Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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today nearly every

medical school

in the United States has at least one department

working on gene-transfer research. Promising therapies for certain types of

cancers

and

tumors, some forms of cystic fibrosis and diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and

hypercholesterolemia have spurred major pharmaceutical companies and the US

government to invest billions of dollars into genetic research.

Such research is not without its downside. Population genetics is the study of the

distribution of gene types within populations. With the advent of widespread and

available genetic testing, the fear of genetic discrimination has increased. Such screening

may lead to the documentation of genetic variations occurring without the presentation o

symptoms. Such variations could be used to deny insurance or jobs based on the potential

future manifestations of symptoms in individuals or offspring.

Further reading

Kevles, D. and Hood, L. (eds) (1992)

The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in

the Human Genome Project,

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

SANDRA GILCHRIST

gentrification

Term originally popularized in Britain in the mid-1960s and 1970s, when working-class

neighborhoods

in London began to be renovated to provide new sources of housing for

middle and upper-class residents, thereby displacing or threatening to displace long-term,

lower-income households. As property values in particularly thriving urban centers like

London,

New York

City, NY,

Los Angeles, CA

and

Boston, MA

continue to rise,

gentrification has become more common as

inner-city

neighborhoods are reclaimed for

higher-income occupants. The term and phenom-enon itdenotes became particularly

ronounced in the 1980s and 1990s in the US and in Europe, as strategies to revitalize

aging urban centers were implemented in cities now characterized by post-industrial

economies based on a burgeoning

service sector

and geared towards attracting suburban

and out-of-town tourists. Increasingly industrial buildings and older types of housing are

being rehabilitated to appeal primarily to young, urban professionals, forcing

working-

class

and poor families out of neighborhoods that have become newly desirable due to

their housing stock or their proximity to downtown. In

Upscaling Downtown: Stalle

Gentrification in Washington, D.C.

(1988), anthropologist Brett Williams provides an

ethnographic perspective on neighborhood change; Neil Smith’s

The New Urban

rontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City

(1996) discusses gentrification as an

integral feature of late capitalism and the turn towards neoliberal social policies.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 486

Gentrification has also spawned a number of urban social movements in which residents

have banded together to attempt to resist being displaced from their communities.

Further reading

Smith, N. (1996)

The New Urban Frontier: Gentrifica-tion and the Revanchist City

London and New York: Routledge.

Williams, B. (1988)

Upscaling Downtown: Stalled Gentrification in Washington, D.C.,

Cornell: Cornell University Press.

SUSAN BRIN HYATT

geography

The social and historical study of humans in space received much less support in the

United States than it did in Europe and Asia. Even the name “

ational Geographic

Society” refers more to a magazine and project (supporting expeditions and photography)

than to a professional association. Still, work on the American landscape coincided with

other questions of the construction of national identity in important works by pioneering

geogra phers Carl Sauer (see

Land and Life,

1967) and J.B. Jackson (

andscape in Sight:

ooking at America,

1997).

As with other social sciences, American geography later moved towards positivism

and quantitative methods. Exemplified by the work of Brian Berry, this approach

embraced putatively valuefree methods from demography and economics in the modeling

and mapping of spatial systems (see

The Changing Shape of Metropolitan America

(1977).

Since the 1970s, however, the impact of European scholars like David Harvey and Neil

Smith, as well as the work of American geographers in Marxist traditions, has made an

impact across the social sciences and some humanities. Important departments have

included Harvey’s position at Johns Hopkins, the University of California-Berkeley and

the University of Southern California (with Jennifer Wolch, Michael Dear and Edward

Soja in Planning). American-

ased geographers have discussed issues of postmodernity

(for example, Soja’s

Thirdspace,

1996), identity (Yi-Fu Tuan’s

Cosmos and Hearth,

1996) and social justice/social change (Wolch and Dears’

Landscapes of Despair,

1987;

