Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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major school and college sport, especially noted for being a new source of scholarships

for women athletes at the larger universities.

Efforts to internationalize the game occurred throughout the 1970s, with a

simultaneous attempt to have softball accepted as an

Olympic

sport. Softball was

introduced at the

Atlanta

games of 1996 as a full Olympic sport. Led by shortstop Dot

Richardson, the American team defeated seven other nations in a round-robin

tournament, securing the gold medal.

Further reading

Walsh, L. (1978)

Contemporary Softball,

Chicago: Contemporary Books.

ROBERT GREGG

SoHo

This lower Manhattan area is located SOuth of HOuston Street and was in the early

1900s an area of cast-iron factory buildings. In the 1960s and 1970s, after many factory

closures, the artists rediscovered the area, using low-rent factories as lofts. An art scene

grew up in SoHo and property values increased. In the 1990s, SoHo boasts institutions

like the SoHo Guggenheim as well as luxury shops and residences. Although some

longtime residents remain, SoHo has become more about the sale and display of art than

its production. The stump-compound name of SoHo has also been extended to NoHo

(North) and mimicked elsewhere—hence SoBe for South Beach, in

Miami, FL

GABRIELLE BENDINER-VIANI

Somalia

Continuing drought brought widespread famine to the Horn of Africa during the early

1990s, leading the United Nations to send humanitarian aid. By December 1992,

however, warring Somali factions were diverting UN sanctioned food-relief shipments to

black markets, so President

Bush

dispatched 30,000 American troops to Somalia to

protect food deliveries.

The deployment of troops became controversial as tensions arose between UN and US

officials in Somalia, while Somali factions began to fight back. It became clearer that

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1036

American officials did not know enough about the region and its peoples to make the

mission work smoothly These problems were exacerbated when President

Clinton

expanded the American military’s mandate to restoring order and state building. When

eighteen marines were killed fighting the forces of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah

Aidid and television cameras recorded a mob dragging an American body down the

street, public support for the mission deteriorated. Clinton withdrew all troops in 1994,

and remained wary of using American force in

Africa,

something that would have dire

consequences when genocide began in Rwanda.

ROBERT GREGG

Sontag, Susan

b. 1933

Susan Sontag is an American essayist, novelist, and film-maker known for her

insightful analyses of contemporary culture. Born in

New York

City, her diverse

accomplishments include a prolific literary career, a performance in Woody

Allen’s

Zelig

(1983) and an uncompromising dedication to humanitarian concerns. She has written

many highly original essay collections, short stories and novels, and has also written and

directed films. Her essay collections include

Against Interpretation

(1966),

About

hotograph

(1977),

Illness as Metaphor

(1978) and

Under the Sign of Saturn

(1980).

Her novels include

The Volcano Lover: A Romance

(1992).

NICOLE MARIE KEATING

soul

Soul music became the voice of black America in the 1960s, but that voice was hardly a

singular one. Mixing the sacred sounds of gospel with the profane of the

blues

—and a

dash of lush, pop production—soul brought black music to new heights o

expressiveness. Lyrically, soul veered from complex, adult romance to optimistic

anthems of black pride, a reflection of the social changes and

civil rights

activism taking

place in the United States.

Ray Charles, Sam

Cooke,

Jackie Wilson and James

Brown

pioneered the form in the

late 1950s with their mixtures of gospel and R&B. In the 1960s, major soul music scenes

centered around labels, producers and studios in

Detroit, MI

(Motown), Memphis

(Stax/Volt),

Philadelphia, PA

(Gamble & Huff) and Alabama (Muscle Shoals).

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Throughout the decade, artists such as Smokey Robinson, the

Supremes,

Ben E.King,

the Temptations and Curtis Mayfield brought the sounds of sweet soul music to

listeners—black and white—across mainstream America. The demand for “Respect” in

the Otis Redding song, as performed by Aretha

Franklin

in 1967, stands as much as

anything for the spirit of soul.

The soul era is generally considered to have died out when the

Civil Rights

era ended,

signified most dramatically by the assassination of Martin Luther

King

, Jr. in 1968.

