards education often leads to lifelong ties between students, parents, and their colleges and universities, ties which can be beneficial for all. When I first came to Germany as an exchange student, I was at first surprised at the poor quality of service: restricted library hours, unfriendly administration personnel, boring lectures and seminars. But then I thought “ you get what you pay for ” and remembered Mark Twain ’ s advice about not letting such aspects interfere with real education outside the classroom. Fig. 4.4 We began this chapter with a collage, which you can hopefully now describe accurately. We ’ re ending it with a personal collage made up of excerpts from an old yearbook that some high schools and colleges used to publish on paper to encourage alumni ’ s life-long attachment and financial contributions, a high school ring, a transcript of grades with GPA and the grade F (evidence of a student who didn ’ t do well), and two diplomas printed on expensive paper, which Americans hang in frames on their walls to show off their degrees. For those who know Latin, you ’ ll also see a connection to our first collage: St. John ’ s College is an American institution that grants the Bachelor ’ s degree. very different attitudes towards education 131 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="139"?> I ’ d often also wondered in my first year as an exchange student in Germany about why there was so much pressure on students to finish their degrees on time until I realized that the German university educational system was supported by taxes and had clear career aims. The liberal arts and humanities goals of American education reflect the belief that a society should grant young people the luxury needed to grow before becoming full adults and thus fulfill the Enlightenment belief that a college degree doesn ’ t have to train people to do things but should enable them to become good citizens. And college education has become a defining aspect of political afiliation. In the 2018 and 2020 elections college-educated Americans helped save American democracy. Both American and British universities and colleges have had to face economic challenges in recent decades. The effects of the pandemic could lead to numerous American colleges and universities going bankrupt, as online instruction has led people to question the value of a college education where life on campus, considered an important part of the experience, isn ’ t possible. A bachelor ’ s degree is no longer seen as a ticket to a guaranteed future career as was as in the past. The Democratic party supports expanding free high school education to free community college education, based at least partly on the fact that Americans with a college education have recently tended to vote for Democrats in numbers never seen before. American higher education is in flux like never before with consequences for American politics 3 5 and society at large. Speaking of politics, we now need to leave schools and colleges and turn our attention to another classic item on the menu of American and British Studies: the powers-that-be in the political institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Many people who have never been to the US still feel as they know what American schools are like through movies. You can easily find lists online of the best movies about high school. The Blackboard Jungle shocked American audiences with a violent description of inner-city movies in the 50s. To Sir with Love showed life in a 60s economically deprived school in London; a made-for-televison sequel thirty years later was set in Chicago. All three movies starred Sydney college education to save American democracy major changes to American education ahead? 132 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="140"?> Poitier as student, teacher, and retired teacher. Dead Poets Society portrayed life in a private all-boys American school in the late 50s. I learned about British public schools in the television series Tom Brown ’ s Schooldays. Thanks to the one of the most successful cinematic francises in history, now hundreds of millions of people have experienced characteristics of British boarding schools: symbols of inequality with exclusive admission, set in historic buildings and organized in houses and prefects, with dress codes for students and an emphasis on comraderie in the dining hall and through playing sports. Daniel Radcliffe couldn ’ t use his personal experience since he attended a day school, the name of which you might remember. The five hundred boarding schools across the United Kingdom don ’ t teach wizardry although some now offer Harry Potter experiences to attract fee-paying parents. If you don ’ t believe that the photograph of the English schoolboys from the late 1930s is well known and eminently relevant today, do an intensive web search to come up with the names of articles and books that make use of the photo right up to the 2020s. Look for a digital copy of the fascinating and moving essay “ Five Boys: The Story of a Picture ” by the respected British journalist Ian Jack first published in Intelligent Life Magazine in 2010. Exercises 1. How do uniformity and plurality in the chapter title fit the content? 2. Pick a special kind of American college and name a famous graduate based on information you ’ ve found elsewhere in this book (hint: look in chapter on gender in Part II). 3. Look for a picture with the name of an English university somewhat hidden (hint: look in the geography chapter about UK climate) and then try and categorize the university. 4. What was the Butler Education Act? And the Butler Act? 5. This chapter in earlier editions of this book contained a diagram of the US educational system. Students praised the illustration but then couldn ’ t remember anything they actually learned from it. Look online for graphical illustrations of both US and UK educational systems, evaluate them, and then try to say in one sentence what you ’ ve exactly learned from them. 133 Chapter 4 Uniform-ity and Plural-ity (education) <?page no="141"?> 6. You have some concrete examples of schools and colleges in the first collage. Find other concrete examples of UK and US school types that you would ’ ve liked to have attended. 7. Describe the second collage based on what you learned in the chapter and use all the following words: GPA, state university, grading system, alumnus, high school, senior. 8. Should faith schools in the UK run by religious organizations be financed by the state? Use the evidence given in this chapter to begin to answer the question posed but not explicitly answered. Challenging and interesting projects: 1. Go to a school or college in Britain or America and compare the average day with the info given in this chapter. Write down all the things you notice that you didn ’ t find in the chapter. 2. Imagine what subject you ’ d like to study, choose the degree you ’ d like to earn, and pick a place in the US or UK. Look online to find out exactly which courses you ’ d need to take and how much the degree would cost. List the benefits you ’ d have as a student there that you don ’ t have in Germany. And finally the if-you-can-do-this-you-deserve-an-automatic- PhD tasks: 1. Devise a school system for England that satisfies those who wish their religious beliefs to be part of the curriculum, a system that is also acceptable for those who think a secular education is best, and a system that encourages achievement but doesn ’ t lead to further class distinctions. 2. Show the similarities and contrasts between a compulsory, state-run authoritarian educational system like that in Prussia and the public school system that developed in the US. How do both systems show causes and effects of totalitarianism and democracy? And further topics not dealt with in this chapter for those with time and passion either as undergraduates, graduates, postgraduates or retirees: … schools and universities in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland; bilingual education; the No Child Left Behind Act as a classic example of the US federal government intervention in education; accreditation of schools and universities in the US and the UK; the importance of life-long learning; a future where huge corporations like Google offer training and degrees … 134 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="142"?> Queendom and Republicracy (political life) I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations. Queen Elizabeth II ’ s first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Opening words of the Declaration of Independence Sometimes we don ’ t ask really obvious questions that can lead us to new insights: Why, for example, is the Queen often called the Queen of England even though she ’ s just as much the Queen of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and head of state for a dozen other countries around the world? And why should Americans have to choose between two political parties that at least as far as their names are concerned - the Republicans and the Democrats - both represent political views that not only most Americans but probably most Western Europeans (even those with a king or queen as head of state) would want to support? When you finish the chapter, you should be able not only to answer these “ obvious ” questions but also to say something about ▶ the British monarch and parliament, ▶ the British Constitution, ▶ devolution and the future of the United Kingdom, ▶ British and American political parties, ▶ the American system of checks and balances, ▶ the American presidential election process, ▶ polarization and the future of the United States. We could begin our look at British political life with one of the most important documents in British history, the Magna Carta. 2 Although the Magna Carta is often described as one of the milestones on the way to the sharing of power between the monarchs and their subjects, it actually doesn ’ t include many of the rights that were later monarch: from real power to ceremony 135 Chapter 5 <?page no="143"?> set out in the American Bill of Rights. We shouldn ’ t confuse that famous Bill with the British Bill of Rights, which a king called William 2 was more or less forced to sign almost five hundred years after the Magna Carta and that further reduced the actual power of the monarch. But without going into more historical detail, let ’ s begin with the political situation today in Britain and with someone we all know: the Queen. While the monarch ’ s powers are largely ceremonial, the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, holds two very interesting records on the throne: she ’ s both the oldest living and the longestreigning monarch in British history, having overtaken Victoria in 2015. She was able to celebrate her Silver, Ruby, Golden, Diamond Jubilees, and then became the first monarch ever to celebrate a Sapphire and a Platinum Jubilee, the latter to commemorate 70 years on the throne. “ The Queen reigns but does not rule ” is a good summary of both the power of the Queen as a symbolic figure and the personification of a tradition that has now lasted for more than a thousand years. She has the right to be consulted and regularly meets with the prime minister, whom she officially appoints after each parliamentary election, although he or rarely she is actually chosen by the biggest party in the House of Commons. This power of appointing the prime minister is one of the powers summarized in the term royal prerogative, which also includes other powers such as dissolving Parliament and calling new elections and also giving royal assent to Acts of Parliament. Theoretically the Queen could insist on choosing the prime minister, but even in the rare cases of a hung parliament (no party with a majority), the Queen still didn ’ t choose the leader. The Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government chose David Cameron as prime minister from 2010 - 2015, for example, and the Queen agreed. She could refuse to give her royal assent to bills passed by Parliament, but such a refusal would no doubt bring about a constitutional crisis and hasn ’ t happened in the last two hundred years. Almost all of the rights associated with the royal prerogative have passed from the monarch to the government or specifically to the prime minister. The royal prerogative also includes the right to sign treaties like the one that Edward Heath signed that made the UK a member of the European Community. The royal prerogative also includes the right to declare war as Margaret Thatcher did on Argentina over the Falkland Islands. 6 Tony Blair asked for parliamentary approval before the invasion of Iraq and thus set a from ceremony to royal prerogative 136 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="144"?> precedent. In the past few years both the Conservative and the Labour parties have indicated a desire to move some of the power and the responsibility implied in the royal prerogative from the prime minister to Parliament. The Supreme Court ruled that the prime minister ’ s permission wasn ’ t enough to withdraw from the EU after the referendum in 2016 and that an Act of Parliament was necessary. Fig. 5.1-1 The Queen on her way to work from Buckingham Palace to greet the President of Mexico as part of the 2009 London Summit. The reason for her wearing very colorful hats and dresses? So that she stands out in a crowd - for security. But the Queen also has many other real duties not delegated to the prime minister. The monarch is also head of the Church of England 8 and head of the armed forces. As head of state she performs many ceremonial functions such as opening parliament and entertaining foreign heads of state (and in the more than 70 years of her reign she ’ s Fig. 5.1-2 And her hot pink outfit here was great for the lucky snapshot we took here. While the monarchy has declined in popularity, the Queen herself remains a very popular figure, who always attracts crowds. If she lives and reigns for a couple of years after her platinum jubilee, she ’ ll become the longest reigning monarch in recorded world history. Head of Church, of State, symbol of unity 137 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="145"?> gotten to know very many of them). As head of nation she travels throughout Britain for hundreds of events like opening hospitals or museums, unveiling plaques, attending film premieres, giving speeches, or meeting with people. The entire royal family helps the Queen fulfill these many ceremonial functions. In spite of all the family problems she ’ s had in the last few decades, including divorces and scandals and the death of Princess Diana, the British tend to see in her a symbol of unity for the entire country. The Queen has seen herself in this role from the start, as the quote from her first televised Christmas greeting given at the beginning of this chapter movingly shows. In a more cynical way, we could of course mention the value of royal scandals in selling copies of tabloid newspapers 10 or the attractiveness of the palaces and royal traditions to many tourists, perhaps especially to tourists from countries like Germany and the US, which don ’ t have the same grandeur associated with a real Queen. Somewhat similar to the royal family assisting the Queen in her duties, the prime minister also has help from ministers in the cabinet although - just as the word prime implies - the prime minister is the most powerful figure in government. You might remember the German roots leading to the first prime minister back in the 18 th century. 2 The word cabinet orginally referred to a little room or chamber that the monarch met with his (or sometimes her) most important group of advisors. Now the British cabinet meets in a larger room at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the prime minister. The cabinet has more than twenty members, who are almost always chosen from the House of Commons, and meets regularly. Most cabinet members have the title secretary of state and are responsible for various departments like defense, education, and environment. The most important cabinet posts are the chancellor, the foreign secretary, and the home secretary. Sometimes those who want to become prime minister work their way through the cabinet. Theresa May, for example, was home secretary (similar to Innenminister in Germany) for years before finally becoming prime minister after David Cameron ’ s resignation following the Brexit referendum. Boris Johnson was foreign secretary for a couple of years before becoming prime minister after Theresa May resigned. The role of the cabinet in actually determining government policy depends on the style of the prime minister. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair were often described as presidential in making decisions without consulting the cabinet. The prime minister chooses the members of the cabinet prime ministers and cabinets 138 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="146"?> and has the power to reshuffle the cabinet if he (twice she) thinks that such a change would help to make a government more popular or to reward important politicians. In addition to the monarch and the prime minister with his or her cabinet, there are also some other players in the British political system. The phrase “ the Crown in Parliament ” emphasizes the importance of parliament, made up of the House of Common and the House of Lords. The power of the House of Lords has been continually reduced over the centuries; it now exercises a legislative function in discussing and revising bills and can also delay bills already passed by the House Fig. 5.2-1 The monarch ’ s entrance to Parliament may be a bit disappointing. Fig. 5.2-2 The sign doesn ’ t look very regal. Another indication that the Parliament has the final word in the UK is the wonderfully old-fashioned traditions during the State Opening of Parliament. The Queen rides in her Diamond Jubilee State Coach from her London home, Buckingham Palace, to the Palace of Westminister. She gains easy entrance and just has to put on special royal clothing before moving on to the House of Lords to give her speech. Since all parts of the government are supposed to hear Her Majesty ’ s Gracious Speech, members of the House of Commons must also be summoned. Since no monarch has entered the House of Commons since Charles I 2 before the Civil War, an officer from the House of Lords has the job. The door to the House of Commons is first slammed in the officer ’ s face to demonstrate the separation of powers. Houses of Parliament: Lords and … 139 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="147"?> of Commons. Hundreds of hereditary peers - those members of the House of Lords who inherit their titles and seats - were thrown out in 1999. Plans to further reform the House of Lords have been repeatedly discussed and repeatedly postponed. Currently, besides the remaining hereditary peers, there are life peers, people of varied occupations who are appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the prime minister. Life peers have become hugely controversial because they are often party donors ( “ cash for honours ” ). Less controversial are the lords spiritual, archbishops and bishops of the Church of England. The Law Lords are important judges who used to be members of the House of Lords but now are part of a Supreme Court separate from Parliament. The House of Lords has red benches and is more lavishly decorated than the plainer House of Commons with its green benches. The House of Commons has 650 members representing one constituency each 1 and thus has currently fewer members than Fig. 5.3 The entrance for non-royals at the bottom of the photo is even less majestic. In the upper left hand corner you can see the top of the Elizabeth Tower, officially renamed to mark the Queen ’ s Diamond Jubilee, although both the tower and the clock are still popularly known by the name of the largest bell in the tower, Big Ben. The entire building is known as the Palace of Westminster. Palace sounds regal and the building used to be the home of kings and queens, but the current building is less than two hundred years old, rebuilt after a fire destroyed most of the area. … Commons 140 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="148"?> the House of Lords. Members are called MPs for Member of Parliament; don ’ t get them mixed up with the PM - the Prime Minister, who also happens to be an MP. The House of Commons has much more power than the Lords since in effect the Commons comprises not only the elected representatives of the government including the prime minister but also the opposition. The election procedure in Britain is actually quite simple. Candidates from the various political parties campaign within each constituency and citizens (technically speaking “ subjects of the monarch ” since the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy) are given the chance to choose one candidate on election day, generally a Thursday. Each constituency can only elect one MP in a system called firstpast-the-post in which the candidate with the most votes wins. In races with more than two candidates, the winner could gain less than 50 % of the total votes but would still be sent to Westminster - I don ’ t mean the London borough here 1 but the famous palace on the Thames in London housing both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. You can understand the term “ race ” here literally since the first-past-the-post term comes from horse racing. But while the winning post is usually fixed in horse racing, its position in parliamentary elections varies, depending on just how many candidates run ( “ stand ” in British English). With only two candidates the post would be at 51 % of the total votes. With three candidates, the post could be at just 34 % of the total votes in a very tight race. In any case the winner takes all and is the only one sent to parliament. While the disadvantage is that the votes of many people aren ’ t represented in parliament, one advantage is a stable government with usually one clear winner and one opposition party that forms something called the shadow government. Maybe you noticed the strange term hung parliament mentioned above - the case when no one party has a majority in the House of Commons. Hung parliaments are much more common in proportional parliamentary systems like in Germany and result in a coalition government made up of several parties. In Britain with its two-party system hung parliaments are rare and usually result in new elections being called. One exception for the first time in more than half a century was the coalition of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which was followed by a surprisingly clear absolute majority for the Conservatives, something which David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party and prime minister, had not first-past-the-post hung parliament 141 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="149"?> expected. He ’ d promised that if elected he would hold a referendum on a possible withdrawal of the UK from the EU, but was assuming that the coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would be reelected. Since the Liberal Democrats were very much in favor of the EU, he could then claim that they were preventing him from keeping his promise. Another hung parliament could have prevented the referendum from even taking place. In spite of the fact that Britain has almost always been governed by a single party (not a coalition) over the last hundred years, there are actually three major parties. The Conservatives - also known informally as the Tories - are one of the oldest parties in the world. The Labour party was founded about a hundred years ago to represent the interests of workers. 2 The Liberal Democrats are the thirdbiggest and also the youngest party, founded in the late 80s. Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose Labour party won after two decades of government by the Conservatives, helped to create what was called New Labour, whose symbol was the red rose. The philosophy of government was often described as a third way, a combination of belief in the free-market system, a typically Conservative doctrine, with some limited government intervention. The Conservatives themselves traditionally support capitalism and free enterprise. The Liberal Democrats, unsurprisingly, have been in favor of reforms to the first-past-the-post system since a proportional election system would allow them significantly more representation in Parliament. The LibDems (as they ’ re often called) are also opposed to government intervention in personal affairs and were strongly in favor of the UK remaining in the EU. They ’ re also in favor of a written constitution and a bill of individual rights. “ Doesn ’ t Britain already have a constitution and a bill of rights? ” you might ask. Often you can read that the United Kingdom has an “ unwritten Constitution ” - a very strange thing when you think about it. If the Constitution is unwritten, how does anyone know what ’ s in it? And usually sources that claim that the British Constitution is unwritten will then go on to list parts of the Constitution that are very much written: ancient documents like the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights. 2 The British Bill of Rights didn ’ t contain some of the individual rights mentioned in the American Bill of Rights or what we would expect today from a Bill of Rights. Britain ’ s original Bill of Rights, passed during the Glorious Revolution in the 17 th century, was instead just one of the steps towards present-day British government: a parties “ unwritten ” means “ uncodified ” 142 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="150"?> constitutional monarchy in which the real power lies with parliament. The Bill of Rights prevented the monarch from making laws or raising an army and also stated that no monarch was allowed to be Roman Catholic and all monarchs had to swear an oath to maintain the Church of England before being crowned. 8 The “ unwritten Constitution ” also contains written reports of parliamentary proceedings and also includes all UK laws. So, as we can see, “ unwritten ” isn ’ t a very appropriate word choice. Since Britain left the EU, EU law no longer applies. A more accurate description would be “ not written down in just one document that anyone can consult easily ” or simply “ uncodified ” and thus very different from the codified German Basic Law or the much shorter codified American Constitution. Although some groups - like Unlock Democracy, an organization that developed out of the Charter 88 (founded, as you might expect, in 1988) - have strongly advocated the creation of a written constitution, the UK ’ s uncodified one still retains the organic form it has developed over many centuries. Some see this organic form as evidence of flexibility. The question remains whether the flexibility of an easily changeable constitution can offset the dangers of abuse of power by parliament, which can in effect change the Constitution with each and every Act of Parliament. But regardless of how the Constitution develops, the government of Britain can best be described as a constitutional monarchy: constitutional because of the very important role of the Constitution even if it ’ s uncodified, and monarchy because of the very important role of the monarch. Another name for the British type of government is parliamentary democracy: parliamentary because of the very important role of the parliament, and democracy because at least the members of the House of Commons are elected and thus the people ( “ democracy ” comes from the Greek word demos meaning “ people ” ) can at least theoretically exercise their power. And it ’ s the power of the people in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland that has had a huge effect on politics in Britain since the 90s. While there hasn ’ t been a revolution in British politics in the last couple of centuries, the process of devolution is changing the face of government in Britain in radical ways. Devolution is the procedure of transferring power from a central government to regional governments and is in effect the reversal of what had been going on in British history in the past thousand years or so: that of gradually expanding power from smaller to larger areas. Think of the various Acts of Union constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy devolution 143 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="151"?> which resulted first in Great Britain and then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 2 and then began to shrink, first with the establishment of the Irish Free State and then the Republic of Ireland. 2 The desire of some of the people in Scotland for more power increased in the 90s, partly due no doubt to the increased revenues of North Sea Oil 6, and resulted finally in a referendum with a large majority of Scots voting for the establishment of a Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. The MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) in the Pàrlamaid na h-Alba, as it ’ s called in Scots Gaelic, 1 have power to raise taxes and make laws affecting Scotland in areas such as health, Fig. 5.4 Collage of photos of the Scottish parliament area in Edinburgh, first opened in 2004, a few years after the Scottish people voted to have their own parliament for the first time since the Act of Union in the 18 th century 2. The building, at first controversial, is radically different than the historical buildings in the historic Holyrood area and won the renowned British Stirling prize for architecture 11. In the top left corner of the collage, you can see the nearby hill called Arthur ’ s Seat rising above a landscaped area with pools as an ornamental feature and a security measure. Below that picture: various parts of the facade made of metal and wood. You might remember 2 “ Alba ” (on the sign at the bottom), which happens to also be the name of the newest Scottish political party. The people you see aren ’ t Scottish members of parliament (MSPs) but foreign visitors, and the architect of the building himself wasn ’ t Scottish but Spanish. His goal was to show Scottish identity through the entire complex, identity being a very complex issue, as we ’ ll see in Part II 12 of our book. Scottish Pàrlamaid 144 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="152"?> education, transport, and the environment. “ Should Scotland be an independent country? ” was the question asked during the referendum in 2014, and 55 % said No. The answer to a future referendum, which the Scottish National Party (SNP) and its leader Nicola Sturgeon are planning, could be different. The Welsh also voted for a National Assembly for Wales. The AMs (Assembly Members) don ’ t have the same powers as the MSPs to raise taxes, but Welsh cultural identity is perhaps more important than political power (the percentage of Welsh in favor of devolved power was considerably lower than the percentage of Scots who voted for a Scottish parliament). The Welsh political party Plaid Cymru has been fighting to extend the powers of the Senedd, which is located in the Welsh capital, Cardiff. Fig. 5.5 In contrast to the Scottish parliament area, you can easily see the Welsh Senedd in one photo. The famous British-Italian architect Richard Rogers designed the building with glass walls symbolizing transparency, and the building is usually open for visitors, offering exhibitions and concerts and a cafe. As you can imagine, the building is made of Welsh materials like slate, steel, and Welsh oak. You can take a virtual tour on the Senedd ’ s website to learn more about the architecture. Queen Elizabeth was there in 2006 for the grand opening (with Rogers) on St. David ’ s Day, named after the patron saint of - you guessed it - Wales 12. Welsh Senedd 145 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="153"?> Northern Ireland had its own parliament from the time of the formation of the Irish Free State in the 1920s up until the early 70s when the Troubles started between the pro-British Protestant Loyalists and the mostly Catholic Republicans in favor of a united Ireland. 8 Then the parliament was abolished and direct rule from London established. As a result of the Good Friday Peace Talks, the Northern Ireland Assembly, also called Stormont after the estate in the Belfast suburb where sessions are held, was reestablished in 1998 but suspended several times afterwards when the political parties in Northern Ireland couldn ’ t agree on forming a government. During a recent three-year suspension, laws legalizing same-sex marriage and liberalizing abortion in Northern Ireland were passed in Westminster. All three devolved institutions in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are elected under a system of proportional representation, which, as we ’ ve seen, is not the case for elections to the British House of Commons with its first-past-the-post system. One interesting result of the combination of devolution with regional parliaments and the House of Commons is that while the Scots, the Welsh, and the Northern Irish MPs in London have a voice in affairs that affect England, English MPs don ’ t have any say in internal matters in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Other than the establishment of a London Assembly that gives the city more power in dealing with London affairs, attempts have failed to give regions in England devolved institutions like in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The debate about how to deal with fair representation in a partly devolved United Kingdom, originally known as the West Lothian Question, resulted in a procedure more clearly called English votes for English laws, which gave MPs from English constituencies the deciding vote on laws pertaining only to England. The House of Commons decided to end the procedure in the early 2020s because “ it was too complicated. ” One radical way to deal with this lack of equal representation would be total independence of the four countries, in effect a total dissolution of the United Kingdom and the untying of the Acts of Union made in the last five hundred years. In the wake of the withdrawal of the UK from the EU the probability has increased that the flag you can see on the cover of this book will be changed - if Scotland withdraws from the United Kingdom and thus the Scottish cross is erased from the Union Jack. At least then the expression “ Queen of England ” would no longer be inaccurate for the future royal country composed of England alone. Northern Ireland Assembly proportional representation, English votes for English laws an Untied Kingdom? 146 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="154"?> The deciding question: To what extent can a common British national identity transcend and incorporate English, Northern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh identities? American minorities have been successful in creating hyphenated identities; 7 it remains to be seen if the British will continue to be successful in keeping their Kingdom United. Speaking of Americans, what about the American flag on the cover of this book? If you remember the possibility of a 51 st state, 1 you might expect a new American flag at some point in the future too. The 2010s and 20s have brought radical historic changes in politics in the United States to match those in the United Kingdom. Let ’ s do a brief review of the situation in Britain. In the United Kingdom the head of the government, the prime minister, is the executive and has far-reaching powers. The prime minister is also a member of the legislative branch, the House of Commons. The House of Lords is one of the few important bodies left in any modern industrialized country that isn ’ t elected in any way. The Law Lords now have their own Supreme Court building to show the separation of the judiciary from the legislative aspects of government. In one important way the political system in the US is simpler than that in the UK: the three branches are much more clearly defined and separated. Since the first-past-the-post system is the same system used in America, where it ’ s called the winner takes all, we won ’ t have to explain this kind of election system again. And the two-party system is also similar, just with different names and different symbols. In the past, parties had names like the Democratic-Republicans, the American Republicans, the Gold Democrats, the Silver Republicans; there was even a party nicknamed the Know Nothings. 7 Even those who know nothing (or next to nothing) about the history of political parties in the US can still easily learn quite a bit about the situation today because it ’ s much simpler than in the past. America has had a system with just two major parties for most of its existence, starting with the founding of the Democratic-Republican party by Thomas Jefferson, which later became the Democratic party. You may remember that we ’ ve already heard about the founding of the Republican party as an anti-slavery party, a party that became famous with the election of President Abraham Lincoln in the mid 19 th century (but can trace its name back to a older party called Democratic-Republican). 2 The names of these opposing parties, Democrats and Republicans, didn ’ t mean that the Democrats were opposed to living in a republic, UK-US comparison Democrats and Republicans Democrats for a republic, but Republicans for democracy? 147 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="155"?> which we could simply understand as being a form of government different from a monarchy. Likewise, the Republicans weren ’ t opposed to democracy, the belief that the people should have the power to influence their own government. However, with the election of Donald Trump some Republican politicians now openly question the value of a democracy. Those who claim outright that the US is not a democracy but a “ constitutional republic ” are aware that demographics in the 21 st century point to a further shrinking of the base of the Republican party: the less-educated rural White male Americans. As we ’ ll read later, some parts of the American system of government completely fail to represent all American citizens equally. One easier to understand and interesting difference between the two parties has a German connection. Thomas Nast, an influential political cartoonist who was born in Landau in the Palatinate region and later immigrated to the US, worked for Harper ’ s Weekly, a magazine with a cover you might remember. 2 He was the first person to use the symbol of the donkey for the Democrats and the elephant for the Republicans. The donkey is supposedly based on what critics called Andrew Jackson: 2 a jackass. Democrats changed the insult into a compliment, seeing the donkey as a humble, smart, and loveable animal. Similarly, the Republicans saw the elephant as strong and dignified rather than slow and pompous. While the donkey and elephant are still used to represent the Democratic and Republican parties, the colors blue for Democrats and red for Republicans are now even more common symbols. You might be familiar with red as being the color for socialists and left-of-center parties and might remember reading a few pages ago about the red rose symbol for Britain ’ s Labour party. The British Conservative party is often associated with the color blue. Thus you might be a bit confused about the American choice of colors since American Democrats are closer to British Labour in terms of their policies and Republicans closer to the Tories. The exact opposite color-party connection became fixed in American media with the 2000 Bush vs. Gore election, the colors blue and red had been used as the colors with the most contrast in color television starting in the 70s. If you think of “ r ” for red and Republican (which the New York Times ’ graphics editor used as an explanation for the newspaper ’ s first use of red in their election maps in 2000) and “ d ” for donkey and Democrat, then you can easily remember the symbolic distinctions between the parties. The color purple is becoming common to refer to donkeys and elephants … states red and blue and purple 148 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="156"?> those states that are more or less split between the Democrats and the Republicans. These states are also called “ swing states ” and have made the difference in closely contested presidential elections. But let ’ s have a closer look now at the whole election process to understand the aspects that might seem a bit complicated at first. The long haul to becoming president is a grueling survival test made up of four major parts: primaries and caucuses, party conventions, general election day, and the Electoral College. The primaries and caucuses, which take place early each presidential election year, give Americans the right to be involved in the political process from the start. The system that the Democratic and Republican parties use for selecting their candidates has put small states like Iowa (caucuses) and New Hampshire (primary) on the political map, and not only in America, as readers of German news headlines will know. Caucuses are meetings of party members in schools, town halls, gymnasiums, or private homes with the goal of selecting the most convincing candidate after a series of speeches and discussions. Caucuses vary from state to state but share the same sort of small-town democracy that Americans like to say is the basis of their government. Primaries are much like regular elections: in some states only registered party members are allowed to vote; in open primaries any registered voter is allowed to vote regardless of party affiliation. Some political commentators have suggested primaries for Germany but apparently overlooked one basic difference between the two political systems. American voters choose an individual (or at least believe they do, the election for president is an indirect one as you ’ ll soon see). Americans have often elected presidents with military backgrounds (from the very first president George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower in the 50s, whose name reveals his German ancestry) or with political experience or as governors (Reagan, who wasn ’ t only an actor but also governor of California) or as senators (Obama, Biden). Donald Trump is the only person with no military or political experience whatsoever to be elected president, perhaps proving that fame and being a celebrity is now more important to Americans than experience. The results of the caucuses and primaries are used in the national conventions that each party organizes in late summer and during which the party nominees are officially chosen. The atmosphere in these conventions is very different from most political conventions in Germany - the music, the flags, the enthusiasm seem more appropresidential election: caucuses and primaries presidents elected as individuals from party conventions to election day 149 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="157"?> priate for a celebration party than for a political one and evidence of the importance of entertainment in American politics. After the conventions and much summer and fall campaigning comes the next part of the election system: election day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the date prescribed in the Constitution. As you might remember, 2 the whole world usually knows by midnight Eastern Standard Time who won - with the elections of 2000 and 2020 as big exceptions, as you ’ ll read below. However, the final step in the process of electing the president doesn ’ t take place until January when the results of the Electoral College votes are counted and confirmed in the Capitol, which brings us to the dramatic events in early 2021. Few Americans had been aware of the arcane procedure for finalizing the presidential election. Few Americans will now forget what happened on 6 January 2021. The official procedure was interrupted by an insurrection of pro-Trump supporters egged on by the still-incumbent president to “ take back the Capitol ” and “ stop the steal ” of an election that many judges had already certified as correct. A generation after the world watched the 9/ 11 attacks, people saw live videos of a mob breaking into what was supposed to be one of the most secure buildings in the world, chanting, yelling, breaking furniture, smearing their feces on the walls, and looking for politicians to punish for not supporting Trump. I remember watching the somewhat boring certification ceremony live and - when the trouble started - not understanding at first what was going on. What if the mob actually finds Vice President Pence, Speaker of the House Pelosi, Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, all hated by both Trump and his followers? What happens to the Congress if many senators and representatives are massacred, what happens if those who are in the line of succession for the presidency are murdered? Due to a combination of luck, laws about carrying weapons in Washington DC, and the heroic actions of a few mostly Black policemen and security personnel, no politican was physically hurt. Five people including one Capitol Police officer died. The ceremony, interrupted as the members of congress scurried to secured areas, began again hours later with final certification of Joe Biden as president-elect. But afterwards, shocking images were posted on social media by the perpetrators themselves, proud to have tried to “ take back ” their government: pictures of American citizens rampaging through their own country ’ s temple of democracy, brutally beating police officers and chanting threats of violence to any politician they might find. Capitol rally, storming, domestic terror, riot, insurrection, coup 150 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="158"?> For a short time a majority of Americans were united in condemning the actions of the pro-Trump mob. There was brief hope that the Republican party could free itself from the cult-like grip that Trump had maintained since his election in 2016. For the first time in history, a president was impeached twice. The House of Representatives had already formally accused Donald Trump of abuse of power in 2019, just over a year later the accusation was inciting an insurrection. But in both cases the vast majority of Republican senators voted against convicting Trump in spite of overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Since the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority for the conviction of an impeached president, Donald Trump remained unconvicted and can legally run for public office in the future. After Trump ’ s acquittal and Republican politicians ’ silence on what had taken place, a majority of American Republican followers began to call the attempted coup a peaceful patriotic protest in spite of the overwhelming evidence of violence. Some of the very people who had stormed the Capitol decided to run for office as Republicans, a majority of those who support the Republican party came to view the 2020 presidential election as fraudulent in spite of no evidence for voter fraud. The effects of the attempted coup will ensure that American politics remains in the news around the world, making the remainder of this chapter even more important for non-Americans ’ understanding of how American politics at least used to work. We can now add one more meaning to the word college, that troublesome word with so many different meanings. 4 The Electoral College doesn ’ t grant anyone a college degree, nor is it a place for students to live nor part of a university. The function of the Electoral College is to officially choose the president after election day. Originally the Electoral College was supposed to choose the president when it took weeks for communication to reach all citizens and when there was some doubt that regular citizens had the necessary skills to elect the president. The Electoral College nowadays is made up of groups of electors who represent the individual states. The number of electors for each state corresponds to the number of senators and representatives the state has in Congress. 1 Each state is represented by two senators in the Senate and by at least one representative in the House of Representatives, and thus each state has at least three electors and thus three votes in the Electoral College. States with larger populations have more representatives but no more than two shock, second impeachment, rewriting of history Electoral College 151 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="159"?> senators. 1 Currently there are a total of 538 electors in the Electoral College, who then meet every four years to vote for the president a month after the general election. The electors from each state are expected to vote for the candidate who received the most votes in their state. In an important way the presidential election thus isn ’ t one election nationwide but in effect 51 separate elections in each of the states and in the District of Columbia, 1 which also has three votes in the Electoral College. A few times in presidential election history the candidate who received the most votes nationwide on Election Day didn ’ t receive the most votes in the Electoral College. In the controversial 2016 election Donald Trump won a few states very narrowly although almost 3 million voters more across the country chose Hillary Clinton. In 2020, more than 7 million voters chose Biden over Trump in the nation as a whole. But in three states, Biden won by a very narrow margin amounting to less than 44,000 votes. If those votes had gone to Trump, he would have won the election. Twenty years earlier the Democratic candidate Al Gore received almost half a million more votes than the Republican candidate George W. Bush nationwide, but Bush won the votes in more individual states and thus 271 electors, one more than needed for the majority in the Electoral College. The controversy over who had really won the most votes in the state of Florida - and thus Florida ’ s 25 Electoral College votes - lasted for more than a month and was finally decided by a Supreme Court decision. George W. Bush won reelection in 2004 with both a majority of the popular vote and of the electors in the Electoral College. But if John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in 2004, had gained just a few thousand more votes in Ohio and had thus won Ohio ’ s 20 Electoral College votes, he would have become president in spite of the fact that he hadn ’ t won the majority of votes nationwide. The Electoral College procedure of choosing the American president has thus, in the last two decades, twice resulted in a president who won the smaller share of the votes on Election Day, and it almost happened four times. So why not fix the problem and get rid of it? One very big obstacle to reforming the Electoral College lies in the most important document in American politics, the Constitution of the United States. The Founding Fathers wanted to create a document that would be permanent enough to unite a nation of individual states and yet flexible enough to adjust to the future. After the Americans won the Revolutionary War and thus could have called themselves American presidential elections 2000 and 2016: loser wins Constitution and Bill of Rights 152 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="160"?> for the first time, they were more likely to call themselves New Yorkers or Virginians or Carolinians. The thirteen original colonies 2 had become more or less thirteen independent countries. It soon became clear that thirteen weak and bickering little countries would never last for long, and so the weak Articles of Confederation became the strong Constitution, which provided for a central federal government with clearly defined rights and responsibilities. State governments assumed powers not given to the federal government. Thus a government with a system of checks and branches was created. The Constitution should be able to stand the test of time with flexibility for adaptations. The very first amendments came with the document itself, the Bill of Rights, which guaranteed the individual rights and freedoms that the government couldn ’ t take away, like freedom of religion and of the press and the right to bear arms. 3 Since these first ten, only seventeen further amendments have been ratified in more than 230 years, evidence of how difficult it is to change the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress followed by ratification in three-quarters of all states. The American Constitution is the oldest existing constitution in the world and is an astonishingly brief piece of writing, only 7500 words and thus shorter than this chapter! The organization of the Constitution matches the organization of the government in the United States. Article I describes legislative power, II executive power, III judicial power, IV the relationship between state and federal power, V the process of amending the Constitution, VI establishes the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land, and VII regulates the ratification procedure. Using the structure of the Constitution, let ’ s take a look at the various branches of the American government and keep in mind two important principles of American government: the separation of powers and the systems of checks and balances. The president is head of the executive branch but is not alone; just as in Britain, the executive leader can rely upon a cabinet. The president is both head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He (so far every president has been male) has the power to sign or veto laws passed by Congress. You may remember the longestserving president from the American history chapter, the second of the two Roosevelts. 2 FDR died shortly after beginning his unprecedented fourth term of office; an amendment was then added to the Constitution to limit the terms of the president to just two. Since then no one can be reelected more than once to the presidency. checks and balances lame ducks and presidential coattails 153 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="161"?> This restriction can turn a reelected president into a “ lame duck, ” a term often referring to politicians whose term of office is due to expire. Remember that presidential and congressional elections are held in the US on one day, as stated in the Constitution, namely the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. So every four years the President, the entire House of Representatives, and one-third of the Senate are elected together. If larger numbers of representatives and senators are elected who belong to the same party as the winning presidential candidate, you might hear the phrase “ presidential coattails ” as a sign that the presidential candidate is seen as being powerful enough to sweep in members of the same party “ on his coattails. ” This was the case in the presidential election of 1980, not only when the Republican Ronald Reagan defeated the incumbent president Jimmy Carter resoundingly, winning 44 states to Carter ’ s mere 6 states, but also when Reagan ’ s party, the Republicans, gained control of the Senate for the first time in more than twenty years. Again in 2008, not only did Barack Obama win the presidential election but his Democratic party also won a majority of seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Joe Biden ’ s coattails were unusually short, the Democrats almost lost the House of Representatives and barely won the Senate in the 2020 election. The US system doesn ’ t have the same ties between the executive (government) branch and the legislative (Congress, Parliament) branch as is the case in the UK and in Germany. Often the president belongs to one party and the majority of both Senate and House belongs to another. While presidents can begin their admistration with majorities in one or both houses of Congress, the party of the president often loses the mid-term elections two years later. During the last half of the Republican president George W. Bush ’ s second term, the Democrats regained both the Senate and the House with Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female Speaker of the House. And which party had the majority during the last half of Democratic president Barack Obama ’ s second term of office? The Republicans, as you might predict. Due to increasing partisanship and polarization 3 and the Republican party ’ s built-in advantage in the Senate, as you ’ ll read more about very soon, the Democrats only won back the House in the mid-term elections during Trump ’ s term of office. Another example of checks and balances between the executive and the legislative branches was when Congress passed the War Powers Act of 1973 curtailing the power of the president to send separation of powers: executive and legislative declare war, impeach 154 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="162"?> troops abroad without a formal declaration of war. And a last example that has been possible from the start: presidential impeachment. The word impeach doesn ’ t mean to remove an official from office; it is only the first step to removal from office, namely putting a public official on trial. Impeachment is one powerful check that the legislative branch has on the executive branch. You ’ ve read about Trump ’ s second impeachment above, his first impeachment was based on his attempt to blackmail Ukraine by refusing to provide military aid approved by Congress until the Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky agreed to support conspiracy theories about US politics and announce an investigation into Joe Biden, whom Trump saw as a danger to his reelection. Trump was acquitted by a Republican majority in the Senate, Zelensky would become a world hero two years later by resisting Putin ’ s brutal invasion of Ukraine. As with the second impeachment, this first one failed to convict Trump due to his power over Republican members of Congress, who were afraid of incurring Trump ’ s wrath and the wrath of Trump voters, who threatened anyone who disagreed with their leader. You ’ ve already heard about the Senate and the House of Representatives. Let ’ s put them both in the context of the legislative branch. Elections to Congress, the name for the legislative branch, take place every two years, meaning that when the president ’ s elected, congressional elections also take place. The Congress is bicameral and consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives, but the two parts are unequal. The Senate has 100 members, two per 50 states. From a proportional point of view, i. e. per resident, states with small populations have more influence than the larger states. Since Republicans are much more likely to live in rural areas, states with few urban areas tend to elect Republican senators. Senators are elected for six years and to maintain continuity one third of the Senate is up for election every two years. The House of Representatives is much larger with 435 members: the number of representatives per state is based on the population of the state. What ’ s the state with the largest population? The map that helped us trace the movement of population 1 has the answer: California (with somewhat less than half the population of Germany) has 53 representatives and two senators. Alaska is the largest state in area 1 but is third to last in population (as many people live in Frankfurt am Main, for example, as in the entire state of Alaska). Alaska has only one representative but two senators just like Wyoming, the smallest state in population. 1 Congress: Senate and House 155 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="163"?> White rural states, although they represent only a small percentage of the American population, control almost half of the Senate. The word legislative comes from a Latin word for “ laws ” and that ’ s what the legislative branch is concerned with: creating bills that with the president ’ s signature can become law. If the president vetoes a bit by refusing to sign it, Congress can override the president ’ s veto with a two-thirds majority. While you might expect the business of lawmaking to be a normal and straightforward, it actually involves a few activities that are a bit more unusual. What sounds like some kind of rare disease is actually a historically based activity relating to the House of Representatives. Gerrymandering has to do with the way congressional districts are divided up. We ’ ve already learned that the number of representatives in the House is based on the population of the state. The citizens of each state as a whole elect the two senators; the representatives (in states that have more than one representative, of course) aren ’ t elected statewide, each is elected in his or her congressional district. The districts should be roughly equal in population; but, as we saw, Americans like to move, meaning some areas lose inhabitants and others gain. 1 In order to take this movement into account and to keep the size of the districts roughly equal, redistricting takes place, usually every ten years after the census 1 determines the current population of each state and of each district. As you might imagine, there are many different ways to divide a state up into districts. And the Democrats and Republicans are both interested in drawing the dividing lines so that the population of the new district is tilted towards one party - so lengthy discussions take place and sometimes even end up in court. So why is this manipulation of district boundaries for political advantage called gerrymandering? A 19 th century politician called Elbridge Gerry (a signer of the Declaration of Independence and also the fifth vice president) was notorious in trying to force redistricting in his favor, creating a district that had the strange shape of a salamander on the map or what Gerry ’ s critics called a “ gerrymander. ” Filibustering wasn ’ t named for an obscure American politician but originates from a Spanish word for pirate and is something that can only happen in the Senate. Senators can speak for as long as they wish until a majority of three fifths (60 out of 100) votes to end the discussion so that a vote can take place. The Senate changed the rules decades ago so that now senators don ’ t even have to talk, they can merely object. No legislation can be voted on unless 60 % of senators laws and vetoes gerrymandering and … … filibustering 156 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="164"?> decide not to raise objections. In practice, very little controversial legislation can be passed. Filibustering has increased in the last few years and can postpone a vote favored by even a 59 % majority and thus protect minority interests. It has been criticized for slowing government decision making and making it almost impossible to pass anything. The Republican party made use of it to prevent most legislation Democratic presidents like Obama and Biden have suggested. Obama described filibustering as being a relic of the Jim Crow 8 era, historically correct because White southern states senators used this procedure to slow down civil rights legislation in the 1960s. You might remember that we used the word constituency to refer to the political districts in Britain, which are each represented by one MP (Member of Parliament). While a rough equivalent of a constituency in the US, as we ’ ve just seen, is a congressional district, the word constituency is also used in American English to refer to the voters who elect a specific politician. In the past, representatives and senators, reelected every two years and six years respectively, used to listen more carefully to the views of their constituencies than to the views of their party. In the past party alignment played a lesser role so that Democrats from the south could have had more conservative views on cultural issues like abortion or gun control or gay marriage than liberal Republicans from west coast states. But in the last couple of decades political polarization has increased, dramatically so with Donald Trump ’ s domination of the Republican party. Deep divisions exist between White rural areas, which overwhelmingly vote for the Republican party, and urban areas with ethnically mixed and more highly educated constituents, who vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party. The third and last branch mentioned in the Constitution is the judicial branch, made up of the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, the court that decides if laws passed by Congress and acts signed by the president are unconstitutional. To avoid a misperception: the Supreme Court doesn ’ t actively check all the laws passed, they only act on their own in a very limited number of cases. Most of the cases that reach the Supreme Court have to go through all the lower courts of appeal to finally reach the nine justices, who have their jobs for life. We ’ ve already mentioned a few major Supreme Court cases in previous chapters, and we ’ ll be hearing more about the role of the Court in future chapters. Justices are nominated by the president constituency, partisanship, polarization the Supreme Court 157 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="165"?> but must be confirmed by the Senate, another example of the principle of checks and balances. The 10 th Amendment to the Constitution and the last part of the Bill of Rights leaves all power not explicitly given to the federal government to the states. Not only are the states responsible for education but also for laws dealing with abortion and capital punishment and gun control. 3 You ’ ve already learned about how the House of Representatives in the legislative branch reflects the division of states into congressional districts. You might also remember one term used to designate smaller political divisions in Britain 1 that is also used in the US: counties. The counties in Britain often have names that refer to much older historical areas like kingdoms. In contrast, counties in the US are much more prosaic and are the basic political and geographic subdivision of a state with responsibilities in police enforcement, highway maintenance, and increasingly health care and social services. But it ’ s time now to zoom out from the county level, moving up through the states and back to the national level, at the same time returning in history to that moment in the late 18 th century when the US Constitution was created. Benjamin Franklin, a famous Founding Father, famously responded to the question about which form of government the Constitutional Convention had decided on: “ A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it. ” For more than two centuries the United States has kept the republic. Also, to think In idealistic terms we could see the development of American government as slowly extending rights from the early landowners in the late 18 th century to all those over the age of eighteen, with the 26 th Amendment to the Constitution in the 1970s. But if democracy means equal rights and fair representation, then the future seems more uncertain. Not since the Civil War more than a 150 years ago has American society seemed so divided, with increased polarization 3 between Democrats and Republicans, between those living in urban and rural areas, between Americans with and without a college education, between older White Americans and a younger multicultural society. The election of Donald Trump as president, his attempt to overturn the election of Joe Biden in 2021, state voting laws passed by Republicans intending to prevent younger, poorer people of color from easily voting, and a backsliding in democratic values are testing the very survival of the United States as a model democracy. Will enough Americans remember the promises made in the opening federal and state a republic … if you can keep it a democracy to lose 158 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="166"?> words of the Declaration of Independence and extend the belief that “ all men are created equal ” to at least all American citizens regardless of skin color, ethnicity, or gender? We can all still admire the audacity and optimism of combining the rights to “ life and liberty ” with the “ pursuit of happiness ” as American ideals, and we can only hope as Abraham Lincoln did at the end of his Gettysburg Address 2 that “ government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. ” The website Politico has enough content to keep any political junkie hooked, ranging from longer essays on a future post-pandemic world to the latest polls on politics across the US, but also with the .eu website suffix across Europe, including of course the UK. You can find connections between politics and media 10 in senior media writer Jack Schafer ’ s witty, acerbic articles. Politico made the headlines itself when the German publisher Axel Springer bought the site for a billion dollars in the early 20s. Another website, electoral-vote.com, concentrates only on American politics and was originally started by the American computer science professor Andrew S. Tanenbaum as a way of combining polls to predict the American president in 2004. Tanenbaum ’ s motivation as an American living abroad - he worked for decades at a Dutch university - was the desire for “ America to be respected in the world again ” after the election of George W. Bush, whom Tanenbaum described as “ the world ’ s playground bully. ” Tanenbaum also saw the Iraq War 6 as one reason for the scorn and hatred felt for America and Americans. Although the Democrat John Kerry didn ’ t win the election in 2004 as Tanenbaum had hoped, the website continued and expanded from 2015 onwards with the addition of an American historian who goes by the penname Zenger, in honor of a German-born journalist and printer who started a newspaper in the 18 th century colonial New York. 10 Together they now produce a daily blog with comprehensive information on the connections between politics and religion, power, race, education. Slay the Dragon proves that nowadays in the US even the arcane political activity that most people had never heard of before can be the 159 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="167"?> subject of an engrossing documentary from 2019. While the intended audience is American, non-American viewers will also understand the attraction of grassroots activists and see the effects of gerrymandering on people ’ s lives. How many people are interested in the monarchy? The makers of TV series like Netflix ’ s The Crown and producers of movies like The Queen and publishers of newspapers and magazines and books like the highly readable Royalty Inc: Britain ’ s Best-Known Brand and their online counterparts evidently think very many people are interested, not only in the UK but especially in those parts of the world that aren ’ t blessed, or cursed, with a monarchy. You can find explanations for the fascination of the monarchy from American sources like the New York Times or the Atlantic or British sources like the BBC. Are Americans fascinated with the British royals because of or in spite of the country ’ s roots in rebelling against a king? And in Germany? How many of your friends watched the wedding of William and Kate or Henry and Meghan? Did Elizabeth ’ s platinum jubilee generate many headlines across German media? Predict the level of news coverage and online activity in Germany when the death of the longest-reigning queen in world history is announced. Exercises 1. What does the strange chapter title make you aware of? 2. Why is the Queen of England an inaccurate term? (Have a look at the British history chapter again.) 3. What evidence can you find in the chapter to prove that the British Constitution is very easy and the American very difficult to amend? 4. Compare congressional districts with British constituencies. 5. Find examples in this and the previous chapter that show the importance of the division of power between federal and state government. 6. What do you notice about the choice of graphics in the chapter? Quickly skim chapter 8 on religion and compare the photos there. 7. Compare political caricatures mentioned in this chapter with one in chapter 2. 8. Compare the photos of the Palace of Westminster with the most common ones you can find online and then come up with reasons for my choices. 160 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="168"?> 9. Compare the collage of the Scottish Parliament with any photos you can find online. See if you agree with architectural critic Jonathan Glancey ’ s description in the Guardian shortly before the official opening in 2004: “ The complexity of the design is such that it is hard to talk of it as a single building. It is like a cluster of boats, a sweeping of leaves, a collection of seaside shells, a Pandora ’ s box of architectural motifs laced together ingeniously, this side of pandemonium, an architectural structure stretching into the dramatic landscape beyond it. ” Challenging and interesting project: First describe and then try and explain the unique atmosphere in the British Parliament and during the American Democratic and Republican National Conventions. If politics is supposed to be so boring, then why do Americans have so much to do and seem to have so much fun during the conventions with the ambitious task of deciding who will be the nation ’ s next president? And why do British MPs seem so raucous in the hallowed halls of parliament? And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you ’ ll-be-elected- President-automatically-or-maybe-even-become-Queen tasks: 1. Advise the British government and monarch on how to reform the British Constitution so that traditions are kept while at the same time allowing for a modernized House of Lords. 2. Advise all the branches of the American government on increasing political participation of all citizens with the aim of improving the reputation of politicians and ensuring government of the people by the people and for the people. And more aspects not covered in this chapter for those with time and passion and imagination to consider what life would be like as the next president or the next king or queen: … structure of local government in both America and Britain; some of the strange smaller political parties in both countries; details about political scandals; strengths and weaknesses of the legislative procedure in both countries; increased political participation overall due to controversial and polarizing leaders being elected; QAnon as an example of political conspiracy theories that have plagued American democracy since the mid 2010s … 161 Chapter 5 Queendom and Republicracy (political life) <?page no="169"?> A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) The buck stops here. sign on President Harry S. Truman ’ s desk I want my money back. attributed to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in negotiations over a special rebate for the UK from the EEC budget We ’ re beginning this chapter with a look at a famous American idiom that uses a well-known word which has several different meanings. “ Buck ” can mean “ dollar ” in informal American English, probably originally related to the value of buckskin, the hide of an animal like a male deer, also known as a buck and traded between Indians and settlers. This monetary meaning of “ buck ” links up nicely with one main focus of this chapter, the economy, but the buck in our famous saying has another meaning. “ The buck stops here ” means “ I ’ m the one responsible for making decisions. ” This use of the word buck comes from the game of poker, where the buck was a marker (like a silver dollar coin) placed in front of the player whose turn it was to deal the cards. If a player didn ’ t wish to deal, he (in frontier days only men played poker) “ passed the buck ” onto the next player. “ Passing the buck ” became a synonym for “ not assuming responsibility. ” Harry S. Truman, the US president responsible for the decision to use the first atomic bombs in history on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had a sign with the slogan “ the buck stops here ” on his desk throughout the seven years of his presidency. International relations (which thankfully aren ’ t only expressed through war and bombs) are the other focus of this chapter. And we ’ ll learn that common wealth for all isn ’ t necessarily the same as a commonwealth, which is another word with several meanings. Of course there are many areas where the economy and international relations intersect. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been famously misquoted in negotiations between the UK and the European Economic Community (the predecessor of the EU). She really said: “ But it is not asking the Community for money; it is asking the Community to have our own money back … . ” When you finish the 162 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="170"?> chapter, you ’ ll not only be able to quote Thatcher correctly but also be able to talk about ▶ some captains of industry or robber barons in American history, ▶ some interesting aspects of the American economy, ▶ some American territories around the world, ▶ expansionism and isolationism as principles of American foreign policy, ▶ some interesting aspects of the British economy, ▶ the role of the Commonwealth in Britain today, ▶ the relationship between the UK and Europe including Brexit, ▶ the special relationship between the US and the UK including NATO. Before we start to look at some interesting and perhaps surprising aspects of the American economy, let ’ s go back in history to the Gilded Age 2 to see what could be considered the roots of capitalism. Whether you see men like Astor, Carnegie, Ford, Mellon, Morgan, Rockefeller, or Vanderbilt as captains of industry, great men who contributed positively to American society at the end of the 19 th and beginning of the 20 th century, or as robber barons, selfish and greedy men who exploited many of the poorer people during the country ’ s vast intake of immigrants, depends at least partly on which facts you choose from their biographies. You could even use the word “ so-called ” in its negative meaning of “ inappropriately named ” if you wanted to express your doubts about the so-called captains of industry. The Astor family can trace its roots back to before the American Revolutionary War and is considered to have started America ’ s first business monopoly with the American Fur Company. John Jacob Astor was well-known for building grand hotels like the one that later became the Waldorf-Astoria, the name of which reveals where the Astor family originally came from: Waldorf near Heidelberg. The Astors earned their millions through real estate and donated large sums to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While one Astor was accused of being a slum landlord in New York, later generations engaged in philanthropic activities. Andrew Carnegie came from Scotland, created an empire out of iron and steel, became one of the richest men in history (if you measure personal wealth as a percentage of the total national wealth of the time), and left many millions of dollars to found libraries, universities, and to Carnegie Hall, one of the most famous music venues in the US. His reputation Astors, Vanderbilts, a Carnegie 163 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="171"?> was publicly tarnished through his involvement in one of the most violent strikes in American history: the Homestead Strike - no connection to the Homestead Act 2 - weakened attempts to unionize steelworkers. The Vanderbilts originally made their millions through shipping and railway companies but also founded Vanderbilt University. One reason for the success of these families was an economic and political policy with the French-sounding name laissez-faire, literally “ let things alone, ” especially the things that prohibited the industrial giants from enlarging their businesses and their wealth. The combination of natural resources with the belief that wealth was a sign of great social esteem and thus of God ’ s blessing led to an enormous increase in wealth, which was, however, very unevenly distributed. The belief that the government should have a role in controlling the very powerful in business started in the 20 th century. American governments today tend to vary in their degree of intervention in economic affairs, with Democratic administrations being more involved than Republican ones. Reagan ’ s economic policy in the 80s was based on the belief that the government should reduce taxes and thus give citizens more money to spend. Increased spending would result in increased investment and economic growth, creating wealth that would eventually “ trickle down ” to those who didn ’ t have much. This view of the role of the government in cutting its own spending on such things as social programs and in deregulating industry became known as Reaganomics. A generation later the deregulation of the finance industry resulted in 2008 in one of the worst crises since the Great Depression. One of the ironies of political life is that as a result of the crisis a Republican administration under George W. Bush proposed one of the most massive interventions by government ever. The subsequent Democratic administration under Barack Obama went even further and expanded government spending and responsibility to levels not seen since the days of FDR ’ s New Deal. 2 After Donald Trump and a Republican majority in Congress cut taxes and rolled back regulations and thus mirrored typically Republican attitudes towards the role of the government in the economy, two huge spending acts were passed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), the largest spending measure ever, at the beginning of the pandemic in the US, and the Democrat Joe Biden from laissez-faire to trickle down Reagonomics … … to CARES and the American Rescue Plan to “ food insecurity ” 164 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="172"?> signed the American Rescue Plan Act at the beginning of his presidency, which dramatically enlarged government support especially for low-income and middle-class Americans. In the middle of the pandemic long lines of Americans in cars waiting for free food made the news; food insecurity as a synonym for being hungry became a condition for more than 10 % of all Americans. How is hunger possible for citizens of one of the richest nations in history? A good question more Americans are also beginning to ask themselves without being satisfied with answers from the past like: “ If you work hard enough, you ’ ll succeed. Those who are wealthy are wealthy because of God ’ s blessings. ” After this look at some of the big names and topics of the past, names that you ’ ll still encounter today, let ’ s turn to some interesting and surprising aspects of the American economy in general. We can start with farming. Earlier generations of English teachers could teach fairly clear-cut agricultural belts with a limited amount of new vocabulary: corn, cotton, wheat, and dairy belts (with the chance for a joke: “ No, they don ’ t grow cows there ” ). From an historical perspective the Black Belt should have been included in the list not only to refer to the fertile soil there but also to those parts of states from Virginia to Texas that Black slaves and their descendants farmed and that today have majority Black American populations. Modern farming in the US involves much more land and more diversification. Even the name for farming has changed from the small plots of land first settled in colonial America and then given away by the government in the Homestead Act. 2 Nowadays the shift to the combination of farming and high technology is called agribusiness. Farmers in the late 19 th century used barbed wire to protect their land, built machinery to harvest their crops, and later used the development of transportation like nationwide trains to sell them. The government encouraged the development of the science of agriculture by founding and funding large state universities. 4 Nowadays those who work in agriculture as farmers make up around 1 % of the population although around 20 % of the total land area of the United States is suitable for growing crops. Agribusiness describes the large scale commercial farms that combine technology and industry with crop growing. In the 2020s with help from the German Association for Vertical Farming, Americans are now beginning to experiment with new kinds of more sustainable and environmentally friendlier farming in wharehouses, which if successful could provide fresher old belts, Black Belt, agribusiness, vertical farming 165 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="173"?> fruits and vegetables to more people. The United States remains the world ’ s leading single exporter of agricultural products although the EU as a whole exports much more. In spite of iconic images of vast expanses of crops in the Great Plains, America ’ s economy today - like other western post-industrialized countries - is driven by the services sector, in which more than four in five of all Americans are employed. As early as the 1950s white-collar workers (service sector, public employment) outnumbered blue-collar 3 workers, leading to a post-industrial society. In terms of the sheer numbers of paid employees, health (pink-collar workers) and social services is the largest sector today followed by the manufacturing and retail trade. American economy as a whole is driven by the consumer, so when consumers buy less, then the American economy begins to have big problems. Visitors to America are often struck by the role advertisements play and the emphasis on consumption in the media. This consumer culture started as early as the 50s. One difference that surprises and puzzles many Europeans is the short vacations of most American employees, a similar shock that Americans experience when they find out how long German vacations are. When I first arrived in Germany, I asked myself how any economic system could function when the vast majority of workers had four to six weeks of vacation a year in addition to the many public holidays. Most Americans have far fewer vacation days with no national government law guaranteeing a minimum number of paid days off. One group lobbying for minimum guaranteed leave has called the US a no-vacation nation. Opening hours were also vastly different between the US and Germany until the liberalization of the law in Germany, and many stores in the US are open on Sundays in spite of the importance of churchgoing. The convenience for the consumer is offset by the forced availability of the employees, yet except for some resistance to opening on Sundays years ago (the laws forbidding businesses from opening on Sundays were called Blue Laws because they were written on blue paper) Americans accept long opening hours and longer working hours as a given. Americans also seem to accept the hire-and-fire mentality of many employers although one result of the pandemic has been record numbers of unsatisfied American employees quitting in the “ Great Resignation, ” a movement that may dramatically change the American economy in the coming years. What could Americans do in the past to avoid lowservice sector #1 vacation? job security? 166 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="174"?> skilled jobs? Get a better education, many would say. We ’ ve already looked at high tuition fees. 4 Many Americans had considered the investment in a college education to be necessary for future economic success although education also is in the process of radical changes 4 due to the pandemic. Students who finance at least some of their tuiton fees themselves rely on part-time jobs or gig work. The pandemic has revealed the precarious nature of gig jobs and the vulnerability of gig workers. We could ’ ve mentioned the word gig in connection with the Jazz Age 2 and the jargon of jazz musicians who spoke of their concerts as gigs and got paid per engagement. Nowadays the term gig workers usually refers to low-paid delivery drivers, fast-food couriers treated as selfemployed contractors. But other workers also get paid for concrete assignments that can range from driving other people around via Uber or developing sophisticated software or playing a gig on stage as a musician. Such workers can set their own schedules but don ’ t have the benefits that non-gig workers have, like unemployment benefits or healthcare insurance that Germans take for granted. Is a gig economy exploitation or the epitome of the American Dream? Depends on who you ask and when you ask them. Restaurant staff who can ’ t find a job because of the pandemic would give a different answer than the software expert who ’ s working with a laptop on the beach. Certainly true is that the American attitude towards work as a crucial part of identity 12 and human value is shifting. It was not only gig workers who experienced a radical change in their working life, both in the US and around the world, as a result of Covid-19. Employees used to going to the office had to shift to work from home. One of the German words that look very American or English but isn ’ t (like Beamer, Handy, Trolly) is Homeoffice. In British English, the Home Office is the name given to the government ’ s ministry for domestic affairs. Americans may have an office at home, but they refer to the huge change in where they work as “ remote work ” or “ telecommuting, ” “ work from home ” or just “ WFH. ” Will WFH and the end of the road warriors (creative American synonym for commuters) radically change not only the ways Americans work but also how American cities look and how people dress too? 11 One huge winner from the pandemic in the US and Europe: one of the Big Five high-tech American companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft) that had already revolutionized the way Americans and also people around the world do their shopping. Amazon ’ s gigs are big WFH and consumerism 167 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="175"?