Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

UFOs/extraterrestrials

Among the most discussed immigrants of the postwar period are those many believe have

never actually arrived—aliens from other worlds. For many these stories are the stuff o

science fiction—where an alien threat has remained big box office from

The Thing

(1952;

1982) and

War of the Worlds

(Orson

Welles’

radio version 1938; film 1953) through

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

(1977) and

E.T.

(1982) to

Independence Day

(1997)

and

Men in Black

(1998). American scientists, military and government agencies have

generally concurred in rejecting any such possibilities. Yet, other Americans assemble

sightings, photographs, personal testimonies, reinterpretations of historical texts and

material evidence to prove alien contact, covered up by a vast government conspiracy (as

in television’s

The X-Files

). Indeed, whether to treat such evidence as incitement to

further research or signs of mass hysteria continues to divide analysts.

Despite many earlier science-fiction accounts of extra-terrestrial life and alien arrivals,

clear changes arrived in the

Cold War

era. Pilot Kenneth Arnold’s report of a formation

of incredibly fast blue-white objects over Washington’s Cascade mountains on June 24,

1947 is generally taken as inaugurating the modern UFO era (Unidentified Flying

Objects; more popularly, “flying saucers”). This incident was followed on July 2 by

reports of a UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, later dismissed by the government as a

weather balloon; skepticism here makes Roswell critical for later ufologists. Thousands

of reports followed, forcing an air force investigation, Project Blue Book, from 1948 to

1969. By 1953, the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel concluded that UFOs did not exist,

ut that stories about them threatened national security; after August 1953, reports

became classified. Yet, in a few months, Donald Keyhoe’s bestselling

Flying Saucers

rom Outer Space

(1953) restated these claims and debate has never disappeared since.

Intense sightings in 1957 and 1973, for example, showed the liveliness of saucers and

watchers.

Various genres of UFO narratives complicate evaluations of evidence. Reports (and

hotographs) of bright lights and unusual movements have tended to be explained as

other airborne objects or reflections or weather phenomena, without convincing skeptical

audiences. Contact has been more problematic. The type case for alien abduction was

Betty and Barney Hill’s hypnosis-induced narrative of a 1961 abduction. Examination o

abduction narratives as factual evidence by professors David Jacobs (Temple) and John

Mack (Harvard

Medical School

) has created subsequent firestorms in academic

communities (see

Secret Life,

1992). T.Matheson, by contrast, in

Alien Abductions

(1998)

reads these stories as the emergence of a new mythology. Others have related such

narratives to anxieties of changing roles of Americans and whites in a global economy.

Analysis of UFOs diverges from a scientific search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1146

(SETI), spurred on in the 1970s by Carl

Sagan

and distinguished researchers. Whether or

not Earth has been visited, this project assumes, others may still be there. Space flights

have included materials to establish contact with such beings.

It is tempting to read extra-terrestrial beings as symbols of race, class and change

(developed by the film

Alien Nation,

1988, which depicted massive extra-terrestrial

arrivals through analogies with African Americans and recent refugees). Yet, other

Americans read them as truth, personal experiences or symbols of conspiracy, a theme o

vocal debate on the Internet.

Further reading

Curran, D. (1985)

In Advance of the Landing,

New York: Abbeville.

Keyhoe, D. (1953)

Flying Saucers from Outer Space,

New York: Henry Holt.

Jacobs, D.M. (1992)

Secret Life,

New York: Simon & Schuster.

Matheson, T. (1998)

Alien Abductions,

Amherst: Prometheus.

GARY McDONOGH

ugly American

American images abroad; tourism

Ukrainian Americans

Exact numbers of Ukrainian immigrants in the US are difficult to determine as

immigration

authorities often used labels such as “Carpatho

Russian

” or “Galician” to

describe Ukrainians. The official number is about 250,000, but the real number may be

double this. Many Ukrainians fled to the US during the Russian Civil War (1918–21).

Unlike some other

Slavic Americans,

the Ukrainians have maintained a fairly strong

ethnic identity; many people are proud to identify themselves as being of Ukrainian

descent, even if it is mixed with that of other groups. A number of cultural and political

organizations have been formed: the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America

represents Ukrainian political interests; and the Washington Group (established in 1984)

informs the public about issues of concern to Ukrainian Americans.