Musically soul lived on, though it spawned the new variations of funk (Sly Stone, James

Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic) and disco (the Trammps, Donna Summer) and the

singular sounds of Stevie

Wonder

DEWAR MACLEOD

South

This region includes the former slave-holding states of the Confederacy during the Civil

War—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South

Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Nearby “border” states of Missouri, Kentucky

Maryland and West Virginia also share many traits and connections. The South’s

defining historical features include social polarization around

race

and

class,

intense

olitical campaigns defending these interests, a stratified rural agricultural base and

torturous cultural debates over these features, in the South and in confrontation with the

rest of the nation. The South remains paradoxical in the very salience of its positive and

negative images—friendly yet embittered, or genteel but ignorant and provincial. Such

stereotypes permeated coverage of the 1996 Atlanta

Olympics

as they had in the

civil

rights

campaigns, which fundamentally changed the Solid South.

Change is a fundamental feature of modern Southern contradictions. In the 1930s, this

area, and its black and white population, was labeled the number one economic problem

in America, even while romanticized in movies like

Gone With the Wind

(1939), which

continued to shape visions of Southern history worldwide. Abandoned by many African

Americans as a hell of slavery and

segregation,

its whites expressed both guilt and

defiance in dealing with the rest of the nation. After the Second World War, the South

was segregated, fundamentalist, rural,

Democrat

and poor, yet it also held an aura o

mystery aristocratic culture and verdant passions. By the 1990s, the South was generally

and visibly integrated, marked by

Sunbelt

development, diverse and

Republican—

without totally belying or erasing its earlier lives and reputation.

Economic development had already begun to change the South in the 1930s and 1940s,

with the work of the WPA and the

Tennessee Valley Authority,

controlling flooding and

generating power throughout the upper South. Other stimuli to growth came from

manufacturers moving production to non

-union

and cheap-wage states, a pattern still

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1038

resent in exploitative industries like poultry and clothing. Military development also

generated continuing investment in the South, whose Congress members and citizens

stayed committed to the armed forces even in periods of American doubt like the

Vietnam War

. The South remains covered by military bases and suppliers to this day.

Agriculture, forced into modernization by the exodus of cheap, controllable labor,

continued as an economic base. While King Cotton never recovered its pre-eminence

after turn of the nineteenth century boll weevil infestations,

tobacco,

sugar, fruits and

vegetables, meats and fish have all contributed to state and local economies.

In the 1950s, however, the issues were less economic than social and political, as

disfranchised blacks across the South demanded equal rights of participation within their

societies. Segregation, for decades, had denied citizens the vote, job opportunities,

schools and even access to stores, restaurants and bathrooms on the basis of race. Bloody

campaigns to gain these rights tore across rural areas, small towns and the cities of the

South. Figures such as Rosa

Parks,

Martin Luther

King,

Jr. and Lillian Smith emerged

as consciences not only for the region but for the nation which had accommodated to the

oppression of so many citizens. Meanwhile, segregationist politicians like George

Wallace,

Lester Maddox and Strom

Thurmond

charted a course which broke the South

from the New Deal Democrats towards a conservative union with Republicans which

became evident in Barry

Goldwater’s

1964 triumphs there against Lyndon

Johnson,

Texan identified with civil rights.

Slow resolutions of decades of injustice came with development as well as

constitutional revindication. In the 1970s, as protest tore across America’s industrial

cities, a new South beckoned with investment opportunities and images of leisure in a

lush climate (aided by widespread

air-conditioning

Florida,

already a

tourism

center,

boomed into the fourth-largest state in the country with retirees and coastal development;

all Southern states except Arkansas and Tennessee have coasts which saw massive

development into the 1990s. Yet the gaps between plutocratic Palm Beach and Florida’s

inland agricultural towns like Belle Glade still speak of both human and environmental

exploitation.

Texas,

whose trajectory also differs from the rest of the South, burgeoned

with

oil

and gas in boom-and-bust metropoles like

Houston

and

Dallas,

while facing

deep divisions between

Latino

populations, old and new, and Anglo settlers and

immigrants. Meanwhile, the

Appalachian

Mountains and Mississippi Delta remained

mired in poverty as mines closed and small farms failed to compete—even when new

resort developments would later spring up nearby

By the 1980s, new capitals had emerged.

Atlanta

took command of air, government

offices and ultimately media with Ted

Turner

Charlotte, NC,

however, challenged

Atlanta’s control of finance through the aggressive national mergers of many North

Carolina banks, while

Miami

and

Houston

evoked a more global South with ties to

Latin America

and the

Caribbean

Nashville,

in music, Orlando, with

Disneyworld

development, and

New Orleans,

in everything, also blend old and new South, where

tourists come to experience, buy and even resettle in areas scorned only decades before.

Development has not erased divisions, as blacks continue to fight for equal funding

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and access as well as political representation across the South. Conservative national

oliticians and judges may often seem to be more of an enemy than local leaders.

