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Mathematics comprises both a set of pragmatic procedures (applied mathematics) and a set of rigorous deductive systems (pure mathematics). Pure mathematics derives its ultimate inspiration from practical problems, but its domain is purely mental. Beginning with axioms, which are rules for manipulating undefined terms, mathematicians proceed through the purely mental process of deductive inference to derive new mental constructs called theorems. While this abstractness seems to make pure mathematics utterly remote from experience, it does facilitate the application of these constructs to new areas. Also, through abstraction, pure mathematics strives to achieve absolute certainty. Alas, such certainty has proved elusive. Gödel’s Theorem (1931) established that no formal system rich enough to include the natural numbers could be both consistent and complete. Either deductive reasoning cannot yield all that is true in mathematics, or it will yield contradictory results. Since pure mathematics is a mental construct, such a conclusion raises fascinating questions about the nature of the human mind.
Applied mathematics has been wildly successful in describing the natural world and in proving its usefulness in nearly every area of human endeavor. Since the time of Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), the physical sciences (especially physics) have sought mathematical description rather than ultimate causes. The effectiveness of a mathematical procedure as applied to science is typically evaluated not by the rigor of its justification, but by its ability to make predictions about the outcomes of experiments.
While the mathematization of the underlying laws of the life and social sciences has met with spotty success, there can be no doubt that the branch of mathematics called “statistics” forms the basis of nearly all research. Any study that is based on more than anecdotal evidence relies on statistical design and analysis. It follows that a rudimentary understanding of statistics is essential for anyone making decisions based on the results of research, including, for example, decisions about the efficacy and safety of new medications.
Computers have naturally had an enormous influence on mathematics. To begin with, by removing the computational burden from humans, computers affect the way we think about math education. Americans have always had difficulty deciding whether the goal of math education should be the mastery of procedures or the understanding of abstract concepts. The ubiquity of computers and calculators at the very least diminishes the need for arithmetical proficiency, while increasing the need to understand algorithms and numerical accuracy.
Computers have also opened the doors to fascinating new areas of mathematics, including chaos theory The self-similarity of some fractal images (based on chaotic systems) suggests links between the visual arts and designs seen in nature. Chaos theory also links the qualitative and quantitative descriptions of phenomena with wide application to domains previously beyond mathematical analysis.
Industry:Culture
Medicine is a profession that continues to attract entrants of exceptional talent with offers of status, meaningful service and comfortable compensation. Competition by college undergraduates for acceptance into medical school remains formidable. Entry into the medical profession requires completion of a baccalaureate degree followed by four years of medical school in order to qualify for a position in a postgraduate training program or “residency.” Postgraduate training in a hospital setting has become an essential part of the qualifications for medical practice and can last from three to seven additional years.
Medical schools are responsible for not only imparting a knowledge base to students, but also inculcating a professional identity complete with professional norms and values.
There is a natural asymmetry in power stemming from the asymmetry in knowledge between physician and patient that mirrors the asymmetry between teacher and student.
Professional norms play a big role in limiting abuses of power. Because patients have limited ability to monitor whether the medical recommendations they receive are in their best interest, they entrust their very lives to physicians. These concerns are particularly acute in the US healthcare system, where physician compensation is related to the volume and nature of medical services. Fees for service physicians are rewarded for additional volume, whereas many managedcare organizations create financial incentives to limit the volume of medical services.
Under the stresses of a distorting payment system, the success of the doctor-patient relationship depends on the maintenance of professional norms to protect the interests of patients. These norms are maintained by: (1) selecting applicants for medical school who can signal the presence of altruistic concern; (2) early co-option of students as junior colleagues in the profession; (3) tying professional prestige to personal responsibility for patient outcomes; and (4) informal and formal censure for physicians whose treatment decisions show signs of pecuniary motivation.
All professions, medicine included, have suffered some erosion in trust and confidence. Always a nation of do-it-yourselfers, the self-help movement has left America less awed by doctors and more inclined to try to address health problems on their own. In working out their own solutions to health problems, Americans are increasingly likely to consult the Internet, reference books and alternative health practitioners for constructive input.
