Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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Further reading

David, P. (1982)

Hometown,

New York: Simon & Schuster.

Stack, C. (1996)

Call to Home,

New York: Basic. http://www.bestsmalltowns.org.

SHARON ANN HOLT

Smithsonian Institution

Founded in 1846 and named for British scientist James Smithson, who had donated

$508,318 to increase and diffuse knowledge in America. The largest museum complex in

the world, most of its buildings cluster around the Washington mall. The Smithsonian

includes sixteen

museums

in New York and the District of Columbia, as well as four

field stations; the National Art Gallery is affiliated, with a separate board. Its collections

encompass American art, space, natural history American history Asian art, African art,

science and technology sculpture and associated themes of popular culture. The

Smithsonian runs an

African American

history museum in Anacostia (Washington), the

National

Zoo

and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York. The newest hall, to

open in 2000, will be devoted to Native Americans, incorporating New York’s Museum

of the American Indian.

All these museums are free to the public. The Smithsonian assembles important

travelling exhibits as well, since less than 1 percent of the total collection can actually be

exhibited at any time. It also has extensive educational outreach facilities (accessible at

its web-site: http://www.si.gov). The Institution also constitutes an important center for

advanced research, scholarship and publication through both its press and

Smithsonian

magazine

. An independent agency its board includes the vice-

resident, chief justice o

the

Supreme Court,

Congress members and citizens.

The Smithsonian, as America’s museum, often challenges the boundaries of what

constitutes history and how it should be presented. It has added television memorabilia

alongside the gowns of the First Ladies and taken American diversity into the mall in its

Folklife Festivals. It was also caught in a bitter controversy in the late 1990s over how to

present the reasoning behind and impacts of atomic devastation in

Japan

—the

“Enola

Gay”

controversy—which remind us how complex the past can be for a contested

present.

GARY McDONOGH

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1026

soap operas, daytime

In spring 1999, the daytime serial

All My Children

ended thirty years of family and

community intrigue and relationships, presented every Monday through Friday. It was

soon replaced by the younger and steamier

Passion

. Demographics and settings may

change, but the idea scarcely varies. Soaps provide dramas of emotion and conversation

over coffee and cocktails rather than politics or work. Women are central, as

eacemakers and bitches, although men have a variety of roles from paterfamilias to

villain to stud. The sheer endurance of soap operas means that they have invited

generations of fans to enter webs of romance, affairs, cat-fights, consumption,

weddings,

births (not in that order) and murders among the men and women of Pine Valley Glen

Cove and other “typical” American places.

Soaps easily made the transition to

television

from long-running

radio

serials (taking

their name from detergent sponsors). These

family

-centered dramas related to the

viewers of new media, especially the housewife whom writers and advertisers have taken

as the long-term viewer. Feminist scholars have examined how the form of soap operas

fits into a woman’s daily routine. Soap operas do not always demand continuous

concentration; hence, the ideal woman viewer can come in and out, watching the show

while doing other chores. Multiple plot lines take away the clear beginning and end in a

strict narrative, allowing the viewers to start watching the show at any point.

Soaps are also cheap to produce—writers create up to 5 hours of programs every week,

taped by three studio cameras, with the actions rolling along without cuts (different

scenes are put together in post-

roduction). These are grueling scripts for actors, although

soaps have provided both security and a sure proving ground for many

stars

Over decades, soap operas have added serial

divorce

and infidelity company battles,

crime, sex and nudity which may have shocked their fans.

Dark Shadows

(ABC, 1966–

71) cast the soap into Gothic shadows.

African American

characters arrived in the 1980s

(although black viewers have learned to watch the scandals of whites in many media).

Teens and young hunks were increasingly promising in the 1990s.

