Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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Einstein, Albert

b. 1879; d. 1955

Physicist whom

Time

magazine chose as “Man of the Millennium.”

German

orn

Einstein was most famous for his theory of relativity and related re-conceptualizations o

physics in the early twentieth century for which he received a

Nobel Prize

in 1921. When

Hitler came into power, Einstein left for the United States, where he accepted a position

at Princeton University He had pointed out the possibility of an atomic bomb in the late

1930s, but was not involved in the actual building of the bomb. Instead, he became

known as both a pacifist (although not with regard to Hitler) and a Zionist, interests on

which he continued to work and speak out until his death.

CINDY WONG

Eisenhower, Dwight David

b. 1890; d. 1969

President between 1953 and 1961, following his success as commander of the Allied

Armed forces during the Second World War. Eisenhower labeled himself a “dynamic

conservative,” fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. He generally accepted the New

Deal as fact, and even went so far as to expand

Social Security

coverage, raise the

minimum wage and extend unemployment insurance. With the creation of a new

Department of Health, Education and Welfare to coordinate government social programs,

the size and scope of the federal government continued to expand during the Eisenhower

years. He also dispatched the 101 st Airborne Division to

Little Rock, AR

in 1957 to

protect the

African American

children integrating Central High School.

Eisenhower is often remembered for his commitment to expanding American

highways,

which radically altered the nation’s social landscape through

suburbanization

and contributed to the increasing reliance on

automobiles

and the declining influence o

railroad networks.

In his

foreign policy

Eisenhower remained tied to containment of the

Soviet Union,

even while he proclaimed a “new look” designed to push back

communist

regimes

around the world. His

Secretary of State,

John Foster Dulles, argued that the United

States should make it official policy to want and expect liberation for these Communist-

dominated nations. But, partly owing to his economic conservatism, Eisenhower also

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wanted to cut military expenditures. Liberation cost more than containment in both

money and lives, and could not be carried out by someone who wanted to cut the budget.

The “new look,” then, came to mean greater reliance on the threat of

nuclear weapons,

which, though expensive, were cheaper than conventional forces. The policy developed

into “massive retaliation,” suggesting that any Soviet hostility might escalate into a

nuclear war. Secretary of Defense, Charles E.Wilson, the former CEO of General Motors,

observed that this new look provided “more bang for the buck.”

The old-look foreign policy remained in place, however, in the US’ actions in the East

and Southeast Asia. Only a few years after terminating the conflict in

Korea,

Eisenhower

egan to commit large development and military resources to the Republic of South

Vietnam,

setting the stage for a long, costly military commitment for his successors.

In his farewell address, Eisenhower warned of a number of emerging problems: the

communist “menace” and too much spending on both warfare and

welfare

. The speech is

remembered for his final warning of the growing influence of what he termed “the

military-industrial complex.” As one of the architects of this complex, he knew whereo

he spoke.

ROBERT GREGG

Eisenman, Peter

architecture

elections

parties and elections

elementary school

Elementary school refers to the institution that provides the first four to eight years of a

child’s formal education. The number of years of instruction varies from

community

community depending on the size of the school population. At the present time, most

elementary schools enroll children of ages five to twelve, kindergarten through sixth

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grade. Some elementary schools include a preschool. The socio-economic status among

elementary students in a school is usually similar, but political and social developments

may lead to the planning of enrollments so that students from diverse backgrounds attend

the same school. For instance, the mainstreaming of special-needs children into

classroom settings was mandated by Public Law 94–142 in 1975.

Parents who have

children

of elementary school age are compelled to provide

institutions for their children to be educated. Schooling is free in public elementary

school. In other words, taxpayers pay for school buildings, teachers’ salaries and school

supplies and equipment. While their children attend school, however, parents spend more

on buying books, field trips,

hotographs, lunches and so forth. These expenditures

depend on the state or local school district.

The elementary school curriculum includes

language

arts,

mathematics,

social

studies, science, music and art. Subjects such as mathematics, social studies and science

encompass various content areas. For example, science programs are composed o

materials from biological and physical areas, and mathematics includes work in

geometry. Elementary school teachers, in contrast to secondary school teachers who are

specialists in specific subjects, are expected to have and to be able to impart a broad

knowledge covering each area of instruction.