MORGEN WITZEL

Entries A-Z 1147

unabomber

Between 1978 and 1995, sixteen mail-bomb attacks were attributed to “the unabomber,”

socalled because the victims were often associated with universities. Theodore Kaczynski

was arrested at his home—a hand-built cabin in the Montana Rockies—after his brother

recognized the style of an anti-technology manifesto which the unabomber had written,

and which the

FBI

had persuaded newspapers to publish. Although his ability to elude

olice for almost two decades made him a minor folk hero, his most lasting effects on

daily life were the identification practices instituted at post offices during his time at

large.

DAVID J.PHILLIPS

“underclass

”

A term introduced by

Time

magazine in 1977 which describes what some saw as a new

class of poor people, not cursed simply with a lack of money, but with a whole host o

social pathologies, from single parenthood, to drug addiction, to high rates o

articipation in crime, and low willingness to pursue legitimate work. The members o

the “underclass” had allegedly fallen out of society’s traditional structures of work and

family. They would, it was argued and feared, reproduce a class of dependent poor. The

term is best written in quotation marks as it reveals as much about a cultural moment in

the history of attitudes towards the poor and a community’s obligation to them as it does

an actual group of people.

New, troublesome phenomena facing the United States and its cities gave rise to a

series of books and endless articles about a “new”

overty. It is no accident, for example,

that the term came out of an era of declining economic fortunes for the United States, as

well as a wrenching transformation of cities and the larger economy which left many

cities

destitute in ways they had not seen before. With a rapidly declining industrial base,

consequent growth of suburban area, a retrenchment of “Great Society” welfare and

urban development goals, many urban areas had been left devoid of an industrial base.

Most gravely affected were “newer” immigrants,

African Americans

and

Hispanics,

major urban areas. Poverty among these groups in urban centers did worsen as economic

opportunities fled once-flourishing neighborhoods, ever more so as industry and new

service-sector jobs moved out to

suburbs

and exurbs. A new American apartheid, as

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1148

Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A.Denton called it, was taking over, not through southern

segregation law, but by northern economic change and political decisions. The impact o

economic desolation—“when work disappears” in William J.Wilson’s phrase—was a

breakdown in a whole host of social structures and mores that maintain a community.

So, there were indeed new, troubling aspects of poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. But

ehind an apparently descriptive term of new problems, lay a century or more of attitudes

and policies towards the poor and a more recent intense battle over poverty economic

change and government’s role in social

welfare

. With the apparent failure of the “Great

Society,” many conservative commentators looked for answers not in lack o

opportunities or income but in a “culture of poverty.” This was in many ways old wine in

new bottles—the notion of the “undeserving” and irredeemable poor from the nineteenth

century recast for the late twentieth century. The term has been largely rejected by liberal

scholars of American cities and social policy as at the very least useless—it offers no new

insight into the new problems of poverty—and, at the worst, disastrous for the effort—

once a real goal, now a starry-eyed dream—of eradicating poverty. For, by focusing on

the behaviors of the poor and the “dysfunctional” life of poor, usually minority,

communities, it turns attention away from structural changes in the economy which have

created new, and in some ways, unprecedented problems of inequality.

Further reading

Katz, M. (ed.) (1993)

The Underclass Debate,

Princeton: Princeton University

Wilson, W.J. (1987)

The Truly Disadvantaged,

Chicago: University of Chicago.

MAX PAGE

uniforms, school

Used in many private schools, school uniforms are becoming increasingly popular in

public schools

across the country. Supported by President Bill

Clinton

in his 1996 State

of the Union address, school uniforms are used in several school districts in twenty-one

states. Although some claim that uniforms make schools safer by eliminating gang

markings through clothing and leveling the appearance of material wealth, some

individuals have challenged school-uniform policies, claiming that they infringe upon

students’ 1st Amendment

freedom

of expression rights.

Further reading

Entries A-Z 1149

Sanders, S. (1998) “Making the Grade; Children’s School Uniforms,”

Children’s

Business

13(1):56.

