Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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the account of it published by John Hersey in 1968.

ROBERT GREGG

Ali, Muhammad

b. 1942

Charismatic first three-time heavyweight

boxing

champion who transcended sport as

an icon of the

Black Power

and anti-

Vietnam War

movements. Born Cassius Marcellus

Clay, Muhammad Ali was a light heavyweight gold medallist at the 1960

Olympic

Games

. A professional sensation for his speed with words as well as fists, his claims to

be “the prettiest” and “the Greatest” were precursors to “Black is Beautiful.” He won the

championship in 1964, but was reviled for joining the

Nation of Islam,

friendship with

Malcolm X

and for changing his name. In 1967, boxing organizations stripped his title

for refusing induction into the army because of religious beliefs. Unable to box again

until 1970, Ali spoke out publicly against the war and on racial issues. His conviction for

draft evasion was overturned by the

Supreme Court

in 1971, public opinion having

swung against the war. Ali then became very popular, even among non-

oxing fans, and

cemented his fame in three epic matches with Joe Frazier: the first, in 1970, pitted two

undefeated champions. Ali lost, won a rematch, regained the title by upsetting George

Foreman in Zaire in 1974, and beat Frazier again in “The Thrilla’ in Manila” in 1975.

Though afflicted with Parkinson’s Syndrome, Ali lit the Olympic torch in 1996, and

acts as a goodwill ambassador for orthodox

Islam

FRAZER WARD

Allen, Woody

b. 1935

Highly original American film-maker, born Allen Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn.

Beginning as a stand-up comedian, he ultimately earned a worldwide reputation as an

incredibly prolific and innovative writer,

director

and actor. He became famous for his

hilarious portrayal of neurotic, intellectual Jewish New Yorkers (e.g.

Annie Hall

), but has

experimented with many different film genres, including serious drama and offbeat

musicals. In the summer of 1992, he gained additional public notoriety for his romantic

relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, adopted daughter of his long-term romantic partner

Mia Farrow.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 36

ee also:

actors

NICOLE MARIE KEATING

alternative medicine

More commonly referred to as complementary medicine (also as additional medicine,

integrative medicine, and natural health), this includes myriad medical practices and

erceptions that have expert systems knowledge and technique and often require periods

of training, whether formal or informal. The United States National Institute of Health

defines alternative medicine “as those treatments and healthcare practices not taught

widely in medical schools, not generally used in hospitals, and not usually reimbursed by

medical insurance companies.” In one way or another, alternative medicine is defined in

opposition to what is referred to as the “dominant” system in the United States—

iomedicine. Nonetheless, recent surveys in the United States show that Americans

appear to be favoring “alternative” medicines in greater proportion to “biomedical”

practitioners and healthcare.

Common complementary health choices include osteopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture,

ayurveda, bio-feedback, homeopathy, naturopathy and traditional Chinese medicine.

Many people also would see several massage techniques (body work, manual healing

methods), herbal medicines, aromatherapy spiritual healing, bio-electromagnetic

application,

diet

/nutrition/lifestyle changes, various mind/

body

interventions and

perhaps all varieties of

folk medicine

as alternative medicines. The distinguishing feature

of alternative medicine is a holistic conceptual framework that sees all aspects of the

ody (anatomy nervous system, vascular systems, musculature, and so forth) as an

integrated system or structure, itself interrelated with the body’s physical, social and

cultural environments, or in some cases with spiritual aspects of a person and of health.

Alternative health approaches are said to consider the “whole person,” whereas

iomedicine is a medical approach that seeks specific etiologies for specific diseases.

Similarly, alternative healthcare approaches are also thought to place an equal importance

on the illness experience as well as the physical pathology of the disease. Biomedicine is

said to be concerned only with abnormalities in the structure and function of body organs

and systems, while alternative medicines include the lived experience of physical and

hysiological abnormalities when diagnosing disease and considering therapeutic

interventions.