In addressing its shortcomings, the medical profession is handicapped by long delays between the time educational reforms are started and the time the students who benefit from these reforms enter practice. The long pipeline of medical training is part of the inherent conservatism of medical practice. The latest adaptation to wend its way through medical schools has been a move in practice style away from authoritarian paternalism towards cooperative teamwork in the doctor—patient relationship. Trainees who have learned to listen for constructive input from patients and to share medical advice as suggestions along with the reasoning behind them have been in the making for over a generation. However, only recently have the numbers of these new physicians begun to reach a critical mass in communities throughout America.
The next generation of physicians is being trained in an environment that is thoroughly infiltrated by economic concerns. Insurancecompany policies and constraints are just as likely to be discussed in daily rounds as the latest vital signs and urine output. Hospitals and insurance companies both deploy cadres of “case managers” to question the financial impact of each medical decision. Although older generations of physicians see the presence of economics at the bedside as intrusive and unnatural, how a generation that has grown up in this system will adapt to the continued presence of an activist payment system is an open question.
The stress of medical training stems from a variety of sources. Perhaps foremost is the need for students to adapt to their continual exposure to the harsh realities of death and human suffering. The professional norm of “detached concern” for the suffering of individual patients does not come naturally to idealistic students selected on the basis of a high degree of empathy. Finding a way to be effectively present for the suffering of patients while maintaining the ability to objectively assess clinical situations is a difficult task to be negotiated during the process of professionalization. Errors of cynicism, inappropriate humor and depersonalization are common in this process. In the end there is a great deal of variation in how successful each physician becomes at merging detachment with concern. Overall, medicine tends to focus on physical processes rather than their meaning for whole persons. American society generally gives little space to suffering, preferring to deny its presence or attack its validity. Physicians as products of society mirror this attitude and often address suffering as an objective problem to be solved rather than a fact of life requiring adaptation.
Additional stresses for medical trainees come from long hours both in medical school and postgraduate training. Coupled with long hours is hierarchy. A chain of responsibility extends from the attending physician supervising residents who supervise interns who supervise medical students. Medical problems occur around the clock and the system must be able to respond at all hours. It has been challenging to find ways to couple the dual goals of 24-hour availability and continuity so that the same physicians and students maintain responsibility for a medical problem until it is resolved. To lower the demands on trainee hours, continuity of individual physicians has been replaced by continuity of physician teams in some medical schools. This permits the introduction of shift work into medical training and a concern that the norm of personal responsibility may be replaced by a watch-the-clock mentality.
Industry:Culture
Melodrama has long been a staple of American entertainment; hence long-running, involved tales of family, relationships, conflict and passion have dominated daytime fare on radio and television for decades. Television’s first soap opera, Faraway Hill (Dumont Network, 1946), nonetheless, was broadcast on Wednesday night, 21:00–21:30. A dramatization of Grace Metalious’ popular novel Peyton Place later briefly renewed the night-time soap (ABC, 1964–9). After the success of various miniseries, however, competitive prime-time serial dramas regained prominence in the 1980s, generally coinciding with the social and economic shifts of the Reagan era, including growing class polarization and the rise of the Sunbelt.
Dallas (CBS, 1978–91), the pioneer, followed the affairs of three generations of the plutocrat Ewing family of the South Fork ranch. It synthesized glamour, sexuality politics and oil, and gained worldwide popularity (whose readings Ian Ang has studied in Watching Dallas, 1985). Seasonal cliffhanger endings included “Who shot J.R.?” (referring to an attempt on villain J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman); 41 million households tuned in for the answer, among the most-watched shows in history Plot twists became more contrived as characters shifted in later seasons.