KATE M.KENSKI

unions

As in other countries, the union movement grew in the United States in tandem with

industrialization, artisans and craft laborers combining to protect their positions in the

labor market from capitalists’ attempts both to de-skill certain occupations and to replace

native-

orn workers with cheaper immigrant laborers. Despite scattered local

organizations prior to the Civil War, attempts at national organization like the National

Labor Union (1866–72), and even the resort to terrorist methods by the Irish Molly

Maguires in the mid-1870s (inspiring the exceptional 1970 movie of that name),

unionization remained stymied throughout much of the nineteenth century. Capitalists

used private force (e.g. the Pinkertons) and the power of the state to crush

strikes

that in 1892 at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Mill (near

Pittsburgh, PA

). In doing so,

they were bolstered by Supreme Court decisions that interpreted the 14th Amendment so

as to protect corporation rights rather than those of workers. Moreover, union

organization and action were also complicated by the concealed issues of

class

and

mobility in the United States that shaped the history and consciousness of the

working

and

middle classes

Nevertheless, Samuel Gompers managed to establish the American Federation o

Labor during the 1890s by stressing “pure and simple unionism,” concentrating on

organizing only skilled laborers and eschewing political action (unlike unions outside the

US, thereby remaining apart from labor and socialist parties). Consequently, Gompers

endeavored to isolate the more politically oriented unionists connected to organizations

like the Knights of Labor and, later, the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies).

In the process, the union movement became associated with attempts to exclude Chinese

in the

West

and generally remained antagonistic to

African Americans

in the

Northeast

. Further, made up primarily of craft organizations, the AFL remained

relatively weak in the face of the consolidation of corporate capitalism. By the turn of the

nineteenth century, more than 2 million workers belonged to unions.

Advances during the First World War, with Gompers and other labor leaders being

rought into the War Industries Board, were followed by an assault on unionism in 1919

and attempts by businesses to establish their own labor organizations, captured nicely in

John

Sayles

’

Matewan

(1987). The 1920s, therefore, saw a union movement at a low ebb,

though the immigration restrictions of 1924 can be seen as partly a concession to labor.

African Americans began to push for their own unions, A.Philip

Randolph

forcing both

the Pullman Company to recognize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and labor

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1150

leaders to accept the Brotherhood as a member organization within the AFL.

Union fortunes shifted dramatically in the 1930s, the Depression provoking growing

labor unrest. President Franklin D.

Roosevelt

endeavored to appeal for labor support and

instituted some protections for unions in the Wagner Act of 1935, which established the

ational Labor Relations Board. In addition, the labor movement became more inclusive,

a new breakaway organization known as the Congress of Industrial Organizations

forming under the leadership of John L.Lewis of the United Mine Workers (UMW).

Formed around industries rather than crafts, these unions were able to take on the major

automobile

and steel companies and win—

state

and federal authorities for the first time

not supporting the companies with military assistance. With union membership

expanding to 14 million by 1945, organized labor was able to establish itself as an

accepted part of the

Democratic Party

coalition, though it never achieved the position

attained by unions in the British Labour Party.

The radicalism of the New Deal spread from the industrial Northeast, and, after the

Second World War, attempted to organize black and white laborers in the

South,

as part

of Operation Dixie. The success of this movement was curtailed by the period o

McCarthyism,

which saw the purge from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)

of labor radicals accused of being communists, and by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947,

which overturned many of the gains of the previous decade (including outlawing the

closed shop and secondary picketing). Operation Dixie faltered and the laborers in the

South divided once again along racial lines, leading African Americans to move down the

path towards the more respectable

Civil Rights movement

as opposed to labor activism.

With the more radical unionists purged, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and

CIO were in a position to combine under Geroge

Meany

’s leadership (1955–79). The

AFL-CIO remained distinctly conservative in orientation through the early 1970s,

concentrating on securing better wages and working conditions, making only half-hearted

attempts to organize the so-called “unorganizable”—women, African Americans and the

newest immigrants (often

Latinos;

see

Chavez, Cesar

). It remained detached from the

civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s. It was also associated in

many people’s minds with corruption, particularly the splinter Teamsters under Jimmy

Hoffa,

the Longshoremen, whose corruption was highlighted in

On the Waterfront

(1954), and the United Mine Workers, whose internal corruption was a background for

the vivid strike documentary

Harlan County, USA

(1977).