The most common approach to teaching or instruction in elementary schools is

currently a thematic approach in an integrative curriculum. This emphasizes thematic or

problem-focused units of study and the contents are blended through activities of a

variety of discipline areas. For example, a unit called “animal” might include

representative activities such as a survey regarding class members’ favorite animals,

making bar graphs, visiting

zoos,

and so forth.

American elementary schools are struggling for several reasons in their curriculum to

satisfy the needs of students as well as society Multicultural education is one of the

important issues in the American elementary school curriculum. It is a trial to understand

students from diverse backgrounds, which include not only ethnicity or socioeconomic

status, but also different intelligence levels, learning styles, and so forth. To satisfy the

needs of individual students from multicultural backgrounds, elementary school teachers

and educators try to find appropriate teaching strategies. At the same time, American

elementary schools deal with the issue of social efficiency or the need to provide stability

in the face of potentially radical social change. That mission took the form of enjoining

curriculum-makers to devise programs of study that prepare individuals specifically and

directly for the role they will play as adult members of the social order.

Further reading

Kliebard, H.M. (1995)

The Struggle for the American Curriculum,

2nd edn, New York:

Routledge.

Nielsen, M.E. (1989) “Integrative Learning for Young Children: A Thematic Approach,”

Educational Horizons

68(1):

18–24.

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Petty, W.T. (1976)

Curriculum for the Modern Elementary School,

Chicago: Rand

McNally College Publishing Company.

JINYOUNG KIM

Ellis, Bret Easton

b. 1964

Novelist of the literary brat pack of the 1980s, whose debut novel

Less than Zero

(1985) depicted an empty

drug-

and sex-driven

Los Angeles, CA

. Ellis’ fascination with

the glamour and darkness of an urbane world of pop culture and affluence reached a

crescendo in

American Psycho

(1991), the obsessive chronicle of an all-consuming

yuppie

murderer, which caused a flap when dropped by its original publisher, Simon &

Schuster.

GARY McDONOGH

Ellison, Ralph

b. 1914; d. 1994

Novelist best known for his 1952 novel,

Invisible Man

. Set between 1930 and 1950,

and covering some of the events in Ellison’s own life,

Invisible Man

struck a chord with

many

African Americans,

who felt that white America failed to see them, except only as

stereotyped

characters or figments of their own imaginations. Born in Oklahoma, Ellison

had attended Tuskegee Institute before moving to

New York

City in 1936 to become a

writer. After his first work was published in Richard

Wright’s

journal, Ellison worked

with the New York Writer’s Project. In 1999 Ellison’s long-awaited unfinished novel,

uneteenth,

drafts of which had previously been destroyed by fire, was edited for

publication by John F.Callahan.

ROBERT GREGG

Ellroy, James

b. 1948

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Novelist and memoirist, darker than noir. Ellroy has been the obsessive investigator

and recreator of 1950s

Los Angeles, CA

—violent, verbal, dominated by sex and power,

in novels like

The Black Dahlia

(1987) and

LA Confidential

(1987, film 1997). In soul-

searching memoirs, he has explored the unsolved murder of his own mother and other

intersections of his own life, crime and the city (see his

Crime Wave

(1995)). Weaving

fragmented Hollywood fictions and realities and grittier racialized Los Angeles, Ellroy

deconstructs the city’s iconic meanings, dark sides to a city of the sun.

GARY McDONOGH

empowerment zones

Economic development strategy signed into law by

Clinton

in 1993 (appropriating

earlier

Republican

ideas to revitalize

neighborhoods

through entrepreneurial zones with

minimal government interference). Block grants of $100 million were given to cities like

Philadelphia, PA

/Camden and

Baltimore, MD,

as well as to rural areas to encourage

industrial relocation into specific areas through tax grants, job training and placement and

other assistance as well as general neighborhood programs administered under

community boards. Doubts have been raised about the long-term success of these

investments, which recall the

Model Cities

programs of the 1960s, despite a sharper

economic focus.