> influence has gone far beyond just economics. Founder Jeff Bezos, one of the world ’ s richest people, has been called a managerial Mephistopheles, been criticized for the treatment of his employees, but he also provides consumers what they want: no hassle and instant gratification or as he wrote “ customer ecstasy. ” Although most employment opportunities are to be found in the services sector, you can still find remnants of America ’ s industrial past. While we ’ ve just learned that traditional agricultural belts aren ’ t a very accurate way of mapping agriculture today, there is one “ belt ” that is still commonly used to describe certain parts of the US stretching from Pennsylvania through Ohio and Michigan - the Rust Belt, those areas that are facing problems because the great textile, automobile, and steel industries of the past have now closed down. To add one more physical feature used nowadays for the location of a specific economic activity: probably most of you have heard of Silicon Valley, which isn ’ t a real valley - although it encompasses the real Santa Clara Valley in northern California - and doesn ’ t grow silicon (a common chemical element found all over the world and used for manufacturing the chips that make our computers work). The abundance of jobs in the computer and other technical industries has given Silicon Valley its name, a name that has inspired other names around the world as a designation for the concentration of jobs in the technological industries, which brings us back to the Big Five information technology companies and Jeff Bezos as a 21 st century captain of industry or robber baron. Just as we started our look at the US economy by going back in history, let ’ s apply some of what we covered in the history chapter to a look at two seemingly diametrically opposed ways of explaining America ’ s role in the world: isolationism and expansionism. If we had an entire chapter to devote to this issue, then our chapter title would be: “ From Two MDs to the World ’ s Policeman. ” The first MD stands for manifest destiny 2, which can refer to the belief that spreading American-style democracy and ideals of personal liberty all over the world is not only good but also God ’ s will. This belief can be both attractive in its genuine though perhaps naive sense to improve the world and repugnant in its inherent hubris (God ’ s chosen people) and ignorance of other cultures. The belief that manifest destiny granted White Americans the right to take land from American Indians was a justification for westward movement to the Pacific. An example of isolationism is the Monroe Doctrine, originating a generation before from the Rust Belt to Silicon Valley isolationism vs. expansionism, Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine 168 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="176"?> the term Manifest Destiny was first used: a warning from the still young nation to the much older nations of Europe not to interfere in the affairs of the United States and the entire western hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine implied also the right of the US to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries in the western hemisphere and thus an example of expansionism too. The US entering World War I late 2 is a sign of the isolationist side of American policy. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning (and openly racist) American President Woodrow Wilson had dreamed of the US joining the League of Nations to ensure that the First World War was indeed “ the war to end all wars. ” The Senate ’ s refusal to approve membership was one reason for the next world war a generation later. Another example of American isolationism was waiting until 1941 to take sides actively in World War II and then only entering after the shock of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. One of the heroes of World War II was General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific during the war and one of the few five-star generals. MacArthur served in the Philippines, which the US had taken from Spain during the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19 th century, 2 and originally planned to defend the islands against the Japanese threat. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered him to withdraw from a losing battle against the Japanese, MacArthur uttered the famous words “ I shall return ” and did indeed return to retake the islands in the Pacific that the Japanese had conquered. MacArthur was ready to lead forces to invade Japan itself before Japan surrendered after the US had used the first atomic bombs to destroy the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Why mention MacArthur in the context of expansionism? Later in the early 1950s MacArthur was appointed leader of UN forces involved in the Korean War and was in favor of expanding the war to China, which had sent troops to support the North Koreans. President Harry S. Truman, concerned that such an expansion would result in a nuclear war, relieved MacArthur of his command. While General MacArthur was still head of the occupation forces in Japan, a young Senator from Wisconsin claimed to have the names of many top-ranking government officials who were secretly members of the Communist party. Although he wasn ’ t able to substantiate his accusations, Joseph McCarthy was able to exploit the widespread fear of communism that had become rampant in the wake of the Korean War and the fear of Soviet domination. McCarthy became chairman of from General MacArthur … … to Senator McCarthy 169 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="177"?> a Senate Investigations Subcommittee and continued his highly public accusations of officials. After lengthy televised Senate hearings on McCarthy ’ s methods, which gave the general public the chance to see his extremist behavior, his influence began to diminish, and the Senate formally condemned him for acting “ contrary to senatorial ethics. ” McCarthyism has been used ever since to critically describe the persecution of innocent people and attempts by those in power to enforce conformity. In 2005 George Clooney wrote, directed, and acted in the critically acclaimed film Good Night, and Good Luck, which portrayed the television journalist Edward R. Murrow, whose televised programs helped to discredit McCarthy ’ s tactics. While you could see McCarthy as being a clear example of the fear of communism rampant in the 50s, sometimes called the Red Scare, there was another scare in the early 60s that showed how important international relations had become. In October 1962 the US received evidence of the building of Soviet nuclear missile sites on Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis would later be dramatized in the movie Thirteen Days and in the book The Week the World Stood Still. Never before had the world been so close to nuclear war. Kennedy was able to persuade Soviet Premier Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles in return for a promise that the Americans would not invade Cuba. The successful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis is regarded as the first thawing in the Cold War. In the context of international relations we need to briefly look at the buildup to the first war that America was to clearly lose. Believing that communism presented a threat to security and peace, Americans began supporting South Vietnam in the struggle with the communist North Vietnam as early as the early 1960s, at first with only advisors and then later with an increasing number of combat troops. The domino theory claimed that if South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese, who were interested in establishing a communist government for a reunited Vietnam, other countries in Asia would also become communist just as the fall of one domino piece causes all other dominos to fall too. Since the United States never officially declared war on North Vietnam and since the build-up of troops proceeded at first gradually, opposition to the war didn ’ t develop until the late 1960s with results you might remember. 2 The swings from expansionism to isolationism and back could easily summarize the first two decades of the 21 st century with Barack Obama ’ s role in ensuring the US signed the Paris Agreement, 9 jolted back by Donald Trump ’ s withdrawal from it, in addition to Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam dominos expansionism, isolationism, Afghanistan 170 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="178"?> imposing tariffs on other countries and even loosening the close ties with traditional allies, followed by Joe Biden ’ s announcement “ America is back. ” The war in Afghanistan had begun two decades earlier as George W. Bush ’ s response to the 9/ 11 attacks, Barack Obama hesitated to enlarge or end the war, Donald Trump struck a deal with the Taliban for a withdrawal, and Joe Biden set the withdrawal date for 11 September 2021. What was called the longest war in American history resulted with the Taliban quickly taking over the country and the US experiencing its second lost war, 50 years after the withdrawal from Vietnam. Before we conclude our brief survey of American international relations, we have to at least mention one defining moment that some readers of this book experienced personally. Just as the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor at the start of American involvement in World War II and much later the assassination of John F. Kennedy were defining moments in the lives of many people of different generations in the US and Britain and Germany, the experience via live television of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York created such a defining moment. The loss of human life and property on that fateful day in September is incomparable with the loss of life and property in American actions following 9/ 11, whether one judges them to be justified or not. The symbolic power of the Twin Towers crumbling on live television around the world changed the US and the world, and its repercussions will no doubt affect our lives for a long time to come, with the end of the war in Afghanistan just being one of the more recent effects. While US territories are, strictly speaking, not a topic for international affairs since they belong to the US, some of them are far Fig. 6.1 This artistic rendering of the Puerto Rican flag reminds us that the Commonwealth and possible future state of Puerto Rico isn ’ t just one big island but is composed of several smaller islands too. The Puerto Rican flag shares the same red, white, and blue colors of the US flag; the future status of Puerto Rico is open. 9/ 11 as second Pearl Harbor? Commonwealth of Puerto Rico - future state? 171 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="179"?> enough from the continental US to justify a place in a chapter on international relations. Let ’ s begin with one of the closest territories, one that echoes part of the title of this chapter: the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico also has a special status, which you can ’ t see as clearly in its official English name, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as you can in its Spanish name, Estado libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, which stresses the fact that Puerto Rico, originally ceded to the US by Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, 2 became partly autonomous fifty years afterwards. Now Puerto Ricans are US citizens who can travel and move to the United States but who don ’ t pay all the taxes that other US citizens pay. Puerto Ricans can ’ t vote in the presidential election but can vote in the primaries 5 to choose the Democratic or Republican nominee. While Puerto Rico has no representation in Congress, it is able to send a non-voting member to the House of Representatives, just like Washington, DC. In 2015 the Senate of Puerto Rico voted to make Spanish the first official language, and in 2020 Puerto Ricans voted yes in a non-binding referendum on whether Puerto Rico should be admitted immediately into the Union as a state, perhaps partly in response to Donald Trump ’ s lack of assistance in the wake of the terrible destruction of Hurricane Maria and his categorical no to the possibility of statehood. 1 While many Democrats support statehood for Puerto Rico, admission to the union looks unlikely in the foreseeable future. Geography buffs 1 might remember the name of one of the island territories so far from the mainland that it ’ s practically on the other side of the world from the continental US. If you said Hawaii, your answer would have been correct before 1959, when the territory of Hawaii became the 50 th state. Guam is the right response and was one of the islands ceded by Spain at the end of the 19 th century as a result of the Spanish-American War, just like Puerto Rico. The inhabitants of Guam, like the Puerto Ricans, are American citizens, and Guam also sends one non-voting member to the House of Representatives. Guam is much smaller than Puerto Rico in area and in population and forms part of the Mariana Islands. The Northern Mariana Islands are another American commonwealth, and all of these islands are located strategically in the western Pacific. One other island group on the other side of the world from the Marianas and much closer to the American mainland is the American Virgin Islands, just east of Puerto Rico where the Atlantic Ocean meets the exotic territories, from Guam … 172 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="180"?> Caribbean Sea. The US Virgin Islands are popular with tourists and weren ’ t taken as the spoils of war like Puerto Rico but actually bought from Denmark during World War I. One American location not at all popular with tourists is Guantanamo Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. But the area isn ’ t a territory: Cuba leased it “ perpetually ” as part of an agreement signed between Cuba and the US - yet another result of the Spanish-American War. As one of his first acts as president, Barack Obama announced the closing of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp for terrorist suspects, but it didn ’ t happen, mainly because of Congressional restrictions. A decade later Donald Trump signed an order keeping the camp open indefinitely. Joe Biden has said he hopes to close it by the end of his term. Maybe one day the entire Naval Base will be closed, and this leased territory will finally be returned to Cuba - an island that American tourists have been barred from easily visiting for a very long time. Americans who violated the American embargo against Cuba were liable to prosecution, as the filmmaker Michael Moore experienced and documented in Sicko. 3 The reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2015 began at first a new era, but Trump reinstated restrictions. Biden has said he hopes to return to an improvement in relations with a country only 150 kilometers from the US island of Key West, Florida. Speaking of islands … we need to return to our United Kingdom and to the lady we (mis)quoted at the beginning of the chapter. Margaret Thatcher was the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom, and she remained head of the government and of the Conservative party for about 12 years and thus longer than any other prime minister in the 20 th century. Some of her critics claimed she reigned with an iron hand; in any case she was very proud of her nickname “ Iron Lady. ” She followed a strict anti-union policy resulting in the defeat of the miners ’ strike in the mid 80s, and she privatized many traditional government-owned industries with British in their names like British Telecom, British Steel, British Gas, and British Airways. Thatcher ’ s emphasis on a free-market economy greatly increased economic output and decreased the high inflation rates of the 1970s. But Thatcherism, the term used to describe Thatcher ’ s ideology, also increased the gap between the haves and the have-nots and contributed to a society of two groups, one wealthy and one poor. She is also - depending on your political perspective - either credited with or blamed for dismantling some parts of Britain ’ s … to Guantanamo, Cuba first female PM Iron Lady 173 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="181"?> post-war welfare state. Many compare her to the American president whose term of office almost exactly coincided with hers: Ronald Reagan. Just as in our look at the American economy, we can begin here with farming to help you compare the importance of agriculture in the two countries. About a quarter of all land in the UK is arable (suitable for growing crops), which is considerably less than in Germany but a bit more than in the US. The amount of land available for farming in the UK is, of course, in absolute size far less than in the US, which is almost forty times bigger than the UK. 1 Most of this land is used as grassland for crops or grazing. The UK has a very low percentage of workers employed in agriculture, less than in Germany. In spite of the low number of farmers, some world-famous breeds of livestock can be found, like Hereford and Aberdeen Angus. But it wasn ’ t these breeds that made international news in the 1980s and 90s. The tongue-twisting disaster bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as BSE or mad cow disease, and the later outbreak of foot and mouth disease caused a crisis in British agriculture and tourism. Another farming issue, whether genetically modified (GM) crops should be grown, makes headlines regularly. Interestingly, the percentage of land reserved for organic farming increased rapidly in the 1990s but has since declined to a low but relatively stable singledigit percent. Speaking of food, what was once Britain ’ s favorite food but is no longer? Fish ’ n chips. 11 And although the entire fishing industry in the UK and in the EU only makes up a miniscule percentage of the total economy, one of the main obstacles to a final Brexit deal was the issue of who had permission to fish where. UK fishermen overwhelmingly supported leaving the EU but have been very unhappy with the result: a drastic reduction in exports to the EU, the main source of their income prior to Brexit. Since fishing is more important in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, negative economic consequences could lead to increased support for a Scottish independence referendum and an independent Scotland then joining the EU. The emotional attachment to seafood and to the fishing industry is understandable in a land where no point is further than … . 1 But no matter how close you are to the sea, you ’ ll have to pass many user-owned homes of all kinds on your way there. Britain has one of the highest percentages of home ownership in Europe, much higher interesting economic aspects: from farming to … … Brexit fishing problems my home is my castle, vacation is holidays 174 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="182"?> than in Germany. Not only is the desire to own your own home much stronger in the UK than in Germany, the way of financing property is also very different. Most British mortgages are financed by variable interest rates, meaning any interest rate changes immediately affect how much money British homeowners can spend on other things. The lower the interest rates, the more money they have left to spend for things like meals, cars and vacations (or “ holidays, ” as the British say). While employees in information technology industries may have the reputation for working long hours, those employed in agriculture and the construction industry work the most hours per week on average. The number of paid holiday days granted to workers in Britain has increased to 28 days a year, more than the average American and on a par with the average German. But employers are allowed to count bank holidays (British term for public holidays) as part of the allowance. We already know that few people work in agriculture in Britain. Most British people work in the services sector: public administration, education, and health form the largest group followed by distribution, hotels, and restaurants. The services sector requires energy, and as with all industrialized countries energy is still often gotten from oil. After North Sea oil was first discovered off the shore of Scotland and northeastern England in the late 60s, oil production soared, reaching a peak in the late 90s and declining ever since. For a couple of decades, however, the UK was not only independent of the oil-exporting countries but also became one of world ’ s top ten producers. As early as the mid 70s the boom in North Sea oil production was having political consequences too. The Scottish National Party (SNP) used the slogan “ it ’ s Scotland ’ s oil ” to further the process of devolution, resulting twenty years later in a Scottish parliament. 5 While North Sea oil has made it economically feasible for Scotland to become independent, a complicating factor is the importance of renewable energy for the younger generation, many of whom would vote for independence. The SNP has to find a new slogan to avoid alienating them. With the concept of devolution we ’ ve already begun to shift our view in this chapter from the economy to international relations, but before we leave the island economically, let ’ s take a drive to Silicon Valley - but not back to California. Britain has also gained its share of Silicon names connected to high-tech and research industries. Sometimes the Cambridge Cluster North Sea oil for an independent Scotland? Silicon Fen, Gorge, Corridor … 175 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="183"?> or area around Cambridge University is called Silicon Fen (the Fens is the name of a flat geographic area in east England). Silicon Gorge is an area between Bristol, Swindon, and Gloucester in southern England with many research companies. Silicon Corridor is sometimes used as a nickname for the M4 motorway connecting London with Wales, which also has its Cwm Silicon (cwm is Welsh for valley) at the end of the Silicon Corridor. Southern Scotland, too, has an area called Silicon Glen (glen is Scottish Gaelic for valley) in which many hightechnology and software companies have their headquarters. Surprisingly perhaps, both the Welsh and Scottish silicon valleys have declined in the past decade. Nonetheless, you can see one example of Britain ’ s transformation from an industrial to an information economy in who ’ s honored on the £50 note. The Scottish engineer who designed a steam engine, James Watt, and his business partner have been replaced by the father of artificial intelligence: mathematician and World War II code-breaker Alan Turing. You won ’ t see many exclusively British automobiles on the Silicon Corridor. Any Jaguars, Rolls Royces, or Land Rovers that you may see are reminders of the demise of one traditional British industry. Rolls- Royce and Bentley are now subsidiaries of BMW and VW. After Brexit, Jaguar has remained the name of the company and is still the name of a luxury car originally built in Britain. The company privatized by Thatcher (one of many privatizations, as we saw earlier in this chapter) was later bought by the American Ford Motor Company and then by Tata Motors of India, a nice example of how the former Empire is now taking over some of the businesses once owned in the mother country, as it used to be called. Speaking of the Empire, … you could say that the British Empire began to decline when the American colonies declared their independence, but you could also claim that the creation of the United States of America from the English colonies on the east coast of North America was more than compensated by growth in Africa, Asia, and Australia. Most of the 19 th century could be called Britain ’ s Imperial Century. 2 The sun never set on the largest empire in the history of the world, which extended from the Cape to Cairo in Africa, from Cairo to Calcutta in India, and all the way around the world past Australia to Canada and back to the mother country. former Empire now at the steering wheel from the sun never sets to island(s) on the edge? 176 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="184"?> Fig. 6.2 Map of the British Empire at its greatest extent after WW I. The different shades indicate differences in status: colony, dominion, or mandate. Fig. 6.3 Map of the Commonwealth of Nations in 2021. Do you notice any big differences? We ’ d need a much more detailed map to capture all the withdrawers and rejoiners. Remember Westminster? 1 3 5 8 While there are enough bells now ringing in this paragraph to make you think you might be in Westminster Cathedral, the term we are interested in is the Statute of Westminster, which established the British Commonwealth of Nations as an association of independent countries that had previously been part of the British Empire. After World War II as the former colonies of the Empire were beginning to gain their independence, the word British was dropped, leaving the Commonwealth of Nations, the name this association still has. The Commonwealth counts around fifty member nations, some left and rejoined like South Africa, or were suspended and readmitted like Pakistan or just suspended like Zimbabwe or left and never came back like Ireland. Some former members no longer exist, like Newfoundland (now part of Canada) or Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania). The countries range from very large in population (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and 177 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="185"?> Nigeria) and very large in area like the continent and country of Australia to very small in area and in population like the island of Grenada. While another island in the Caribbean, Barbados, chose to become a republic in the early 2020s, it also chose to remain in the Commonwealth. After the vocal criticism about British racist heritage in Jamaica and the Bahamas during a Caribbean tour by the future heir to the throne, Prince William admitted that he might not become the leader of the same Commonwealth when he ’ s crowned king. Other islands had provoked a war in the early 1980s, as you ’ ll read later in this chapter. The last remnant of the British Empire are the British Overseas Territories, which are also members of the Commonwealth through their close ties to the United Kingdom like the Falkland Islands, a small group of small islands in the South Atlantic that have far more sheep than inhabitants. Other political units like the Crown Dependencies including the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man 1 are neither part of the Commonwealth nor part of the UK. The current Commonwealth is only partly concerned with a common wealth for all since economics plays only one role among many in Britain ’ s relationship to the countries that used to be part of its huge Empire. Moving away from the Commonwealth now, let ’ s look at another important British role in international relations, one that ended in 2021. Fig. 6.5 This photo was taken from inside the Commonwealth Cemetery, part of Cologne ’ s Südfriedhof and one example of exterritoriality, an area in one country that officially belongs to another. We ’ re on British soil just a few kilometers from Cologne Cathedral! Fig. 6.4 The flag of the Commonwealth of Nations was adopted in the 1970s and redesigned in the mid 2010s. If you count the sunrays that form the C in this current version of the flag, you ’ ll come up with a number that never corresponded to the number of nations of the Commonwealth but that is supposed to indicate the many facets of Commonwealth work around a golden globe. 178 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="186"?> The relationship between the UK and the EU could be described as stormy with patches of friendliness and lots of mistrust. Let ’ s just look at a few of the stops on the bumpy road of Britain ’ s integration into Europe and then departure from it, known as Brexit. First Britain applied for membership in what was called the European Economic Community (EEC). After being turned down twice by the French leader Charles de Gaulle, Britain was finally accepted and became a member in 1973. The British government held a referendum two years later, and the majority of the voters confirmed Britain ’ s membership. Britain was one of the poorer countries in the EEC in the 70s and 80s and also had relatively few small farms. Most EEC spending was on farm subsidies, so most of the funding from Europe went to other countries. Thatcher therefore won a special rebate from the EEC, which the EU continued and which in effect returned some of the membership contribution that Britain paid every year. These financial aspects weren ’ t a clear-cut case of the UK a winner or a loser, but other EU countries also had their own financial interests, so there was disagreement about the British rebate. The EU did repeatedly what it usually does with complicated financial debates: postponed a final decision about ending the special rebate while reforming some of the controversial agricultural funding. Another financial connection between the EU and the UK is much easier to explain and is something that every tourist knows who crosses the Channel. In spite of signing the Maastricht Treaty in the early 90s, which founded the European Union and established the euro as a future currency of all member states, the UK negotiated an opt-out clause allowing the country to postpone adopting the euro due to the feared unpopularity of such a move. With no euro, no participation in the Schengen passport-free travel zone, and with the growth of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Britain remained a very skeptical member of the EU. Eurosceptics weren ’ t only in UKIP: the Conservatives had a minority who were always prepared to blame Brussels for whatever wasn ’ t going right in the UK. David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister of a rare coalition government with the Liberal Democrats 5, expected that the coalition would be reelected and that the Liberal Democrats would reject any referendum on EU membership, so he thought he would be able to offer the referendum in the run-up to the election without running the riks of fulfilling his promise afterwards. To the surprise of many, including Cameron, the Tories (another UK in EEC £ not € referendum? referendum! 179 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="187"?> name for the Conservatives 5) won the election handily, so the Liberal Democrats weren ’ t needed for a majority. Those Tory politicians critical of the EU now demanded that Cameron keep his promise, and a referendum was announced for 2016. Cameron then saw his chance to triumph as someone who used the threat of leaving the EU in order to gain improved membership conditions, and the other EU members cooperated in the hope that the British would make a wise decision. A new agreement giving the UK even more of a special status that it already had would take effect after a Remain vote. The Vote Leave campaign claimed that leaving the EU would result in border controls to keep out immigrants, in reduced payments to Brussels, and would enable Britain to make global trade deals without any EU interference. Vote Remain argued that a leaving would lessen British influence and also harm the economy. German research in the early 20s exposed the role played by a rich elite who supported the Vote Leave campaign because they expected they would profit more without EU regulations. Most pundits and the betting markets predicted a win for the people who voted to remain in the EU. In the early morning hours of Friday 24 June I checked the first results and saw, to my surprise, that the betting markets had gone from 90 % probability for remain to 60 %. The first results from Sunderland in the northeast of England showed a higher than expected number of leave votes. People across the EU and around the world watching BBC International News saw how it became shockingly clear by 5 a. m. that the United Kingdom was leaving the EU, as the famous BBC television journalist David Dimbleby 10 announced, not trying to hide his shock: “ The British people have spoken and the answer is: We ’ re out. ” The results were much closer and much different than the betting markets had suggested with 52 % voting Leave across the UK. The results in the four nations of the United Kingdom differed greatly. In England and Wales 53 % voted Leave; in Northern Ireland only 44 % and in Scotland a mere 38 % did so. Later that day I tried to impress on my students the importance of taking action in support of their beliefs. The vast majority of young people in Britain were against leaving the EU, but too few had bothered to vote. After the referendum, younger British people realized that Brexit had robbed them of their chances to study and work across Europe and carried signs in pro-EU demonstrations saying Brexit had stolen their future. “ We ’ re out ” and “ Brexit stole my future ” 180 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="188"?> The result of the Brexit referendum not only shocked the financial markets with the pound falling to new lows against the euro and US dollar, but it also seemed to catch the Brexiteers - the name for the politicians in favor of leaving - by surprise because they had apparently not expected to win. One of the founding members of UKIP, Nigel Farage, seemed more prepared to attack a majority for remain than to celebrate the leave vote. Cameron announced his resignation hours after the result outside of 10 Downing Street. The Conservatives chose Theresa May to replace him and thus to become the UK ’ s second female prime minister, who became known for her slogan “ Brexit means Brexit. ” The next four years were filled with hope, disappointment, and gradually exhaustion for both the British and for the EU. Brexit became the overriding topic in Parliament and in the media. May chose a bad time for a new general election, which the Conservatives won but with a greatly reduced majority. The split between leavers and remainers in the general population reflected a split in the House of Commons, which continually refused to ratify an agreement for withdrawal from the EU, and the original date for withdrawal was postponed and postponed again. A little more than three years after David Cameron resigned, Theresa May resigned after failing to get a Brexit deal passed in Parliament. The Conservatives chose Boris Johnson 3 5 as her successor, whose failed architectural plans you might remember 1 and whose taste in music you ’ ll be reading about later. 11 Johnson called a snap election with the slogan “ get Brexit done, ” and won the biggest majority in the House of Commons since Margaret Thatcher forty years previously. More than 3½ years after the referendum, the United Kingdom finally left the European Union at 11 p. m. Greenwich time on 31 January 2020 just a short time before the coronavirus began to shut down the UK. In spite of the pandemic, talks on the post-Brexit relationship with the EU continued. The UK and the EU finally agreed a trade deal just before the UK left the single market at the end of 2020. After his many scandals and a dramatic decline in popularity, Conservative party MPs pressured Boris Johnson to resign in mid 2022. In seven years four different Conservative prime ministers all marked by the Brexit crisis, two of whom were forced out of office not by the British people but by members of their own party. The results of this split between the UK and the EU remain unclear. Will the hopes of the leave voters come true: economic prosperity “ Brexit means Brexit ” Brexit, Brexit, Brexit UK alone in the world? 181 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="189"?> through trade deals with the rest of the world? Will the rest of the world be interested in intensifying ties with a country that is no longer part of the largest common trade area in the world? How much longer will the United Kingdom continue to exist in its present form, or will leaving one union lead to the breakup of another with Scotland an independent country and Northern Ireland disappearing in Irish reunfication? The leave voters perhaps forgot that the European Union helped bring peace to a continent torn apart by two world wars. The remain voters perhaps weren ’ t able to appreciate the historic achievement of an extraordinary political event. Even before the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, the British had often looked not eastwards towards “ Europe ” or the “ Continent ” but westwards towards the US. And one important aspect of Britain ’ s role in the world is its special relationship to the US. One of the quotes that we could ’ ve started this chapter with is usually attributed to the playwright George Bernard Shaw: “ England and America are two countries separated by a common language. ” And although the US and the UK were allies in both World Wars, there have been some interesting differences in foreign policy that would ’ ve perhaps resulted in conflict if the Anglo-American ties hadn ’ t been so long-lasting. However, at least for the first fifty years of the US ’ s existence, the US-UK relationship was one based on war and on conflict with each other: the War of Independence and the War of 1812. 2 But then Britain supported American attempts to limit Spain ’ s influence in the western hemisphere in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine and didn ’ t side with Spain against the US (as most European countries did) in the Spanish-American War. American support for Britain and the other Allies in World War I, though late, cemented a relationship that was also based on common institutions, traditions, and a common language - in spite of some differences that Shaw was making fun of in his famous quote. Of course, American support of Britain and later involvement in World War II further strengthened a sense of common goals: the more than a million American troops stationed in Britain during the war represented a “ friendly invasion. ” Churchill used the term “ special relationship ” to describe American-British relations shortly after World War II. And this special relationship was able to survive postwar political disagreements like the Suez Crisis in the 50s when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, provoking Britain and France to attack Egypt. After both the UN and the US took a firm stance against UK - US special relationship tests from Suez to the Falklands 182 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="190"?> the attack and thus against Britain, soldiers were withdrawn. The British decision to go to war in the Falklands in the early 80s could have been interpreted as having violated the Monroe Doctrine, yet the US kept out of the conflict between Britain and Argentina. Margaret Thatcher ’ s response to Argentina ’ s invasion of the small group of islands was to declare war on Argentina, and two months later British forces had won. The UK along with the UN condemned a US invasion of Grenada, a Caribbean island and, as you now know, also an independent member of the British Commonwealth. In spite of these provocations, the special Anglo-American relationship has stood the test of time. Along with historical and traditional connections, personal connections are further evidence of the special relationship. Millions of Americans claim British descent, and the first woman elected to the House of Commons wasn ’ t only an American but had a name you might recognize: Nancy Astor of the famous Astor family with whom we began this chapter. Two important prime ministers, Churchill and Macmillan, had American mothers. The much publicized and criticized close friendship between George W. Bush and Tony Blair is an example of the important British support of the unpopular American involvement in the Iraq War. You ’ ll remember similarities between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. 3 One other US-UK connection for Johnson is his American cititzenship, having been born in a hospital in New York City, which he claimed would allow him technically to become president. (Johnson later renounced his American citizenship to avoid paying American taxes.) Of course, American fascination with British royalty not only made the story of Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan ’ s split from the Royal Family so popular on both sides of the Atlantic, their children Archie Harrison and Lilibet Diana both have dual citizenship, the first due to his mother being American and the second due also to place of birth. One final example of US-UK connections is the close friendship between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, both of whom we ’ ve read about in this chapter and both of whom could provide a fitting connection between the two topics of this chapter: economics and international relations. We ’ re at the end of the chapter and with Vladimir Putin ’ s invasion of Ukraine also at the end of an era of peace in Europe. The first two editions of this book didn ’ t include a word about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization although the UK and the US were founding American mothers and American princesses NATO, Putin ’ s War, end or rebirth of Europe? 183 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="191"?> members of NATO a few years after the end of World War II. The main purpose of NATO (don ’ t use an article with the acronym unless you ’ re speaking German) was to contain the spread of communism. The first Secretary General of NATO, a British diplomat and army general, is said to have described the purpose of the organization in oft-quoted words: “ to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. ” The number of member countries has grown to more than two dozen European countries and the US and Canada with another 35 countries cooperating to various degrees. The expansion of NATO to Eastern European countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been called one of the most successful examples of American foreign policy. The military alliance is supposed to insure that the threat of war in Europe is kept in check with the promise that any attack on one member nation is an attack on all. Only once in the 75-year history of NATO has this guarantee been invoked, the 9/ 11 attacks mentioned earlier in this chapter. The shock and brutality of the Russian invasion in early 2022 has led to seismic changes in NATO and in the relationship between EU countries as well as between the US and UK and EU. The close alliance between the US and European countries nearly destroyed by Donald Trump ’ s admiration for Putin ’ s autocratic power has now been restored under Joe Biden, tensions caused by Brexit between the UK and the EU have faded as both the UK and other NATO members as well as EU members now face Russia as a common enemy. The world-changing events in early 2022 are especially relevant for the topics of this chapter - economics and international relations - and undertstanding the roles of the US and UK in a hopefully peaceful, strengthened, and united Europe has become even more crucial for us all. While you can easily see lots of news footage of the real Margaret Thatcher, you can also see one of the more famous movie versions of her life as The Iron Lady with the American actor Meryl Streep winning her third Oscar for the title role. Watch it and see if you can notice any historical inaccuracies. While the reviews of the movie were mixed overall except for universal praise for Streep ’ s performance, I ’ d like to turn one critique into a reason for watching. Roger Ebert criticizes: “ Few people were neutral in their feelings about her, 184 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="192"?> except the makers of this picture. ” I definitely belong to those who despise her policies and condemn the harm her government caused, but the movie prevents me from feeling the personal hatred that many people felt towards her, evidence of which became clear during her funeral in the early 2010s. Choose any blog entries in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, who writes about health care, social policy, politics, and economics too, fitting for someone who won a Nobel prize for economics. He writes for a general audience, and you ’ ll soon discover why he ’ s one of the most popular economists on college campuses across the US. Both his writing and his interviews contradict completely a famous 19 th century view of economics as a “ dismal science. ” Few can imagine eating popcorn and enjoying debates in the Bundestag, but many people around the world watched debates in the House of Commons leading up to the final official withdrawal of the UK from the EU. You can find video clips of House Speaker John Bercow combining competence, arrogance, and humor in the endless discussions on various Brexit proposals and also experience why he became a widely popular celebrity. The House of Commons broadcasts all sessions online. The sessions - even without Bercow, who stepped down as Speaker at the end of the 2010s - are still sometimes entertaining and always intriguing. Exercises 1. Use the strange chapter title to explain as much of the content of the chapter as possible. 2. Name one member of one of the most illustrious American families who made it all the way into the House of Commons and research why a statue dedicated to her became controversial in the 2020s with US, UK, and Nazi Germany connections. 3. Name all specific places mentioned in the chapter and connect them to the topics of economics and/ or international relations. Challenging interesting projects: 1. Try and meet some American tourists travelling in Germany and engage them in a conversation (not usually difficult since American tourists tend to be very friendly and talkative). Ask them to describe what they consider important about the American economy. Ask them how much vacation they and their friends have. Then tell them the facts about the average length of 185 Chapter 6 A Common Wealth? (economics, international relations) <?page no="193"?> German vacation and note their response. 2. Try and meet some British tourists travelling in Germany and engage them in a conversation (perhaps explain you ’ re a student doing research for an important project). Ask them to describe the most characteristic aspect of the British economy. Then ask them as tactfully as possible if they think Britain should have a closer relationship with the US or with the EU. (The answers may depend on whether you have a recognizable German accent or American accent.) And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you-could-become-a-21st-century-captain-of-industry-or-maybe-even-Head-ofthe-UN tasks: 1. Come up with an economic policy that allows for the free markets that Americans know and love and at the same time doesn ’ t allow for the kind of financial crashes that America - and then the world - had to endure in the 1920s and again at the end of the first decade of the 21 st century. 2. Devise a future foreign policy for Britain that allows it to maintain its close ties to the Commonwealth, an important part of its history and tradition, while at the same time improving its damaged relationship to the European Union. 3. Create American foreign policy that doesn ’ t veer wildly from isolationism (actions such as refusing to join the League of Nations or defying United Nations ’ mandates or withdrawing from international organizations like the World Health Organization) to expansionism (playing the world ’ s policeman in naively trying to impose democracy on countries that have little experience of this form of government) but does attempt to export the American dream of promise and decency and equality. And for those with time and passion and an interest in bucks, pounds, diplomacy, and such: … the American banking system with its risks; reasons why socialism and communism have never taken hold in the US; the importance of labor unions in the US and even more so in the UK; MI5 and MI6, James Bond and other spies like Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt etc. and their role in international affairs; America ’ s war against terror as an encore of a failed foreign policy; Britain as a former world power; America ’ s exceptionalism as a better key to understanding foreign policy than the traditional dichotomy between isolationism and expansionism … 186 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="194"?> Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) “ Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! ” The Statue of Liberty “ cries with silent lips ” in the last stanza of Emma Lazarus ’ poem “ The New Colossus ” engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship title 1 st edition Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents title 3 rd edition Who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I end up? Three basic questions that we can ask ourselves as human beings could result in thousands of pages discussing categories, identity, logic, and Aristotle if we were doing philosophy. While we ’ ll be dealing with the complicated and fascinating issue of identity in Part II, let ’ s limit this chapter to groups closely connected to immigration. When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ the waves of American immigration, ▶ problems with naming in the US, ▶ American Indians, Black Americans, Hispanics, ▶ metaphors used to describe American society, ▶ the beginnings of British immigration, ▶ problems with naming in Britain, ▶ Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, African-Caribbean, Black African, Chinese, ▶ the future of immigration in Britain. We began with the British in the chapters on education and political life; let ’ s start with the Americans in this chapter because immigration has been a much more important and integral part of American identity from the very beginning of what became the 187 Chapter 7 <?page no="195"?> United States. The challenges of immigration in the United Kingdom are also becoming increasingly important and changing the face of this country before our very eyes. You may remember that we ’ ve had the problem of where to begin before. 2 If we define immigration as the movement of people from one place to another, then we could theoretically start with the first human beings who moved to what would later become the United States, whether these first humans came from Siberia or from the Pacific Islands or even from the European continent. 2 Although the descendants of the people who were there when the Europeans arrived make up only a very small percentage of the population of America today, the American Indians - the real natives, you could say - still form part of American consciousness in general and thus deserve their own part of this chapter. But before we have a look at the Indians and others in more detail, let ’ s do a quick summary of immigration to the US and use some common terms to describe immigration in general. The image of waves gradually extending throughout an entire continent could be a useful way of imagining the first human beings crossing the Bering Bridge from Asia to Alaska and then travelling across both American continents. 2 Immigration during the first hundred years of the existence of the US can also be imagined in peaks and troughs as immigration increased and decreased - sometimes dramatically. Let ’ s have a brief look at four of these waves. First wave cresting mid 19 th century ▶ from: Western and Northern Europe (Germany, Ireland, Britain) ▶ push factors: Irish potato famine, revolutions, political and religious persecution, overcrowding, unemployment ▶ pull factors: jobs, California Gold Rush The Native American Party - which had nothing to do with American Indians - was the name of a mid 19 th century political party with the goal of creating laws to restrict immigration, especially of Catholics. Since members of the party were secretive and answered questions about the party with “ I don ’ t know, ” they gained the name Know Nothings. US immigration: where to begin? waves with peaks and troughs 188 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="196"?> Second wave from late 19 th to early 20 th century with a very high peak ▶ from: southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Austria-Hungary, Poland, Russia, Greece, Balkans) and China, Japan ▶ push factors: poverty, political and religious persecution ▶ pull factors: effects of the Homestead Act, many jobs in industry and transportation like the building of railroads 2 especially by Irish and Chinese laborers The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to commemorate the French- American alliance during the War of Independence and arrived in New York in the late 1880s in time to welcome the millions of immigrants who began to arrive by ship in New York. Near the Statue of Liberty a receiving station on Ellis Island became the first stop for millions on their way to a new life. Laws and agreements drastically restricted immigration from Asia. Peaking with the pull of industrialization, this wave ended in a trough when the Great Depression erased all of America ’ s economic pull factors at the end of the 1920s. Government law already drastically restricting immigration from Asia established quotas that favored those of western European heritage and thus limited immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Third wave from World War II to the 90s ▶ from: at first from Germany and Eastern Europe but then increasingly the Western Hemisphere (Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the West Indies), Asia (Philippines, Korea, India, China, Vietnam), and the Middle East ▶ push factors: war refugees (from hot wars like World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and from the Cold War), poverty, unemployment, political persecution ▶ pull factors: jobs, freedom and peaceful living conditions, family reunions During World War II and especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-American citizens were subjected to internment camps, which the US government officially apologized for - nearly half a century later. Restrictive immigration policies were somewhat loosened and national quotas gradually dropped, allowing a huge increase of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Reunifying families became an important reason for visas. 189 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="197"?> Fourth wave still going on ▶ from: more than half from Latin America (especially Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and El Salvador) and a quarter from Asia (especially the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam) ▶ push factors: poverty, desire to join relatives and family in the US ▶ pull factors: money and for Mexicans the chance of supporting their impoverished families just over the border This wave contains the biggest crest of any wave and the highest absolute number of immigrants ever with a percentage of the total population born abroad near the record 15 %, which was the peak of the second wave in the late 19 th century. Of course the total population in the 21 st century is now four time more than it was a century earlier. New laws in the 1960s abolished quotas based on national origin. The Obama administration attempted to deal with unauthorized immigrants by granting them a path to legal status and to citizenship. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM) has been introduced in Congress again and again without becoming law. President Obama used executive action to stop the deportation of young immigrants, and then President Trump ordered a border wall to be built between Mexico and the US. The fate of the young people known as Dreamers after the name of the act remains in the balance. Even though the majority of Americans have repeatedly said they are in favor of awarding these people a legal way to gain citizenship, Congress has failed again and again to agree on legislation. Courts have still to issue a definitive ruling on whether a president has the authority to defer deporting young immigrants. After a glance at the great waves of immigration, let ’ s have a more detailed look at some minority groups. We ’ ll be talking about names throughout the chapter and can start with a name that has become more common in the last few years. “ People of color, ” sometimes abbreviated as POC, was originally sometimes used by Black Americans in the 1960s but now extends to Asian Americans, American Indians, Latinos, and multiracial Americans to encourage solidarity among all people who suffer systemic racism because of their skin color. Some people have criticized the term as overlooking important differences among these group. Another, more controversial term is AAPI for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. BIPOC is a more people of color, POC, AAPI, BICOP 190 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="198"?> recent abbreviation for Black Indigenous People of Color. The three minority groups we ’ ll be looking at more closely could all be considered people of color. We ’ ll begin with the one group who immigrated first, thousands of years ago, the I of BIPOC. During the late 1960s when African Americans were demonstrating, and protests against the Vietnam War were filling the front pages of newspapers, a book entitled Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee appeared and became a bestseller. It portrayed the government ’ s treatment of American Indians in a shockingly honest light. More than 35 years after the book ’ s publication an award-winning television film adaption reminded many viewers of the story of the massacre of the Lakota Sioux (pronounced su: ) tribe by the US Army near a small river called Wounded Knee in South Dakota. We ’ ve already encountered American Indians and learned how they were herded across the country by European immigrants eager for land. 2 We ’ ve learned what Manifest Destiny meant for White Americans - the relentless God-willed move westwards all the way to the Pacific. 6 The Trail of Tears was started by the president Andrew Jackson, who believed that Indians were “ savage hunters. ” 2 This forced movement west ended in 1890 at Wounded Knee, in what was later to become the state of South Dakota, with the massacre of the Sioux by the US Army. More than eighty years later armed supporters of what had become the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized control of the Wounded Knee site, demanding a US Senate investigation of Native American problems. In contrast to the 19 th century, the 20 th and 21 st centuries have seen some progress in American Indians regaining some of the rights taken away from them. Let ’ s take a closer look at their status now and begin with the issue of naming. As we ’ ll see with African Americans and Hispanics in the US and with Asians in the UK, naming can be a big issue. Paleo- American is one name given to the indigenous people who inhabited the American continents. 2 The Europeans named them Indians, based on the subcontinent India that explorers were looking for when they stumbled upon a New World. How do you feel when you hear the phrases “ with the feather ” and “ with the dot ” to distinguish American Indians from Indians from India? The term Native American came into use in the 1960s in the US in an attempt to avoid one ambiguity but actually ended up by producing another ambiguity: all people born in the United States could be called Native Americans. Many people who might be called American Indians or Native Americans from Wounded Knee to … … to Trail of Tears back to Wounded Knee Native Americans? American Indians? 191 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="199"?> themselves prefer to be called by their tribal names. Should we choose tribes out of the many hundreds present when the Europeans arrived or from the hundreds of federally recognized ones? Alphabetically and geographically we could go from the Absentee-Shawnee Tribe, one group of Shawnees who lived by farming and hunting on the East coast, to the Zuni, one of the Pueblo peoples who lived as farmers in the deserts of the southwest. Remember the name of the island within walking distance of Russia? 1 A tribe of Native Alaskans, the Iñupiat, live there. Perhaps better known are the nomadic Apaches and Navajos in the west of the US, the Cheyenne in the Great Plains, the Cherokees in the southeast. As you might have already noticed, we ’ re using the name American Indian in this book since some surveys indicate that a majority of American Indians or Native Americans or Amerindians or Red Indians or Indigenous Peoples of the Americas prefer to be called American Indians but also accept Native Americans. Now that we ’ ve explained one fairly complicated issue, we can turn to the next rather complicated issue: the relationship between American Indians and the federal government. One reason for the complicatedness is the degree of autonomy American Indians have had. The 14 th Amendment to the Constitution, which we ’ ve heard about in the context of Reconstruction, 2 had granted full citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, but a Supreme Court ruling (Elk v. Wilkins) in the late 19 th century claimed that since the federal government made treaties with Indian reservations similar to treaties with foreign nations, the people born on these reservations couldn ’ t automatically be granted American citizenship. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 finally granted full citizenship rights to all Indians. About 1 % of all Americans claim to be at least partly American Indian with the majority of them living in western states like California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Some of the protests and reforms that began in the 70s have improved the life of American Indians nowadays although poverty and malnutrition are still big problems for American Indians living on reservations. But some tribes are able to make money from casinos or from tourism or from the management of the natural resources found on their land. The view of American Indians as savages, held not only by Andrew Jackson, is becoming more and more a relic of the past. While you might be able to find accurate portrayals of Indians in a few western amendment … ruling … act … on the path to citizenship current status 192 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="200"?> films, it wasn ’ t until Kevin Costner ’ s popular and award-winning film Dancing with Wolves in the 1990s that American Indians were presented as being neither the idealized noble savage nor the demonized brutal savage. Remember some place names given by European settlers? 2 I could ’ ve mentioned state and city names that are definitely of Indian origin like the states Arkansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, or the cities Chicago, Miami, Seattle, or Tulsa. The Iroquois Great Law of Peace influenced the development of American democracy, and Benjamin Franklin was an admirer of the Iroquois leader Canassatego, who encouraged the 13 English colonies to unite and used the metaphor that many arrows are harder to break than one. Take a look at the arrows in the Great Seal of the US 9 to see how this metaphor became visualized as part of the national symbol. Two hundred fifty years later a record number of American Indians are running for public office. The first to serve as Secretary of the Interior was Debra Haaland of the Laguna Pueblo. American Indian attitudes towards the environment influenced Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir. 9 Sporting activities of American Indian origin include canoeing, lacrosse, and tug-of-war. The American Thanksgiving holiday often explicitly includes mention of the American Indians who saved some of the first European settlers from starvation. Americans can also give thanks to the Indians not only for foods like potatoes, pumpkins, cranberries, and turkey but also for the names of foods ranging from avocado to chocolate to pecan. American Indian stereotypes have been exploited for selling everything from Land O Lakes butter to Coppertone suntan oil to Cherokee jeeps. An exhibit entitled Americans at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the largest collection of Native American art and artefacts in the world, reminds us of a perhaps surprising fact: “ Indians are less than one percent of the population. Yet images and names of Indians are everywhere. ” Topics in the 2020s included renaming American sports teams with racially insensitive names like redskins and dropping stereotypical school mascots, evidence that finally some are listening to American Indians, who have been calling for change since the 60s. We ’ ve begun our look at American immigrant minority groups with the American Indians, who in a sense didn ’ t immigrate but were simply there long before others arrived. We ’ ll continue now with the one group who were transported in terrible conditions on some of the place names, politics, environment … … food, sports, pop culture, name changes 1619 infamy begins 193 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="201"?> very first ships that the Europeans sailed to the New World, as now everyone who has heard of the 1619 project knows. 2 African Americans have been such a popular topic at German schools that you probably don ’ t need much of a review here, so I ’ ll try and provide you with some less familiar details. Before we look at problematic aspects of names for African Americans, we need to look at the problems in using the word “ race. ” The US Census Bureau has had a difficult struggle with using “ race ” in their statistics. In the past some thought that using objectively definable characteristics such as skin color or facial features could classify people as members of a particular race. A hundred and fifty years ago, the US government offered a choice between three colors only: white, black, and mulatto. A few decades later with the increase of immigration from China and the need to count American Indians, the color palette was expanded to include yellow and red. Nowadays the Census Bureau offers multiple choices for race based on self-identification, which is evidence of the complexity in defining who has a right to be called American and of a change in attitudes towards race and ethnicity. The Census Bureau also admits that race categories include both racial and groups defined by the country of birth (like Mexico or Vietnam) and are “ sociopolitical constructs. ” A separate race question in the 2020 census included 14 separate choices plus a “ some other race ” category with an additional box for origin. Over the course of the last hundred years race has become a matter of personal choice with respondents deciding which race they identify with and no longer a choice made by others that could decide which school, which part of the bus, or which toilets people could choose. The Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson at the end of the 19 th century 2 was one reason why the equal rights promised to former slaves at the end of the Civil War would take another hundred years at least to be actually granted. The Court ’ s “ separate but equal ” decision confirmed the Jim Crow laws, which effectively set up a system of segregation in public buildings and public transport and which remained in effect until long after the end of the Gilded and the Jazz Ages. 2 In the 2020s Jim Crow appeared again: former President Obama lambasted filibustering 5 as a relic of the Jim Crow era, and President Biden warned Americans that voting restrictions passed by Republican state legislatures were evidence that parts of the US were backsliding to the time of Jim Crow. US Census Bureau and race separate but equal? 194 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="202"?> Fig. 7.1 Jim Crow was a figure first created by Thomas Rice, a White actor who colored his face black and ridiculed Black former slaves with song and dance routines as part of minstrel shows popular in American cities in the 19 th century and also in London, where this print was made. Rice died before the Civil War began. His figure of Jim Crow came to designate laws that oppressed Black Americans and in effect deprived them of the rights they should have gained through the 13 th , 14 th , and 15 th Amendments. 2 Note the awkward posture, tattered clothes and shoes, and the frog and the reptiles all framed in stage curtains. The Supreme Court was to decide yet again on the “ separate but equal ” doctrine in the 1950s. Oliver Brown ’ s daughter wanted to attend a school near her home in Topeka, Kansas. 2 One of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in American history, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, pronounced N-doubleA-C-P), encouraged Brown and other parents with the same complaint to sue. You ’ ve already read 2 about one of the other cases. Four years later the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal. This decision not only overturned the earlier Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson with its “ separate but equal ” doctrine but also paved the way for the desegregation of schools and further desegregation in general. separate can ’ t be equal! Brown v. Board of Education, NAACP 195 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="203"?> You may remember reading about the Square Deal associated with Theodore Roosevelt 2 and the New Deal associated with another Roosevelt, FDR. 3 FDR ’ s successor was Harry S. Truman, who attempted to have Congress pass some of the provisions of what he called a Fair Deal. Many of the programs in this Fair Deal were supposed to give African Americans the full rights they should have gotten after the Civil War. But these programs weren ’ t fully implemented until a generation after Truman with Lyndon B. Johnson ’ s Great Society in the 1960s. We need now to return to the important issue of naming and begin with a list: Negros, Colored, Afro-Americans, and African Americans, Blacks. These are all names you ’ ll find in sources, but only the terms African Americans and Blacks are commonly used nowadays. The word “ black ” referring to people is now often capitalized - as is the case in our book. The Associated Press 10 made the decision to change from a small to a capital letter on Juneteenth, 12 the commemoration day of when the last African Americans learned that they ’ d been freed after the Civil War. Colored as a name for African Americans was used as a polite euphemism until the middle of the 20 th century and can still be found in organizations like the abovementioned NAACP, founded at the beginning of the 20 th century by a group of intellectuals including W. E. B. Du Bois. To this day the NAACP is a large and respected national organization with the goal of helping African Americans achieve full equality. “ Negro ” originally meaning merely black was commonly used until the middle of the 20 th century and is still to be found in some organizations like the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), an organization founded in the 1940s to raise money for historically Black colleges and universities and to provide scholarships for Black students. Nowadays “ Negro ” isn ’ t used anymore as a name for African Americans and can be considered offensive. But during the Civil Rights Movement both the terms Negro and Black were accepted usage: you can hear Martin Luther King saying both in his famous “ I Have a Dream ” speech in 1963. Gradually Negro became replaced by black (at first with a small letter), which became used in the expressions black pride, black power and black is beautiful. Another popular name associated with the late 60s and 70s is Afro-American; the word afro also referred to the large hairstyle associated with musicians like Jimi Hendrix or much later Lauryn Hill. You might still hear the term Afro-American used by Germans speaking out-of-date English. Deals for a Great Society obsolete names, black and Black 196 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="204"?> Black as a name for African Americans has some disadvantages: as a description of skin color and racial characteristics it doesn ’ t apply to all African Americans, and Black can also refer to immigrants from the Caribbean and South America, who don ’ t share the same heritage as the descendants of former slaves. “ African American ” has also been criticized for its over-emphasis on an African heritage, which many African Americans may not identify with. Barack Obama described himself as Black and as African American although his mother was White and his father was a student from Kenya who never became an American citizen and returned to Africa after Obama ’ s birth. African American has become a commonly used name partly perhaps because it makes an explicit comparison with other ethnic groups like German Americans or Asian Americans. Black is the first word in a slogan that is currently well-known all around the world: Black Lives Matter. This broad social movement gained prominence at the beginning of the 2010s as a hashtag 15 and then went global during the world-wide demonstrations in the summer of 2020 2 and is composed of many networks, local groups, activists. All have the goal of protesting police brutality against Black people in the United States and beyond. White support of the BLM movement has increased in the US especially after George Floyd ’ s murder. 2 Now that we ’ ve looked at names for African Americans in general, let ’ s mention a few names of individual African Americans whom you may not know: W. E. B. Du Bois, Shirley Chisholm, Cicely Tyson. If the name William Edward Burghardt Du Bois rings a bell, then you ’ ve been paying very close attention. He was one of the founders of the NAACP. His very French-looking name came from his father, who was of French Huguenot ancestry. Du Bois gave specific instructions on how to pronounce his name: “ My name is pronounced in the clear English fashion: Du, with u as in Sue; Bois, as in oi in voice. The accent is on the second syllable. ” Du Bois attended the University of Berlin as a student in the late 19 th century and became the first Black ever to gain a PhD from Harvard. He became a leading scholar in the at the time new discipline of sociology, doing research into the situation of Blacks in America including studies of the Black Belt 6 and describing the “ double consciousness ” of people who are both Black and American. In contrast to another highly respected Black scholar, Booker T. Washington, Du Bois didn ’ t believe in full integration and instead believed that agitation and protest were sometimes necessary. He wasn ’ t only a political activist with the goal of equality for African African American? Black? BLM Du Bois and double consciousness 197 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="205"?> Americans, he was also a supporter of women ’ s rights including the right to abortion, 3 and a peace activist who was interested in Marxism, visiting the Soviet Union and China in the late 1950s. Always interested in Africa and embittered by US government treatment, he became a citizen of the African country of Ghana just before he died in his mid 90s. Du Bois has been commemorated on two postage stamps as a representative of Black heritage and as a social activist. Fig. 7.2 This photograph of W. E. B. Du Bois taken in the early 20 th century is from the digital archive of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of the dozens of Smithsonian museums and institutions in Washington DC and around the US. A museum dedicated to African American history and culture had been planned for many decades but wasn ’ t finally completed until 2016 and was opened by President Obama at the end of his second term. The museum has tens of thousands of objects showing the influence, rich culture, and also the pain of African Americans, including a room dedicated to Emmet Till as you might remember from another graphic painting. 2 Maybe you thought Hillary Clinton was the first woman to run for the presidency? While Clinton was the first serious contender to become the nominee of a major political party, Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, was also the first African American to try and become the presidential nominee of one of the two major parties. Chisholm was born in New York, spent her childhood in Barbados, one of the islands of the West Indies, an area of the world we ’ ll be hearing more about later in connection with UK immigration. Chisholm ’ s autobiography Unbought and Unbossed summarizes her determination to change the status quo of White male dominance in American politics. She wittily said that if you don ’ t have a “ seat at the table ” of power, then you should bring your own chair. Shirley Chisholm was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama posthumously in 2015. unbought unbossed Shirley Chisholm 198 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="206"?> At first working as a model and later as actor, Cicely Tyson played strong African American women in films, among others Harriet Tubman 2 in A Woman Called Moses, and Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King. One of her most famous roles was the fictional story of a slave who lived long enough to see the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Cicely Tyson acted in film, on television, and on stage in a career spanning seven decades from the second half of the 20 th century right until the 2020s, when she died in her mid 90s. You read earlier about changes to the names of sports teams and products that exploited American Indian stereotypes to sell products. George Floyd ’ s murder and the ensuing nationwide demonstrations in the summer of 2020 2 brought about a general reckoning with stereotypical names and images of American products. I remember using Aunt Jemima syrup for pancakes with the smiling Black woman ’ s face on the bottle, buying Uncle Ben ’ s rice with the smiling Black man ’ s face, and eating at the Sambo ’ s restaurant chain, fully ignorant of the happy Black slave myth behind this figures or the use of Aunt and Uncle as a way of avoiding the use of Mrs. or Mr., which White racists considered too deferential. Social media abounds with nostalgic comments lamenting the changes. As with the removal of statues to Confederate war heroes, 12 the issue is the same: Who decides what a society commemorates? And what do people need to know about classic movies? The epic movie Gone with the Wind, 11 abbreviated often as GWTW, can now only be shown with a disclaimer pointing out the historical context and denouncing the film ’ s racist depictions. Before we turn to our next minority group, let ’ s look at one government policy that has attempted to right historical wrongs not only for African Americans but for other minority groups as well. One of the important policy decisions of LBJ ’ s Great Society program of the mid 60s, mentioned briefly above, was the effort to improve opportunities in education and in employment for minorities and for women. Affirmative action was designed to give those who had suffered most from a history of discrimination preference in getting places at universities and jobs in businesses that received federal funding. By the late 70s some people began to criticize affirmative action as a kind of reverse discrimination that led to White students and job seekers not being given a chance to compete. By the end of the 90s many laws were being changed to prohibit government agencies actor across ages Cicely Tyson Little Sambo, Aunt Jemimah, GWTW affirmative action affirmative or negative? 199 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="207"?> from giving preference to individuals based solely on race or sex. The first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O ’ Connor, and former President Barack Obama both said they believed that affirmative action should expire when no longer needed. How much longer affirmative action will be needed remains an ongoing question for American lawmakers and courts. In the early 2020s Californians voted to keep the ban on affirmative action for the public sector in their state, and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges, which could bring about radical changes to a policy that at least attempted to give Black Americans a better chance at being admitted to universities like Harvard. The underlying question is whether diversity is something positive or whether race and ethnicity should play no role in determining who ’ s admitted to a university or who gets a job in a company with government funding. Behind the fight over affirmative action as behind so many of contemporary controversies in America is the fear that the White male heterosexual non-collegeeducated members of society are losing more and more of the status and power they have enjoyed for so long. One living connection between Black Americans and Hispanics, our next minority group, are those who identify as Afro-Latino of African descent and with roots in the Caribbean or in Latin America. More of this group are foreign-born than the other main Hispanic groups, and they are caught in complex identity issues about skin color, racism, and heritage. One famous example is the first Afro- Latina news anchor of a major US network, 10 Ilia Calderón. The question of appropriate names is - like like for American Indians and Black Americans - also an issue for Hispanics or Latinos, the two commonly used terms to refer to people whose country of origin is one of the Spanish-speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere. The US 2020 Census uses both of these with an additional choice - Spanish - in their forms. What ’ s the difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino? Some point to the focus on the Spanish language inherent in “ Hispanic, ” whereas in “ Latino ” there is a geographical focus on Latina America, including Portuguese-speaking Brazil for Latinos. The term Hispanic avoids the gendered nouns Latino and Latina. Hispanics/ Latinos seem not to have an overall preference for one term, although a majority of them identify more with their country of origin. The Census offers four different categories: Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano; Puerto Rican; Cuban; or another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin. This Afro-Latinos Hispanic or Latino or country of origin? 200 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="208"?> last option included examples referring to countries of origin like Colombia, Guatamala, Spain. Taken together Hispanics are currently the second fastest-growing minority in the US after Asian Americans, having overtaken African Americans to become the largest minority group. Although most share a common language and a Roman Catholic religious heritage, the three largest groups, the Mexican Americans, the Puerto Ricans, and the Cubans, differ from one another in important ways. Let ’ s start with the largest Hispanic sub-group, accounting for more than half of all Hispanics: the Mexican Americans, who have also been in America longer than the others, for more than 150 years. The Mexicans, who won independence from Spain in the early 19 th century, had a large piece of land between the Rio Grande and the border of the Louisiana Purchase 2 but not many settlers, so they offered Americans moving west the chance to become Mexicans and gain land. We thus have in the early 19 th century the unusual case of Americans becoming Mexicans. Conflicts led to the founding of the Republic of Texas. “ Remember the Alamo! ” refers to the Mexican execution of Texan forces in the Alamo mission. This defeat encouraged more resistance and eventually the victory of the Texans against the Mexicans. Texas becoming part of the US led to the Mexican- American War, which resulted not only in the first use of the phrase Manifest Destiny 6 but also in the ceding of a huge portion of land from Mexico to the US. This land would later become the states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming. A less common term for Mexican Americans is Chicanos, which has a connotation of political activism. In addition to their size and the long history of their heritage within America, Mexican Americans also share a common border with the country that gives them their name, a border that ’ s more than 3,000 kilometers long and has posed political, social, and economic challenges on both sides. One of Donald Trump ’ s presidential campaign slogans was “ build the wall, ” and after the election Trump diverted money from other projects to continue some of the border barriers that were already in place and falsely claimed that Mexico would pay. Joe Biden stopped construction soon after his inauguration. Mexican Americans have a history as poor farm workers and as a group are still economically disadvantaged. One of the heroes of the Chicano movement, a civil-rights movement that began in the 1960s, Mexican roots long border, short wall civil rights, popular culture 201 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="209"?> is Cesar Chavez, a Mexican labor leader, who fought for the rights of the migrant workers. Other famous Mexican Americans are the musicians Carlos Santana and Joan Baez. Cinco de Mayo has become a day of celebrating all things Mexican in many parts of the US with positive pride in Mexican heritage, and, among White Americans, commercialization and an overemphasis on partying. We ’ ve already encountered Puerto Rico as a possible future state. 1 6 Puerto Ricans form the second-largest group of Hispanics and began emigrating from their island in the Caribbean to New York City more than fifty years ago. (The United States had invaded and occupied Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19 th century.) Nowadays Puerto Ricans have spread both west to California and south to Florida and many places in between, like Chicago. Poverty and low educational achievement have been persistent characteristics of Puerto Ricans in spite of the fact that they form the only Hispanic group to arrive in the US with US citizenship, but some Puerto Ricans have become very successful. The vast majority of Americans were in favor of Obama ’ s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the first Hispanic and was at the time only the third woman to serve in that position. The number of Puerto Ricans living in the US is more than 5 million and thus more than those living in Puerto Rico, an astonishing fact that affects conventional ideas about national identity. How will Puerto Ricans define themselves in the future when the majority of them won ’ t have been born on the island that gives them their name but instead “ stateside ” ? Nuyorican is one originally derogatory name used by Puerto Rican islanders to refer to those those who emigrated to New York. Famous Americans of Puerto Rican heritage include the progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, known by her initials AOC. Two singers with Puerto Rican roots are Ricky Martin, born in Puerto Rico, and Jennifer Lopez, born to Puerto Rican parents in New York. What you may not have seen is West Side Story, a popular Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film from the early 1960s with music composed by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Neither Bernstein nor Sondheim had Puerto Rican roots, but West Side Story, a modern version of the Romeo and Juliet story, was written at the time when Puerto Ricans were immigrating in large numbers to New York City. One of the stars of the musical was Rita Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico, and became the first Hispanic to win an Oscar. You ’ ve Puerto Rican roots West Side Story then and now 202 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="210"?> probably at least heard the melody of songs like “ America, ” in which Puerto Rico and Manhattan are compared rhythmically and humorously. Although the film is regarded as a classic, other than Moreno no Puerto Ricans played roles and the film ’ s use of stereotypes has come to be seen as problematic. Lin-Manuel Miranda, 11 a famous young popular culture star with Puerto Rican roots, admits: “ West Side Story has for the Latino community been our greatest blessing and our greatest curse. ” Miranda ’ s own filmed musical In the Heights ensured that early 2020s popular culture had a strong Latino touch. Steven Spielberg ’ s version used the same music and songs with a screenplay by Tony Kushner 8 with Puerto Rican actors. Spielberg ’ s film attempted to avoid the stereotyping of the original. Ariane DeBose played Anita, the same character that Rita Moreno portrayed in the original film sixty years earlier. Like Moreno, DeBose won an Oscar and and thus became the first Afro-Latina to win an Oscar. Let ’ s stay with popular culture but going back three generations: Some of you have seen episodes of the popular American 50s comedy series I Love Lucy or the acclaimed 2020s movie with Nicole Kidman Being the Ricardos. Lucy ’ s husband both on and off screen was the Cuban American Desi Arnaz, who played a Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo in the series and who gave millions of Americans their first positive image of Hispanics. Arnaz wasn ’ t only Lucy ’ s husband but also a shrewd businessman and the producer of many popular television series. Cubans began to arrive in larger numbers towards the end of the run of I Love Lucy when Fidel Castro assumed power. The mostly middle-class and highly educated Cuban Americans were welcomed as political refugees by the American government. With their more privileged background, Cuban Americans are the wealthiest and most successful Hispanic group, and they still have strong ties to their homeland and a strong sense of identity. The songs of the popular singer Gloria Estefan testify to the passion Cuban Americans feel towards their roots in Cuba. Partly due to the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which Democrat President Kennedy supported in the early 60s in a failed attempt to depose Fidel Castro, Cuban Americans are mostly conservative Republicans politically. Cuban Americans as the third-largest group of Hispanics with more than two million mostly living in southern Florida. They exercise considerable clout at the local, state, and federal level as mayors and former mayors of Miami, senators and representatives from Florida and New Jersey, ambassadors, and members of the cabinet. Cuban American roots 203 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="211"?> Demographers tell us that Hispanics have increased their share of the American population from 5 % fifty years ago to almost 20 % now. We can also see the growth of Hispanics in the ranking of surnames Garcia, Gonzalez, Hernandez, Lopez, Martinez, Perez, Rodriguez, Sanchez (all spelled with or without an accent) in the list of most common American family names. By the middle of this century non- Hispanic White Americans will no longer be in the majority. The 2020 census showed that for the first time in history the number of White non-Hispanic Americans was decreasing. Will the result be a further entrenching of fear among those White Americans who have held power since the Founding Fathers and a further attempt to restrict people of color from achieving fair democratic representation? More than a century ago southern Europeans and the Irish were discriminated against, and then they became accepted as White and now are part of a shrinking percentage of White Americans. What is happening to the long-held old American dream of people from different nations living together in harmony? What should we think of the various metaphors that Americans have used to describe people from different nations living together in harmony? Put together American Indians with all their various tribes, African Americans with their unique history as non-voluntary immigrants, German-Americans with their high degree of assimilation, Hispanics with a strong pride in their own heritage, along with a multitude of other people from various racial, ethnic, cultural backgrounds who have immigrated to America, and what do you get? A melting pot? A salad? A mosaic? A pizza? A mess? The phrase “ melting pot ” became a frequently used metaphor to describe American society more than a hundred years ago in a play entitled The Melting Pot by the English playwright Israel Zangwill, whose Russian Jewish parents had immigrated to London. Like the far more popular musical Westside Story fifty years later, The Melting Pot was also an adaptation of Shakespeare ’ s Romeo and Juliet. In Zangwill ’ s play, the two young lovers are Russian immigrants (typical, as we ’ ve seen, of immigration to America at the turn of the 20 th century) and in contrast to Shakespeare and to Westside Story, The Melting Pot has a happy ending. The image of the melting pot is used positively as a promise of new identity (although would anyone ever really want to be thrown into a melting pot? ) in a scene with a sunset and the Statue of Liberty in the background. But the metaphor of the melting pot never really seemed to include Black Americans. The 20 th century saw future Hispanic? or what? good old melting pot? mixed marriages? 