The coexistence of alternative healthcare with biomedicine illustrates a dynamic

“medical pluralism” in the United States. This medical pluralism represents a desire on

the part of the American public for approaches to healthcare other than biomedicine,

efforts towards the professionalization of several complementary medicines, and the

historical impact of the complex relations of healthcare provisions with social structure

Entries A-Z 37

(class,

gender, race)

. In spite of the dominance of biomedicine, medical pluralism is the

norm, historically anchored in a milieu of healthcare fads, technological developments,

social movements and changing opinion regarding the efficacy of biomedicine. The

revitalization of

midwifery

and home births in recent decades is an example of the

coming together of these various elements that inform a changing desire for alternative

medicines. The professionalization of alternative medicines indexes a medical system in

the United States organized within a capitalist economy and offered to the American

public as “consumer medicine.” With professionalization, alternative medicines become

insurance options.

Social class, ethnic groups and the greater numbers of migrants and immigrant groups,

and gender issues related to health and healthcare are all important factors in a dynamic

medical pluralism in the United States. Finally, as with folk medicine, discontentment

with modern life, dominated by technological advances, fragmented by alienation and the

dissolution of community life, has encouraged some to seek alternative medicines

ecause they are believed to be natural therapies that have descended from primordial

traditions and practices.

Further reading

Baer, H. (1995) “Medical Pluralism in the United States: A Review,”

Medical

Anthropology Quarterly

9(4):493–502.

Frohock, F. (1992)

Healing Powers,

Chicago: University of Chicago.

Last, M. (1996) “The Professionalization of Indigenous Healers,” C.Sargent and

T.Johnson (eds)

Medical Anthropology,

Westport: Praeger, pp. 374–95.

National Institute of Health Office of Alternative Medicine (1994)

Alternative Medicine:

Expanding Medical Horizons,

Pittsburgh: Government Printing Office.

STEVE FERZACCA

Altman, Robert

b. 1923

Brilliant, sarcastic

director

whose films have etched an acid vision of modern America

war

(

M*A*S*H,

1970), on crime sprees (

Thieves Like Us,

1973), in

Sunbelt

aspirations (

Brewster McCloud,

1971) or in a quest for fitness (

Health,

1979). These

films alternated with complicated lyrical works and smaller films linked closely to

theater;

Altman also faced some big-budget problems. After a lengthy hiatus, Altman’s

caustic wit reemerged with

The Player

(1992), satirizing

Hollywood

itself.

CINDY WONG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 38

Alzheimer’s disease

A degenerative brain disease resulting in memory loss, this disease affects approximately

4 million Americans. Symptoms include confusion, personality and behavior change, and

impaired judgment. The disease usually begins by influencing shortterm memory before

affecting other sections of the brain. Although the disease can affect people in their

thirties, most individuals diagnosed with the disease are over sixty-five years old

according to the Alzheimer’s Association, making this a particular concern—and

image—of the elderly. There is no cure, although donepezil and tacrine are used to

relieve some symptoms.

Further reading

The Alzheimer’s Association: http://www.alz.org

KATE M.KENSKI

American (census category)

Census category first used in 1980 when census takers began to inquire about the

ancestry of the US population. In previous years, questionnaires had asked merely for the

respondent’s birthplace. When

ethnicity

was asked for, however, the multicultural nature

of the country and the intermarriage that had occurred between different ethnic groups

over the years made it difficult for some to report their ancestry. Someone who was

equally Scottish, German, Italian and Irish was inclined just to answer “American,”

explaining why this became the fastest growing “ethnic” group in the United States. The

category “American” also fitted in with the prevailing white

backlash

against non-white

Americans, since it clearly “whitened” the person designating him/herself in this way.

Someone who had one-quarter of the same heritage noted above replaced by African or

Chinese descent could be designated

African American

Asian American

respectively, although they might contest this classification.