Smith’s

The New Urban Frontier,,

1996). Their awareness of the impact of space and

lace on society and culture, in turn, has contributed in methods and theory to other fields

as diverse as

anthropology, sociology, history

and

cultural studies

GARY McDONOGH

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German Americans

Immigration from Germany to America began in the seventeenth century as radical

religious groups such as the Mennonites and Anabaptists fled from religious persecution

at home to the relative tolerance of the American colonies. By 1776 Benjamin Franklin

estimated that 150,000 German speakers lived in America. Many of them settled in the

rural farming districts of Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, while others went west

to the then

frontier

district in Ohio. In the nineteenth century war, political problems and

economic problems in Germany and the AustroHungarian empire led to a peak period o

German

immigration

between 1815 and 1870; nearly 4 million German speakers came

to the US during this period. Thereafter German immigration declined somewhat, to be

replaced by large migrant flows from Eastern Europe. There was another wave o

immigration following the First World War, and another following the Second World

War and the partition of Germany; 150,000 Germans came to the US in 1950 alone. This

latter group was a mixture of displaced persons,

refugees

from East Germany and war

brides of American soldiers.

Unlike the later Eastern European arrivals, who sought work and wages, most of the

German immigrants were interested in acquiring land. In the early nineteenth century

they settled in the

Midwest,

particularly in Ohio, in and around cities such as

Cincinnati,

and

Milwaukee, WI

(today nearly half the population of these cities is of German

descent). These German communities remained highly homogeneous; during the

American Civil War, regiments raised from among the “Dutch” (as they were known)

often had to have staff interpreters as neither officers nor men could speak English. Even

today many of the Ohio communities are bilingual in German and English. Later arrivals

moved further west, homesteading in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. It

has been estimated that by 1900, one-quarter of all German immigrants were engaged in

farming.

German Americans have a long history of association and political involvement.

Before the First World War, the German American Central Alliance focused mainly on

domestic issues concerning German speakers, but it also pressed for US neutrality in the

war. Earlier, German Americans such as Emma Goldman had also been active in socialist

and anarchist movements. Between the wars, other strong German cultural movements

emerged, some of which were suspected of supporting the Hitler regime in Germany In

fact, though, almost all German Americans supported the war effort and German

American men served overseas in large numbers.

Today some 55 million Americans claim German descent, more than any other ethnic

group. German Americans have been prominent in every walk of life. German

contributions to American culture have been immense, even if they are no longer

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 488

recognized as distinctly German. Great German American figures include Albert

Einstein

and Samuel Pulitzer; more controversial ones include Werner von Braun, the

rocket scientist who was spirited out of Germany at the end of the war to mastermind the

space

program, having previously built rockets for the Nazis. On another level, the

American brewing industry was founded by German immigrants (mostly from the

AustroHungarian empire). All across America in the summertime, people gather at

icnics and barbeques to drink beer and eat hamburgers and hot dogs made with

frankfurters, implicitly acknowledging how German culture has become embedded in

that of America.

MORGEN WITZEL

ghettos

The term “ghetto,” originating in the Jewish urban enclaves of Europe, was adapted to the

urban ethnic communities in the US at the beginning of the twentieth century It found its

most lasting association with the residentially segregated inner-city

African American

neighborhoods. Such

neighborhoods

first developed in northeastern cities, primarily in

the 1920s, following the mass

migration

of blacks from the

South

. In the twentieth

century the “ghetto” referred almost automatically in speech and media to the most

depressed and dangerous elements of black urban life.

These areas have changed themselves over time. Initially new residents in these areas

came full of expectations that they would secure industrial employment. Such jobs were

not forthcoming, however, except in the period during and immediately after the Second

World War. In the 1940s and 1950s, access to these jobs dried up as industries closed or

moved out to the

suburbs

. In addition, whites moved out to these areas, leaving

inner-

city

communities economically blighted.

In the 1960s, with urban

race riots,

a strong sense of nostalgia developed in relation to

the old ghetto. New neighborhoods were seen as onedimensional in their poverty having

once been viable, vibrant communities—sites of black churches, fraternal orders and

other associations. The growing literature on ghettos and ghettoization, therefore, tends to

describe a point at which the areas began to develop supposedly dysfunctional

characteristics, such as weak families, high levels of poverty violence, prostitution and

drugs. The riots themselves damaged the remnants of

community

that had survived.