Dynasty (ABC, 1981–9) also mixed money power and oil in the couplings and catfights of two wealthy Denver families. Blake Carrington, played by a former TV sitcom father, John Forsythe, was husband to naive, honest Krystle (Linda Evans) and patriarch to a troubled company and kindred, including one of television’s first gay male characters. Blake’s nemesis/ex-wife, Alexis Carrington, became closely associated with the persona of actor/author Joan Collins. The series offered loyal fans marketing tie-ins like perfume and short-lived spin-offs (The Colbys, ABC, 1985–7), but it also sparked parodic parties and camp humor. Again, its images of power and sin sold well abroad, confirming dreams and stereotypes of the US.
Other related series, with lustful couples, scheming older villains (often reviving Hollywood stars’ careers) and money included Falcon Crest (CBS, 1981–90, with former Reagan wife Jane Wyman as the matriarch of a California winery) and Knots Landing (CBS, 1979–93), set among middle-class California suburbanites. All disappeared into syndication by the mid-1990s, eclipsed by police and medical shows which sometimes claimed to be higher-brow entertainment, yet incorporated similar melodramatic personal stories.
Stories of the beautiful and comfortable later reemerged to prime-time popularity sometimes finding different fans on emergent networks like FOX. Melrose Place (FOX, 1992–), with Dynasty alumna Heather Locklear, proved popular among Generation X viewers. Beverly Hills 90210 (FOX, 1990–), an Aaron Spelling serial, tracked both its stars and audience from Hollywood high-school chic through college affairs. Perhaps as a response to changing times, these seem to focus more on sexuality and betrayal than on the glamorization of sheer wealth that underpinned Dynasty and Dallas. Nonetheless like daytime soaps—and real-life dramas portrayed by news media in the same melodramatic and cliffhanger styles, from O.J. Simpson to the Clinton White House—these continue to be staples of the American dream.
Industry:Culture
Memory of a pre-Internet America, door-to-door sales of brushes (Fuller brush men), vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias and bibles were all part of the incorporation of rural and even suburban America into national consumption. As envoys of modernity these sales representatives (generally male) also had dubious reputations: the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter is a standard scenario of American dirty humor. Yet their era was fading by the time of Albert and David Maysles’ documentary Salesman (1969). While females also participated in these areas, they were known for appointment/party sales of domestic goods and cosmetics—Avon and Tupperware.
Industry:Culture
Mexico’s relationship with the United States began with the settlement of Anglo-Americans in northern Mexico in the 1820s. Hostilities between the two governments and groups of citizens, particularly in what is now the southwestern United States, escalated into the Mexican American War of 1846–8. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the war between the two nations, although portions of the treaty remain in dispute over 150 years after its signing. Relations between Mexico and the United States and its citizens have fluctuated from cordial to violent.
On the macroscopic level, the relationship of the United States with Mexico in the last fifty years is a neo-colonial one. Mexico’s material and human resources are continually utilized by the United States, on both sides of the border. This unequal status and exploitation began in 1848, and violent eruptions, such as the Mexican Revolution of 1910, have resulted. The Border Industrialization Program in the 1960s, and the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, have further eroded the Mexican economy and government and created domestic instability At the beginning of the twenty-first century issues such as the United States’ militarization of the border in “wars” on drugs and undocumented immigration continue the legacy of distrust between the two nations.
At the microscopic level, the 1848 treaty awarded the northern half of Mexico to the United States, and, with it, the people on those lands. Personal and political ties remained between Mexicans living on both sides of the border and distinct cultural variations emerged. Mexicans and Mexican culture (and United States citizens and their culture) continue to move back and forth across the Rio Grande, suggesting the border between the two countries is more political than social. Despite at times hostile relations between the two governments, personal and community relations continue to thrive. Mujer a Mujer, a binational network of female workers discussing shared labor concerns, demonstrates the strength and utility of such ties.
One area which transcends both nations is the ecosystem they share. Since the 1960s, devastating water, air and soil pollution has affected all living organisms in both countries. The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras is one example of a simultaneously grassroots and transnational organization formed to address shared concerns, such as the environment. This type of relationship between the United States and Mexico will necessarily increase as the number of Mexicans rises, both south and north of the border. The Chicano/Chicana population is one of the fastest growing in the United States. They have made Los Angeles, CA the second-largest Mexican city, suggesting the complexity of United States-Mexican relations in the future.