ROBERT GREGG

Entries A-Z 39

American Association of Retired Persons

(AARP)

Dr Ethel Andrus founded AARP in 1958. Now the nation’s largest and oldest

organization of older Americans, its membership is over 33 million. A non-profit, non-

partisan organization, AARP is governed by an elected, twenty-one member volunteer

Board of Directors. Its extensive volunteer network makes it one of America’s most

effective lobbying groups, both nationally and locally. AARP also co-chairs the

Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, a coalition of non-

rofit organizations that

represents the public-

olicy interests of older Americans. AARP members receive a

variety of discounts, services and products, ranging from health insurance to prescription

drugs.

ee also:

old age; retirement; Social Security

COURTNEY BENNETT

American Broadcasting Company (ABC

network)

networks, television

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Headquartered in

New York,

the ACLU is the largest public-interest legal organization

in the United States, with over 60 staff attorneys, 2,000 volunteer lawyers and 275,000

members. The ACLU was founded by Roger Baldwin in 1920 in the wake of America’s

Red Scare, when the

Supreme Court

upheld the criminal convictions of prominent

American leftists who expressed unpopular political views. It is dedicated to the

reservation of individual rights through litigation, legislation and public education, and

also fought the mistreatment of women,

gays and lesbians,

racial minorities, political

dissidents and prisoners. The ACLU has opposed the death penalty, loyalty oaths for

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 40

government employees, state restrictions on free expression and

abortion,

and

government entanglement with

religion

. Despite its defense of extreme right groups as

well, “card-carrying members of the ACLU” have become standard targets for

conservative attacks.

BRIAN LEVIN

American dream

American images abroad; assimilation; immigration

American Express

credit and credit cards

American Film Institute

Non-profit foundation for film established in

Washington, DC

in 1967 under the aegis o

President Lyndon

Johnson’s

support of the National Endowment for the Arts. Its mission

is to preserve and advance film through restoration, cataloguing and training future film-

makers (primarily at its

Los Angeles

campus). It offers achievement awards, lectures and

honorary degrees, publishes the journal

American Film

and operates a showcase theater

Disneyworld

. Despite its success at restoring and cataloguing historical films and

raising consciousness about the loss of American film heritage, its goals and

accomplishments sometimes have been clouded by controversy.

CINDY WONG

American images abroad

Entries A-Z 41

“For the European, even today, America represents something akin to exile, a phantasy o

emigration, and therefore a form of interiorization of his or her own culture,” wrote Jean

Baudrillard in

America

(1988:78). Americans abroad in the early twenty-first century

face profoundly dichotomized, contradictory images in which they participate and

through which they are interpreted as myths, nation and individual actors. One image is

the

Ugly American

(from Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s influential 1958 novel),

aggressive and destructive, whether through ignorance, malevolence, intervention or

neglect. A second image is that of America and Americans as bearers of liberty,

technology, progress and prosperity as broadcast over international airwaves by Voice o

America. Most Americans prefer the latter, which underpins the rhetoric of business,

missionaries, development aid,

mass media

and even

tourism

. While propagandistic,

this ideology often imbues individual actors, including expatriate rebels, and ironically

reaffirms an image of close-mindedness abroad. The first image is also polemic—thrown

against the US by enemies, allies/ competitors and leftist critics at home. While both

images are transmitted through multiple media—

Hollywood,

news, music videos,

world

fairs

—at home and abroad, both are also grounded in actions, policies and events

intensified by American economic, political and military expansion in the early twenty-

first century.

These images, of course, take shape in concrete local contexts. Arkush and Lee’s

of Ghosts

splendidly analyzes and anthologizes changing Chinese readings of America

since the nineteenth century. Unlike many of the European elite, for example, who

characterized America as young and uncouth (albeit energetic and rich), Chinese leaders

saw America as an example of modernity and its discontents. Chinese immigrants—like

generations from every country on earth—dealt with the promise and disillusion of an

