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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
Since the 1970s, the Sunbelt has agglomerated—and represented—disparate centers of population and economic growth, generally in the Southern tiers of the US from Florida to California. Some of these areas were underdeveloped before the Second World War; hence the term also refers to a major shift in communities and power in the US. In contrast, older, declining industrial centers have been labeled the “Rustbelt.” Although cities like Los Angeles, CA and Miami, FL long have been models of recreation, leisure and dreams, the Sunbelt as a new boom region has encompassed both cities and suburbs, including new financial and government nodes—Atlanta, GA, Charlotte (North Carolina) and Houston, TX. Retirement and tourism centers also have blossomed, including Phoenix, AZ and Orlando/Disneyworld (Florida), whose population grew by 50 percent between 1980 and 1990. By analogy, some stretch “Sunbelt” to include other areas of new growth since the 1970s, including Denver, CO and Hawai’i. Rustbelt is used less as a term, since it does little for boosterism or growth, but taints cities such as Buffalo, NY, Cleveland, OH and Philadelphia, PA.
The Sunbelt nonetheless encompasses uneven growth patterns as well as changes over time. Southern California and South Florida, its early centers, already have faced problems of sprawl and racial and ethnic divisions exacerbated during recessions. Smaller cities like Santa Fe, NM and Nashville, TN have challenged other Sunbelt metropoles with their more relaxed lifestyles, while all areas face increasing growth and the insistent franchising of both malls and downtowns. Throughout the Sunbelt, meanwhile, longsettled populations have complained about intruders. Some—African Americans in the South and Latinos and Native Americans in the Southwest and West—have fought their exclusion from new growth. New immigrants from outside the US have also created new diversity exemplified by Asian strip malls forming part of suburban highway sprawl from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
After decades of growth, Sunbelt states have gained a large voice in politics (especially among Republicans), manifest in the mass presidential primaries of “Super Tuesday” (the first Tuesday in March), when eight Southern states vote together. They are centers for industry, services (including tourism) and, increasingly for culture, whether in research centers, new arts and museum complexes, or sports. The Sunbelt also sets national styles, exemplified in fads for Southwest designs. Yet it faces competition from other regions that tempt mobile Americans with economic opportunity and an enhanced “quality of life,” whether the “Ecotopia” of the Pacific Northwest, revivals of New England towns or the diversity of older industrial cities. At the same time, the explosion of Sunbelt urban and rural areas also has created gaps in education, healthcare and social services, while new and old citizens search for civic identities that will build bridges from bucolic pasts into rapidly changing futures.
Industry:Culture
The International Business Machine corporation (also known as “Big Blue” in Richard Delamarter’s 1986 expose), founded by Thomas J. Watson, long dominated the computer industry in the US. Watson had come up through National Cash Register, where he was jailed with other executives in 1912 for antitrust violations. Joining and taking over the CTR corporation, he expanded from calculating machines to massive computers and peripheral attachments that made IBM the most profitable company in the world in the postwar period. At the same time, the company became known for its crushing of competitors and regulation of workers (down to their white shirts). IBM faced its own lengthy antitrust suit from 1969 to 1982. IBM stumbled as personal computers hit the market, although it recovered with an industry standard in the 1980s. Nonetheless, it no longer provided the secure employment or national symbol that it once was despite continuing power. Its history and style are often opposed to the West Coast Apple and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs; parallels, however, may also be telling.
Industry:Culture
The Midwest is the most ambiguous and least welldefined of major American regions. In contrast to the South the West, or New England the Midwest has neither a sharp, clear historical identity nor a strong presence in contemporary popular culture. There are no music or movie genres called “midwesterns” and no traditions of Midwest literature or history comparable to that of the South or West. Even the geographic referent is uncertain. For some, the Midwest refers to the “Old Northwest,” the states north of the Ohio River, between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River. But for others the heart of the Midwest lies in the plains states of Kansas and Nebraska, well to the west of the Mississippi. While an inclusive twelve-state definition centered on the Upper Mississippi-Missouri watershed—Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and the two Dakotas—is becoming somewhat standard, there is no real consensus even on this most basic issue.