Audiences have also varied. Educated professionals and college students videotape

their soaps daily although daytime soaps do not have the same public appeal to straight

males. Celebrities, however, have turned fanship into participation; Elizabeth

Taylor

and

Carol Burnett have made cameo appearances in their favorite shows. Soaps, as prominent

television artifacts, have been skewered in other series (the ironic evening comedies

Soap

(ABC, 1977–81) and

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

(1976–77, syndicated) even as

networks

vied to create glamorous

prime-time soaps

Tootsie

(1982) and

Soapdish

(1991) also imputed other layers of human complication to dramas on screen.

Cable television has brought

telenovelas

and other long-running dramas from around

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the world to American screens (and PBS has come close with some more sophisticated

British imports). Yet these scarcely rival decades in which

ays of Our Lives, All My

Children, The Bold and the Beautiful

and others have become everyday worlds as well as

stories.

Further reading

Modlewski, T. (1979) “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas,”

Film

Quarterly

33(1): 12–21.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

soap operas, prime-time

Melodrama has long been a staple of American entertainment; hence long-running,

involved tales of

family,

relationships, conflict and passion have dominated daytime fare

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

allas

(CBS, 1978–91), the pioneer, followed the affairs of three generations of the

lutocrat 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.

ynasty

(ABC, 1981–9) also mixed money power and oil in the couplings and cat-

fights 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

arodic parties and camp humor. Again, its images of power and sin sold well abroad,

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1028

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

nots

anding

(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-

row 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.

Further reading

Ang, I. (1985)

Watching Dallas,

London: Methuen.

Bianculli, D. (1996)

Dictionary of Teleliteracy,

New York: Continuum.

GARY McDONOGH

soccer

One of the fastest growing sports in the United States, both in terms of participation and

spectatorship, largely owing to its appeal among women and girls who have been shut out

of other professional team sports. Such appeal was manifest at the 1999 Women’s World

Cup Final, played between the United States and China at the Rose Bowl in front o

90,000 plus spectators—the largest-ever audience for a women’s sporting event. The

images of Briana Scurry making the crucial penalty save, and Brandi Chastain pulling of

her shirt after slotting home the final penalty will be remembered in the minds of many

American girls for as long as English boys remember events at Wembley in 1966.

Soccer in the United States developed slowly due to the strength of American

football

in colleges and the strength of

baseball

among working-class Americans. Immigrants

from countries associated with Association Football—Germany Italy and Ireland, for

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example—left their homelands before soccer was firmly established and so readily

adopted a game that was being promoted as the “American game.”

Soccer’s popularity increased at the end of the 1960s with coverage of the 1966 World

Cup because of a continued identification among many Americans with England. In 1967

the North American Soccer League was established, using the formula of attracting big

names from European and South American soccer. Only the New York Cosmos thrived

under this system, signing Pele, George Best and Franz Beckenbauer, and the league

suffered due to the lack of talent and the limited availability of native-

orn players with

whom crowds could identify By the end of the 1970s the league was all but moribund.

The situation in the 1990s has been very different. Soccer now has very strong roots in

communities around the country It ranks as the fastest-growing team sport in terms o

levels of participation, dwarfing

little-league baseball,

with between 4 and 6 million

children participating in organized leagues. Soccer has also established very strong roots

in colleges, particularly among women players, whose sporting facilities have improved

in response to

Title IX

The international soccer federation (FIFA) tried to enter the lucrative American market

for many years, but this remained difficult until the emergence of

cable

television, as the

major networks catered to exceedingly profitable football,

basketball

and baseball

leagues. The rise of ESPN, the cable sports channel, provided a new outlet for small

sporting markets and growing markets like that for soccer.

The World Cup in 1994, held in the United States, set attendance records for the

competition and helped cement the position of soccer in the United States. Large crowds

witnessed a respectable American national team led by Alexi Lalas, Eric Wynalda and

John Harkin, stars from the fledgling major-league soccer. This league has avoided the

itfalls of the NASL, and, by limiting each team to four foreign players, has given the

league a more American flavor and ensured considerable corporate sponsorship.