GARY McDONOGH

Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act was enacted in 1973 amid growing concern that species

were becoming extinct at an accelerating rate due to the increased use of pesticides and

other chemicals, the destruction of habitats to make way for

suburbs

and other

development, and excessive

hunting

and

fishing

. Under the Act, the federal government

lists an animal or plant species as “endangered” if it is in danger of extinction and as

“threatened” if it is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable

future.” Once listed, no one may “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap,

capture or collect” a member of the species or damage its habitat. The Endangered

Species Act is one of the strictest federal

environmental

laws and perhaps the most

controversial. The Act’s critics have charged that it has blocked needed economic

development to protect “insignificant” species (such as the snail darter and kangaroo rat),

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 380

and that it interferes with private property rights.

DAVID GOLDSTON

enemies

Foreign policy,

domestic discourse and

mass media

have often coincided in the

identification of “acceptable” external American enemies, both vilified and

stereotyped,

with potentially painful consequences for those who might be associated with these

groups within the US. The culture of the select reviled enemy as global metaphor for

American identity pervaded wartime propaganda of the twentieth century which vilified

the Spanish, Turks, Germans and Japanese. In the last case, racial features were cruelly

caricatured even as the rights of resident

Japanese Americans

were trampled on by their

confinement in concentration camps. In the

Cold War,

this sense of a powerful foe

focused on

communism

—the “evil empire” of the

Soviet Union,

the nearby threat o

Cuba

and continuous concerns with Asian enemies—Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean.

With the collapse of many communist regimes, the question of “suitable” foreign

enemies has become more ambiguous for politicians and media.

ethal Weapon I

(1989), for example, turned to white South Africans;

Russian

mobsters have become

frequent villains for movies and

television

(

The Saint,

1997; NBC’s

Law and Order,

1990–). Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega have also been cast as arch-enemies, as

were Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs amidst ongoing Balkan conflicts (a sense o

“enemyship” was parodied in the 1997 film

Wag the Dog,

which created a fictional

engagement and heroic actions in Albania). The need for and manipulation of enemies

remains fundamental to American politics, whether justifying military expenditures or

actions abroad, or in defining the American dream against those denied some aspect of it.

Yet these images continue to cause deep conflicts within a multicultural society. For

example, 1999 congressional and FBI concerns about Chinese espionage in American

nuclear research evoked a specter of an inscrutable Asian enemy and divided loyalties

that deeply worried Americans of Asian descent, among others.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

engineering

The practice of organizing the design, production and operation of devices, systems, or

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rocesses to meet recognized needs. The engineering profession is typically characterized

as applied science. Though engineers do

apply

scientific knowledge when necessary the

technological artifacts they produce are not derived from science in any straight-forward

manner. Engineering knowledge is autonomous and identifiably different from scientific

knowledge. Consequently engineering is not merely

applied

science.

Congruent with the “applied science” myth is the equally misguided belief that

technical applications emerge naturally from basic research in the pure sciences. This has

led to an emphasis on funding for basic research and an attendant failure to champion

support for applications research. The gradual weakening of US industrial hegemony

over the last fifty years and its shift from trade surpluses to chronic deficits is partly due

to ineffective application of scientific knowledge.

The technological knowledge and artifacts produced by engineers affect virtually every

aspect of society Technological determinism embodies the widely held belief that such

technology is the driving force behind social change. However, while the impact o

airplanes,

automobiles, computers,

mega-

cities,

telecommunications,

and more all bear

witness to the social transformations made possible by engineering technology

technological determinism trades on a misrepresentation of engineering practice and its

relationship to society

Much of the force of technological determinism derives from histories of technology

which focus explicitly on scientific and technical details. These “internal approaches”

ortray the emergence of technological systems as essentially value neutral. This

urported neutrality insulates from criticism the social factors driving technological

advances and masks the symbiotic relationship between engineering and society The

deficiencies of such analyses are nowhere more evident than when considering

engineering design.