Another way of envisioning the Midwest is as the hinterland of Chicago, IL. The Midwest is encompassed by a large semi-circle or arc of economic influence stretching for some 500 miles around the great metropolis of the central US. But the strongest and most common identifying characteristic of the Midwest is agriculture. The Midwest is rural and agrarian, in contrast with the urban and industrial coasts. Because of this identification of farming and region, the encroachment of urbanization and industrialization from the east and the growth of cities like Detroit, MI and Cleveland, OH have gradually shifted perceptions of the region more to the west. Michigan and Ohio have lost some of their credentials as Midwestern states, and are more associated with the industrial northeast. Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska are now the most typical Midwest states.
Farming and pastoralism identify the Midwest with one of the abiding positive themes of American culture, going back to Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Thus, the Midwest is often seen as the best and most typical part of America, still resembling a small town and rural “golden age,” before ‘America grew up and moved to the city,” bringing all of the problems that have beset the urbanized nation. Americans think of the Midwest as the safest, most honest, hard-working, friendly middle-class, egalitarian center of American culture. The Midwest is Lawrence Welk, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, Dorothy and Auntie Em and Toto in The Wizard of Oz, and Main Street in Disneyland (made to resemble Walt Disney’s childhood hometown of Marcelline, Missouri). Above all it is farmers and small towns—to test wide acceptability one asks “How does it play in Peoria?” Hence, commentator George Will opined that if God were an American, he would surely be a Midwesterner.
Nonetheless, the 1920s and 1930s were the apogee of Midwest pride and selfconfidence.
Since the Second World War, the Midwest’s image has been somewhat tarnished. It has seemed to many an increasingly old-fashioned and out of touch backwater in a cosmopolitan, modernizing and multicultural society Isolationism before the Second World War and McCarthyism afterwards hurt the region’s reputation, in spite of Truman and Eisenhower’s political roles as native sons. Subsequent Midwesterners have led majority and minority parties in Congress, but Robert Dole lost to a Southern incumbent in 1996.
A prolonged farming crisis and economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s precipitated a drastic decline in the number of farms and farmers; disasters like floods, tornadoes and droughts recur as themes in news and fictional media. Many Midwest states began to lose population. People fled south and west in droves, leaving behind pejorative labels like rustbelt and snowbelt. A famous albeit controversial proposal envisioned returning much of the Great Plains to its early nineteenth-century state as a “Buffalo Commons.” Some thought a notorious error in which the state of North Dakota was left out of the 1989 Rand McNally atlas was symbolic of the region’s status.
Economic hard times helped foster violent, terrorist individuals and organizations such as the posse commitatus and various “freemen” militias.
But there has also been a more positive side to the picture. Much of this has to do with things rural or “country.” Midwest Living became a commercial success, touting the region’s “clean air, genuine friendships, appreciation for the land, and family oriented values,” in contrast to urban blight and decay. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970– 7), a long-running newsroom sitcom set in Minneapolis, and Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Woebegone, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average,” reinforced more positive images of the region. The farming crisis of the 1980s elicited sympathetic literary and cinematic portrayals of the Midwest. While fictional accounts of the region, from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood to Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, Robert Waller’s phenomenally popular Bridges of Madison County, or the Coen brother’s quirky movie Fargo, have not ignored the darker side of the contemporary Midwest, elements of idealism and admiration are also evident in these works.
In short, despite vicissitudes, the Midwest seems likely to remain an important and evolving region, image and concept in contemporary American culture. An influx of Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans is altering the once homogeneously European population. Industrialization and urbanization are on the increase. But the Midwest also retains much of its earlier character. One indication is the increasing tendency of both Midwesterners and outsiders to refer to the region with an openly adulatory and congratulatory label as the nation’s “heartland.” Indeed, it sometimes seems possible that “heartland” may replace the more traditional but problematic “Midwest” as the primary label for this large and vital interior section of the nation. It is hard not to feel optimistic about any region that considers itself and is considered by others to be the “heartland” of a nation.
Industry:Culture
Upholding the constitutional separation of church and state, the US Supreme Court in 1963 interpreted the 1st Amendment and the Bill of Rights to mean that children should not be subject in public schools to involuntary participation in the prayers of others.
Those who advocate instituting school prayer, often heard on Christian media and among those on the Christian Right of the Republican Party, argue that the 1st Amendment should protect them from government interference in the practice of their faith. In some areas of the country (e.g. the Bible belt), communities continued after 1963 to sanction prayer in the schools, leading to cases like that in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, when newcomers objected and took the school board to court. Focus has shifted to the word “voluntary” and supporters of prayer in schools have been pushing for the introduction of a moment of silence during which students may pray. Opponents, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, question how voluntary this may be and whether it would not still be oppressive to atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, among others, who might feel obliged to conform to Christian-imposed ritual.
