front cover of Ecospeak
Ecospeak
Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America
M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer
Southern Illinois University Press, 1992

In this book, M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer have a twofold purpose: to analyze the patterns of rhetoric used in written discourse about environmental politics and to make a practical contribution to the art of rhetorical criticism through the study of rhetoric in use.

The language, professional objectivity, and research programs of scientists insulate these best-informed citizens in enclaves of specialization, limiting access to crucial information and hindering effective reformative action. Science, the authors stress, is not merely a database to rely upon but a view of the world that must be broadened in order to affect social morality. Science-based activism must arise to ensure the care and future of the environment.

Killingsworth and Palmer argue that for grassroots activism to be tied to this globally conscious philosophy, a rhetoric of sustainability must be cultivated.

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The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace
American Religion in a Decade of Conflict
Ellwood, Robert S
Rutgers University Press, 1997
If you still hold the notion that the fifties were the "good old days," blessed with incomparable social affluence and widespread family unity, all buttressed by a strong, unconflicted spirituality, then look again. In this compelling narrative of religion in a decade still embraced by an indefatigable nostalgia, Robert Ellwood interrogates the notion of the fifties as an era of normalcy, and proves it to be full of spiritual strife.

A companion to his Sixties Spiritual Awakening, Ellwood explores the major Catholic-Protestant tensions of the decade, the conflict between theology and popular faith, and the underground forms of fifties religiosity like "Beat" Zen, UFO contactees, Thomas Merton monasticism, and the Joseph Campbell / Carl Jung revival of mythology. Ellwood frames his detailed and lively account with the provocative idea of the fifties as a "supply-side" free enterprise spiritual marketplace, with heady competition between religious groups and leaders, and with church attendance at a record high.

In addition to challenging an idealistic fifties cultural milieu, the book analyzes American religious responses to key historical events like the Korean War, McCarthyism, and the civil rights movement, turning a religious lens on the cultural history of the United States.
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Looking for God in the Suburbs
The Religion of the American Dream and its Critics, 1945-1965
Hudnut-Beumler, James
Rutgers University Press, 1994

In the 1950s, 99 percent of adult Americans said they believed in God. How, James Hudnut-Beumler asks, did this consensus about religion turn into the confrontational debates over religion in the 1960s? He argues that post-World War II suburban conformity made church-going so much a part of middle-class values and life that religion and culture became virtually synonymous. Secular critics like David Riesman, William Whyte, C. Wright Mills, and Dwight Macdonald, who blamed American culture for its conformism and lack of class consciousness, and religious critics like Will Herberg, Gibson Winter, and Peter Berger, who argued that religion had lost its true roots  by incorporating only the middle class,  converged in their attacks on popular religion.

Although most Americans continued to live and worship as before, a significant number of young people followed the critics' call for a faith that led to social action, but they turned away from organized religion and toward the counterculture of the sixties. The critics of the 1950s deserve credit for asking questions about the value of religion as it was being practiced and the responsibilities of the affluent to the poor—and for putting these issues on the social and cultural agenda of the next generation.

                                                           

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Protestant--Catholic--Jew
An Essay in American Religious Sociology
Will Herberg
University of Chicago Press, 1983
"The most honored discussion of American religion in mid-twentieth century times is Will Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew. . . . [It] spoke precisely to the mid-century condition and speaks in still applicable ways to the American condition and, at its best, the human condition."—Martin E. Marty, from the Introduction

"In Protestant-Catholic-Jew Will Herberg has written the most fascinating essay on the religious sociology of America that has appeared in decades. He has digested all the relevant historical, sociological and other analytical studies, but the product is no mere summary of previous findings. He has made these findings the basis of a new and creative approach to the American scene. It throws as much light on American society as a whole as it does on the peculiarly religious aspects of American life. Mr. Herberg. . . illumines many facets of the American reality, and each chapter presents surprising, and yet very compelling, theses about the religious life of this country. Of all these perhaps the most telling is his thesis that America is not so much a melting pot as three fairly separate melting pots."—Reinhold Niebuhr, New Yorks Times Book Review
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Rainbow at Midnight
LABOR AND CULTURE IN THE 1940S
George Lipsitz
University of Illinois Press, 1994
Rainbow at Midnight details the origins and evolution of working-class strategies for independence during and after World War II. Arguing that the 1940s may well have been the most revolutionary decade in U.S. history, George Lipsitz combines popular culture, politics, economics, and history to show how war mobilization transformed the working class and how that transformation brought issues of race, gender, and democracy to the forefront of American political culture. This book is a substantially revised and expanded work developed from the author's heralded 1981 Class and Culture in Cold War America.
 
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front cover of Reluctant Partners
Reluctant Partners
Implementing Federal Policy
Robert P. Stoker
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991

Constitutional principles at the core of the United States government divide authority between market and state and within the structure of the state itself. This diffusion of authority is valuable because it defends against the excesses of national government, causing federal policy initiatives to be more attuned to the concerns of local jurisdictions, and creating a context in which free enterprise may flourish.

However, this diffusion of authority weakens the control that federal officials enjoy over resources vital to the implementation of national policy. To implement their plans, federal policy formulators must often call upon autonomous participants such as state or local governments, advocacy groups, or commercial interests. When federal policy challenges the perspectives, interest, or priorities of these participants, they become reluctant partners. These implementation participants enjoy substantial autonomy, making their cooperation in pursuit of federal policy goals uncertain and difficult to achieve. How, then, can the federal government secure the cooperation it needs to implement policy when the act of implementation empowers potential adversaries?

Reluctant Partners explores these problems and proposes strategies to reduce the impediments to cooperation and promote policy coordination. Drawing upon theories of regime development and cooperation, Stoker suggests the “implementation regime framework” to analyze the difficulties of realizing cooperation in the implementation process. The framework is illustrated with numerous vignettes and two extensive case studies: the National School Lunch Program and federal nuclear waste disposal policy.

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front cover of Young, White, and Miserable
Young, White, and Miserable
Growing Up Female in the Fifties
Wini Breines
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Young, White, and Miserable is a critically acclaimed study that compellingly shows how the feminist movement of the 1960s found momentum in the seemingly peaceable time of the 1950s. Wini Breines explores white middle class America and argues that mixed messages given to girls during this decade lent fuel to the fire that would later become known as feminism. Concluding with a look at the life and suicide of social scientist Anne Parsons, this book is a poignant and important look into conditions that led to the women's movement.
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