Continued success for soccer in the United States is likely to depend on the blending o

two traditions, similar to that occurring earlier in the rise of basketball. One is the

suburban

sporting tradition, undergoing a shift as parents turn away from basketball,

associated with the inner city and football, seen by many as being too violent for their

children. The strength of soccer in suburban communities is seen in the political

significance attached to the “soccer mom” as a constituency in recent political elections.

The other tradition is that of the new immigrants coming into the country New arrivals

following the easing of

immigration

quotas in the 1960s have left places where soccer is

firmly established as the leading spectator sport. Instead of identifying with baseball,

which has been losing its hold as the American game, many of these immigrants enter

communities where ethnic soccer teams and leagues are commonplace.

And the success of the game has been amply demonstrated by the Women’s World

Cup of 1999, which, building on the USA’s leading position in the women’s game, has

produced record-

reaking crowds and widespread attention from bastions of male

dominance. The Gatorade commercial pitting Mia Hamm, the superstar of the women’s

game, against Micheal Jordan highlights the newfound commercial appeal of the game

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1030

and its players.

Further reading

Gardner, P. (1999)

Soccer Talk,

Chicago: Masters Press.

Longman, J. (2000)

The Girls of Summer,

New York: Harper Collins.

ROBERT GREGG

socialists

communism; Left, the

Social Security

The Social Security Act of 1935, part of President Franklin

Roosevelt’s

New Deal

program, was drafted in response to a need to address financial insecurity in

old age

While it did provide public assistance for the aged poor, it more notably legislated a

national social-insurance system to provide pensions for retirees. Although not made

explicit at the time, it is commonly believed that the legislation was also intended to

address the problem of unemployment by removing a significant number of persons from

the jobless statistics. While improving income security for older Americans, it

simultaneously and unintentionally set the stage for a form of age discrimination by

insinuating that older adults do not have a place in the labor force, a sentiment still held

y some today. Maximum payments in 1999 are set at $1,373 dollars for fully vested

individuals, although benefits vary widely in terms of amount of contribution, time o

withdrawal and additional income.

The Old-Age Assistance component of the Social Security Act, Title I, is funded

through general

tax

revenues, and guarantees public assistance to poor elders regardless

of employment history In contrast, Title II, which mandates universal pensions for retired

workers, is financed through a payroll tax shared equally by employee and employer.

When first enacted in 1935 only workers in commerce and industry were covered,

representing approximately 60 percent of the labor force (Myers 1987). It wasn’t until the

1950s that subsequent legislation broadened the scope of the program to include most o

those previously excluded, such as farm workers and the self-employed.

Social Security pension benefits were originally and deliberately portrayed as having

been earned by the elderly through premium-like payments into the system during their

working years. However, it has become increasingly understood that the Social Security

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system is a tax on today’s generation of workers to support those who are currently

retired—not an insurance program. There are, in reality no reserves of accrued

premiums—a deliberate feature of the program. Thus, there exists an arrangement

whereby elderly recipients are, in a sense, at the mercy of the current workforce and their

continued commitment to supporting the program as it now stands. Many fear that the

sense of obligation to perpetuate the system will diminish, which will usher in

momentous modifications to its structure and potentially undermine its solvency

A further threat to the Social Security system is the changing demographic profile o

the American people. As an aging society the United States is experiencing an increase in

the elderly dependency ratio, the number of dependents over sixty-five per hundred

persons aged eighteen to sixty-five. This figure for the year 2030 is projected to be twice

what it was in 1960 (Pifer and Bronte 1986), reflecting an increasing pool of Social

Security beneficiaries dependent upon a significantly smaller cohort of labor-force

articipants. Given a design founded on resource redistribution, not insurance, this

connotes high and increasing costs for maintaining the elderly The potential for strained

relations among generations is apparent.