Meanwhile, the area that produced almost all modern Democratic presidents—Johnson

(who balanced Massachusett’s young, liberal

JFK

Carter

(Georgia) and both

Clinton

(Arkansas) and his VP

Gore

(Tennessee)—has increasingly voted Republican in

Congress and the statehouse. In 1996 the Democratic president and vicepresident and the

Republican Speaker of the House Newt

Gingrich,

of Georgia, and Senate Majority

Leader Trent Lott, of Mississippi, were all Southerners, yet polarized by party and, to

some extent, ideology. The 2000 elections has seen Southerners heading the tickets for

oth parties. Ironically inroads by blacks, women and other minorities have been more

notable in urban politics and local elections.

Other cultural features of the South are also in flux. The isolation of underdevelopment

has given way to national and international migrations.

Yuppies

and “twenty-

somethings” are as much a feature of the North Carolina research triangle as the Houston

suburbs

. In cities, new Asian and

Caribbean

communities have also appeared, often in

the suburbs.

The religious panorama of the South, identified with

Bible belt

preachers in both white

and black evangelical traditions, was always more complex, including elite

Episcopalians

and urban Catholics and Jews.

Buddhism, Islam

and

Santería

have

complicated this vision, but 1990s Southern spiritualities also encompass large, secular

populations for whom the gods and guilt of the South no longer have the same meanings.

Education has also changed. Centuries of segregated education gave way to

white-

flight

academies and

de facto

divisions, which the South now shares with public

education nationwide. Although the College of William and Mary in Virginia, is one o

the country’s oldest schools, Southern universities were once more known for sports and

gentlemanly finishing than academics. While the Southeastern Conference remains a

powerhouse in

football

and

basketball

—highly integrated sports—other schools like

Duke, University of North Carolina, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Georgia Tech and Emory have

increased national prestige as well.

The culture of the South, through all of these changes, has also demanded reflection—

the drive, as a Faulkner character put it, to “tell about the South.” Authors including

Faulkner, Eudora Welty Maya

Angelou,

Reynolds Price, James Agee, Alice

Walker,

Tennessee

Williams

and Ralph McGill have found inspiration and dilemmas in their

region. John

Grisham

and Anne Rice have dominated popular fiction, exploring the

darkness of the South as well as its changes. Southern musical traditions—

blues, Cajun,

countrywestern,

gospel,

jazz,

ragtime and tejana—have infused American culture in

voices from Mahalia Jackson to Elvis

Presley

In movies and television, however, images produced outside the South have changed

much more slowly The “guilty” South has haunted classic movies like

To Kill a

ockingbird

(1962),

Cool Hand Luke

(1967) and

Driving Miss Daisy

(1989). Alternate

visions of tortured struggle (

Wise Blood,

1979, based on Flannery O’Connor’s religious

novel; or the labor panorama of

Harlan County, USA,

1976) and complicated corruption

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1040

(Robert Altman’s

Nashville,

1975) exist alongside creative communities of minorities

and women (Julie

Dash’s

exquisite

Daughters of the Dust,

1989; Hollywood’s

The Color

urple,

1985). Television has changed even more slowly finally abandoning the bucolic

comedy of the

Andy Griffith Show

for sophisticated and sardonic women in

esignin

Women

Facing the twenty-first century the South and its inhabitants still constitute one of the

most strongly marked regions of the United States. Yet, rapid changes in the area in the

last five decades and its complexity today also mark the South as quintessentially

American. The South shares the same dilemmas, development and population in a

manner scarcely imaginable before the Second World War. Images and realities, division

and identity are continually reshaped against a history perhaps more distant yet hardly

escaped.

Further reading

Reagan, C. and Ferris, W. (1989)

Encyclopedia of Southern Culture,

Chapel Hill NC:

University of North Carolina Press.

GARY McDONOGH

South Asians

People of South-Asian origin living in the United States have emigrated mostly from

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. Some scholars of South Asia

also include Burma and Tibet in this group, while others see them as being part of East

and Southeast Asia.

Immigration

to the United States from South Asia can be divided

into two main phases. The early phase, from the mid-nineteenth century to the early

1920s, was marked by the arrival in

California

of immigrant farmers and laborers from

the state of Punjab in India. Initially absorbed into the economy as cheap labor, these

Punjabi farmers made significant contributions to the development of large-scale

agribusiness in California. This was the period during which the immigration laws in the

US discriminated against Asian immigration. Many of the Punjabi men, who had arrived

single in America, married Mexican women leading to the creation of that awkward

category of people called “Mexican Hindus.” Members of the PunjabiMexican second

generation imbibed both cultures, but defined themselves consciously as Americans.