204 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="212"?> violence against Black Americans, 2 and self-censorhsip prevented Hollywood from even suggesting Black and White Americans could marry in the movies, much less in real life. It wasn ’ t until 1967 in the case Loving v. Virginia that the Supreme Court ruled all laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstituional. Loving proved victorious here, and mixed marriages have since become far more common. Other metaphors attempt to describe American society with a more complicated sense of American identity than “ melting pot ” envisages. The differences can be tasted as with “ salad bowl ” or “ pizza ” or heard as in “ symphony ” or seen as in “ mosaic ” or “ kaleidoscope, ” all commonly used to describe American society. Minority groups and the American Dream are simply too well known a part of what America seems to be - even if the metaphors don ’ t always fit. Just as the past of America was defined by its immigrants, the future of the country will also be dependent on immigrant groups. While projections of the future of the US with a non-White majority by the middle of the century instill fear in many people among the current White majority, other projections predict ever more Americans identifying as mixed race and ethnicity and thus not feeling threatened by this demographic change. One indication that American citizens might be more interested in their identity as immigrants rather than in becoming “ melting pot ” Americans could be their enthusiasm for researching their family trees to find out where they came from, which was one of the questions this chapter started with. As we did with our survey of American immigration and minorities, let ’ s begin here with a brief look at immigration to the UK and the challenge of defining Britishness in the context of a multicultural country. We can apply what we ’ ve learned about the push and pull factors for American immigration to immigrant groups in Britain too. But instead of beginning with the question of who and where, let ’ s ask who and when. Should we start by seeing the Romans as the first immigrants? Or was it the Anglo-Saxons, or the Vikings or the Normans? Or were these four groups all invaders? 2 The Anglo- Saxons can no longer be identified as a group in Britain, because they merged with the descendants of the Normans almost a thousand years ago; and while the Vikings came to visit and plunder, like the Romans they didn ’ t stay. Another possible starting point for immigration to Britain could be the 16 th and 17 th centuries with Dutch and French Protestants (Huguenots) fleeing their homes because of religious salad bowl, pizza, symphony, mosaic, kaleidoscope … ? UK immigration: where to begin? 205 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="213"?> persecution. As you can see, with a country whose history stretches such a long way back the question of when immigration began is very tricky. A glance at British history as a whole could indicate that in the last thousand years or so, more people left the island - as sailors or adventurers or colonists - than arrived there. The first two decades of the 21 st century saw historically high numbers in both emigration (British who left the country) and immigrations (foreigners who came to the UK). In the case of the latter we can see the history of the laws governing modern British immigration as having become increasingly restrictive. The first codified law was a truly imperial policy of granting the status of British subject (in a monarchy the equivalent of citizen) to all born in His Majesty ’ s dominions: “ His ” Majesty since this Act was passed during the reign of George V at the beginning of World War I, and “ dominions ” referring to much of what was the British Empire in the early 20 th century. 6 This first law had a long name: The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act. In spite of the name alien, which means both a person from a foreign country and a person from another planet, the policy itself was generous, providing the status of British subject to almost everyone born in practically all of the Empire. This generous policy was maintained with the British Nationality Act, passed shortly after World War II. While recognizing that each member of the Commonwealth could grant its own people national citizenship, this act allowed all 800 million inhabitants of the Commonwealth to maintain the status of British subjects with the right to live and work in the UK. This astonishing policy was possible because no one at the time thought many Commonwealth inhabitants would be coming to Britain. As, however, more and more people began to arrive in Britain to live and work in the 1950s and 60s, restrictions on immigration and the right to live and work in Britain increased. Finally the right of citizens of Commonwealth countries to automatically be entitled to live and work in Britain was abolished in the 80s. While we ’ ve already heard briefly about the changes from Empire to Commonwealth in other contexts, 6 here we need to distinguish between the Old Commonwealth - countries with large white populations like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - and the New Commonwealth. New Commonwealth countries with large non White populations include islands of the West Indies like Jamaica (with the largest emigrating and immigrating Old and New Commonwealth 206 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="214"?> group), which still has the British monarch as head of state, or the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago or Barbados, which while still part of the Commonwealth are now republics, Barbados becoming the first new republic of the 2020s. Other important sources of immigrants to Britain include Asian nations like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China; and African nations like Nigeria, Ghana, or Zimbabwe. While it would be a nice easy way to distinguish minority groups in Britain according to their country of origin, and it ’ s the way we ’ ll categorize our groups a little later, both historical developments and one African dictator have made the situation more complicated. But let ’ s start with a simple fact and what came to be known as a symbolic journey. After all, we still haven ’ t decided about when to begin our story of immigration to Britain. A ship that had been used by Nazis to take vacation cruises as part of the Kraft durch Freude program and was later taken over by the British government and renamed the Empire Windrush sailed into the port of Tilbury in southeast England in June 1948 with around five hundred young immigrants mostly from Jamaica and Trinidad. With this voyage the modern era of immigration to Britain begins and the answers to what is really British become more varied. Before we look in more detail at the people on the Windrush and other modern-era immigrants whose skin color marks them out as being different, let ’ s meet a group who may surprise you. Probably most people who hear the words “ immigration, minorities, Britain ” wouldn ’ t immediately think of the Irish, but if we look at the number of British people who say that their ancestors come from another country, the ones with Irish ancestors are by far the biggest group. People with British passports can easily acquire Irish citizenship if they have an Irish grandfather or grandmother. And if we consider that Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, then we automatically have a large minority group. Some surveys claim that up to 25 % of all people living in the UK have some Irish ancestry. These numbers may change because one result of Brexit is a customs border in the Irish Sea separating Northern Ireland from the other three nations of the United Kingdom, which may lead to the departure of Northern Ireland from the UK. The Irish as a minority group have one special characteristic that they share with the Puerto Ricans (other than their island status): There are more Irish abroad than live in Ireland itself. We ’ ve already learned about reasons why there are so many Irish Windrush the Irish? the British? 207 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="215"?> abroad. One of the strongest push factors to drive people away from their homes is also one of the most basic human needs: hunger. The Great Famine is therefore a momentous event in the history of Ireland and Irish immigration. 2 The Irish have at least a clear name for themselves (if you ignore some of the rarely used or clumsy names like British Irish or Irish Briton or Irish in England). You could ask along with Shakespeare ’ s Juliet, “ What ’ s in a name? ” and remember what suffering a name can cause. Names are important, as we ’ ve seen with immigrant group names in the US. We can start with a name that can be confusing, depending on which variety of English you ’ re familiar with and how much you know about world history. The largest immigrant group in Britain is often referred to in British English as Asian. What do you think of when you hear the word Asian or the German translation of the word? Probably not the same as what is meant in British newspaper articles as you ’ ll see soon. From the 2010s until the early 2020s you could find BAME being used as an umbrella term for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people. As you might expect after learning about similar acronyms and abbreviations in the US at the start of this chapter, such umbrella terms are problematic. The British government and major media decided that it would stop using the term because it was too broad and imprecise to be useful in making policies for people with an immigrant background. You can still find it as part of the title of an excellent BBC website (details at the end of this chapter). The term Asian in British English usually refers to immigrants from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and excludes immigrants from East Asian countries like China or Korea, who are often referred to only in accordance with their country of origin. Some people resent being grouped together under one name that doesn ’ t take into account some of the important differences between people born in, say, India or Pakistan (or even people born in different parts of India or Pakistan). At least one of the original reasons for using Asian as a term for so many different groups of people stemmed from a good intention. If a Muslim from Pakistan could acquire an identity as Asian upon arrival in Britain, then maybe some of the violent disagreements between Muslim Pakistanis and Hindu Indians could be avoided. The theme of confusing names now brings us to two groups who went through major immigration journeys: the African Caribbeans, what ’ s in a name? Asian, BAME … Asian: different names for different peoples African Caribbean and East African Asian 208 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="216"?> as their name implies, can trace some of their roots back to Africa in the 17 th and 18 th centuries when they were brought as slaves to islands like Barbados or Jamaica, then part of the British Empire. Large-scale immigration to Britain began, as we saw, after World War II with … (remember the name of the ship? ) from Jamaica and Trinidad. East African Asians first emigrated from India to other British colonies in East Africa like Uganda and Kenya. Although they had varied ethnic backgrounds, East African Asians represent a group due to their place of residence immediately before coming to Britain. Most of them were professionals, and all of them had to leave their adopted homes in Uganda and Kenya after these colonies became independent countries. The Ugandan dictator Idi Amin expelled them in the late 60s and early 70s; some also left Kenya under the pressure of increasing African nationalism. As you can see, some immigrants to Britain travel through various cultures and countries and continents before arriving. Even though immigrant groups are becoming more mixed, for the sake of simplicity we ’ ll look at the groups separately. Keep in mind that all of the following groups made up large parts of immigration to Britain from the late 40s to the 60s. Legal restrictions effectively stopped the flow in the late 60s, but immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, Black Africa, and China may have changed the face of Britain forever. Names for this group: Indian, British Indian, Indian British BBC Creative Diversity website: “ British Indians ’ contribution to the NHS and British culture is vital. ” ▶ When did they arrive? While most arrived in the 1950s, Britain had been active in India from the 17 th century up until India gained its independence in 1947. Large parts of India were under the direct rule of the Crown for about a hundred years, and India has been a member of the Commonwealth since independence. Some Indians arrived after independence because of the violence that came with the partition of formerly British India into India and Pakistan. Other Indians who had gone to other British colonies in Africa like Uganda and Kenya were forcibly expelled when these former colonies became independent in the 60s and 70s. 209 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="217"?> ▶ How many live where? With around 1.5 million the largest ethnic minority group in the UK lives mostly in London, also especially in Leicester and the Midlands, and to a lesser extent in Scotland and Wales. ▶ Typical occupations? Indians work in a wide variety of jobs ranging from running their own corner shops to working in the medical profession. Some first-generation immigrants from India were trained for the NHS: 3 nowadays many Indians work in medical professions. Some of Britain ’ s most successful business people are of Indian origin with several making the Sunday Times Top Ten Rich List. ▶ Typical characteristics, specialties? British Indians are more likely to have managerial or professional occupations and to own their own homes than other immigrant ethnic groups. They use digital communication more frequently than the population as a whole. Their influence on British culture ranges from food (although many Indian restaurants are actually run by British of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin) to popular films like Bend It Like Beckham (the film ’ s director Gurinder Chadha 8 was born in Kenya). And Bollywood - a word play on Hollywood and Bombay (now called Mumbai, the largest city in India) - has its largest audience outside India now in Britain. By the way, the “ dot ” that is sometimes used in stereotypes to distinguish Indian Indians from American Indians, as explained earlier in this chapter, is called a bindi and is a forehead decoration worn by many women from India. ▶ A few famous people … One you might not expect is Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the band Queen, not only for his non-Indiansounding name but also because he kept his heritage a secret. Mercury spent much of his childhood in India. Those who know the actor Ben Kingsley from his role as Gandhi may not be surprised about his Indian origins. Meera Syal became one of Britain ’ s most famous Indian faces on television series like Goodness Graious Me and The Kumars at No. 42. The prize-winning author Salman Rushdie 8 has made his Indian heritage a central topic in many of his books. Anjum Anand is a British celebrity food writer and TV chef. Preet Chandi became the first woman of color to travel alone to the South Pole in the early 2020s. 210 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="218"?> To predict the future let ’ s take a look at the past, choosing two violent events to see what positive changes they brought about. We ’ ll begin with one of the examples of minority culture that we ’ ve just covered: the Notting Hill Carnival, which most people would consider positive because of its music, parades, costumes, dancing, food. But the reason for the celebration wasn ’ t positive at all. In the late 1950s a series of riots took place in the Notting Hill area of London. Young poor White working-class men, indirectly encouraged by politicians with slogans like “ Keep Britain White, ” started to destroy Caribbean cafes and began to chase, attack, and seriously injure Black Caribbean immigrants during a week in late summer. One result of the highly publicized riots and violence was the Notting Hill Carnival, which was supposed to demonstrate the positive influences of the Afro-Caribbean population living in this area of London. While some violence and disturbances still occur during the Carnival - with more than a million visitors the biggest in Europe - the news from Notting Hill has dramatically improved since the riots of the late 50s. One April evening in 1993 two young Black men were waiting at a bus stop in south London when a group of five young White men approached and stabbed the teenager Stephen Lawrence to death. Although all five suspects were tried, all five were freed because of “ insufficient evidence. ” The outrage expressed by the public and press, in addition to the campaign organized by Lawrence ’ s family, who had emigrated from Jamaica, and their supporters resulted in a formal investigation and a report which revealed institutional racism in the London police force and proposed reforms. Two of the five men were eventually convicted of murder, and the Stephen Lawrence case was instrumental in changing the law in England and Wales, allowing defendants to be retried for the same crime after being acquitted once. The publicity surrounding the case put the topic of racism on the front pages of national newspapers. An annual architectural prize (Lawrence had planned to study architecture) as well as scholarships from the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust are awarded in his memory. The Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 showed that the institutional racism uncovered in the police force during the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation still exists more than a generation afterwards, connecting vicitms of racism across time and space. Notting Hill: from riots to the Carnival Stephen Lawrence to BLM 211 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="219"?> Name for this group: British Pakistani BBC Creative Diversity website: “ Pakistanis ’ contribution to the steel, textile and medical sectors in Britain have been significant. ” ▶ When did they arrive? If we take the name Pakistani literally as referring to Pakistan as the country of origin, then the earliest any could have arrived would have been in 1947 when Pakistan was created as a nation. Of course, Muslims from British India had emigrated to Britain much earlier, but in much smaller numbers. British Pakistanis came to the UK for some of the same reasons that British Indians had: violence due to religious persecution and the wars between India (mainly Hindu) and Pakistan (mainly Muslim) after independence, and the economic needs of postwar Britain. ▶ How many live where? More than 1 million and thus one of the largest ethnic minorities in Britain, with roughly equal numbers in London, the West Midlands, Yorkshire, and North West England, making them a much more widely dispersed group than others. ▶ Typical occupations? Transport and communication industries, selfemployed, taxi drivers, steel, textiles, and the medical sector. ▶ Typical characteristics, specialties? While British Pakistanis came from very different backgrounds in Pakistan, the overwhelming majority are Muslim and many third-generation people identify more as Muslim than as British Pakistani. ▶ A few famous people … Mohammad Sarwar was the first British Pakastani Member of Parliament, London ’ s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, has Pakistani parents. The youngest Nobel Prize lauerate Malala Yousafzai moved to Britain after being shot in the head on a school bus in Pakistan. Mishal Husain is a well-known BBC journalist whose book The Skills uses her life to encourage other women to become successful. The Olympic boxer Amir Khan became a role model for young Asian boys. Riz Ahmed is an award-winning actor and rapper known both in the US and UK. Hanif Kureishi is a famous writer whose work, like the screenplay to the film My Beautiful Launderette or the novel The Buddha in Suburbia, focuses on Pakistani or Indian life in a British context. As immigration increased in the 50s and 60s, it was accompanied by an increase in white racism, explicitly shown in the politician Enoch Powell ’ s infamous Rivers of Blood speech in the late 60s, in which he warned against the results of too much immigration and Rivers of Blood, emigration to immigration 212 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="220"?> advocated returning Black immigrants to their country of origin. While there ’ s evidence that the racist violence and xenophobia that began in the 50s in Britain is still present today, there ’ s also evidence that a discussion of what it means to be British may be providing a more peaceful way to learn how to live together. While laws have been passed that dramatically restrict immigration from what had been an integral part of the old British Empire, other laws have attempted to ban racist acts and language and to encourage if not enforce integration. At the beginning of the 20 th century less than 1 % of the population was foreign-born, at the beginning of the 1970s the percentage had increased to more than 5 % and fifty years later more than one in ten of all inhabitants of the United Kingdom weren ’ t born in the UK. There was also a shift from New Commonwealth to pre- Brexit European Union immigrants, whom we ’ ve not mentioned at all - the increase in Polish-born was huge during the first decade of the 21 st century - as well as immigrants from the US (of all places! ), Australia, and South Africa, thus reversing an emigration trend from Britain to these places hundreds of years ago. Asylum seekers from war-torn countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia had been coming too until changes in UK law after Brexit. Names for this group: Chinese, British Chinese, British-born Chinese BBC Creative Diversity website: “ The Chinese democratised eating out after the Second World War. ” ▶ When did they arrive? The first recorded Chinese visitor was back in the court of James II in the late 17 th century, but most Chinese arrived from Hong Kong in the 1960s as the “ takeaway generation, ” making chow mein a popular dish. Many Chinese arrive from other countries, making multistep immigration journeys like the East African Asians. ▶ How many live where? British Chinese are a smaller ethnic group in the UK as a whole but with Chinatowns in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and the oldest in Liverpool. They form the largest ethnic group in Northern Ireland. Due to China ’ s repression of freedoms in Hon Kong in the early 2020s and the British government ’ s consequent promise to accept Hong Kong citizens who meet certain requirements, the numbers could rapidly increase. ▶ Typical occupations? About half of all Chinese men work in hotels and restaurants. Many of the first Chinese immigrants in the early 20 th century set up laundries, which they later converted to restaurants. 213 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="221"?> British Chinese have the highest proportion of managerial and professional occupations of any ethnic group. ▶ Typical characteristics, specialties? British Chinese are regarded as a model minority, and are successful at school and at university. But British Chinese are also subject to more incidents of racism, on average, than any other ethnic minority in the UK, with more open racism against British Chinese since the coronavirus pandemic began. ▶ A few famous people … Anna Lo was the first Chinese-born person to be elected to any legislature in Europe when she became a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Ching He Huang is a TV chef and writer, the Queen awarded her the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) award in the 20s for her services to the culinary arts. Baroness Dunn, born in Hong Kong and involved with the transfer of power over Hong Kong from the UK to China, was the first person of Chinese descent to sit in the House of Lords as a life peer. Alan Mak became the first Briton of Chinese descent to be elected to Parliament in 2015; as a member of the Conservative party he criticized public emphasis on his ethnicity. Name for this group: British Bangladeshi BBC Creative Diversity website: “ Over 8 out of 10 UK Indian Restaurants are owned by Bangladeshis. ” ▶ When did they arrive? Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) came into existence after winning a war against what was formerly West Pakistan in the early 1970s. ▶ How many live where? Certainly more than the 0.5 million estimated in the 2011 census since British Bangladeshis are a young and growing ethnic group with the vast majority in an area of London called Banglatown, which has many Bangladeshi restaurants and lively markets - evidence that it became a much more congenial place than it was in the 1970s, when it was known for attacks by White racists. However, rising rents and new businesses are challenging the specifially Bangladeshi atmosphere in the 2020s. ▶ Typical occupations? Many Bangladeshis work in hotels and restaurants as chefs, cooks, and waiters. They are among the poorest of the immigrant ethnic groups and also have the highest unemployment rate. 214 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="222"?> ▶ Typical characteristics, specialties? Almost all Bangladeshis are Muslim and Bengali and feel they are different from Pakistanis and from Bengalis from India. Bengali is the fifth most spoken language in the UK. As with other Asian ethnic groups in the UK, the family is very important. ▶ A few famous people … Pola Uddin is the first Muslim woman to gain a seat in the House of Lords. A well-known television personality and author of children ’ s books is Konnie Huq. Habib Rahman became Newcastle ’ s first ever non-White mayor in the 2020s, a half century after his father immigrated from Bangladesh and was murdered days later in a racist incident. Names for this group: Afro-Caribbean, African Caribbean, Black Caribbean, the British Afro-Caribbean community BBC Creative Diversity website: “ While we exult in black Britons ’ ongoing success in sports, music, fashion and the NHS today, discrimination still blights lives. ” ▶ When did they arrive? Although some Black Caribbeans have been in Britain for hundreds of years, the date of large-scale immigration began with the arrival of the Empire Windrush, as you now know. You ’ ll find out about the Windrush scandal at the end of this chapter. ▶ How many live where? Around 0.6 million, mostly in Birmingham and London. ▶ Typical occupations? Public transportation, restaurants, NHS. ▶ Typical characteristics, specialties? Reggae music, the Notting Hill Carnival, which you now know about, diversity based on the different islands and cultures in the Caribbean, mostly Christian. ▶ A few famous people … Movie director Steve McQueen (name is spelled the same as the 1970s American actor), best known for his awardwinning and highly acclaimed film 12 Years a Slave, also created an early 2020s film series about life in London for West Indian immigrants entitled Small Axe; television and radio personality, actor, comedian and writer Lenny Henry; model Naomi Campbell (who also claims some British Chinese ancestry); journalists Trevor McDonald and Moira Stuart. 215 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="223"?> Names for this group: African British, Black African, Black British (somewhat ambiguous since Black British can also refer to the Black Caribbean community) BBC Creative Diversity website: “ African influence within British society is undeniable. ” ▶ When did they arrive? While Black Africans have been part of British life to a small degree for a long time, many Black Africans began arriving in the 80s from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. ▶ How many live where? 1.3 million Black Africans and thus one of the largest ethnic minority groups in Britain with the majority in London living in Ghanaian communities. There are also Somalis in Cardiff, and Sudanese in Birmingham, showing the diversity of country of origin as well as geographical distribution in the UK. ▶ Typical occupations? Care and leisure services. ▶ What are some typical characteristics, specialties? The growing number of secondand third-generation Black African British are making their mark on fashion, art, music, and food. ▶ A few famous people … award-winning and controversial painter Chris Ofili; the first Black Archbishop of York, Lord John Sentamu, born in Uganda (thus not one of the East African Asians mentioned in an earlier section); television presenter and executive June Sarpong, award-winning actor Idris Elba, Olympic gold medalist Mo Farah. You can see Boris Johnson ’ s roots in his first name but other details about his roots may be surprising. As you might remember, 6 he was born in the US and named by his mother after a Russian who paid for her flight from Mexico to New York for a more comfortable birth. His grandmother was half-French and his great-grandfather was Turkish. Johnson, like Trump, is not known for his sensitivity, he ’ s insulted Muslim women and Africans and has often shown himself tone deaf in official speeches. On the other hand he chose diverse cabinet members with a clear immigrant background: the son of a Pakistani bus driver, the daughter of Ugandan Indians, another daughter of parents from Ghana, others born in India or Iraq. The citizenship test introduced by the government after the turn of the millenniun was supposed to ensure that all those who passed possessed “ knowledge of life in the United Kingdom, ” and it has become a requirement for all who wish to remain indefinitely in the name calling but also roots and posts journey or just a guide 216 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="224"?> UK. Maybe you noticed the title of the first edition of the guide mentioned at the beginning of this chapter: Life in the United Kingdom. The subtitle for the latest edition (published before Brexit and not yet updated) could indicate different expectations. What was A Journey to Citizenship for the first edition has become to A Guide for New Residents. If you read it, I ’ m sure you would notice that even the latest edition of the government guidebook, which is supposed to prepare people for the test, contains some embarrassing factual mistakes. Fig. 7.3 One delicious result of the integration of immigrants in a photo taken years ago: the Old English Gentleman next to Iranian Cuisine just off Edgware Road in London. Brexit has created serious shortages of employees in all restaurants and hotels, a problem exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Consequently, the number of traditional English pubs has dramatically declined. The Old English Gentleman became the Old Lebanese Gentleman and is now a Lebanese fast food venue. There are no more pubs in the area. The Iranian Cuisine restaurant next door has been serving food for half a century. The goal of the journeys that have brought millions of new people to the United Kingdom in the last half century could be citizenship. But with the reality of Brexit and increasing restrictions on immigrants to satisfy an older, shrinking White English population, the goal of government policy no longer seems to be the peaceful co- Windrush deportation scandal 217 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="225"?> existence of people from different cultural backgrounds. We began the history of modern immigration to Britain with the Windrush and are ending this chapter with the Windrush deportation scandal. Conservative prime minister Cameron and his home secretary May (the one who later became prime minister) attempted to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in making the UK a “ really hostile environment for illegal immigrants ” and requiring citizenship documentation. Some of those who arrived with the Windrush had never bothered to do the paperwork and were deported as elderly people fifty years after they had legally arrived. Some died while waiting for compensation after the scandal became public. In light of the increasing attacks on immigrants that spiked after the Brexit referendum, helping people to understand and appreciate one another ’ s different roots no longer seems to be the goal of government policy. The Irish, the Welsh, the English, and the Scots eventually learned to stop killing one other after centuries of doing so, but now seem more divided than united. If a multicultural United Kingdom is no longer possible, then maybe a United Kingdom isn ’ t either. One factor of identity that has posed some problems in integration for many of the groups we ’ ve read about in this chapter is religion, which we ’ ve not described in detail yet. But religion is important enough to deserve a chapter of its own. The Pew Research Center advertises itself as “ a nonpartisan fact tank ” and has an American audience but can also be fascinating for non-Americans trying to understand more about the US. While Pew does a lot of polling, the numbers are never numbing but enlightening, and they are combined with understandable interpretations. For me their self-description is fully accurate: “ combine the observational and storytelling skills of journalists with the analytical rigor of social scientists. ” I ’ ve consulted specific pages about race and ethnicity and racial and ethnic groups, but you can use the site for practically every topic in our book. Living Facts is a related and equally fascinating website also founded and funded by the Pew Research Center. The internationally highly reputable British Guardian newspaper published a digital wallchart called Black History timeline to 218 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="226"?> supplement what could and should be included in national curriculum history courses 4 about Black people. Readers of this chapter should be able to identify a number of the events described in the timeline. You can also find hundreds of Guardian articles about various aspects of the Windrush scandal from the early 2020s. The BBC ’ s Creative Diversity website has detailed pages under the heading BAME We ’ re Not the Same, Uncovering the Nuance within ‘ BAME ’ with multimedia elements and lots of fascinating examples relating to all the groups we ’ ve read about in this chapter. Scroll through the pages and then judge for yourself if the BBC meets its lofty goals: “ In order to deliver on the BBC ’ s promise of providing ‘ value for all ’ people in the UK, we must have an in-depth and nuanced understanding of the incredible diversity of today ’ s United Kingdom and the diverse lives, backgrounds and experiences of the whole British public. ” As you can see above, I ’ ve used their opening quotes for each group. You ’ ll also find quite a bit of American popular culture on this special website. You might have wondered if there isn ’ t more recent popular culture evidence of American Indians than the old movie Dancing with Wolves directed by a White non-Native American. Have a look at the television streaming series Reservation Dogs to see just how far American popular culture has come in thirty years in presenting Native Americans and their culture. Who Do You Think You Are? is a series originally started in the early 2000s by the BBC with wellknown celebrities (in Britain) searching for their family roots. Evidence of the popularity of the series: it ’ s still running on the BBC with licensed versions around the world from Australia to Ireland to the US (with some celebrities you ’ ve heard of). Attempts to start a similar series in Germany have failed. I remember seeing one about Joey Kelly of the Kelly family and thinking what a shame that it seems more contrived and awkward in comparison with the British original. But what better way to learn about minority and ethnic groups and history and discrimation than following celebrities on the search for their roots. And there is usually a scene where the celebrity starts to cry - parts of each episode are moving indeed. An added bonus for German viewers of the original BBC series is that you learn about famous UK celebrities not well known here. Just one recommendation from the first series: Moira Stuart, a well-known BBC news reader with connections to the Caribbean and to Scotland. 219 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="227"?> Exercises 1. Look for an illustration of a street name in another part of the book (hint: 1) and guess what relevance this street might have for the topic of minorities UK. Now find other relevant names of parts of London in this chapter. 2. How are American immigrant groups presented differently from groups in Britain in the chapter? (the easy part) Why? (tricky part) 3. Which group is missing from the US part of the chapter that, considering the intended audience of this book, you could ’ ve certainly expected to read about? (easy) Why? (very tricky) 4. Which description of two ethnic minorities presented as humorous could easily be understood as racist? (easy) Under which conditions could this description be used and by whom to avoid any racist connotations? (tricky) 5. How many of the numerous individuals mentioned as representatives of ethnic groups in this chapter had you heard of before? Why do you think I chose these? Which ones would you have chosen? Challenging interesting projects: 1. Keep a diary on your next trip to the UK and record all the evidence you can find about the influence of immigrants on everyday life in Britain. If you go to London, try and find evidence for (and maybe even a little evidence against) the claim that London is the most diverse city in the world. 2. Ask as many Americans as you have time to talk to about their ancestors (Americans love to do research on and to talk about their roots) and be prepared to note down lots and lots of foreign countries. And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you-could-get-astatue-dedicated-to-you-on-Ellis-Island-or-get-to-lead-the-Nottinghill-Carnival-Parade task: Come up with a definition of British identity and of American identity that includes all inhabitants and gives all inhabitants a sense of where they came from, how they ’ re different from other British and American people but also what they have in common. Maybe a definition of identity using civic and cultural characteristics rather than racial and ethnic ones will help. The creation of this identity should then help each person answer the opening questions of this chapter in a way that gives him or her not 220 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="228"?> only a sense of identity but also the motivation to live together peacefully. And for those with time and passion for all things multicultural and the desire to discover even more roots and maybe even answer the three philosophically challenging questions at the very beginning of this chapter: … Asian Americans, Chinatowns; treatment of the Japanese during World War II; Little Italy; changing views of who counts as White in the US; theories of assimilation and multiculturalism to explain immigration to the US and the UK; newer immigrants to the UK from Eastern Europe; influence of the caste system on British Indians; the combination of immigration laws and race relations policy as attempts at integration in Britain … 221 Chapter 7 Who, Where From, Where To (minorities and immigration) <?page no="229"?> Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) “ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us …” John Winthrop “ A Model of Christian Charity ” 1640 Life events: Weddings, Adult Baptism, Christenings, Confirmations, Funerals, Vocations The Church of England ’ s website If you ’ ve traveled in the US, you might have wondered about the vast number of churches in an astonishing variety of buildings that looked more like clothing stores, gas stations, or private homes (and often were gas stations or clothing stores before they were turned into churches). You might have wondered too about the variety of names on the buildings and the presence of advertising. You might have seen bumper stickers on cars or T-shirts with obviously religious messages. America seems to be a very religious country, and American politicians use religious phrases in a way unthinkable here or in Britain. If you ’ ve traveled in Britain, you ’ ve probably either visited many beautiful cathedrals or tried to avoid the ABCs (another bloody church) included in most sightseeing tours. Religion is as important for British architecture as castles and palaces. Yet if you happened to attend the services in an English cathedral, say in the beautiful cathedral in Gloucester, you might have been surprised at how much room there was inside and about how few people were there for Holy Communion or even for the Sung Eucharist, which is often regarded as the grandest service of the week. The local department store open on Sundays would easily win a popularity contest against the soaring space of the cathedral. In this chapter you ’ ll be finding out more about the presence of religion in the US and in Britain. To understand what role religions play in modern American and British life, we ’ ll need to use some of the information provided in the chapters on history, political life, education, minorities and immigration, and the arts. 222 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="230"?> When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ the importance of religion and of the Puritan heritage for Americans, ▶ the paradox that religion in America is both diverse and homogeneous, ▶ concrete examples of a range of American religions and denominations, ▶ the interaction of religion with other areas of American life, ▶ separation of church and state, civil religion, ▶ consequences from the Church of England being an established church, ▶ current controversies in the Church of England, ▶ the role of religion in the identity of non-Christians in Britain, ▶ changing attitudes towards religion in the US and the UK. John Winthrop, a Puritan from England who became a colonial administrator in the New World and was elected governor in what was to become the Massachusetts Bay Colony, gave a sermon, the words of which have been quoted through the centuries to express a view Americans have of themselves and a view that others have repeatedly used to describe America (and which began this chapter). As early as the 1630s, long before the settlements on the east coast of North America were to form a new nation, the first settlers were thinking of themselves as true pioneers in a very religious context. Winthrop was one of many English settlers who had left their homeland because they were dissatisfied with the Anglican Church there, the roots of which were laid by a king 2 who had been especially honored by the pope for his loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church and for his resistance to the Reformation before finally breaking with Rome. Winthrop was one of many Puritans and Pilgrims to sail to the New World in the 17 th and 18 th centuries; their beliefs have influenced many mainstream American Protestant denominations. The Puritan tradition is often used to try to describe American society: Americans have a special “ exceptional ” role in the world, democratic decisions are preferable to hierarchical structures, hard work and wealth are positive virtues, pleasure for its own sake is bad, intolerance towards other faiths justified. Although the Puritans fled England because of religious persecution there, they themselves were intolerant of other Puritan heritage Winthrop, American exceptionalism 223 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="231"?> beliefs. This intolerance antagonized other settlers and resulted in another key characteristic of American religious experience: the importance of religious freedom. Roger Williams, another Puritan emigrant from England, believed strongly in religious freedom and in a “ wall of separation ” between religion and the state. He was probably bothered by Winthrop ’ s assertion that the Puritans were building their own city on the hill without taking into account that the hill belonged not to the settlers but to the American Indians: Williams was an early champion of Native American rights. He soon left what later was to become the state of Massachusetts and not only founded the colony of Rhode Island but by baptizing fellow settlers also came to be considered the founder of the first Baptist Church in the New World. The Baptists are currently the largest denominational branch, or family, within Protestantism in the US; the conservative Southern Baptist Convention is the largest single Protestant group in the US; common to all Baptist denominations is adult baptism. Many of the early English settlers shared a religious motivation. The Founding Fathers - those men who were instrumental in the founding of the new nation and who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - were almost exclusively Christian but from at least half a dozen different denominations. Their differences and their shared experience of the suffering that an established state church could inflict helped to lead the writers of the Bill of Rights to put the aforementioned wall of separation in the very first words of the very 1 st Amendment to the Constitution: “ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. ” However, what seems to be a clear separation between matters of the churches and matters of the state is full of contradictions, some of which we ’ ll be looking at later. While America is often described as having an incredibly diverse religious culture, we could with as much evidence say that American religious experience is astonishingly uniform. Perhaps the most astonishing is the lack of conflict among the groups - especially if we compare the long and bloody history of religious conflict in the UK, a history which has continued to this day in Northern Ireland. One possible explanation for this lack of violent controversy might be the tendency for American Protestant denominations to simply split or unite with other churches when disagreements surface. Another explanation might be the general underlying sense of sharing other Williams, religious freedom, Baptists wall of separation diversity and uniformity 224 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="232"?> characteristics that transcend the differences between the various denominations. In addition to the unifying factors of the Puritan heritage, the shared sense of most Americans being able to call themselves WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) provides a sense of identity. While the WASPs are now heading towards minority status, the shared characteristics of what has become known as civil religion, which we ’ ll turn to later in this chapter, might still be enough to continue uniformity in matters of religion. The famous and influential French scholar Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the US in the early 19 th century, wrote about the importance of religion in American life. Other observers of American life see the separation of church and state providing a fertile ground for various religions to flourish without government interference. In a society with huge economic inequality religion offers comfort to those who suffer from lack of financial security. A uniformity of religious attitudes in the US remained constant in the 20 th century. But although a far larger majority of Americans, compared with the British or Germans, still consider religion to be important, the number of Americans who identify with a specific denomination has declined sharply. Fewer younger Americans say they believe in God or pray daily. Two decades ago three-quarters of Americans selfidentified with Christian denominations, in the 2020s less than twothirds do. In the past, Christian denominations split or united to meet the changing religious needs of Americans and thus kept religion relevant. Let ’ s look at a few historical examples. Methodism, for example, started with the “ methods ” taught by John Wesley, an English theologian who left England as an Anglican missionary and visited my hometown of Savannah, Georgia, during colonial times (the Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church is still there). He met some German Moravians there and even translated some of their songs into English. Later he became convinced that salvation was possible through individual faith in Jesus Christ and thus founded Methodism for the working classes as an alternative to the formal hierarchy of the Church of England. One Methodist Church later divided into many different churches: the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Zion Church for Blacks, many of them freed slaves; the Methodist Episcopal Church South was founded by slave owners; the Free Methodist Church came into being, as did the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Holiness Churches and the Church of the Nazarene were also changing attitudes and affiliations Methodists then and now 225 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="233"?> branches of Methodism, as were small German ethnic denominations. Later, starting in the 20 th century, some of these smaller denominations began to unite to form the United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination, but there are up to 40 other denominations that also call themselves Methodists or share some of the same characteristics. The splitting and uniting of religious groups, which has perhaps helped to maintain a general atmosphere of tolerance in the US, results in a dizzying number of names of groups with dizzying estimates about numbers. If you were interested in finding out just how many Catholics or Protestants are living in Germany, you probably wouldn ’ t have a hard time (if you consider belonging to a church to be more or less equivalent to paying church tax) since the German government keeps count of who pays the church tax it collects. Although a national census has existed in the US since 1790, there are no questions about church membership due to the constitutional separation of church and state. This lack of governmental statistics is offset, however, by numerous surveys and scholarly research projects. One piece of evidence for the diversity of American religious groups is the sheer number of separate churches. The main Christian denominations are probably familiar to most of us in Germany: Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians. But even these few familiar names can be misleading since there are often big differences within some of the same denominational families. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, is far more conservative than the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which ordains women; but both could be considered part of the Baptist denominational family. This diversity is also expressed in the many words used by members and commentators to describe the various denominations, such as: religions, branches, denominational families, denominations, religious bodies, congregations, churches, sects, or cults. American religions have names like Western Liturgical, Pentecostal Family, Adventist Family, Communal Family. Of the many different denominations or churches or religious groups to choose from, we ’ ll be focussing on two in more detail, not because they ’ re the largest - Roman Catholics, Baptists, and Methodists are larger - or because they ’ re the oldest - many current Protestant denominations like the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Church of Christ can trace their history in some form back to the colonial period. Many of you, even those who haven ’ t been denominations and enumerations focus on two 226 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="234"?> to the US, will have had some sort of personal contact with one of these two religions. The other example, a popular choice of studentteachers in my seminars, is connected to a language that would sound strangely familiar to German speakers. We ’ ll begin the first example with a story. A young boy with the common American name Joseph Smith receives a vision in a grove of trees in a small town in upstate New York in the early 19 th century. An angelic being with the very uncommon name Moroni tells young Joseph where he can find gold plates, on which an ancient American prophet named Mormon recorded the story of his people in an ancient language that Joseph translates. Ten years later the first printed versions of the Book of Mormon are available - not on gold plates, of course - and a great American success story begins. For some reason - maybe envy because of the rapid increase in the number of converts, maybe because Smith was said to have behaved like a monarch and to have practiced polygamy - the early Mormons made enemies and were driven westwards: to Ohio, Illinois, Missouri. A mob murdered both Joseph Smith and his brother in their prison cell in Illinois where they were awaiting trial for inciting violence. The loss of their leader didn ’ t stop the believers, who called themselves “ latter-day saints ” : “ saints ” in the meaning “ set apart ” and “ latter day ” since they believed that the original church that Jesus Christ founded had to be restored much later, in modern times. As they moved further west, they, like so many American denominations, split into several groups, some of which have remained separate to this today. The majority moved across the Rockies to what is now Utah and settled around what was to become Salt Lake City. Brigham Young became the leader, had many wives and even more children. The issue of polygamy caused the American government to send troops into the Utah territory and an outright military conflict was narrowly avoided. The Mormons ’ official church doctrine later condemned polygamy. We ’ ve already seen 7 how important the choice of name can be. Shortly before the 2020s the president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the over ninety-year-old Russell M. Nelson, asked that everyone stop using the terms Mormons, Mormon Church, Mormonism, or LDS as an abbreviation for Latter-day Saints. Nelson said his revelation from God was to use only the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the religion, a very long name that shows the Christian element in a way that Mormon or LDS doesn ’ t. A history and legend naming 227 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="235"?> slightly more concise official alternative name is the Restored Church of Jesus Christ, with “ restored ” emphasizing a central belief of the Mormons that their church is a return to the original Christian faith. While Mormons self-identify as Christians, some Christians don ’ t consider Mormons to be members of the same religion. Brigham Young University, the largest religious university in the US, was named after the second leader of the Mormons, has an abundance of foreign-language courses, runs a large study-abroad program, and seems not to have the problems with drugs or binge drinking that other American universities are faced with. The honor code which BYU students and faculty have to adhere to includes regulations about clothing, facial hair for men, and sexual activity. Whether the honor code allows for same-sex romantic gestures like hand-holding and kissing made the news in the 2020s and reflected a struggle about the acceptance of LGBTQ 14 individuals. In German cities you ’ ve probably seen Mormons; their clean-cut appearance with their white shirts and ties usually sets them apart, as does their friendly approach and their thick American accent combined with a surprisingly good command of German. Missionary work is considered an important task for Mormons: the official website at Church of Jesus Christ is attractively designed and available in more than a hundred languages. The Mormons in America and abroad display some of what could be considered Puritan traditions: no alcohol, no tobacco, not even coffee is allowed; premarital sex is condemned too. On the other hand, although divorce isn ’ t encouraged, it ’ s not prohibited. The Mormons could also be considered a typical American phenomenon for other reasons: the movement west to a newer and better life, the belief in economic progress, the belief in individual responsibility and the obligation for individuals to participate actively in the church. The Mormons have also made the search for one ’ s roots - genealogy - much easier by creating a huge online databank of information. And America as a country of immigrants is also a country in search of where it came from. In contrast to most of the other religions and denominations in the US, the Church of Latter-day Saints is a “ homegrown ” religion, having been founded in America and still having the majority of their believers there - although their missionary work has caused the church to grow in other countries too. Controversies about the Church include its authoritarian structure and the treatment of minority groups and of women. Blacks were education and missionary work search for roots controversies, politics 228 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="236"?> excluded from becoming ordained until the 1970s, women are still excluded from all positions of leadership. The tensions between the government and the Mormons, which began with the banning of polygamy at the end of the 19 th century, have continued into the 21 st century. State politics in Utah is largely influenced by Mormons, who make up two-thirds of the population there, an apparent example that a clear-cut American separation of church and state isn ’ t to be found everywhere. Mitt Romney ’ s Mormon religion played a surprisingly minor role in his 2012 presidential campaign in contrast to John F. Kennedy, whose religious belief played a prominent role in his campaign to become the first Roman Catholic president fifty years previously. Not only in Utah has the height of the wall separating church and state been tested; on the other side of the US, in what would seem to be another world, issues of church and state have also played a significant role. Ordnung, hochmut, demut, gelassenheit, herumspringa: these words probably won ’ t appear very foreign to you (except maybe the last one) … or to the roughly half a million people who use these words in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, and who have also settled in some other states in the last decade, owing to their increasing numbers. The Amish, an unusual group of devout farmers, dress and look very different from most of the readers of this book and have managed to resist most of what we all take for granted in modern civilization. This time the story starts not with a young boy but with an old man, Jakob Amman, a Swiss Anabaptist (one early branch of what later developed into quite a few Protestant denominations, among others the Baptists). He believed in the principle of meidung, of excommunicating believers who didn ’ t follow strict rules. Because the followers of Amman were persecuted in Europe, they fled to the New World like other religious groups and began to call themselves the Amish after the old Swiss man. The Amish arrived in an area called Pennsylvania and still look and act much as they did then, almost 300 years ago. Pennsylvania, literally Penn ’ s Woods, was named after William Penn, a member of the Quakers, another small but interesting religious group that still exists today. Penn was, like Roger Williams and other American colonists, a fervent believer in religious freedom. Perhaps you ’ ve seen or even eaten the famous Quaker Oats cereal and think William Penn ’ s picture is on the package (it actually isn ’ t but many people associate the picture with Penn). Amish origins, Quakers 229 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="237"?> But now back to the Amish. Their appearance and customs are what sets the Amish apart and makes them so interesting - certainly for tourists of the Pennsylvania Dutch area (called Dutch not after the people in Holland but after what non-German-speaking Americans understood when they heard the word Deutsch). The Amish mostly avoid the use of electricity, telephones, and cars, using buggies for transportation and horse-drawn ploughs for farming. The men wear broad-brimmed hats and the women bonnets, all use hooks instead of buttons on their clothing. While tourists have helped the Amish economy by buying bread or beautiful quilts, tourists have also caused problems by photographing them - ablichten is the word the Amish use. The Amish regard photography as breaking the Second Commandment and as a sign of vanity. Some even see photographs as a kind of theft of their souls. Ironically, the Amish are sometimes called the most photographed ethnic group in the world. The ordnung determines the concrete regulations for the use of modern technology and dress for each individual community. In general the Amish are forbidden to marry outside of their community, they are supposed to avoid hochmut and strive for demut, and to show gelassenheit even when confronted with outsiders who aren ’ t tolerant of their special way of life. After a period of teenage herumspringa, young adults are baptized and accepted as members of the church and community. The long Sunday services are conducted in individual homes and are followed by the entire community eating together. While many Amish are still farmers, some work in non-agricultural areas. The Amish are growing quickly with no contraception allowed and large families encouraged. Perhaps it ’ s difficult to understand for most non-Amish, but the number of young people who decide to leave these isolated communities is low. One movie popular in Germany that introduced little-known aspects of Amish life, such as barn raising, to the movie-going public, including the tradition of barn raising, was Australian director Peter Weir ’ s 1985 film Witness starring Harrison Ford. The Amish have tested the height of the famous wall of separation between church and state in several court cases. The Amish are not forced to pay into the Social Security system as almost all other Americans do since the Amish believe their community is responsible for the welfare of all its members. The Amish were also granted an exemption from military service even in wartime because of their belief in non-violence but were required to do their obligatory a tourist attraction? ordnung, herumspringa, popular culture exemptions from wall of separation 230 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="238"?> military service in civilian jobs during World War II. The belief that regular school attendance was unnecessary for a life within the community resulted in a famous Supreme Court case that gave the Amish the right to be exempt from obligatory education requirements after eighth grade. Amish children attend the first eight grades of school in one-room classrooms at private religious schools. The tragic Amish school shootings 4 in the first decade of the 21 st century in which a gunman killed five young Amish girls and then himself, catapulted the gentle pacifist Amish to unwanted world attention. The Amish response - asking for forgiveness for the murderer instead of retribution - was very moving testimony to the importance of nonviolence and charity in this unique religious group. As we have seen, the strict separation of church and state as stated in the First Amendment to the Constitution leads to interesting issues Fig. 8.1 You may ask what are all these coins doing in a chapter on religion? If you look a little closer, you can see that Americans keep God in their pockets (at least when Americans pay by cash). And while the presidents displayed here aren ’ t deities, monuments dedicated to them look somewhat like Greek temples. What the coins all share is the motto In God We Trust and the image of an American. Can you identify the American presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt (FDR), and Kennedy (JFK)? Presidents Day is one of the numerous civil religious American holidays, as is Thanksgiving, strictly speaking. There ’ s even a German connection here: with a magnifying glass you could see FS underneath Jefferson ’ s collar at the top in the middle. Felix Schlag was a German-born sculptor and designer who won the competition in the late 1930s for designing a new five-cent coin, which Americans call a nickel. Schlag also created the design of Monticello, Jefferson ’ s home, on the reverse but could have chosen the Jefferson Monument, one of the “ temples ” dedicated to American presidents in Washington, DC that you ’ ll be seeing a little later in the chapter. And the woman? She ’ s been mentioned 2 and will be again 14 in Part II. In God We Trust 231 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="239"?> with specific religious groups such as the Mormons and the Amish. In spite of the First Amendment, religion seems to play a central role in American life in ways that would seem foreign to the English or Germans. Take a look at any American coin - say the penny or the nickel or the dime or the quarter - and you can find not only the presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt but also the words In God We Trust. “ God ” thus appears each and every day in millions of American transactions. “ In God We Trust ” was first used shortly after the Civil War but didn ’ t become common on all coins until the beginning of the 20 th century and didn ’ t appear on paper money until the late 1950s when it was also officially adopted by Congress as the national motto. Although the use of this motto has been hotly debated in the context of the separation of church and state, it has been adopted on other official American symbols like the state flag of Georgia. At the beginning of each school day millions of American students stand in front of the American flag to say the Pledge of Allegiance including “ one nation under God. ” Congress opens with a prayer, presidents swear on the Bible during their inauguration, “ God Bless America ” isn ’ t the national anthem but is much easier to sing and no doubt sung more often than the official “ Star-Spangled Banner. ” Political speeches often seem to be religious in a way that would be impossible in Germany and sound strange in Britain. On the other hand, there are no official religious holidays like in Germany and in Britain, and school prayer in all forms is illegal in all public schools. Some issues involving religion in America cause heated controversies at a level of intensity that ’ s difficult for Germans to understand. The debates about allowing school prayer in public schools, for example, have continued since the Supreme Court ruled in the early 1960s that according to the First Amendment to the Constitution school prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. What had been accepted in the hundred years or so of American education as something normal - Christian prayer being a part of each school day - has become a matter of great public debate and has even led to attempts to create a new amendment to the Constitution specifically allowing school prayer. Even though probably a majority of Americans would support some sort of voluntary school prayer, the attempt to pass an amendment hasn ’ t been successful. Amending the Constitution is, as we ’ ve learned, 5 very difficult. You can read regularly of court cases which result in manger scenes or the Ten one nation under God Bless America contradictions? 232 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="240"?> Commandments having to be removed from public buildings - often in spite of protests by local residents from communities that are relatively homogeneous in regard to religion. Thus even with the clear separation of church and state in the 1 st Amendment, the question of how much separation is possible and necessary before freedom becomes impaired is an issue that remains very contentious, more than two and a quarter centuries after the 1 st Amendment to the American Constitution was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights. The strict separation of church and state has resulted in issues that not only lead to controversies within the US like school prayer in public schools or religious symbols in public spaces, the separation of church and state can also lead to public misunderstandings between the German and American government. The US Department of State, for example, has criticized Germany for not respecting the religious freedom of minority religious groups like Scientologists or Jehovah ’ s Witnesses. I remember being surprised by the very strong emotions on both sides when a few prominent American politicians and celebrities openly criticized what they saw as the German government policy of prohibiting practicing Scientologists from entering the country. While Scientology evokes strong emotions and has been severely criticized in the US, at least some prominent American critics of the German policy mentioned the importance of the freedom of religion as central to American criticism. While Scientology is certainly controversial in the US, perhaps one reason for the diversity of American religious belief is the tolerance and acceptance of a wide range of groups as serious religious denominations, groups that in Germany would be called Sekte with all the negative connotations of the word. Religion plays a role in sexuality in America to a larger extent than in other Western secularized countries. But although the Puritan influence - no sex outside marriage, homosexuality as an abomination, no birth control - is visible in some Protestant denominations in the US, we should also note that the first openly gay Episcopal bishop was ordained in America and that same-sex unions are blessed in some denominations and that even some traditionally Protestant denominations allowed same-sex marriage ceremonies before the landmark Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges 14 that legalized same-sex marriage. (The Episcopal Church is, by the way, the American branch of the Anglican Communion, which we ’ ll be dealing with in the British part of this chapter.) American Catholic US-German differences religion and sexuality 233 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="241"?> bishops take a more liberal stance on issues of birth control than some bishops in Germany, and the Metropolitan Community Church, founded in the late 60s in Los Angeles, was the first organized Christian group explicitly accepting and supporting gays and lesbians. Evangelicalism is a movement that spans multiple Protestant denominations and originates from the 19 th century Awakenings with a central belief in the literal reading of the Bible and a personal commitment to Jesus as savior along with the importance of preaching this belief to others. What was first a uniquely American combination of television and evangelism later spread to Britain and to other parts of the world. While “ revival meetings ” in the 18 th and 19 th centuries could last for days, the radio broadcasts by such famous evangelists as Billy Graham in the 1950s, and later television broadcasts by Rex Humbard, Robert Schuller, Oral Roberts, and Jimmy Swaggart were just a few hours long but at times managed to combine professional showmanship with a sign of sincere faith. The format of televangelist broadcasts today can range from filmed church services with preaching and singing to talk shows with guests. It might seem easy to ridicule the entertainment factor of televangelists and parody their hypocrisy - famously done, for example, by the pop band Genesis (strangely enough for a band named after the first book of the Bible). Televangelism has been seriously criticized for its isolationist tendencies, which encourage believers to stay in the comfort of their home rather than joining a community, and for its simplistic promises made in return for donations, for its overt sales pitches, or for its proven cases of fraud. Televangelists were involved in well publicized sex and money scandals in the 1980s just as they had reached the height of their political power. In a post-television society the revivals from early America have moved on to social media, although traditional religious television and radio networks are still broadcasting in the US. Televangelism featured in an early 2020s award-winning movie The Eyes of Tammy Faye, based on a documentary of the same name released a generation earlier. The prosperity gospel teaches that financial and physical well-being are a sign of God ’ s blessing, and financial contributions to the best evangelist can lead to happiness or at least to prosperity, a key component of the American Dream. The political power of Christian evangelicals in the 1980s helped to elect Ronald Reagan as president. Jerry Falwell, a televangelist and religion and the media: televangelism and the prosperity gospel religion and political power 234 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="242"?> founder of Liberty University using Brigham Young University as a model, organized the so-called Moral Majority, a political lobby that promoted fundamentalist Christian values: the belief that the Bible was to be read literally, against abortion, for traditional families, against homosexuality, in favor of increased military spending, against expansion of social welfare programs, in favor of media censorship. Although the Moral Majority as an organization was disbanded in the 1980s, Christian evangelists have continued to play an important political role, supporting Republican candidates like George W. Bush or Donald Trump, whom Falwell ’ s son strongly supported. How can evangelicals who support the traditional family and are against pornography support a candidate like Trump who had affairs with adult film stars, was twice divorced, and knew little of the Bible? One reason might be that Falwell Junior wasn ’ t as pious as he seemed. In the early 2020s he was forced to resign as president of Liberty University in the wake of a scandal involving accusations of sexual impropriety. Also, some scholars see especially White male evangelical support of Trump as a sign that evangelicalism is not only a religious movement but one in which race and gender are very important. Roughly a quarter of all Americans identify as evangelical with the belief that the US should remain a Christian nation, if necessary through force. One best-selling response to the fundamentalist surge has been written by former president Jimmy Carter, a professed devout Christian himself, who argues for the separation of church and state as required by the constitution, the separation that Christian fundamentalist organizations have been trying to overcome. What has prevented religious revolution and violence, which is common elsewhere in the world, from happening in the US is something called civic or civil religion. This phenomenon is based on among other things a common tradition. All the religions we ’ ve mentioned so far would fit into what is often called the “ Judaeo- Christian tradition ” ; although the individual denominations may vary widely - as we ’ ve seen by looking at the Mormons with the Amish - a common Christian heritage is evident. When we add the Jews, who make up only around 2 % of the population but who have greatly influenced many aspects of American life (the arts, business, education), we can create a background that most Americans would identify with. This shared sense of identity may indeed change with the increase in immigrants from parts of the world that don ’ t share a civil religion 235 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="243"?> Judaeo-Christian heritage (Asia, for example). The common strand of identity called WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) has already been changed by the influence of the Hispanics, 7 who are overwhelmingly Catholic and are proud of their language and their culture. Fig. 8.2 This collage shows a rocket next to a church in Maryland, a unique combination in America, where, as we read at the beginning of the chapter, churches don ’ t always look like traditional churches in the UK or Germany. Can you identify the Capitol Building, the Jefferson Memorial (mentioned in the previous collage), the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial? These national monuments in Washington DC aren ’ t churches, of course, but they do look a lot like Greek temples, and obelisks were originally devoted to an Egyptian god. Can you match the coin bearing the image of the Lincoln Memorial with a coin in the previous illustration? Civil religion has been a common “ faith ” of very many Americans. The fervor with which some Americans sing the national anthem or speak about the Constitution or affirm their belief that Americans are a chosen people could seem as intense as religious feelings in other cultures. Symbols and rituals such as the saying the Pledge of Allegiance, celebrating the Fourth of July or Presidents Day with a reverence for the presidents that seems to put them on a par with saints, the use of God Bless America as a tag line in many speeches, putting the American flag on the altar in churches: all these examples are evidence of a shared sense of what ’ s important or sacred. Presidents Day, celebrated on the third Monday in February, used to be called just Washington ’ s Birthday and really was celebrated on Washington ’ s birthday. Monday holidays 6 have become popular to ensure that federal and most state workers have a long weekend and civil religious holidays and government temples 236 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="244"?> also to encourage shopping. The Monday holiday Presidents Day also honors Lincoln and in some states other presidents too. Another aspect of America ’ s civil religion is manifested in the Greco-Roman “ wedding-cake ” architecture you can find all over the country. The question remains to what extent Americans from other cultures can identify with the Greco-Roman tradition embodied in the monuments of Washington DC, for example, and to what extent they can accept aspects of the American Dream such as self-reliance, hard work, individual material success as a sign of being blessed, balanced by volunteerism and a sense of work for a larger community. John Winthrop ’ s proclamation of founding a city upon the hill for all the world to look upon is still common currency in American life. But it will remain an ongoing task for Americans in the future to come up with a more precise description of what this “ city upon a hill ” should look like with its new immigrants and new non-Judaeo-Christian religions as well as a dramatic decline in American affiliation with organized religion. The challenge of maintaining a cultural identity that everyone can accept in spite of a level of partisanship 3 12 not seen since the Civil War will be one of the major challenges for Americans in the 21 st century. In Britain there seems to have been no need for a civil religion, perhaps because the Church of England (abbreviated C of E) serves the purpose of granting a sense of identity - at least for the English - at a relatively low cost. Unlike in Germany, there are no church taxes, and the great variety of doctrines and beliefs and even of church services can satisfy many. Some High Church parishes are closer to the Catholic Church in their use of ritual and celebration of hierarchy; Low Church parishes have less formalized services. Unlike other religions, the origins of the Church of England can be dated precisely to several documents. Henry VIII 2 didn ’ t intend to start a fully new religion - he was, after all, opposed to the Reformation and to Martin Luther at first and had even been granted the title of fidei defensor, Defender of the Faith, by the Pope. He did, however, very much want a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she hadn ’ t been able to provide him with the son he desperately wanted. Once Henry rebelled against Rome, he was able to distribute the spoils gained by taking over the rich lands and monasteries owned previously by the Catholic Church and thus solidify his own personal power. His daughter Elizabeth I 2 did much to complete the break with Rome and established traditions that have continued to this very C of E is the Church of England 237 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="245"?> day. The Church of England is one of the very few established churches - churches officially recognized by the government - in the world. As we have seen, the US constitution forbids the US government from creating an established church. Fig. 8.3 Not only can US coins tell us something about US religion, British coins also contain references to the importance of religion in British history. The title fidei defensor abbreviated as FD or Fid Def has appeared on all coins for hundreds of years, even on coins that were never released, such as the one with Edward VIII, who as we ’ ll shortly see abdicated before he was crowned. As with the American coins we have examples here that few people own, like the gold Britannia 50-pound coin. Jody Clark designed the portrait you see of Elizabeth, the fifth official portrait since she became queen. How very long ago that was is commemorated by the 50-pence coin in the middle celebrating Elizabeth II ’ s historic Platinum Jubilee with the Queen on horseback. Although future monarchs will most probably assume the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Charles has publicly expressed discontent with the use of the title fidei defensor; the Prince would rather be known as Defender of Faith, not of The Faith because of the other faiths that have since become part of religious life in Britain and which we ’ ll be turning to shortly. The connections between the established Church of England and the British government probably appear very odd to us in a largely secularized Germany. Some of them seem to be of ceremonial nature: the Lords Spiritual, who sit in the House of Lords, have little power to make changes that would dramatically affect the life of most people in Britain, and the monarch has the power to name the Archbishops of Canterbury and York but does so only on the advice of the Prime Minister. 5 Of Defender of (the? ) Faith 238 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="246"?> course, we could go more into detail here about the structures of the Established Church - the dioceses, the General Synod, the role of the C of E in the Anglican Communion (a much broader community of churches around the world), the Lambeth Conference, the personalities and powers of the Archbishops of Canterbury and of York, … But - except for those perhaps wanting to become an Archbishop - we can also approach the importance of the Church of England from a broader, more popular angle: romantic love. Even though weekly church attendance in the UK has been on the decline for many years, formal aspects connected with the Church of England still play an astoundingly important role - at least for the Royals and thus also for the readers of popular newspapers, magazines, and blogs around the world. Most people, including those who aren ’ t really interested in such things, couldn ’ t escape the media coverage of Lady Diana, from the fairytale wedding with Prince Charles to her death in an automobile accident, followed by probably the most televised funeral in the history of the world. The romantic wedding between a prince and a kindergarten teacher had taken place in front of a global television audience around twenty years earlier in the one Anglican cathedral that no tourist can overlook: St. Paul ’ s Cathedral in London. It was an extravagant, spectacular event watched by 750 million people worldwide. Charles ’ great uncle, Edward VIII (whose portrait is on the gold coin above), would have no doubt been happy with a much quieter wedding to the American woman he loved, but even that was out of the question for a church that put principle above romance. This story is too long for us to start at the very beginning, so let ’ s jump right to the heart of the matter. The last - at least up to now - of many kings with the name Edward was Edward VIII, the son of one of the many Georges (George V, to be exact). After George V died, his eldest son became king. In addition to the many economic and political problems facing Britain in 1936, Edward, who became supreme governor of the Church of England at the same time as becoming king, had the problem of not being able to marry the woman he loved, the American socialite Wallis Simpson, because she had already been married twice and both husbands were still alive. And this meant that the C of E would not conduct the wedding. The prime minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin, was also much opposed to the planned wedding because he believed the British people would not tolerate a divorcee as queen. Edward then decided to give up the religion and romance a crown for true love 239 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="247"?> throne to marry the woman he loved. How ironic when you think of the fact that the Church of England was founded to allow a king, Henry VIII 2 as you remember, to divorce his wife. Unexpectedly Edward ’ s younger brother, yet another George (the VI), became king, and upon the early death of this George, his daughter Elizabeth became queen and simultaneously the supreme governor of the Church of England. While she hasn ’ t had marriage or divorce problems herself and thus no difficulties being an important part of the Church of England and simultaneously queen, her children have had all sorts of problems in their love lives. But the Church of England has changed with the times, and even the marriage of the widower Charles to the divorcee Camilla Parker Bowles has become possible - although they weren ’ t married in such a grand setting as St. Paul ’ s but only in a small civil ceremony in the Guildhall in Windsor, a town hall where marriage ceremonies are performed, a hall which was at least finished by the famous architect of St. Paul ’ s Cathedral, Christopher Wren. 2 The Queen as supreme governor of the Church of England didn ’ t attend the ceremony (putting the Church before Charles) but did attend the prayer service afterwards, during which both Charles and Camilla were blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The C of E has not only had concerns about royally romantic entanglements; there have also been some potentially explosive issues involving women and homosexuals, explosive in the sense of exploding the Anglican Communion by causing a schism between the various branches. Although a woman, Queen Elizabeth I, was responsible for finally establishing the C of E ’ s independence from Rome, women had little influence in the C of E until the 1990s - except of course for the roles of the Queens Anne, Victoria, and Elizabeth II as its Supreme Governors. The Episcopal Church in the US, a member of the Anglican Communion, was the first to ordain women as priests and later as bishops in the 1980s. After much debate and the threat of a schism within the Anglican Communion, general acceptance of women as priests has grown. In the mid 90s the first women priests were ordained in Bristol Cathedral. The first female bishops were ordained within the Church of England two decades later. As a result of the ordination of women in the CoE some members of the clergy and congregations converted to Roman Catholicism. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was open in his criticism of the Church of England ’ s ban on ordaining practicing a more recent romance ordination of women ordination of homosexuals 240 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="248"?> homosexuals when he was appointed archbishop at the beginning of the millennium. As with the previous process involving the ordination of women, there ’ s still a danger that the Anglican Communion could break apart over the issue of ordaining gay priests. As with the ordination of women, the American Episcopal Church has played the maverick by appointing an openly gay bishop in the early 2000s. Other members of the Anglican Communion, especially those in Africa, have threatened to withdraw if gay clergy members are permitted, thus perhaps bringing about a schism that would shatter the Anglican Communion, of which the Church of England has been the center for hundreds of years. This special established status of the Church of England could play a role in the ordination of women and of homosexuals. Parliament has the right to veto church decisions, although conflict between the Church of England and Parliament has mostly been avoided in the last few hundred years. But the Anglican Church in Scotland allowed same-sex weddings in the late 2010s and the Church in Wales followed in the early 2020s. The Church of England could follow Scotland and Wales or Parliament could intervene. How the Anglican Communion in general will deal with the issue of the ordination of practicing homosexuals and of same-sex marriage remains a potentially divisive question in the 21 st century. English history - and to a certain extent British history as well - could be described as a series of conflicts first between church and state and then between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. Even after Henry VIII ’ s break with Rome, Roman Catholics remained in Britain, but it wasn ’ t until the beginning of the 19 th century that the Catholic Emancipation Act 2 was passed and they regained some of the rights they had lost almost 300 years previously. Nowadays Catholics have all the rights anyone else has in the United Kingdom, except, of course, that a Catholic can ’ t become king or queen or marry one either. But with all the public problems the Royal Family has endured in the last few decades, probably few Catholics feel this restriction to be very important. Catholics make up around a fifth of the population and their attendance at Mass is higher than the very low attendance of Anglicans. The number of Catholics has increased with Irish immigration to Britain as well as to some degree immigration from other countries in Asia and Africa. There are, of course, some beautiful cathedrals in Britain; the mother church is in London, Westminster Cathedral. While the question of personal religious affiliation seems to be declining in importance, the question Roman Catholics 241 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="249"?