Ghettoization was also described as a form of internal colonialism. In conjunction with

the

Black Power

movement, many assumed that these areas needed to be decolonized

and that blacks had to gain some self-determination before improvements would occur.

Any potential for this to happen, tied to the

War on Poverty,

was lost with the economic

downturn brought on by the

Vietnam War

and the OPEC crisis.

A recent tendency has been to accentuate the “culture of poverty” of people in these

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communities, suggesting, as Nicholas Lemann did in

The Promised Land

(1991), that

such people brought a “sharecropping culture” with them from the rural South. This has

tied in with the short-sharp-shock approach to

welfare reform,

which suggests that it is

no longer advisable to give support to members of these ghettoized communities,

especially single mothers vilified as “welfare queens.” They must be removed from these

environments and the mindsets fostered by the culture there by being forced to work.

Such theories have been countered by scholars like Robin D.G.Kelley, Michael Katz and

Adolph Reed.

Further reading

Kelley, R.D.G. (1997)

Yo’ Mama’s Dysfunctional,

Boston: Beacon Press.

Lemann, N. (1991)

The Promised Land,

New York: A.A.Knopf.

Osofsky, G. (1966)

Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto,

New York: Harper & Row.

ROBERT GREGG

GI Bill of Rights

Signed into law in June 1944, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the

GI Bill of Rights, offered education and home-loan benefits to Second World War

veterans

. The program helped to triple college graduates from 1939 to 1950 and kept

returning soldiers and sailors out of the labor force longer, allowing the economy slowly

to absorb job-seeking veterans. Similar programs were implemented for

Korean War

and

Vietnam War

veterans as well as reservists. Since 1944, more than 20 million

veterans and dependents have participated in education programs and 14 million home

loans have been guaranteed.

ee also:

colleges and universities; education and society

JAMES DEVITT

Gingrich, Newt

b. 1943

Newt Gingrich was elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives in 1995. His

election capped a dramatic shift in American politics in which the

Republican Party

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 490

regained control of Congress for the first time in a generation. Gingrich is largely

credited with formulating the “Contract with America,” a platform for conservative ideas

such as support for

welfare reform

and cutting

taxes,

which became a Republican

mantra.

Though named

Time

magazine’s 1995 Man of the Year, Gingrich found difficult the

transition from opposition party member of Congress to congressional leader. Lacking

the charisma of other politicians, Gingrich suffered from low ratings in national opinion

olls. Weakened by a large fine for violations of ethics rules, he was almost removed

from his leadership position in 1997, and then resigned a year later after the Republican

Party’s poor showing in mid-term elections.

First elected to the Congress in 1978, Gingrich previously taught

history

at West

Georgia College after receiving his PhD from Tulane University In his years before

winning the Speakership, Gingrich was known for his effective use of

television

to reach

Republican activists and rebuke the

Democratic Party

. His fierce partisanship earned

him regular challengers to his seat in Congress from suburban

Atlanta, GA

.Gingrich’s

enthusiasm for technological solutions to complex human

roblems earned him

derision—for example his recommendation for giving poor people laptop computers as a

way to improve their conditions. He is the author of four books, including

To Renew

merica

(1995) which lays out his political vision.

A.JOSEPH BORRELL

girl groups

Between 1960 and 1964, a new trend developed within the nascent US popular music

industry: groups of girls, some as young as thirteen, singing together in a vocal harmonic

style that had its roots in the black gospel churches and in the popular doo-wop style o

the

ghetto

street corner. The girl groups’ songs were composed by a new wave of young,

mostly Jewish songwriters who were influenced by

rock ’n’ roll,

and who brought a

fresh,

teenage

sensibility to the stale pop formulae of the light entertainment industry

The first girl group to hit the national charts was the Chantels in 1958 with “Maybe.”

Arlene Smith, the lead singer, was a convent schoolgirl who had formed the group with

her classmates. Smith herself had composed the song, but it was credited to her producer;

the record sold well but the girls themselves made virtually no money. This pattern, in

which the artists were exploited both artistically and financially was to be repeated

continually throughout the girl-group era.