Industry:Culture
Middle age is a relative concept. Although the term literally means a mid-point between birth and death, most Americans consider it to fall in the years between forty and sixty.
During these years, health problems or a parent’s death remind us that life is finite.
Balancing the needs of children and aging parents, while assessing career goals, creates a convergence of life events that is accompanied by a re-evaluation of the life lived, with adjustments of expectations for the future.
People experience becoming middle aged at different points, depending on life experiences. The early onset of chronic illness can evoke these feelings in the thirties.
Likewise, good health and an active lifestyle may postpone the perception of middle age until the sixties or even seventies. For those starting families in their forties, the feeling of middle age may occur later in life. During the 1960s, the youth culture motto was “Never trust anyone over thirty.” As those who chanted that slogan now enter middle age, they are reassessing their lives and redefining aging.
American culture is intensely youth oriented, thus middle age is rarely greeted with enthusiasm. The baby boomer population has embraced the anti-aging industry with gusto. Researchers are exploring options for delaying the aging process. Plastic surgery, hair transplants, physical fitness, New Age cures and vitamin and hormonal supplements may be sought to offset the effects of aging. Many of these remedies are expensive and only available to the more affluent.
Middle age is marked by health-related changes that will continue into old age, although there is no clear dividing line between the two stages. Physical signs can occur simultaneously with the development of chronic health problems. Loss of flexibility and stamina are common. Hormones change, signaling the onset of menopause for women.
Male menopause—andropause—refers to the lethargy and depression that may accompany middle age.
Midlife crises can occur and may involve upheavals in relationships and careers. Some will recognize that the endless possibilities of youth are no longer available. Aware that life is half over, they may rebel against day-to-day routines. A teacher supporting a family may realize he or she will not become a famous screenwriter as he or she once dreamed. Others may suddenly regret a choice of partner and yearn for carefree youth.
Men may marry younger women, cynically called “trophy wives,” and start a new family Women may pursue education or a career that was postponed due to child rearing.
Although many find midlife to be a stressful time of transition and re-evaluation, others find empowerment. New freedoms and opportunities become available as responsibilities to children and aging parents are fulfilled. Careers and finances may be more stable. Some will emerge from middle age feeling satisfied with their choices and excited about their life ahead.
Industry:Culture
Migration in the United States since the Second World War has often been associated with “the American dream” of upward mobility. Such identification is often mistaken, and assumes that migrants make rational choices, are always seeking better opportunities and generally experience such mobility. Although it is true that the growth of suburbs gave the appearance of great upward mobility, the myth of the American dream ignores the experiences of the large numbers of refugees who have no choice but to come to the United States, and of others who are forced to move within the country owing to some form of displacement (losing jobs, losing land, and so forth). In addition, migration is often not linked to either upward mobility or to displacement, but is rather a question of life cycle changes fundamental to maintaining status within the middle class. Middleclass Americans move frequently from the time the young adult goes off to college or university until he or she moves into a retirement colony.
The origins of belief in an American dream are longstanding. Nineteenth-century Republican ideology was founded on the notion that Americans could improve their social condition by moving away from a place of oppression to one where opportunities were more abundant. The popular Horatio Alger stories cemented the ragsto-riches story in the popular consciousness. Although social historians since the 1960s have brought into question the veracity of this myth (showing in many instances that few Americans who were born laborers really did make their way out of the working class), nevertheless the myth has remained powerful, and has helped inspire many migrations, both among immigrants arriving at US ports and among native-born Americans within the country.
Even African American migration into northeastern cities, which began prior to the First World War and continued through the Second World War, and which radically altered such cities, is often spoken of in terms of an “exodus” out of the segregated South to the “promised land.” Such characterizations gained hold in spite of the fact that the later years of this migration coincided with the deindustrialization of many cities and resulted in economic plight for many of the migrants.