> of Tony Blair ’ s possible conversion to Catholicism was still deemed interesting enough to make headline news before he resigned as prime minister. If he had converted before resigning, he would have become the first Catholic prime minister, a fact no doubt deserving the same publicity as John F. Kennedy becoming the first Catholic US president. But in the 2020s neither President Joe Biden ’ s Catholicism nor Boris Johnson becoming the first Roman Catholic prime minister in history made much political news. Johnson being allowed to marry his Catholic wife in Westminster Cathedral was possible because the Catholic church hadn ’ t recognized Johnson ’ s first two marriages. Religion (in the Church of England sense) seems not to play an important role in the life of many people in Britain: the vast majority only go to church for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and according to some surveys only about half of the population even professes to be Christian. Religion in Northern Ireland, however, where more than three-quarters of the population are Christian, has been a matter of life and death for the last five hundred years at least. While officially there has been no established church like in England since the Church of Ireland was disestablished in the latter part of the 19 th century, most Unionists, who support a continuation of Northern Ireland ’ s place in the United Kingdom, are either members of the Anglican Church of Ireland or of the Protestant Presbyterian Church. Nationalists, who support the separation of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and a union with the Republic of Ireland, are Roman Catholic. Trying to find a solution to the Irish Troubles will no doubt also involve untangling the ancient religious and political knot that has threatened to strangle the Irish in both parts of the Emerald Isle for so many centuries. Whereas the conflicts between the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans are mostly historical - except for the current situation in Northern Ireland, of course - religious conflicts of another sort have become widely publicized. At least ever since the first immigrants from the colonies and former colonies of the British Empire arrived in the UK, non-Christian religions have made their appearance in Britain, an appearance which has become conspicuous in a beautiful sense with the building of temples and mosques but also conspicuous in an ugly sense with public expressions of racism, hostile demonstrations, the burning of effigies, and even violence on both sides of the racial divide. Believers in non-Christian religions make up less than one-tenth of the population of Britain. The main Northern Ireland non-Christian religions 242 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="250"?> religions: Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism are the faiths of the ethnic minorities who began to come in large numbers to the UK after World War II and who have since changed the face of Britain. 7 For most non-Christian believers in Britain, the ties between religion and ethnicity seem as close and tight as the ties between religion and political affiliation for Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Only the Buddhists, the smallest major non-Christian group, have believers across the ethnic spectrum. Hinduism is one of the oldest of the world ’ s major religions and one of the most diverse, with various doctrines and many gods and divinities and holy days and festivals. The belief that the soul wanders through many forms (reincarnation) is one of the central tenets of Hinduism. Around 2 % of the British population identify themselves as being Hindu. What seems to be a very small percentage throughout the country as a whole is very unevenly distributed. About half of all Hindus in the United Kingdom are concentrated in London; Hindus also account for 15 % of the population of Leicester. Hindus first began arriving in larger numbers in the UK after the independence of India and the partition of India and Pakistan. Other Hindus were expelled from former British colonies in East Africa in the 1970s. 7 Indian restaurants, an important Indian influence on British culture, are often run by Muslim Pakistanis or Bangladeshis. In matters of food, most Hindus are vegetarians. A study funded by the British government and the Hindu Forum of Britain came to the conclusion that in the early 21 st century Hindu families were stable and that Hindus were successful economically but that the trait of being selfsufficient had hindered Hindus from becoming more politically and socially active within wider British society. Nevertheless, Hindus have formed many organizations, among them the somewhat controversial Hindu Forum, and Hindus are becoming better represented in Parliament. The first Hindu state-funded faith school opened in the 2010s, by the 2020s there were primary and secondary Hindu faith schools. There are already hundreds of Hindu temples in Britain; the first traditional Hindu temple and one of the largest outside India was opened in London shortly before the turn of the millennium. Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights and a sort of Hindu New Year, has become a well-known celebration in Britain, especially in the city of Leicester, as you might guess. Sikhism was founded in the 15 th century in India and is thus the youngest of the three large non-Christian religions in the UK. Sikhs Hindus Sikhs 243 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="251"?> believe in one God just as Christians and Muslims do, and they place emphasis on living honestly, working hard, and treating everyone equally. While many of the first generation of Sikh immigrants from India adapted to their home country by removing their turbans and cutting their beards, later immigrants from East Africa kept up their minority status by openly displaying the symbols of their faith and fought to be allowed to do so. The typical turbans worn to cover their long hair may have caused some Sikh men problems with American and Irish security regulations, but they have now become part of English life - especially in the areas with high numbers of Sikhs. Less than 1 % of all British people are Sikhs, with very few of them in Wales or Scotland, but they make up more than 8 % of the population in the West Midlands area. More Sikhs live in the UK than anywhere else in the world other than India. The vast majority are from an Indian ethnic background, but most were born in the UK. Most Sikhs own their own homes, a sign of integration. There are Sikh members in the House of Commons and one in the House of Lords, there have been Sikh mayors in Coventry, Leicester, and Gloucester, and a cult Sikh cricket player, Monty Panesar. Britain has hundreds of gurdwaras, the places where Sikhs congregate for worship, and London has one of the largest outside India. While Sikhs don ’ t have a special holy day like Sunday for Christians, Saturday for Jews, or Friday for Muslims, most Sikhs go to a gurdwara on Sundays. Shortly after the turn of the millennium Bend It Like Beckham, directed by Kenyan-born Gurinder Chadha, 7 offered one view of Sikh family life in Britain with a traditional mother and an understanding father, who had suffered from racism as a cricket player in England and thus wanted to protect his daughter, who was determined to play soccer. Islam is the youngest of the world ’ s major religions and was founded by the prophet Mohammed in what is now Saudi Arabia in the 7 th century. The monotheistic religion spread rapidly throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and into Europe during the following centuries and is now the second-largest religion in the world. The relations between the Islamic and the Western world have ranged from peaceful and fruitful coexistence to the violence of the medieval crusades and terrorism of the 21 st century. Muslims make up more than half of all non-Christian religion adherents, are the fastestgrowing religious group in Britain with more than one-third of all Muslims under the age of 16, and make up more than 7 % of the total population. While contact between Britain and Muslims can be traced Muslims 244 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="252"?> back hundreds of years, the majority of Muslims in Britain today came as immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh, starting in the late 1940s. 7 While most Muslims have an Asian ethnic background, large minorities have a White or Black ethnic background, contributing to a great diversity of ethnicity. As with the Hindus and the Sikhs, the majority of Muslims live in London and urban areas of the West Midlands and of Yorkshire. One major sign of the deep-seated differences between Muslim belief and British values became obvious during the public protests about the novel The Satanic Verses, written by the award-winning British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie and published in the late 1980s. Many Muslims regarded the novel as blasphemous. Bookstores that sold the book in the UK and abroad were bombed, copies of the book were burned during demonstrations, and the Iranian leader Khomeini called for the death of Rushdie and his publishers, resulting in a rupture in diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran. The controversy was rekindled when Rushdie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth a decade later. Another incident which has caused increased tensions within the British Muslim community and between Muslims and non-Muslims was the London bombings in the mid 2000s resulting in many deaths. The suicide bombers were all Muslim and their religious beliefs seemed to have played a major role in the attacks. The Muslim community in the UK reacted with shock and condemnation but also with some understanding for what they saw as reasons behind the terror: anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes, British foreign policy hostile to Muslim interests, the perceived immorality on the part of White British society as a whole. An Islamist extremist suicide bomber detonated the Manchester Arena bombing in the mid 2010s killing two dozen people and injuring hundreds of children attending a concert. London Bridge attacks and stabbings in the late 2010s made headlines. How British society comes to terms with different attitudes towards religious freedom, towards blasphemy and censorship, towards individual rights and community responsibility along with obvious economic differences will determine whether violence and hate crimes continue in the United Kingdom. Satanic Verses, London and Manchester bombings 245 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="253"?> Assimilation and integration problems with questions of Muslim/ Asian identity have been dealt with to varying degrees in films like My Beautiful Launderette or East is East or the lesser-known My Son the Fanatic - the last one with a German connection. The well-known English pop singer of Greek ethnic background Cat Stevens converted to Islam in 1977 and changed his name to Yusuf Islam and founded three faith schools in London, one of them, the Islamia Primary School becoming the first state-funded Muslim school. Members of the House of Lords include the youngest and first openly gay life peer, Lord Waheed Alli, as well as the first female Muslim life peer, Baroness Uddin. The first British-born Muslims elected to the House of Commons won their seats fifty years after Muslim immigrants began arriving in large numbers in Britain. Islamophobia played a role in the Brexit campaign and increased in the early 2020s with Boris Johnson ’ s public insults of Muslims and allegations of Islamophobia in the Conservative party making headline news. On the other hand, more Muslim members were elected to the House of Commons at the end of the 2010s than ever before, and Sadiq Khan was reelected as the first Muslim mayor of London in the early 2020s. Some of the many mosques in Britain date back a century; large mosques can be found in London, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool. As we saw in the chapter on minorities and immigration in the UK, problems of race as opposed to problems of religion were paramount in the past; the religion of Stephen Lawrence 7 played no role in his murder or in the publicity that followed. Britain has certainly been no stranger to religiously motivated violence, with a history of conflicts between state and one church and then between Catholics and Protestants. Except for Northern Ireland, though, (and even there the conflict is at least as much British versus Irish as Catholic vs. Protestant) the role of religion has declined in importance for many Britons, and with the exceptions mentioned above religion has thus lost some of its power to motivate extreme violent action. Britain has even been looked upon as a model of multicultural tolerance and as providing an environment that allows people to live together peacefully, people who in other parts of the world like India, Pakistan, and former Yugoslavia resort to violence over religious differences. assimilation and integration future of religion in Britain 246 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="254"?> Fig. 8.4 British buildings and names reveal aspects of religion in the UK. St. Paul ’ s Cathedral 2 in London seen from the Millennium Bridge is, as you ’ d expect, in the middle. You can also find what could be a typical American Baptist Church in Penzance (with palm branches at the very top) in the upper left. Clockwise to Liverpool, which has both a very-modern looking Roman Catholic cathedral and a more traditional Anglican cathedral, larger than St. Paul ’ s. Birmingham ’ s St. Chad ’ s Cathedral is one of the few Roman Catholic churches built after Henry VIII ’ s split with Rome. In Birmingham you can also find the Ramgarhia Sikh temple. The very Catholic-sounding St. Mary the Virgin actually belongs to the Church in Wales (part of the Anglican church). We have the word temple on a building that refers to law courts in an area of London named after the Temple Church, a Royal Peculiar church, which is too peculiar to explain here. The Salvation Army, both a Protestant denomination and an international charity, was founded in London a century and half ago. The hazy-looking Alma de Cuba was once St. Peter ’ s, the oldest Catholic church in Liverpool, and became a bar, restaurant, and theatre, where you can now get married and stage a party. You can also drink under stained glass windows at what was the Langstane Kirk and is now a bar called Soul in Aberdeen or visit the ruins of the Cathedral in Elgin, Scotland. And the last image is Antony Gormley ’ s Angel of the North, one of the largest sculptures in Britain. Gormley had a German mother, an Irish father, was raised Catholic, and traveled as a young man to India to learn more about Buddhism. What ’ s missing from the collage? The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir temple was one of the largest Hindu temples when completed shortly before the turn of the millennium and is Europe ’ s first traditional Hindu stone temple. The Baitul Futuh Mosque is one of the largest mosques in Western Europe, but you can easily find images of both online or, even better, plan to visit on your next trip to Greater London. 247 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="255"?> Perhaps this multicultural model can be implemented more easily in Britain than in Germany, for example, because the situation in Britain is in many ways different - Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs are minority groups that come from the Commonwealth, from countries that shared at least parts of a common culture with the motherland; Muslims in Germany are now in the third and fourth generation but still are regarded as foreign. Integration will and must come: the economic factor is simply too important. With a broader interpretation of what it means to be British - as opposed to being English, Welsh, Scottish - Muslims can identify themselves in the UK as full citizens. Two-thirds of all Sikhs identified themselves as British according to the 2011 census. An earlier census report found that more than 50 % of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu adults living in England and Wales said that their religion was important to their identity. The fact remains that while violence has erupted in connection with Islamic terrorism, no major violence has taken place between the various religious groups. Some Hindus and Sikhs have begun to become dissatisfied with the term Asian - partly to separate themselves from Muslims and partly to show their identity as British citizens. 7 It will remain the task of British society to find ways to integrate and include all faiths now found in Britain. The test will be if the monarch can change from being the defender of the faith to a defender of faiths and if British society can find room for the sound of the muezzin and the presence of veils, turbans, saris, and bindis as valid demonstrations of religious belief in a secular society where for most people religion has a major role only in issues of “ hatch, match, and dispatch ” - baptisms, weddings, and funerals. You hopefully remember the Pew Research Center 7, which provides very many statistics and does high-quality research not only into ethnic groups but also into religious belief in the US. The PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that publishes statistics and analysis such as the 2020 Census of American Religion or the 2021 American Values Survey. Gallup is an American company that has been conducting opinion polls in the US for almost a century. These three sources have documented the dramatic decline of American interest in organized religion and the decline in the number of Americans who self-identify as Christians. As you can see in the spelling, The Religion Media British as unifying factor for all to hatch, match, and dispatch? 248 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="256"?> Centre is based in Britain and does similar research not only on religion in the UK but also in the US, with the goal of providing media representatives with impartial, well-grounded information. “ We believe that at a time when society is so deeply divided, with social media fuelling division and hatred, encouraged by extreme ideologies, the imperative for our work has never been greater. ” I think we can all say “ Amen! ” to that. You can experience one critical but also moving view of the Mormons in the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part play Angels in America, written by Tony Kushner and first performed in the early 90s, and the winner of Tony Awards as Best Play two years in a row. The play was later made into a multi-award-winning television miniseries. The musical Book of Mormon opened on Broadway in the early 2010s to glowing reviews, winning many awards and becoming one of the most successful musicals of all time. You can find out more about the role of non-Christian religions in Britain by watching older films Bend It Like Beckham or My Beautiful Lauderette and then waiting for British cinema to come out with more recent films. Many of you have no doubt seen Life of Brian, but did you think about how its reception in the UK reveals insights into British attitudes towards religion? While some places in Britain banned the movie in the 80s, Monty Python ’ s Life of Brian has become one of the most respected comedies in the history of British cinema. Since public executions took place in the Middle Ages, attitudes towards religion in public life have changed a lot. Exercises 1. Criticize and justify the title of this chapter compared to the actual content. 2. Which graphics in this chapter would you have expected to be in chapter 5 or chapter 6? (easy) What are these doing in this chapter? (not quite as easy) 3. Distinguish Westminster Cathedral from Westminster Abbey. 4. Give two examples of how church and state are (not) separated in the US. 5. What role did romance play in religion in the last century and what role could it play in this century? 6. Describe the ethnic background of adherents of non-Christian religions. 249 Chapter 8 Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals in the City on the Hill (religion) <?page no="257"?> Challenging questions and interesting projects: 1. On your next trip to Britain, look for an Anglican Cathedral and note the activities advertised there. If possible, attend a service and describe your reactions and try to identify components from Roman Catholic churches and components from Protestant churches. 2. Look for the transcript of the speech of any American politician and list the number of phrases that seem to have a religious ring to them. And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you ’ ll-maybe-become-a-saint tasks: 1. Try and come up with a solution that would please both those Americans who believe that allowing for voluntary prayer in public schools is necessary and those Americans who believe that the Constitution forbids such offers. 2. Devise a plan that would integrate British Muslims into British life fully, giving the Muslims a sense of belonging that the non-Muslim British population could also feel comfortable with. And for those with time and passion in this life or if not in the next: … Roman Catholic belief in the US; the mega churches; the Left Behind series; finding names for religions and for American religious experience; Black Muslims; tests used by the Supreme Court to judge the constitutionality of public prayer; creationism, and evolution in schools; tolerance of the US armed forces for a Norse Heathen being allowed to grow a beard; Trump ’ s ban on immigrants from Muslim countries testing the separation of church and state; other characteristics of the Church of England: English, reformed, established, comprehensive; important differences between the UK and the US regarding the role of religion in public life; Judaism in the US and the UK; free churches in the UK; the Church of Scotland; religion in Wales; religion in education in the UK, especially Christian-run and state-maintained schools and the growing number of Muslim-run schools; interesting, typically eccentric English religions like those of the Pagans, Druidism 1 … 250 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="258"?> From Disasters to Parks (the environment) Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. attributed to Mark Twain One is not born English without knowing how to converse easily about the weather. Deanna Raybourn We also look after forests, woods, fens, beaches, farmland, downs, moorland, islands, archaeological remains, castles, nature reserves, villages - for ever, for everyone. from the National Trust ’ s website What comes to your mind when you think of Britain and landscape? Rolling green hills and hedgerows in the heart of England? Romantic or dramatic moorland in places with names like Dartmoor in southwest England? The soft hills of Wales, the craggy peaks of the Scottish Highlands, or the white cliffs of Dover? America and landscape would probably trigger some of the tourist attractions mentioned before. 1 In this chapter you ’ ll be finding out more about some of the natural wonders in America and in Britain, as well as some of the natural disasters caused by nature and by humankind. When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ typical landscapes and animals in the US and the UK, ▶ typical British and American impacts on the environment, ▶ the role of the government in protecting and exploiting the environment, ▶ environmental disasters in the US and the UK, ▶ environmental awareness in the US and UK, ▶ American and British national parks. The attempt to link the identity of a people with a particular kind of landscape is nothing new; in fact, it ’ s become a popular topic in cultural studies, which we ’ ll be turning to soon in Part II of this book. Think for a minute about what sources are responsible for what you see in your mind when you think of typical American or British landscapes. Even though I grew up in the flat wooded southeast, the a national landscape? 251 Chapter 9 <?page no="259"?> first images of American landscape that come to my mind are the vast open Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. And English landscape is for me the gently green rolling hills with sheep dotted picturesquely here and there that I ’ ve seen in paintings and in movies like Barry Lyndon. When I traveled to the heart of England, the Cotswolds area, for the first time, it all seemed very familiar. Scottish landscape is for me and probably for many of you the Highlands with their majestic mountains - and not the pretty but rather flat countryside and coastline of southeastern Scotland that I ’ ve actually experienced. And the term British landscape just results in a blank in my mind since I ’ m not sure what that could be - maybe Stonehenge since it can ’ t be classified as English, Welsh, or Scottish (but it ’ s too small to count as a landscape anyway). Of course there are problems with assigning landscape to national identity. While a river like the Rio Grande can be taken as a clear way of distinguishing the border of two countries, the US and Mexico, what aspects of landscape change when you travel in the border country area of north England and south Scotland or of western England and eastern Wales? History buffs 2 might want to point to Hadrian ’ s Wall as a way of distinguishing the English from the Scottish side of the border except that Hadrian ’ s Wall is now to be found completely within England. And while a couple of rivers form part of the border between England and Wales, the area of the Black Mountains looks the same on both sides of the border. Do the American Rockies look a lot different than the Swiss Alps? Where do we get our images of national landscape from? For many of us no doubt from tourist brochures or movies, paintings, the mass media, or from the “ purple mountain majesties ” in the lyrics of patriotic songs like “ America the Beautiful. ” We could ’ ve also chosen a few lines from Woody Guthrie ’ s famous folk song “ This Land is Your Land ” : “ From California to the New York Island/ From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters. ” But since tourism, painting, movies, and media are not our topics yet, we can leave the theoretical problem of linking national identity with a specific landscape and turn to concrete positive examples of government stewardship of the environment. First, though, let ’ s take a brief look at some animals. If it ’ s difficult to connect landscape with national identity, what about fauna and flora, animals and plants? Are there uniquely American animals or English plants? Does it make sense to discuss animals from a national cultural point of view? Animals most problems with a national landscape? an American bird? 252 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="260"?> probably don ’ t feel English, Scottish, Welsh or Pakistani or Black Caribbean, but before Brexit they could get pet passports. Now all animals from the British Isles need a more expensive Animal Health Certificate to visit the EU with their owners. The American bald eagle certainly doesn ’ t need either a passport or certificate to show it ’ s been a symbol of America since the American Revolution and can still be found in the Great Seal of the United States and on coins 8 and dollar bills. Why the bald eagle as the national bird? ( “ Bald ” here refers to the bird ’ s white head feathers.) Eagles are seen as symbols of strength and courage, and the bald eagle is indigenous only to North America. One of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, 2 was in favor of the turkey as the national bird. But most Americans point with pride to the bald eagle as a national symbol. President John F. Kennedy praised the bald eagle ’ s “ fierce beauty and proud independence ” as a fitting symbol in a letter to the National Audubon Society but also warned of the dangers the bald eagle was facing. At the beginning of the 1960s Americans were becoming aware of the effects of pollution. The biologist and writer Rachel Carson published the bestseller Silent Spring and made the general public aware of the dangers of pesticides, especially DDT, for birds. Without the environmental activism that began at this time and grew strongly during the 1970s, the American bald eagle might well have become extinct and was for many years on Fig. 9.1 Great Seal of the United States. Does anything remind you of American Indians? Check back 7 to remind yourselves of an Iroquois motto that captures the sense of unity that the seal is intended to portray. And the arrows aren ’ t the only sign that American Indians played a role in the design. Colonists observed the Native Americans ’ reverence for the eagle. Which direction is the eagle looking in? The olive branch symbolizing peace is in its right claw. bald eagle, endangered species 253 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="261"?> the government ’ s official Endangered Species List. Even though the population of bald eagles nationwide has now stabilized, it is still strictly against US law to disturb them in any way. You may have noticed the word indigenous to describe the bald eagle above. This word can refer to any animals (including humans) that are native to a certain region of the world. Animals that aren ’ t indigenous must have come from somewhere else, and one small animal that scurries across parks and fields in search of food and that comes in various colors is a good example of the connection that some people make between nationality and animals. The gray squirrel is one of the most common animals in American city parks and can be seen throughout suburbs in much of the country. More than a century and a half ago rich Victorians took home gray squirrels from North America as souvenir pets and then released them. Due to their size and strength as well as the diseases they spread, they were able to compete successfully with the native red squirrels, whose numbers have now plummeted to a degree that they are in danger of becoming extinct in the UK. Prince Charles, patron of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, called the gray squirrel an “ alien species ” in competition with “ one of the most utterly charming British native mammals, ” although they aren ’ t called British or English or Welsh red squirrels (in spite of an attempt to create a safe haven for red squirrels on the Welsh island of Anglesey). The official name for this “ charming British native mammal ” is the European or Eurasian red squirrel to distinguish it from the American red squirrel. Incidentally, red squirrels can have gray-colored fur just as gray squirrels can be reddish, showing that discrimination on the basis of color causes problems in the animal world, too. Red is also the color of the unofficial national bird of Britain, which in spite of its official name, European robin, received the most votes for the British national bird in a newspaper survey a few years ago. A move to officially name the golden eagle as Scotland ’ s national bird hasn ’ t been successful, but the projects to boost the number of golden eagles there were successful in the early 2020s. Even if Britain doesn ’ t have an official national bird, it does have Europe ’ s largest conservation charity, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB for short), founded more than a hundred years ago and still very popular. The RSPB makes use of the British love of nature by encouraging people to count not only birds but recently also other kinds of wildlife in their own gardens. Another large organization with a long name is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), a British squirrel? red robins and … 254 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="262"?> which has come out in support of one red-colored animal that in the early 2000s was found more often in The Guardian 10 than in the gardens because of the headlines it generated. This animal would no doubt want to obtain a passport to be able to emigrate out of the rural areas where fox hunting is still practiced even if it ’ s now against the law. Fig. 9.2 One identifying aspect of rural Britain has remained visible to varying degrees in the last thousand years. Take a look at what you might consider to be a typical photo of the English countryside. The lines that divide up the green rolling hills in the upper left are hedgerows near Exeter in southwest England. Hedge (etymologically related to the German word Hecke) is a typically English feature of the landscape, made of shrubs and bushes from the rose and hawthorn families as well as trees like the elm, oak, and ash, some of which have been pruned over many hundreds of years to establish a natural border between fields (sometimes going back to Roman times) or to separate roads from fields. While modern farming methods with the use of large machinery have resulted in the loss of hedges, national societies dedicated to their preservation are helping to slow their destruction. Even though hedges are a more common feature of the English countryside, the world ’ s largest hedgerow, made up of a living wall of beech trees, is said to be found in Scotland. The parking lot and asphalt spoil the photo on the left, but they wouldn ’ t look too out of place with the double-decker bus on the right, a famous symbol of London. London can boast of having the world ’ s first - and also oldest - underground public transportation system, the famous London Tube. But both traffic in the London Underground, the official name of the Tube, and the traffic above-ground can be extremely congested. At the beginning of the millennium when traffic in central London had slowed to the pace of a (tired) horse and buggy, Mayor Ken Livingstone introduced a congestion charge requiring motorists to pay a fee to enter parts of London during the week, with closed circuit television (CCTV) used to ensure compliance. While the charge did reduce congestion, accidents and some pollutants, studies in the early 2020s showed higher pollution because of the increased number of diesel-driven buses and taxis in the congestion zone. The introduction of electric vehicles should gradually solve that problem. And the new dazzlingly modern Elizabeth line on the London metro promises a better future of public transport bringing people faster than ever across greater London. 255 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="263"?> The debate over allowing or banning fox hunting was accompanied by huge demonstrations even though foxes have never been hunted by more than a small percentage of the British population, many of them from the upper classes. Even though the traditional “ sport ” of fox hunting with hounds has been made illegal in all parts of the UK except for Northern Ireland, ceremonies connected with fox hunting and sometimes the hunting itself illegally continue. Supporters of fox hunting claim that the debate leading up to the ban actually increased people ’ s awareness of a great tradition associated with rural life and that fox hunting performed a service in controlling the numbers of foxes. Although the hunt is now illegal, the hunters ’ bright-red jackets and barking hounds will no doubt linger in our TVand movieinfluenced imaginations as a symbol of a kind of rural British identity. We began this chapter with “ purple mountain majesties ” and tourist images of the natural beauties of the US in mind. There are other, human-made aspects of the US landscape that are not at all famous but still very important for the environment. Take dams, for example. Until the 1930s flooding was a typical problem in the Tennessee Valley, an area in the southeast United States stretching from Kentucky through Tennessee to North Carolina and Virginia. As part of FDR ’ s New Deal and yet another example of the alphabet agencies, 2 the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) improved the lives of the poor farmers living in this impoverished area, generated electricity through many new dams, provided lakes for recreation, and was used as proof that the federal government could positively affect people ’ s lives through huge engineering projects in spite of criticism that such government action was a sign of socialism. Planned projects with nuclear power in the Tennessee Valley were cancelled in the 1980s because of problems with quality, at the beginning of the 2020s the use of nuclear power was increased with the goal of reducing emissions by the middle of the century. Another massive engineering project from the same time period was at first called Boulder Canyon Project and later named after President Herbert Hoover. 1 Hoover Dam, like the TVA, was supposed to control flooding and generate electricity and was considered successful in taming the Colorado River, which the dam holds back at the Nevada-Arizona border (which also separates the two time zones Mountain and Pacific). While positive results of the Hoover Dam include flood control, the production of hydroelectricity, and irrigation - in effect transforming the southwestern … foxes from TVA … … to the Hoover Dam 256 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="264"?> area of the US - the dam also choked off the mighty Colorado, which now no longer regularly flows into the Gulf of California but often dries up in the desert. A former president of the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest American environmental organization, has suggested draining mighty Lake Powell, formed by another dam on the Colorado, the Glen Canyon Dam, and returning the Colorado to its previous condition as a wild-flowing river. The belief in the wonders of technology that led to the building of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s was shaken by two events in the 70s, which largely contributed to the growth of environmental awareness in America. In the New York State city of Niagara Falls (named for the famous landmark nearby) there is a neighborhood with the romantic name Love Canal, which became the focus of national and international attention in the late 70s when huge amounts of highly poisonous chemical waste began to rise above the surface of the ground where homes and a school had been built decades earlier. For the first time in American history, emergency government funds were spent on clearing the aftermath of a human-made disaster, building a residential neighborhood on a dangerous chemical dumpsite. Just a few years later another environmental scandal was exposed in another neighborhood, Times Beach in the state of Missouri, with the same results: evacuation of families, serious health effects for those who had lived in areas that were full of toxic waste, and a change of attitude about the role of the government in protecting the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal government agency established at the beginning of the 70s, became authorized to use money (called the Superfund) to compensate those harmed and to clean up the mess left behind at Love Canal and other sites across the country. But environmental problems weren ’ t limited to the 1970s. The Flint water crisis was headline news in the 2016 presidential election and was a focus in the documentary Slay the Dragon, 5 which shockingly showed how bad politics resulted in Black Americans in Flint, Michigan, being slowly poisoned by lead levels in their drinking water. Only a couple of hundred kilometers from Love Canal, near Harrisburg, the state capital of Pennsylvania, 1 and not far from an area with a substantial Amish population 8 lies an island in the Susquehanna River where two nuclear power plants were built in the 1970s. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident caused by equipment malfunctions and worker errors didn ’ t result in death and destruc- Love Canal, Times Beach, Flint Three Mile Island 257 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="265"?> tion, unlike Chernobyl seven years later or Fukushima more than a generation later, but it did result in a huge public-health scare and a dramatic change in attitude towards nuclear power. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a government agency established a few years earlier, tightened regulations on new nuclear power plants as a direct consequence of Three Mile Island. No more nuclear power plants were to be built for the next forty years. Two typical characteristics of American cities pose challenges for energy efficiency and environmental protection. At first glance they seem contradictory: vertical expansion with skyscrapers and horizontal expansion - suburbs and beyond - spurred on by economic factors like cheaper automobiles, improved roads, and the American dream of owning a house and yard. After World War II new houses were built in the areas around the cities, and people moved from the city to larger houses in the new suburbs. The resulting rise in car ownership was due to increased travel from home in the suburbs to work in the cities. The growth in road traffic led to the building of networks of highways like the mammoth US Interstate Highway System, proposed by President Eisenhower and based on his experience of the German autobahn system during his duty in Germany after World War II. The interstate system, one of the world ’ s largest highway systems, was originally planned for military movement, and has sometimes proved useful in evacuations in the wake of hurricanes. Urban sprawl, the ugly spreading out of cities, isn ’ t limited to America but certainly is a typical characteristic of American urban areas and the result of the dramatic increase in the use of the automobile, which has remained the favorite mode of transportation for the vast majority of Americans. Other forms of land transport have struggled to establish themselves. The first “ transcontinental railroad ” wasn ’ t really transcontinental, 1 and it actually wasn ’ t until the 1990s that the first real transcontinental railroad for passengers connected Los Angeles at the Pacific with Miami at the Atlantic, but even this line was discontinued after damage done by one of the many hurricanes that hit the US each year. Joe Biden, a fan of the government-funded Amtrak railway network, spearheaded a plan to expand public transportation in the early 2020s. While it is highly unlikely that the birthplace of mass-produced automobiles becomes the land of mass public transport in the future, it would be wrong to rule out the possibility of America making some improvements that will benefit the environment. on autobahns … … to urban sprawl 258 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="266"?> Public transportation has always played a more important role in the UK, especially in densely populated southern England, than in the vastness of the US, and urban sprawl isn ’ t a major problem, but the UK has had a nuclear disaster similar to Three Mile Island. Sellafield or Windscale are both names for a nuclear processing area on the northwest English coast not far from the Lake District. The Windscale reactors were originally used for developing nuclear weapons in the 40s and 50s. Queen Elizabeth II pulled the lever to start the UK ’ s first civilian nuclear power station called Calder Hall, not far from Windscale, in 1956. Her optimism about the uses of nuclear power echoed the optimism in much of the industrialized world at the time: “ This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community. ” Just a year later the Windscale fire, the first fire in any nuclear reactor, released radiation. The fire burned for three days and reports of health problems among local residents persist to this day. A BBC documentary called the accident “ Britain ’ s Biggest Nuclear Disaster ” and compared it to the Three Mile Island accident. In an attempt to improve its public image, Windscale ’ s name was changed to Sellafield. But a later series of accidents and leaks kept Sellafield, too, in the headlines and created tension between the Irish and British government, Sellafield being just across the narrow Irish Sea from Ireland. Sellafield hasn ’ t only been used to generate electricity but also to reprocess nuclear fuel from other nuclear reactors - including reactors in Germany. And thus it has become a focus of criticism by many environmental organizations like Greenpeace. The use of nuclear power has remained controversial, but both Labour and Conservative governments have made plans to keep atomic energy on the agenda and to build new reactors to replace some of the older ones due to shut down in the 2020s. Will the work of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government body with the task of shutting down and cleaning up Britain ’ s nuclear reactors, increase or decrease in the future? Will the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the site of a dozen nuclear reactors, result in more peaceful atomic power in place of Russian oil imports or more awareness of the environmental dangers connected with the vulnerability of nuclear plants? One basic environmental difference between the UK and the US is the occurrence of natural disasters. Blizzards, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, floods, earthquakes, even volcanic eruptions are part Sellafield and a nuclear future? weather and the Weather Channel 259 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="267"?> of the reason why the Weather Channel is a popular network 10 in the US. And even though talking about the weather might be an essential part of English identity as the second quote at the beginning of this chapter claims, the dramatic natural disasters that the US Weather Channel reports on round the clock and throughout the year didn ’ t used to happen in Britain. The British version of the Weather Channel was discontinued after just a few years of operation due to a low number of viewers. An increase of record-breaking future flooding in the UK due to climate change could make British weather a much more dramatic topic in the future. In order to judge more comprehensively American attitudes towards the environment and towards energy, we need to take into account some characteristics of the country as a whole and of Americans themselves. One result of engineering feats like the Hoover Dam and the Glen Canyon Dam 1 was the growth of Las Vegas, which could be taken for a fata morgana in the middle of arid wasteland if it didn ’ t take so much real energy and water to maintain the city. Las Vegas can ’ t exist without the water diverted from the Colorado River. We also need to keep in mind that for all its enormous size, most of the United States isn ’ t fit for comfortable human habitation without central heating (for most of the Central Plains and the entire northern half of the country) or air-conditioning (for the swelteringly humid summers of the entire southern part and most of the East coast) or sophisticated weather services to warn people of impending hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, and floods (for most areas of the entire country). Of course, there are areas where you can live comfortably without powerful heating or air conditioning: some areas of California are climatically very comfortable … until the next earthquake. A characteristic of Americans is their willingness to live in areas that require enormous expenditures of energy to be made habitable, and American history is filled with the deep desire to move on to bigger and better places, to harness the land, to find the gold at the end of the rainbow, no matter what the cost. Not only natural phenomena like extreme heat and cold and horrific storms have presented challenges for those seeking comfortable life in the United States. Research in the 2020s has shown the connection between racism and pollution in the US. In Louisiana research has identified environmental pollution as a legacy of slavery, with Black Americans traditionally living in contaminated areas. New research shows how city planning in the 1930s discriminated against not fit for human habitation legacy of slavery and discrimination 260 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="268"?> ethnic minorities. And Native American Indians hit by environmental crises of the 2020s are being “ forced off their land, again ” as the New York Times documented, echoes of their century-long abuse. We opened the chapter with a witticism attributed to Mark Twain, which we could apply in a serious way to climate change, which has increasingly made itself felt in dramatic ways. More and more governments and people are doing something about what many now consider the most important challenge facing all of humanity on Earth. “ Global weirding ” was coined in the early 20s to emphasize the variety of destruction caused by an increase in weirdly extreme temperatures and weather events around the world: historic hot and cold spells, wildfires, violent storms, flooding. Scientists and almost all political leaders now agree that we ’ ve entered a new age, the Anthropocene, during which human activity is the dominant influence on the geology of the planet. The UK and especially the US have had to deal with natural disasters in the 2020s that weren ’ t the immediate result of human action in the way that Love Canal, Three Mile Island, and Sellafield were, but which are undeniably the result of human-generated global warming - and the reluctance of us humans to stop our climate-harming activities. The consequences of global climate affect both the US and the UK with particularly drastic examples occurring in the early 2020s. A megadrought in the American Southwest became the worst in more than a thousand years. Lake Mead 1 has begun to dry up. At the same time predictions claim that a rising sea level will cause more frequent flooding especially on the American East coast and to a lesser degree on the West coast. The summer of 2020 wasn ’ t just historic because of the pandemic, unprecedented marches for racial justice, and a controversial presidential campaign in the US. Widespread fires devastated parts of the promised land of the most populous state of California. The Pacific Northwest 1 turned into an oven with recording-breaking temperatures in parts of the US that normally had a climate so mild that air-conditioning wasn ’ t necessary. As global warming increases, the iconic geyser Old Faithful in the world ’ s first national park, Yellowstone, could simply dry up as global warming increases. In Britain, the icy east wind called Beast from the East is followed by heat waves and droughts and wildfires. As we saw, the catastrophic flooding in Europe in the early 2020s didn ’ t spare the British Isles. global warming, global weirding climatic extremes in the 2020s 261 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="269"?> We can smile about Twain ’ s joke at the beginning of this chapter, that nobody does anything about the awful weather, but we can also see that some people have begun to do something about climate change. But before we look at modern climate groups, let ’ s go back to the 1970s, when the human-made catastrophes we read about earlier led to student protests and other efforts to increase environmental awareness, such as the first Earth Day, celebrated at the beginning of what was supposed to be the “ decade of the environment. ” Moving towards the present, we ’ ve mentioned the Environmental Protection Agency and the Sierra Club in the US, the Royal Societies in the UK. Extinction Rebellion, a group that uses civil disobedience to demonstrate against government inaction on climate change, was launched with a protest called “ Declaration of Rebellion ” outside the Houses of Parliament in London at the end of the 2010s. The group Fridays for Future, founded by Swedish student Greta Thunberg, has spread quickly around the world as befitting a group that supports global change to confront a global challenge. The pandemic and Putin ’ s invasion of Ukraine in the early 2020s showed that societies and individuals can react quickly and make fundamental changes that previously weren ’ t considered possible. Social scientists name such tipping points “ Aha! moments ” to describe a sudden understanding, and small interventions can grow into systemic changes. Rising insurance costs, for example, could begin to motivate some Americans to finally act in a more climate-friendly way. The current extent of global weirding and environmental awareness is unprecedented, but we ’ re going to end this chapter with evidence of environmental awareness that began a couple of centuries ago, evidence that visitors to and citizens of the UK and US can still enjoy and admire. Gardens that came to be called English and spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world began in the middle of the 18 th century with a gardener romantically named Lancelot. His surname, by contrast, was simply Brown, but he came to be called Capability Brown because of his talents in transforming the land around some grand private homes in England. He turned them into parks that did away with the formality which had been popular up to that time. Through the understated placement of trees and small lakes, the landscape seemed natural but the effect of space and vistas was in fact carefully planned. Some claim that the new kind of landscape gardening that Brown introduced to England and then to the rest hope for “ Aha! moments ” from a capable gardener and the English garden … 262 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="270"?> of the world is one of the most significant English contributions to European culture along with the Perpendicular style of architecture. 11 You can still visit some of Brown ’ s many parks and gardens scattered all over southern England. About a century after Capability Brown had left his mark on English landscape gardening, people on the other side of the world were beginning to agree that the government had the responsibility to set aside land for public use, recreation, and for preservation. Because Americans get a very bad press (often justifiably) on environmental awareness, sometimes people forget the leading role some Americans played in environmental awareness long before the color green became political. Even before the western part of the United States had been mostly settled by the end of the 19 th century with the closing of the frontier, 2 some Americans started to plan to protect some of the breathtakingly beautiful scenery they had taken over. At the end of the 19 th century the world ’ s first national park was planned in what would later become the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, and it was named after the Yellowstone river, a tributary of the Missouri. 1 Although Yellowstone was officially founded in 1872 by President Ulysses S. Grant, it would take years before the government could be convinced that it was worth investing money in setting aside areas of land for preservation and recreation. A conservationist we met briefly earlier in the book as the husband of the woman credited with establishing kindergartens 4 in the US, Carl Schurz, used his position as Secretary of the Interior to encourage setting aside land for national forests. One of the presidents 2 3 16 became a champion of the movement that would lead to many more national parks being founded. One of the lesser-known national parks was named after him: Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. Roosevelt was a conservationist. A famous preservationist - someone who believes that the land should be preserved for its own sake and not just for human use - was John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. In the next century more than fifty national parks were to follow. The largest of them, Wrangell St. Elias in Alaska, occupies more land than the entire German federal state of Lower Saxony. The majority of national parks are in the western states with landscape features varying greatly from the most famous geyser in America, Old Faithful in Yellowstone, to the swamps of Everglades National Park in Florida to the caves of Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico to the volcanoes in the park appropriately named Hawaii Volcanoes Na- … to the world ’ s first national park parks from Acadia to Zion 263 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="271"?> tional Park. The national parks with the most visitors include the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the Appalachians, which may surprise you; Grand Canyon National Park, which you no doubt expected; Acadia National Park in Maine at the top of the alphabetical; Zion National Park in Utah at the bottom but among the most popular top ten with more than two million visitors a year. Parks established since the turn of the millennium span the entire country: from Congaree in South Carolina to Cuyahoga Valley in Ohio, Great Sand Dunes in Colorado to Pinnacles in California. Remember reading about “ interesting and unusual physical features ” 1 in the UK? Maybe some of you who are fans of Romantic poetry or know something about tourism in Britain were surprised not to find one truly beautiful area in the north of England not far from the Scottish border, an area that would become one of Britain ’ s first national parks. At the same time as Americans were becoming aware of the need to protect some of the vast land they were taking over, famous 19 th century Romantic poets like William Wordsworth were writing poetry about the beautiful landscape of the Lake District in northwest England. The first national parks weren ’ t founded in Britain until the 1950s after conflicts about the right to roam and the right of access to the countryside were settled. Within a decade, ten of the current fifteen parks were founded. While the British national parks don ’ t have the same extraordinary variety of landscape as those in the US, they still draw millions of visitors each year. It ’ s the balance between use of the land, encouraging tourism, and protecting the environment that is often difficult to achieve and will no doubt continue to be a challenge in future. The balance between preservation and recreation will remain challenging for both the British Association of National Park Authorities and the American National Parks Service, the subject of an acclaimed Ken Burns ’ documentary series, 2 subtitled “ America ’ s Best Idea. ” We began this chapter by looking at some of the ways in which landscape and national identity can be combined, and we ’ re concluding the chapter with a look at a British institution with “ nation ” in its name (a British institution if you include the Scots, who have their own National Trust for Scotland, but with roughly the same goals). The National Trust, founded more than a hundred years ago and now the largest conservation charity in Europe, combines both a British love of countryside and a love of the past by preserving places of from Wordsworth to South Downs the nation and the National Trust 264 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="272"?> Fig. 9.3 The map shows that the parks are spread around the entire island of Great Britain, with large areas of Wales forming national parks. Based on your geographical knowledge 1 you shouldn ’ t have too many problems finding the Lake District in northwest England starting on the coast and then proceeding east through the Yorkshire Dales to the North York Moors on the other coast. The Cairngorns are the most northerly large green splotch in Scotland, and Snowdown is in north Wales. Right in the heart of England is the Peak District. National parks in Britain aren ’ t as remote from cities and towns as most of the American parks are. Large areas of British national parks are privately owned but still used by the public - you can find farms, villages, and towns within the boundaries - unthinkable in the US. Population figures vary from a few thousand to more than one hundred thousand in the newest of the national parks, South Downs in the south on the coast. And there aren ’ t only national parks but also national forests in Britain. The area fittingly called the National Forest, a 14-hour hike due south from the Peak District National Park and nicknamed “ a forest in the making, ” is just one example of how Britain is now attempting to save its forests. While there most probably won ’ t be a return to the thickly forested island that humans inhabited thousands of years ago, since the 1940s forested land has doubled in size, so there are signs that future Robin Hoods will have a place to live. Looking for a map of national parks in the US? As you can imagine, so many more parks spread across a country 40 times larger would be difficult to fit on part of this page, so just take a look at the inside of the back cover for details. 265 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="273"?> “ historic interest ” or “ natural beauty ” like Wakehurst Place Garden in southern England or the Conwy Suspension Bridge in north Wales or the Macquarie Mausoleum on the west coast Scottish island of Mull or the UNESCO World Heritage Site Giant ’ s Causeway in Northern Ireland. 1 The National Trust owns more land than almost anyone else in the UK (except for the Crown) and has the motto “ for ever, for everyone, ” a motto that seems to erase the boundaries of the nation while the National Trust at the same time preserves evidence, both natural and human-made, of a specific national culture. Natural like Fair Isle between the Shetland and the Orkney Islands in northeastern Scotland or one of the world ’ s largest natural harbors at St. Anthony Head in southwestern Cornwall or Rhossili Bay in Wales. Humanmade like the Chedworth Roman Villa in southern England or Crathes Castle in northeastern Scotland or the Dolaucothi Gold Mines in south Wales. Political junkies will remember the presidential candidate at the turn of the millennium who won more votes but still lost the election. 5 Al Gore is one of America ’ s best-known environmental activists with his well-known film An Inconvenient Truth from the mid 2000s followed by the sequel ten years later, An Inconvenient Sequel, which detailed the environmental challenges facing the US and the world. The 50 th anniversary of Earth Day was put online due to the pandemic, and the organization Earth Day has an internet presence that fulfills its slogan: “ It ’ s not a day, it ’ s a movement. ” Want to see some stunning photos of South Downs, the newest national park in Britain? The Guardian online shares them in a special photo report “ Awesome astrophotography from the South Downs, ” which reminds us of how wonderfully dark it can be there. We mentioned briefly one of the most famous books at the beginning of America ’ s environmental movement, Rachel Carson ’ s Silent Spring. It offers an insightful look into how a scientist can turn facts into a gripping narrative. Julia Bradbury is a well-known British journalist who has hosted many television series that show the beauty of the British landscape and how it deserves to be protected. You can learn about a famous hiker who wrote best-selling guides to the beloved landscape of 266 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="274"?> northern England. In the series Wainwright Walks Bradbury follows in his footsteps. You can follow her on Twitter detailing her moving struggle with breast cancer and admire her inspiring awareness of all things environmental. Exercises 1. Which national parks were mentioned in the chapter? How could you categorize them? 2. Look again 1 and see if you can locate the following picture. Fig. 9.4 And on a totally different topic: Look again 1 and see if you can find a photo that could help you guess which station was on the world ’ s first underground railway. Now do a web quest and compare photos of the newest London underground network: the magnificent Elizabeth line. 3. How could you categorize some of the organizations mentioned in this chapter? 4. Which organization of the ones you ’ ve come up with in the previous answer do you think could refer to itself as the “ extended shadow of Rachel Carson ” ? Interesting projects: 1. If you ’ ve been to national parks in the US or the UK, list your impressions and rank the parks you ’ ve visited according to preference. If you haven ’ t yet been there and don ’ t know 267 Chapter 9 From Disasters to Parks (the environment) <?page no="275"?> anyone who has, use the parks ’ web presence to create a table with the main attractions. 2. Ask American and British people to describe the role weather plays in their lives and note the words they use. Compare what they say with the information given in the geography appetizer chapter and in this chapter. And the if-you-can-do-this-maybe-you ’ ll-get-a-national-park-orat-least-a-world-famous-dam-named-after-you: Devise a plan that will maintain the highest degree of preservation possible for parts of the natural environment while at the same time justifying the use of taxpayers ’ funding for creating land that the taxpayers won ’ t be able to experience personally as they might like because the land is supposed to be protected. And further topics not dealt with in this chapter for those who have time to travel further than just the main tourist attractions: … more detailed effects of global warming on the climate of the UK and the US; details of the debate between preservationists like John Muir and the Sierra Club and conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt; other dams and human-made attempts to harness nature; importance of solar, wind, and tidal power; other animals and plants indigenous to the US and UK; air and water pollution; recycling and use of the catalytic converter as an example of California as a forerunner in all things environmentally friendly; Exxon Valdez as an example of how much damage can be done to the environment by one drunk ship captain; ecowarriors as a special British contribution to environmentalism; the anti-roads movement in the UK; the American and British Green parties; tree sitting … 268 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="276"?> Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) … were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. American President Thomas Jefferson 1787 To inform, educate, and entertain, … To bring the best of everything to the greatest number of homes mission of the BBC according to founder John Reith Once upon a time, learning about and teaching media in the US and in the UK was very easy. In Britain you had two kinds of newspapers, tabloids and broadsheets, easy to distinguish because of their size and their content: tabloids were small with pictures and big print; broadsheets were big and broad, had long serious articles, and were difficult to read on the London Tube. In the US you had three major networks, the Big Three, with easy-to-remember names: ABC (American Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and NBC (National Broadcasting Company), all of which began as radio networks and started to televise in the 1940s. Television in the UK was just as easy: other than the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) there was only ITV (Independent Television) launched in the 1950s as competition for the BBC and followed later by BBC Two and Channel 4 and then Channel 5. You could almost say that television in the US was as easy to understand as the alphabet and in the UK as easy as counting 1, 2, 3 (ITV rhymes with three), 4, 5. The very names - American, British, National - of the old television networks indicate their relevance in a book about America and Britain. How times have changed … The press, radio and television of the 20 th century now seem in many ways to be historical artifacts, and some of this chapter will seem foreign to the generations who ’ ve grown up with … what was once called “ new ” media and which we will call modern media. To understand the wonder and the risks of modern media we need to first understand its roots in traditional media and use details in Part II to show that some “ new ” media isn ’ t so new after all. This look at traditional media can help us to 269 Chapter 10 <?page no="277"?> understand the breakneck speed of a revolution as dramatic as Gutenberg ’ s invention of the printing press 500 years ago. When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ British and American newspapers and tycoons past and present, ▶ government and the press, ▶ British and American television both past and present, ▶ the end of analog media and beginning of the internet, ▶ names, terms, issues to be continued in Part II. Let ’ s start this chapter with the first evidence of British and American newspapers. William Caxton brought the printing press to Britain just after Gutenberg had invented it, and the first English newspapers appeared in the early 17 th century. Two early English and American newspapers had similar names: The New England Courant, founded by Benjamin Franklin ’ s 2 brother, and the London Daily Courant, associated with the female printer/ publisher Elizabeth Mallet in Fleet Street in central London. The old spelling courant shouldn ’ t disguise the meaning of “ current ” ; people have expected the current news from newspapers ever since and sometimes they ’ ve also expected critical articles about the government too. Publishing newspapers with articles of this kind was, however, often dangerous. The infamous Stamp Act tax on paper was one of the causes of the American Revolution. 2 In Britain newspaper taxes weren ’ t abolished until the mid 19 th century. Since the tax was put on each page, early newspapers tended to be broad with few sheets, a size that was to characterize serious British newspapers for three centuries. Some of the early big names are still around (although probably not much longer on paper), like the English newspapers The Times and the oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer, first published at the end of the 18 th century. The three most respected American newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, were all first published in the mid to late 19 th century. The increasing success of newspapers in the 19 th century in both countries can be attributed to technical advances in printing, to the falling price of paper, to the abolition of taxes on newspapers, and to the rising rates of literacy 4 with more and more people being able to read. Newspaper tycoons became rich and powerful by selling more and more newspapers at very low prices. The “ penny press ” was the name for newspapers in Britain that just cost one British penny (1/ Courant and dangerous from the start old papers and still famous newspapers for the masses 270 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="278"?> Fig. 10.1 The Scottish-American artist David C. Lithgow created this print two centuries after the actual trial. The man standing on the right in the dock next to the judge is Zenger, and his lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, is standing on the left, declaiming the words printed at the bottom of the picture. John Peter Zenger 5 was a young immigrant from Germany in the early 18 th century who worked as a printer in New York city. Zenger was put in prison after he refused to say who had written the articles critical of the governor of the time. The ensuing trial resulted in a verdict of not guilty, which led the way for freedom of the press to become part of the First Amendment to the US Constitution written half a century later. While Zenger was in prison, his wife Anna Catherine had continued to print the paper. After his death she took over the business. The University of Arizona ’ s journalism program awards an annual John Peter and Anna Catherine Zenger Award for Press Freedom. Zenger ’ s New-York Weekly Journal is just one example of the first highly political newspapers in America, a genre that came to special prominence towards the end of the 18 th century as the colonies sought their independence from Britain. 271 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="279"?> 240 th of a pound sterling before decimalization 12) or just one US penny (1/ 100 th of a dollar). We ’ ve already met one important American newspaper tycoon, 2 who was also - as so many important newspaper people - a politician: Horace Greeley founded in the mid 19 th century the influential New York Tribune, employed foreign correspondents like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and popularized a famous saying about the frontier before it closed. 2. Two even more famous names in the history of American newspapers are still widely known today. William Randolph Hearst didn ’ t only have his own castle on the California coast 11 and didn ’ t only become the unwilling subject of a movie that many critics consider the best movie ever, 11 he also founded a business that to this day carries his name and still plays a major role in American media. Hearst first took over his father ’ s newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, at the end of the 19 th century before heading east to New York where a long period of competition with Joseph Pulitzer began, the other famous American publisher of the time. Their competition for readers led to the development of yellow journalism, characterized by exaggerated and shocking material, scare headlines, and sometimes faked interviews in addition to many positive innovations like more illustrations, sports coverage, and crusades against corruption. Pulitzer, born in Hungary, had immigrated to the US as a teenager and at first joined the Union Army in the Civil War. His excellent command of German helped him get a job at the Westliche Post, a German-language newspaper in St. Louis edited by the German- American statesman and reformer Carl Schurz. 4 In typical rags-toriches manner, 3 Pulitzer managed to earn enough money to later buy the New York World, which he turned into a financial success by attracting a larger readership, including the waves of immigrants 7 arriving in the US at the end of the century. The competition between Hearst and Pulitzer was especially intense during the Spanish- American War 2 when both championed the concept of Manifest Destiny 6 to justify American involvement in the war. A well-known legend is evidence of Hearst ’ s political power as the owner of important newspapers: He was said to have sent a telegram to a photographer in Cuba: “ You furnish the pictures, and I ’ ll furnish the war. ” The influence that Hearst and Pulitzer had on the development of the American press isn ’ t an unverified legend. It is real. The Hearst Communications corporation still owns very many newspapers, Hearst vs. Pulitzer and a Prize 272 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="280"?> magazines, television stations and networks. Pulitzer left part of his inheritance to one of the most prestigious American universities, Columbia University, to found what would become one of the most famous graduate schools of journalism in the country, which awards the annual Pulitzer Prize, one of the highest awards any journalist (or writer or composer) can achieve. Fig. 10.2 The cartoonist Leon Barritt ridiculed both Pulitzer and Hearst in this famous caricature entitled “ The Big Type War of the Yellow Kids. ” The Yellow Kid was a popular cartoon, and popular was what yellow journalism most wanted to be, through sensational stories to attract readers. Barritt makes a pun on “ type, ” which also refers to newspaper production. The children ’ s toy blocks also function as moveable type for the printing press. Pulitzer is complaining about the tone of Hearst ’ s newspaper reports on the Spanish-American war, and when you read his words aloud, you should notice the accent Barritt is making fun of. Does anything remind you of the words of a 21 st century American president? Fake news 15 was an issue in the 19 th century, too. Adolf Ochs, the son of German-Jewish immigrants, bought the nearly bankrupt New York Times and by using a more serious kind of journalism vastly different from that of Hearst or Pulitzer successfully turned the paper around financially. Although he reduced the price to a penny, he managed to improve the Times ’ reputation, and today it is considered one of the best newspapers in the US. Ochs ’ motto “ all the news that ’ s fit to print ” is still on each front page. Hearst, Pulitzer, and Ochs and “ all the news that ’ s fit to print ” 273 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="281"?> Ochs have left an indelible mark on all American print media; their influence was extended all the way to the other side of the Atlantic. While the names in Britain were different, the intention was the same: increased circulation through popular stories and cheap prices. Lord Northcliffe was born as Alfred Harmsworth in Ireland and revolutionized British newspapers by providing more headlines, shorter articles, and special columns for women. He was influenced by American trends set by Hearst and Pulitzer. Northcliffe founded newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror as well as buying the Observer and the Times, all which still exist today. He helped the British government in spreading propaganda in World War I. Lord Rothermere, the younger brother of Northcliffe, was born as Harold Harmsworth in London. After the death of his elder brother, Rothermere became heir to the family ’ s newspaper business. Politically, Rothermere was radically right-wing, supporting the British fascist party and sympathizing with Mussolini and Hitler. He died shortly after the beginning of World War II. Our third lord, Lord Beaverbrook, born as Maxwell Aitken in Canada, became known as the Baron of Fleet Street by buying the Daily Express and the Evening Standard among others. He was one of the few to serve in the British cabinet in both World War I and II. One big change after the era of the three lords happened in the 1980s when Rupert Murdoch, whom we ’ ll be meeting again later in the chapter, and others moved production facilities from Fleet Street in central London to the Docklands and enabled newspaper publication to take place with far fewer employees than before. The newspapers with the highest circulation in Britain are popular papers like the daily Sun and Daily Mail. But the once clear distinction between just two types of newspapers isn ’ t so clear anymore: the broadsheet “ quality ” papers with a focus on serious topics like politics, economics, and society as opposed to the mass-market tabloid red tops (named for the color of the masthead at the top of the front page) with the focus on celebrities, sex, and sports. Now some former tabloids have changed into mid-market papers (with black tops) like the Daily Mail and Daily Express with more news than the traditional tabloid but still also with a strong focus on celebrities, crime, human interest stories, and the Royals. And to further complicate matters, traditional broadsheets like The Times or The Independent began to be published in “ compact ” form (since the word three Lords and more papers black tops and red tops 274 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="282"?> “ tabloid ” can have a negative connotation) to make them easier to read on the London Tube. The Independent ceased publication on paper altogether in the mid 2010s. You can find newspapers for the many ethnic groups 7 in London, too, but probably not much longer on paper. While the distinction between quality and popular isn ’ t as easy to draw in the US as in the UK, there are American daily newspapers like the New York Post or weekly newspapers like the National Enquirer known for their emphasis on sensationalist news. One important development in America ’ s newspapers took place at the beginning of the 1980s when a brand new kind of newspaper appeared in color and was to radically change the look of American newspapers. USA Today was branded McPaper when it first appeared because of its shallow and brief articles, but this first real American national newspaper Fig. 10.3 Collage of “ historical artifacts ” in London. Fleet Street was a traditional address for the British press for centuries. On your next trip to London visit Fleet Street and see what it looks like now. Next scavenger hunt task: Try and find newspaper boxes like these or try to find any newspaper boxes at all. Not only are newspapers becoming a thing of the past, if the UK continues to discourage EU citizens from immigrating to Britain, then there won ’ t be as big a need for information given in the foreign languages you can read here. McPaper? USA Today! 275 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="283"?> exploited new satellite-based data transfer that made it possible to reproduce and sell the newspaper all over the country. It also used the shrinking cost of color ink to turn out a product that was much brighter than the gray and black The Washington Post or The New York Times. Since then both these newspapers as well as newspapers across the country have changed to using color photos and graphics and are, of course, also available online with multimedia elements. In spite of different types of newspapers, what the US and the UK share is the belief in the crucial importance of the press. Although Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was often criticized in American newspapers during his years as an important political figure in 18 th and early 19 th century US history, he still believed that free newspapers were essential for a democracy to work - the people must be well informed, as his famous quote at the beginning of this chapter indicates. Jefferson was thus strongly in favor of the first Amendment to the Constitution, 5 which stipulates that “ Congress shall make no law [ … ] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; [ … ]. ” The press came to be known as the Fourth Estate in the UK and the US with a power equal to the executive, legislative, and judicial parts of British and American government. 5 As the Fourth Estate the press has a tradition of being the watchdog of the government. Even though there ’ s no government censorship in Britain, the government is notoriously secretive. In order to guarantee national security - or to claim to be doing so - the government can warn and prosecute journalists with serious consequences if they publish what the government considers to be confidential information. Freedom of Information Acts passed in the US from the late 1960s onwards at the federal and state level, often referred to as sunshine laws, grant every person the right to free access to government records without having to give any reason for the access. The British Freedom of Information Acts were passed thirty years later and still don ’ t provide the same degree of power to the people that the American laws do. As we ’ ll see later, 15 social media has complicated the role of government and freedom of speech and the very definition of the Fourth Estate. Investigative journalism has been part of a long tradition in both America and Britain, including the muckrakers, a name Theodore Roosevelt 2 used to describe those writers of the late 19 th and early 20 th century who expose corruption in business and government by raking it up. Of course, the muckrakers ’ stories also helped to sell 1 st Amendment and Fourth Estate freedom of information? investigative journalism 276 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="284"?> newspapers. The New York Times published what became known as the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s, which led to increased criticism of the Vietnam War. The work of two Washington Post reporters investigating the Watergate Scandal 2 in the 1970s ultimately led to the first presidential resignation ever. In Britain Harold Evans, editor of The Sunday Times, helped develop investigative journalism from the late 1960s to the early 1980s by encouraging journalists to work in teams and write detailed articles. The Sunday Times reported on the victims of thalidomide (the sedative called Contergan in Germany), and Evans helped force the drug companies to provide significant amounts of compensation. His kind of investigative journalism has helped to challenge the power of the British government to restrict access to information. Government control of information has become weaker as the internet has made news leaks more common. American-born Edward Snowdon and Chelsea Manning as well as Australian-born Julian Assange and organizations like WikiLeaks or exposures like the Panama Papers are seen as either traitorous or patriotic, depending on your political and moral viewpoint. Will their revelations result in more openness or increased government attempts to prevent information being made public? Ask historians in a decade for an answer. Although, as we ’ ve seen, there are many similar aspects of the press in the UK and the US, you can find some important differences. While British newspapers usually clearly support one political party, American newspapers aren ’ t as closely connected to one political party. British papers tend to provide readers with a stronger sense of identity: a working-class conservative Sun reader, for example, usually identifies with different groups and interests than a Guardian reader, who would typically be academically educated and more liberal. But such close ties can change, just as the Sun changed from a paper supporting first the Labour party to the Conservatives several times in the last few decades. While US newspapers endorse politicians during campaigns, the value of these endorsements isn ’ t clear. Donald Trump received hardly any endorsements in his campaign for president in 2016, and yet he still won the election. Also, British newspapers, especially the popular press, often have headlines that would seem too nationalistic for most of popular papers in the US or in Germany, for that matter, that has often been targeted in infamous sports headlines like “ Let ’ s Blitz Fritz ” or “ Watch out Krauts. England are gonna bomb you to bits. ” Similarly, in its UK - US differences: political connections … … and shock headlines 277 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="285"?> coverage of anti-racism protests, the UK ’ s conservative popular press sides with statues rather than protesters, as this headline from the Daily Express in summer 2020 shows: “ Winston Churchill statue desecrated for second day as protesters daub ‘ racist ’ on monument. ” What started out as paper has now changed into multimedia and the word newspaper has become a misnomer. Since the end of the first decade of the 21 st century a dramatic drop in income from print sales and advertising has resulted in some well-known newspapers both in the US and the UK reducing their services. The highly respected American newspaper Christian Science Monitor (not a religious paper, surprisingly) was one of the first to switch mostly to online publishing. Other newspapers have also gone completely online, been taken over by other industries, installed paywalls to generate income from readers using online editions, or simply disappeared. Jeff Bezos 6 bought the previously family-owned The Washington Post in the mid 2010s, causing much speculation about the future of one of America ’ s most respected newspapers. One journalism professor has fixed an exact date for the last daily newspaper in America to disappear: the first quarter of 2043. Another journalist stopped his blog on death of the newspaper at the end of the 2010s. Some think that newspapers could still save themselves by receiving financial backing from non-profit organizations such as the Scott Trust, founded in the 1930s to preserve the financial security and independence of the British newspaper The Guardian. Some say that the biggest newspapers with the best reputation will survive in the market if they embrace new technology. With the move online, new elements of journalism have come to life, a few of which we ’ ll look at a bit more closely later in our book. Not only are online versions of all newspapers now available but many newspapers also have digitally archived their older paper editions, like the The Guardian and The Observer ’ s Digital Archive, and thus put a wealth of information at our fingertips, some for free and some for a fee. Regardless of the huge changes in print media, modern media in general haven ’ t changed in one respect since the time of the tycoons Hearst, Pulitzer and the three lords we read about. We can see monopolistic tendencies on both sides of the ocean, sometimes to be found in the same person, Rupert Murdoch providing us with the perfect example to take us from Britain to America and from paper to waves and then all the way finally to bytes. Murdoch was born in Australia (keeping an audible Australian accent all his life), studied at Oxford, 4 worked briefly at one of Lord Beaverbrook ’ s tabloid who needs a newspaper? Murdoch: Anglo-American media mogul 278 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="286"?> newspapers, and then bought his own British newspapers, the weekly News of the World and the daily Sun. Murdoch very successfully combined sensational headlines with stories about sex, crime, and sports, but didn ’ t limit his acquisitions to the popular press, acquiring later the prestigious Times. Murdoch ’ s head-on-head fight with Robert Maxwell could remind you of the competition between Hearst and Pulitzer. Maxwell, who had roots in Eastern Europe, immigrated to Britain during World War II, served in Parliament, built a media empire that included the Mirror Group Newspapers in the UK in addition to American publishing, television, and film production companies. Financial irregularities were discovered after Maxwell ’ s mysterious death in the early 1990s. His daughter ’ s conviction on sex-trafficking charges in the early 2020s made headline news on both sides of the Atlantic and in Germany. Murdoch expanded into American media just as Maxwell did, buying an American weekly tabloid, the Star, and a daily, the New York Post. Later Murdoch expanded into television, buying Fox Broadcasting in the US in order to compete with the Americanborn media tycoon Ted Turner, founder of CNN, the Cable News Network, who later bought other media companies like Warner Brothers Films. Murdoch created Sky Television in Britain before acquiring another newspaper, one of the highly reputable American newspapers mentioned earlier, The Wall Street Journal, which he called his flagship. Murdoch has also ventured into the digital world and claimed that digitalizing and globalizing are the two keys to success. He owned and sold MySpace.com, one example of the internet social networks we ’ ll be looking at later in the book. Murdoch ’ s very conservative political views, his close friendships with those in power, and the general dangers of putting many different kinds of media in the hands of one person or corporation remain a source of major controversy. With the mention of the Fox Broadcasting Company and the Cable News Network we ’ re already in the middle of our next media section and at the end of a tradition of American television programming. We ’ re leaving the medium of paper and proceeding to airwaves that carry analog audio and visual signals from the producer to the receiver. And in the 1950s at least, the producers and the receivers were clearly defined both in the US and the UK. Most Americans during the 50s owned a TV, which brought television series full of White middle-class families into their living Murdoch vs. Maxwell vs. Turner paper to waves Big Three US networks 279 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="287"?