The 1970s witnessed a concerted effort by the AFL-CIO both to reform and to expand

the tradeunion movement. The latter impulse was nicely captured on screen in

orma

(1979), based on the efforts of a Southern woman textile worker and a Northeastern

Jewish labor organizer to organize a mill whose owners had successfully resisted

unionization for decades. Any momentum in this direction was halted by the election o

Reagan

to the presidency (partly due to the support of working-class Democrats) and the

ensuing efforts of the

Republican Party

to once again weaken the labor movement. This

assault on unionism was most evident in the

air-traffic controllers

’

strike

of 1981,

during which Reagan laid off 11,000 PATCO workers, replacing them with strike

Entries A-Z 1151

breakers.

During the 1980s and 1990s, particular unions remained strong, especially those

serving the more skilled, professional “middle-class” workers, such as teachers and

airline pilots, as well as those in public-sector organizing. Nonetheless, the overall

movement as a whole has continued to decline and now fewer than 20 percent of all

workers belong to unions. The Democratic Party has retained the support of the union

movement, especially the leadership, although workers still have rallied to Republican

issues. Yet, the decline in union membership, the movement of many industries abroad

(to countries where the union movement is weaker still) and the loss of majority status for

Democrats in Congress has diminished the union movement’s political influence

dramatically. This was witnessed in the passage of

NAFTA

in spite of vociferous

opposition from trade unionists, as well as the concessions on salary and other issues that

have become a constant part of contract negotiations. This malaise permeates a more

recent documentary on a union city, Michael Moore’s

Roger and Me

(1989).

The future of the union movement in the US and its ability to reverse the decline in its

fortunes over the last twenty years will be determined by its ability to adjust to the rapidly

changing economic environment. The continuing influx of immigrant labor, increasingly

rapid changes in the workplace (with larger proportions of Americans now working

outside factories and employed in the service sector), the movement of capital to offshore

sites, as well as the growing influence of trade organizations like the World Trade

Organization, present problems and opportunities for a trade-union movement that has

seen reverses before only to re-emerge as a major force in American politics and society.

ee also:

mining

Further reading

Bell, T. (1991)

Out of this Furnace,

Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Docherty J. (1996)

Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor,

Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

Fraser, S. and Gerstle, G. (1989)

The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order,

Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Montgomery D. (1979)

Workers Control in America,

New York: Cambridge University

Press.

ROBERT GREGG

unions, public sector

Labor organizations of employees who work for government agencies have grown and

roliferated since World War II. After 1970, as the private economy shifted its

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1152

orientation from industrial to white-collar and

service sector

employment, and non-union

and foreign competition erupted, traditional union membership plummeted, while public

employment and public sector unions grew rapidly. By the end of the 1980s, less than 17

percent of American workers were organized, yet in some

cities,

90 percent of public

workers were represented by unions. Some are conventional unions, while others are

rofessional organizations that have evolved from civil service associations or police

fraternal organizations. They have substantial

African American

and

Latino

membership, many of whom are employed as teachers in

public schools

and

nurses

public health.

Although the right to organize for federal and almost all state and local employees is

rotected by law, public sector unions and employees are often precluded from striking

y federal and state laws. Punishments include fines levied against unions and individual

strikers, dismissal of strikers and imprisonment of union leaders. Restrictions on public

employee strikes have been justified under legal theories that emphasize state sovereignty

and the governmental duty to protect the general welfare, public health and safety, and by

the essential nature of transit, health, sanitation, fire fighting and police services.

Demands continue for selective limitations on strikes, since employees performing

similar functions in private industry may strike and many public employees, for example,

librarians, and workers in state and national parks are not essential to health and safety.

Unlike in some European countries, there is little tolerance in America for strikes,

especially by public employees. President Ronald

Reagan’s

1981 discharge of striking

government-employed

air-traffic controllers

crystallized a resurgence of anti-unionism.

Because of sanctions and the lack of public support, tactics of temporary slowdowns,

sickouts and the threat of strikes have generally replaced actual strikes. Strike threats

ensure enormous

mass media

coverage and are usually effective in imposing pressure to

bargain effectively and to reach contract settlements before deadlines.