The second phase of South-Asian immigration to the US was ushered in by changes in

the Immigration and Naturalization Act in 1965. Large numbers of Indians started

entering the country as, for the first time, a person’s right to enter the United States did

not depend on race. The new Act allowed people with skills to immigrate and,

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subsequently professionals from various countries took advantage of the legal welcome.

By 1995 there were approximately 1 million Asian Indians, constituting the largest group

among South Asians in the United States. The post-1965 immigrants came from different

arts of South Asia, but still predominantly from India and, particularly from the states o

Gujarat, Punjab and the four Southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu

and Kerala. Those with professional educational training took advantage of opportunities

in medicine,

engineering,

business management and computer science, and established

themselves as the group with the highest annual income in the US; many others set up

successful businesses in

New York

City, NY,

Chicago, IL

and

California

. Besides

nostalgia and memory strong socio-economic and cultural investments link the new

immigrants with their countries of origin. In the new economic regime of liberalization in

South Asia, national governments, eager for investments from South Asians abroad, are

seeking to create a favorable atmosphere by speaking of transnational communities and

unified diasporic entities. Satellite television,

video

and the

Internet

have accelerated the

pace of cultural exchanges between the parent country and the diaspora.

South-Asian Americans, as one of the more economically successful groups in the

United States, have turned their attention and resources to establishing several religious

and cultural centers of distinctively South Asian origin.

Hindu

temples, Islamic

community centers, Sikh gurudwaras, ethnic churches and electronic communication

links have enabled the establishment and maintenance of thriving diasporic communities.

While participation in the political life of the US has been limited to fundraising and

small-town politics, many South-Asian organizations in the US are known to sponsor

actively a range of political activities in South Asia. Right-wing Hindu political

formations in India as well as Islamic fundamentalist organizations in Pakistan enjoy

considerable support from their respective diasporic communities.

Presently the South-Asian community in America is engaged in a fascinating

intergenerational negotiation about identity and other cultural values. While an

unambiguous “Indian” or “Sri Lankan” identity was crucial for their parents’ self-

definitions, the second generation of South Asians seems comfortably to embrace

hyphenated identities, calling themselves American with an “In-dian” or “Sri Lankan”

background or origin. Among children of Indian origin, for example, “Indianness” is not

foregrounded in their self-

erceptions, and there seem to be divergent understandings o

what it means. Many respect their heritage and even don’t hesitate to flaunt it in the new

multicultural marketplace of ethnic America. Racial identity is as much a reality to them

as it has been for their parents, although, unlike their parents’ hesitant approach to

matters of race, the second generation South-Asian Americans engage with

race

much

more explicitly and confidently. Race, ethnicity

class, religion,

language,

gender and

sexuality are some of the components of their identities that shape their perceptions o

who they are and how they like to be perceived by others.

Further reading

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1042

Leonard, K.I. (1997)

The South Asian Americans,

Westport: Greenwood Press.

Rayaprol, A. (1997)

Negotiating Identities,

New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

APARNA RAYAPROL

Southeast Asians

War and political strife have been the reasons Southeast Asians find themselves in the

United States. With the declaration of war between Spain and the United States in 1898

Americans entered into the affairs of Southeast Asians in the Philippines. Americans

moved there and

Filipinos

later followed colonial relationships and education to the US.

The

Vietnam War

brought several “hill tribes,”

articularly the Hmong, from Laos and

Vietnam to the United States for resettlement because of their involvement with US

counter-insurgency campaigns (sponsored by the CIA and US military) against the North

Vietnamese. After the end of US involvement in the war, many south Vietnamese

“escaped” Vietnam by boat (known as “boat people”) for

refugee

camps located

throughout Southeast Asia, later to be resettled in the United States. Political upheavals in

Cambodia and along its borders with Vietnam, Laos and Thailand have also fostered

Southeast Asian

immigration

to the US.

Southeast Asian groups living in the US, then, are for the most part refugee

opulations. In the racial politics that continue to shape the US social structure, Southeast

Asians (except for established Filipinos) have little political power or representation apart

from

“Asian American”

status and politics. Compared with other Asian groups, like the

Chinese and Japanese “model minorities,” they are still closer to the margins of the US

social and economic system, working in low-

aying or informal jobs and sometimes

relying on welfare.

ee also:

Vietnamese Americans

Further reading

Haines, D.W. (ed.) (1989)

Refugees as Immigrants: Cambodians, Laotians, and

Vietnamese in America,

Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield.