> rooms. Americans could choose between three television networks, all of which still exist today, given here in order of their original founding as radio networks and which you might remember from the beginning of our chapter: NBC, CBS, and ABC. Each of these networks provided programming to local television stations. The Federal Communications Commission or FCC, one of the alphabet agencies first founded during FDR ’ s New Deal, 3 regulated the use of the airwaves and helped to organize the rapid growth of television stations. We can understand “ network ” here in the literal sense as a connection between the producers of television programs and their broadcasting through affiliate local stations. Let ’ s look at three concrete examples of CBS affiliates in three state capitals that you might remember. 1 In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the local affiliate of CBS is WHPTV, originally channel 55; in Austin, Texas, CBS programming is shown on KEYE-TV, originally channel 42; and in Sacramento, California, on KOVR, originally channel 13. We can see that each local television station has a call sign, usually composed of four letters beginning with W for the eastern part of the country and with K for those areas west of the Mississippi River. Yes, I know that doesn ’ t make much sense, but the other letters do try and tell us something about the station: HP for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; EYE for the famous eye that CBS uses as a logo, and KOVR for “ covering all of northern California ” (with a creative spelling of “ kovr ” for “ covering ” ). The channel numbers originally simply indicated the numbers arranged around the channel knob on each television set. Now in the digital age channel numbers aren ’ t used the same way anymore, but numbers are still important in another sense: the number of people who watch which programs on which networks at which times, especially during “ prime time, ” the evening hours from around 7 to around 11 pm when the most viewers are watching television. Nielsen Ratings is the most famous organization that establishes the number of viewers, which determines how much a network can charge businesses for commercial time - at least it did in the days before internet television providers with streaming like Hulu or Netflix or YouTube came into existence. The number of viewers also indicates the popularity of a show and thus which shows should be continued or canceled. In addition to the Big Three, the Public Broadcasting Service was founded at the beginning of the 1970s as a non-profit American corporation. PBS isn ’ t funded by commercials like most American four-letter local stations, prime time and ratings PBS 280 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="288"?> networks but by a variety of sources: federal, state, and local governments as well as voluntary contributions by viewers and by corporate donations. Although not as many Americans watch PBS as regularly as they do the other networks, PBS has more member stations than any other American network. The affiliate in Harrisburg, for example, has the call sign WITF. A famous PBS member station is WGBH in Boston, which has collaborated with British production companies and produced famous series like the popular science series Nova and the cooking show The French Chef with Julia Child. 11 Other acclaimed PBS series include the long-running and very influential children ’ s series Sesame Street, the longest-running weekly primetime America drama series Masterpiece, which has been broadcasting high-quality British and later American drama for more than fifty years and which made the original presenter Alistair Cooke known nationwide from the 70s until the turn of the millennium. From the 2010s into the 20s PBS broadcast internationally popular British series like Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Endeavour (known in Germany as Der Junge Inspektor Morse) and All Creatures Great and Small (a new version of Der Doktor und das Liebe Vieh). Another PBS series is American Experience, an award-winning documentary series about American history and culture. Rupert Murdoch, as we ’ ve seen above, founded Fox (written sometimes as FOX to look like the Big Three networks) in the 1980s. Fox has since become one of the most-watched television networks with the longest-running animated situation comedy (sitcom) series, The Simpsons, the science-fiction drama The X-Files, and the reality competition show American Idol, based on the British original Pop Idol (the German version is Deutschland sucht den Superstar) and The Masked Singer (based not on a British but a South Korean original). The Fox News Channel, part of News Corporation, founded and led by Murdoch and one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, has been criticized for its partiality and its strong support of a conservative political agenda but has remained one of the most popular news channels. With the advent of cable, satellite, and now digital broadcasting, Americans have dozens of television networks and in major cities hundreds of stations and channels (the three words network, station, and channel are now used interchangeably) catering to every possible wish. Some programs are available for free, others require subscription payments. For news in addition to Fox and CNN, C-SPAN covers Fox … many more networks … 281 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="289"?> the US government. 5 For shopping you can choose programs on HSN (Home Shopping Network) or QVC (Quality Value Convenience), both with German versions. Spanish-language 7 networks include Telemundo and Univision. As the names indicate, TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) has Christian and GOD TV has Christian evangelical content. For movies try HBO (Home Box Office) or TMC (The Movie Channel), for sports ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) or TVG (Television Games Network) dedicated to horse racing. For weather tune into TWC (The Weather Channel) 9 or AccuWeather, now available only via streaming. Extreme right-wing politically ultra-conservative pro- Trump networks include OANN (One America News Network), which many cable and satellite providers removed due to problematic content. Music Television or MTV hit the airwaves with music videos in the early 80s and linked television and popular music in a radically new way. MTV has had enormous influence both on television and on popular culture. Many of the networks named above may be disappearing or reforming as on-demand providers like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube take over market share, making fixed television schedules look as old fashioned as front-page newspaper headlines. International expansion is blurring national labels. We began our look at American television in the 50s when many people watched the same programs; nowadays “ broadcasting ” has become “ narrow-casting ” with television no longer providing a common cultural experience but becoming tailor-made for the many groups in contemporary American society, including Anglophiles. American television has always provided programs for those interested in all things British; the British “ invasion ” began with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones 11 and was followed by other very successful British exports to America like “ Britcoms, ” British situation comedies from Fawlty Towers in the 1970s to The Office at the turn of the millennium to Fleabag in the 2010s and Doc Martin and Sex Education in the 2020s, the last three available not on regular US network television but only by on demand or via subscription. Also popular in America in the past and present are special series made in Britain and successfully exported like Kenneth Clark ’ s Civilisation from the 1970s or series made in America by British expatriots like Alistair Cooke ’ s personal view of American history, America, a special birthday present for the American bicentennial, or Harold Evans ’ beloved British imports 282 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="290"?> They Made America, an award-winning series about American inventors. (The names Alistair Cooke and Harold Evans should ring a bell for readers of this chapter.) David Attenborough ’ s nature documentaries, such as Blue Planet, Blue Planet II, and Life in Color, were hits from the turn of the millennium into the 2020s. The television network BBC America is available on cable and via satellite. And speaking of the BBC … The BBC, short for the British Broadcasting Corporation, was the only provider of television programming in the UK until the mid 1950s and has remained one of the institutions that defines Britain. Auntie Beeb was the BBC ’ s nickname - both in a positive way to denote a member of the family and with critical connotations to evoke an old, ultra-respectable and unadventurous aunt. The founder of the BBC, John Reith, didn ’ t believe its duty was only to inform, educate, and entertain as quoted in the second epigraph to this chapter. He also saw the BBC as a means of creating a “ national family ” with a sense of responsibility towards every member of that family. For example, in the early years of television, a scheduling policy that came to be called “ toddlers ’ truce ” shut down broadcasting between 6 and 7 p. m. so that parents could put their children to bed. The BBC has remained a cultural force in Britain in spite of scandals about its reporting and the degree of government interference, and in spite of criticism that the programs aren ’ t as high in quality as they used to be. And the BBC has remained a successful exporter not only to the US, as we ’ ve just seen, but also to the rest of the world (Germany being the 4 th largest importer) with very expensive and highly acclaimed documentaries like the ones from the BBC Earth brand, such as Planet Earth; entertainment like Strictly Come Dancing, whose format is sold under license as Dancing with the Stars; and the enormously popular Sherlock series (which you now know was also shown on PBS). Those who pay the German television fee wouldn ’ t be surprised about the license fee everyone who owns a television/ radio pays in the UK. The fee was around £150 a year in the early 2020s, but Boris Johnson ’ s government was threatening to freeze the fee or abolish it altogether because of what they perceived to be a left-wing bias in the reporting and programming. The BBC, on the other hand, says it is impartial and needs the license fee to fulfill its duty as a public service. The BBC license fee will probably remain a very controversial topic for years to come. After the famous broadcast of the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, television grew greatly in popularity. The BBC was joined by Auntie Beeb ITV, Channel 4, Channel Five, Ofcom 283 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="291"?> Independent Television (ITV) in the 50s, and BBC Two was added in the 1960s, followed in the 80s by Channel Four and in the 90s by Channel 5. The words of Raymond Williams, someone we ’ ll be hearing a lot more about in Part II of this book, could be heard during the first day of broadcasting for Channel 4, a fitting example for a channel that is known for its documentaries and cultural programming. Channel 4 has its Welsh-language counterpart S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru means Channel Four Wales in Welsh). All five digital terrestrial broadcasters (called “ terrestrial ” because the broadcasting is done on Earth and not via satellites or underground cables) are available all across Britain to practically anyone who has a television set. Partly because of their wide availability, these networks (like the BBC or ITV) or channels (like BBC One or BBC Two) are regulated by the Office of Communications (Ofcom) and are expected to broadcast programs for the public benefit and not just for commercial reasons. Both award-winning and very popular is the soap opera Coronation Street, which began on ITV in 1960 and is now the world ’ s longestrunning TV soap opera. The series originally shared some similarities with the social realism of British cinema in the early 60s. 11 While the main networks still exist, the British now have an increasing number of networks and programs to choose from. The BBC alone now has more than a dozen channels ranging from BBC Parliament to CBeebies for children under six years of age. BBC World News is the world largest news channel, and BBC Entertainment is available via cable in Germany. Digital terrestrial television using antennas and special boxes as well as television via cable and satellite provide programming catering to every possible wish - just like in America. Of course, television isn ’ t the only medium that broadcasts signals using waves, the voices and music of radio also use airwaves to reach American and British ears from coast to coast. If we had organized this section strictly chronologically, we would ’ ve had to begin with radio since the Big Three American networks and the BBC first were radio networks. Let ’ s just mention a few important radio details that link up with other chapters of this book. One of the most famous American radio broadcasts because it caused panic among listeners in the late 1930s was Orson Welles ’ 11 adaptation of H. G. Wells ’ science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds. Much more soothing were Franklin D. Roosevelt ’ s Fireside Chats, meant to reassure … and many more … radio: from War of the Worlds to Fireside Chats … 284 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="292"?> Americans in the troubled times of the Great Depression and World War II. To help the British understand the Americans, the British journalist Alistair Cooke, whom we met earlier in the chapter, began shortly after World War II a weekly radio series entitled Letter from America on BBC Radio 4 (the BBC has numerous radio stations). The series continued until the early 2000s and thus became the longestrunning speech radio show in the world. Another famous British journalist whom we met earlier in this chapter, Harold Evans, continued a version of Cooke ’ s famous series for a short run. One other famous radio program that also started on Radio 4 a few years after Cooke ’ s radio series began is still running: The Archers is a radio soap opera about families living in a fictitious village called Ambridge in rural England and is still one of the most popular series both on the radio and on the internet. Just as for newspapers, the future of radio lies in the internet. Radio is now available in online versions of regular radio stations and as internet-only stations. While radio stations that mostly play music probably don ’ t have a future in competition with music-streaming services like Spotify or Deezer, which have become exponentially popular around the world, talk radio is still popular in the US and conservative radio hosts exert political influence. Where can you see American or British television programs? On the internet, of course, via video-sharing platforms or streaming services or on any of the corresponding websites for all of the television and radio networks mentioned, sometimes for free or for a fee, sometimes, as in Britain, with restrictions on broadcasting to foreign countries. Could we substitute social media for newspapers in the Jefferson quote at the beginning of the chapter? In some ways we already have social media without government control although governments around the world are trying to deal with the power of Alphabet and Meta. 6 We ’ ve now covered newspapers, radio briefly, and television and thus have moved from paper to waves and only touched upon bytes. Who could ’ ve dreamed that mere “ bits ” - the technical name for the smallest units of information in computers, with the value of either 0 or 1 - could be combined to form “ bytes ” and that these bytes could be combined to generate all the information of the virtual universe? For most of you, this chapter has so far been of historical interest, referring to things that your parents and grand- … to Letter from America to The Archers … future online and what about media we use now? ? ? 285 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="293"?> parents experienced personally. Turn to 15 for information about features of modern life that you have grown up with while your parents and grandparents often struggle to understand them: things like social media, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, hashtag, blogs, user-driven content, pandemic ’ s effect on media and vice-versa … Why spend a chapter that deals mostly with medium - the means of transport for different kinds of content - rather than the actual content being transported? And what about NFTs? A nonfungible token looks like a picture of an artwork - painting is a topic in the next chapter - but it ’ s composed of bits and bytes only. What ’ s the difference between a great television series and a movie with sequels? These are all good questions and a great lead into our next chapter. Although “ bytes ” is in the title of this chapter, I hope you ’ ll forgive me for asking you to wait until Part II of this book for more about bytes since the paper reserved for this chapter is almost used up, and neither the airwaves of the early 20 th nor the bytes of the 21 st century can help. But at least I can offer you a “ bite to eat ” in the next chapter, if you can stomach such a clunky pun. But first digest the morsels you should be expecting at the end of each chapter. We don ’ t need a specialized radio emoji instead of the notebook you ’ ve seen in the previous chapters for National Public Radio. Despite its name and long history, NPR and its many wonderful programs are now available online, too. As I grew up, I fell in love with the programs Morning Edition in the morning and All Things Considered in the afternoon, programs still running half a century after they premiered. A long time ago when National Public Radio was broadcast only on the radio and wasn ’ t available all over the US, I ’ d planned to move back only to places where NPR ’ s full range of programs were easily accessible. I ended up not returning to the US, and nowadays we can all can enjoy NPR around the clock and around the world. Even though this chapter deals mostly with old media and both The New York Times and The Guardian were originally founded as newspapers many years ago, I have digital-only subscriptions and read articles from both each and every day. Most of the readers of this and what about content? 286 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="294"?> book have probably never read any newspaper on paper, and I find it hard to imagine reading “ paper news ” again. But let ’ s move on now to magazines, which were mentioned briefly in earlier chapters (see the questions below). The Atlantic is a wonderful example of a highquality magazine founded in Boston more than a century and half ago originally with articles and essays from famous writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe 2. What was once a monthly magazine is now fully available online with articles and essays on politics, foreign affairs, business and economics, culture and the arts from an American perspective by writers with experience of the world. Finally, as befitting old media, two television networks, the British Broadcasting Company BBC, and the Public Broadcasting Service PBS have so many high-quality impressive programs and series available, unfortunately mostly not accessible outside of the UK or US, since funding comes from US and UK citizens. When will we all be able to pay to stream some of these programs? For those who ’ d like to enjoy some gossip, try the novel The Fourth Estate by best-selling author Jeffrey Archer, based on the lives of two of the media moguls mentioned in the chapter, Murdoch and Maxwell. And finally for those who prefer a classic film instead of a novel: Citizen Kane is on most Best Films of all Time lists. Randolph Hearst, mentioned in this chapter, tried unsuccessfully to stop Orson Welles, also featured in this chapter, from directing that film. You ’ ll be meeting them both again in our very next chapter. Exercises 1. Skim the chapter on religion to find the name of the two-part play that won two Pulitzer prizes. But what ’ s the connection to this chapter? Now find a caricature by a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist (hint: 4). 2. Skim through the next chapter to find the name of a film regarded as one of the best films ever made and then connect its director with two of the topics of this chapter. 3. Mention two important media tycoons of the early and late 20 th centuries who both competed with two other more successful tycoons. 4. Remember from this chapter a specific British television network that broadcasts in the Welsh language? (should be easy) Remember this network mentioned in connection with an historical Welsh hero? (more 287 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="295"?> challenging, clue: “ historical ” ) Remember a specific Afro-Latina journalist who worked for a “ major US network ” ? 7 Which two networks mentioned explicitly in this chapter would employ Latina journalists? (extra info: Univision is the largest Spanish language network.) 5. Although we didn ’ t cover magazines in this chapter, you ’ ve already heard about one famous magazine of the second half of the 19 th century, which not only provided us with a cover portrayal for one of the most famous Black Americans but provided readers with caricatures from a German-born cartoonist who helped to popularize the two mascots for the two American parties (hints: 2 5) When you find the names of the American scholar and the German-born artist and the magazine, you ’ ll more easily remember all three in future. 6. After identifying the magazine in the previous question, look for two other examples of famous American magazines connected to a brutal murder of a young Black boy in Mississippi at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. And finally look for a British magazine that provided us with a cartoon showing a British monarch and lots of German names. 2 Challenging questions and interesting projects: 1. Compare the paper versions of three randomly selected American and British newspapers with their online versions. Now list all the differences and try to find as many similarities as possible. 2. Check your local television listing and write down all the programs you think might come from the US or the UK. Try and come up with explanations about why these shows are popular in Germany. And the if-you-can-do-this-maybe-you ’ ll-win-the-Pulitzer-Prizeor-become-more-famous-than-Netflix-or-YouTube task: Predict what the contents of this chapter could look like in a new edition in ten years. Which sections will be interesting only from a historical point of view? Which important content won ’ t have been covered? And finally, further topics not dealt with in detail or at all in this chapter for those who just can ’ t get enough of old-fashioned media: … censorship; magazines; television genres; details about talk radio with infamous hosts like Rush Limbaugh explaining their popularity 288 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="296"?> by reference to older generations and the use of radios in cars; Katherine Graham ’ s importance in American journalism both as owner of The Washington Post and as a woman in a “ man ’ s world ” ; Forbes as a modern media platform; how the founding of German public television helped to avoid political polarization in Germany with advice for PBS in the US; great TV series with insights into American identity like The Wire or using Friends to show shifts from nuclear family to importance of friends and also using Friends to teach English as a foreign language; reality TV and its roots in a series from the 70s An American Family; the roots of Donald Trump in reality TV from the early 2000s; documentary television series with details about Kenneth Clark ’ s Civilisation as a model from the 70s; David Attenborough ’ s huge influence on television in the UK and around the world; news agencies like Associated Press and United Press International in the US and Reuters in the UK; US cable TV and Donald Trump as a cable TV fanatic; black journalism with Ebony as one example and more details about Jet as another prime example to add to the ones you have in the answer to question 6 above, … 289 Chapter 10 Paper, Waves, Bytes (media) <?page no="297"?> Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) A land without music? Parry, Holst and Elgar to you, Schmitz Title of article in The Telegraph by Boris Johnson (not yet Mayor of London or Prime Minister) You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark! … All right, Mr. DeMille, I ’ m ready for my close-up. Norma Desmond ’ s last lines in Billy Wilder ’ s iconic film Sunset Boulevard Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win. Gary Lineker, sports broadcaster and former football player quoted after England lost to Germany in the semifinals of the World Cup 1990 If you ’ re going to America, bring your own food. American writer and humorist Fran Lebowitz in Social Studies The importance of food in fashioning national identity or the importance of fashion in looking at the arts wasn ’ t taken seriously up until around the late 1950s - even though just a glance at some insulting terms in English for other nationalities shows us the linguistic links between food and foreigners: frogs (for the French) and krauts (for the Germans). And not only were certain kinds of clothes once a way of classifying people, certain colors, too (like royal purple for royalty) used to be an age-old way of distinguishing who was who. The style and color of clothes are less class-related than they used to be, but they can still be seen as an expression of personality. Also, people still spend a good portion of their lifetimes shopping for, preparing, and eating food - in spite of the development of fast food and convenience food, which started in the land of the hamburger and hot dog. Not only what we eat, but how we eat, and when we eat can help define who we are. And what better way to spend our time after dinner than going to the movies or the theatre or the opera? Or going to a ballgame or watching our favorite sports team online? And those 290 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="298"?> who would rather stay home than go to an art museum or to an arena can still listen to music that we might identify as American or English just by hearing the first few notes. When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ the broad range of the arts in the US and the UK, ▶ typical English and American architecture and architectural follies, ▶ some famous American and British directors and actors, ▶ typical movie genres with examples, ▶ English classical music from Purcell to Britten, ▶ British and American popular music and festivals, ▶ the shock value of BritArt and American pop art in Germany, ▶ some leisure-time activities in both countries, ▶ a few typical American and British sports, ▶ different kinds of British and American food. Let ’ s begin this diverse chapter with the arts topic and start by looking at the word arts with its manifold varieties. We have the visual arts, which can include architecture and painting; the performing arts, which could include music and movies; the fine arts, which could include all of the above; the liberal arts, which you ’ ve encountered before in a different, educational context. The word arts in the Bachelor of Arts degree 4 is used in its widest sense and could include any of the topics dealt with in this chapter. We could also include design and fashion as art, and if we take the origin of the English word back to its Latin root, ars, we ’ d come across meanings that include cunning as opposed to natural, and “ cunning ” is related to “ können ” and therefore to “ Kunst. ” Which art to begin with? We could start alphabetically and historically at the very beginning. A for architecture Is there such a thing as American or British architecture? What comes to your mind when you hear this combination of nationality and buildings? Let ’ s take a look at temples of God and temples of mammon in both countries. While it might be difficult to assign many European cathedrals to a just one individual nation, one particularly arts visual, performing, cunning Kunst temples of God: English Gothic original … 291 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="299"?> English contribution to European architecture has the word English in its name. English Gothic is usually divided into three periods: Early, Decorated, and Perpendicular. A good example of Early English Gothic architecture is Salisbury Cathedral in southern England. Fig. 11.1 Exeter Cathedral is an example of English Decorated Gothic style. You can see here a partial view of the longest continuous piece of Gothic vaulted ceiling (almost 100 meters) in the world, described as an avenue of palms. The stained glass is modern, most of the original stained glass was lost during World War II bombing. Fig. 11.2 York Minster is an example of the English Perpendicular, and this view of the two front towers from the central one captures a sense of the vertigo visitors can experience while taking a tour of the roof. As you may remember, 8 York is the seat of one of the two most important Archbishops of the Church of England. 292 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="300"?> Perpendicular lines are characteristic of Gothic cathedrals in general, and the Perpendicular style in England is characterized by soaring walls, huge stained glass windows, and ceilings with fan vaulting, a particularly English design. You can find wonderful examples of ceilings with fan vaulting in the cathedrals in Gloucester 8 and Canterbury and also in King ’ s College, which is part of Cambridge University, 4 and, like Exeter Cathedral, has a huge fanvault ceiling. While Gothic architecture was replaced by other styles from the 16 th century onwards, many elements of Gothic architecture became popular again from the 19 th century onwards. You could say Gothic was “ revived. ” Examples of Gothic Revival or Neo-Gothic design include one of the most popular American buildings, the National Cathedral in Washington DC. But a cathedral that looks so similar to many others in Europe doesn ’ t convey the same sense of American identity as small churches in New England villages do with their simple architecture and just their high steeples to distinguish them from the surrounding neighborhood. You won ’ t only find examples of Neo-Gothic in religious buildings like cathedrals: the Palace of Westminster 5 is also a famous example of Gothic Revival. And we can see the connections between temples and government in the “ wedding-cake architecture ” in Washington DC 7 that exemplifies civil religion. You ’ d probably automatically think of skyscrapers in connection with architecture in the US; and these temples of mammon, as they could be critically described in our money-minded world, are perhaps the most visible aspect of American architecture even if most skyscrapers and all the highest ones are now to be found in Asia and in the Middle East. No longer even among the Top Ten highest in the world but still the most popular American building, according to one survey, is the Empire State Building in Manhattan, built in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Incidentally, the invention of the electric elevator by the German inventor Werner von Siemens in the late 19 th century helped to make skyscrapers possible. Until the completion of the World Trade Center in the 1970s, the Empire State was the highest building in New York City. The One World Trade Center building, located not far from where the Twin Towers stood before 9/ 11, 6 has now become the highest building in the US and also in the Western Hemisphere with a height of 1776 feet, a number than should ring a bell for history fans. The verticality that was a unique characteristic of American cities like New York and Chicago in … and revived skyscrapers as temples of mammon 293 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="301"?> the last century is now a characteristic of urban areas around the world. Another architectural form can also be found in other places in the world but is most often found in Britain: buildings not to glorify God or to demonstrate the power of the state or of money but just for fun and often called follies. A few, like the Triangular Lodge in the English Midlands, were built for more serious reasons. The builder wanted to express his Catholic faith more or less secretly in Protestant Elizabethan England 2 by using architectural elements in threes - three walls, three floors and three windows, to name just three examples from many - three designating the Trinity. Other follies were either built to look like ruins or in effect became ruins because they were never finished, like the National Monument in Edinburgh, which was supposed to eventually resemble the Parthenon and thus justify Fig. 11.3 Hearst Castle, also called La Cuesta Encantada (the enchanted hill), has a wild mixture of architectural styles and the overall gaudiness of the estate may not be to everyone ’ s taste although it attracts many visitors, including Lady Gaga, who was allowed to film a music video there. Hearst collected and bought not only the furnishings but also doors and walls and entire buildings in Spain and Britain and had them shipped to the east coast and then transported across the country. It ’ s now a state historical monument and perhaps uniquely American in its unabashed combination of the old and the new - much of the estate is made of concrete - with the unifying factor being anything and everything that one rich and powerful man liked. The entire estate comprises a huge range of different buildings, some of which can been seen in the collage of photos. How many different styles can you identify? follies just for fun? 294 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="302"?> Edinburgh ’ s claim to be the Athens of the North but for unclear reasons was never finished. Today you can find most follies in amusement parks, which we ’ ll be visiting later in the chapter. Before we leave architecture, let ’ s return briefly to our opening question of nationality and architecture. First we can mention three famous German-born architects who lived at least some of their lives in the US: Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Helmut Jahn. While you perhaps identified Britain with cathedrals or castles and America with skyscrapers or monuments, you most probably didn ’ t connect America with castles unless you were thinking of an amusement park like Disneyland. But there is one castle on the California coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco built by one of the first American women architects, Julia Morgan, for a man you may remember having read about 10 and whom we will be meeting again later in the chapter. F for fashion And what about fashion? Is fashion an art? It certainly can play a role in national identity. Just think of a bowler hat and an umbrella as the way the typical Englishman was presented in German school books, think of the Queen ’ s robes and her crowns, of Scottish tartan and kilts. What about headscarves and bangles? There have been court cases in Britain about the rights of students to to wear jewelry with their school uniform or to wear religious clothing. 4 Here we see the importance of clothes as a statement about personal identity that can lead to headline-grabbing suits (lawsuits here, not business suits, which are themselves an interesting sign of identity and power). And then there are school uniforms 4 both in Britain and in private schools in the US. Clothes and America? Jeans, of course. One of the very many Germans who immigrated to America in the middle of the 19 th century 7 was someone born with the name Löb Strauß, which became Levi Strauss. And the rest is blue jeans history. After Strauss let ’ s mention just two contemporary examples of people who have had enormous influence on British and American fashion. Vivienne Westwood is an iconic British fashion designer with roots designing clothes for the punk band the Sex Pistols and then provocatively reusing typical British fashion motifs and fabrics. She ’ s designed uniforms for flight attendants and clothing for British and American celebrities and has become a political activist against an American castle royal robes to blue jeans British Westwood, American Talley 295 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="303"?> capitalism and the arms race and for the Green party. André Leon Talley was the first black male editor of the fashion magazine Vogue, had contact with countless celebrities and artists and presidential families from the 1970s until he died in the early 2020s, was editor for Ebony magazine, 10 wrote books, was the subject of documentaries, a judge on America ’ s Next Top Model, and encouraged designers to use more African American models. Born in the segregated Jim Crow 7 south of the 1950s, Talley remembered the way Black American families dressed up for Sunday church services. He fought for a democratic form of fashion for LGBT and ethnic minorities. The Savannah College of Art and Design named their annual award after him, and one of the winners was Vivienne Westwood (and also Karl Lagerfeld). This openly gay, two-meter tall Black man has influenced fashion in America and around the world in multifarious ways. F for film We could ’ ve called this section in British English “ C for cinema ” or in American English “ M for movies ” and thus distinguished between the two film cultures pretty easily. But the questions “ Who ’ s American? ” and “ Who ’ s British? ” aren ’ t as easy to answer. What about the director Stanley Kubrick, who directed world-famous movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut and who spent most of his adult life in England? He was an American citizen, but was he also an American director? Movie star Elizabeth Taylor was born in England to American parents and was thus both a British and an American citizen. The director Alfred Hitchcock was born in England with personal experience of German cinema in the early 20 th century, directed the first British “ talkie, ” a film with sound, was influential in early English cinema, but later emigrated to America and became an American citizen. Probably the first word that comes to mind in connection with American movies is Hollywood, which was originally founded as a small town near what was a small but very fast-growing city called Los Angeles at the turn of the 20 th century. Some of the producers of the flourishing new film industry moved from the east to California because of the good weather and the wide range of landscapes (snowcapped mountains, desert, and the ocean) available within a short distance. But Hollywood did not rely solely on natural landscapes. D. W. Griffith, who made the first movie set in Hollywood, is British or American? Hollywood, of course 296 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="304"?> considered the pioneer motion-picture director and is sometimes called the Father of the Motion Picture. Griffith made movies on a grand scale by using monumental sets and many actors and refining many of the then current techniques in editing and cinematography. Griffith ’ s The Birth of a Nation, about the period of Reconstruction, 2 was released in 1915 and is considered one of the most important films of all time although the racist content of the film, which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroes restoring order to the south, provoked riots in some cities. The film was banned or censored in some states. Shocked by the critical response, Griffith directed the film Intolerance as an answer to those who had accused him of racism. While Intolerance was financially a failure in contrast to The Birth of a Nation ’ s huge profits, the later film has come to be seen as vastly influential on the development of cinema as an art form. In addition to Griffith, perhaps the most important American film director of the silent era, another famous American film director, Cecille B. DeMille, had a career spanning more than forty years. You read his name in the quote at the beginning of this chapter from the movie Sunset Boulevard, named after the boulevard that winds more than 30 kilometers from downtown Los Angeles through Hollywood to the Pacific Ocean and is often associated with glamour and corruption. With the advent of sound in the 30s, two especially American film genres became popular. Gangster films like Scarface, with Italian gangsters (you might know the remake from the 80s, with a Cuban drug lord), were based partly on the violence caused by Prohibition. 2 The sound of shooting was soon followed by the sound of singing, and the first feature-length film with dialogue and songs and thus the first musical was The Jazz Singer. By the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the large production companies in Hollywood were turning out hundreds of films each year, and Hollywood has continued to represent mainstream American cinema to this day. American musicals were popular for most of the 20 th century, but it took the Canadian director Damien Chazelle ’ s homage to French director Jacque Demy ’ s love of traditional American musicals to regenerate the genre almost a century after The Jazz Singer with the critically acclaimed and successful La La Land, set in Los Angeles with a jazz soundtrack. We ’ ve already seen the Nuyorican influence on modern American musicals with Lin-Manuel Miranda ’ s 7 success on stage and on screen. In addition to using Hollywood as a category for American movies, you could also categorize them according to famous directors 2 gangster movies and 2 musicals … … epic, western, sports, animated … 297 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="305"?> and actors (both male and female), studios, and film genres. You just read the name of DeMille, who created epic films like The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments. What some claim is the most successful movie of all time, Gone with the Wind, was released during Hollywood ’ s Golden Era in the 1930s and produced by David Selznick, who worked with three of the largest production companies of the time, RKO, Paramount, and MGM. GWTW is a prime example of the epic genre, but it is very problematic today because of its racist stereotypes, which were common in movies of that era. 7 Epics made much later range from William Wyler ’ s Ben Hur (mid 20 th ) and Stephen Spielberg ’ s Schindler ’ s List (late 20 th ) to 21 st century epics like There Will Be Blood and Interstellar. The Western genre includes a variety of films like the 50s classic The Searchers, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, the very popular Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Paul Newman and Robert Redford made in the late 60s, or Unforgiven, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood in the 90s or Django Unchained and The Power of the Dog from the 21 st century. Sports films include Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Robert DeNiro, and Rocky with Sylvester Stallone, both about boxing, as well as National Velvet, a film about horse racing, with a very young Elizabeth Taylor. Walt Disney is famously connected to animated films, another genre that was very popular in Hollywood ’ s Golden Age, with hit movies like Snow White and Pinocchio. The animated film gained new popularity from the 1990s into the 21 st century with computer-animated movies from new studios like Pixar and DreamWorks, such as The Incredibles, Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Shrek, and new Walt Disney movies like Frozen and Encanto. Romantic film comedies span the time from the beginnings of Hollywood with Charlie Chaplin ’ s silent film City Lights through The Philadelphia Story from the 40s directed by George Cukor and starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart. The 70s had Woody Allen ’ s Annie Hall, the 90s writer and director Nora Ephron ’ s Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The film classic from the 30s The Wizard of Oz belongs to the fantasy genre along with another 30s classic King Kong. Other examples of the fantasy genre include director Francis Capra ’ s It ’ s a Wonderful Life and Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Science-fiction films include Stanley Kubrick ’ s 2001, George Lucas ’ s Star Wars series, Steven Spielberg ’ s ET, Roland Emmerich ’ s Independence Day or the comeromcom, fantasy, science fiction 298 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="306"?> dy-science-fiction-dystopian Don ’ t Look Up from the early 2020s. The most successful movie financially of all time was the science-fiction fantasy epic Avatar directed by the Canadian James Cameron with sequels planned throughout the 2020s. To end this overview we need to go back almost a century to one director mentioned in the context of American radio 10 often regarded as having directed the greatest film of all time: Citizen Kane, a 40s drama about a newspaper magnate and supposedly based on the life of the publisher William Randolph Hearst, 10 whose castle you might remember as being an unusual example of American architecture. The criticism that the Academy Awards and the movie industry in general weren ’ t doing enough to represent people of color began in the mid 2010s. The superhero movie Black Panther became one of the biggest-grossing movies of all time with its Black director and mostly Black cast, proof that very successful movies could be made with people of color. By the early 2020s Black people were winning Oscars in all categories. While women had been awarded Oscars for acting from the very beginning a century ago, few have been nominated for awards for directing and only a couple have won. Chloe Zhao was only the second women and the first person of color to win an Oscar for directing. Her film Nomadland in the early 2020s also won many international awards. Its subject: Americans who for various reasons gave up their homes to become wandering nomads. There would be a lot to say about British film, which began at around the same time as American film but soon exported many of its directors and actors across the ocean. Films described as British social realism began in the late 50s and early 60s with directors like Tony Richardson, Jack Clayton, Karel Reisz, and John Schlesinger and with films like Look Back in Anger (based on the play by John Osborn), Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving, and Billy Liar. A renaissance of British cinema began in the 80s with films like Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, and Gandhi. Currently important British directors include older men like Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, and Stephen Frears, director of My Beautiful Lauderette 7 and The Queen, as well as younger directors like Stephen Daldry, director of Billy Eliot and The Reader, based on the German novel by Bernhard Schlink. Finally we must mention younger directors lik Christopher Nolan with Dunkirk and The Dark Knight and Steve McQueen with 12 Years a Slave and older Ridley Scott, but still making big films like House of Gucci. We ’ ll end this very short overview with two of the Hollywood so white and so male UK cinema: not only James Bond and Harry Potter 299 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="307"?> most profitable movie franchises in history with very British connections: James Bond and Harry Potter. M for music In order to understand the title of the newspaper article from The Telegraph quoted at the beginning of this chapter, we ’ ll have to do a quick survey of the history of important English composers in a few key names. We can begin with Henry Purcell, born in the mid 17 th century in a part of London that we ’ ve heard about again and again, namely Westminster. Purcell was a real wunderkind, composing his first works as a boy. His Dido and Aeneas is considered to be the first English opera and is very short at around an hour. The subject matter is from the classical Roman poet Virgil ’ s epic poem the Aeneid. Purcell also composed works like The Fairy-Queen and King Arthur, which deals with a story closely connected to England, the King Arthur legend. 2 Both these works are sometimes called semioperas since they contain spoken language and dances. And after Purcell? Well, the name of the next very famous English composer doesn ’ t sound very English. George Frideric Handel, who anglicized his first two names and gave up his umlaut when he emigrated to England, composed extraordinarily popular music like the Water Music, which fellow German George I 2 requested for a concert on the Thames. Handel ’ s Music for the Royal Fireworks was composed for another German, King George II of England. At least Handel could speak better English than the kings. He also composed the Messiah, based on excerpts taken from the King James Bible. The movement often performed last (though it doesn ’ t come last in the work itself) is the very famous Hallelujah Chorus, at the beginning of which the audience traditionally stands up. Another important English composer of German descent was Frederick Delius, whose music is said to celebrate his love of the English countryside, although he spent most of his life in the US and later in France. An early piece inspired by Delius ’ s stay near Jacksonville, Florida, is called the Florida Suite. Parry, Holst, and Elgar, the composers cited in this chapter ’ s epigraph as evidence that Britain was not a land without music, as the German critic Oscar Adolf Hermann Schmitz claimed in pre-World War I Europe at a time when Anglo-German relations weren ’ t the best. Sir Hubert Parry is an English composer from the late 19 th century known for the anthem I P for Purcell Händel? Handel! Delius, Parry, Holst, Elgar 300 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="308"?> Was Glad, used during the coronation of all monarchs since Edward VII. Gustav Holst was born in England, but his name points to his Swedish ancestors. While you might not know his orchestral suite The Planets by name, you ’ ve probably heard parts of it in TV commercials and movie scenes. If you ’ ve experienced a typical American graduation ceremony, then you ’ ve certainly heard one of the Pomp and Circumstance Military Marches, a very famous series of works by Sir Edward Elgar. And if you ’ ve experienced any of the annual summer concerts in London known as the Proms, especially the Last Night at the Proms, then you ’ ve no doubt heard the song “ Land of Hope and Glory ” being sung to the tune of Elgar ’ s March No. 1, with much flag-waving and singing, behavior that is one example of an overlap between “ serious ” and “ popular ” music, which are often strictly divided in Germany. What would be more appropriate to round off our brief look at British classical music than with a British composer named Britten? And Benjamin Britten is indeed considered to be one of the most important composers of the 20 th century, with operas like Billy Bud, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice (based on short stories by the American and German writers Herman Melville, Henry James, and Thomas Mann). His many works include the War Requiem, written for the completion of a new cathedral in Coventry next to the one destroyed by German bombs in World War II. One of Britten ’ s most popular pieces is called The Young Person ’ s Guide to the Orchestra, a musical guide to various instruments. In this work Britten uses a theme from Purcell and thus provides us with a second nice example of how serious and popular music are combined. By the way, Purcell also had an influence on British rock music. While Britain may have had the reputation of being a land without music earlier, the “ British invasion ” of the US in the 1960s, with the overwhelming success of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones among other bands, gave the UK a leading status in pop music. You ’ ll remember 10 that the British invasion of American arts in general also included Britcoms and television series like Civilisation. Two composers and musicians, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, along with musicians George Harrison and Ringo Starr, were the most successful popular music group in western history. A generation after the breakup of the Beatles, known also as the Fab Four, the words Britain and pop were fused into Britpop, partly in response to America ’ s dominance of pop music in the 90s. Bands like Oasis American graduations, British Proms Britten for Britain Britpop and best classical 21 st century composer 301 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="309"?> and Blur explicitly indicated their admiration of the Beatles and of their roots in the north of England. Other world-famous musicians with British roots are Phil Collins, Elton John, David Bowie, Sting, and Robbie Williams. Singers like Amy Winehouse (until her untimely death), Adele, and Ed Sheeran became popular in the 2010s and 20s around the world. And one last name: Max Richter, which sounds German because he was born in Hamelin (yes, the city associated with the Pied Piper) but grew up in Britain. While you may not have heard of the name, you ’ ve certainly heard his music. The Guardian 10 proclaimed his The Blue Notebooks album as one of the best classical works of the 21 st century. His genre-spanning music has been widely used in television and film soundtracks. Richter ’ s German roots, the influence of the German band Kraftwerk, his cooperation with European and American composers, and his understanding of music as a language that crosses borders and boundaries - these aspects comprise a fitting reply “ And Max Richter to you, Johnson ” to the first quote at the beginning of this chapter and include not only Boris Johnson but all who attempt to exploit music for nationalistic purposes - other than, perhaps, the European Song Contest. We started this section with the first big name in British music from the distant past, Purcell; we ’ ll end it with two anniversaries of important events in American music. The fiftieth anniversary of Elvis Presley ’ s death reminds those too young to have experienced him live of his enormous impact on popular music, with a style that combined elements of African American, country, and American pop music. A list of musicians influenced by Presley ’ s music could function as a summary of modern Anglo-American popular music. A summary of important Anglo-American music of the 70s can be found by looking at those who performed at the legendary Woodstock festival, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary at the end of the 2010s. The festival, held in the open air at a rural dairy north of New York City included a variety of musical styles representative of American and British music of the time. Folk singers like Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie; rock singers like Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin; bands like Blood, Sweat, and Tears; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; the Grateful Dead; Jefferson Airplane; Santana; Sly and the Family Stone; and The Who. The organizers had planned to sell tickets, but most of the crowd was let in for free when far more arrived than expected. People openly took drugs and had sex and even seemed from Elvis to Woodstock to … 302 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="310"?> to enjoy the rain that started during the festival and turned the farm into a sea of mud. In spite of the huge and unexpected crowds, there was no violence. And Jimi Hendrix gave an iconic and controversial interpretation of the “ Star-Spangled Banner. ” 2 8 The documentary film Woodstock was released the following year and proved enormously popular. The “ three days of peace and music ” became a symbol of the counterculture movement and both shocked and fascinated Americans. About a thousand kilometers from where Woodstock took place is a city known for car manufacturers you might remember 1 and for a kind of music that embodies Black American experience. Once one of the largest Black-owned companies in the US, the Motown (from “ motors ” and “ town ” ) Record Company was founded in the 1960s. Motown music is a mixture of rhythm and blues, soul, and pop that has influenced many other kinds of American music. Detroit is not only the home of Motown, but the White rapper Eminem ’ s hometown, too. And now, to finish on a high, let ’ s fast-forward to the 2020s and and mention a gay Black musician who fuses the typically American genres of country and western, hip-hop, and rap with phenomenal success: Lil Nax X. V for visual arts Visual arts can shock and fascinate people just as much as music and festivals can, so we ’ ll start our look at British visual arts with a contemporary group of British artists whose work is often labeled with a name modeled after Britpop: BritArt. While the kind of art created by those who came to be called the Young British Artists or YBA has varied widely, its ability to shock people is one common aspect. The first and now famous art exhibition of artists like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Marcus Harvey, and Chris Ofili was appropriately called Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, and it really did cause a sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where it opened in the late 1990s, before moving to Berlin and then closing at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York. One of the most controversial paintings in the London exhibition, Marcus Harvey ’ s Myra, might look ordinary enough to most people outside of Britain, but it ’ s based on one of the most widely known images in Britain, a photograph made by police after the arrest of Myra Hindley, a serial killer of young children, convicted in the mid 1960s. What was … to Motown and beyond S for Sensation 303 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="311"?> especially controversial was Harvey ’ s use of small children ’ s handprints to create the picture. The most controversial item in the New York exhibition was a picture by Chris Ofili, a British artist of Nigerian ancestry. Ofili used elephant dung and small pieces of pornographic magazines to portray a black Virgin Mary, a mixture of African and Western art that some Americans found obscene and blasphemous. The publicity - both negative and positive - contributed to making the Sensation exhibition a sensational success, also for the sponsor and advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, who later sold the works for large profits. Damien Hirst was also represented in Sensation and originally belonged to the YBAs, and he has since become one of the most famous and richest artists in the western world. Nowadays Hirst is famous for a replica of a human skull decorated with thousands of diamonds and for glass boxes containing preserved dead animals. The shark installation with the long title The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living has become a famous example of BritArt and of conceptual art, where the concept is considered to be more important than the aesthetic qualities or the material. Another British artist, Tracey Emin, became famous for an installation My Bed with soiled sheets, condoms, and bottles. Hirst won the Turner Prize for another one of his dead-animal installations in the mid 1990s. Chris Ofili was the first Black recipient of the prize. The Turner Prize was first presented in the mid 1980s and organized by the Tate, a network of four art galleries with the goal of increasing public appreciation of British art from the 16 th century to the present. The prize creates a connection between perhaps the most famous English painter of all time, John Mallord William Turner, and contemporary artists. Turner painted landscapes in the first half of the 19 th century, and his later work became especially influential. Although none of Turner ’ s paintings would cause any controversy these days, they did in the 19 th century, and the winners of the Turner Prize are also often controversial, with the award regularly provoking protests. Emin a Turner Prize nominee and Hirst a winner in the 1990s. Ofili won for a collection of paintings, including The Holy Virgin Mary mentioned above, and No Woman No Cry, based on the murder of Stephen Lawrence. 7 The Turner Prize has become the most publicized art award in Britain and is presented annually to British artists younger than 50 for an outstanding exhibition or presentation of their work. “ British ” no longer only means born in Damien Hirst ’ s shark and Tracy Emin ’ s bed Turner Prize and Turner 304 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="312"?> Britain. Since the requirement was changed to include foreigners who live and work in the UK, two German-born artists have won: In 2000 Wolfgang Tillmans was the first photographer and the first person not born in Britain to receive the Turner Prize, followed six years later by the German-born painter Tomma Abts. Sculptors can also win the prize: Antony Gormley 8 won for a collection of his work, a few years before he built Angel of the North. In the early 2020s groups of artists received the Turner. Banksy is the name given to an English-based street artist, political activist, and film director, who has managed to remain anonymous since his first graffiti began appearing on walls, buildings, and bridges around the world. While his work has appeared in the US and in Israel, most occurs in English locations including his hometown Bristol. Banksy makes use of the internet via his Instagram account, documenting some of his artworks that have been painted over or destroyed, which is something that keeps happening. Banksy ’ s political activism is anti-war and anti-capitalism and he foregrounds Fig. 11.4 James Rizzi was the first living artist ever to be given a commission to design German postage stamps in the late 2000s with his own signature, thus turning the hundreds of thousands of letters posted in Germany into little works of American pop art. Rizzi matched the designs to the printed German words, used his trademark yellow bird and his fish and cat motifs, and worked in the red, white, and blue colors of his native USA. Who ’ s Banksy? 305 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="313"?> issues of power and class, making him an ideal artist for cultural studies. If you ’ re interested in American painting, you can easily see masterpieces by famous pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol in art museums in Cologne and Frankfurt. One of the first and best-known pieces of pop art (created not by an American artist but by the English painter Richard Hamilton) is a collage with the long title Just What Is It that Makes Today ’ s Homes So Different, So Appealing? and can be found in Tübingen. Pop art blurs the lines between an original and copy through reproductions. Remember Deborah Kass ’ 4 Barbras, many chapters ago, at the end of the introduction to this book? It references Andy Warhol ’ s silk print production. In contrast you can see the uniqueness of the Happy RIZZI House in Braunschweig, which American pop artist James Rizzi designed. Rizzi also created stained glass for a church in Essen, and decorated the exterior of tram cars and a Condor airplane. We could now include some of the arts not mentioned earlier, like dancing, for example. While distinguishing between ballet and square dancing would be a great topic to show differences in class and national/ regional identity, I ’ ve chosen instead to present some of the ways the British and Americans spend their leisure time. Leisure Activities You might remember how little vacation Americans have 6 and wonder if they have any time at all for leisure activities. Maybe because of the pioneer spirit or American restlessness or just because the idea of a vacation as “ having nothing to do and all day to do it in, ” as the American comedy writer and magician Robert Orben claimed, isn ’ t attractive to Americans. In any case many Americans fill up their vacations with activities. And one very popular attraction was built in the Californian city of Anaheim (founded by Germans, as you can see by the name) in the mid 1950s by someone we ’ ve now met several times in this chapter: Walt Disney. His Disneyland Theme Park was followed by a similar but even larger resort on the other side of the country in Orlando, Florida, twenty years later. We mentioned follies as an example of typical British eccentricity earlier in the chapter. The most famous follies are probably those in Disneyland, buildings that look like castles or old mansions or swans but function as shops or American pop art … in Germany and on German stamps Disneyland 306 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="314"?> settings for rides or hotels or restaurants (in contrast to Hearst ’ s Castle or Michael Jackson ’ s Neverland Ranch, which functioned as homes). Disneyland has been exported to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and - at first less successfully - to Paris, but not at all to Britain, where amusement parks like the Pleasure Beach in Blackpool in the north of England and Alton Towers in the Midlands can be found. There are also older seaside attractions with piers at places like Brighton 1 although the traditional seaside resorts have suffered economically from the mass tourism that began in the 60s with inexpensive package holidays in Spain. But the British don ’ t need to leave the country to enjoy one of the most popular leisure activities in Britain: bird watching, often as a member of the RSPB. 9 And as we ’ ve also heard, 9 fox hunting, although now illegal in England, Scotland and Wales, is still practiced in ways that controversially circumvent the law. Hunting isn ’ t nearly as controversial in the US, where it ’ s a very popular leisure activity. Americans may allow laws to prevent drinking 2 or smoking but laws to prevent hunting or to restrict the right to own guns 3 can provoke strong protest. Americans believe they have a constitutional right to hunt and fish, and in the state of Oklahoma it is even anchored in the state constitution. A game that most of you have probably watched on German TV was originally a British television game show. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? has been exported to many countries. One famous American forerunner of this popular TV game show was The $64,000 Question. As you might guess by the low sum of money, this game show was popular a long a time ago - in the 1950s. In a famous quiz show scandal in the 50s involving a similar show called Twenty One, producers tried to increase ratings 10 by giving popular contestants the answers to the questions. Robert Redford later directed the award-winning movie Quiz Show based on this scandal. Perhaps you noticed in earlier chapters some political references to card games, yet another popular American and British leisure activity: Teddy Roosevelt ’ s Square Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ’ s New Deal, Harry S. Truman ’ s Fair Deal and also his saying “ the buck stops here. ” 2 3 6 Card games may seem a little old-fashioned in our modern age of media - although there are some electronic versions of old-fashioned card games like Solitaire, Poker, or Bridge. Another somewhat oldfashioned leisure time activity can be traced back to Roman times and British seaside and birds and hunting scandals and politics: it ’ s all a game circuses 307 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="315"?> places like the Circus Maximus, literally the “ greatest circle, ” where chariot races took place. (The movie buffs may have seen a film mentioned earlier in this chapter, Ben Hur, with its famous chariot race.) The first modern circus was in 18 th century London, the first American circus was started a few years later in Philadelphia. In addition to horses like in ancient Rome, wild animals, acrobats, and clowns entertained the audience. Barnum and Bailey became famous names in late 19 th century America with their three-ring circus promising the “ Greatest Show on Earth, ” which might remind you of a movie title mentioned earlier in the chapter. The welfare of animals in traditional circuses can be a cause of concern for the RSPCA 9 in the UK and the US PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). These and other groups have worked to ban the use of all wild animals in circuses across England and individual US states. Partly due to these concerns, the American traveling circus Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closed in the late 2010s, a century and half after the first American circus shows but planned to return after the pandemic without the animals. Modern-day circuses include the TheatroZinZanni based in several American cities and the NoFit State circus in Wales with its emphasis on regional identity. Why mention circuses in this chapter? Because of the title and the final words of the chapter … but we ’ re not quite there yet. We could have had a look at one popular American and British activity: domestic tourism. And tourist guides can provide an especially interesting look at a people ’ s and a nation ’ s identity, but let ’ s turn now instead to another activity that has occupied human beings since they were able to spend time on other things than farming and hunting, an activity that plays an important role in many people ’ s lives and not only in Britain and America: sport in British English or sports in American English. Sport(s) Let ’ s begin this section with a look at sports from an Anglo- American perspective although kicking balls around has been a human pastime since humans and balls existed. Legend has it that in the early 19 th century at an English public school 4 named Rugby one student started to carry a ball that players had only been allowed to kick, and the sport rugby was born. Rugby became popular in the United States too and was known as football. Outside the US, the rest Anglo rugby to American football 308 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="316"?> of the world calls this game American football to distinguish it from the kind of football that the rest of the world plays, which the Americans call soccer. Even if you don ’ t understand American football and aren ’ t interested in the issues of identity, costume, and aggression connected with this sport, you still might be interested to know the name for a risky pass that has only a tiny chance of success. It ’ s a “ Hail Mary pass, ” which is used in American politics for an action that needs a miracle to make it succeed. German immigrants brought with them their turnverein, also known as gymnastics clubs, in the mid 19 th century about the same time as the combination of Christianity and physical fitness led to the founding of the Young Men ’ s Christian Association, the YMCA. Physical education became a subject at school and university. Theodore Roosevelt 1 9 believed in doing sports as a way of overcoming sickness. Americans generally like their presidents to show an appreciation of the importance of sports. The only kind of sport of specifically American origin is basketball, invented within the YMCA more than a hundred years ago. And maybe you thought baseball, another very popular sport in the US, was originally American? While it ’ s been played more than half a century longer than basketball, its origins are now thought to go back to an English game called rounders. And the rules of baseball are no doubt as mysterious and difficult to understand to non-fans as the rules of English cricket. Weightlifting, bodybuilding, and gymnastics, although originating in the early 20 th century, started to become much more popular in the US since bodybuilders Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone became movie stars and with the success of actor and activist Jane Fonda ’ s gymnastics videos in the 1980s. Americans like to see their values such as competition, selfimprovement, and fair play as part of the reason for the popularity of sports in American life, even if some Americans sometimes criticize the abuse of intercollegiate sports in colleges and universities 4 as well as the enormous profits to be made in professional sports like basketball, baseball, and football. While sports, like so many other areas of American life, were originally segregated, the success of African American athletes goes back as far as the 1936 Olympics in Berlin when Jesse Owens annoyed Hitler by beating white “ Aryan ” German athletes in running and the long jump. Famous African American sportsmen include Carl Lewis (track and field), Tommie Smith and John Carlos (both track and field and football), baseball typical American sports American values, American ethnicities 309 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="317"?> player Hank Aaron, basketball player Michael Jordan, tennis players from Arthur Ashe in the 1970s to the sisters Venus and Serena Williams from the 2010s to Naomi Osaka in the 2020s, world-famous boxers like Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Smith and Carlos became internationally known after they used the Black Power Salute during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City to protest American racism. Muhammad Ali was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. One popular record-breaking golf star at the turn of the millennium was Tiger Woods, whose mixed ethnicity is sometimes called Cablinasian: from Caucasian (white), black, Indian, and Asian. Personal scandals made negative headlines in the early 2010s, but he made a typical American comeback in the late 2010s until an automobile accident ended his career in the early 2020s. Simone Biles made headline news not only for her record-breaking career as a gymnast but also for her courage to speak out about health pressures during the Olympics in the early 2020s. Let ’ s now make an abrupt transition in time and place. Manchester ’ s historical Roman connection 2 with the suffix -chester derived from the Latin word castrum meaning “ camp ” or “ fortification. ” Our topic isn ’ t Roman here, but camp still plays a role as in football camps for young athletes, and Manchester United as one of the most famous football (what Americans would call soccer) teams in the world. The most famous of the many well-known players is retired player David Beckham, who joined the team at the age of 17, and who has since become one of the most recognizable people on earth. His fame is based not only on his athletic prowess but also on his marriage to Victoria Adams, one of the Spice Girls, themselves an iconic English girl group of the 1990s, as well as on his presence in the worlds of fashion and popular culture. While the national aspects of international football are obvious, as in the English football player and broadcaster Gary Lineker ’ s wry praise of German talents mentioned at the very beginning of this chapter, we need to remember the United Kingdom is made up of four nations. While Great Britain participates in the Olympics as one country, England and Wales can compete as one team (called England) together against Scotland in cricket, a bat-and-ball sport (in some ways similar to American baseball) more popular in England and Wales than in Scotland or Northern Ireland. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can compete against one another in rugby and in football. Northern Ireland is part of the Ireland rugby Manchester United and English pop culture national identity and inter/ national sports 310 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="318"?> team, which also plays internationally. Through rituals and chanting, through wearing tattoos and dressing up or painting their faces in the colors of their national flag, even through arranging marriage ceremonies or having their ashes spread on the grounds of the stadium of their favorite team, fans express not only their connection to the sport but also their own identity as part of a group. The controversial Conservative politician Norman Tebbit used his “ cricket test, ” which later became known as the “ Tebbit test, ” to demonstrate that those immigrants to Britain who supported the teams of their country of birth hadn ’ t yet learned to love their new country enough and lacked the necessary patriotism needed to become true English people. Tebbit was aware of the tradition of cricket and the high quality of players in countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the West Indies, and he knew how very difficult his “ cricket test ” was. That group identity can sometimes involve violence and hooliganism - behavior connected with English football fans - is an aspect of sport much more prevalent in Britain than in America, an unexpected situation based on what you ’ ve learned about overall violence in each country. 3 Food? Food! After all the work involved in art and music and the physical exertions in sport, we can now turn to one last popular leisure activity spanning the globe that was once the activity of human beings: cooking and eating. Since we just mentioned the connection between sports and national identity, let ’ s continue looking at identity but now from a culinary point of view. It ’ s useful to remember that much of the English national diet has its origins more in the industrial revolution than in organic pastures. One of the most famous examples is a kind of yeast extract used as a salty spread on toast or as a flavoring, which many British people either love or hate. Marmite, the brand name used for the product in Britain, is very popular in England - and in parts of the former Empire like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa - and has been produced since the beginning of the 20 th century, at first as a byproduct of brewing beer. While Marmite has come to be considered as a typical English food, its name comes from the French word for a cooking pot and its existence is due at least in part to research done on meat extracts by a German scientist in the 19 th century. Other Tebbit test and hooliganism from Marmite to fish ’ n chips 311 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="319"?> examples of mass-produced food products popular in Britain are Twiglets - snacks that taste like Marmite - and KitKats, chocolatecovered wafers that have also become popular in the US and in Germany. In addition to these examples, which could be considered as mass-produced junk food, another English food is also the product of the machine age: fish ’ n chips. It was originally Jewish traders in London who fried fish to prevent it from spoiling quickly. The hearty English breakfast of egg, bacon, and sausage with tomatoes and mushrooms, which some tourists enjoy before the rigors of doing all the sights, was originally intended as food for farm workers to get them through a long day of manual labor. Popular in Britain isn ’ t only fish ’ n chips but a dish with no exact equivalent in India or Pakistan or Bangladesh and which some claim has now become the national dish of Britain: chicken tikka masala, a combination of roast chicken chunks in a thick sauce rumored to have been created by a Bangladeshi chef in Glasgow in the 1970s. Reasons for popularity of curry - a word used for a variety of Indian meals using meat and sauce - in particular and foreign food in general in the UK: the rise in Asian immigration, 7 the rise in celebrity TV chefs, increase in British travel abroad, a contrast to traditional blander British food. What ’ s true in any case is that international flavors have made culinary life in Britain more varied, especially when the multicultural contrasts are readily available in shops and restaurants that are often right next door to each other. 7 Tea, something probably everyone would identify as a sign of Englishness if not Britishness, is made of tea leaves from China, India, or Sri Lanka and sweetened with sugar from other exotic places. But the British were the ones who brought the tradition of drinking tea to India, where it was little known in spite of the abundance of tea leaves. In modern times, the increasing popularity of coffee means that tea might one day lose its place as Britain ’ s favorite drink, but it remains extremely popular. The Scottish people, who if we believed stereotypes would rather drink whiskey than tea or coffee, can be proud of some of their regional food officially recognized by the European Union: Scottish Farmed Salmon and Arbroath Smokies (a kind of haddock). More famous is haggis, a traditional Scottish dish that actually tastes a lot better than you might expect from its ingredients of seasoned sheep intestines. Other British products with regional identity in their names include Dorset blue cheese, Cornish clotted cream, Scotch beef from English breakfast to chicken tikka masala tea or coffee? from haggis to regional specialities 312 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="320"?> and lamb, and Welsh lamb. And you may remember some other regional details 1 like Worcestershire. Or maybe you remember British aristocratic titles 3 like earl? The Earl of Sandwich ’ s name is now known around the world, not so much for any noble accomplishments but for one of the most common kinds of food available in the Western world. More recently food and cooking in Britain has been making headlines for the modern awareness of the importance of healthy eating. Traffic-light labeling for food with red, amber, and green circles to alert the consumer to possible health risks started in the UK and has spread to Germany, too. Jamie Oliver became well known not only in Britain for his television programs with catchy titles like The Naked Chef or Jamie ’ s Ministry of Food along with his many cookbooks and public appearances, making generations, especially school children, more aware of what they eat. Michael Caines is another example of an English chef enhancing the international reputation of British cuisine. An American equivalent to Jamie Oliver is in some ways Julia Child, even though the American chef, cookbook writer, and television personality was most influential in the 60s and 70s of the last century and died in her 90s after the turn of the millennium. A film entitled Julie and Julia explores the relationship between Julia Child and Julie Powell. Meryl Streep plays the woman who some say did much to change the way Americans see food, and Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, an American blogger 15 who documents her cooking more than 500 recipes in Child ’ s bestseller Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Child ’ s cookbook, first published in the early 1960s, is considered to be one of the most influential cookbooks in American history. The kitchen she used in her TV shows is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC. Julia Child herself has been a figure in American popular culture since the 60s. Probably most people wouldn ’ t think of French cuisine when they imagine American food, but instead think of hamburgers and hotdogs. The hamburger and the hotdog can be as simple as meat or sausage on a bun or elaborate meals in themselves with exotic garnishes and seasonings. Being able to be fixed and eaten quickly without cutlery or plates helps account for the success of both kinds of food, developed from ground beef and sausages originally introduced by German immigrants in the early 19 th century. While the name traffic lights, British chefs Julia Child hamburgers, hotdogs, Heinz 313 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="321"?> hamburger automatically reminds you of the German city, you ’ ll also recognize the German/ Austrian connection for hotdogs when you hear the synonyms frankfurter or wiener. The name of the most wellknown brand of ketchup is Heinz, which sounds even more German than hamburgers and hotdogs. The place that Donald J. Trump ’ s grandfather came from 2 was also the home of the father of one Henry John Heinz, who founded a company that took tomatoes and turned them into a kind of sauce that would be added to both hamburgers and hot dogs. The growth of fast-food chains all over the world provides evidence both for critics who point to the environmental waste and lack of nutrients in fast food as well as for those who claim that fast food can also carry connotations of progress and modernity. But American food also reflects the multiculturalism of American life. An example of delicious Creole cuisine in Louisiana is gumbo, a fish and vegetable soup or stew that combines French, American and African ingredients. While Americans face problems of obesity from eating too much - at least partly to blame are the fast food restaurants with their extra large sizes and free refills of soft drinks - awareness of the dangers in eating too much is increasing. California requires all chain food restaurants to display calories and the amount of fat per item; restaurants in New York City already have menu-labeling regulations. Some public schools have begun to replace junk food and soda by fruits and vegetables in an effort to help Americans eat healthier. We have another American counterpart for Jamie Oliver to end this section. Alice Waters, who founded an Edible Schoolyard Project in the 90s to support a free sustainable food school lunch for all children, has also advocated organic food and became vice president of the Slow Food International organization. America - land of fast and slow food? The rest of the world will no doubt continue its love-hate relationship with American food and American eating habits. At the very opening of this chapter I quoted the American humorist Fran Lebowitz (nomen est omen if you look at the last syllable of her last name). Even if she didn ’ t mean her bon mot as a compliment to American cuisine, as we ’ ve seen here the immigrants who came and are still coming to America did bring their own food. While two common metaphors 7 used to describe American society, pizza and salad, can ’ t claim to be very original contributions to world cuisine, the huge variety of food that Americans eat reflects their origin. Also Starbucks revitalized coffee, which had been fast food but gumbo and healthier and slower food too American cuisine 314 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="322"?> considered as old-fashioned, first across the US and then across the world and in effect saved some of the European cafes that might have gone out of business had not coffee drinking become so popular again. We began the first part of our book with geography and history appetizers and will be ending it with coffee and perhaps some German desserts since neither America nor Britain compares especially well with the German and Austrian selection of cakes and pies. You may have asked yourself what the title of this chapter referred to. We mentioned some American influences on the ancient time activity of going to the circus. But the combination bread and circuses? I could give you the Latin expression panem et circenses and throw in some very fancy vocabulary like “ hegemony ” or “ bricolage ” . But I think we all need a nice after-dinner drink now followed by an afternoon nap before we tackle the rest of the book. With such a chapter combining so many different aspects, what better way to continue than with a web quest about some of the most interesting people and objects mentioned, with the goal of finding websites, printed books, and documentaries and clips. I found enough wonderfully varied and interesting websites, essays, and clips to justify giving you the freedom to search too. While you can ’ t experience Betje Saar ’ s assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jamima or Damien Hirst ’ s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living online as intensely as you could in person, perhaps by the time you do the searching, there ’ ll be hologram images of both art works. Or you can put Saar ’ s work on your bucket list on your next trip to California (Saar ’ s assemblage is in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). Hirst ’ s shark might be more difficult to find: the first one was replaced after the water in the vitrine turned cloudy but the same vitrine was used for the replacement shark. Was it thus a different work of art? The extremely heavy exhibit was on show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at later at the Tate Gallery years ago. Maybe if the current owner, billionaire American businessman Steve Cohen, finally builds his private art museum, we ’ ll have the chance to experience the work again. panem et circenses on our way to Part II 315 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="323"?> Maybe you ’ ve been thinking about how new media can be really different from traditional media since finishing the last chapter. The art critic Jason Farago created an interactive series Close Read for the digital edition of the The New York Times in the 2020s that offer a fascinating look at paintings, combining text with zoom-in close-ups of selected details in the artworks. Look for “ How a Gray Painting Can Break Your Heart ” to learn more about one puzzling painting by Jasper Johns, one of the most famous American artists of the 20 th and 21 st centuries. If you enjoyed that experience, find “ The Myth of North America, in One Painting ” and learn more not only about myths of the birth of the US (and Canada) but also about the first American painting to gain a world-wide reputation and about the iconic 19 th century American painter Benjamin West. You can also find articles that Farago has written for The New York Times about the Turner Prize, the French-American artist Nikki de Saint-Phalle, and the German-British painter Frank Auerbach. The Tate Museum with galleries in London, Liverpool, and St. Ives offers a free online chronological “ Walk through British Art ” with hundreds of artworks to explore and experience both visually and by listening via the audio guide to artists, writers, and historians. Joan C. Williams is a name that readers with good memories might remember. 