Public sector unions have learned that they can succeed by exercising political power

and applying their resources to influence public opinion. Most were strong supporters o

the

Civil Rights movement

Martin Luther King, Jr.

was assassinated while in

Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike. More recently, teachers unions have led

the opposition to school vouchers. Generally favoring liberal

Democratic Party

positions, they use

lobbyists,

research publications, political contributions, members as

campaign workers, and members voting power to influence elections and the decisions o

oliticians who control the appropriations and budgets on which public employee salaries

and benefits depend. Adversaries, in turn, brand them as special interest groups seeking

narrow gains incompatible with the welfare of the public their members serve.

Further reading

Aronowitz, S. (1998)

From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and American’s

Future,

Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Entries A-Z 1153

Galenson, W. (1996)

The American Labor Movement, 1955–1995,

Westport: Greenwood.

JAMES KRAUS

Unitarian Universalist Association

Religious community formed by the 1961 merger of the Universalists (founded 1793) and

Unitarians (founded 1825). Eschewing creeds and keeping a remarkably open mind on

any religious questions (sometimes to the confusion of outsiders), UU churches and their

215,000 members have also been deeply associated with liberal social and cultural

movements.

GARY McDONOGH

United Nations

Although founded in the US as a successor to the League of Nations (which the US had

not joined) and headquartered beside

New York

City, NY’s East River, the UN has often

faced problems and divisions within the US. Conservatives like the

John Birch Society

and others on the

Right

have rejected any implications of global sovereignty while

interventionist

presidents

have chafed under its restrictions and censure on military

actions or debates over

China

and the

Middle East

. The US has also become a notable

delinquent in dues, representing both rejection and criticism of the UN.

GARY McDONOGH

Updike, John

b. 1932

Updike is one of an increasingly rare number of American twentieth-century writers

who manages to combine some degree of popular success with serious critical attention.

Although also an accomplished essayist and a poet, his fame primarily derives from his

work as a novelist. One of his most successful fictional creations was former highschool

basketball star and small-town businessman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, the hero of four

different novels. Congenitally unfaithful and proudly unreflective, difficult to truly

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1154

dislike in his essential innocence, Rabbit often seemed to personify Updike’s notion o

America in the last decades of the twentieth century. While sometimes criticized for too

narrow a focus, at his best Updike uses his considerable lyrical gifts to fashion a complex

anthropological picture of a large segment of America—

suburban. white,

upper

middle

class

and Protestant—coming to grips with the possibility of its decline.

MARK BREWIN

upper class

From the early Republic, America has touted itself as a land without kings or nobles,

however patrician the Founding Fathers might be in education, holdings and connections.

Throughout American history, the idea of dominant groups able to reproduce its control

of wealth and power over generations has been a cause for alarm. Muckraking studies by

Gustavus Myers and Ferdinand Lundberg and populist rhetoric decried any attempt to

ublicly condone the existence of an American upper class. Yet, the ability to rise to

wealth is central to the American dream, whether embodied in Benjamin Franklin, John

Rockefeller,

Oprah

Winfrey,

Bill

Gates

or Vito Corleone. The tension between social

mobility and social reproduction produces a convoluted discourse of perhaps nowhere

more tortured than in describing an American upper class.

In fact, euphemisms underscore this ambivalence. Since the Second World War, for

example, it has been easy to talk about “elites” in a way that conveys a synergy o

expertise, intelligence or even style rather than a substrate of mere wealth; or scholars

divide “political,” “economic,” “social” and “intellectual” elites as if these were parallel

categories. Popular American sociology has also focused on status—and the markers o

status that permeate consumerism in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, when

Gucci can be bought at outlet malls—rather than a Marxist analysis of power, which

often has held sway among academics.

Such elites are also divided by race and ethnicity. Jewish, Catholic and

African

American

elites—whether defined by political power, cultural presence or wealth—have

established separate institutions, family associations and even vacation spots. While there

are some indications of coalescence in government, corporations and other institutions,

these families also underscore the general WASPish cast of American elites. Gender, too,

has played a role—women’s positions have tended to be defined socially rather than

olitically or economically; not as founders or managers of wealth and power, but instead

as mediators like Eleanor

Roosevelt

in relation to Franklin

Roosevelt

In the end, though, whether looking at tax reforms,

Ivy League

alumni publications or

residential politics, America has an upper class that Americans are ashamed to talk

about. One way of avoiding this is through a belief in circulation of wealth—“Old

Money” slowly disappears over time, “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.”

Entries A-Z 1155