Industry:Culture
The traditional multinational corporation was controlled from its world headquarters (often in the US). Firm-wide policy dictated the responsibilities of its foreign subsidiaries. The subsidiaries were tightly controlled, often run by imported executives who had little flexibility in altering methods or products to conform to local cultures.
“Corporate imperialism” sought new markets as an opportunity to sell existing products, not as an opportunity for development of new ideas.
The concept of “think globally act locally” has gained credence with the increasing interrelationship technological innovation has created. Multinationals are more than just firms with operations in multiple countries. Today foreign subsidiaries often run independently. Instead of importing Harvard MBAs, the executive ranks include locally born and educated employees who have broad power to set policies and standards.
Multinationals thrive on the diversity of their employees and the markets in which they operate.
The global giants are faced with a challenge: to what extent must firms maintain control over their foreign operations? Initial forays into emerging markets produced mixed results. Cereal firms spent millions in India only to have their customers switch to generic, local alternatives as soon as they became available. Consumer product firms and automakers have had difficulty identifying middle-class needs. Clearly, some flexibility is needed to market products to a wide variety of cultures.
Gillette has been particularly successful without modifying its products for cultural variations. On a daily basis, 1.2 billion people use at least one Gillette product.
McDonald’s on the other hand has encountered differing tastes throughout the world, forcing it to serve vegetarian burgers in India and alcohol in other markets. Chevrolet would have had serious problems had it marketed its Nova automobile brand in Spanishspeaking countries, and could not sell them among Hispanic Americans (No va translated as “it doesn’t go”).
As the consumer markets in developed countries become saturated, multinationals are increasingly looking to emerging markets as the growth engines of the twenty-first century. Coca Cola, Nike, Citibank and numerous others have increased their presence in such markets. The winners in this race will be those who are able to weather the turmoil in these markets and capitalize on it. Coca-Cola (by purchasing local bottlers) and General Electric (by pursuing local contracts) have been aggressive in maintaining and bolstering operations during troubled times. In unveiling its list of the “World’s Most Admired Companies” in October, 1998, Fortune Magazine highlighted the ability of firms to allow flexibility and local control as one of the most important elements of achieving global success.
The growth of multinationals creates fears of Americanization and the loss of cultural identity to the point that entire nations feel threatened. Some of these fears are well founded, although Robert Reich argues the increasing irrelevance of corporate nationality. Multinational corporations owe their allegiance to their shareholders regardless of nationality. The outdated notion of “What is good for GM (General Motors) is good for the US” masks the reality of a global economy. Reich argues that the strongest countries are those with the most skilled workers, not the largest capital base.
Weblike organizations that are replacing the centralized multinationals will allow power to flow to those with the most valuable knowledge.
Industry:Culture
This is the reorientation of history and cultural studies to situate the origins of African American identity (and other cultural features) in Africa in opposition to “Eurocentrism.” Although interest in Africa was apparent in earlier intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and participants in the Harlem Renaissance, this was more clearly a revindicationist movement of black nationalism after civil rights. Among its major proponents are professors Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University, author of The Afrocentric Idea (1987) and Leonard Jeffries of CUNY. Another heated debate, suggested by Martin Bernal’s Black Athena (1987), emerged over the claims of African origins for “Western” civilization. Historical revision, unfortunately, has sometimes been clouded by interethnic debates, as well as by dubious scholarship, although discussion has gnawed away at the implicit and accepted centrality of northern European experiences and perspectives.
See literature, race and ethnicity.
Industry:Culture
The ninth leading cause of death for all Americans, and the second leading cause of death for teenagers (ages fifteen to nineteen). Clues as to reasons for taking one’s life may be written in notes for those left behind to decipher. Causes range from revenge against parents to acute depression, to drug and alcohol abuse and at times—as mass suicides of cult followers have shown—the belief in a better afterworld. Romantic notions coexist with socio-psychological interpretations, and the Centers for Disease Control have declared suicide a “serious public health problem.” Copycat behavior of teens following rockstar suicides, the Supreme Court’s intervention in doctor-assisted suicides and the condemnation of the Catholic Church make suicide an act of contested and uncomfortable signification in cultural consciousness.