3 Williams is a highly respected scholar who has written on gender and class and has attempted to begin to bridge some of the chasms in American society that have been painfully apparent since Trump ’ s election. One of her many articles worth reading was published in the Harvard Business Review just after Trump ’ s election: “ What So Many People Don ’ t Get About the U. S. Working Class. ” The expanded book version appeared the following year: White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America. But what is she doing in this chapter? Just watch one of her mesmerizing TED talks like “ We Won ’ t Fix American Politics until We Talk about Class ” and see how she explains food as a class marker. What better way to end part 1 and begin part 2 of our book than with a wonderful example of academic scholarship made movingly personal and linking politics and class and food and identity, power, gender, media, and popular culture, topics we ’ ll now be feasting on. 316 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="324"?> Exercises 1. Name a characteristic of English Gothic architecture and give three good examples you could visit in the UK. Name two characteristics of follies and give one example in the UK and one in the US. Name one famous English architect mentioned twice earlier 2 8 but not in this chapter, an architect who ’ s best known for a cathedral in London that isn ’ t Gothic. 2. I just mentioned three German-American architects only by name. Find photos of some of their most famous buildings online and decide if they look German or American or German-American. 3. What could you criticize about the parts of the chapter that deal with movies and with music? 4. Think of some of your favorite movies not included in this chapter and try to categorize them according to the genres mentioned. 5. What ’ s the connection between one of the most famous English painters of the 19 th century and a German photographer who lives and works in London? 6. Name one example of German influence and two examples of British influence on American sports. 7. Name two connections between circuses and movies and one connection between food and movies. 8. Mention one example of German influence on American food, two examples of how food can be a sign of a multicultural society, and three chefs. Challenging questions and interesting projects: 1. Ask American and British people what they would recommend to foreign visitors as the one most American or most British (or if it ’ s easier: English or Welsh or Scottish) piece of art. 2. Ask the same people what they would cook if they wanted to give a foreign visitor the best taste of American or British food (or English or Welsh or Scottish if they respond with “ there is no British food ” ). 3. Have a look at all the German television programs you receive for a week of your choice and count the number of American and British movies broadcast. Try to account for the kinds of movies. Which ones have you already seen or would you want to see? 4. Go to your nearest art museum and count the number of paintings you would consider American. Try and explain why there are so few British paintings there. 317 Chapter 11 Bread & Circuses (arts, leisure, sports, food) <?page no="325"?> And finally the if-you-can-do-this-you-deserve-an-Oscar-and-a- Tony-and-an-Emmy-and-a-Grammy-and-maybe-even-the-Turner- Prize-and-a-meal-at-a-Michael-Caines-restaurant task: Think of a way that the American and British governments can encourage artists to reach citizens of all classes and ethnicities and solve the increasing problem of obesity in both countries by convincing American and British people that eating is a cultural activity that should prolong life, not cut it short. And for those culture vultures who just can ’ t get enough and who have the leisure time needed to pursue the arts, play and watch sports, and enjoy all the cuisines Britain and America have to offer: … Buckminster Fuller ’ s geodesic domes as a utopian folly; John W. Moutoussamy ’ s Johnson Publishing Company Building in Chicago to combine architecture by Black Americans with magazines like Jet and Ebony; Amanda William ’ s “ Color(ed) Theory ” series combining painting and architecture by a Black American woman; tower block vs. front and back garden as reasons for the British not taking to living in high-rise apartment buildings with the renovation of Keeling House as example of modern architecture; council housing in the UK compared with public housing in the US; the Elizabeth line as part of the London underground and a fitting comparison to English cathedrals; the influence of deconstruction on American architecture and architects like Frank Gehry; the influence of Madonna and Lady Gaga and MTV on world culture; connections between Bob Dylan ’ s music and American films; connections between American jazz and rock music; the growth of American theatre out of minstrel and vaudeville; music as a sign of patriotism (other than the “ Land of Hope and Glory ” and the “ Star-Spangled Banner ” mentioned in this chapter); American “ classical ” composers like Barber, Copland, Bernstein, Gershwin; American folk art and quilts; Grandma Moses; German-British contemporary artists like the painter Peter Doig or the sculptor Tony Cragg; dances like the Charleston; Alvin Ailey and the Black American experience in dance on stage; popular American photographers such as Spencer Tunick, Edward Weston, Robert Mapplethorpe, Connie Imboden, Ansel Adams, Man Ray, or Cindy Sherman; government support for the arts; Washington Crossing the Delaware as an iconic American painting by the GermanAmerican artist Emanuel Leutze; and finally to end this potpourri (or bricolage? ) - see Part II for more details - many more details about food and fashion as elements of identity … 318 I Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies <?page no="326"?> II: Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies Contents 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? 321 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t 339 14 Gender: Wo-Men 357 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? 375 16 culture and Culture 393 We ’ ve now finished lunch, and hopefully you ’ re still relishing the bread and circuses dessert. You ’ ve made notes of some of the tastes you ’ ve experienced in Part I. In Part II we ’ re going to be taking another look at some of the details covered in Part I from different perspectives in order to better understand certain aspects of what is a popular subject in academia, especially in the US and the UK but more and more around the world too. Perhaps you ’ ve noticed that “ cultural studies ” is part of the title of this book but wasn ’ t mentioned in the title of Part I: “ Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies. ” What about the “ cultural studies ” part of Anglo-American Cultural Studies? Before we can answer this question, we ’ ll have to come to grips with one small word in the dictionary and a giant concept in academia and in life: “ culture. ” Before we get to culture though, we ’ ll first explore other ways of looking at some of the topics in Part I, using the key words identity, power, gender, and media. Then we ’ ll be able to turn finally to tackling “ culture ” and putting Anglo-American Studies in the context of other academic disciplines, some of which you ’ ve heard of, others of which may be new to you. And we ’ ll end our after-dinner discussions with a final conclusion. 319 II <?page no="327"?> While the five chapters in this second part of our book follow the same pattern as most of the chapters in the first part, you ’ ll notice one addition. Since individual academics, intellectuals, and scholars play such an important role in cultural studies, it ’ s appropriate to do a bit of name-dropping. But name-dropping alone isn ’ t enough, of course, so you ’ ll find some biographical details about each important person in a new section called “ biggies in boxes. ” While we ’ ll be adjusting our perspective in Part II, much of what we ’ ll be looking at remains the same. To show the contrast, we ’ ve now changed from Part I to Part II; to indicate continuity, the first chapter in Part II will be called Chapter 12, following Chapter 11 in Part I. 320 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="328"?> Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? … whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swede. What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither a European nor the descendant of a European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. French-American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur in Letters from an American Farmer in 1782 Recently described as ‘ a place not a race; a vibe not a tribe ’ , Britain is a more successful matrix for changing identities than almost any other European country. This makes it more, not less, difficult to understand what Britishness is all about … What is British? British Council brochure Probably the first question human beings ask themselves is: “ Who am I? ” In the past half century the concept of “ identity ” has become one of the most popular concepts that academics have wrestled with. We could actually have used this chapter title for the entire book as the question of identity is perhaps the most central one in Anglo- American Area and Cultural Studies. We could also include class and gender here as aspects of identity, but let ’ s reserve these topics for their own chapters. When you finish this chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ how national identity can be described, ▶ the role of the nation as an “ imagined community, ” ▶ aspects of identity that we ’ ve covered in previous chapters, ▶ a critique of the choice of content in previous chapters, ▶ important scholars in the field of cultural studies. If we look at the title of this book, then we ’ re already in the middle of one view of identity. Can you imagine anyone answering the question: “ Who are you? ” with “ I ’ m an Anglo-American ” ? Common answers would be “ I ’ m American ” or “ I ’ m English ” or “ I ’ m Welsh. ” Our sense of identity often involves being citizens of nations and that may seem at first glance wonderfully concrete. What ’ s more concrete than a passport? Most people only have one. But the passport answer identity is (not) nationality? 321 Chapter 12 <?page no="329"?> can be very problematic at second glance. Is “ I ’ m a citizen of the United States ” the same as “ I ’ m an American ” ? I remember some of my students claiming they could be American regardless of nationality since being American was a state of mind. “ I ’ m a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ” in addition to being a bit clumsy certainly wouldn ’ t satisfy some English, Scottish, and Welsh people. So you can see it isn ’ t always easy to equate identity with nationality. And nationality itself isn ’ t as simple as it may seem. The word “ nation ” is derived from a Latin word associated with “ birth ” and can refer to a group of people who all share the same place of birth. And all people born in the United States are automatically granted American citizenship (jus soli, a Latin expression for “ the right of the soil ” ). Sometimes the word “ nation ” is used in contrast to the word “ state, ” with “ state ” designating the political entity. So the United States is a state made up of 50 individual states. What is a nation? Does it make sense at all to talk about Britain or the United Kingdom as just one nation? Does knowing about political divisions in the US, like congressional districts 5 for example, help us understand anything important about national identity? Perhaps we can at least agree that people tend to identify with places and call themselves Los Angelenos (city), or Welsh (nation) or Geordie (region, the area of northeast England around Newcastle). One person who spent some time thinking deeply about nations was born in China to an Irish father and an English mother. He grew up in California, attended Cambridge University, and later was thrown out of Indonesia after criticizing the government. Understandably enough, considering his personal background, Benedict Anderson thought that nation, nationality, and nationalism were all very difficult to define and wrote a book whose title would become an important concept in the academic discussion of identity: Imagined Communities. Anderson understands a nation as a community that ’ s imagined, limited, and independent. “ Imagined ” because the members of even the smallest nation would never get to know personally all the other members and thus can only imagine who these others are. “ Limited ” because the concept of a nation involves recognizing the existence of other nations, no nation being large enough to include all people. “ Independent ” (or sovereign) because the concept of nation includes a sense of being able to control its own destiny within a state. And here we have the distinction between nation and state that can explain the cause of many of the conflicts of the last half century. Some nations and states Benedict Anderson ’ s nation(s) UK nations? states? 322 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="330"?> understood and still understand the Irish nation as deserving its own state: the entire island of Ireland. The United Kingdom has four nations, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, each of which could theoretically be its own state. We ’ ve seen how the process of devolution could help these four nations remain a united kingdom in one state or perhaps lead to the breakup of United Kingdom into four nations in four separate states. 5 One view of identity within the UK is that the Scottish and the Welsh have a binary sense of national identity like the “ hyphenated Americans ” : Arab-American, Chinese-American, German-American. The Scottish and the Welsh thus see themselves as Scottish or Welsh and as British. The English don ’ t seem to see the differences between English and British that others do, whereas England ’ s immigrant population identify more as British. Although they can only be imagined, some nations are so important that people are willing to fight, kill, and die for them. You may remember an example of how the belief in Manifest Destiny 2 6 was used to explain why and how the United States was able to move across the continent of North America taking over land owned by others. Of course, people base such strong feelings of nationality on more than just an imagined idea of what their nation is: They also have symbols and actual objects made of marble or stone, which help them maintain their sense of national identity. The Stone of Scone (also called the Stone of Destiny) is a symbol of Scottish identity. It was used in the coronation ceremony of Scottish monarchs, later brought to Westminster Abbey hundreds of years ago, and has been used ever since in the coronation ceremony of English and then British kings and queens. A couple of decades ago, Queen Elizabeth decided to return the stone to Scotland (although it ’ s to be sent back to London for future British coronations). The Stone is now in Edinburgh Castle (also named “ Defender of the Nation ” ). But don ’ t assume that the Stone of Scone is a truly grand monument - it is really just an old rock with two rusty rings on either side supposedly for transport. The Scottish, however, see it as part of their history and as evidence of their “ rocky ” relationship with the English. You can easily find photos online and then decide if you ’ d want to fight for this. What do Germans see in the Loreley? I was almost as disappointed when I finally saw the Stone of Scone as I was when I finally saw the Loreley, which looked like just another cliff to me. Monuments made headline news in the summer of 2020 7 when nations to kill for and to die for? monuments of stone(s) 323 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="331"?> protesters demanded that statues of slave traders or monuments to the Confederates in the American Civil War 2 be taken down. Monuments don ’ t have to be visually impressive to carry special meaning for imagined communities. A much more impressive monument for Scotland is the Scottish Parliament Building, also in Edinburgh, 5 which uses Scottish rock in a very modern attempt to symbolize the landscape of Scotland through the strikingly modern architecture of the building, which was designed by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles. The Welsh Assembly 5 designed by the British architect Richard Rogers, who was born in Italy and studied at Yale, uses slate from Wales and Welsh oak and was opened on St. David ’ s Day, the day dedicated to the patron saint of Wales. Speaking of saints, the English have St. George ’ s Cross, the Scots have St. Andrew ’ s Cross, and the Irish have St. Patrick ’ s Cross. You may remember that the Union Jack represents a forced union. 2 The American Stars and Stripes clearly symbolize the fifty states with fifty stars 1 and the thirteen original colonies with thirteen stripes. 2 You can see a collage of the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes flags with the German flag on the cover of our book. Flags can be interpreted in many ways. Black film historian and media critic Jim Pines sees the English St. George ’ s Cross positively as a symbol of multicultural inclusiveness because when it was used as a sign of support for the England football team in the World Cup it was displayed by both White and Black supporters, thus also representing the generations of black English people who have grown up in England since Windrush. 7 On the other hand, England ’ s White football supporters have a reputation for racial abuse of their own Black players. And the Union Jack could be seen as a symbol of the British Empire. Paul Gilroy, who studied at Birmingham under Stuart Hall (a biggie whom we ’ ll be meeting at the end of this chapter), wrote an oft-quoted book entitled There Ain ’ t No Black in the Union Jack, which examined an imaginary national English white culture. The importance of the Confederate flag as a symbol of identity during the American Civil War 2 continued through controversies about historical identity and racism. In the mid 2010s a young White man murdered nine Black worshippers during a prayer service in Charleston, South Carolina. Since he had posted photos of himself draped in a Confederate flag on Facebook before the massacre, the Confederate flag was finally removed from many public places, including the state capitol at Columbia, South Carolina, marking Black in the Union Jack? Confederate flag: murder and insurrection 324 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="332"?> in one way an end of the Civil War that had begun more than 150 years earlier. Versions of the Confederate flag made headline news during the Capitol Insurrection in early 2021, 5 evidence that White supremacy was still very much alive among Donald Trump ’ s avid fans. And many of Trump ’ s supporters drape themseves in the US flag. Can Fig. 12.1 Flags of England, Scotland, and Wales. We ’ ve used a somewhat similar graphic before 1 to show geographical and political terminology. Here we have flags to indicate the different nations of the UK as well as the three crown dependencies. 1 Flags strongly indicate national identity by using colors and symbols. The Union Jack of the UK uses red, white, and blue, and three superimposed crosses for the union of England, Scotland, and Ireland. You can see the St. George ’ s Cross and the St. Andrew ’ s Cross also on the flags of England and Scotland, respectively. St. Patrick ’ s Cross represents Ireland on the Union Jack but isn ’ t used on the Republic of Ireland ’ s flag, which has had the Tricolor since the 1920s, with green representing Roman Catholics, orange representing the Protestants, and white as hope for a peaceful union between the two. As you might remember, 2 the Welsh dragon isn ’ t represented at all in the Union Jack but is the main conspicuously red part of the Welsh flag. The flag of Northern Ireland in this graphic hasn ’ t officially been used since the 1970s and now represents only the Unionists in Northern Ireland. The Isle of Man has the unusual three legs symbol, which can be traced back to the Middle Ages. The flags for the two large Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey have only been used officially for the past few decades but contain very old French elements, not surprising since these islands are very much closer to France than to Great Britain. 1 325 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="333"?> Americans who are against White supremacy philosophy reclaim the Stars and Stripes as a symbol for their understanding of American identity? Colors, too, not just on flags, can be a powerful representation of national identity. The color orange is connected with the Dutch dynasty that William belonged to before he was invited to become King of Great Britain in order to save the throne from the Catholics. 2 In Irish history orange represents loyalty to the Protestant monarch of England and support of Protestant supremacy in Northern Ireland. Green stands for the green island of Ireland, for the green shamrock as a symbol of Ireland, and, in Catholicism, for hope and eternal life. When each year the parades to commemorate the defeat of the Catholics by the Protestant William of Orange take place, the colors orange and green can turn red from violence. The flag of the Republic of Ireland uses both green and orange but with a white center representing peace, as you saw in the graphic. The Plantagenet kings in England used the symbol of a plant, as you remember, 2 and the Wars of the Roses used two roses for two opposing claims to the throne. The rose has also been the symbol of the Labour Party since the mid 1980s, although in Scotland the party decided to change it to a thistle in the early 2020s. Flowers and plants can be symbols that help members of imagined communities experience their sense of belonging, and just like animals can become part of a sense of national identity, as we ’ ve seen before. 9 The old saying “ you are what you eat ” points to the meaning food has for national identity 11 and also for class. 3 To illustrate the complex issue of identity, let ’ s have a brief look at one of the names from the chapter on arts. Remember the first photographer to win the Turner Prize? 11 Why did I choose to focus on Wolfgang Tillmans when there are many other important artists in Britain whom I didn ’ t mention? One reason is audience relevance: a German photographer for the German readers of this book. Another reason is the preoccupation of cultural studies with marginal groups: Tillmans is openly gay. And yet another reason is to raise the issue of national identity - Tillmans was the first artist not born in Britain to receive the Turner Prize. Let ’ s switch from British (but is it British if the photographer was born in Germany? ) photography to American (? ) film. Note the films in the section on American film genres. 11 I didn ’ t mention my criteria for choice of genre, by the way, but merely adopted the genres and top films provided by the American Film green and orange to white or blood red plants, animals, food photography and movies - national? 326 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="334"?> Institute. Does it make sense to call films like Ben Hur, set in Rome, or Schindler ’ s List, about the Holocaust in Europe, American? I did mention that Alfred Hitchcock was actually born in England, but I sneaked through Charlie Chaplin ’ s City Lights as an American film although Chaplin himself was English. You could reply by saying, “ What does a person ’ s nationality or place of birth have to do with a work of art? ” You could perhaps point to Roland Emmerich and say that although he was born and educated in Germany, films like Independence Day and The Patriot are prime examples of Hollywood blockbusters with American settings and American themes. We ’ ve already seen one Black artist ’ s rendering of Emmet Till ’ s murder. 2 We could ’ ve also chosen another Black artist, Betye Saar, and her piece of art Liberation of Aunt Jamima as an example of an artist criticizing the cultural appropriation of a minority in product names that use racial stereotyping. Saar took a figurine of Aunt Jamima (a name for a popular pancake syrup 7) and endowed it with subversive power by providing it with a rifle and a postcard of yet another Jamima with a mixed-race child. She created this assemblage of various objects in the early 1970s and lived to experience, in the 2020s, the renaming of products that had previously carried racist names. What about another very different kind of art like dance and Alvin Ailey ’ s Black American experience on stage? A typical cultural studies question points out the complexity of identity: In what ways does it make sense to categorize any works of art as “ American ” or “ English ” ? We ’ ve already considered music at least partly as being American or British, 11 and certainly national anthems would seem closely linked to national identity. Remember “ The Star-Spangled Banner, ” the official anthem? 2 It ’ s not only extremely difficult to sing but also has lines like “ the rocket ’ s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, ” with a glorification of violence. You may remember other non-official anthems like the “ Battle Hymn of the Republic ” 2 used by Union soldiers during the Civil War. Americans could probably more easily agree on identifying with the non-violent lyrics of “ America the Beautiful ” or “ This Land is Your Land ” 9 with their focus on natural beauty. The official national anthem of the UK, “ God Save the Queen, ” is a focus on the monarch as the central element of identity not only for the United Kingdom but also for many Commonwealth nations 6 that share this anthem. Sung with more fervor and no doubt at least some good-humored irony during the Proms 11 is “ Rule, Britannia! ” Black American art? evidence of national identity: national anthems and … 327 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="335"?> Remember the lack of US holidays explained from an economic perspective, 6 then holidays and holy days in the context of civil religion, 8 and finally holidays as leisure time? 11 One new federal holiday is Juneteenth, established to commemorate the end of slavery in an attempt to at last deal with America ’ s past as a slaveholding nation. Indigenous Peoples Day as an alternative for the traditional Columbus Day is another attempt to offset the prejudice and discrimination of the past with a new-found sense of justice. What about work as a central component of identity? The American Puritan work ethic brought about economic expansion on a scale never before known. The pandemic put a focus on an inequality of wages not seen since the Gilded Age 2 with the Great Resignation 6 pointing to seismic changes in American attitudes towards work. We briefly touched upon the role of the value of work in our look at class, 3 at economics, 6 and leisure. 11 What happens when a society isn ’ t able to provide highly paid, highly respected jobs to those who have invested years and money in getting a prestigious education and then connect the value of their lives with the value of their work? Will the American Dream change from being about success and wealth to being about health and happiness? And what about the role of legends and the choice of facts for a presentation of history in the identity of a nation? Apart from reminding ourselves about how many foreigners, some of whom couldn ’ t even speak English, 2 became English kings, let ’ s wait just a bit for more details about the US and the UK. 16 To illustrate the importance of the choice of perspective in establishing identity, let ’ s glance now at our first biggie in a box, Edward Said, who changed our ways of describing other cultures. biggies in boxes Edward Said, Jerusalem-born intellectual and founding father of postcolonial studies, late 20 th century Edward Said (his last name is pronounced in the Arabic way using two syllables: sigh-eed) was probably one of the best-known intellectuals in America in the 80s and 90s with many media appearances as the voice of the Palestinians. Said was born into an Arab-Christian family in a Palestine still under British rule, went to an English school in Cairo, was later educated in America (his father had dual Palestinian-American citizenship) at the elite universities of Princeton and Harvard. Certainly … US holidays identity through work perspective Fig. 12.2 Edward Said 328 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="336"?> his personal life as an exile had an influence on his belief that essentialism, which we ’ ll be looking at later, with its stereotyping was wrong and that all identity was hybrid. Said was a Christian Palestinian with an English first name in an anti-British country, Egypt. He was harshly criticized in the US for his support of the Palestinians while he himself was critical of Arab governments that wanted no dialogue with America. While Said was a professor at the prestigious Columbia University for most of his life, he also taught at other highly reputable universities; his writings and interests ranged from literary criticism, theories of imperialism, anthropology, and political science to geography and music criticism. He himself was opposed to the strict separation of disciplines - one reason why he ’ s become such an influential figure in cultural studies. While Said ’ s scholarly work covers a wide range, he ’ s best known for the book published in the late 70s that has become the bible of postcolonial studies: Orientalism. Said criticized what he regarded as false assumptions that Western research had about Arab cultures, asking if objective representations of other cultures were possible at all. He investigated how one culture attempts to dominate and control another in the way it represents the other culture. Said claimed that the Western ways of looking at the Orient were limited by binary oppositions (much like the title of our chapter with “ us ” versus “ them ” ). The West was seen as rational, democratic, dynamic, progressive; the East as irrational, despotic, static, backward. Even positive stereotyping - the East as exotic and romantic - was attributed to the Western desire to dominate the East. While some of Said ’ s many critics have accused him of stereotyping the Westerner, other critics have recognized the enormous impact Said ’ s work has had on the ways we can understand cultural identity. As with so many of the biggies in cultural studies, Said would deserve a box elsewhere in this part of our book; his work on the relations between knowledge and power would justify a place in the next chapter just as much as his research into the nature of identity justifies his place here. While describing identity from the outside can be very difficult, as Said claimed, even trying to decide on your own national identity may be very difficult. We heard about the subject of citizenship as a foundation course in the English National Curriculum. 4 What ’ s education ’ s role in identity 329 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="337"?> not revealed on the official Curriculum ’ s website is the ongoing debate about if or how these courses should be used to teach British identity and values. These issues aren ’ t easy to understand, and maybe that ’ s why teaching the courses is problematic in a good number of schools. What exactly is British and what are British values? We ’ ve already learned about the problem of using the term British in connection with geography. 1 We ’ ll be dealing with identity again and again and as outsiders we might be in an easier position to learn more about what it means to be British. Just thinking about the debate on German Leitkultur can remind us (German readers living in Germany) of the difficulties of the subject from the “ inside. ” From the outside we can mention a couple more concrete aspects of British national identity: symbols on coins and the measurement system. Earlier in the chapter we mentioned some characteristics of national identity. If you skim through the book and note the illustrations, you ’ ll no doubt notice some of the most common symbols of the nation: on stamps, coins and banknotes. British coins show symbols that emphasize the importance of the four nations in one kingdom: the Royal Shield or Royal Coat of Arms with three lions for England, the rampant lion for Scotland, and the harp for Ireland. And what about Wales? Well, the designer Matthew Dent was at least born in Wales. For coin collectors the pre-decimalized currency system was wonderful, with many different names and with a very special system of arithmetic: 2 farthings = 1 halfpenny (spelled sometimes “ ha ’ penny ” and pronounced “ haypnee ” ); 2 halfpennies = 1 penny; 12 pence (the plural of “ penny ” ) = 1 shilling; 2 shillings = 1 florin; 2 shillings and 6 pence = half a crown; 5 shillings = 1 crown; 20 shillings = 1 pound (gold pound coins were called sovereigns); 21 shillings = 1 guinea. Just using these old names could provide us with some enlightening comparisons from European history. If you collect pre-euro European coins, then the names “ shilling ” and “ florin ” won ’ t sound as foreign to you as they might to the British today who have grown up with the very simple 100 pence = 1 pound system. The United Kingdom gave up its ancient currency system on D-Day or Decimal Day with a changeover not unlike the introduction of the euro in Germany. While the changeover from shillings and crowns to pence and pounds was completely successful, the change from the Imperial Measurement System, based on measurements that have been in use since Roman, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon times, to the metric system was largely successful, although the imperial system £ coins and meters 330 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="338"?> remained in use for distances, speed, and liquid measures (it ’ s still a pint of beer). After Brexit some celebrated holding on to “ our ” miles and pints as opposed to “ their ” kilometers, liters, and hectares. What do decimalization and metrification tell us about British identity? Decimalization tells us that the British are able to give up an unbelievably complicated monetary system and adopt an extraordinarily simple one. The metric system tells us that the British aren ’ t entirely willing to completely give up an unbelievably complicated measuring system and adopt an extraordinarily simple one. Decimalization took place on one day in the early 1970s; metrification is still an ongoing process and may never be fully finished. Fig. 12.3 Forty years after decimalization the Royal Mint decided to update the reverse designs of the pence coins. The obverse always has the Queen in various portraits. Special designs are used on coins commemorating special occasions such as Elizabeth II ’ s Platinum Jubilee. A few of those were even made of platinum and of gold. The coins pictured in the graphic are all common coins not made of valuable metals but with valuable designs taken from parts of the Royal Arms Shield, with the walking lions representing England, the single lion Scotland, and the harp Ireland. You can arrange all the coins in such a way that together they show the entire shield. “ This piecing together of the elements of the Royal Arms to form one design had a satisfying symbolism - of uniting the four countries of Britain under a single monarch, ” the young graphic designer Matthew Dent said, who submitted the winning plan. And what about the symbol for Wales? “ I am a Welshman and proud of it, but I never thought about the fact we did not have a dragon or another representation of Wales on the design because as far as I am concerned Wales is represented on the Royal Arms. This was never an issue for me. ” And what do faces tell us about identity? Euro notes solved the difficult problem of deciding which faces to honor by not using any at all. The Brits honor the Queen on the front of all notes, Winston Churchill 2 on the £5, 19 th century author Jane Austen on the £10. A self-portrait of Turner (£20), a painter you might remember 11 replaced a picture of the 18 th century Scottish economist Adam Smith. The Scottish engineer of the steam engine, James Watt, and the faces on banknotes 331 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="339"?> English manufacturer Matthew Boulton were replaced in the early 2020s by the English 20 th century computer scientist pioneer Alan Turing on the £50. The Yanks have been planning to replace the controversial president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman as you probably remember. 2 You probably also remember that presidents are popular on American bills and coins. 7 An important aspect of the criticisms that Edward Said had of western views of the Orient can be summarized in one word: essentialism. (Some had criticized Said himself for using this same kind of generalizing, by the way.) The main question involves the possibility of defining something about being British or American that is present in every British or American person. Stereotypes are based on an essentialist view. If you skim through the chapter on minorities and immigration, you ’ ll come across some of the problems involved with terms like “ African American ” in the US or “ Asian ” in the UK. 7 People grouped under the same name always have at least one characteristic that distinguishes them from other groups designated with different ones. The essentialist view sees these characteristics as permanent, based on the idea of there being an “ essence, ” a fundamental quality that defines a nationality. An example of a permanent characteristic could be race, which is based on unique physical and genetic characteristics, but of course these characteristics are not shared by all Americans, all British, all Welsh, all the Scots, all the English. But there are other ways of looking at identity. Those of you who ’ ve already done some linguistics courses may have come across the theory of speech acts. One kind of speech act, the performative, puts into effect exactly what it states. For example, when you say “ I promise that … , ” you do something - in this case make a promise - by saying it. Other examples are: “ I pronounce you man and wife ” or “ The court sentences the convicted to ten years imprisonment. ” Many of those working in cultural studies prefer to describe identity not as something with a predefined essence, but as an action that the individual can perform. Identity - and gender too as we ’ ll see later 14 - thus has more to do with performance than with essential unchangeable characteristics. And people have more power over their own identity if they can perform it instead of being born with it. We ’ ve seen how the US Census Bureau deals with race and origin in American censuses. 7 Whereas the UK census of 1991 was the first one to ask for information about ethnicity, it wasn ’ t until 2011 “ essentialist ” problems identity: action and performance … … and choice 332 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="340"?> that census respondents were given the chance to choose from a very wide range of ethnicities in addition to the category English/ Welsh/ Scottish/ Northern Irish/ British. The results were analyzed in a BBC article “ How British is Britain? ” and revealed that younger generations feel a lot more British than older ones and concluded that Britishness is attractive to those with a “ mixed cultural heritage ” and is an identity “ quite at home in the 21 st century. ” The recommendation made in the Parekh Report (sponsored by the Runnymede Trust) at the turn of the millennium was that a multiethnic Britain needs to re-imagine itself. This recommendation has caused a lot of discussion about how the British should describe themselves and how political changes should reflect racial and ethnic changes. Most discussions of national identity and cultural identity nowadays involve the terms “ multiculturalism ” and “ hybridity ” - both of which make our division of “ us ” and “ them ” more difficult to maintain. The effects of Brexit and the results of a new census in 2021 won ’ t be known until the mid 20s. Our last two biggies in this chapter, whom you ’ ll now meet backto-back, weren ’ t born in the US or the UK but have had great influence in showing us how difficult it has become to define the “ us ” and the “ them ” both in the US and UK. And both have personal histories that place them firmly in the concerns and complexities of this chapter. biggies in boxes Stuart Hall, Jamaican-born founding father of cultural studies, mid 20 th to early 21 st century Stuart Hall came to Britain as a teenager as part of the Windrush 7 generation, studied at Oxford, worked on the important journal New Left Review, was one of the first people ever to teach the brand-new discipline media studies, co-wrote a book called The Popular Arts that led to his joining the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), 16 where he later became director after Richard Hoggart 12 left. Hall, regarded as one of the academics who defined British cultural studies as a discipline, made his mark as a Marxist scholar of mass media, ethnicity and gender and identity. Hall not only continued the research on the popular arts that had begun with Hoggart and Raymond Williams, 16 he also called into question the belief that those who watch television were mere consumers and thus easily Fig. 12.4 Stuart Hall 333 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="341"?> manipulated by the producers of mass media. 15 According to Hall, media consumers negotiate meaning through active response, which doesn ’ t always agree with what media producers intended. As with other important British academics involved with establishing cultural studies as a discipline, Hall also became associated with adult education at the Open University, 4 becoming a professor of sociology there after leaving the CCCS. And like other figures involved in cultural studies, he was active in social movements and critical of the British government, both Thatcher ’ s Conservatives and Blair ’ s New Labour. Hall served as patron of the Runnymede Trust (mentioned above), a charity dedicated to promoting a multi-ethnic Britain. Maybe you think that putting Hall in this chapter makes sense regarding his origin and his later research into questions of identity. But we could ’ ve just as justifiably put him in the next chapter in the context of power since Hall ’ s work on explaining how Thatcher came to power is based on interpreting political power. Or we could just as justifiably put him in the upcoming chapter on media since his research into the ways in which media users encode and decode meaning has been influential in understanding the way media works from a cultural studies perspective. But you ’ ll hopefully agree that Hall, praised by the Independent in their obituary in 2014 as an “ intellectual giant, ” certainly belongs in Part II of this book, the “ cultural studies ” part. biggies in boxes Homi K. Bhabha, Indian-born postcolonial theorist, mid 20 th to early 21 st century Even though Homi K. Bhabha (not to be confused with Homi J. Bhabha, an Indian nuclear scientist) has argued against identity being fully dependent on place of origin, his personal roots have no doubt played an important role in his work and are also a reason for including him as a biggie in this chapter. Bhabha was born in India just after independence from Britain 2 7 into a Parsi family. Parsis are members of the ancient Zoroastrian religion who originally came from Persia and have lived in India for centuries. The Parsis have always been a small minority, and they functioned as mediators between the Indians and the British during the centuries when India was part of the British Empire. Bhabha studied in India and the UK, and taught at highly reputable American universities like Princeton, the University of Chi- Fig. 12.5 Homi K. Bhabha 334 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="342"?> cago, and Harvard. Bhaba said that our first biggie in this chapter, Edward Said, was the scholar who most influenced him. Bhabha argues against the over-simplified binary interpretation of identity that is often found in writings about identity in a postcolonial world: colonizers and the colonized as interdependent. Describing identity needs a “ third space, ” which could perhaps be understood as somewhere beyond the duality of being authentically Muslim only and authentically British only. 8 More difficult, abstract, and controversial is another meaning of “ third space ” involving the performance of culture, similar to a definition of gender as being not in a given role but in its performance. While Bhabha is certainly as important a name in postcolonial theory as Judith Butler 14 is for gender studies, both share one “ prize ” that helps explain why you won ’ t find much of Bhabha ’ s work in many cultural studies readers: winning the Bad Writing Contest run by the journal Philosophy and Literature. You could see the difficulty in understanding Bhabha ’ s writings as being part of the difficulty in the subject matter. Identity, especially in its hybrid forms, isn ’ t an easy thing to write about. And even though you won ’ t find Bhabha ’ s prose in many anthologies, you will come across his concept of the “ third space ” (or similar concepts such as “ third place ” or “ third culture ” ) in much writing about postcolonial studies and cultural studies. You ’ ve already read in Part I about minority and ethnic groups in America and Britain, you ’ ve now heard about national identity, about the nation as an “ imagined community, ” and you ’ re aware of the pitfalls of essentialism. On the other hand you ’ ve also decided to study English and are certainly interested in Britain and America and probably know some English people or some Scots or some Americans. You ’ ve read things called American novels and watched things called American films, maybe you ’ ve drunk English tea or Scotch whiskey. And now you ’ ve read most of this book, which is full of information about two nation-states, America and Britain. So what do you know about American and British identity? Stuart Hall admits that the term “ identity, ” no matter how much we may dislike it, remains a term that we can ’ t avoid using. American identity has always been a mixture, and it ’ s never been fully clear which elements are most important. American identity is still perhaps as new as it was when the French-American (one of the many hyphenated Americans) identity is real … and complicated 335 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="343"?> writer Crèvec œ ur, whose words opened our chapter, first famously named the “ new man ” a couple of centuries ago (women weren ’ t yet considered important enough to be mentioned then, but in just a couple of chapters, we ’ ll be seeing how much things have changed since then). The British perhaps have a more difficult task with their identity, a combination of four different nations (at least) with more than a thousand years of history. We ’ ve come to see how the term “ national identity ” is complicated and contradictory - in effect making the “ us ” and the “ them ” much more complicated and contradictory than we perhaps thought. But what if learning to live with a more complicated and contradictory view of the “ us-es ” and the “ thems ” might lead to a more peaceful world … Hopefully your interest was piqued by the second quote at the beginning of the chapter, and you found the source online. The brochure What is British? was published by the British Council as part of the series Birthday Counterpoints in the early 2000s to commmerate the 70 th anniversary of the institution. The names of the authors, Ziauddin Sardar, Piaras Mac Éinrí, Zrinka Bralo, and Csilla Hós may not look British - until you realize the importance of British Muslims (Sardar) and the role of Ireland (Éinrí) as part of British identity. Bralo and Hós show the international role of the British Council, especially at the turn of the millennium. The words “ place not a race, vibe not a tribe ” date the publication to the days of Tony Blair and “ cool Britannia. ” But tribal partisanship has become a much more conspicuous part of politics in the UK after the referendum to leave the EU and in the US with the election of Donald Trump. Many of you are probably aiming for a degree in teaching English as a foreign language in German schools. On their website the British Council provides information about the UK that teachers as well as students can use. See the special British Council website for German users. As you can guess now from the previous morsel, the British Council was founded in the mid 1930s as a way to spread information about British culture and establish networks for learning English. King George VI (Elizabeth ’ s father) granted the organization a Royal Charter to promote more knowledge about the UK around the world in the early dark days of World War II. What about the American equivalent? 336 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="344"?> The awklwardly named United States Information Agency (USIA) had similar goals in providing positive narratives about the US around the world, including Amerika-Häuser in Germany. The USIA was dissolved and Amerika-Häuser were all closed around the turn of the millennium, but you can do a web quest and find all sorts of insightful and surprising digital artifacts relating to them. You ’ ll easily be able to find a copy of Crevecoeur ’ s famous book online for free in its entirety or in excerpts. The full title is wonderfully long like so many titles from the 18 th century: Letters from an American Farmer; Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs not Generally Known; and Conveying Some Idea of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies in North America. How fitting for a chapter about identity than to use someone born as Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur in Normandy but with relatives in England, who immigrated to what the English called New France in modern-day Quebec, then moved to colonial New York, became a British sujbect before the American Revolution and changed his name to John Hector St. John, published in French and English, was identified with his fictional American narrator James, lived many years in what had become the United States but then returned to his native France, where he died in the 1810s. Just a little surfing will show you what a huge influence his book has had and how many topics the Letters cover, from environment to slavery to American Indians. And you might be surprised by how readable the letters are. A good start isn ’ t at the beginning but with the third letter quoted at the beginning of the chapter: “ What is an American? ” Exercises 1. Can you explain the misuse of grammar in the title of this chapter and explain why the title mirrors the contents and then answer the question the title poses? 2. Look back through Part I for visual examples of what was mentioned in Chapter 12 as examples of American and British national identity. Why do you think these were chosen? 3. Look back through Part I and choose groups and events that could be used as examples of and explanations for national identity. Which one(s) would you consider most appropriate as examples, considering what we ’ ve covered in this chapter? Which groups and events did you miss being mentioned at all? 337 Chapter 12 Identity: Who ’ s the Us, Who ’ s the Them? <?page no="345"?> 4. Perhaps you had a chance to look at Joan C. Williams ’ TED talk I recommended at the end of the last chapter. 11 Do you remember which foods she gave as examples of class in America? Which other foods would you expect in an American context? In a British context? Challenging questions and interesting project: On your next visit to Britain and/ or to America, ask people you meet to describe their national identity. Then ask them to describe the national identity of their parents and their grandparents and note any differences. Ask them for details about what exactly they think has changed through the generations. And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you ’ ll-maybe-become-known-as-the-biggest-and-brightest-new-hope-in-culturalstudies task: Come up with a new theory of national identity that takes into account both the sense of continuity that a nation provides and the increasing mix of different peoples in one state. In other words, the new theory should solve the dilemma between imperialism (one fixed national identity that has a fixed value in comparison to all others) and relativism (in a multicultural society all identities are equally valuable, no objective evaluation is possible). This new theory should contribute to world peace and not to national confrontations. And finally further topics not dealt with (or not dealt with in enough depth) in this chapter for those who just can ’ t stop being fascinated by the complexities and challenges of “ national identity ” : … other ways of looking at identity defined through ritual and family structure and food; the role of psychoanalysis in theories of identity; how the notion of hybridity has changed definitions of national identity; multiculturalism compared with essentialism; critical views of some of the metaphors used 7 to describe American society (melting pot, salad bowl); the Runnymede Trust ’ s role in current discussions on the future of a multiethnic Britain; the reception of the Parekh Report; the effects of Brexit and populism on identity in the UK; the demise of national identity in a globalized world; the importance of regional affiliation versus old affiliation to out-ofdate nation-states; Stone Age Columbus 2 Solutrean connection to White supremacy … 338 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="346"?> Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. Mark Twain What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it does not only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. Michel Foucault from “ Truth and Power ” in Power/ Knowledge When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ kinds of power and the special kind called hegemony, ▶ some important scholars in cultural studies who analyzed power, ▶ some classic research on resistance and creativity, ▶ aspects of hegemony covered and not covered in previous chapters, ▶ subtle signs of power and signs difficult to overlook, ▶ some of the complicated keywords used in the discourses on power. One of the keywords you won ’ t be able to avoid once you start reading anything about cultural studies is a fancy word with various pronunciations: hegemony (the stress is usually on the second syllable, the “ g ” can be pronounced like a “ g ” in “ gun ” or a “ j ” in “ judge ” ). The word originally comes from ancient Greek meaning “ lead, ” and the modern meaning of the word has to do with a special kind of leadership that involves another word that ’ s much simpler to pronounce and which is part of the title of this chapter: power. When you hear the word “ power, ” you probably think of military and police power, which is mostly men with guns. You might also think of judges and the courts or of the kind of economic power that multinational corporations have. You could even think of the German education system with teachers having the power to decide on the school type children should attend or think of professors with their power to make important decisions that affect the careers and lives of their kinds of power 339 Chapter 13 <?page no="347"?> students. You might also think of the power that American governments claim they have through the Constitution ( “ We the People ” ) and through the election system or think of the power British monarchs claimed in the past: the divine right of kings (and queens), supposedly given by God. Armies and police can force people to do things against their will. The theory of hegemony analyses a kind of power that isn ’ t based on force of that kind, but on voluntary agreements between the rulers and the ruled, and how those agreements come about. We ’ ve already heard of Bhabha and Butler 12 and something they share with other academics - the fact that their writing is sometimes very difficult to understand. Maybe you could see this difficulty as something necessary for carefully considering aspects of power (and of gender, as we ’ ll see in the next chapter) that otherwise might be taken for granted, aspects that some people aren ’ t even aware of. The very strangeness of the word “ hegemony ” helps people to think about what could otherwise seem to be the most natural thing in the world - like teachers having the power to assess students ’ work using simple numbers or letters and students accepting this power without question. Hegemony is a special kind of power, namely that of persuasion by the ruling group of the sort that subordinate groups accept because they think it ’ s in their best interests. While the word “ hegemony ” is much older, it wasn ’ t until the 1970s that the term began to be used frequently, especially in British cultural studies. And thanks for that go to one of the scholars with much influence on British culture studies and on cultural studies around the world: our first biggie in this chapter. biggies in boxes Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist party leader and Marxist political theorist and activist, early 20 th century You might be just a bit surprised by the name. Were you expecting someone with a more English-sounding name? (His name is pronounced “ gram-she. ” ) But maybe you ’ re used to foreign-looking names after the biggies in our previous chapter. 12 Gramsci, born in Sardinia, never set foot in Britain, but still his writings strongly influenced those who became the founders of the new discipline of cultural studies in the UK. Any book on cultural studies with a chapter on power includes him. As a Communist party leader Gramsci was hated and feared by Mussolini ’ s fascist regime. In spite of strict censorship, Gramsci hegemony Fig. 13.1 Antonio Gramsci 340 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="348"?> managed to have thousands of pages of notes smuggled out of prison during the years he spent there, evidence that he was determined to defy what the prosecutor famously had demanded in Gramsci ’ s trial: “ We must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years. ” Gramsci died soon after being released from prison at the age of 46, just a few years before the outbreak of World War II. What he wrote in prison wasn ’ t published in English, however, until the 1970s, when it appeared as Prison Notebooks. In his writings Gramsci attempted to understand how a ruling class maintains power over other groups in an ideological and cultural way. He wanted to know how the Italian fascists were able to gain the support of the working class when a fascist regime was obviously not in the working class ’ s interest. Gramsci expanded the classical Marxist view of struggle as being primarily determined by an economic base to include a struggle among various groups not only over capital or production but also and especially over ideology and culture. The victorious group was the one who could convince the subordinate groups that they were acting in their own best interests through accepting the common-sense world view of the ruling class. You could see a crude kind of hegemony in politicians providing voters with presents or bribes, the practice in ancient Rome that was described by the phrase panem et circenses. If you remember the end of Part I and our talk about bread and circuses in ancient Rome, then you might not be too surprised to find an Italian here. And Gramsci won ’ t be the only important non-English-sounding name in this chapter … Gramsci and others influenced by his work distinguish between civil society - comprising the family, the church, schools, trade unions, the mass media, youth culture, leisure activities, etc. - and the state or political society - comprising the armed forces, the police, the government, the legal system and prison. Gramsci saw two possibilities for change: through a “ war of maneuver ” with a direct assault on state power through violent revolutions, for example, or through a “ war of position ” with a continual negotiation of power and influence between the rulers and the ruled. He believed that all ruling groups, no matter how authoritarian, must eventually use hegemony to maintain control, that they must eventually be able to convince people that the ideas and culture of the ruling classes are natural and in the best interests of all. In order for this persuasion to be successful, civil society, political society, subaltern 341 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="349"?> those in power sometimes have to make compromises and grant some of the wishes of the subordinate groups to create a common conception of the world that those in power want the others to believe in. Both groups - the rulers and the ruled - have to exist for there to be any power. Thus the rulers are in a way defined by those ruled; both are dependent on each another. A term that Gramsci used to describe those ruled, the subordinate groups who were usually not politically organized, was “ subaltern. ” This term is now used in postcolonial studies 16 and also sometimes in cultural studies in general to indicate those groups who don ’ t have power or don ’ t even have any voice at all, as the Indian philosopher and literary critic Gayatri Spivak claims in her famous essay “ Can the Subaltern Speak? ” Gramsci uses the concept of the organic intellectual to describe someone who sees through the system and then is able to show the people that they are oppressed. Thus this person mobilizes them to change their situation through a “ war of position ” and through negotiations that lead to changes in the culture and the common world view of the ruling class that everyone is supposed to share. Organic intellectuals wouldn ’ t come from the ruling class and would normally be educated to support the ruling class. If provided with a proper critical education, however, the organic intellectual could articulate the feelings that the subaltern felt but didn ’ t know how to express. Establishing the kind of critical education that organic intellectuals needed to make reform possible wouldn ’ t be easy. Gramsci ’ s belief in people ’ s innate ability to understand the world and to change it is central to the discipline that has come to be called cultural studies. How exactly can people from subordinate groups change the world? They can negotiate with those in power, as we saw above, and they can also take cultural practices or objects and use them for their own purpose. The creative ways in which young people in particular try to change power relationships were the topic of much of the research done at the University of Birmingham ’ s famous Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 16 in the 1970s. This research looked at how smaller groups, sometimes called subcultures, defined themselves in relation to the dominant culture of the time. The Teddy boys ’ use of upper-class clothes from the Edwardian era ( “ Teddy ” is a short form of the name “ Edward ” ) in the 1950s was understood as their way of transforming how the dominant society had interpreted fashion. Vivienne Westwood 11 is a later example of a fashion organic intellectuals resistance and creativity 342 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="350"?> designer who used resistance and creativity to become extraordinarily successful. Because the punks, a subculture of the 60s and 70s, didn ’ t have the money to buy the sort of fashion that other British groups could use as markers of their identity, the punks often (ab)used their own bodies as an outward sign of their identity or used everyday objects like the safety pin, worn openly on clothing or even inserted through the skin, in a way that was offensive to the world outside of punk. Still other groups like Britain ’ s “ rockers ” in the 60s or the hippies defined themselves through the format and kind of music they listened to (singles or albums, rock and roll or progressive rock). Music associated with Blacks, like soul, was adopted and adapted by some Whites in northern England to express their own opposition to authority or their own liberation, perhaps similar to the American white rapper Eminem 11 as a White boy playing in a Black rap world. Studies were also made of how people used places in ways that the owners didn ’ t intend: for example, how young Americans used shopping malls not as a place of consumption but as a place to congregate, to hang out. In the same way I can remember as a young man (ab)using restaurants by intentionally remaining with friends long after having finished eating although the restaurants didn ’ t serve coffee or dessert because the guests were supposed to eat and leave and thus make room for other paying guests. More recent studies of subcultures have criticized the ways in which earlier researchers interpreted the use of fashion and music to define groups from an outsider perspective instead of using the group members ’ voices themselves. Initial ways of looking at subcultures as being the embodiment of resistance to a dominant culture have also changed now. But the connection between power and identity and fashion and music as an important focus of cultural studies has remained. After having looked at some ways in which certain groups use rituals and appearance to carve out their own space, let ’ s look at some ways in which larger society creates the common-sense world view that all groups are supposed to accept. Those who experienced American media and everyday American life after the 9/ 11 attacks could see just what a “ common culture ” or “ common world view ” can be - with countless American flags flying and the overwhelming shows of patriotism in the mass media. I can remember a much earlier example of a common view in the television news of the late 70s broadcast on CBS 10 by the very highly renowned broadcaster and news anchorman Walter Cronkite. Cronsubcultures, fashion, music examples hegemony US and UK 343 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="351"?> kite ended each evening broadcast with the famous sign-off: “ And that ’ s the way it is ” followed by the date. During the Iran hostage crisis Cronkite followed the date with the phrase “ the … (20 th , 45 th , 222 nd ) … day of captivity for the hostages in Iran. ” At the time no one seemed to question the appropriateness of giving this detail such a prominent place in the evening news. One classic example of hegemony often taken from modern British political life is Margaret Thatcher ’ s election, which was only possible by having large numbers of working-class voters choose someone who wouldn ’ t normally seem to have their best interests at heart. You could also see aspects of the British educational system as hegemonic in several ways. Aspects such as compulsory schooling, testing, the National Curriculum 4 could be seen as part of the state or political society since the government has the right to force people to go to school against their will. The belief that education is something positive would be part of civil society since here the family and the media play a role. Education is often part of “ cultural capital, ” as we ’ ll shortly see. Now that we have learned about some different kinds of power, have met one of the most important figures associated with theories about the special kind of power called hegemony, and have seen how groups can express their resistance to a dominant culture through music and fashion, let ’ s look at some expressions of dominant culture and power: in architecture, government structures and rituals, symbols, education, and even clothes again. We ’ ll be ringing bells to remind you of details covered in Part I of this book, details that we can look at now from another point of view. Sometimes governmental power in architecture is immediately recognizable around the world, as in the photo here of London ’ s Palace of Westminster, which should remind you of other details, 5 or Washington ’ s monuments, 8 or the Senedd building in Cardiff. 5 Larger-than-life statues indicate the importance of individuals who wielded power politically in the past. 2 Those who decide on whom to honor with monuments have power, but protesters in the early 2020s 2 showed how others can share power through demonstrations and through removal of a statue of a Confederate hero in Richmond, Virginia, or of a slave trader in Bristol, England, or by painting “ racist ” on a statue of a British war hero and prime minister. 2 But the power of the rulers can also be expressed in ways that do not offer an easy “ concrete ” target for attack. signs of power: in stone … 344 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="352"?> Fig. 13.2 Sometimes just the silhouette is enough to convey power: Palace of Westminster You might remember a few odd rituals as examples of political power. 5 You may have asked yourself why I gave you four different long names for the changes in the Department of Education. 4 These examples provide us with another way that power can be represented: through the changing of governmental structures, as in cabinet reshuffles in the UK. There are also rituals used in politics that reinforce power - the distance between the two sides of the House of Commons 5 is the length of two swords, symbolizing the battle between the government party and the opposition parties, a battle that shouldn ’ t lead to bloodshed but often does lead to combative cheers and jeers that seem very odd indeed to Germans used to disciplined debates in the Bundestag. You might remember a celebrity speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, who was constantly shouting “ Order! Order! ” during the tumultuous Brexit debates. The Speaker also decides, based on precedence, which issues could be debated and voted on, and he announces the results of the votes. 6 In the US there are rituals in each state capital before the formal tallying of Electoral College votes in Washington DC that is supposed to result in an official declaration of the winner of the US presidential election. This was a little-known ritual until the Capitol Insurrection in early 2021. 5 The Republican party reacted to their loss in 2020 by … in structures and rituals … 345 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="353"?> trying to change the electoral system in their states so that in future the Republican officials in charge of certifying results could make decisions that would favor their own party. The 2020s will test American democracy in unprecedented ways. 3 And yet another instance of power in Britain is the status of having attended a public school and thus becoming a member of the “ old boys ’ network. ” You should remember some details from a famous photo 4 as evidence of basic inequality in English schools, with private schools available almost exclusively to very rich parents. Remember the positive description of the Open University? 4 The Open University, like the proliferation of new universities, degrees, and diplomas in the 60s and 70s, could also be seen as a sign that the old boys ’ network was willing to let the working class satisfy their educational ambitions. We would have a classic case of hegemony here since the rulers - the old boys ’ network with the prestigious backgrounds and the proper family ties - were willing to allow the masses a university education but of course not of the same quality that the ruling class receives. In return the masses then grant the ruling classes a continual recognition of the innate superiority of a public school and Oxbridge education as a prerequisite for positions of power and money. Of course, you could also see the growth of universities in Britain more idealistically as an attempt to satisfy basic human needs for intellectual growth or a bit less idealistically as evidence of a society that recognizes the economic needs for a bettereducated workforce. The expansion of redbrick universities in the 19 th century was driven by increased industrialization, as we ’ ve seen. 4 We can mention here in passing the concept of cultural capital, formulated by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, as an important aspect of education and an important motivation for the British and especially for Americans to invest huge sums of money in college education at prestigious institutions. You might remember reading about American celebrity parents who bribed admissions offices 4 to admit their children to leading American universities. The cultural capital that comes with a degree from these universities is a source of power, as is the social capital that comes from knowing the “ right ” people, as is the economic capital that comes from wealth - all of them are a source of power. One cultural studies explanation for the political power of entertainment celebrities in the US is the lack of an aristocratic ruling class. We met famous examples of this special American breed … in education with cultural capital celebrity power, clothes, charisma, things … 346 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="354"?> of politician in several chapters in Part I: former actor Ronald Reagan and former reality TV star Donald Trump became president at least partly due to their celebrity status. We can add other examples like actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger as California governor, singer (and former husband of Cher) Sonny Bono as Representative of California, actor and director Clint Eastwood as mayor of the beautiful California town Carmel-by-the-Sea, and wrestler Jess Ventura as Minnesota governor. We can now use the Mark Twain quote about clothes, which opened this chapter if we remember that Twain ’ s use of “ man ” should apply to women too. A lot of attention was paid to vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin ’ s dresses compared with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ’ s pantsuits, and to Barack Obama ’ s wearing or not wearing a flag as a lapel pin in the 2008 presidential campaign. Vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris ’ choice of shoes made the headlines in the 2020 campaign. Wearing the wrong color or the wrong material could have resulted in draconian punishment in earlier times, fashion has always been in the broadest possible sense a sign of power. The choice of clothes can be a part of the charisma of politicians and celebrity politicians, too. Charisma - etymologically “ a divine gift ” - is the hard-to-define combination of charm or attractiveness with the ability to inspire devotion that the famous sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu, whom we ’ ve just met, and Max Weber saw as one important component of power. Examples of politicians with charisma like Obama, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Boris Johnson show that this “ divine gift ” isn ’ t limited to one particular party. And what about the power of things? The use of tin cans, to name just one example, allowed the extension of the British Empire out across the waves. Another example could be the completion of a transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, 2 which helped make the United States a world power. Not only are tin cans and railroad connections sources of power, so are maps, whether paper or digital. We ’ ve already seen at the very beginning of our book the power of maps to distort reality 1 with power belonging to those who make maps and name places 2 and also name groups of people. 7 We could ’ ve mentioned a specific line of longitude, in addition to comparing lines of latitude, 1 to see power in those who chose to have the meridian, the 0 degree line of longitude, running through Greenwich and thus turning time into Greenwich Mean Time. You might remember Greenwich in another … things like maps 347 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="355"?> connection, the place where you can see the Armada Portrait, 2 which shows power as brute military force and as divine intervention from a “ Protestant ” storm or simply the luck of the weather. People with power create maps, name and number time zones, and also create zones in American cities, another topic that could ’ ve been mentioned much earlier. 1 American cities were influenced not only by the American government ’ s payment to men from the Armed Forces returning from World War II to allow them to build their own houses, but also by zoning laws created to segregate financially welloff White residents from Blacks and immigrants. Zoning began in, of all places, Berkeley, California, which was otherwise known as a very progressive place. How American history could have changed for the better if only poor White people across the south had seen newly freed Black former slaves not as their enemies but as their allies. They had at least two things in common: they worked under appalling conditions and there was no one to fight for them politically. Some historians see an intentional move by the people with money and power to ensure that these two groups remained enemies. One of the presidents you ’ ve met in multiple earlier chapters was Lyndon Baines Johnson, also known as LBJ, who in the 1960s established the Great Society and declared a War on Poverty resulting in improved lives for Black Americans. 3 He wasn ’ t blind to American racism and told a young Bill Moyers (who would later become a famous American journalist and political commentator): “ If you can convince the lowest white man he ’ s better than the best colored man, he won ’ t notice you ’ re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he ’ ll empty his pockets for you. ” LBJ ’ s use of “ colored ” 7 marks this quote as being dated from the 1960s. This ability to divide poor people into groups who were hostile to one another was something another president demonstrated 50 years later: Donald Trump. Another reason for the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was the Electoral College: 5 A change of just 78,379 votes in 2016 would have given an electoral college victory to Clinton (who, as we already know, won the nationwide vote by a couple of million votes). A change in 43,692 votes in 2020 would have given Trump an electoral college victory in spite of Joe Biden having won many millions of votes more nationwide than Trump. The somewhat complicated reason lies in the political system of the US 5 where winning the majority of votes in the US as a whole doesn ’ t always make that winner president. It ’ s the class and race in the US the power of selected numbers 348 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="356"?> way the numbers are counted that decides who wins presidential power. Class is also a sign of power, of course. Class played a crucial role in two important books by two of the founding fathers of cultural studies, E. P. Thompson and Richard Hoggart. What wasn ’ t included in our very brief look at the social class system 3 was Thompson ’ s view that politics and conflict were essential parts of the identity of the English working class - and thus one very big distinguishing factor between the English and the American working class. The term “ working class, ” by the way, isn ’ t as common in the US as in Britain - the “ middle class ” is the most common term used in the US because, as Joan C. Williams says in her TEDT talk, many poor working-class people identify as middle class. Our next biggie, Edward Palmer Thompson, used the word “ class ” in the title of his most famous book, and it ’ s time to meet him. biggies in boxes E. P. Thompson, English-born historian and peace activist, founding father of cultural studies, 20 th century Edward Palmer (often referred to as E. P.) Thompson wrote one of three books always mentioned in summaries of the history of British cultural studies: The Making of the English Working Class was important for the development of cultural studies. Thompson ’ s book was “ history from below ” and included details about the people historians had usually overlooked. Thompson didn ’ t see class as a given structure in society but as the result of people ’ s feelings and experiences of political, economic, and social relationships. With his most famous book Thompson achieved his goal of rescuing British workers “ from the enormous condescension of posterity ” to use his now famous phrase. Thompson ’ s work hugely influenced studies in social history. Thompson, also known as a biographer of William Morris (the socialist and Marxist activist and a major influence on the 19 th century arts and crafts movement in Britain), had joined the Communist party as a student but left after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Like so many of the other famous names in British cultural studies, Thompson was involved in adult education of working-class people who had left school but then had the chance to further their education in postwar Britain. Thompson dedicated The Making of the English Working Class to two of his students, who had become close friends. class in the UK Fig. 13.3 E. P. Thompson speaking at a rally against nuclear weapons rally in Oxford in the early 1980s. 349 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="357"?> Thompson regarded himself as an academic outsider and scathingly criticized what he saw as a commercialization of higher education in the early 1970s in the book Warwick University Ltd before leaving the university altogether to become an independent writer and scholar (he could afford this move financially partly due to his wife ’ s tenured position). In the 80s Thompson became a vocal opponent of nuclear arms, a proponent of a Europe without superpowers, and refused to take sides in the Cold War, criticizing both NATO and the Soviet bloc. He and his wife Dorothy Towers, also a social historian of repute, were well known in intellectual circles in Britain. Thompson believed passionately that individual human beings can have a positive effect on society through persistent resistance to the arrogance of the powerful. He combined being an academic with also being a public intellectual and activist and exemplifies in the best cultural studies tradition the belief in using knowledge to change the world. While Thompson decided to leave the university as an institution, another one of the founding fathers of cultural studies remained and founded his own department, which gave the new subject cultural studies its name. For Richard Hoggart, too, class played a role in his research: he came from the working class and his origins and upbringing had great influence on his thinking. While class isn ’ t in the title of his most famous book, it is in the subtitle. biggies in boxes Richard Hoggart, English-born founding father of cultural studies, mid 20 th - 21 st century Richard Hoggart, just a few years older than Raymond Williams, 16 is like Williams known for his turning the study of popular culture, especially the culture of the working classes, into a serious academic pursuit. His semi-autobiographical book The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life, published in the mid 1950s, praises the sense of community and the value of popular culture among English workingclass communities before Americanized mass culture reached England in the late 50s. Hoggart extended the kind of critical analysis that other scholars (like F. R. Leavis 16) had applied to great works of literature to include cultural products like popular song, working-class rituals connected with pubs, and popular magazines. In the second half of his Fig. 13.4 Richard Hoggart 350 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="358"?> book, Hoggart harshly criticizes what he considered the bad influence of “ mass culture ” like the rise of a specifically new British youth culture influenced by American rock-and-roll music, which he saw as a threat to the genuine culture made by and for the working classes. In the early 1960s Hoggart was one of the leading witnesses for Penguin Books in a trial that determined that D. H. Lawrence ’ s novel Lady Chatterley ’ s Lover wasn ’ t obscene and thus could be made widely available in the United Kingdom. Hoggart became a professor of English literature at the University of Birmingham, where he founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) 16 and remained its director until Stuart Hall 12 took over in the early 1970s. Hoggart later worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) before transferring to Goldsmiths College, where he retired in the mid 1980s. Goldsmiths achieved a reputation for producing renowned graduate artists like the YBAs 11 and has also now become one of the centers of cultural studies with distinguished faculty like Angela McRobbie. 15 One of Hoggart ’ s sons, the wellknown print and radio journalist and prolific writer Simon Hoggart, criticized the academic discipline of cultural studies as nonsense. Richard Hoggart died in his mid 90s, just a few months after his successor at the CCCS Stuart Hall passed away in the mid 2010s. Let ’ s use an example that neither Thompson nor Hoggart covered in their books to illuminate the connection between class and power. Food is also about class both in Britain and in the US, and being able to choose healthy foods is based on income and education. Food that is high in sugars and fats is often cheaper, and cutting back on money for food is one of the first choices of those caught in poverty. The resistance by many people to Jamie Oliver ’ s plans 11 to revolutionize the way Britain ’ s schoolchildren eat shows how the choice of food is part of identity, even if this choice of food results in poor teeth and disease. But it ’ s also a power issue, just as it was in Victorian times. The issue remains the same as it was in Victorian times: Does the government have the right or duty to protect its citizens from hunger or to encourage people to eat healthy foods? Michelle Obama tried to do so with her Let ’ s Move! initiative during her husband ’ s first term. Donald Trump criticized the program during his term. Joan C. Williams 11 sees class divisions in food choices. Should the government have the power to make alcohol illegal 2 or to prohibit food? food! 351 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="359"?> schools from making money off soda machines? Or is individual responsibility more important? As with so many questions of power in our lives, the government that permits these questions also determines the answers. Food? To some extent, people get what they vote for. But political power has limits, and one way of understanding them is with the concept of the Overton window, which defines the spectrum of possible political policies acceptable at any given time. Successful politicians identify which policy is possible and are aware of the shifts in acceptability. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable in the 70s, for example, when laws prohibited forms of sexuality in the US and the UK. As society ’ s acceptance increased, it shifted on the Overton window ’ s scale from radical to acceptable, sensible, and then popular until it became policy and the law of the land in both the US and the UK, as we ’ ll see in the next chapter. The Overton window is sometimes referred to as the window of discourse, with “ discourse ” drawing our attention to how our choice of words and concepts determines our world. This brings us to our last biggie in this chapter, one who turned “ discourse ” into one of the most popular academic key words of the last half-century. biggies in boxes Michel Foucault, French philosopher, sociologist, historian, 20 th century We could ’ ve put this biggie in any box in any of the chapters in Part II, but since we started with an Italian, why not end the chapter with a Frenchman, especially since one of Foucault ’ s most influential ideas involves how power is used in all aspects of life, as this chapter ’ s opening quote was supposed to show: bringing together “ power ” and “ knowledge ” and “ truth. ” Foucault ’ s work includes much of what you can find throughout Part II of this book, summarized in keywords like “ power-knowledge, ” the way those in power determine what ’ s true; “ biopower, ” the way the bodies and health of entire populations are controlled and regulated; and “ discourse, ” a way of trying to show how what people consider to be absolute truths changes through history - for example, how the concept of insanity changed from divine inspiration to a mental illness. In addition to his enormous influence on the academic Overton window Fig. 13.5 Michel Foucault 352 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="360"?> world, Foucault is also a good example of the connection between academic abstraction and political action, turning personal concerns into scholarly investigation. Foucault not only wrote about how prisons were examples of the power of the state over individual bodies, he also was an activist and founding member of a group that fought to reform the prison system and give prisoners a voice. An openly gay man - and one of the first prominent people to die of AIDS in the mid 1980s - Foucault became a source of personal and political inspiration for gay activists. He was criticized for advocating the legalization of pedophilia, and reports of his alleged sexual abuse of Tunisian boys in the 1960s surfaced in the early 2020s. Foucault was a restless scholar, teaching and traveling all over the world, spending time in Sweden, Poland, Germany, Tunisia, Brazil, Japan, Canada, the US, and Iran in addition to the time he spent in his country of origin, France, at the Collège de France, one of the most reputable educational institutions in the country. When asked to define his role within academic disciplines - historian or philosopher or Marxist or “ Professor of the History of Systems of Thought, ” Foucault famously said: “ I don ’ t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. ” His influence on academic disciplines from history to the social sciences is enormous: Foucault was the most cited scholar in the humanities and social sciences according to a Thomson Reuters list published in the Times Higher Education magazine at the beginning of the 2010s. Foucault might have been amused by the connection between knowledge and power that such a list implies. Foucault will have to be our token Frenchman, but there are many other very important French thinkers who ’ d also deserve their individual boxes in a much larger edition of this book: Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Louis Althusser, Jean-Paul Sartre, and our very famous token woman Simone de Beauvoir … But at least in passing we heard of Pierre Bourdieu (who made number 2 on the list of the most cited scholars mentioned above). Have you noticed what all the biggies in this chapter have in common? They ’ re not women. Who ’ s to blame? Certainly there are many important female voices in contemporary cultural studies as 353 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="361"?