Since the Second World War, engineering design has increasingly been accepted as the

defining characteristic of true engineering practice. It distinguishes the engineer,

qua

engineer, from the engineering technician or mechanic who merely produces or operates

technological artifacts. The design process encompasses everything from initial

conceptualization to production of artifacts. Various non-technical factors influence and

constrain the design process, including engineering styles, social determination o

engineering goals and the need to optimize designs.

timization is essential to engineering design. It seeks to adapt engineering artifacts

to particular goals and values, maximizing intended benefits and minimizing undesirable

consequences. Prior to the Second World War, optimization was often confused with

efficiency—the maximization of output with respect to input—and treated as an

inevitable consequence of proper application of the design process. Methods were

developed and deployed for maximizing efficiency but optimization was not treated

explicitly. After the Second World War it became clear that optimal designs were not

necessarily the most efficient, and engineers searched for mathematical methods to

objectively establish optimal systems.

It was discovered that mathematical models of engineering systems could not ignore

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 382

values. Engineering designs can be expressed as “criterion functions.” These functions

represent design parameters as variables multiplied by weighing coefficients. The

coefficients provide quantitative measures of the value of each design parameter, thus

revealing the extent to which engineering artifacts and systems are shaped by and

explicitly incorporate human values.

Value judgments permeate every branch of engineering. Civil engineers design roads,

bridges, dams,

airports

and more. Though concerned more with utility and efficiency

than aesthetic or symbolic expression, civil-engineering designs are still imbued with

social values. For instance, early waste-disposal systems were almost solely concerned

with quick and efficient removal of refuse from population centers. In designing waste-

disposal systems today civil engineers must consider

environmental

impacts. This is a

clear reflection of society’s growing anxieties over environmental pollution. The work o

mechanical engineers, who design dynamic systems like machines and engines, has been

similarly affected. With the increasing complexity of specialized machines and their

integrated utilization in manufacturing processes, various physical and mental health

roblems have arisen for operating personnel. US Government health and safety

standards respond to public concerns over such issues by in effect, legislating

incorporation of certain values into engineering designs. Nuclear engineering is likewise

affected. US nuclear power plants are optimized with human and environmental safety

considerations in mind. Such designs may not be the most efficient in terms of energy

output, but they do reflect the importance society places on safety.

Awareness of the “value-ladenness” of engineering design is particularly evident in the

impact women have had on the marketplace over the last few decades of the twentieth

century As women have acquired financial power, industry has been made to realize that

designs optimized for males cannot be expected to serve best all consumers. As one o

the major industrial forces in the US economy automotive engineering illustrates this

shift. Automobiles were traditionally designed for males. However, women tend to be

shorter than men and thus had trouble reaching steering wheels and brake pedals and

seeing over instrument control panels. Automobile designs have been altered to address

these issues. Women are also more concerned with functional safety features such as

delayed interior lighting, airbags and anti-lock brakes, and they have led the drive to

make such features standard on all cars.

Nevertheless, US engineering remains dominated by a rigorous professionalism that

emphasizes the purely technical. US engineers are trained and generally function as

specialists who provide solutions to technological and commercial problems which

emerge out of existing social systems. Though responding well to such challenges, US

engineers are not trained to place society’s needs in broader contexts. This serves to

uttress fundamentally flawed systems. Despite curriculum reform efforts to raise

awareness of their social responsibilities, young engineers remain illprepared to address

the most pernicious problems facing contemporary American society, such as poverty

environmental degradation and the impact of

consumerism

on energy and environmental

resources.

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Further reading

National Academy of Engineering (1999)

Frontiers of Engineering,

Washington, DC:

National Academy

Paul T.D. (ed.) (1991)

Critical Perspectives on Nonacademic Science and Engineering,

Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press.

Sladovich, H. (ed.) (1991)

Engineering as a Social Enterprise,

Washington, DC: National

Academy

STEPHEN D.NORTON

English in America

Cricket and cucumber sandwiches in

Hollywood

come to mind, with an English actor

like David Niven (in his autobiography

The Moon’s a Balloon,

1972) left wondering why

he is able to find work with not much talent to draw on besides a cute accent. Or the life,

death, traveling exhibits and collectibles of Diana Windsor, part of a surrogate royal

family for Americans, who, like the Peter Sellars character in

Being There

(1979), just

like to watch.