Industry:Culture
While state and local boundaries are clearly defined and embodied in law, those of the region called the Pacific Northwest are not. Cohesion derives from the region’s early geographic isolation and resulting history. In this article, “Pacific Northwest” refers to Washington, Oregon and Idaho (Schwantes), although the term is sometimes used also to include British Columbia, western Montana and/or northern California.
This variegated, 250,000 square mile, parallelogram-shaped region spans 480 miles north to south and 680 miles east to west. It is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Canadian border to the north, the Klamath (Siskiyou) Mountains and Great Basin desert to the south, and the Rocky Mountains to the east. Its vegetative diversity reflects its climatic diversity, with three major vegetation provinces—forest, shrub-steppe and alpine. Unifying the region is the Columbia River, with its many tributaries, transportation and communication networks, trade and commerce patterns and a special sense of place derived from its history and geography.
What gives Pacific Northwesterners a different sense of place from others? The environment. The region’s spectacular landscape offers a plethora of contrasts, from breathtaking views of jagged mountains to alpine meadows; from the glistening waters of the coast to the vast, dry, sagebrush interior; from wide sandy beaches to rugged headlands; from lush forested valleys to bare rock faces; and from placid estuaries to turbulent mountain streams.
The region’s geography provides the basis for understanding its history and economy.
The Pacific Northwest remained isolated from the main centers of economic and political power through the early part of the twentieth century. Because of its separateness and the fact that it supplied the country with raw materials such as furs, logs, lumber, agricultural products, seafood and metals it came to be thought of as a colonial hinterland.
The region was home to two contrasting American Indian cultures. The coastal and plateau peoples located in a rich natural environment produced a stable economy and sedentary culture. In contrast, the desert peoples adapted to its dry climate and scarcity of food with a seminomadic lifestyle.
The region’s environment is an outcome not merely of geologic history but also of values about nature deeply embedded in the local psyche. Pacific Northwest literature is replete with images of human interaction with the natural environment. It is often suggested that the environment itself determined who settled here—that the rugged mountains and gigantic forests attracted strongwilled, self-reliant people.
In all three states of the Pacific Northwest, tourism is one of the top three revenue generators. The area’s many recreational resources not only benefit the regional economy but are also an important contributor to Pacific Northwesterners’ high quality of life. The terrain seduces worldclass mountain climbers, skiiers and other outdoor enthusiasts.
Hikers escape to the untrammeled wilderness areas, combers and surfers to the beaches, fishing enthusiasts to the streams, lakes and rivers and hunters to the wildlife of the forests and shrub steppes.
Bucking one of the strongest traditions of the American West—an individual’s right to develop his or her own land—the Pacific Northwest led the country in several areas of environmental protection through growth management, as well as forest and salmon protection legislation. This was not, however, achieved without controversy—the battle lines were clearly visible from bumper stickers declaring: “I Like Spotted Owls—Fried” versus “Save an Owl, Educate a Logger.” The 1990 census showed the Pacific Northwest outpacing the national rate of population growth, with newcomers arriving from all over the United States as well as from overseas. Washington has five times the population of Idaho, while Oregon’s population lies between the two. The average population density was thirty-five people per square mile in 1990, significantly lower than the national average of seventy. The Pacific Northwest’s population has always been overwhelmingly Caucasian, but now includes rapidly growing Spanish-speaking, Asian and African American populations.
Over time, the Pacific Northwest’s attitudes towards its minority populations have shifted dramatically but differently in each state. Idaho’s image is often associated with that of the white supremacists. Contrast the late nineteenth-century banner seen in Seattle proclaiming “The Chinese must go!” with the 1996 election of Washington Governor Gary Locke, the first Chinese American governor in US history. While discriminatory signs once excluded blacks from public places in Washington State, African Americans have recently been elected as County Executive (Ron Sims) and Seattle mayor (Norm Rice).
Although the Second World War expanded the region’s economy to include manufacturing (due to Puget Sound-based Boeing’s defense contracts), forestry mining, fishing and agricultural industries continued to be important. In Washington’s Puget Sound region in particular, the economy has taken wild rollercoaster rides as Boeing’s defense and commercial contracts have alternately expanded and shriveled.
Following a dramatic downturn in manufacturing in the early 1970s, the region made a concerted effort to diversify its economy. This resulted in marked expansions in international trade, service and high-technology industries—most notably Microsoft, which catapulted the region onto the world’s radar screen. The Pacific Northwest continues to dominate the high-tech industry worldwide, while spawning numerous spinoff businesses here at home.