> well as in the past, but with a few exceptions mentioned in passing they didn ’ t seem to fit into this chapter on power. But this has already begun to change with the next generation of up-and-coming cultural studies scholars. And women do fit very well into our next chapter. You can get the best English overview of some of Gramsci ’ s writings in The Antonio Gramsci Reader Selected Writings 1916- 1935, which Stuart Hall 12 praised when it was published by the New York University Press at the turn of the millennium. While you won ’ t be able to visit the Gramsci Monument in the Bronx, New York, since the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn didn ’ t intend for it to last for longer than a summer in the 2010s, you can find multimedia information about the monument online as well as reviews like one very critical one in the New York Times entitled “ A Summer Place in the South Bronx. ” Gramsci 44 is an informative Italian documentary (with English subtitles) released in the mid 2010s with enacted scenes about 44 days of the many years that Gransci spent in prison. Note the kind of school Gramsci tries to found during these 44 days and compare the details with what you can remember reading about organic intellectuals in this chapter. E. P. Thompson also wrote poetry in addition to his scholarly works mentioned above. His Collected Poems was published at the turn of the millennium. “ The Place Called Choice ” imagines an English setting just before a nuclear bomb explodes and reminds us, along with the photo you saw of him protesting nuclear weapons, that Thompson was a peace activist. You can see Foucault ’ s huge academic influence by visiting Clare O ’ Farrell ’ s Foucault News website with a blog and very many links to publications, dissertations, and conferences and also to a gallery of multimedia items related to Foucault. You ’ ve learned of Richard Hoggart ’ s role in defending the publication of the at the time controversial novel Lady Chatterley ’ s Lover. You can watch a British dramatization of the trial, The Chatterley Affair, with the actor David Tennant playing Richard Hoggart at the trial. Tennant is better known as one of the many versions of Doctor Who in the hit British TV series, which you perhaps know. Tennant playing Hoggart doesn ’ t have a big part in the movie, but Hoggart ’ s son, whom you also met briefly above, praised 354 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="362"?> the performance. And the relevance for the topic of this chapter? We didn ’ t mention explicitly “ the power of the pen ” in this chapter, but the TV drama mentioned above does look at the power of censorship over the written word. Richard Hoggart ’ s masterpiece is, as mentioned in the box above, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life, which is still in print and available on paper or as an ebook. Read at least portions to experience another era difficult to imagine in our world ruled by social media. While the book was uncensored, Hoggart had to mask some of his pointed criticism due to threats of libel and had to write all the extracts and “ dirty passages ” himself. In addition to looking for the “ dirty passages, ” try and find some of the many indications to support the claim that I made in the introduction to our book, that cultural studies texts don ’ t hide the author: The Uses of Literacy is unabashedly autobiographical. Exercises 1. Which very big name has only been mentioned in passing and would probably deserve the biggest box of all if influence determined size? And who became very popular again after the economic crisis of 2008? Why wasn ’ t he (first hint: gender) included although considering the nationality of this book ’ s readers (second hint) he could ’ ve been a good pick? 2. One of the biggies wrote one of the three books “ always mentioned in summaries of the history of British cultural studies, ” as I claimed. Which three books? 3. Can you interpret the title of this chapter according to the content? (This is a tricky question, so I ’ ll give you a hint: Think of rules you learned at school and the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars you heard about in your linguistics seminars.) 4. How can you interpret the photo of the Queen 5 in light of the discussion in this chapter? Hint: Think about signs of power. 5. Look back at your answer to exercise 3 at the end of the chapter on identity. 12 Now use details from this chapter on power to explain why those groups and events were missing from that chapter. 6. Look briefly at the beginning of the last chapter of the book 16 and find a fitting example of hegemony that you could most likely relate to. Interesting and challenging project: Make a chart with three columns and list in the first column the powerful people and 355 Chapter 13 Power: Those Who Got It and Those That Ain ’ t <?page no="363"?> institutions based on your memories of school life and based on your experiences at university. Now write down in key words in the second column the justification for each of your examples of personal and institutional power and in the third column the ways in which each example exercises power. And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you ’ ll-maybe-become-known-as-the-biggest-and-brightest-new-hope-in-culturalstudies tasks: 1. (not quite serious) Try and explain why three Frenchmen were at the very top of the list of most-quoted scholars in the humanities and social sciences and don ’ t refer to their personal biographies but only to their ideas and their role in 21 st century academia. Now turn your analysis into a suspense thriller and sell the rights to a movie production company. (But please don ’ t forget to mention this book in the closing credits.) 2. (serious) Answer the following question based on the “ interesting and challenging project ” given above: Does the chart you ’ ve created mirror justice or the injustices of life? And finally, further topics not dealt with in this chapter for those who ’ d like to know just a little more about the trappings of power (and maybe even come to understand more about those complicated terms like power-knowledge or the original Foucault expression pouvoirsavoir): … of course a lot lot more about Karl Marx and the power of the proletariat, examples of how hegemony has been achieved through family background and class, the Puritan work ethic from a hegemonic point of view, role of the scholarship boy and girl - those young people admitted to university on merit, not income or family background - in the early history of cultural studies and as a great example of hegemony; Gramsci ’ s analysis of “ American Fordism, ” the shift from “ idols of production ” to “ idols of consumption, ” the role of government in the funding of the arts, a comparison of the discourse on terror used by Bush and his administration after the 9/ 11 attacks with that of al-Qaeda, Foucault ’ s technologies of the self with what some would consider a very happy ending to this chapter: namely the belief that people are able to “ transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality, ” to close this chapter with another Foucault quote, … 356 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="364"?> Gender: Wo-Men We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal … from the Declaration of Sentiments read at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, “ It ’ s a girl. ” Shirley Chisholm You might have heard the song “ Let ’ s Talk about Sex ” by the American hip-hop group Salt-n-Pepa, which was also very popular in Germany years ago. Maybe some of you were very disappointed that hip-hop wasn ’ t mentioned earlier, in the chapter on the arts, 11 although with its mix of youth, race, popular culture, and gender it could be considered a very appropriate topic for cultural studies. I can ’ t make up for that lapse here, but I can promise that we will be talking about sex in this chapter in connection with the issue of feminism. In addition, we ’ ll also be looking at gender and women and men and gays and lesbians. Hopefully you ’ ve noticed the strange title of this chapter. “ Wo- Men ” isn ’ t a typographical error. It ’ s supposed to get you thinking about the differences between women and men in a new way, using concepts like “ gender. ” I ’ m tempted to say “ man-made ” concepts and probably wouldn ’ t be far off base with feminists by using “ man-made ” in its most literal sense. One of the goals of this chapter will be to get our terminology “ straight ” … When you finish the chapter, in addition to understanding something about the terms sex and gender, you should be able to say something about ▶ the history of the women ’ s movement in the US and the UK, ▶ different roles for women in contemporary American politics, ▶ the waves of feminism, ▶ important feminist scholars, ▶ issues in the struggle for equal rights for gays and lesbians, ▶ a critique of choices relevant to sex and gender from previous chapters. 357 Chapter 14 <?page no="365"?> We could ’ ve dealt with women and women ’ s rights in our look at minorities, 7 especially if we consider the term “ minority ” as not applying only to those groups in society who are fewer in number than the majority but also to those who don ’ t share the same power or prestige or social standing that other groups do. The focus of chapter 7, however, was on minorities and immigration taken together, where gender wasn ’ t as important an issue as race or country of origin. But in this chapter we have the chance to look at women and their fight for equal rights in America and in Britain. The belief in the equality of men and women can to some extent be traced back to a revolutionary book written by one passionate woman at the time of the American and French Revolutions, so let ’ s begin our overview with Mary Wollstonecraft, who lived for a while in Paris with her American lover before returning to England, the country of her birth. Wollstonecraft ’ s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman claimed that women were as rational as men - reason being a cardinal virtue at the time of the Enlightenment - and should also have the same rights as men and equal opportunities in education. Women could best serve their families and society not as subservient wives but as intelligent companions in marriage, a truly revolutionary idea at the end of the 18 th century. Initially, Wollstonecraft ’ s new ideas didn ’ t survive long - she died soon after giving birth to a daughter who would become the famous author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley - but these ideas were rediscovered a century later. The details of her unconventional life, criticized and ridiculed in her own lifetime, helped to establish her as an important role model for later feminists. By the end of the 1870s women had gained some control over their own property, which before had been fully in the hands of the husbands. The suffragette movement, which also involved some violent protests, led gradually to most women gaining the right to vote in Britain a century ago, at the same time as in the US. 2 In both World Wars, women in the UK and the US were needed for the workforce at home while the men were away fighting the war. After WWI this had led to women gaining the vote. However, when the men returned after World War II, the women were expected just to return to the kitchens and resume their traditional roles as housewives and mothers. It wasn ’ t until the 1960s that a new women ’ s movement in the US claimed and - to a limited extent - won government protection against discrimination and support for equal pay. The movement also arrived in Britain and had the same mixed women as a minority? Wollstonecraft ’ s revolutions from suffrage to the Queen 358 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="366"?> results, especially on the issue of equal pay: women in Britain today often still earn less than men. Who could function as possible role models? Margaret Thatcher, nicknamed the “ Iron Lady ” because of characteristics like determination or ruthlessness, which aren ’ t considered typically feminine, was the first female prime minister. She allowed no other women in her cabinet. The second female prime minister, Theresa May, did much more to improve the representation of women in her cabinet and in politics generally, and she is reported to have worn a T-shirt bearing the words: “ This is what a feminist looks like. ” She predicted in her tearful resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street: “ I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold - the second female prime minister but certainly not the last. ” Princess Diana combined traditional ideals of feminine beauty with a savvy use of the media for self-promotion. And then there ’ s the Queen as a record-breaking Head of State and at the same time a devoted wife and grandmother. Her only daughter, Princess Anne, is hard-working, likable, and independent-minded. She has also been called a style icon by the editor of British Vogue. In the 1960s British feminists had looked to America for inspiration, and we ’ ll turn now to the history of women ’ s rights there. An American history appetizer provided us with one starting point, a place connected with the reform movements that started in the 19 th century, back in the days before the Civil War began. 2 The founding mothers of feminism were all there at Seneca Falls, New York, in the mid 19 th century: the well-off mother of seven children Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence, with the belief that all men and women are created equal; Lucretia Mott, an independent Quaker and Abolitionist; Lucy Stone, a hardworking farm girl who became one of the first female college graduates of Oberlin; and Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer who fought for women to gain the right to vote, regarded family as a burden and became the first real woman (as opposed to the symbolic figure of Liberty) to be portrayed on an American coin. 7 The right to vote wasn ’ t originally intended for everyone in spite of the resounding opening words of the Constitution “ We the People. ” The “ we ” meant White male property owners up until the middle of the 19 th century. Enfranchisement - another fancy word like “ suffrage ” for the right to vote - had first been extended to former male slaves via the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution during Reconstruction. Seneca Falls to the 19 th Amendment 359 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="367"?> 2 It took another half a century before the right to vote was extended to the other half of the population. Starting in the new western states in the latter part of the 19 th century, women gradually gained the right to vote at the state level. They didn ’ t gain the right to vote in all elections until the passing of the 19 th Amendment in the year 1920, after all the founding mothers of the Declaration of Sentiments had died. The wording of the 19 th Amendment is wonderfully simple: “ The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. ” Not only did women gain the right to vote, they also began to do other shocking things, like cut their hair, smoke, and dance the Charleston in the age that became known as the Jazz Age. 2 The 19 th Amendment was the last amendment in the US Constitution to deal specifically with women - so far. An attempt to add an amendment to fully guarantee equal rights for women was originally started just after the 19 th took effect, but it wasn ’ t until the 1970s that the proposed amendment known as ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, finally passed Congress and thus at least overcame the first hurdle to becoming part of the Constitution. The text of the proposed amendment was simple and sounds much like the 19 th Amendment: “ Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. ” Why would anyone be against guaranteeing women equal rights after guaranteeing them the right to vote half a century before? Well, some who opposed the amendment claimed it wasn ’ t necessary, others claimed that women would be obliged to serve in military combat operations. Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative political activist, became famous through her passionate opposition to the ERA, arguing that passage of the amendment would weaken laws that protect women from working in heavy industry and would also change laws that had favored women in child custody and divorce cases. In contrast, the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in the mid 1960s by Betty Friedan, author of the famous book exploring the frustrations of modern women in traditional roles, The Feminine Mystique, was strongly in favor of the ERA. While the ERA eventually failed to be passed by the required number of states, the women ’ s movement of the 60s made more progress in fighting for women to receive equal pay, in gaining full access for women to higher education, in supporting more women to become elected to the ERA and NOW 360 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="368"?> political office, and in the legalization of abortion. 3 In the early 2020s attempts to ratify the ERA began again to make the news with details about precedent and language in the Constitution that would make any political junkie happy. When will the Constitution gain an amendment (number 28) guaranteeing the rights of people who actually make up just over half of the population? The first attempt was submitted to Congress a century ago. American society can present contradictions that aren ’ t always easy for foreigners or even Americans themselves to explain or to understand. Two aliens from outer space with the task of describing the role of women in American society might come up with two totally contradictory views. The first alien could claim that Americans are in favor of a traditional family with the father as breadwinner and the mother as housewife, that an attempt to guarantee women the same rights as men failed to make it into the much beloved Constitution of the land, that less than 30 % of the members of the US Congress in the third decade of the 21 st century are women although women make up more than one-half of the population. The second alien could claim with just as much evidence that American women are liberated and independent with more rights and choices than women in many other countries, could point to an increasing avoidance of sexist language, expressed for example in the use of Ms. as a form of address that doesn ’ t reveal marital status. Or they could point to famous organizations like NOW, or to internationally known feminists like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, or to women who ’ ve been very successful in media and business like Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Mary Barra, Abigail Johnson, and Julie Sweet, the last three in the top 10 of Forbes ’ list of Power Women in the early 20s. This second alien could also point to women who have important political roles like Speaker of the House or Supreme Court Justice or Vice-President and point to the fact that the percentage of female members of Congress has increased dramatically just in the last decade with the percentage of women in Congress growing from around fewer than one in five in the 2010s to a record-breaking one in four in the early 2020s. Both aliens from outer space would ’ ve taken notice of the political role of American women that made the news not only across the country but also around the world when Hillary Clinton announced that she would be running for president. While there have been dozens of women who have been nominated to run for the presidency modern American contradictions: women changing and contradictory roles 361 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="369"?> by various small political parties, and dozens more who were unsuccessful at gaining party nominations, the first serious contender for a major party was Clinton, who came in a very close second to Barack Obama for the nomination to run as the Democratic candidate. The first woman to be nominated by a major party as vice president was Geraldine Ferraro, who ran in 1984 on the Democratic ticket with Walter Mondale as the unsuccessful presidential nominee. The first woman to be nominated by the Republican Party as vice president was Sarah Palin. Palin ’ s nomination provoked much controversy. The evangelical conservative Christians who very strongly supported Palin because of her strict opposition to abortion and her strong support of the right to bear arms 3 wouldn ’ t have allowed a woman to serve as a pastor in one of the churches, yet now they were caught in the contradiction of supporting someone who, if she won, would be just a heartbeat away from becoming president. This contradiction may end up liberalizing attitudes towards women among the most conservative Americans. But Palin isn ’ t the first conservative woman who seemingly presents a direct contradiction to the traditional role of women as wives and mothers only. Phyllis Schlafly, whom we ’ ve already met, was another, a woman who believed in the traditional role as wife and mother yet who at the same time expanded this role to include a very public one of conservative activist and outspoken author. And finally what about Karen? You ’ ll find this female first name and internet meme 15 used on paper and online as a symbol of racism, sexism, and White privilege for belligerent White women. The use of this name as well as the attitudes of Karens highlight yet another contradiction in contemporary experience of American racism and sexism. The present and future of the role of women in US society? Kamala Harris the first female vice president, Hillary Clinton was the second female Secretary of State in a row, following Condoleeza Rice as the first female African American Secretary of State; Michelle Obama has assumed a prominent role in the media as an independent, and intelligent and stylish former First Lady with star power. Sonia Sotomayor is the first female Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Kentaji Brown Jackson the first Black woman in that role. Janet Yellen is the first female head of the US Federal Reserve banking system and the first female Secretary of the Treasury. The first female president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust, was just elected a couple of years after a president was forced to resign partly based on comments famous powerful American women 362 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="370"?> he made about an allegedly causal link between biological sex and success in scientific subjects. But in spite of these powerful women and in spite of the Equal Pay Act passed in the early 1960s, which was intended to insure that sex didn ’ t play role in income, women in America still don ’ t earn what men do. The history of the struggle for equal rights for women is sometimes summarized in waves. The first wave started with Seneca Falls in the US and with Wollstonecraft in the UK and ended with American and British women having fought for and won the right to vote. The second wave started with the changes in society caused by women entering the workforce during World War II in both countries and lasted until the failure of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in the US in the late 1970s. And as you would expect, a third wave usually follows a second. Proponents of third-wave feminism sometimes criticize the use of the word feminism itself, which some think puts too much attention on an outdated view of gender being fixed (an important issue in cultural studies, as we ’ ll shortly see). Partly a generational question - thirdwave feminists were born after the legal and social successes of the women ’ s liberation movement of the 60s - younger activists of the third wave advocated an expansion of the struggle for equality to include other minority groups like African Americans and other economic groups, such as the poor and the working class, and other sexual orientations, like lesbians or transgender individuals. Fourth-wave feminism started in the 2010s and makes use of the internet for the empowerment of women. You ’ ll hear more about the use of the hashtag in social media, which was unknown a generation ago, in the next chapter. You ’ ll be reading about the changing use of pronouns a little later in this chapter. The #MeToo movement became known around the world in the wake of the historic trial of the former powerful film producer Harvey Weinstein in the mid 2010s. Dozens of women accused Weinstein of sexual abuse and rape over a period of 30 years. The allegations and the historic conviction, along with widespread use of social media, resulted in hundreds of thousands of women posting that they too had been sexually abused. The #MeToo movement has led to resignations, changes in state and federal law, and an awareness of sexual abuse as an abuse of power. Other big names connected to sexual abuse: the convicted sex offender and American financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died under unexplained circumstances in prison; his close partner Ghislaine Maxwell; 10 the Queen ’ s second-oldest son, Prince Andrew, who resigned from all waves of feminism fourth wave and #MeToo 363 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="371"?> public roles and gave up his honorary military titles in the early 2020s before before reaching an out-of-court settlement with is accuser in a case about sexual abuse. In the US and around the world people have begun to rethink the roles of men and women in work, power relationships and many other areas of life. We began our glance at some highlights in women ’ s struggle for equality with a White 18 th century English writer who believed strongly in the role of education as the tool to equality. We ’ ll end this section with our first biggie, a Black 20 th and 21 st century American writer, who also strongly believed in the power of education. biggies in boxes bell hooks, pen name for Gloria Jean Watkins, Kentucky-born feminist philosopher, poet, social critic, and teacher; late 20 th to 21 st century bell hooks created her pseudonym from her grandmother ’ s name in honor of her family ’ s female tradition; the small letters were supposed to emphasize her message and not the person Gloria Watkins. At the same time, this double persona points to the performance part of identity that is now a central aspect of discourses on gender. Being both African American and female, she provides us with two “ minority ” groups in one, and it ’ s exactly this combination that she used to reveal struggles for power and rights. Thus as with all other biggies in cultural studies she too could ’ ve been placed in the chapters about identity, power, media, or culture since hooks also did research on how blacks and women are represented in popular culture. hooks saw Black women as being doubly disadvantaged, for being Black and for being female. After having enjoyed her school experiences at a segregated school, 2 7 hooks found education at a newly integrated school to be disappointing - her White teachers didn ’ t have the same sense of mission that the Black female teachers had been able to inspire her with. After gaining degrees in English literature, bell hooks began a career as a university professor and emphasized her belief in the liberating aspects of education again and again. She published on a wide range of topics at the heart of cultural studies like gender, race, media, popular culture, and education. Her highly personal anecdotal writing style might shock some German academics but did not prevent her from becoming one of the best-known and most respected academics in the fields of gender and race studies. hooks died in her late 60s at the beginning of the 2020s. Fig. 14.1 bell hooks 364 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="372"?> One of the goals of this chapter is to get our terminology “ straight ” in sex and gender discourse. 13 The pun here is on “ straight ” also being a somewhat dated term for heterosexuals and the opposite of “ gay ” for (male) homosexuals. We started our look at the struggle for equality for women with a famous woman in Britain and a famous event in the US. We can start our look at the struggle for the equality of gays and lesbians at a small bar in lower Manhattan. In the late 1960s a diverse group of gay men and lesbian women and transvestites (people who dress as the opposite sex) resisted one of the regular raids by the New York City police at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The spontaneous protests against arbitrary arrests lasted for several days and are now considered to be the beginning of a revolution in the public awareness of these sexual minority groups. The anniversary of the Stonewall Riots is now celebrated each summer across the country and around the world as Gay Pride or LBGT Pride, LBGT refers to lesbians, bisexuals, gay, and transgender. In Germany these events are sometimes named Christopher Street after the location of the Stonewall Inn. American society can present contradictions that aren ’ t always easy to explain or to understand. Those two aliens from outer space now faced with the task of describing sexuality and sexual orientation in America might come up with two totally contradictory views. The first alien could claim that America is number one in the production of hard-core pornography, that America can claim to be one of the birthplaces of gay and lesbian rights, and is obsessed with sex in all its forms. Gays and lesbians today in the US are present in the media, in politics, in the entertainment industry to an extent that those who experienced Stonewall probably wouldn ’ t have dreamed of. And with the 2015 Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, same-sex marriage was declared legal in all states. As a gay man, I personally didn ’ t think the Supreme Court decision was a trailblazing one, because American society, like the West generally, had already become much more liberal over recent decades. But as a gay-rights activist in college in the 1990s I wouldn ’ t have expected the White House to be bathed in the colors of the rainbow to celebrate same-sex marriage in my lifetime. The second alien could claim with just as much evidence that America is puritanical with state laws prohibiting public nudity, and some states that make not only gay sex but also many forms of heterosexual intercourse illegal. Conservative religious groups condemn homosexuality as a sin and regard sexuality as straights, gays, Stonewall, LGBTQI+ modern American contradictions: LBGT 365 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="373"?> something that the government needs to regulate, and they insist on religious freedom as a valid reason for denying same-sex couples marriage licenses. The beginning of the gay liberation movement in the US is often traced back to the Stonewall Riots. In Britain a first tentative step towards equality was made in the late 1950s with the Wolfenden Report, which based its findings on research in the social sciences and recommended that the state avoid legislating on morality and sexual behavior. A decade later and a couple of years before Stonewall, private sexual acts between two men older than 21 were legalized. This age of consent between two male sex partners was later reduced to 18, but not until the beginning of the new millennium was the age lowered to 16 and thus made equal for same-sex and opposite-sex partners. A huge setback to the struggle for gay and lesbian equality was the passage of Section 28, a law that prevented local governments from promoting homosexuality as an acceptable family relationship. The British LBGT activist group Stonewall was founded as a response to Section 28, was instrumental in Section 28 being repealed in the early 2000s, and is now one of the largest of such groups in Europe. Same-sex marriage has been legal in England and Wales and in Scotland since 2014, in Northern Ireland six years later, 5 a reminder that the United Kingdom is made up of four different nations. The 2021 UK Census asked about sexual orientation and about gender identity. After our look at the struggle for equal rights for women and for gays and lesbians in the US and the UK, we now come to the more difficult theoretical part, and we ’ ll have to begin with what was once thought to be a relatively easy to understand, clear-cut distinction between male and female and between the two concepts of sex and gender. We ’ ll be looking at other binary contrasts like nature and culture or high culture and low culture later 16 and seeing how these contrasts have also turned out to be problematic. As a student of a foreign language, you ’ ve probably already come across one meaning of the word “ gender ” in gender-specific pronouns, which can lead you to some very interesting questions that are relevant for cultural studies. The English pronoun “ me ” has the advantage that it doesn ’ t indicate in any way whether the person referred to is male or female although the use of “ me ” in #MeToo referred in general to women, as we read above. The third-person pronoun only allows the possibility of two genders: “ he ” and “ she ” UK: Wolfenden to Section 28 to marriage binary contrasts? he and she and they 366 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="374"?> ( “ it ” refers to objects or to babies and animals, when the gender isn ’ t obviously male or female). If I want to express male/ female distinctions using pronouns, I can do so just by using “ he ” or “ she, ” but which pronoun can I use to describe someone who ’ s not fully male or female or something in between? The pronouns “ he ” and “ she ” won ’ t help me here. And other languages express male-female distinctions in even more ways, but they don ’ t venture past the male-female gender boundary. Why is it so difficult to express aspects that go beyond or confuse the seemingly clear-cut male-female dichotomy? Fascinating cultural-studies questions that I can at least make you aware of here. If you read Twitter, 15 you ’ ve already become aware that pronouns are often an important part of people ’ s profiles. Anthropologists 16 have always been interested in gender, but the simple distinction between men as hunters and women as gatherers became inadequate and was discarded long ago. Cultural studies, as we will see, has begun to question other outdated distinctions. But let ’ s start with some seemingly simple biological facts. Sex is the biological category that divides almost all human beings into either female or male depending on genitals, hormones, or the reproductive system. Individuals who can ’ t be specifically categorized as just male or just female are sometimes referred to as intersex or, in older usage, hermaphrodite. Gender describes the historical, cultural, and social differences between men and women. Gender roles are taught consciously and unconsciously by parents and society to babies and toddlers. But gender identity doesn ’ t always have to coincide with sex. People can feel male or female or something in between, or neither male nor female. Transgender or transsexual people are individuals who feel that they belong to the opposite biological sex and who then undergo sex reassignment operations so that their gender role and their sex are then the same. You read about LBGT above; LBGTQI+ is now used to also include people who selfidentify as queer (Q) or intersex (I), the plus sign is to bring in “ others ” who feel they are not covered by the other 6 letters, such asexual or agender. Transgender is the opposite of cis-gender, which refers to people whose sex at birth is also the gender they identify with, which was assumed to be true for everyone until the sex-gender debate made us aware of many more non-binary possibilities. I said at the beginning of this chapter that gender was a “ manmade ” concept, and two of the people who came up with the distinction between biological sex and the socially constructed gender sex, gender, LBGTQI+ gender = liberation? 367 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="375"?> were indeed men: Alex Comfort, an English physician, poet, novelist, and pacifist who became much better known for his bestselling Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking in the early 1970s, described how gender roles were learned at an early age. Robert Stoller, an American psychoanalyst, also did trailblazing research into the distinction between the biological basis of sex and the cultural and social construction of gender. Work done at this time began to shake the common belief that the biological differences between male and female were the root of all other distinctions. This distinction between sex and gender, first used in the 1960s, allowed supporters of the women ’ s liberation movement to argue that inequality between men and women wasn ’ t based on biological facts but on cultural views. With third-wave and fourth-wave feminism, the focus changed from a narrow female-male distinction to include race, ethnicity, class, and power. We ’ ve seen how identity could be defined as a kind of action. 12 We could take the doctor ’ s words quoted by Shirley Chisholm 7 at the start of this chapter to be a performative speech act like “ I now pronounce you man and wife. ” You may think that it ’ s a bit strange to claim that language has the power to make someone “ male ” or “ female, ” a distinction that most people would regard as a biological fact independent of language. But from the 1980s onwards under the influence of important French philosophers like Foucault 13 some people began to question a clear-cut distinction between sex and gender. Maybe sex isn ’ t a given fact outside of our influence; maybe sex too is a social, historical, and cultural category. The person perhaps most associated with these views is one of the most important American female scholars working in cultural studies and our second biggie in this chapter, Judith Butler. Academics nowadays working in cultural studies support a more complex view of sex and gender than a simple male-female, homosexual-heterosexual distinction. In this chapter you ’ ve already encountered some of the terms used for sexuality and gender-based identities. To pick just one more example from popular culture: Around the turn of the millennium “ metrosexual ” became a common word to describe heterosexual men who have acquired the same interests in personal appearance and consumption that are often stereotyped as being gay male characteristics, with David Beckham 11 being one of the first examples. While some researchers still see the influence of a biological male-female distinction as important, sex as a speech act metrosexual to drag queens and kings 368 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="376"?> biggies in boxes Judith Butler, American feminist philosopher and writer, late 20 th to 21 st century Many of the biographical details you can find about Judith Butler include her illustrious academic career with degrees from the Ivy League 4 Yale University and her teaching positions at such reputable institutions as Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and the University of California Berkeley - in other words, she is an academic star. Butler has become known for questioning fixed identities of any sort and calls herself a gay woman philosopher anti-Zionist American Jew. Butler, though, isn ’ t known just as a feminist philosopher but also as one of the founders of queer theory, 16 which calls into question the idea that certain forms of sexuality like heterosexuality are natural. She ’ s become known for her view that gender and sex aren ’ t given “ facts ” or “ nouns ” outside of our culture but come into existence only by being “ performed ” and thus are “ verbs. ” Butler ’ s influence hasn ’ t only been academically enormous, with hundreds of books and articles written about her theories in addition to the dozen books she ’ s written herself. In spite of the difficulty and denseness of her writing, which has been criticized as being too far removed from daily life and not political enough, she has a devoted following among graduate students and feminists. Her most famous book, Gender Trouble, even generated a fanzine called Judy! , which both took Butler ’ s theory seriously and parodied her star status. Butler remains a popular und controversial academic in the 2020s. In the most recent interviews Butler has requested the use of the pronoun “ they ” to avoid “ she. ” Use of the plural pronoun can be confusing but is a sign that English is in need of a 3 rd -person singular pronoun that doesn ’ t mark sex or gender to match all the other personal pronouns, which don ’ t mark sex or gender either. most people working in cultural studies emphasize plural forms: masculinity and femininity aren ’ t essential characteristics but occur in varying degrees and are matters of representation. Presenting masculinity as a matter of representation and not defining it as an essential characteristic with necessary qualities like success at work or success at war could make life much easier for men. To take just two examples: think of the psychological pain suffered by the men who Fig. 14.2 Judith Butler 369 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="377"?> lost their jobs in the financial crisis of 2008 or in the pandemic of the early 2020s. Or the pain of those Vietnam War Veterans who weren ’ t seen as returning from a successful war when they came home to America. Redefining boundaries between masculine and feminine might be threatening to some but can also be liberating. Making ourselves conscious of where the boundaries are and how they can change can also help us to understand aspects of popular culture. To end with just one example: drag queens or drag kings are men and women who dress and behave like the other sex, which results in calling such gender roles into question while - perhaps - at the same time reinforcing them since drag only works as a parody if the performer and the viewer know what ’ s being parodied. And before we finish the chapter on (fe)males, which in spite of all the talk about socially constructed gender still has something to do with biology and the body, we need to mention that “ body ” in the very concrete sense of the word has become a popular “ subject ” or “ object ” of cultural studies. We can connect bodies to the American ideal of beauty as a driving force behind some of the culture that America has exported to the rest of the world. We can see American ideals of beauty as exemplified in the enormous success of the Barbie doll, created sixty years ago, or in Miss America pageants and the popularity of bodybuilding, but also in the problems of obesity, fitness crazes, diets, and anorexia - these are all very hot topics and popular in cultural studies in general. One example is the huge number of workout videos on YouTube, popularized by the closure of gyms. The body is the place for playing out cultural differences and it connects identity and gender and race, as in the ironic expression “ dead white males ” - used to criticize the overemphasis on white men as contributors to European and Anglo-American civilization. We could also look at the body ’ s role in Foucault ’ s 13 studies of executions in the context of changes in the way capital punishment in the US has been applied. And finally, we still have time to mention a booklet published in the 1970s by a small group of feminists. With its combination of personal experience and research to help empower women to make decisions about themselves that others - male doctors, for example - had made for them, Our Bodies Ourselves isn ’ t just a wonderful book for this chapter but one for cultural studies in general. With the headline-making news of former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner ’ s gender transition into Caitlyn, the sex-gender discussion bodies and beyond sport, politics, and beyond … 370 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="378"?> fully reached popular culture. The early 2020s have brought the election of the first non-binary mayor of Bangor in Wales as well as transgender politicians elected to state office in Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and Vermont and thus sexgender awareness has also reached politics. Cultural studies has also started to study “ post-human ” bodies, plastic surgery, and Second Life avatars. And by mentioning avatars, those 3-D objects or icons that computer users choose to represent themselves, we ’ ve moved from bodies to virtual reality, part of the new media, which is the topic of our next chapter. I assume that most people don ’ t read the list of illustrations given at the end of the book, but if the illustrations are chosen well, then sometimes the contributors are also worth writing about. Remember the photograph of part of the Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, dedicated to the young Black student Barbara Rose Johns? 2 This photo is courtesy of the website Dead Feminists created by the artists Chandler O ’ Leary and Jessica Spring. You can not only find out a lot about important feminists, but you can also admire the beautiful work O ’ Leary and Spring create on broadsides (what they call the “ great grandmother of the poster ” ) with the intention of helping to bring about positive change, just like other posters used as a means of communication through the ages. They said they modeled some of their work on Martin Luther ’ s posting of his theses. While you can see digital images of their products on the website, their actual creations are on paper, hand-drawn and hand-printed resulting in “ multiple originals. ” . Through sales of their work they support groups that “ empower girls and women to create change in their own communities. ” This morsel could ’ ve thus been in other chapters covering old and new media, power or identity. While it might seem ironic that I ’ ve used a prosaic photograph from their website with their permission, 2 it was only through researching Barbra Rose Johns that I discovered their work and can share my discovery with you. You can read about the feminists they ’ ve discovered in a lavish award-winning book called Dead Feminists: Historical Feminists in Living Color. 371 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="379"?> Those who find Judith Butler ’ s writing inaccessible might try some of her lectures available online, which give evidence of her wit and her passion. And a fascinating documentary film, Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind, could provide more immediate access for all those interested in identity and gender and power. Did you recognize any of the women mentioned as examples to support one alien ’ s view of American women that have become successful? Did you take the time to find out more about any of them? If not, now you have the opportunity, first by researching Forbes, the media platform that you could have expected in a previous chapter about media 10 or about power 13 because of the powerful Forbes family. Forbes is well known for its lists. Have a look at the current list of the World ’ s Most Powerful Women and see how many come from the US and UK. How many are former wives of better-known husbands? Remember to evaluate the criteria Forbes uses for its choices. While she is a devout Catholic, Nancy Pelosi is not generally given to the mystical. Still, she relayed one hard-to-explain moment at her first meeting with a president at the White House as a member of the congressional leadership. She had just won election as Democratic whip in 2001, making her the highest-ranking woman in the 213-year history of Congress. She suddenly realized that never before in the nation ’ s history had a woman attended one of these sessions. As President George W. Bush began to speak, “ I suddenly felt crowded in my chair, ” Pelosi recalled. “ It was truly an astonishing experience, as if Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul, and all the other suffragettes and activists who had worked hard to advance women in government and in life were right there with me. I was enthralled by their presence, and then I could clearly hear them say: At last we have a seat at the table. After a moment, they were gone. ” How ’ s that for a dramatic story? You can read more in USAToday ’ s 10 Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page ’ s bestseller Madame Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power. Page provides insights based on many interviews with Pelosi and others and supplies background information to make the reader aware of why this woman, whose life spans multiple waves of feminism, has become such a historic figure in America and the world. 372 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="380"?> “ But who is Karen? ” you might ask yourself after stumbling across the meme mentioned briefly earlier in this chapter. We could ’ ve dedicated the entire chapter just to the use of this meme to show fascinating contradictions and complications within the realms of American sexism and racism. The New York Times 10 can help with in-depth articles and essays like Ligaya Mishan ’ s “ The March of the Karens ” or Henry Goldblatt ’ s “ A Brief History of ‘ Karen ’” and The Guardian 10 offers Julia Carrie Wong ’ s much shorter and more personal “ The year of Karen: how a meme changed the way Americans talked about racism. ” Exercises 1. Look back through the history appetizers and through the chapters on minorities, on the media, and on the arts in Part I to find some examples of women whom you could praise as good choices for this book. 2. Criticize the content of this chapter from a cultural-studies point of view - and keep in mind Part I. Praise the contents of the chapter from a cultural studies point of view - and keep in mind the focus of area studies on “ life and institutions. ” 3. For those who already tried the first morsel above: How many of the women O ’ Leary and Spring honored with broadsides had you already heard of? And for those who skipped that morsel, go back and spend the half-hour needed to skim their beautifully organized website. You should be able to identify a few of the feminists based on what you ’ ve learned in previous chapters. Can you find information about Barbara Rose Johns? (Hint: she ’ s not on one of their broadsides but still beautifully represented in their art.) 4. And for those who ’ ve tried the last morsel: Why isn ’ t there an equivalent to the American “ Karen ” meme in the UK? Challenging questions and interesting project: Tell a few friends you ’ re doing a project and you need their help. The friends need to ride the bus or tram or just walk through a crowded store immediately before meeting you. You ask them to describe the people they just saw. Note the key adjectives they use in their descriptions. Maybe they use words like “ tall ” or “ white ” or “ old ” or “ beautiful ” or even “ men ” or “ women. ” Then work together and come up with categories for the adjectives and then definitions of the categories. The goal of this 373 Chapter 14 Gender: Wo-Men <?page no="381"?> project is to raise your awareness of how subjective and how difficult defining such categories can be. If your friends protest that there ’ s a clear distinction between “ men ” and “ women, ” then ask them how they know that someone ’ s a man or woman: clothes, behavior, hair, skin, body? And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you ’ ll-maybe-become-known-as-the-biggest-and-brightest-new-hope-in-culturalstudies task: Using poststructuralist theory explain how academics who write in an abstruse style like Judith Butler or who use such startlingly personal details like bell hooks managed to become academic superstars of the first two decades in the 21 st century. And just a few examples of things and people we couldn ’ t talk about in this chapter but that are also important in the sex/ gender / body/ feminist/ male studies debates: … gendered subjectivity; the influence of post-structuralist theory on the sex/ gender distinction; Freud and the feminists; the feminists and the origins of British cultural studies at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies; use of terms like “ gendered body ” and “ sexed body ” ; pornography as a lightning-rod issue for feminists; hip-hop music with its misogynist lyrics; the development of female sexual enjoyment, from the advice given to Victorian women, who were expected to bear children but not enjoy sex - that they should “ close their eyes and think of England ” during intercourse - all the way to the advertisements for the American cigarettes called Virginia Slims, marketed for women - “ You ’ ve come a long way, baby ” ; analysis of gender-bending in describing Madonna ’ s and Lady Gaga ’ s performances; origin of drag kings in British music-hall variety shows of the 19 th century; the influence of the first openly gay professional football player and Black British football star Justin Fashanu (could ’ ve also been put in 7 and 11) … 374 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="382"?> Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? … the medium is the message … and/ or The Medium is the Massage famous saying by Marshall McLuhan and the title of a later published book We ’ re All Journalists Now title of a book by American lawyer and writer Scott Gant Someone the other day said, “ It ’ s the biggest thing since Gutenberg, ” and then someone else said, “ No, it ’ s the biggest thing since the invention of writing. ” media mogul Rupert Murdoch describing the internet The first question we ’ re facing in this chapter deals with terminology. We ’ ve already covered a more or less traditional chapter in Part I and just touched upon some of the big changes taking place in the world of media today. But maybe we shouldn ’ t have used the oldfashioned word “ media ” in the title of this chapter. You may have come across the abbreviation MSM, which isn ’ t the name for yet another American or British television network 10 but instead stands for “ mainstream media, ” and refers to much of the media that we looked at in Part I. A more appropriate description of the kind of we ’ ll be covering in this chapter could be ICT for Information Communication Technology or just IT for Information Technology. But if I had decided to use either of those terms in the title, the allusion to the famous McLuhan quote wouldn ’ t have been possible. And media comprises more than just ICT. In this chapter we ’ ll be looking at media both new and old, first by using using the same distinction as in the previous media chapter: the distinction between newspapers and television from the cultural studies perspective. And we ’ ll also be taking up another topic from Part I - natives and immigrants - but this time from a very different perspective. When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about ▶ digital natives and digital immigrants, ▶ newspapers and television from a cultural studies perspective, 375 Chapter 15 <?page no="383"?> ▶ the role of the audience, ▶ some well-known media critics, ▶ diversity, interactivity, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, ▶ all the things missing from Chapter 10, ▶ new and old aspects of modern media, ▶ the future of media. Almost all the readers of this book are digital natives, a term first used at the beginning of the new millennium to describe those who at an early age became familiar with the use of digital technology like computers, the internet, and cell phones. And what are the digital non-natives called? Digital immigrants - people like me who came late to digital technology as adults and have to learn to live with it and ideally even love it because of their jobs or the world they now find themselves in. The American educator, writer, and software designer Marc Prensky, who coined the terms digital native and digital immigrant, has done research into using the digital world in the classroom. Prensky strongly believes in listening to and learning from student experience, and teaching is a job he has in common with practically all the big names in this chapter: McLuhan, Postman, Hall, Williams. Prensky ’ s approach to teaching was to learn from his students ’ experience. Researchers in cultural studies take the same approach with media users, and the use of media is one of our main topics in this chapter. We could summarize some of the changes in media by looking at some derivatives of the root word “ cast. ” An over-the-air broadcast is the term used for the transmission of, say, a TV program to be shared simultaneously by a broad audience, as was common in the predigital age. A narrowcast is the transmission of a TV program to a small, special-interest audience who typically pay for the viewing experience; narrowcasting has been done via cable or satellite since the 70s, or in modern times via the internet, as with YouTube channels, for example. A webcast is the transmission of a video via the internet, and a podcast refers specifically to digital media files - audio or video - available for download online. The means of communication via paper, waves, and bytes that we covered in Part I can now all be seen converging on one screen that serves the same purpose as a newspaper, a radio, or a television. And this webcast material isn ’ t all created by the few for the many, but by many for many. Some computer hackers can be seen as those who fight against digital: immigrants and natives from broadto narrowto webcasting 376 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="384"?> powerful institutions that are threatening to curtail the freedom of the net. In spite of all these changes, let ’ s still begin with the newspaper, familiar to us from the earlier chapter on the media, 10 but now with a different focus. We ’ ll begin with someone you met a couple of chapters ago. In the late 1970s Stuart Hall 12 wrote a book with several other colleagues from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) 16 entitled Policing the Crisis, which analyzed the treatment of crime and race in British newspapers and showed that newspapers could encourage racial prejudice by creating a moral panic with claims or suggestions that a particular minority ethnic group had become a threat. A recent example of moral panic is the debate over the use of Critical Race Theory in American schools. 4 Back in the 1970s Angela McRobbie, a graduate of the CCCS, began to look closely at Jackie, a weekly British magazine written for girls, in order to see how the readers interpreted what they read and how they absorbed the ideology that the producers of the magazine and society in general wanted. Academics in cultural studies began reading print media closely to understand how power and identity, race and gender were expressed. A logbook was - and still is - a written record used for navigation in ships, and I suppose sailing on water and surfing the internet are related closely enough to justify the connection. In any case, web logs - commonly known as blogs, or vlogs if they are video logs - have become one of the important ways of distributing information and opinion and are now an integral part of old-fashioned newspaper ’ s modern online versions with journalists writing informal accounts of live sports or entertainment events, for example, and allowing readers to participate in these blogs by sending in their comments. Check any online opinion piece or review in any newspaper mentioned before 10 and see how many of them have space at the bottom - or “ below the line, ” as it ’ s called - for readers to record comments. You could say that this kind of participation is little different from the letters to the editor in paper editions except that these readers ’ comments are easy to send and can reach millions of readers immediately. Another perhaps more marked difference between traditional media and online media is the use of audience participation in the form of “ citizen journalists ” and “ I-Reporters, ” integrating the texts and audiovisual contributions of users - made easy through the widespread use of cell phones - into traditional online media sites. Whether print media: aspects of racism and gender blogs and citizen journalism 377 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="385"?> this dramatic increase in participatory journalism is a sign of increased democracy and shared power or indicates a loss in quality journalism is one of the exciting ongoing debates in media studies and cultural studies. What is certainly true is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was the first war that millions of people all over the world could watch day-by-day or even hour-by-hour on their mobile phones and other internet devices. Ukrainian president Zelensky showed his mastery of modern communication by using his own mobile phone for speeches to bolster the morale of his people and to persuade friendly governments to provide military assistance, and these speeches were also watched by millions of internet users around the world. Donald Trump ’ s candidacy and his term as president led to an even greater need for serious print and TV journalists to report verifiable facts as objectively and fairly as possible. This is because Trump and his administration told obvious lies and called them “ alternative facts ” or simply rejected any report of their misdoings as “ fake news ” . Another defense strategy, used by politicians the world over, was to use “ whataboutism, ” distracting from criticism by asking “ What about our opponents? ” and focusing on their misdeeds, or “ bothsidesism, ” saying “ Both sides do this! ” All this means that objective journalism, more than ever, has to be as truthful and balanced as possible in its reporting. American and British media have both become better at using fact-checkers to establish when one side ’ s view is biased or mendacious or misleading. One result is that one political party, the Republicans in the US and the Conservatives in the UK, has increasingly taken to attacking journalists and institutions who call out their lies. Another result is increasing partisanship, with society no longer merely split along class or political lines, but also divided into completely separate realities with meaningful communication between the two barely possible. Stuart Hall ’ s theories of coding and decoding can help, as we ’ ll see a little later in this chapter. Big names in social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have assumed more responsibility for removing untruthful or harmful content. This responsibility should remind you of the role of “ old media ” as the fourth estate. 10 Another dramatic change that came with online media is the spread of aggregators, websites composed of collections of headlines with links to a variety of other sources - mostly online versions of print newspapers. (The technical word “ aggregate ” means “ to flock or cluster together. ” ) Sometimes the headlines are automatically chosen, fake news and separate realities aggregators 378 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="386"?> as in Google News; sometimes reader selection plays a role, as in Flipboard. The Drudge Report and the HuffPost (formerly called Huffington Post) are two other examples of similar websites with very different American political views (Matt Drudge has conservative, Arianna Huffington liberal views) that combine links to articles from the mainstream media with original contributions and blogs. These aggregators may point to the future of the news online, but there are still issues to be resolved: Should the aggregator pay the original source of the news (online versions of newspapers, for examples) or should these sources see the aggregator as a service to direct readers to their sites? We ’ ve already moved from paper to bytes, but before we continue our look at online media, we need to switch to traditional television first. One of the biggest names in cultural studies, Stuart Hall, 12 developed in the early 1970s a theory that was to become influential in understanding television audiences: encoding and decoding. Television texts - text in the broadest sense of the word - carry multiple meanings, which Hall categorizes as dominant, negotiated, and oppositional. The producers encode the texts with one meaning, which the audience can accept by using the dominant code, adapt by using the negotiated code, or understand but reject by using the oppositional code. Hall ’ s taking television programs and their audiences seriously led to a series of studies from the 1980s onwards that made use of American and British television programs and signaled a change from a textual analysis of content to a look at the way audiences create meaning. Television has always been a very popular medium for cultural studies because of the sheer amount of popular culture it produces and for the hugeness of the audience it reaches. Let ’ s look at one genre of special interest: the soap opera. What originally began on American radio in the 1930s for a mostly female audience and was financed by commercials for laundry detergent - hence the name - made a successful move to daytime American television of the 50s and later expanded to prime time 10 with such internationally successful series as Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon Crest. If you look at the German title for Dynasty (Der Denver-Clan) and recall the title of the British television soap opera Coronation Street 10 or know of other British soap operas like EastEnders or Emmerdale or perhaps one of the first American televised soap operas Peyton Place, then you can guess from the titles alone one characteristic of soap operas in general: encoding and decoding soap operas 379 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="387"?> their connection to a specific place, often a small town. Soap operas have open-ended story lines since they aren ’ t made with a limited number of episodes like other television series. The content deals with personal relationships and melodramatic incidents. Cultural studies researchers like Ien Ang, Dorothy Hobson, David Morley, and Charlotte Brunsdon began to look at how audiences understood the then popular American and British soap operas Dallas and Crossroads and the British news program Nationwide. They discovered that audiences interpreted what they saw in widely different ways, and that this range could only partly be accounted for by such factors as class, education, and ethnicity. Cultural studies changed the way audiences were seen and basically discounted the hypothermic model, which had claimed that producers easily manipulated television audiences and “ injected ” them with the meaning and intentions the producers wanted. Similarly, in connection with politics and power, researchers began to question the traditional view of television news as a mere reproduction of the hegemonic 13 structures of society through the primary definers of the news, the authoritative sources in government, and the talking heads of the television news presenters. We need to mention some other big and much more widely known names than those above, names of academics connected with important and very critical views of television. During the mid 1980s in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death the American cultural and media critic Neil Postman damned television for its emphasis on entertainment, on the image instead of the word, and its oversimplification. Raymond Williams, 16 whose words were heard on the opening day of the British Channel 4, 10 was irritated by American television with its commercial interruptions, and developed a system of analysis based on sequence and flow, which interpreted television programming based on the producers ’ intention of keeping the viewers ’ attention with commercial interruption. Of course, Williams ’ analysis was based on old-fashioned television broadcasts on television sets without the help of a remote control. Television was for Williams a result of social and economic causes and not a powerful cause of change in itself as Marshall McLuhan believed, the man whose famous quotes opened this chapter. Although McLuhan died years before the World Wide Web came into existence and thus couldn ’ t be considered a digital native, in many ways he was way ahead of his time. watching Dallas, Crossroads, Nationwide too much entertainment: sequence and flow 380 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="388"?> biggies in boxes Marshall McLuhan, Canadian-born scholar and one of the big names in media studies, mid to late 20 th century Marshall McLuhan is known for two catchphrases: “ the medium is the message ” and the “ global village. ” Like other biggies in cultural studies we ’ ve met in the boxes, such as Richard Hoggart, 13 or will be meeting, like Raymond Williams, 16 McLuhan was also trained as a professor of English literature. He studied in England as a graduate student under F. R. Leavis 16 and was influenced by what came to be called New Criticism, the belief that great books deserved close reading without taking into account extra-textual sources. One of McLuhan ’ s early books, The Mechanical Bride, was published in the early 1950s and analyzed newspaper and magazine advertisements. His Gutenberg Galaxy, published a decade later, popularized the term “ global village, ” which McLuhan saw as the result of people being able to see and hear events all over the world at the moment they happen and thus feeling more connected to one other and to other places. The famous phrase “ the medium is the message ” comes from his book Understanding Media and was later used in the title of the collage book The Medium is the Massage, which became something of a cult classic with its collage-style mix of pictures and text. McLuhan believed that the medium influenced the content in a fundamental way and thus content that was conveyed via writing would have a different effect on the reader than content conveyed via images such as those on TV. He believed that new technologies were the cause of changes in human cultural life: the print media created a mass audience of readers, electronic media created a mass audience of viewers. McLuhan also predicted the importance of networks and in effect described the internet years before it came into existence. Late in his life McLuhan appeared as himself in Woody Allen ’ s acclaimed romantic film comedy Annie Hall. He had already become one of the most famous and most criticized American academics of the late 20 th century, appearing in magazines like Newsweek, Life, Esquire, and Playboy. McLuhan was a devout Catholic convert and an avid reader of James Joyce ’ s last and most difficult book Finnegans Wake. After his death, McLuhan became the “ patron saint and holy fool ” of the print and online magazine Wired. Fig. 15.1 This mid-20 th century photo is of Marshall McLuhan at Cambridge University from the National Archive of Canada. Cambridge is where he was educated and Canada is where he was born and lived most of his life. McLuhan also taught at various American universities but returned to Toronto to establish what would become the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology. 381 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="389"?> While McLuhan ’ s view of technology creating a global village might lead you to think of the positive aspects of increased communication and understanding among people connected via the media, McLuhan himself didn ’ t see the global village created by television to be necessarily a harmonious one. The defining televised experience of the 2000s certainly proved that the inhabitants of the global village experiencing an event live together didn ’ t lead to increased understanding between nations, it actually led to war. The attacks on the World Trade Center carried a symbolic force not possible without the media. Those who planned the attacks knew how to use the media to spread their message, and thus the 9/ 11 attacks are fundamentally different from two other defining moments in American history: Pearl Harbor 6 was a military base and the attack came without the media looking on; the Kennedy assassination was witnessed only in retrospect on videotape. My personal memory of the 9/ 11 events is a woman being interviewed on television in New York, who in tears kept asking “ What have we done so that some people would hate us so much as to do this? ” It remains to be seen if the shared media experience of 9/ 11 and its aftermaths will result eventually in a deeper understanding of one another within the confines of our networked global village. Most of the searing images of the two planes crashing into the Twin Towers in Manhattan came from reporters and camera operators from old media: newspapers and television. The images from the insurrection at the Capitol in Washington in January 2021 came from countless social media sites, filmed by the perpetrators themselves and uploaded at first with pride to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. Neither the exponentially increased number of television networks nor worldwide internet and social media have provided the same sort of “ social glue ” that some media analysts saw in television ’ s first golden age. Let ’ s look back at those days now. As we saw in the media chapter in Part I, cable and satellite television with hundreds of channels provides viewers with an overwhelming choice of programming. Some older people regret the loss of the shared experience they had during the 50s and 60s with only a few major American and British broadcasting companies. In this so-called golden age of television, people at work and in school were able to share their thoughts about the TV shows they had all watched the evening before - there was little choice about what to watch. This sharing of experience was sometimes described as a kind of “ social glue ” that bound people from different backgrounds and horrors of the global village television - the social glue no longer sticks 382 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="390"?> classes together and gave them something to talk about. On the other hand, the kind of television shown in Britain and America in the 50s and 60s was a reflection only of the majority White middle-class nuclear families. Other groups (immigrant families, African Americans, single parents, gays) weren ’ t shown until the 70s. Now there are television networks tailor-made for specific target groups, 10 who can watch television online, making it easy for people in the modern age to move away from old-style TV broadcasts and turn to new-style webcasts. While the age of the internet is global, its roots can be localized, so we can summarize some of the relevant details and still remain within Anglo-American studies. What came to be the internet began in the early 1970s as a US military project called the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which was supposed to provide a computer network that would allow communications in event of nuclear war. The network expanded among American universities in California and soon included universities across the country and by the mid 1980s had reached Germany too (the first email sent to the University of Karlsruhe had the subject line “ Wilkommen, ” a typically American spelling mistake). The number of computers connected to this early version of the internet began to increase rapidly. At the beginning of the 1990s while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, the British engineer and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee created what came to be called the World Wide Web, a simpler way of sharing texts, sounds, and images (in effect uniting paper and waves with bytes) that turned the academic internet into a web that would cover the whole wide world and turn the three letters www into the key to a vast amount of information - and commercialization - previously unknown in human history. With the help of programs called browsers, businesses, institutions, and people were able to advertise and sell products, simplify communication, and share personal information around the world. Just over a decade later a new term appeared, Web 2.0, often used to indicate interactive audience use via blogging, YouTube, and Wikipedia. While some, including Berners-Lee, see Web 2.0 as nothing more than a different name for the interactivity that was always there, the passive audience of browsers just a decade before had now turned into an active audience of creators. For those who are puzzled by the name: Using numbers with decimal points is a way of from ARPANET to WWW to Web 2.0 Web 2.0 and users, Web 3.0 and things 383 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="391"?> distinguishing various versions of software development. Some of you have probably used the 100 th or higher version of the browser Firefox; some digital immigrants like me might remember Windows 3.0 before Microsoft stopped using the version numbers and switched to other version names like Windows Me and Windows Vista and then reverted to numbers with Windows 10 and 11, but in a simplified way that looks less technical and therefore more user-friendly. Web 2.0 is supposed to represent a further development of the original web: the user is now the focus. The US newsmagazine Time named “ The User ” their Person of the Year for 2006 (the computer was the choice in 1982). And the most popular websites like YouTube or Wikipedia are those created by users for other users. The term Web 3.0 refers to an intelligent web that already knows what you want before you start to key in your wishes. You ’ ve perhaps wondered why advertisements for a book you just ordered on Amazon or a hotel you just booked continue to pop up on the sites you visit - these are examples of the Web 3.0, as is the possibility to choose favorite topics on news aggregators or indicate kinds of restaurants you like. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a further development, with communication between systems where human interaction isn ’ t necessary at all: self-driving cars or refrigerators that order food when necessary. But there are still parts of the web that need human interaction to exist. A couple of decades ago, an American computer programmer developed software that would allow users to create and edit web pages. Ward Cunningham named his invention WikiWikiWeb from the Hawaiian word for quick and the alliteration with www. With the speed of a digital revolution, the most famous wiki, the user-driven Wikipedia website, created by the American businessman Jimmy Wales, has grown from a small project to one of the most visited sites on the web. The underlying principle of community responsibility with many contributors has the advantage of a pooling of knowledge and experience by many people and the disadvantage of a lack of personal responsibility since the authors and editors of Wikipedia articles remain mostly nameless in contrast to the expert-driven principle of other encyclopedias. An old joke about the surprising success of Wikipedia says: Good thing it works in practice, because, in theory, it would never work. To see just how well it can work, have a look at the history of the Wikipedia article about the 2021 Capitol Insurrection using the Talk tab and archived pages for evidence of the intelligent thoughtful discussions about appropriate names for the wikis and Wikipedia 384 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="392"?> event. Here you have an example of how social media works through discussions and argumentation and then consensus among a group. While the name for the insurrection was controversial, probably everyone can agree on the uncontroversial fact that Wikipedia is one prime example of Web 2.0, which may be a cause of its decline, with fewer people willing to contribute time to update and correct articles. Wikipedia also struggles with companies abusing articles as advertisements. And why do some academics seem to dislike Wikipedia so much? Is it just the risk of finding wrong “ facts ” or sabotaged descriptions or is it the loss of the power that comes to those who are used to being gatekeepers and having access to libraries and books and “ hidden knowledge ” ? We could continue here but then we ’ d be back in our chapter on power. 13 As promised in a previous chapter, 10 let ’ s now do a quick overview of all those things that your parents and grandparents have had to learn to deal with but which you ’ ve grown up with naturally. We ’ ll start with the hashtag, originally called the number sign, especially in American English, and still found on keyboards and keypads alongside the digits 0 - 9 and the asterisk. Chris Messina, an American product designer and social media expert, suggested the use of the hashtag on Twitter to, in his own words, “ galvanize popular social movements. ” And the list of hash-tagged activist movements is long: We ’ ve already read about #MeToo, used to show how many women have been harassed by men. We ’ ve also mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement, 2 7 which used #BlackLivesMatter. We read about the problem the Oscars have with members who are mostly White. 11 The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite helped to organize protests. We ’ ve already mentioned Twitter and also used a Twitter profile as the source for an opening quote 4 as well as for a graphic. 1 Twitter was founded in the mid 2000s as a way for users to interact in short tweets of 140 characters or less, a limit that was later increased to 280. Twitter has hundreds of millions of users, and one of the most infamous was Donald Trump before Twitter permanently suspended the @realDonaldTrump account “ due to the risk of further incitement of violence ” after the Capitol Insurrection in early 2021. 5 Just like the number sign becoming a hashtag #, the @ ( “ at sign ” ) was used by previous generations simply to mean “ at the rate of ” but now is universally used as part of email addresses and social media handles, “ handles ” meaning user names on Twitter. # and Twitter and @realDonaldTrump 385 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="393"?> Many of you have perhaps spent a childhood almost free of Facebook and more and more younger people aren ’ t using the app and platform nearly as much as their parents and grandparents are. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg around the same time as Twitter and YouTube and Tumblr, all platforms that allow users to post texts or video clips and interact with all other users. SnapChat and Instagram began in the 2010s. All these social media platforms were founded by Americans in the US. Let ’ s briefly concentrate on Facebook with its roots in American Ivy League university life. In the early 2020s the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced another big shift in the company ’ s plans to a focus on virtual reality. A decade earlier Zuckerberg had very successfully shifted from a focus on desktop to mobile devices. The move to Meta was controversial, especially since Facebook still hadn ’ t fully dealt with misinformation and extremism on its own site and that of its subsidiary Instagram. Zuckerberg said he saw the future in virtual reality, which is created through hardware and software in the Metaverse, a fully digital alternate universe. Sounds like science fiction? But the pandemic showed how much of our lives can take place digitally. Non-fungible tokens are as much a part of the metaverse as all the work meetings and university seminars held online. Our last chapter ended with mentioning “ post-human ” bodies and Second Life, an online virtual world, that seemed old-fashioned in comparison with what Meta ’ s vision of the future. Will Facebook ’ s shift to Meta help make it relevant for the next generations? Will the whistleblowers who have accused Facebook of deliberately using hatred to increase traffic and profits bring about more social responsibility? Or is new social media platforms like TikTok, originally developed in China, the face of the future user communication? The pandemic certainly introduced hundreds of millions of humans around the world to software like Zoom and Microsoft Teams as ways of communicating in real time with one another. You ’ ve not only grown up with social media to create your own content and communicate with others, you ’ ve also made use of streaming services to watch and listen to what you want when you want, using them as on-demand source of TV shows, movies or music. And here, too, we have American companies to thank for freeing us from TV schedules and radio playlists. At least in the US, television is quickly becoming an artifact of the past with young Americans shifting dramatically away from cable television 10 to social media from Facebook to Meta and beyond streaming when and where you want 386 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="394"?> streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, and Swing. The old-fashioned television set is being rapidly replaced by mobile devices. You hopefully remember reading about Spotify and Deezer as alternatives to radio. 10 Fig. 15.2 Francis Barraud ’ s painting His Master ’ s Voice Perhaps one poignant story behind the famous music trademark His Master ’ s Voice visible on American, British, and German record labels can help us understand what hearing recorded voices must have been like for people in the 19 th century (who couldn ’ t have even dreamed of a digital future). The image used by the HMV label was said to have been based originally on a painting of a dog listening intently to recordings of the voice of his deceased master coming from the loudspeaker, which looked like a trumpet back then. The actual story is more mundane, summarized in the first title of the painting: Dog Looking at and Listening to a Phonograph. The English painter Francis Barraud had a hard time selling the painting of his brother ’ s dog Nipper, but Emile Berliner loved the painting when he saw it at the turn of the 20 th century and bought it. Berliner, the German-born American inventor of the gramophone, a machine that could record and play back sounds, was the owner of the Gramophone Company, which later became the American record company RCA Victor (RCA = Radio Corporation of America). The dog Nipper became the icon also of the British record company HMV (His Master ’ s Voice) and the Japanese record company JVC (Victor Company of Japan). RCA is now part of Sony Entertainment, an American subsidiary of the Japanese multi-conglomerate that specializes in television, music, and movies. But who buys non-digital copies of movies or music anymore (other than fans of vinyl recordings)? The relevance of this media icon was apparent to Bansky, 11 whose HMV Dog gives Nipper a bazooka pointed at the gramophone horn at the turn of the millennium, a century after the original was created, and thus returned the commercial icon to the world of art. 387 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="395"?> As in our chapter on traditional media, let ’ s end this one by going chronologically backwards to the very beginnings of recorded sound, even further back than the medium of radio. It ’ s probably difficult for us as digital natives or digital immigrants to imagine the sense of wonder people must have had when hearing recorded voices for the first time in human history. Can we believe Rupert Murdoch ’ s 10 claim at the beginning of this chapter that the internet is the biggest thing since writing? When we look at all kinds of media and their history from the point of view of communication, we can see that for all the talk about the radical innovations of information communication technology mentioned at the beginning of the chapter actually not a lot has changed or, as the French say: plus ça change, plus c ’ est la même chose. Using beacons and smoke signals to communicate at a distance is as old as the use of fire itself, and the telegraph was invented in the early 1800s, even earlier than the telephone. 2 Thus the first use of technology in the modern sense to bridge distance and shrink time is more than two centuries old. And is there really any big difference between the vinyl recording and the CD disc - other than the amount of information stored? We could even see the digitalization of society built on the binary code, on just two numbers 0 and 1, as being like the on and off flashes of beacons in lighthouses thousands of years ago. And Twitter, allowing users to send short text messages to anyone or everyone, has the same name as the sounds birds make, a reminder perhaps that the messages carrier pigeons once delivered aren ’ t different in content from those transmitted by the bytes filling the air and cables that connect our world. We could continue this chapter with media studies or go even further and mention virtual reality as the newest kind of media, but a uniquely Anglo-American component isn ’ t clear. The very idea of national borders seems absurd in the virtual world with social networking sites that may have been founded in the US and have their headquarters there but are accessible and popular worldwide. Of course, it ’ s still possible for countries to attempt to block parts of the internet from users within certain geographical borders. And national identity can still be important to Web 2.0 ’ s individual users. Do digitopians - a word combined of “ digital ” and “ utopian ” meaning those who believe in a positive future for us all online - have the better arguments? At least at the beginning of the pandemic optimism seemed justified. For the first time in human history the entire world was facing an “ invader ” together. In a joint statement, Facebook, from His Master ’ s Voice to the biggest thing since writing? virtual utopian world: national and global? 388 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="396"?> Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit and YouTube said they would help ensure people could stay connected to each other during isolation as well as fight any misinformation and fraud linked to the outbreak. That promise wasn ’ t kept. Will boundless internet geography and the virtual space created by the user lead to a digital democracy in spite of attempts by individual nations to restrict access? The digitopians might believe so, pointing to the origin of the internet with its ideals of free flow of information, knowledge sharing, justice, and community. They would see the end of traditional media as something positive, old media having produced cultural domination and imperialism from the powerful few for the many without a real voice. Modern media can be seen as bringing a dramatic change from limits in space (paper) and time (TV schedules) to the ability to see what you want when you want it and to create content for the rest of the world to experience, the ultimate in attaining audience empowerment. But will modern media succeed in empowering users in new and exciting ways or is it just a sign of the dumbing down of humankind, of the triumph of the mindless image over the rational word? And what about the right to be forgotten or the right to privacy versus the right to know and the fight against censorship? And the role of governments in accessing data about citizens? And the power of propaganda unleashed by algorithms that increase hatred and violence? Stay tuned … for the next episode on an online platform of your choice … To give a sense for how quickly media has developed, the movie The Social Network was made at the beginning of the 2010s, less than a decade after Facebook itself first appeared. Watch it and note everything that seems dated as well as attitudes towards women that would no longer be acceptable. The movie itself is based on what reads like a novel, but author Ben Mezrich used interviews and court proceedings as sources for his best-selling The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. We could ’ ve put this morsel in earlier chapters on modern captains of industry 2 or economics 6 or traditional media 10. Jeff Bezos and Amazon affect so much of modern-day life in the US and around 389 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="397"?