There is significant debate over the future of the Social Security program. Many still

subscribe to the belief that the structure will collapse due to inadequate funding to

perpetuate the system, despite significant legislated improvements in 1983. Public

confidence has declined drastically in light of such commentary. In reality the ability o

the nation to keep the system solvent is not in question and there is, in fact, a substantial

surplus of funds at present. The question is, therefore, not

whether

the United States can

guarantee the continued existence of the Social Security system but

how

Those who have

subjected the program to critical scrutiny answer that question with solutions ranging

from minor tweaking to a significant overhaul (Dentzer 1999). Regardless, the critical

issues to be addressed include the formula used to collect the necessary funding, the

amount of benefits to be distributed to individuals, the criteria under which benefits are

distributed and the source of financing.

Future retirees across the generations are deeply concerned about the ongoing

successful management of the Social Security program and fear that they may receive no

benefits in exchange for their years of contributions. Today’s politicians recognize the

alarm among the populace and are crafting various proposals to “fix” the system. Some

are acting out of a sincere concern for their constituents while others, perhaps, merely see

the universal fear as an opportunity for political gain. The politicization of the issue has

een both beneficial, by drawing needed attention to the matter, and harmful, by

generating undue panic over the continued solvency of Social Security

Debates, both political and scholarly over the matter of adjusting benefit levels based

upon the relative economic status of beneficiaries have contributed to the polarization o

the American public. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether means-testing

is a useful method of improving the financial health of the Social Security system or

simply a path towards the further division of the American populace along class lines.

Those in support of the latter position argue that better ways of modifying the program

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1032

exist (Scharlach and Kaye 1997).

Further reading

Atchley, R.C. (1997)

Social Forces and Aging,

8th edn, Belmont: Wadsworth.

Dentzer, S. (1999) “The Stakes,”

Modern Maturity,

pp. 44–55.

Myers, R.J. (1987) “Social Security” in Maddox, G.L. (ed.)

The Encyclopedia of Aging,

New York: Springer Publishing Company.

National Academy on Aging (1997) “Facts on Social Security: The Old Age and

Survivors Trust Fund, 1997,”

Gerontology News

(24)6:7–8.

Pifer, A. and Bronte, L. (1986)

Our Aging Society: Paradox and Promise,

New York:

W.W. Norton & Company.

Scharlach, A.E. and Kaye, L.W. (eds) (1997)

Controversial Issues in Aging,

Boston:

Allyn and Bacon.

Schulz, J.H. (1995)

The Economics of Aging,

6th edn, Westport, CN: Auburn House.

LENARD W KAYE

sociology

Sociology as a field of study focuses on the interactions of individuals, groups and

organizations within a social structure. The discipline of sociology has always been

shaped by the political and social climate of the times and can be traced back to the

works of Karl Marx (1818–83), Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), Max Weber (1864–1920)

and W.E.B.

Du Bois

(1868–1963), whose political and social philosophies on labor,

capital,

religion,

culture, morality and modern life continue to influence the field o

sociology as well as other disciplines.

During the early twentieth century the

University of Chicago

was known to be the hub

of American sociology. While at Harvard University around the mid-century, Talcott

Parsons (1902–79), considered the founder of American sociological theory worked on

general theories of social action, helping make that institution a center of sociological

research. Likewise, Robert Merton’s work at Columbia University helped to forge

sociology into an intellectual science with its own terminology of concepts and standards

of application, making Columbia the other recognized center for sociology.

Up until the mid-twentieth century the field of sociology was dedicated mostly to

structural analysis. Social changes occurring in the 1950s inspired the emergence of new

sociological concepts. With the

Civil Rights movement

and other social movements, the

olitical and social climates of the United States were altering quickly and sociologists

responded by focusing their research less on structural analysis and more on political and

moral concerns prevalent during the late 1950s and 1960s. Younger sociologists began to

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ut into practice those theories they had learned by researching less advantaged groups in

society like women,

African Americans

and

Latinos

. As sociologists embarked on this

new direction, their influence increased with summons coming from the White House,

Senate and Congress to advise on the plethora of social problems facing the country

In the 1990s, most

colleges and universities

housed a sociology department, but the

restige of these departments had diminished significantly from the heyday of the 1950s

and 1960s. Partly this was a result of the

backlash

against many of the policies and

rograms that they had recommended to politicians, many of them associated with

President Lyndon

Johnson’s

“Great Society” Backing away from public policy

sociologists have in a way synthesized the earlier impulses, studying individuals and the

social structures within which they operate. Areas of research vary from

feminism

education

to ethnic identity to the HIV/

AIDS

epidemic. With a broader, more complex

field of study most sociologists still utilize the classic theories to understand the intricacy

of contemporary problems.