In 1960 the Shirelles hit number one with the single “Will You Still Love Me

Tomorrow?”. Lead singer Shirley Alston had a plaintive, sweet, almost off-key vocal

style that charmed a generation, and the song, written by teenage sweethearts Carole

King and Gerry Goffin, seemed to sum up the innocence and sincerity of a young woman

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on the brink of her first sexual experience. The single kicked off a craze for girl groups,

as new groups like the Crystals, the Ronettes and the Shangri Las rushed to repeat the

Shirelles’ success.

In the early 1960s, the pop songwriting industry (known as Tin Pan Alley) was

centered around New York’s Brill Building, where a number of new labels, producers,

songwriters and artists set up stall to service the teenage market. It was a creative time for

op music: a song could be composed, hawked around the building, recorded, pressed

and distributed in a matter of days. Three songwriting teams emerged as the major

players in the girl-group explosion: King and Goffin, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, and

Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry (who also wrote with producer Phil Spector). Between

them, these songwriters wrote nearly all the classic songs of the period, from “Chapel o

Love” to “Leader of the Pack,” from “Da Doo Ron Ron” to “Be My Baby.”

Meanwhile, in Detroit, Barry Gordy’s newly established Motown label was grooming

a girl group for stardom: the

Supremes

. However, the Supremes were slow to get a hit,

while other girl groups like the Marvelettes, who scored the label’s first number one with

“Please Mr Postman,” and Martha and the Vandellas found popularity. Finally, in 1964,

the Supremes began their staggering run of hits, which established them as Motown’s

most successful act. Remarkably the group’s success coincided with that of the male

British beat groups, such as the

Beatles

and the Rolling Stones, who were widely viewed

as having destroyed the US pop industry. Even more remarkably after the break up of the

group Diana Ross managed to forge a brilliant solo career for herself, emerging as the

first black female superstar in show business.

The girl-group phenomenon was largely ignored in the late 1960s and 1970s by rock

critics who saw the music as “bubblegum” schlock, yet girl groups such as the Three

Degrees, Sister Sledge, the Emotions and Labelle continued to attract a mostly female

public. In the 1980s, groups like Salt ‘n Pepa, En Vogue, SWV and TLC fused elements

of hip hop with the “girl-talk” aesthetic of girl groups to create a new, more sexually

explicit music directed at young women. More recently the Spice Girls, a UK band with

the message of “girl power,” appealed to an ever younger generation of female pop fans.

Further reading

Greig, C. (1989)

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?,

London: Virago.

CHARLOTTE GREIG

Giuliani, Rudolph

Italian Americans; New York and its boroughs

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 492

Glass, Philip

b. 1937

Composer. Grandson of

Russian

Jewish immigrants, trained in

New York

City, NY

(Julliard) and Paris while also influenced by

South Asian

and Arab music. Glass

combines a certain minimalism with mysticism in musical events like his opera

Einstein

on the Beach

(1976, with Robert

Wilson

). His music became familiar to a wide audience

from the intense repeated score of the ecological polemic

Koyaanisqatsi

(1982).

GARY McDONOGH

Goldberg, Whoopi

b. 1949

Female actor and comedian who often has tackled issues of

race

and

class

. She gained

screen prominence for her debut as the suffering Celie in

The Color Purple

(1985),

although she won an Academy Award for

Ghost

(1990), the first black woman so

honored since Hattie McDaniel (1939). She also served for several years as an acerbic

and politicized emcee for the Academy Awards and developed a short-lived television

talk show

ee also:

actors

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

golden age of television

Epithet applied to the innovative (often live) developmental period of network

television

from 1948 to 1960. Among the shows taken as high points of this period are dramas like

Studio One, Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theater

and other sponsored

theater

shows

prime time

. Certainly, this produced many fine pieces in writing, acting and directing,

including Paddy Chayefsky’s

Marty,

which later won an Oscar as a cinematic production.

Many viewers and critics also fondly recall early comedy—both

variety shows

with

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Milton Berle or Sid Caesar and

sitcoms

I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners,

etc. Finally

this period was also taken as a high point for

news,

with the towering figure of Edward

Murrow

. In all these choices (which omit the hours of dross over the decade), one also

sees standards set by

New York

urbane sensibilities that were challenged by

television’s

growing ties with

Hollywood

as well as its national expansion and appeal to new

audiences. Robert Thompson, in

Television’s Second Golden Age

(1996), argues that the

1980s produced more complex and broader medical,

crime, law

and other dramas that

better merit such accolades.