American dream rent by

class

and racial discrimination. America has been read as a

friend to democratic reformers and the nationalist regime it propped up after 1949, and

itter enemy to the communist regime it sought to isolate on the mainland. Renewed ties

of trade and

immigration

with this mainland have produced deeply ambivalent relations

in the 1980s and 1990s, including the polemic attacks of the

China that Can Say No,

well as the Goddess of Liberty in Tienanmen Square. Moreover, friends and enemies

have expressed perplexity at differences in

family, gender,

absence of hierarchy and

food

The postwar French, by contrast, soon found that liberating allies could be overbearing

friends. The success of American mass culture (abetted by the Marshall plan) has pitted

those who protect the purity of French language, culture, markets and difference against

those who adopt

rock,

Coca-Cola,

film noir,

blue jeans and

Brando

. Meanwhile, in

third-world nations, the image of a rich nation as a goal for emigration or emulation

continually crashes against military intervention or exploitation in which American

business and policy participate.

Commentators worldwide have underscored the contradictions between American

public ideals and the realities of racism, poverty, crime,

guns,

social breakdown and

unbalanced consumption that accompany world power. As racial tensions have boiled

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 42

over in Europe since the 1980s, for example, more than one national analyst has

exclaimed “This is not America!”

In these complex realms of imagery, one may try to distinguish the United States as a

myth and a political and cultural agent from its citizens. The wealth and mass

consumption of international travel and the globalization of business has opened an

American presence beyond the wealthy

expatriate,

dedicated missionary and eccentric

exile. Scholars, students, the military tourists, artists, minorities, revolutionaries,

Peace

Corps

workers, medical workers and evangelists can provide more varied experiences

and attitudes to nuance stereotypes. Moreover,

immigration

reforms since the 1960s

have created increasing transnational families and citizens who balance American and

other identities. Nevertheless, many people

know

America through media before they

meet a living American.

Yet, public discourses of individual freedom, democracy, hegemonic Western values

and independence, coupled with economic and political power, have become global

policies. Part of the tragedies of Hungary,

Vietnam,

Cuba,

Somalia,

Iran

and Rwanda is

not only American action (or inaction), but American justification in the name o

“freedom,”

“democracy” and American interests. American mass media may explore

this painful paradox, especially with regard to Vietnam, but it should be balanced with

the recurrent scenario of

Star Trek,

in which “galactic” rules of non-intervention

invariably are broken to end racism, promote democracy impose peace or facilitate trade.

While a student, tourist or diplomat abroad may insist America “is not like that,” actions

and interpretations underscore the contradictions at the center of the nation’s dilemmas in

the twenty-first century

Further reading

Baudrillard, J. (1988)

America,

New York: Verso.

Fischer, F. (1998)

Making Them Like Us,

Washington, DC: Smithsonian.

Kuisel, R. (1993)

Seducing the French,

Berkeley: University of California.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

American Indian reservations

American Indian reservations comprise territories within the United States’

orders that

serve as the homelands for American Indian tribes. According to the 1990 United States

census, approximately one-quarter of the 1,959,000 American Indians currently live on

the 314 federally recognized reservations. American Indian reservations are concentrated

Entries A-Z 43

in the western part of the United States, although there are reservations, containing nearly

44 million acres, in all parts of the country. They incorporate not only vast cultural

differences, but distinctive experiences of

history

and context, ranging from the elaborate

casinos of Connecticut to the problems of unemployment (up to 70 percent), substandard

housing,

alcohol

and poverty plaguing reservations like Pine Ridge, South Dakota, which

President

Clinton

highlighted in his 1999 visit.

The relationship between American Indian reservations and the United States federal

government was shaped by an 1831 United States

Supreme Court

decision, which

agreed with the Cherokee Indian nation that the state of Georgia had no jurisdiction over

it since American Indian tribes were “domestic dependent nations.” This definition has

formed the basis for the current legal relationship between American Indian tribes and the

federal government, and, in essence, a definition of American Indian tribes.

herokee Nation

Georgia

led to the creation of the legal concept of limited

sovereignty. According to this concept, tribes are nations with rights to internal self-

government on federally recognized reservations. Yet sovereignty has also been limited.