But the English in America have not merely been aristocrats, and their country is more

than fodder for public broadcasting, like

Masterpiece Theater,

in which England is

portrayed as fundamentally

white

with rather quaint and even charming ideas about

class

divisions. Americans often respond viscerally to such television fare. Indeed, the

Republican Party’s

assault on public broadcasting has had some genealogical

connection with the old mid-western populist and middle-American suspicion of things

British.

The United States has had a love—hate relationship with the country from which it

sprung in revolution and from which many claim descent, and the English in America

have needed to learn the nature of this relationship as they endeavor to exploit the

country to their full advantage. The hate part is clearly understood—revolution is a

source of powerful animus indeed. Additionally the largest immigrant groups in the

United States were the descendants of Irish and Germans, the former linked to anti-

colonial nationalism and the latter from a nation that contested European sovereignty

Later, immigrants from British colonies—

South Asia,

the

Caribbean,

Hong Kong—also

have ambivalent feelings towards the English.

Love came from sharing constitutional ideas with the British, and from fighting

alongside them in two world wars (though the first one saw Americans shedding their

lood in defense of the British Empire in the most unpopular war ever fought by the US).

Since the Second World War, and certainly since the Suez crisis, Britain has been a

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 384

unior partner, a base for American planes and cruise missiles. Americans have felt fairly

comfortable envisioning Britain as a former empire, seeing themselves as the inheritors

of British global dominance. Hence Americans could buy London Bridge and rebuild it in

the middle of a desert (even if it turned out to be the wrong bridge). And if a Margaret

Thatcher was still a potent enough force to motivate a wimpy president to go to war with

a tin-pot dictator, so much the better.

But wealthy English speculators, under the cloak of their irrelevance, also sneaked into

the United States during the 1980s to buy up major parts of American real estate—

newspapers,

companies,

banks

. While Americans were anxiously eyeing the Japanese

and Germans, the English undertook far larger transactions of their own. Indeed,

Thatcher’s virtually bankrupt Britain became a profitable haven for privateers who could

play on the markets across the ocean.

But perhaps “the Brits” felt that this was merely payment for the debt the United States

owed them in the realm of

popular music

and culture. Apart from highbrow television,

the English invasion was most noticeable from the mid-1960s to the present in wave after

wave of innovative music. Beginning with the

Beatles

and the Rolling Stones, following

through the psychedelic bands like Pink Floyd and Yes, through singer/songwriters as

diverse as David Bowie (who became closely involved with artists producing the

Philadelphia

sound), Elton John and Joan Armatrading, and continuing with a dissonant

crash with the

punk

excesses of the Sex Pistols, the English contribution to American

music has been profound, in many instances fitting within the process of co-opting and

commercializing

African American

music. The success of Mike Myers’ spoof on 1960s

Britain in the “Austin Powers” movies pays tribute, in a rather warped way to this legacy

The excesses of Thatcher and

Reagan

have given way to the centrists Bill

Clinton

and

Tony Blair. The old partnership of the 1950s has been revived, with Blair coming to the

support of Clinton at every available opportunity and Clinton returning the favor

whenever this might be of use to the prime minister.

Moreover, the old 1890s liaison—the “cute accent” gets the “All-American girl”—has

returned as a match too. The hugely successful

Four Weddings and a Funeral

(1994)

established a template for the Anglo-American, all-white lovefest. This was then repeated

in James Cameron’s (1997) remake of “Love Boat”, with a sinking feeling, followed by

The Parent Trap

remake (1998), in which it was shown that Americans and English truly

were very rich twins divided at birth. The love affair has been reprised once again in the

whitest

Notting Hill

(1999) ever captured on camera. Of course, this celebration o

Anglo-American hegemony forgets one important fact: the Titanic hit an iceberg and

sank.

ROBERT GREGG

English Only

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