> the world. The documentary episode of PBS ’ s 10 Frontline series Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos fits also in this chapter very well with information about on-demand buying. Frontline has been airing on PBS since the mid 1980s as a traditional television investigative journalism documentary series but is now available also on demand from video-sharing sites like YouTube. You might remember a morsel with hints about finding art online. 11 We ’ ve mentioned Instagram in this chapter, so why not go to Betye Saar ’ s Instagram profile, remember she ’ s in her 90s and has thousands of followers, and then take a closer look at her perhaps most famous work of art, the assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, which you should have already seen 11 but maybe not on Instagram. When Betye Saar heard that the Quaker Oats company had decided to stop using Aunt Jemima to sell products, she posted a photo of her assemblage on her Instagram account: “ She ’ s liberated! Finally at long last! And it ’ s about time! ” Here we have art and cultural appropriation being made instantly and simultaneously available not only to Saar ’ s followers but to all others who have access via an app or browser. You might remember the name of the magazine who has our biggie as their patron saint? If not, then google the article “ The Internet Is Not as New as You Think ” for an excerpt from the book by Justin E. H. Smith. You should be able to find the excerpt on the online magazine Wired. Some of the article and the book should remind you of the way this chapter closes with evidence that modern media and the internet actually aren ’ t new at all. Smith puts the internet in a much older perspective that compares it to natural communications. You should also be able to find a much much older article from the early years of Wired from the mid 1990s entitled “ The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool, ” with lots of critical details about his life and his influence. 390 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="398"?> Exercises 1. First the easy part. Give a few specific names that show how different branches of the old and new media have become intertwined today (hint: you ’ ll need to review a bit of Chapter 10 in Part I for this answer) and remember to include one important name from the past too. Now, the more difficult part: criticize the content of your answer by using some of the concepts mentioned in the chapter. 2. Reread the description of digital native and digital immigrant at the beginning of the chapter and come up with some criticism of this binary opposition (fairly easy) as well as an explanation for why these terms have become so popular in spite of the criticism (more tricky). 3. Can you give any examples that link paper, waves, and bytes? 4. See how many different meaningful combinations of words you can create from the title of the book The Medium is the Massage. Interesting and challenging projects: 1. Since the topic of media seems to have morphed from paper and waves and bytes into a unified focus on the portable computer or mobile phone screen, you may ask why this cultural studies chapter on modern media is organized along the same lines as the traditional media chapter in Part I. Using the same structure was supposed to help you understand the differences between area and cultural studies more easily, but perhaps a better structure from a purely cultural studies point of view would be to categorize both old and modern media in different ways and use categories like production (institutions, organizations, industry), control (government and economic forces), and consumption (audiences) of programs (or texts in the widest possible sense), the connection between these programs and popular culture. Try and reorganize the chapter using the same content given but with this different structure. 2. Watch and compare how the news is presented on the Cable News Network (CNN), the Fox News Channel (FNC), BBC News Channel, IT News, or Sky News and determine if the choice of programming or the manner in which the news is presented tends to support or refute a hegemonic model of news. And the if-you-can-answer-this-question-please-let-me-knowvia-email-or-Twitter-or-even-carrier-pigeon-as-soon-as-possibleso-that-I-can-put-the-answer-in-the-next-edition task: Will modern 391 Chapter 15 Media Was, Is, and Always Will Be the Message? <?page no="399"?> media succeed in empowering users in new and exciting ways or is it just a sign of the dumbing down of humankind, of the triumph of the mindless image over the rational word? And please include predictions about the right to know versus the right to be forgotten debate. And, finally, for those digital natives who simply can ’ t get enough, some topics not dealt with or not dealt with enough in this chapter: … Shitstorm as another Scheinanglizismus to add to an earlier chapter 6 and to show the power of the user in social media; the role of influencers; how The Simpson ’ s and other cartoon series like South Park, American Dad, and Drawn Together transform an old medium for children into a new one very much for adults with many references to popular culture; the role of minorities and ethnicities in British television series like Goodness Gracious Me (with both Indian Hindu and English stereotypes), and The Kumars at No. 42; the influence of American television series like All in the Family on German series like Ein Herz und eine Seele; the roots of popular talent shows in the British variety tradition; Fiske and Hartley ’ s analysis of television and of American television news; examples of the combination of teaching and entertainment on television like the English historian and television presenter David Starkey ’ s series Monarchy or the BBC broadcaster David Dimbleby ’ s A Picture of Britain and How We Built Britain; the blending of audience and text in the reality TV genre; how “ doing cultural studies ” combines cultural texts and the Sony Walkman; WikiLeaks cultural influence on media studies; more details about Jeff Bezos and his takeover and digitalization of The Washington Post and Amazon ’ s takeover not only of rights to show movies but also showing them via its own streaming service; Politico 5 being bought by Springer Verlag, including audience relevance for the readers of this book; internet subculture; 4chan as an example of an imageboard website with connections to QAnon political conspiracy; social media ’ s role in harming young people by setting impossible body standards; how the products of social media are fundamentally different from the products of earlier eras with effects on the visible value of work … 392 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="400"?> c ulture and C ulture “ What is culture? ” If you ’ re lucky, you could get this question in an oral or written exam. Lucky, because practically any answer you give would be right. You could also claim that trying to answer the question has resulted in many (some might say too many) books, and, if you want to drop names, mention that Raymond Williams (who will be one of our last “ biggies in boxes ” later on in this chapter) hated the word. Or that the famous literary critic Terry Eagleton called it a “ slippery term. ” Or you could mention the great pun by David Walton (author of a very entertaining introduction to cultural studies): “ difficulture. ” But you could also be unlucky to get this question in an oral or written exam. Unlucky, because if the examiners have done their job correctly, the question should be followed with: “ Please give specific contexts for your definitions. ” Culture has been one of the central concepts in the humanities and in the social sciences in the past thirty years, and philosophers have been defining and redefining culture for many a century. We ’ ll be taking two steps towards understanding culture in this final chapter. The first step is to realize that culture is an extraordinarily vague idea, the second step is to be able to define culture in at least a few appropriate contexts. When you finish the chapter, you should not only be able to mention several different definitions of culture but also be able to say something about ▶ the importance of some big names in a modern discussion of culture, ▶ aspects of culture that we ’ ve covered in previous chapters, ▶ the founding of the new subject of cultural studies, ▶ other subjects in comparison with UK and US cultural studies, ▶ the choice of facts in previous chapters with a critique of these choices. 393 Chapter 16 <?page no="401"?> In the middle of the 20 th century two anthropologists named Kroeber and Kluckhohn listed more than a hundred different definitions of the word “ culture. ” We ’ ll be glancing at the discipline of anthropology later; in this chapter we ’ ll be concentrating on just two definitions of culture as given in the chapter ’ s title, one with and one without a capital letter. But first we need to look briefly at what culture has been contrasted with as well as some uses of the word in common phrases. If we think about the etymology of the word culture and the phrases that use it, then one basic meaning of the word might become clear: humanmade as opposed to natural. These two concepts “ culture ” and “ nature ” are so vague, so complicated, and so ambiguous that they ’ ve provided many great philosophers and academics in need of a subject to write about with enough work for millennia. For our very simple purposes here, we could see “ nature ” as designating what ’ s already there and “ culture ” as something that human beings do. Another way to distinguish culture from nature is to ask which one is primarily the cause of human activity: culture (nurture) or biology (nature). Or, in other words, do we learn through what we do or through what we ’ ve been born with? This question has been asked again and again, probably because the answers weren ’ t completely satisfactory, from the last century until the present. The idea of the noble savage, the ideal of the romantics who saw everything as being better in its natural state, can be criticized for being just as one-sided as the idea of the savage nobleman, who was corrupted by the civilization he grew up in. Speaking of civilization, we can also look at another contrast and use two languages to try and capture the difference: German Kultur and French civilisation. While the German word came to represent the characteristics that make up a separate nation or a separate people, the French word was thought to be universal, applicable to all humanity. Later, “ civilization ” in the phrase “ western civilization ” would become a buzzword especially in the culture wars and especially in the US between those in favor of a western (White male) tradition and those in favor of multicultural inclusion of other races and of women. Binary oppositions such as this do not prove to be very useful once we start thinking about “ culture ” as being part of human “ nature ” and “ nature ” as not being separate from the cultural way in which we see things. An important British literary critic named F. R. Leavis (F for Frank, R for Raymond) believed very much in culture with a big “ C ” , the kind culture vs. nature Kultur vs. civilisation C ulture with a big C 394 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="402"?> of culture to be found in literary works of the “ Great Tradition ” by Jane Austen, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad. Leavis also included writers who were his contemporaries, writing in the mid 20 th century, like T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, or James Joyce. (I ’ m dropping lots of names now but not putting any of these biggies in boxes here since you can find out more about them in your literature courses.) Leavis admired the works that merit a close and careful reading and analysis because they reflect a serious moral attitude towards the complexity of life. In the often quoted words of the 19 th century English poet and critic Matthew Arnold, such works represent “ the best that has been thought and said in the world. ” In literature, that is what we regard as culture with a big C, sometimes called high culture. High culture can also be found in classical paintings, plays, and music. In words that Arnold wouldn ’ t have used, high culture is something we are sometimes told we should like and appreciate if we want to be called “ cultured. ” And here we have our first problem with culture with a big “ C ” and culture based on a canon - it can be used to divide us into those who are “ cultured ” and those who aren ’ t. And we immediately have a second problem connected with the first: Who decides which are the really great works of art, great dramas or comedies, great novels? And do we have to believe what these people tell us? The problem of trying to evaluate this kind of culture has been around ever since two of those “ great ” Greek writers Plato and Aristotle began to tackle the question of defining what ’ s truly great. And you ’ ve no doubt had a look at one of those countless lists telling you just which books you need to read as students of English or which places you need to visit if you want to become sophisticated - in other words you ’ ve probably already been confronted with what is sometimes called a canon. Maybe you ’ ve also hated having to follow one. We can ’ t summarize the problematic discussion of culture with a big C here; but if you want to hear more from some big Anglo- American names who were very much in favor of the civilizing aspects of this kind of culture, then pick your favorite encyclopedia for detailed information about Matthew Arnold, whom you ’ ve just heard of and who wrote the book Culture and Anarchy in the 19 th century; and Allan Bloom, 20 th -century American philosopher known for his defense of the “ Great Books ” and his bestselling critique of American education, The Closing of the American Mind; and Harold Bloom (no relation to Allan), late-20 th -century American critic, who wrote The Western Canon. c as in canon one Arnold, two Blooms 395 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="403"?> As you can imagine, a canon would include great works of culture like great paintings, great plays, great novels, great symphonies, great books in general, maybe great films, great pop songs, … Great pop songs? What about a very popular Broadway musical like Cats? The author of the poems which form the backbone of the musical was the American expatriate and poet T. S. Eliot (whom F. R. Leavis admired and who wrote poems that provide much for academics and often bewildered students to analyze). Eliot once claimed that Europe had the highest culture the world had ever known. This view of culture has become known as cultural imperialism and has been out of fashion for the last few decades. Th term cultural imperialism points to the role power plays in culture, and the phrase “ culture with a big (or capital) C ” gains a new meaning when we remember another term that links culture with power: “ cultural capital. ” 13 The German sociologist Theodor Adorno (associated with a movement in the second half of the 20 th century that became known as the Frankfurt School) thought pop music and all popular mass-produced culture was bad because of its standardization, and because its purpose was to provide quick satisfaction, perhaps not unlike the bread and circuses 11 13 of ancient Rome. Adorno, by the way, was also a composer, who was influenced by other composers like Alban Berg and Arnold Schönberg - good examples of culture with a capital C, if we want to refer to works that are “ challenging ” rather than easily enjoyable. Maybe neither T. S. Eliot nor Adorno would ’ ve appreciated pop songs, but with pop songs we ’ ve arrived at another kind of culture. As you can imagine, if there ’ s culture with a big C or “ high culture, ” then there should also be culture with a little (or small) c, sometimes also called “ low ” or “ popular ” or “ mass ” culture. And this kind of culture could very well include things like pop songs. (Maybe you noticed that this book ’ s introduction ended with a few lyrics from a pop song.) Let ’ s start with one example of culture with a little “ c ” that many of your parents might remember. Can you guess whose name was missing in the last part of our British history 2 and whose life and death helped to sell millions of newspapers? One contemporary textbook on cultural studies with “ The Basics ” in its subtitle starts with a death in the late 1990s that nearly caused the thousand-yearold British monarchy to collapse. Princess Diana called herself the “ Queen of Hearts ” in a famous BBC TV interview and was the first wife of Prince Charles. Her death clearly shows two characteristics of popular culture. Popular culture originates from the people: the from C ulture to c ulture culture with a little c + Diana 396 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="404"?> masses who brought countless bouquets to Kensington Palace, Diana ’ s home in London, the more than a million people who lined the route of the funeral procession, and the billions of people who watched the funeral on television. Popular culture is commercial: “ Goodbye England ’ s Rose ” sung by Elton John at Diana ’ s funeral became one of the bestselling pop songs ever. Was the media event surrounding Diana ’ s death manipulation by the press in order to sell more papers and Elton John ’ s song commercialized exploitation, or was the media a mirror of genuine sadness and the song a sign of real grief? And how would you evaluate the identification of many people with someone who claimed to be queen not because of her royal status but because of her public popularity? The answers depend on how you see popular culture, and definitions of popular culture always involve value judgments. If you ’ ve been reading this book chapter by chapter, then you ’ ve already come across quite a few examples of what some would consider culture with a capital “ C, ” so many in fact that if we used real bells here, the book would be really loud now. But since loud noises aren ’ t good for digestion and we ’ re also nearing the end of our evening meal, let ’ s keep most of the bells off the page and let ’ s save a review of some of these examples for later in the chapter and turn now to an even broader definition of culture. The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines culture in its Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity: “ [ … ] culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs ” and thus includes pretty much everything in this entire book, appropriately enough for a book with “ cultural ” in the title. In a standard book used in cultural studies, New Keywords, which is an updated version of Keywords by Raymond Williams, one of the “ biggies ” in cultural studies whom you ’ ll be meeting very soon, there ’ s an entire essay devoted to “ culture ” with examples of phrases like “ high culture ” and “ mass culture. ” Other phrases mentioned in the anthology New Keywords include culture wars, sports culture, cultural landscape, cultural capital, 13 national culture, cultural history, cultural evolution, cultural turn (to describe the rise of the importance of cultural studies). And if you haven ’ t had enough, what about “ culture shock ” : either an overexposure to cultural stimulation or culture with a capital C or a small c? culture as pretty much anything and everything 397 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="405"?> what people might feel when they ’ ve encountered or experienced a foreign culture. So that we can recover from culture shock, let ’ s go back to the etymology I mentioned but didn ’ t give you details about at the beginning of the chapter. Culture comes from the Latin verb colere with meanings that included “ inhabit ” in the sense of “ colonize or protect ” or “ honor with worship ” as in cult or “ cultivate. ” You can also find “ culture ” in “ agriculture ” and “ horticulture ” , reminding us of the activity, the doing and making and cultivating that ’ s connected with the word. Culture can also be found in things as diverse as political leadership, body language, fashion, popular media, music and sports. The biggie with whom we opened this chapter and who we ’ ve just heard a bit about, the one who wished he had “ never heard the damned word, ” Raymond Williams, actually came up with several different definitions of culture during his long academic life. And although he started off in the tradition of F. R. Leavis, who as you remember was very much in favor of a canon and culture with a capital C, Williams came to see the importance of popular culture and produced one definition of culture often quoted in cultural studies: “ a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group. ” Williams also talked about culture as patterns and a “ structure of feeling. ” biggies in boxes Raymond Williams, Welsh-born founding father of cultural studies, 20 th century Born in south Wales very close to the English border, Raymond Williams had a Welsh working-class background but became a professor at Cambridge. He served in the army during World War II but refused to serve in the Korean War. His interest in socialism and Marxism in Britain of the 1930s and 40s as well as his later experience in adult education had an important influence on his academic work. Williams ’ book Culture and Society examined how definitions of culture have changed through the ages, and it established him as a pioneer in the study of popular culture, a topic previously thought unworthy of serious academic study. Williams said that the word culture was one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language and also claimed that he hated the word because it was so difficult to analyze, but still Williams ’ work - he published widely on literature, culture, and agriculture horticulture patterns and “ structure of feeling ” Fig. 16.1 Raymond Williams 398 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="406"?> media - established him as one of the important founders of the new discipline with culture in its name: cultural studies. He not only wrote about but also appeared on television. Channel 4 ’ s 10 first day on air included excerpts from Williams ’ writing. Williams also wrote novels, plays, and short stories. One of his early novels, Border Country, had the same setting as his last unfinished work, People of the Black Mountains: the area of rural south Wales where he was born. Williams was not an academic in an ivory tower with little interest in the real world, he was eminently political - opposed to nuclear armament and a member of the Communist party as a young man and against the politics of the Thatcher period. Maybe it ’ s appropriate that one of our last biggies, like the other founders of cultural studies, was a teacher involved in adult education. Certainly it ’ s appropriate from a cultural studies point of view to include Williams as a biggie, as one of the founding fathers, and as someone who is difficult to categorize with conventional labels like sociologist, professor of drama at Cambridge, visiting professor of political science at Stanford, or novelist, media critic, or cultural historian. In fact, he ’ s just as hard to categorize as cultural studies, the discipline he helped to found. Williams provides us with the bridge to the last part of this chapter and our book, too. He ’ s considered one of the founders of the new discipline, academic subject, intellectual and political field of interest that would come to be called “ Cultural Studies ” or “ cultural studies, ” mostly used with the singular verb form, sometimes with the plural. Well, so far in Part II, we ’ ve seen how culture can be defined, and we ’ ve also begun to review and criticize some of the content choices that were made in Part I, so let ’ s now turn our attention to the overall subject of our book. We ’ re almost at the end and it ’ s about time to mention the title, don ’ t you think? But since we ’ ve waited so long to hear about cultural studies, and although we ’ ve been using this term without definition, maybe we could wait just a little longer and first take a quick look at some of the other established disciplines that share some of the same interests and methods. We ’ ll begin with “ a ” for anthropology, literally “ the science of humanity, ” which began in the 19 th century and combined new theories about evolution (Charles Darwin ’ s famous On the Origin of Species was published in the mid 19 th century) with old practices of from culture to cultural studies a for anthropology 399 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="407"?> archaeology, “ the science of ancient things, ” which had begun a hundred years earlier with excavations of ancient Italian cities like Pompeii and was later revived with passion by men like the German Heinrich Schliemann, who looked for the origins of ancient Greek civilization and for proof that Homer ’ s Iliad and Virgil ’ s Aeneid (part of the canon of great books of culture with a capital C) were based on fact. Anthropology now encompasses many specialized areas like physical anthropology, which emphasizes biological differences between human beings and other animals, and cultural anthropology, which shares some of the very same interests as cultural studies like film, nutrition, work, but also research areas where equality and discrimination are important, like feminism. In fact some anthropologists see cultural studies as just one of the later developments of anthropology. Some people working in cultural studies criticize anthropologists for their belief in the scientific objectivity of their findings, especially criticizing the role of anthropologists within a colonial tradition and their inherently patronizing view of the “ primitive ” peoples anthropologists had studied in the 19 th century. Did you read the titles of the two parts of our book carefully or did you maybe miss a small but crucial distinction? Part I is “ Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies. ” Maybe you asked yourself what “ area studies ” is or are (the term is used in the singular and in the plural, with capital or small letters). In a very simple way area studies has to do with a certain geographical area, as in American Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Pacific Studies, Romance Studies. But as you can see from these examples, “ area ” can take on very different meanings. The discipline can deal with a political entity like the United States (and you might remember the problems with the use of “ American ” to designate the United States Introduction). It can also focus on a region with similar cultures (like Middle Eastern Studies) or languages ( “ Romance ” refers to Latin-derived languages like French, Italian, and Spanish) or a region defined by the ocean around it (Pacific Studies). And the complexity only starts with trying to figure out just what an “ area ” is. Let ’ s say we agree that “ British Studies ” means something. After all, there ’ s a Centre for British Studies as part of Humboldt University in Berlin and also a Center for British Studies at the University of California Berkeley, and Oxford offers a summer course especially for American students called British Studies at Oxford. There ’ s a Journal of British Studies published by the North American Conference on British Studies. But what exactly is/ are a for area studies 400 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="408"?> British Studies? History, geography, political life, sociology, languages, literature? Interdisciplinary? Multidisciplinary? Any and all of the above is the answer, and this variety can be overwhelming too, in addition to the complexity of the term “ British ” itself, as you might remember. 1 Scholars in the field of anthropology have attempted more precise definitions by using “ cultural area ” or “ cultural province ” or “ Kulturkreis ” (the German word is often used without translation). The question remains, however, whether these terms represent real distinctions or are just constructs. As we ’ ve already seen, Edward Said 12 revealed the subjectivity of those who claimed to have objectively analyzed the Orient. We ’ ve already looked at film as an art form in the last chapter of Part I. 11 Film studies is one of the many relatively recent disciplines in which you can get a college degree in the US and UK. The actual name of specific degrees may vary, but film studies, aside from focusing on the history and theory of film, shares many of the interests of cultural studies with topics like gender, sexuality, class and their representations in film. We ’ ve devoted a chapter 14 in Part II to looking at women ’ s rights and the differences between sex and gender. The latter has given its name to gender studies, which has become increasingly well known due to American scholars like Judith Butler and Gloria Jean Watkins (better known under her pen name bell hooks) and to the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and the occasional French male like Michel Foucault. 13 The term “ gender, ” as we ’ ve seen, calls into question biological differences between men and women that many had taken for granted and looks at maleness and femaleness as constructions. Gender - specifically the connection between gender and power - has become one of the main focuses of cultural studies. What ’ s the German word doing in this list of disciplines, you may ask. I could ’ ve put “ Landeskunde ” as one possible translation of area studies as given above. But since the word itself is important and since you ’ ve probably all come across this word at some point in your studies at school or at university, Landeskunde deserves a separate entry among the disciplines we ’ re surveying here. Landeskunde as a subject in English departments at German universities has been criticized in the past because of its tendency to deal just with “ facts ” and not be “ wissenschaftlich ” enough - a typically German academic debate in which “ wissenschaftlich ” unfortunately can at times seem to mean “ too difficult to be understood by those outside the inner f for film studies g for gender studies l for Landeskunde 401 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="409"?> circle. ” Another reason for Landeskunde ’ s role as the allegedly less important part of the English curriculum, taught usually by native speakers with temporary contracts, as opposed to literature and linguistics, usually taught by non-native-speaker professors with tenure, lies in Germany ’ s past. From the turn of the 20 th century until well after the end of the Third Reich the important goal of learning more about typical Landeskunde topics was to be able to love Deutschland more. The term Kulturkunde was used in Germany by the Nazis, who weren ’ t very interested in learning about English identity or British history and culture, presumably because they feared such knowledge might lead to deeper understanding and to tolerance of other peoples. British imperialism, however, was seen as something that Germans should copy so that they could become even more imperial. We all know the end of that story … After World War II the purpose of Landeskunde was to provide background information for the study of literature, and even today Anglo-American cultural studies programs aren ’ t nearly as common as English and American literature and linguistics, in spite of curricular reforms. There are legitimate criticisms of Landeskunde as a subject that just presents facts in categories without providing any justification for the choice of these categories and facts. This lack of justification is often hidden behind the lack of a direct author (the “ I ” being banned from serious German academic research as if this prohibition would magically safeguard objectivity). I ’ ve continually used the “ I ” throughout this book, which I ’ m sure you ’ ve noticed and may have been a bit surprised by. I use the “ I ” not only because I ’ ve found in my own reading that personal accounts and opinions tend to make an academic subject more relevant and more interesting but also because this element of explicit subjectivity is an important part of work done in English on Anglo-American cultural studies. I ’ ve presented the Landeskunde material in Part I similar to most introductory books in American and British Studies. But some German academics have used other ways to organize the material based on abstract concepts like “ time, ” “ space, ” “ decentring, ” and the like. We ’ ve devoted two chapters of this book to media, from a traditional perspective in Part I and from a cultural studies perspective in Part II. Media studies itself has become a name for degree programs focusing on traditional media like television and newspapers as well as on new media like the internet. Media studies can cover both the consumption (audience) and the production (journalism) criticism of Landeskunde m for media studies 402 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="410"?> sides and sometimes includes communication in general. And communication is part of the new field of intercultural communication. One of the first professors of media studies was someone whom you may remember as one of our biggies, Stuart Hall. 12 You may also remember details about power and identity from Part II as well as details about Britain ’ s colonial past from Part I of our book. In this connection, one of our earlier biggies, Edward Said, 12 wrote a book called Orientalism, which is considered the bible of postcolonial studies, a discipline that looks at many of the same topics that cultural studies does - identity, class, gender - but focuses on these topics from the perspective of former colonies of Britain and of other colonial powers. And you might remember another one of the earlier biggies, Homi K. Bhabha, 12 whose name is closely linked with postcolonial studies and the concept of the “ third space. ” We ’ ve also already encountered this name 14 for the study of sexual orientation, which is sometimes considered a broader field than gay and lesbian studies. While the word “ queer ” - perhaps related etymologically to the German word “ quer ” - was originally used as an insult to designate something odd and later became used in reference to effeminate homosexuals, it has now come to be used as an umbrella term to refer to all kinds of unconventional sexual orientations. Queer theory questions the very existence of stable permanent sexual identities. Queer studies has expanded beyond sexuality to include other social categories and to connect sexuality with race, social status, power, and identity. Like anthropology, sociology, the “ science of society, ” became an academic discipline in the 19 th century. We could look at sociology as the study of contemporary human groups in comparison with anthropology ’ s origins in the study of what were then considered “ primitive people ” in isolated areas of the world. Modern anthropology has since changed, and nowadays it ’ s not always easy to distinguish some forms of anthropology from sociology. Pierre Bourdieu 13 is sometimes considered an anthropologist, sometimes a sociologist. And yet another Frenchman, Claude Lévi-Strauss, (no, not the German-American 11 known for Levi ’ s jeans) developed or applied theories from other disciplines (structuralism is perhaps the most important) that have become important for anthropology and for sociology. As we ’ ve seen, 3 13 one central interest of sociology, the concept of class, is also a primary concern for cultural studies. Some sociologists see cultural studies as just one of the later p for postcolonial studies q for queer studies s for sociology 403 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="411"?> developments of sociology. Some people doing cultural studies see sociology as the unsexy variety of cultural studies. Describing cultural studies as sexy sociology is a good way for us now - finally and at last - to turn our attention to cultural studies as a subject, discipline, trajectory. As I ’ ve said before, “ What is cultural studies? ” could be a question you get, if you ’ re lucky, in an oral or written exam. Lucky, because you could reply that, based on what ’ s been written about in the last half century or more, it seems as if no one really knows what it is. You could point out that this very question has been used as the title of numerous books and articles, so either no one really knows the answer or it takes a huge amount of writing and reading time to explain the answer. You could also do a little namedropping along the lines of “ Cultural Studies in Britain is, of course, usually connected with the CCCS and with Stuart Hall. ” You could refer to Paul Smith ’ s article “ Looking Backwards and Forwards ” as a good summary of the history of cultural studies in Britain. You would mention Paul Moore ’ s article “ European Cultural Studies ” as a good starting point for placing the discipline in a European - including German - context. Within American cultural studies you could drop names like Paddy Whannel and John Fiske (and smilingly say that of course you know that both Whannel and Fiske were born in Britain but were very influential in the US with their studies of popular culture and the media). Mention Henry Nash Smith ’ s work on popular culture in the US and his trailblazing analysis of the American West, long before cultural studies became a name in academia. And of course everyone knows or should remember 15 Marshall McLuhan as the one who claimed that the medium was more important than the message, a theory which Raymond Williams emphatically disagreed with (here you can give your examiner a knowing wink). Drop Lawrence Grossberg ’ s name with the term “ vectors ” and regretfully murmur how difficult it is to define what “ vectors ” are. Mention Grossberg ’ s criticism of British cultural studies and his view of the history of the Birmingham School, where he studied in the 70s. Add that Grossberg is a very big name in American cultural studies with his studies on youth culture and politics and then say that cultural studies has become a popular subject in the US - with conferences, journals, and degree programs, and with more institutionalization than in its home country of Britain. In passing, you could mention the reader, American Cultural Studies, published at the turn of the millennium and co-edited by an Australian academic, and what is cultural studies? cultural studies in the US 404 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="412"?> John Hartley, born and educated in Britain and known for his research into television. You could also mention Grossberg ’ s essay “ The Circulation of Cultural Studies ” or Alan O ’ Connor ’ s essay “ The Problem of American Cultural Studies ” or Joel Pfister ’ s “ The Americanization of Cultural Studies ” for views of the discipline in the US in the 80s and 90s. Or for a more recent discussion of cultural studies in the US, cite Toby Miller ’ s introduction to the paperback edition of A Companion to Cultural Studies and, while on the subject, quote Miller as saying that cultural studies is simply “ magnetic. ” You could add Miller ’ s reference to the “ iconic significance ” of American food as a wonderful example of what makes cultural studies so interesting. You could point to some of the key themes that cultural studies is especially interested in: class, race, nation, gender. You could try and make a joke by saying that, based on the research done in Britain in the 80s, the more appropriate term should be “ subcultural studies ” since the behavior and characteristics of certain groups of people from what are commonly called “ subcultures ” seem to be the main topics of investigation. You could argue that the lack of a clear definition of cultural studies has its advantages - there ’ s an openness and a methodological flexibility that allows academics to respond to everyday life and not just to ivory tower topics, that cultural studies can be seen as a liberating intellectual project. You could reverse the roles and ask the examiner to explain cultural studies and casually mention that the hierarchical world of university examinations can be a wonderful example of hegemony 13 with elitist gatekeepers admitting only those people who play the game according to the gatekeepers ’ rules. You could argue that education in general and university in particular are among the most powerful hegemonic forces in society (assuming that both your examiner and you have reviewed details on power and hegemony 13). Giving the exam and having control over the grade gives the examiner power, which he or she believes is a necessary feature of the system. Passing the exam gives you a good feeling - you ’ ve achieved your goal - and at the same time you ’ ve reinforced the system, if perhaps only unconsciously. So yes, it might really seem difficult to define cultural studies, but we can come up with quite a few ideas and opinions that sound good in oral exams even if they are somewhat controversial. Some academics have spent time arguing about what cultural studies is, whether it should be written in capital letters or used in the liberating intellectual project? examine the examiner! just do it? ! 405 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="413"?> plural, and we ’ ll be reviewing a few of the characteristics of the subject in a little while. Keep in mind for now that we can ’ t define cultural studies as easily as we can define some of the older disciplines like anthropology or sociology. These disciplines, like literature and linguistics, have a longer history as institutionalized subjects. Keep in mind too that we ’ ve been doing cultural studies in the past five chapters! And the doing is important, as you can see from the titles of some of the books on the subject: Doing Cultural Studies or The Practice of Cultural Studies. But before we continue our practice of cultural studies, let ’ s have a look at its origin and mention some names, almost all of which you ’ ve heard before. We can begin with our next-to-last biggie in a box. biggies in boxes Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) + Open University The first half of our penultimate biggie isn ’ t a person, it isn ’ t even an institution that still exists, but it just may be the one most important thing in the history of cultural studies - at least in Britain. Those who ’ ve been reading carefully enough have already come across the name The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (abbreviated as CCCS) at the University of Birmingham a few times. As we know, the CCCS was founded by Richard Hoggart 13 in the mid 1960s. Some of the biggest names in cultural studies researched and taught there. Stuart Hall 12 became Director after Hoggart left a few years after the founding. Hall ’ s decade of guiding the CCCS in effect established cultural studies as a discipline, “ guiding ” being a better term than “ leading ” since collaboration was an important principle to offset Birmingham University ’ s typical university hierarchy. Topics of research included popular culture, youth and working-class culture, the uses of power, the role of race and gender, the role of the media - in other words pretty much everything that you ’ ve been reading about in Part II of our book. If the CCCS was so well known and respected, then why was it closed? This was a question that some intellectuals asked themselves after the turn of the millennium when the University of Birmingham decided to close the Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology, the successor to the CCCS. The answer lies partly in different ways of assessing the value of university departments, partly in the competition with other subjects like engineering and the sciences, perhaps also in tensions between the 406 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="414"?> anti-hierarchical leftist or Marxist philosophy behind cultural studies and hierarchical university administration structures. Another institution that you ’ ve already heard of but that is still going strong after more than half a century is the Open University. 4 In the late 1970s it offered a course on popular culture, which would be an important step in the development of what was becoming known as “ cultural studies. ” And the founding fathers of cultural studies, Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, were both involved in adult education; Stuart Hall spent his last two decades before retirement at the Open University - as a Professor of Sociology. Some people trace the beginnings of cultural studies further back than to the founding of the Birmingham CCCS in 1964. The Suez Crisis in 1956 6 could be seen as the beginning of the cultural studies movement in Britain and the end of Britain as a real world power. Maybe you remember some of what we dealt with about minorities and immigration to Britain in the 50s. 7. Some people see the social, cultural, and economic changes that this first mass immigration wave brought to Britain as the breeding ground for cultural studies. Some people see the roots of cultural studies in Britain as beginning even before the disintegration of the British Empire after World War II, perhaps beginning with English literature taught at English universities like Cambridge in the 1930s. As we ’ ve seen, some of the later biggies in cultural studies started out studying and teaching English literature. And some people point to the criticism and praise of the Americanization of Britain starting in the 50s as one important motivation in the development of cultural studies. Now that you ’ ve heard something about the history of cultural studies, let ’ s mention a few characteristics of this relatively new discipline by doing a review and critique of some of what you ’ ve read in the first part of the book. First of all, cultural studies isn ’ t restricted to a specific culture or to a specific nation-state although the discipline started in Britain and also has roots in the United States. Thus the title of our book points to the fact that we ’ re not dealing with cultural studies in general, which has now expanded around the world, with many important scholars in Australia and exciting research being done in Asia. We are now almost at the end of our journey together, so it ’ s certainly high time I made you aware of my process of selecting origin of British cultural studies cultural studies perspective choices in Part I 407 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="415"?> information - especially the information you found in Part I. First of all, my collecting of the data that I ’ ve shared with you is by no means original. I ’ ve summarized what other writers have considered important about American and British Landeskunde topics and have used my personal experience in teaching American and British Studies at German universities over the past few decades as an explicit guide. I ’ ve kept my background and yours in mind, assuming that Anglo-American Area and Cultural Studies from, say, a French or Muslim perspective would be at least somewhat different than from a German perspective. I ’ ve made choices about the narrative, trying to maintain textual coherence to keep you interested in the story and to provide you with as many links as possible. The links are an important didactic part of the choices I ’ ve made about content - how to present the material in the best possible UTB Basics way. Some of the choices are based on mundane aspects such as copyright and space and time limitations, too, of course - which is also true for many things in life but perhaps not admitted often enough. You may have been surprised about the personal details, some of them perhaps seeming to be inappropriately personal. Writing and researching in cultural studies is more personal than in some other academic discipline, certainly more so than in typical German academic discourse. By including personal details, I ’ ve not only tried to make you aware of the inescapable subjectivity of the discipline but also wanted to give you the chance to experience cultural studies, especially if this is the first book you ’ ve read on the subject. Some who work in cultural studies believe that while it ’ s possible to summarize a view or interpret what others say, you can ’ t speak FOR others, although you ’ ll have noticed that I ’ ve been doing this throughout this book. For one last example of how personal details can support academic teaching, have a look at the popular film The Mirror Has Two Faces (a good example of popular culture) in which a university professor played by Barbra Streisand mentions personal details of her life and her family in an attempt to indicate some truths about literary history - and thus makes an abstract topic more pertinent for her students than abstract theorizing would. In a way perhaps you could look at the choice of material in Part I as a kind of bricolage - remember the word at the very end of Part I? Big names in cultural studies like Claude Lévi-Strauss (who you remember now as NOT being the jeans man) and Jacques Derrida used the word in somewhat different ways. The literal meaning of the experience cultural studies Part I as bricolage 408 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="416"?> French word bricolage is making use of the things at hand in whatever way one can choose, a kind of do-it-yourself process. Bricolage has become a very popular word in cultural studies and in the arts too. In music it can refer to the lack of classically trained musicians in punk, and in art it can refer to the collage. Just surf personal homepages to see examples of the putting together of lots of bits and pieces. Bricolage often has a subversive sense, with consumers using what producers created in a different way than the producers intended. Speaking of subversion, cultural studies likes to analyze the way subcultures adapt various things and use them in ways that subvert their original meaning - for example young people “ hanging out ” in shopping malls and thus using this space not for consumption as intended by shopping mall designers, but as a social gathering place. Just as young people can subvert shopping malls for their own uses, I hope we ’ ll be able to “ subvert ” Part I for our own cultural studies uses. While I hope you found most if not all of Part I interesting, if you ’ ve been reading Part II carefully you ’ ve already learned to re-read the “ facts ” with a critical eye. Let ’ s continue our critical re-reading of Part I from a cultural studies perspective. What about the cover of our book? We could interpret it from a cultural studies point of view: the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack as symbols of the two nations covered in the book, with the German flag in the corner symbolizing the intended audience, readers in Germany or with a German background. The flags aren ’ t shown fully, an indication that we can ’ t give the full objective picture, but they overlap, making us aware that certain aspects will remain hidden because of our subjective viewpoint. We could continue with the chapter titles, which you may have found a bit unusual compared with those in conventional German academic books. The creative chapter titles are meant to be typical of research work in cultural studies. If we were to apply the criteria of cultural studies to the first part of the book, you might now look differently at the selection of information given there. Along the traditional lines of area studies (or Landeskunde) with the emphasis on commonly accepted facts, we learned about several different names for each country. Area studies is, after all, based on “ area ” and on geographical boundaries. Have a look again at the first US geography and the first UK geography appetizer. On the one hand I ’ ve given you commonly accepted facts about the boundaries of both countries, and on the other I ’ ve made you aware of how unclear in a fundamental way these boundaries can Part I as subversion start with the cover … and chapter titles cs perspective: geography 409 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="417"?> be. You could find a cultural studies tidbit in the Deutsche Bahn ’ s confusing “ England ” with “ Britain. ” 1. And now I can use the packaging of the chocolate soccer balls DB distributed for free during the World Cup 2006, which is also a good example of what a “ text ” can be in the broader sense of the word as well as an interesting example of popular culture. Other cultural studies alternatives as examples taken from the geography appetizers: Instead of talking about a few American cities, 1 we could ’ ve looked at Manhattan ’ s skyline as an assertion of the power of money. We could ’ ve mentioned the distinctions between inner cities, suburbs and introduced the term “ exurbs ” (those areas beyond the suburbs) because the exurbs aren ’ t just examples of urban sprawl, 9 they also display some of the inequalities in income and power most clearly. Or instead of mentioning some physical features of Britain, 1 we could ’ ve discussed in what way the rural landscape of England represents a concept of Englishness. Instead of mentioning the traditional Latin and Anglo-Saxon roots of English place names, 2 7 we could ’ ve chosen place names as examples of power and representation, like choosing to use either the name Derry or the name Londonderry, depending on which political view you have. (We did at least see how the term British Isles is politically loaded for the Irish.) A common view of history in its very traditional sense is that it ’ s able to tell us what happened when. Have a look again at the first US history and the first UK history appetizer. We saw the problems with dates at the very beginning and couldn ’ t even clearly come up with an exact date to start with. A historian could perhaps ask the following questions: Why mention John Hancock ’ s signature if given only three lines to talk about the Declaration of Independence? 2 If you only have five lines to talk about Alfred the Great, why spend half of the space describing a legend? And why include a question about the Spanish Armada but not even mention the disaster the British Navy endured during the War of Jenkins ’ s Ear - in addition to the question of not including anything about a war with such a fascinating name. The answer in all cases from a cultural studies point of view: because John Hancock ’ s signature and the legend of King Arthur and the defeat of the Spanish Armada are bits of cultural trivia that probably most Yanks and Brits have heard of and that they could consider part of their cultural identity. We ’ re assuming here that the goals of a student of Anglo-American cultural studies are to see how a country and people define their own history, keeping in mind that the geography alternatives cs perspective: history 410 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="418"?> differences between a national self image and a view from outside could be important. Even though we ’ d be running the risk of essentialism, 12 we could point to Frederick Jackson Turner ’ s frontier thesis as an attempt to define the Americans as a people uniquely shaped by the history of the land, by westward expansion, by Manifest Destiny 2 6 in a similar way to how the British have liked to identify themselves as seafarers, as islanders. 1 The history chapter contains appetizers based on big names like presidents, queens, and wars and ignores the role of ordinary people, although some of those working in cultural studies might like my including somewhat odd autobiographical details and the use of items from popular culture (movies with Charles I and television series with Henry VIII) in the history appetizers. Maybe some would approve of my referring to the Solutrean theory about an “ Ice-Age Columbus ” without mentioning the name of the theory but would ’ ve liked to hear more about implicit questions of power and voice the hypothesis raises and the connection between this theory and White supremacy. Maybe some would also approve of my somewhat irreverent retelling of the story of Bonnie Prince Charles, involving not only the idea of physical beauty but also of fashion and gender. 2 Or my mentioning the teddy bear, a children ’ s toy and product of popular culture, in connection with Theodore Roosevelt. The “ facts ” given in the chapters on education and political life are taken from the systems of power that people doing cultural studies criticize. Just giving the facts about institutions without asking important questions about power, gender, race, and class could be an area studies approach, maybe an American/ British Studies way of doing things, but it definitely isn ’ t a cultural studies way. Just to mention one well-known study on British education: Paul Willis ’ s Learning to Labour examined the attitudes of working-class boys at an English secondary school and came to the conclusion that their rebelliousness against school structure destined them for workingclass jobs; the school structure is able to provoke reactions that reinforce the system - an ideal example of the hegemonic function of the English education system. At least in the new 3 rd edition I ’ ve included an iconic photo showing class differences in English schools and a biting caricature making fun of the attempt to censor American school teachers. The chapter on the arts is based on big names at the expense of exploring how art represents a particular culture or group. Instead of history alternatives cs perspective: education, political life cs perspective: arts, leisure time, fashion 411 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="419"?> mentioning some of the great names in painting, we could ’ ve discussed English landscape painting from the perspective of the landowner and included class (those with property vs. the working class) and gender (situation of the dependent wife). Probably no one would disagree that many operas - depending of course on which canon you choose - are culture with a big C. But is going to the opera culture with a big C? What about leisure activities in general? 11 We could look at all leisure activities including buying expensive theatre tickets or traveling to the South Seas or just to the seashore (which, you remember, 1 is never far away, at least in Britain) as examples of the importance of consumption in shaping our lives and cultures. Maybe fashion in the sense of beautiful designs or extraordinary articles of clothing or jewelry could be considered as culture with a big C. What about buying fashionable clothes or shopping in general as a cultural activity or as a cultural institution? Interest in fashion from a cultural perspective isn ’ t as new as you might think. One of the first scholars in the new discipline of sociology, Georg Simmel, wrote an essay on fashion in the 19 th century. Great works of architecture could be culture with a big C - depending of course on … which list 11 you prefer, as you ’ ve probably already guessed. But what about looking more closely at the architecture of the shopping mall with its roots in an idea by an Austrian architect who had fled to America to escape the Nazis and finding that architecture couldn ’ t turn America into a shared and sharing community like the mall, and having to admit that there would always be gated communities, with a few people at the centres of power and wealth and many on the margins? You may have recognized some or many of the works and artists referred to in the first part of our book - I chose some of the most highly acclaimed - but from the point of view of culture with a little c these works aren ’ t necessarily more worthy of study than many other examples from what ’ s sometimes called “ popular ” or “ mass culture. ” But you could also criticize choices I made from the popular-cultural perspective. I chose Roland Emmerich as a representative of popular culture for several (hopefully convincing) reasons, and his films would be a fitting example of popular culture. Yet I only mentioned in passing another emigrant to America from the German-speaking world, Billy Wilder, whose films critically analyzed American hypocrisy and were not only box-office successes but also acclaimed and thus possible candidates for culture with a big C. His film noir Double Indemnity deals with adultery and murder, The Lost Weekend was the first major cs perspective: film and television 412 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="420"?> film to address the issue of alcoholism, Sunset Boulevard 11 and The Apartment both deal with exploitation. Another example - this one from television - of a combination of popular and high culture could be the TV series Civilisation; 10 at least it certainly includes lots of indisputably culture-with-a-really-big-capital-C works of art. But what about other TV series like Coronation Street or All in the Family? 10 What about watching television itself? You now know at least the cultural studies relevance of the role of the audience 15 from Part II. By looking at “ culture ” as an important part of the word “ agriculture, ” you shouldn ’ t be surprised at all by the last part of the chapter “ Bread and Circuses ” ; and food is indeed one of the hot topics in cultural studies. Did you notice a couple of facts tied in with economic and identity issues? Look at the claim that Marmite is typically British, the Jewish origin of fish ’ n chips, the economic aspect of mass-produced foods … We heard about Prohibition, 2 but did you know that Prohibition in the US was needed to keep men sober for industrial labor and that pub closing times in the UK were intended to keeping men fit for the next day to work in the factory or in armaments production during wartime? We can thus see how food and drink aren ’ t just part of a nation ’ s “ culture ” but can also be seen as elements of power. 13 Those who see Anglo-American Studies through the cultural studies perspective would certainly approve of our look at leisure activities and at food at the end of Part I because both topics are popular in current cultural studies research. And what better way to end Part II than to remind ourselves of the importance of the leisure time we need to read (and write) books like this and the food and drink we need to sustain us while doing so! Have another look at Deborah Kass ’ s 4 Barbras way back in the introduction to our book. Visit Kass ’ website, her Instagram and her Twitter profiles, and look for some online articles about her work. You can use what you come across then for an exercise below. Take a look at the website of St. John ’ s College (the one with campuses in Annapolis and Santa Fe) for information about a curriculum that sets a canon like the ones you ’ ve read about in the chapter. See how many of the authors mentioned are ones you recognize. You might remember at least the sign of St. John ’ s College from a previous chapter 4 and after reading about the program online you will know more about what kind of college it is. cs perspective: food and drink 413 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="421"?> Perhaps you were curious enough to already search online for David Walton after reading the first paragraph in this chapter (and took the trouble to ignore all the entries about the American actor and several other American and English writers of the same name). If not, find a copy of his uniquely entertaining Introducing Cultural Studies: Learning through Practice, which doesn ’ t just have many of the basic ideas about cultural studies (mostly from the British perspective) but is also wonderfully fun to read with creative dialogues, excellent exercises, and interesting tasks, proof that Walton is able to make good use of his background as an English teacher in Spain. Perhaps you were also curious enough to look up the book mentioned above that started with the death of Diana? Jeff Lewis ’ s Cultural Studies: The Basics hasn ’ t been revised since the 2 nd edition, published in the late 2000s, but is still useful as an introduction to cultural studies, divided into two sections: “ Forming Culture/ Informing Cultural Theory ” with a look at the history of culture studies and “ Cultural Locations ” with an examination of some of the “ hot ” topics of contemporary cultural studies like “ the body ” and “ terrorism. ” Chris Barker ’ s Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, a popular comprehensive introductory book, is now in its fifth edition with an additional author, Emma A. Jane, (who has published extensively, as you can see from her Emma Jane website with multimedia and fascinating details from her biography). You ’ ll also come across a popular dictionary of cultural studies also written by Barker and published by Sage, The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies, after the turn of the millennium. You can find short and clearly written articles about some of the key words of cultural studies from B for “ body ” to H for “ hegemony ” to Y for “ youth culture ” and also biographical details about some of the biggies, both those in boxes in this book, like Bhabha or Williams, as well as some we only mentioned in passing, like Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Freud, or Marx. You won ’ t find an entry about Chris Barker, though, and with common names like Chris and Barker you ’ ll also have difficulty finding much personal information about him online, a bit surprising perhaps since his books have been popular. He ’ s writing fiction, growing vegetables, and looking after chickens, according to his entertaining blog Creased at the Edges. What do all three authors highlighted in this morsel have in common? They all live Down Under, a nickname for Australia that should remind you about the power of maps. 1 13 414 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="422"?> And the last “ perhaps you were curious enough ” link … New Keywords came out after the turn of the millennium about 20 years after Raymond William ’ s Keywords, which is still a readable collection of words from “ anthropology ” to “ culture ” to “ nature ” and dozens more. New Keywords was edited by three well-known academics in the field of cultural studies: Tony Bennett (not the American singer or football player or basketball player; this one is an English sociologist who taught at the Open University 4 and who ’ s published on such things as the cultural use of museums), Lawrence Grossberg (an American scholar who studied at the CCCS, where he met Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart, and is known as one of the importers of cultural studies to America), and Meaghan Morris (an Australian who has taught cultural studies in Australia and Hong Kong and has been involved in numerous academic journals in cultural studies and the social sciences). New Keywords has more than a hundred multi-page essays by more than fifty different academics working in cultural studies and related disciplines at universities in the US, the UK, and Australia. Exercises 1. Give one example of culture with a big C and one example of culture with a small c. 2. When was the term “ cultural studies ” first used? 3. Name three or four founding fathers of cultural studies and three pioneering books. (Hint: you may need to skim through chapters 12 and 13 to jog your memory if you don ’ t recognize this trivia question from another chapter). 4. Skim through Part I and note all those aspects where I indicated that my choice was based on my personal preferences. Do you find the use of such personal details convincing or not “ wissenschaftlich ” enough? 5. Based on what you learned in the Deborah Kass morsel above, try to categorize all the art works you found using criteria you read about in this chapter. 6. As the very last exercise almost at the very end of our book: Without looking back at first, which graphics do you remember? How many were works of art? How many were examples of popular culture? Now look and see what you might have missed. I ’ ve tried to integrate the illustrations chosen in the 3 rd edition to help you learn more effectively and to inspire you. 415 Chapter 16 culture and Culture <?page no="423"?> Challenging questions and interesting projects: Pick any of the assumptions I ’ ve pointed out in this chapter and try to prove - or disprove! - them. Concrete example: I ’ ve tried to justify in this last chapter my inclusion of John Hancock ’ s signature, the Spanish Armada, and King Arthur in the first part of this book. But have contemporary Asian Americans or African Americans or Americans from the Dominican Republic really heard of John Hancock? What about British people of Indian descent or Black British people in reference to the Spanish Armada? Do the Scots claim King Arthur as part of their heritage? And - perhaps more importantly from a cultural studies point of view - how could you go about trying to answer these questions? Questionnaires? Analysis of television programs? Critical look at the National Curriculum? Survey of online Hispanic newspapers? And finally the oh-my-god-if-you-can-do-this-you ’ ll-maybe-become-known-as-the-biggest-and-brightest-new-hope-in-culturalstudies task: Design a curriculum that gives undergraduate students the necessary factual background found in Landeskunde combined with some of the critical views of power, class, gender, and of race found in cultural studies so that within one module students not only have learned more about the United States and the United Kingdom but also have come to see in what ways their knowledge is limited. (I didn ’ t give you the task to “ write a book ” because I hope this book fulfills the task for the unwritten curriculum.) And, finally, further topics not dealt with (or not dealt with in enough depth) in this chapter for those who just can ’ t get enough of culture or of cultural studies: … Some of the other hundred different definitions of culture; a look at the subjects history, linguistics, and literature (not given in the list from “ Anthropology to Sociology ” ) in comparison with cultural studies; how the origins of the American school of comparative literature has foreshadowed the development of cultural studies; how the term “ text ” has changed in the last hundred years and its current meaning in cultural studies; criteria to distinguish between good and not-so-good examples of high culture and popular culture; lots of other important figures in the history of cultural studies - including a lot of foreigners with mostly Frenchsounding names … 416 II Looking at Anglo-American Cultural Studies <?page no="424"?> Conclusion We ’ ve now come to the end of our day together after appetizers, lunch, and dinner, and we ’ ve come to the end of this book. Hopefully you ’ ve enjoyed the meals and are now well nourished to continue with your explorations of all things American and British. Hopefully the many bells that should ring when you come across some of the topics that you ’ ve read about here won ’ t result in a cacophony but rather in a grand symphony. Or to change metaphors: I hope you ’ re able now to see Anglo-American Area and Cultural Studies as a diamond that sparkles from many different angles. Since cultural studies always contains personal experience and motivation for action beyond the ivory tower and outside hallowed academic walls, I feel that I can include a bit of my personal experience and my wish for action here at the very end of our time together. My curiosity as a young American exchange student about all things German involved travelling from Flensburg to Garmisch, going to see Faust and finding it excruciatingly boring, being astonished at the nudity on the front covers of magazines, eating Wurstsalat, and observing the (to me seemingly rude) behavior of the natives in crowded subways and pedestrian zones or being surprised by the fashion fact that the majority of German women wore earrings. And there were also many things which convinced me to stay - the beer, the coffee (in a pre-Starbucks world), the bread, buildings made of beautiful stone (and not covered in plastic siding), the public transportation system, the social security system, the history (it took me years to get used to the fact that I could touch artifacts older than the country I was born in), the admirable way in which Germany confronted its own past. I ’ ve tried to keep my original curiosity about the Old World in mind when planning and writing this book. I hope I ’ ve been able to make you curious about the two cultures hyphenated together as Anglo-American, but in ways very distinct from each other. And I hope I ’ ve been able to answer some of your questions and to satisfy some of your curiosity, but I especially hope I ’ ve been able to whet your appetite for even more Anglo-American Area and Cultural Studies. Since cultural studies often contains a call to action, please let me express my own fascination and reservations about cultural studies Anglo-American Area and Cultural Studies bells and diamonds curiosity and wonder call to action 417 Conclusion <?page no="425"?> here and now. In cultural studies you can do anything you want, explore areas that have to do with what it means to be human, explore topics that are probably immediately interesting to students. The popular teacher and cultural researcher Vicki Galloway came up with my favorite list of four old-fashioned approaches to learning about another culture, which I ’ ll adapt slightly here for our purposes (Galloway was writing from the perspective of Americans learning about Spanish culture), including a last look at some of the tidbits I ’ ve shared with you. ▶ The Frankenstein Approach: talking a bit about American attitudes towards abortion putting it together with a another bit about British resisting the metric system for distances and pints of beer, and tacking on a bit of history of the special relationship between the US and the UK. ▶ The 4-F Approach: folk dances (at least I mentioned square dancing and ballet), festivals (Last Night at the Proms, of course), fairs (circuses were part of the chapter title on the arts), and food (bread as part of the title of the area studies chapter on the arts, and food as a factor of identity - and the narrative of the whole book was framed as a meal! ). ▶ The Tour Guide Approach: monuments (count those in geography and the arts and don ’ t forget the national identity monuments in Part II), rivers (count the number in chapter 1), cities (even including some touristy photos), etc. (the etc. is my favorite part of this approach). ▶ The By the Way Approach: sporadic lectures or bits of indiscriminately selected behavior (you can find enough of this in Part I and maybe even some in Part II). Galloway criticized these haphazard approaches for good reason. At the end of the day after creating your Frankensteins, doing the obligatory 4-Fs, going on the mandatory tour, and taking in all the “ oh-by-the-way-did-you-happen-to-know ” tidbits, do you really understand everything you need to know about the Americans and the British? Hopefully not! The critical cultural studies view that you ’ ve gained by reading this book should have made you cautious. But on the other hand we have to start somewhere, and knowing a bit about festivals and food, rivers and cities, and strange customs and attitudes can lead to a deeper critical understanding of things both on the other side of the Channel and on the other side of the ocean, critical critical understanding 418 Conclusion <?page no="426"?> understanding being infinitely better than blind awe. And a critical understanding of the Americans and the British can lead to a better understanding of our own cultural environment and of our own personal identity. I ’ ve felt uncomfortable with the breadth and depth of cultural studies, at times near drowning in the ocean of theories, books, journals, and names both big and little. I ’ ve also felt uncomfortable with the relativism that at times seems to pervade the field. I can sometimes sympathize with the critics who claim that cultural studies busies itself too much with reading cereal boxes instead of Shakespeare, or looking at Brillo boxes instead of Bauhaus. My undergraduate education was at St. John ’ s College, the “ Great Books ” school, with a curriculum that, at first glance anyway, is as far from cultural studies as you can get. We had a canon, a rather strictly defined one, and read each and every week some of the most inspiring and at times the dullest and most complicated books written in western civilization. (I could put a bell here with a reference to what you read about in the last chapter - remember the issue of canon and Allan Bloom? Allan Bloom was a popular person at St. John ’ s. But no more bells at the end of our time together since we ’ ll have more beautiful music in just a few paragraphs … ) But there is one connection between my St. John ’ s education and the spirit of cultural studies that I find inspiring. Even with the Great Books canon as a guide, we weren ’ t able to latch on to one “ right way of thinking ” since the authors we read as part of the Great Conversation were busy contradicting one other - and sometimes themselves. And we students learned quickly to question the wisdom and even the competence of our “ tutors ” (there was no professorial hierarchy at St. John ’ s). So, summing up, I hope that you ’ ve found what you hoped to find in this book - an introduction to things American and British that you can use in your courses, in exams, and perhaps in later life too. And most of all, I hope that what you ’ ve read will encourage you to increase your critical awareness of the world in general and of the German university in particular with its persistently and sometimes startlingly feudal structures - especially disturbing so many years after “ Unter den Talaren, der Muff von 1000 Jahren. ” Cultural studies should create a more emotional response than other disciplines in academia. Some fear and hate cultural studies for its potential to change power systems or for its taking popular culture seriously. But I hope that you won ’ t be discouraged - neither by those who hate cultural studies nor by some of the incomprehensible stuff subversive? oh yes! 419 Conclusion <?page no="427"?> written by poor academics in cultural studies both here and abroad (remember and pity the publish-or-perish principle of university education). While I hope you ’ ve enjoyed reading this book, I also hope that you were at times just a little bit annoyed with me and perhaps asked: “ Why didn ’ t he just come out and give us the facts? If Part II criticizes so much of what was in Part I, why didn ’ t he write Part I differently? ” Part of my honest response to these reactions would include deadlines and space limitations, but the much more important reason is my attempt to encourage you to think critically yourselves, refusing to unconditionally accept another person ’ s theories, explanations or selected facts, even if that person is a teacher with a title. Generation Z, the generation of many of the readers of this book, those born around the turn of the millennium, is on track to become the best-educated generation in American history. This generation is also made up of younger British people who experienced the advantages of EU membership before Brexit took it away. Generation Z is aware of the environmental hazards that endangers their longterm future, and they are aghast at Russia ’ s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which - after their parents ’ lives were blessed with peace - threatens to afflict their lives with the horrors and hardships of war. Can Generation Z save American democracy and help heal the pain and loneliness in American and British society, and also overcome the polarization there? These are tasks not just for one generation but for all, not just for Americans and the British but also for Germans and for all Europeans and all human beings regardless of nationality. But since the subject matter of this book is not saving the world but becoming more competent in Anglo-American cultural studies, the relevant task here is much easier. I ’ ve kept our last biggie in mind throughout this book. last biggie in box YOU, future scholar in Anglo-American Area and Cultural Studies, born in Germany, 21 st century Perhaps because cultural studies is a young discipline (or more accurately, an anti-discipline), or because of its emphasis on the study of power and its inherent criticism of institutions, or because so much research in cultural studies is driven by personal and political interests, or most probably because of all these things and others too, you the Generation Z and saving the world 420 Conclusion <?page no="428"?> reader, the interested student, the future scholar have the opportunity to shape the future of cultural studies. Even as cultural studies has become more institutionalized with new degrees, with university departments, with journals, anthologies, books, professorships, and conferences, those who do cultural studies continually and consistently question the value of this institutionalization (sometimes from a comfortable tenured chair). Even while trying to define cultural studies, those who do cultural studies are resisting and wrestling with definitions, arguing strongly against a canon while publishing anthologies of articles by the big names of the past, resisting prescriptive guidelines for research while trying to write clear introductions for students telling them how to do cultural studies. This sounds pretty chaotic and contradictory, doesn ’ t it? So, as you can see, the future of cultural studies really does need shaping as do German universities too. Barbra Streisand started her concert in Berlin in summer 2007 with an old song, which some of you now have perhaps heard. In 1966 she closed her second highly praised television show “ Color Me Barbra ” with the same song. Hopefully now the colors of Deborah Kass ’ artwork reflect for you the multi-colored ways of looking at American and British area and cultural studies. Fig. 0.1 4 Barbras (The Jewish Jackie Series) Now take my hand For the greatest journey Heaven can allow Starting love Starting here Starting now 421 Conclusion <?page no="429"?> List of Illustrations 0.1 Deborah Kass, 4 Barbras, 1993, © Bild-Kunst for Artists Rights Society 1.1 continental US? United States in the World.svg. Wikimedia Commons, Author: TUBS, Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: United_States_in_the_World.svg 1.2 US population density (US Census) 1.3 change in congressional seats 2020 (US Census) 1.4 the “ British ” Isles (Skinner) 1.5 the “ British ” Isles terminology: British Isles terms.gif. Wikimedia Commons, Author: Matt Lewis, Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: British_Isles_terms.gif 1.6 isles and seas: British Isles.svg. Wikimedia Commons, Author: Smurrayinchester, Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: British_Isles. svg 1.7 witch on a pig (John Spiers Twitter Tweet 2017.1.2) 1.8 palm tree here? (photo: Roberto) 1.9 Westminster sign (photo: Roberto) 1.10 UK urban density (Skinner) 2.1 Martin Waldseemüller ’ s Universalis cosmographia (Library of Congress) 2.2 Fort San Marcos in St. Augustine Florida (photo: Roberto) 2.3 Sacagawea golden dollar coin (United States mint image) 2.4 territorial expansion map (US Census) 2.5 US $20 Andrew Jackson, planned US $20 Harriet Tubman 2.6 Frederick Douglass Harper ’ s Weekly cover (Smithsonian) 2.7 Civil Rights Memorial (photo: Dead Feminists website) 2.8 Emmett Till courtesy of artist Lisa Whittington 2.9 Bayeux Tapestry detail (Wikimedia Commons) 2.10 Glyndwr statue Cardiff: Owain Glynd ŵ r at Cardiff City Hall.jpg. Wikimedia Commons, Author: Seth Whales, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Owain_Glynd% C5%B5r_at_Cardiff_City_Hall.jpg 2.11 Armada Portrait Elizabeth I: Armada Portrait Elizabeth I Queens House.jpg. Wikimedia Commons, Artist: anonymous, Title: The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, Royal Museums Greenwich, Author: PKM, Licence: CC0 1.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Armada_Portrait_Elizabeth_I_Queens_House.jpg 2.12 Charles Edward Stuart portrait: Lost Portrait of Charles Edward Stuart.jpg. Wikimedia Commons, Artist: Allan Ramsay, Title: Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 1720 - 1788. Eldest Son of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, National Galleries Scotland, Author: Blight55, Licence: CC0 1.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Lost_- Portrait_of_Charles_Edward_Stuart.jpg 2.13 cartoon from Punch 1917: A Good Riddance - George V of the United Kingdom cartoon in Punch, 1917.png. Wikimedia Commons, Artist: Leonard Raven-Hill, Title: A Good Riddance: “ The King has done a popular act in abolishing the German titles held by members of His Majesty's family. ” , Author: Magog the Ogre, Licence: CC0 1.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: A_Good_Riddance_-_George_V_of_the_United_Kingdom_cartoon_in_Punch,_1917.png 422 Illustrations <?page no="430"?> 2.14 David Lloyd George statue London (photo: Roberto) 2.15 Winston Churchill statue London (photo: Roberto) 3.1 registered service marks Planned Parenthood Federation of America 3.2 St. Thomas ’ Hospital London (photo: Roberto) 4.1 college collage (photos: Roberto) 4.2 “ Toffs and Toughs ” . Photographer Jimmy Sime, London, 1937 4.3 cartoonist Rollin Kirby 1925 4.4 collage American education artifacts (scan: Roberto) 5.1 the Queen on her way to work (photo: Roberto) 5.2 Sovereign ’ s Entrance to Parliament London (photo: Roberto) 5.3 visitor entrance to Parliament London (photo: Roberto) 5.4 Scottish Parliament collage Edinburgh (scan: Roberto) 5.5 Senedd Cardiff Wales (photo: Roberto) 6.1 Puerto Rico flag map: Flag-map of Puerto Rico.svg. Wikimedia Commons, Author: Darwinek, Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Flagmap_of_Puerto_Rico.svg 6.2 British Empire (Wikimedia Commons) 6.3 Commonwealth of Nations: Commonwealth of Nations members with territories.png. Wikimedia Commons, Author: Bastin8, License CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https: / / commons. wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Commonwealth_of_Nations_members_with_territories.png 6.4 flag of the Commonwealth of Nations 6.5 Commonwealth Cemetery Cologne (photo: Roberto) 7.1 Jim Crow (New York Public Library Digital Collection) 7.2 Du Bois (Smithsonian National Museum) 7.3 restaurants London (photo: Roberto) 8.1 US coins collage (United States mint) 8.2 US church and temples collage (United States Mint, photos: Roberto) 8.3 UK coins collage (Royal mint images) 8.4 UK church and temples collage (photos: Roberto) 9.1 Great Seal of the United States 9.2 hedgerows near Exeter, Congestion Charge London (photos: Roberto) 9.3 National Parks UK. Wikimedia Commons, License CC BY-SA 4.0, URL: https: / / en. wikipedia.org/ wiki/ National_parks_of_the_United_Kingdom#/ media/ File: National_- Parks_in_the_United_Kingdom.svg 9.4 Jurassic Coast danger (photos: Roberto): 10.1 Zenger trial (Special Collections New York State Library Albany) 10.2 Leon Berrit cartoonist (Library of Congress) 10.3 collage Fleet Street + London newspaper boxes (photos: Roberto) 11.1 Interior of Exeter Cathedral (photo: Roberto) 11.2 York Minster (photo: Roberto) 423 Illustrations <?page no="431"?> 11.3 Hearst Castle collage (photos: Robert) 11.4 German stamps (© James Rizzi artwork by Art Licensing Int. GmbH, www.artlicensint.com) 12.1 flags British Isles: British Isles Venn Diagram-en.png. Creative Commons, Author: Wdcf, Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: British_Isles_Venn_Diagram-en.png 12.2 Edward Said: Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim in Sevilla, 2002 (Said).jpg. Creative Commons, Author: Barenboim-Said Akademie gGmbH, Licence: CC0 1.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Edward_Said_and_Daniel_Barenboim_in_Sevilla, _2002_(Said).jpg 12.3 Royal Mint image 12.4 Stuart Hall (blackpast.org) 12.5 Homi K. Bhabha: Homi K. Bhabha-cropd.jpg. Creative Commons, Author: jeanbaptisteparis (Homi_K._Bhabha.jpg; derivative work: Hidro), Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Homi_K._Bhabha-cropd.jpg 13.1 Antonio Gramsci: Gramsci colorized photo.jpg. Creative Commons, Author: Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada, Licence: CC0 1.0 URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Gramsci_colorized_photo.jpg 13.2 Palace of Westminster (photo: Roberto) 13.3 E. P. Thompson: E P Thompson at 1980 protest rally (cropped).JPG. Creative Commons, Author: Kim Traynor, Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: E_P_Thompson_at_1980_protest_rally_(cropped).JPG 13.4 Richard Hoggart (Peter Creswell artist, Goldsmiths website) 13.5 Michel Foucault: Michel Foucault.jpg. Creative Commons, Author: Nemomain, Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Michel_Foucault.jpg 14.1 bell hooks (Blackpast.org; photo by Cmongirl, public domain) 14.2 Judith Butler: JudithButler2013.jpg. Creative Commons, Author: University of California, Berkeley, Licence: CC0 1.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: JudithButler2013.jpg 15.1 Marshall McLuhan: Marshall McLuhan at Cambridge University.jpg. Creative Commons, Author: unknown, Source: Library and Archives Canada, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: Marshall_McLuhan_at_Cambridge_University.jpg 15.2 Francis Barraud painting His Late Master ’ s Voice: His Master's Voice.jpg, Creative Commons, Artist: Francis Barraud, Source/ Photographer: Victor Talking Machine Company, Author: Meidosensei, Licence: CC0 1.0, URL: https: / / commons.wikimedia. org/ wiki/ File: His_Master%27 s_Voice.jpg 16.1 Raymond Williams (courtesy of the Raymond Williams Society) 424 Illustrations <?page no="433"?> ISBN 978-3-8252-5940-2 Dieser Band kombiniert eine Einführung in die traditionellen Kategorien der Landeskunde mit einer Darstellung wichtiger Schlüsselthemen der modernen Kulturwissenschaften. In englischer Sprache verfasst und auf die Gegebenheiten an Universitäten im deutschsprachigen Raum zugeschnitten, wurde er für die dritte Auflage vollständig überarbeitet und auf den neuesten Stand der Ereignisse gebracht. Lehrbücher mit einem klaren Konzept: ▶ Farbige Abbildungen und Karten veranschaulichen den Lernstoff ▶ Aufgaben fördern das Verständnis und regen zur Weiterarbeit an basics Dies ist ein utb-Band aus dem Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. utb ist eine Kooperation von Verlagen mit einem gemeinsamen Ziel: Lehr- und Lernmedien für das erfolgreiche Studium zu veröffentlichen. utb.de QR-Code für mehr Infos und Bewertungen zu diesem Titel Anglistik Amerikanistik Kulturwissenschaft