Book Review: American Crucible by Gary Gerstle

Classes begin again next week.  Here is my review of the first book for the semester American Crucible by Gary Gerstle.

Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

            American Crucible provides a broad synthetic interpretation of twentieth century American history with a focus on nationalism.  American history was driven forward in this period by the interplay of two competing and contradictory visions of American nationalism, an inclusive “civic nationalism” and an exclusive “racial nationalism.”  For Gerstle the former nationalism was good while the latter was definitively bad.  Civic nationalism was a faith that the common pursuit of democracy, freedom, and equality were not only the founding ideals of the United States, but the principles around which American identity continued to be constructed in the present.  Racial nationalism, on the other hand, was the ideology that only people possessing certain racial characteristics and belonging to certain racial and ethnic groups were eligible for membership in the American nation.  During the twentieth century these ideologies were in competition, often within the minds of the era’s leading politicians and cultural icons.  The events of the twentieth century continually renewed both civic and racial nationalism, carrying them forth to the 1960s when, according to Gerstle, they confronted each other in a final showdown of which the remainder of the century was the uncertain epilogue. 

            Gerstle’s book is a synthesis and like all syntheses it must simplify its subject matter in some way.  Gerstle’s simplifying device is the idea of the United States as a “Rooseveltian Nation” in the decades between World War I and the end of the Vietnam War.  The Rooseveltian Nation made certain provisions for its citizens by ensuring economic opportunity and political equality, extracting from them conformity with largely “Anglo-Saxon” cultural norms, loyalty and support in war, and a commitment to steer clear of radical ideologies.  Not surprisingly, the founder of the Rooseveltian Nation was Theodore Roosevelt who, more fully than any other character in Gerstle’s narrative embodies the conflicting ideals of civic and racial nationalism.  TR combined looked at the world with an inclusive gaze, yet spoke in exclusive, racialized terms.  He felt sympathy with individual members of excluded groups, such as black Americans, yet refused to let that alter his opinions about those excluded groups as a whole.  He combined a preference for government enforcement of economic equality and fair play, yet distained radicals who he was, at least in this regard, on the same page with.  Additionally, Theodore Roosevelt placed a great deal of faith in the power of war to foster unity between the (male) members of the nation, a faith that was widely shared among Americans and which received its ultimate test in World War II.

            The Rooseveltian Nation was carried closer to fruition not by TR’s Republican Party, but by their Democratic opponents.  Democratic Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt presided over great increases in degree to which the federal government managed the economy and provided for citizens’ welfare.  At the same time, these Democrats remained linked to racial nationalism through their ties to the segregationist regime of the Southern states and which they enshrined in marquee state-building efforts such as the New Deal.  Indeed, the nation as a whole seemed to embrace racial nationalism in the wake of World War I.  The Russian Revolution provoked fears of anarchism and communism which were linked in the minds of many Americans with the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who had arrived in the country by the hundreds of thousands.  The congress of the 1920s imposed severe immigration restrictions including national origin quota that reflected a preference for “Nordic” or “Anglo-Saxon” immigrants.  Americans expressed this pro-Nordic bias less dramatically after the restriction of immigration, but an unspoken consensus remained, expressed in the labor movement’s idealized images of workers and in Hollywood films.  Recent immigrants and their descendants may not have been considered as American as their Nordic peers, but they were acutely aware of the potential benefits of associating themselves with them.

            Gerstle argues that the boundaries between old Nordic immigrants and new immigrants broke down in the course of World War II as multi-ethnic platoons had the unifying effect Theodore Roosevelt had envisioned.  After the war these men would come to see themselves less as members of ethnic groups and more as members of a monolithic “white” category.  However the war did not have the same unifying effect between white and black Americans.  The military was rigidly segregated and in many cases would be black soldiers were denied prestigious combat positions, or even turned away from service altogether.  The cultural ideal that emerged from the war, the paradigmatic American fighting man, remained white, even if he was no longer explicitly Nordic.  Despite having melded together whites of different ethnic backgrounds, the war regenerated racial nationalism through its maintenance of the color line.