Hein, J. (1995)

From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: A efugee Experience in the United

States,

New York: Twayne Publishers; London: Prentice Hall International.

STEVE FERZACCA

Southern Baptists

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The Southern Baptist Convention represents a general organization of the 15.8 million

members of 40,887 churches. Southern Baptist beliefs include freedom of religion, the

priesthood of all believers and the individual soul’s competency before God, and belief in

Jesus Christ whose will is revealed in the Bible as the sole authority for faith and

ractice, as noted in the 1925 Statement of Baptist Faith and Message, adopted in 1963

y the Southern Baptist Convention. The 1998 convention adopted an amendment to the

1963 statement, regarding the structure of the

family, marriage

and the role of women,

defining marriage as the monogamous relationship between a man and a woman, and

asserting that the husband is head of the family and the woman should “graciously

submit” to him.

Southern Baptists have played an increasing and often controversial role in American

political life, allying themselves most closely with the

Republican Party

and

conservative issues. In 1997 they voted to boycott all

Disney

products because they said

that Disney policies did not promote a profamily image and supported gay and lesbian

lifestyles and agendas.

Southern Baptists enjoy independence congregationally They do not adhere to one

confession of faith or creed, noting that “any group of Baptists, large or small, have the

inherent right to draw up for themselves and publish to the world a confession of their

faith whenever they think it advisable to do so” (1925 statement). The 1925 confession,

adopted in 1963, is not binding on congregations, but rather constitutes a guide for

interpretation with no authority over conscience.

The Southern Baptist Convention traces its roots to 1845 in Augusta, Georgia during

increasing tensions among people in the North and

South

. Debates concerned slavery the

denominational authority to discipline church members, the rights of Southerners to

receive missionary appointments and the neglect of the South in missionary

appointments. Prompted by decisions to decline to appoint several slaveholders as

missionaries, 293 Baptist leaders from the South representing 356,000 Baptists convened

to determine the best means of promoting the foreignmission cause and other interests o

the Baptist denomination in the South.

On May 10, 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention was organized, a constitution

adopted, a structure developed, the mission and purpose written, the Foreign Mission

Board and the Home Mission Board established and very soon after this the first

missionaries were appointed.

Southern Baptists have emphasized mission and evangelism since their beginnings.

Currently 4,000 foreign missionaries serve in 133 foreign countries; 4,857 home

missionaries serve in the United States. The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist

Convention assists its churches and agencies in a variety of ways. It serves as the fiscal

agent for the Convention, represents the Convention in legal matters, provides promotion

and publicity for the Cooperative Program through the Baptist Press, presents a budget

for the Convention and its agencies, authorizes the work of the Southern Baptist

Foundation and provides advice.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1044

Further reading

Smith, J. (ed.) (1995)

The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion,

San Francisco:

American Academy of Religion and HarperCollins.

“Southern Baptist Convention,” “Southern Baptist Beliefs,” “The Executive Committee,”

June 8, 1998: http://www.sbcnet.org.

GAIL HENSON

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

(SCLC)

SCLC was founded in 1957, emerging out of the Montgomery Improvement Association,

which had successfully orchestrated the bus boycott. Led by Martin Luther

King,

Jr. as

president, until his death in 1968, and by Ralph

Abernathy,

SCLC advocated non-violent

resistance to

segregation

and racial oppression. In 1960 it helped establish a student

organization, the

Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee

(SNCC), which would

challenge the parent organization’s philosophy of non-violence and embrace

Black

Power

. Until the mid-1960s the influence of SCLG was felt in all the cities of the

South;

but it was unable to have similar success in northern cities like

Chicago

ROBERT GREGG

Southwest

The Southwest region includes New Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah, southern Nevada,

and the adjoining parts of Colorado,

Texas

and

California,

mingling Native Americans,

Hispanics

and waves of European American

immigration

. Although the Southwest,

more than many other US regions, connotes a coherent regional style in architecture, food

and other aesthetics, the meanings of the Southwest have varied over time. From an early

association with the “primitive”

West

of “wild Indians,” to the tranquil vacation

destination of the 1950s, to its current association with the border and

retirement

communities, the Southwest remains a touchstone for what is essentially American.

The romance of the early Southwest attracted nineteenth-century collectors o

antiquities and pot-hunters alike, whose influence remains clear today in the development

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