The dangers of assumptions about the “American dream” lie most clearly in the fact that migrations (and perceptions about them) are often closely connected. The “success” of one set of migrants or immigrants is seen in contrast to the experience of others, and is often mobilized in political discourse through notions of “model minorities” or peoples marked by a “tangle of pathology” As such, these assumptions fit neatly into or even frame beliefs about race and ethnicity that become mobilized in public-policy debates.
This is especially clear in the case of the migration of whites out of cities to the “crabgrass frontier” following the Second World War. Often labeled white flight, since the migration occurred partly in response to this influx of African Americans, many white city dwellers began to move to suburbs. Spurred on by the easy availability of mortgages for GIs returning from service in the Second World War (which African Americans have sometimes characterized as a “white ethnic handout,” since benefits were often withheld from black veterans) and by the construction of networks of highways promoting automobile culture rather than public transportation, large numbers of the children of immigrants moved away from urban neighborhoods to live in the newly developed suburban tracts. While such whites reaped the perquisites of suburban lifestyle, the marker of their success, most African Americans remained trapped in ghettos characterized by limited opportunities. What the Kerner Commission would see as the emergence of “two societies” was a product of the emergence of a racial divide that was not just spatial (suburban/ urban), but was also one framed by migration narratives (those who assimilated/those who could not do so because of an assumed “culture of poverty”).
Other migrations of great significance to post-Second World War American society occurred as a result of the rapid development of the western United States, spurred by military expansion and the growth of the oil industry. In the aftermath of the restrictions on immigration passed between the 1880s and 1920s, very few migrants entering states like California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona were first- and second-generation immigrants from Europe and China, the origins of many earlier migrants. Instead, many were of Mexican origin (exceptions to restrictions being made for immigrants coming from within the Western Hemisphere) for whom the region had long been familiar and marked by strong family and community ties crossing the boundaries of the nation state (many such “migrants” even questioned the legitimacy of those boundaries). In addition, migrants began leaving the “dust bowl” of Oklahoma to work as fruit pickers in California’s farming and wine industries (as in The Grapes of Wrath, 1939), and these were followed after the war by the kinds of migrants depicted in The Lucy Show (CBS, 1962–74), northeastern urbanites leaving their homes and making their way to the “land of opportunity.” The movie industry too had established itself in Hollywood earlier in the century with the migration of prominent Jewish movie moguls west from New York City, and, focused on their own westward migration rather than the northern and earlier eastward migrations, the movie industry tended to promote images of Californian prosperity and opportunity. Such westward migrations diminished with the end of the Cold War and the decline of federal funding for the defense industry.
The easing of quotas in 1965 returned immigration to levels witnessed in the years before the First World War. Along with refugees flooding into the country following American involvement in the Vietnam War and support for regimes that were overthrown (Nicaragua and Iran), these immigrants have radically altered the demographic character of the country. Prior to the 1960s, Americans were largely of European and African American origin, with Chinese, Japanese, Latinos and American Indians represented by regional concentrations. Now, throughout the US, South Asian, Asian and Hispanic communities are growing rapidly with the proportion of Europeans and African Americans declining.
Seeking cheaper land and labor, along with reduced taxes, corporations have moved steadily into the Southern and Southwestern regions, now often labeled the Sunbelt, and they have been followed by many northeastern and Midwestern workers seeking jobs. The economic revival and a perceived end to the racial turmoil that had been associated with these regions have made them more attractive to outsiders.
Finally older Americans have continued to migrate, sometimes into a nearby retirement home, but frequently also to areas of the country like Florida, that have large postretirement populations. Attractive to older Americans, especially during the winter months, Florida’s identification with retirement-age Americans is seen in both movies, (e.g. Cocoon, 1985) and sitcoms (Golden Girls, NBC, 1985–92).