Images of Northwest scenery in TV series such as Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–1) and Northern Exposure (CBS, 1990–5), and Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991) have introduced millions around the globe to this region.
“Northwest cuisine” not only reflects variations in the area’s landscape and ethnic populations, but captures its adventurous spirit through four subregional cuisines. Coastal waters cuisine dares us with dishes such as matsutake mushrooms in seaweed broth and creamy sea-urchin bisque. Farmland cuisine tempts us with Walla Walla onion frittata and Fraser Valley pheasant. Cities cuisine features microbrew steamers and cappuccino cheesecake. Finally, mountains and forests cuisine includes tasty delicacies like morels on toast and vegetable pâté with watercress and fiddlehead ferns. With Northwest wines and microbrews winning international awards, a locally made beverage is a must to accompany the region’s culinary delights.
Industry:Culture
The American bathroom is understandably associated with body waste and dirt, as well as privacy even in public space. Architecturally bathrooms tend to be the most secluded spaces of the house; building codes do not require them to be naturally lit. Similarly, in many homes, the bathroom is the only room that can be locked. While bathrooms are often the home’s smallest rooms, they are sites of many hours of daily bodily ritual, using a toilet, one or more sinks, bathtub and/or shower, mirrors, medicine cabinet and associated fittings (a bidet is seen as a marker of European influence). Because of the secretive nature of these practices, in the postwar context, the bathroom often seemed a forgotten space in visual culture. Nonetheless, All in the Family (CBS, 1971–) challenged contemporary values by prominently displaying a toilet in February, 1977. After breaking this social taboo, the domestic bathroom has become more visible in many cultural contexts, including mass media, advertising and home design.
Bathrooms are still private; hence, middle-class dwellings are expected to have multiple facilities, including utility washrooms and private bathrooms for master bedroom suites. Within the room, cabinets and closets often become hiding places of embarrassing paraphernalia, ranging from analgesic ointments to birth-control appara-tus.
Privacy is also linked to the gendering of public and private spaces: women are often associated with bathroom sociability (including childcare and conversations during waits), as well as extensive grooming in both private and public facilities. For men, the bathroom has been constructed as an isolated space, away from the family and certainly from male strangers, although this cultural invisibility has allowed public bathrooms to become known as gay rendezvous points (“tearooms”). The unisex public bathroom reflects the social changes of the 1960s, and is often associated with college dormitories, although it has figured as a prominent social space in television’s Ally McBeal (FOX, 1997–).
“Bathroom humor” relies on bodily functions for response. Although considered unsophisticated, it pervades mass culture, including the comedy of George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, the cartoon South Park and teen-oriented films like There’s Something About Mary (1998). Likewise, the bathroom is commonly the locus of illicit behavior ranging from benign teenage rebellion (Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room (1968), Brownsville Station) to sexual activity, particularly masturbation, the “quickie” and homoerotic practices (Basketball Diaries (1978) by Jim Carroll or the fiction of Henry Miller). Graffiti, whether humorous, racist or sexist, also appears in bathrooms.
Cinematically, the bathroom also has been characterized as the site of violence (violation of privacy) in films such as Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).
In the 1990s, a luxurious domestic bathroom became an indicator of social status.
Martha Stewart and Bob Vila invaded homes and cultivated a market for nostalgic tubs with claw feet and porcelain fixtures; other elite features include saunas, his-and-hers tubs and fireplaces. Advertising also markets bathroom products as sources of pleasure and well-deserved relaxation/ escape. Hence, the domestic bathroom has gained status as a site of embellishment, and now shares with the kitchen a reputation as a coveted site of remodeling.
Industry:Culture
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC houses exhibits on the Holocaust, the systematic effort of the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 to exterminate the Jews of Europe and members of other groups the Nazis considered “undesirable.” The museum also runs a variety of education programs and is a center for Holocaust scholarship. The bill creating the museum was approved by Congress unanimously in 1980, and the museum opened in 1993. The money to build the museum was provided exclusively through private donations, but the federal government pays for the museum’s operational expenses. The museum draws far more visitors than originally anticipated and since the museum’s opening, several states and cities have opened their own Holocaust museums and memorials. Congress’ decision to charter the museum was in some ways a break with past practices as the museum does not focus on an event in American history although its exhibits do deal with the US reaction to the Holocaust and its aftermath.
Industry:Culture