            Like the war that preceded it, World War II was followed by a period of reaction as the Cold War settled in.  According to Gerstle, the civic nationalism that the war had stoked became more narrow and constrained during the period postwar anticommunism.  Chastened in their civic nationalism and facing a communist foe, Americans found it increasingly difficult to critique the prevailing economic system the way earlier nationalists such as the Roosevelts had.  Yet, postwar civic nationalism also gave birth to a movement for African-American civil rights, which successfully challenged the most virulent remnants of racial nationalism, even as it failed to extirpate it entirely.  Racial nationalism remained in the Democratic Party, which turned its back on the black Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 for fear of losing the support of southern whites.  Many civil rights activists found this spurning hard to forgive and set off to forge a racial nationalism of their own, Black Power.

            At the same time that black power was emerging from the civil rights movement the unifying power of war began to falter.  Since the 1950s the United States intervened in conflicts in the post-colonial “third world,” fighting a war in Korea and aiding French colonials and a nominally free government in Vietnam.  In the early 1960s American leaders increased the scale of US involvement in Vietnam, which quickly grew into a war.  Few Americans saw the connection between the war in Asia and their own national interests.  Additionally, many privileged Americans evaded serving in the armed forces once the government began drafting men.  Out of the discontent over Vietnam a New Left movement built around a radical critique of American government and society emerged.  The experience of Vietnam for most Americans did not serve to endear them to their nation.

            For Gerstle Black Power and Vietnam broke the power of nationalism in the United States.  Unifying principles that emerged in the wake of the 1960s, such as multiculturalism, further undermined Americans’ nationalist sensibilities, pushing them towards identifying with racial and ethnic groups rather than with the nation.  Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both tried to renew civic nationalism and, in the case of Reagan, racial nationalism, but failed to recapture the old magic.

            Gerstle’s vision of the last century is a compelling one.  Unlike many authors who cordon off war and peace, foreign policy and domestic policy, Gerstle elegantly integrates the two, demonstrating the ramifications of war for American society in the twentieth century and vice versa.  His critical readings of the ultimate twentieth century American medium, the Hollywood movie, from key junctures in the period are illuminating as well as fun.  Gerstle may overstate his case by referring to the US in the middle decades of the century as a “Rooseveltian nation,” but by doing so he forces the reader to think deeply about the appropriateness of the term and to ponder better alternatives. 

            In the years since the publication of American Crucible books in the field of twentieth century US history have proliferated, many of the most prominent of them focusing on the rise of conservatism, a subject largely ignored by Gerstle.  In many ways the study of conservatism has become a monolithic entity beyond which it is difficult, yet necessary, to see.  Gerstle’s emphasis on nationalism may provide a signpost to the route beyond conservatism, as nationalism was certainly not parallel to any conventional left-right axis in the twentieth century.

Kevin Lynch's "The Image of the City"

In the interest of professional aesthetics, and so that I may copy and paste them into future footnotes and bibliographies, I am including more formal citations in this and subsequent posts.  Perhaps I will modify my previous posts as well.  But for now here is:

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960).

           

Kevin Lynch’s 1960 volume The Image of the City had been popping up in my Amazon.com reccomendations for some time.  This past Christmas I put it on my wish list and now, in the midst of the inter-semester lull I sat down to read it.  Lynch’s book is widely cited by authors on urban topics and is one of those books that is so thoroughly influential that much of its content seemed quite familiar to me despite my lack of direct contact with it.  The Image of the City explores how people perceive cities.  Rather than focus on professionally produced images Lynch attempts to gain access to the mental images which people use to navigate the urban environment.  Lynch’s fieldwork led him to develop the concept of imageability, which he defines as, “that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer.” (Lynch, 9)  For Lynch imageability is a quality that can be maximized through urban planning and design, yielding a sense of “a distinct, unforgettable place, not to be confused with any other.” (Lynch, 102)

           

Lynch approached the problem of how people “image” the city using a novel method of interviewing inhabitants of three very different American cities (Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles) regarding what they found memorable about their cities and their “imaginary trips” to various locations in them.  Lynch and his team then scoured the interviews for trends and commonalities in how interviewees perceived the city.  From the data Lynch identified five “elements” that contributed to the imageability of a place: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks (all are neatly defined in Lynch, 47-8).