Industry:Culture
Mild climate and more than 1,200 miles of coastline have been the impetus of steady population growth for the Sunshine State since the Second World War. During the war, Florida thrived economically as a major military training area. Needed infrastructure supporting rapid postwar growth was thus in place. Exposure of servicemen to the area as well as the inviting climate made Florida a haven for retirees and winter residents, swelling sizes of some cities tremendously during the “season” (winter months in south Florida and during the fall in northern Florida). Year round nearly 20 percent of visitors are attracted by Disneyworld alone. Residents such as John and Mabel Ringling, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams and Jack Kerouac were among those lured to Florida for its climate and natural beauty. Migrant workers also increase local populations as they follow harvesting cycles. Tourism, citrus, cattle and phosphorus are currently at the base of Florida’s economic development, though film is becoming important.
African Americans such as Mary McLeod Bethune played a significant role in shaping Florida’s cultural and economic identity, as chronicled in the more than 141 sites listed for the Florida Black Heritage Trail. Native Americans are also prominent. Cuban Americans and Haitian Americans now constitute a significant proportion of the populations in major growth centers, contributing unique cultural influences to areas such as Miami, FL (Little Havana) and Tampa (Ybor City).
Florida is also well known for its unique natural beauty which is well illustrated through writings of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (The River of Grass), William Bartram (Travels; naturalist art also displayed in the British Museum) and Marjorie Rawlings (The Yearling), as well as Miccosukee and Seminole Indian art and numerous roadside folk artists such as E.B. Ott and Ruby Williams. Zora Neale Hurston (Of Mules and Men) described not only the rich environment of rural Florida, but also provided insight into the struggles of people to coexist in Florida’s subtropical environment. Environment is also a strong feature in works of John MacDonald (Travis McGee series) and sciencefiction writer Kate Wilhelm. Florida’s Keys and sunsets are postcard symbols for the state.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Florida achieved prominence in the glory days of NASA.
Climate played a role in the selection of Cape Canaveral as a primary US spaceport.
Though hurricanes and lightning are common, the strategic location for tracking as well as the generally good weather have made the Cape the primary shuttle launch/ recovery site. The spaceport spurred economic growth and sparked an educational boom in Florida. Today the extensive network of community colleges, private colleges state universities (ten with the newest opening its doors in 1997) leaves no Floridian more than an hour from access to higher education.
The Museum of Florida History opened in 1977 in Tallahassee, provides a glimpse into the rich past and present of Florida.
Industry:Culture
Models of bilingual education range from those intended to retrain students from a first language to the sole use of English to those which support students’ simultaneous development of two languages. In all models there is implicit or explicit tension between maintenance of cultural heritage and identity through language instruction on the one hand and assimilation and Americanization on the other.
Acceptance of bilingual education programs by the wider monolingual community can be correlated to the socio-economic status of those who attempt to develop them.
Bilingual education was originally conceptualized and implemented by upper-status immigrant groups such as the Germans, who maintained bilingual German—English instruction in some schools in the United States for an uninterrupted period between 1840 and 1917. Beginning in the 1920s, immigration of lower-status peoples from Spanishspeaking and Asian countries prompted criticisms of bilingual education programs.
Legislation has been passed in support of bilingual education, including Title VII, which was added in 1968 to the Elementary and Secondary Educational Act of 1965 to provide financial assistance for local schools to design educational programs for children in whose households the primary language spoken was not English. However, interpretation and implementation of bilingual education varies, and it remains a controversial issue closely tied to socio-economic status. Some states maintain that wellconceptualized and implemented programs promote success among students (see Texas, for example), while other states reject the idea and incline towards English-Only laws and school policies (see California, for example).
Industry:Culture
Monthly statistic, computed by the United States Department of Labor, which measures the price changes of various goods and services, such as gasoline, food, or apartment rent, paid for by a typical American family. Large increases in the index indicate inflation, whereas small changes in the index, or even decreases, may suggest the economy is in recession. The prices of hundreds of everyday items, randomly collected across the country are used to calculate the CPI, which is commonly used as a basis for calculating cost of living adjustments for workers and retirees.
Industry:Culture