For example, the United States adopted a policy of Indian Removal in the 1830s, moving

American Indian tribes to distant areas until they could be assimilated into mainstream

society. Eventually this policy placed all federally recognized Indian tribes on

reservations.

While theoretically American Indian tribes are totally independent from any other

government within the reservation boundaries, federal Indian policy also has emphasized

assimilation

and trusteeship over Indian interests and rights of later immigrants who

have encroached on Indian lands by lease or illegal appropriation. The government has

even intervened to divert growing wealth from cattle or

oil

to reservations (South Dakota,

Oklahoma). An emphasis on the privatization of Indian lands and the disposal o

“surplus,” for example, reduced tribal lands from 119,373,930 acres in 1887 to

40,236,442 acres in 1911. Current acreage has grown since a 1933 low of 29,431,685

acres.

Reservation locations were determined in a number of ways. Some tribes, like the

Cherokees of Georgia, were forcibly moved to Indian Territory, which eventually became

the state of Oklahoma. A few tribes, like the Menominee of Wisconsin, were able to

escape removal, gaining a reservation on marginal land in their original territory. Indians

like the

Florida

Seminoles or

Southwestern

Navaho and Pueblo tribes also fought long

to hold and regain their lands. Settlement over land claims has been a major political

issue in the 1980s and 1990s in Maine, the

Midwest,

the Southwest and the

West

Tribal self-government first gained national attention during the war of 1812 when

many United States citizens feared American Indian tribes might conspire with foreign

enemies to threaten national security. Hence, under the doctrine of limited sovereignty,

no tribe may establish independent relationships with foreign governments. Eventually

the doctrine of limited sovereignty was refined to mean that although state and local laws

do not apply on reservations, federal laws can be enforced.

Foreign-

olicy issues also led to a debate about the citizenship status of individual

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 44

American Indians. An American Indian could become a US citizen only by renouncing

his tribal citizenship. During the First World War, many volunteered even though, as

non-citizens, they were not subject to the draft. After the war, a political movement arose

to grant US citizenship to American Indians who served in the war. Some tribes opposed

the idea of US citizenship for individuals, viewing this as an attempt to destroy the right

of tribal self-governance. The American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, a compromise

ill, granted dual citizenship to American Indians, who became full citizens of the United

States and the states where they resided while remaining citizens of their respective

tribes.

The last component of the Supreme Court’s definition of American Indian tribes was

domestic. This means that the reservations are the direct responsibility of the United

States federal government and are held in trust for tribes. This ensures that neither an

individual tribal member nor tribal governments can endanger the tribe’s land base by

disposing of it. Even through their elected legislatures, tribes may not sell or lease

reservation land without the federal government’s permission. This regulatory authority

is invested in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a division of the Department of the

Interior. However, the BIA has also been accused of mishandling Indian funds, while

development has often led to disputes about ownership and rights in recreational lands

and even subdivision projects which had been granted to tribes in early treaties. This has

kindled animosity between reservations and their neighbors.

Gambling

has also become an arena of competition and conflict. In the 1970s, gambling

was regulated only at the state level. Because state laws do not apply on reservations,

some tribes opened high-stakes bingo parlors and casinos on reservation land. Some

states objected, arguing that the right to operate gambling establishments had become a

rivilege that some, but not all, of their citizens enjoyed. The states were also concerned

that gambling affected the entire state without access to accrued revenues. In response,

Congress

passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 in an attempt to re-establish

the balance between the needs of the state and those of the tribe. This law grants

individual states some control over gambling on reservations, but prohibits state control

over low-stakes traditional gambling between tribal members. This has also created

divisions between those reservations able to make use of their metropolitan settings and

those for whom underdevelopment has made reservations prisons, as depicted in

Thunderheart

(1992) and the documentary

Incident at Oglala

(1992).

Further reading

Anderson, T. (1995)

Sovereign Nations or Reservations?,

San Francisco: Pacific

Research Institute for Public Policy

Deloria, V. and Lytle, C. (1984)

The Nations Within,

New York: Pantheon.

SARAH SHILLINGER

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