           

For Lynch attending to inhabitants’ perception of the urban environment as they move through may lead to the creation of cities that are more sensuously fulfilling to live in.  A city environment with intuitive paths, well-defined landmarks, and clearly demarcated neighborhoods may even contribute to a more democratic society by providing a “guide and a stimulus for new exploration,” and “strategic links in communication.” (Lynch, 110)

           

Lynch’s method of asking city residents how they got to various destinations and what they recalled encountering along the way is particularly interesting.  As a historian, I would be tempted to read such responses for the artifacts of power which they contained.  After all, individuals’ perception of the world around them is historically conditioned and constrained.   Lynch only hints at the potential perceptual differences between city dwellers of different social classes or races, but one can imagine how fruitful using such an approach might be in the context of an oral history interview.  Indeed, it might even be possible to examine Lynch’s own work from “The Perceptual Form of the City,” the project that culminated in The Image of the City. Some of Lynch’s papers appear to be available here: http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/research/collections/collections-mc/mc208.html.

Happy New Year!  I hope to write a great deal more here in the upcoming months.  I took a few days off from writing to recharge my batteries, but I am paranoid that I will lose my touch if I don't commence cranking out words.  I may even jazz up the site a bit.  Maybe I will create a new site altogether, one with a more creative name!

Best,

J

What's Next?

Despite their volubility about their research historians are often inarticulate about why their discipline matters as a whole.  It seems to me, at least, that historians are rarely able to put forth a convincing case for why history matters that has more than personal relevance.  Indeed, graduate training in history often seems to consist in (blindly) grasping towards a personally satisfying answer to that question, in addition to whatever smaller historiographical questions we may be trying to resolve.  As the end of this semester draws near, and I seek to renew my historical faith in the face of a hefty workload, this week’s readings on the prospects of public history are particularly enlightening, as well as unsettling.  First up, we have James Chung et. al. with “Coming Soon: The Future: The Shape of Museums to Come,” which provides a vision of the possible future of museums in light of on-going structural changes in American society.  Second, we have Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, a recent study on the practice of history in National Parks, prepared by the NPS and the Organization of American Historians.

           

In “Coming Soon: The Future,” Chung et. al. try to envision the future of museums in a country that is projected to become older, more racially and culturally diverse, and increasingly unequal with regard to income and wealth in the coming decades.  As is so often the case with cultural institutions, the future, as forecast by Chung et. al., will depend on money, whence it comes and where it goes.  As energy costs increase, making transportation more difficult, museums away from public transportation may suffer.  As wealth becomes more concentrated museums may become even more beholden to large donors than they already are.  As “digital natives” mature and leisure time more scarce museums will have to adjust their content to meet new expectations for accessibility and flexibility.  Everything about museums will have to change it seems except the place of museums as both respites from the outside world and sites of dialogue about, and for, the outside world.  The Chung projections seem built around a large intuitional model of museums, a model which discounts other, more informal, types of exhibition (such as those studied by Tammy Gordon in Private History in Public), yet they provide useful food for thought about the relationship between structural change and cultural institutions.

           

Imperiled Promise, compiled in 2011 for the NPS and OAH by Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Marla Miller, Gary Nash, and David Thelen, is a report on where history stands in the NPS based on an electronic survey of NPS employees in history-related fields (its method and rationale is not unlike that of Thelen’s earlier study The Presence of the Past, conducted with Roy Rosenzweig).  According to the report, history in the NPS is a mess.  Few NPS employees in historical positions have graduate-level training in history.  The few credentialed historians the NPS possesses are often segregated in cultural resource management, rather than in positions that involve interpretation and interaction with the public.  History is too often presented to the park-going public as a fixed, objective set of facts about the past rather than an ongoing, dynamic process, the interpretations of which change in light of developments in the present.  In short, history in the NPS too often resembles history in an old textbook or a cheap television show.  Whisnant and company would like history in the NPS to more closely resemble, and maintain a closer relationship with, history in the academy.  Doubtless there is much that could be gained from this, but in making their recommendations Whisnant, Miller, Nash, and Thelen have a tendency to romanticize professional history (most evident on p. 17-9).  These four historians (it must be admitted) occupy privileged positions in the profession that, while undoubtedly well deserved, may insulate them from seeing how the forces that have pulled apart history in the NPS have their parallels within an increasingly entrepreneurial and bottom-line focused academy.  NPS historians are not the only ones isolated from professional networks and opportunities for professional development: graduate students and adjunct faculty frequently are too.  Fixing history in the NPS appears to be a small part of a much larger necessity: fixing history.