Further reading

Lemert, C. (1997)

Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life,

Lanham:

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Lemert, C. (ed.) (1993)

Social Theory: The Multicultural & Classic Readings,

Boulder:

Westview Press.

LORELEI ATALIE VARGAS

soda

Names vary regionally (“pop” in

New England

. “soft drinks” or “cola” in the

South

), as

do local favorites. Yet, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and related non-alcoholic carbonated beverages

have built global empires, as emblematic of contemporary America as tea in Japan or

wine in France. Over a century strong cultural associations have been forged between

these drinks and child and

teenage

sociability (1950s soda jerks and soda fountains or

1990s

fast-food

packages). Meanwhile, darker associations have been drawn between

aggressively marketed sodas and poor nutrition or tooth decay while teen folklore has

identified coke and aspirin as a contraceptive (or whispered about drugs hidden in

innocent beverages).

Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton created “Coke” in 1886, a “temperance” version o

his previous Bordeaux-coca combination. Mixing fruit flavors, spices,

coca

and

kola,

Pemberton added carbonated water in 1887 before selling out to pharmacist Asa Candler.

Candler expanded sales through regionalized syrup production and local bottling

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1034

franchises. In the 1920s, the Woodruff dynasty took Coke worldwide, including to the

frontlines of the Second World War. Advertising and placement in fast food, foreign

policy and children’s sight made Coke an American staple, reinforced with catchy jingles

like “I’d like to teach the world to sing.” The company diversified into diet drinks and

other markets, but faced a major misstep in 1985, with a change in its highly secretive

formula. The

Atlanta

-based company recovered with 1992

Olympic

sponsorship, Coke

memorabilia, stressing American nostalgia, and insistent placement through advertising

and monopolistic sales arrangements.

Pepsi, created by a North Carolina pharmacist in the 1890s, grew slowly until after the

Second World War, when markets expanded through advertising pitched towards a

younger “Pepsi Generation.” By the 1970s, it pulled even in-store sales and skirmished

over both fast-food placements and international diplomacy (

Nixon

took Pepsi to China).

Like Coke, Pepsi seeks monopolistic placements, whether in schools or on airlines.

Pepsi and Coke diversification encompasses lemon-lime sodas, fruit drinks and related

products. Competitors have included Dr Pepper (with snappy youth-oriented ad

campaigns) and Royal Crown Colas, fruit flavors (orange, grape and peach Nehi), creme

soda and root/birch beer and chocolate sodas. Asian and Latino stores supply coconut,

vegetable and sugarcane beverages, while 1990s competition for non-alcoholic markets

has been heightened by bottled, flavored iced teas and sparkling waters, often with

European cachet (albeit conglomerate ownership).

Further reading

Pendergast, C. (1993)

For God, Country and Coca-Cola,

New York: Charles Scribner’s

Sons.

GARY McDONOGH

softball

Baseball

game adapted for women by educators who believed that the women’s game

should differ from the men’s in terms of the size of the ball, the pitching (which, though

underarm, can be a fastpitch game at the top levels) and the vigor with which it was

layed. Only the first two strictures remained as the game spread rapidly in the industries

that employed women during the Second World War (as many as 40,000 teams existing

around the country in 1944). Following the war, softball remained largely unsupported in

colleges and universities

until the passage of

Title IX

in 1972, but by the 1990s an

estimated 40 million men and women were playing softball in the US. Among men the

game is normally given recreational status, but for girls and women it has become a

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