Further reading

Thompson, R. (1996)

Television’s Second Golden Age,

New York: Continuum.

GARY McDONOGH

Goldwater, Barry

b. 1909; d. 1998

A long-time

Republican Party

US senator from Arizona (1952–64; 1968–86) and

failed presidential candidate, Goldwater is widely considered the founder—and certainly

the galvanizer and emblem—of the postwar conservative political movement in the

United States.

Although Goldwater had few legislative accomplishments as a senator and suffered a

landslide defeat in the 1964 presidential election against Lyndon B.

Johnson,

his

outspoken and unabashed conservative views were a kernel around which the

conservative movement was rebuilt, beginning in the 1950s, in the wake of the New Deal

and against the current of the postwar liberal consensus. Goldwater gave the conservative

movement one of its rallying cries in his speech to the 1964 Republican convention in

San Francisco, CA,

stating “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and

“moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Goldwater’s campaign brought many conservatives into the political arena, including

Ronald

Reagan

. whose victory in 1980 is often considered the flowering of ideological

seeds that were planted in the 1964 campaign. Goldwater’s philosophy came down to two

core principles: a fundamentally libertarian opposition to the growth of federal programs

at home and an adamant and aggressive opposition to

Russia

abroad. Both principles led

his opponents to brand him “extreme,”

articularly during the 1964 campaign in which

Gold-water suggested making Social Security voluntary and using low-level nuclear

blasts to defoliate Vietnam. As a senator, Goldwater voted against the 1964

Civil Rights

Act

. These positions led to Goldwater’s 1964 defeat—in which he received less than 40

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 494

percent of the popular vote and won only in Arizona and five Southern states—and his

acolytes, while sharing his principles, moved away from his specific positions.

At the end of his career, Goldwater’s libertarian attitudes sometimes put him at odds

with the conservative movement, as he felt uncomfortable with the religious right and

supported homosexual rights.

DAVID GOLDSTON

golf

In the period since the Second World War, golf in the United States has gained in

opularity both as a spectator and participatory sport. In the late 1940s and 1950s, gol

egan to gain appeal as a status sport associated with the wealthy and with business. The

obsession of President

Eisenhower

with the game—he played over 800 rounds while in

office—symbolized a sport which was viewed as a pastime of the elite.

Just as golf was beginning to become a staple of televised sports, the arrival in the

early 1960s of a new breed of professional golfers—young, athletic and charismatic—fed

a new fascination with the game. No player symbolized the new feeling associated with

golf more than Arnold Palmer. Palmer was blessed with both an excellent game and an

easy-going charm which together won him a devoted following known as “Arnie’s

Army” Palmer, from Western Pennsylvania, rose from humble beginnings, encouraging

others to reassess the view that golf was just a game for the well-off. At the same time, a

younger golfer named Jack

Nicklaus

emerged as a foil for the more popular Palmer. In

time, Nicklaus would eclipse Palmer and become the most accomplished American golfer

of all time.

As a result of the professional game’s increased visibility public and resort golf-course

construction became a growth industry in the 1970s and 1980s as the

middle class

clamored for a place to play the game at a price within their reach. This period saw the

continued rise in the profile of the professional game, and a host of new stars, including

Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw and Curtis Strange.

The 1990s, while still a boom time for the men’s circuit, saw the rise of a second tour,

the Senior Your for men fifty years and older, as well as a somewhat more vitalized

women’s tour. Women constituted the largest group of new golfers in the 1990s.

However, exclusionary practices still exist to bar women from some of the more

prominent private clubs. Moreover, public courses sometimes discourage women’s play

with the result that women also constitute the largest percentage of golfers who give up

the game. The practice of minority exclusion continues as well, although the subject has

become more hotly debated in the last few years. In 1991 the Professional Golfers’

Association threatened to move its championship tournament from the Shoal Creek Gol

Club because of the club’s practice of exclusion, and a number of other clubs have been

Entries A-Z 495