           

That said, there are glimmers of hope, particularly here in Philadelphia.  The 2012 report of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance on the economic impact of cultural ventures in the region (http://www.philaculture.org/research/reports/arts-culture-economic-prosperity-greater-philadelphia-2012) presents evidence of the growing economic footprint of cultural work.  The figures speak for themselves, but suffice it to say that even if the NPS and the historical guild can’t come through we historians may yet have opportunities in the coming years.

Until Next Time,

J

On the "Front Lines"

Amy Tyson’s The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines provides an in-depth look at the world of costumed historical interpreters.  Employed in numerous historic sites across the country, costumed interpreters are rarely considered in the way the Tyson considers them in her book: as laborers occupying a precarious position in a customer-centric service industry.  Tyson provides a scathing indictment of a system of non-profit cultural institutions that exploits the skilled interpreters whose work on the “front lines” ultimately makes those institutions meaningful for the people who visit them.

Tyson examines this phenomenon of exploited “emotional” labor in the environment of Minnesota’s Historic Fort Snelling, an 1820s U.S. Army fort managed by the Minnesota Historical Society.  Her study combines archival research on the history and development of the interpretive program at Fort Snelling with ethnography of the interpreters she worked with at the fort in the late-1990s to the mid-2000s.  Fundamental to the nature of interpretive work at Fort Snelling is that it is carried on only on a seasonal basis.  For most of its history as a tourist attraction (since the 1960s) Fort Snelling’s interpreters have had to reapply for jobs each season.  While working at the fort interpreters earned a meager wage with no benefits and were accorded little respect or consideration by the historical institution that employed them.  Nevertheless, Fort Snelling most interpreters became deeply invested in their work, going out of their way to enhance their knowledge and tailor their interpretations to the emotional needs of visitors.  Many interpreters reported feeling deep satisfaction from their interactions with visitors despite the otherwise poor conditions under which they labored.  For Tyson, the exploitation of interpreters hinges on the poor pay they receive despite their devotion and expertise.

Tyson raises important questions about how cultural and historical work is carried out in the United States, if not the world.  Among these is the question of whether there is a meaningful difference between non-profit and for-profit corporations with regard to how they view and treat their non-managerial workforce  in the post-industrial, neo-liberal order that has emerged over the last half-century.  Regrettably, she spends little time discussing the parent institution of Historic Fort Snelling, giving the impression that the Minnesota Historical Society is a cold, faceless bureaucracy (although it is conceivable that that is the point).  However, one would expect that the MHS is staffed by individuals whose background is similar to that of the interpreters on the ground (college or higher education, grounded in the humanities).  If this is the case, then what accounts for the apparent lack of sympathy of employer for employee? 

Of course, as with any ethnographic  work one must ask of Tyson’s Wages of History just how particular are the experiences she describes to the milieu in which they occurred.  Tyson repeatedly compares interpreters with waitresses, graduate students, and temporary workers, in other words, with other workers who are perceived as not having “real jobs.”  However, she does not entertain the possibility that even more generally valued jobs can also exact a sizable emotional toll.  That of physician immediately comes to mind.  To get a sense of the ways in which even workers at the top of the capitalist food chain are exploited in similar ways, Tyson’s Wages of History could be profitably read in tandem with Karen Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.  Forty years ago, when the modern service economy was only beginning to come in to view, Daniel Bell observed that in contrast to earlier eras in which humans battled against nature and against the physical limitations of their technology, “the post-industrial society is essentially a game between persons,” (The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, p. 488).  Tyson’s study of historical laborers in a consumer-centric environment helps us envision what such a game looks like, and what effect it has on its participants.