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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
Behavior associated with a dependence on either a substance or activity that is harmful when used to excess. When addicted, the user is either unable or unwilling to stop his or her behavior. In the compulsive need for and use of a drug, addiction can involve either a physical or a psychological need. When addicted, the user also experiences increased tolerance for a substance. When more broadly defined, addiction can also refer to the compulsive need for an activity i.e. “addicted to TV,” or “addicted to jogging.” Addiction is measured in the degree of harm that it causes the user. Thus, an addiction to coffee is not considered a serious addiction because science has not shown that coffee consumption produces significant health hazards. An addiction to heroin is considered extremely harmful because of the physical and social conditions commonly associated with heroin addiction: HIV, hepatitis, endocarditis, cellulitis, overdose and collapsed veins. In the early twenty-first century, addictions to activities such as sex, gambling, video games, the Internet and pornography are talked about frequently.
Some substances which are physically addictive and used illegally include opiates, stimulants, inhalants, depressants and barbiturates. New drugs of the 1980s and 1990s that appeal to young people in dance clubs are Ecstasy an amphetamine/ hallucinogen combination drug and ketamine (Special K), a depressant. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 1.5 million people in the US over the age of twelve were chronic cocaine users, and about 2.4 million people have used heroin at some point in their lives.
The most widespread addictions in the United States, however, are tobacco and alcohol, both legal mindaltering substances. NIDA estimates that in 1996 there were 62 million smokers in the US, and an additional 6.8 million who used smokeless tobacco.
Treatment for addictions come in many different forms. For drugs which are clearly physically addictive, like heroin, substitution treatment is available. Methadone is most commonly substituted for heroin, and is strictly regulated by the federal government.
Methadone programs are located mainly in large cities, so addicts who live in rural areas and small towns either do not have access to methadone treatment, or may have to travel many hours to get to an available clinic. New forms of heroin substitution, such as buprenorphine, are also available.
Abstinence-based programs often use a “12-step” approach which was developed by Alcoholics Anonymous, and has since been adopted by Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Gambling Anonymous, and other national projects that seek to support addicts who are “in recovery” from their addictions. The 12-step approach, since it is based on submitting to a higher power or religious figure, has some critics. Alternatives to 12-step programs have also arisen, which often center the addict as the controlling party in the process of recovery rather than a higher authority.
During the 1990s a new philosophy of treating the harms associated with drug use emerged. Harm reduction calls for prevention and treatment programs which do not expect that abstinence is the only option for dealing with the consequences of drug use.
Instead, harm reduction proponents advocate measures which will decrease the harms associated with illicit drug use, i.e. prevent HIV transmission, overdoses and other diseases associated with using dirty syringes. Needle exchange programs which prevent bloodborne diseases among injecting addicts are good examples of harm reduction programs, and are springing up in areas of the country where drug use and drug traffic are more common.
Industry:Culture
Betty Friedan inspired this political and cultural movement for women’s rights by writing The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Supporters, calling themselves “feminists,” borrowed ideas from the Civil Rights movement and also pioneered techniques like consciousness-raising to persuade women that personal experiences had political significance. While independent, feminist-inspired activity erupted in many arenas of American life, the organized movement itself struggled with a bias towards white, middle-class women. The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment somewhat obscured the movement’s success in passing sportsequity legislation, legalizing abortion, increasing educational and professional opportunities for women and weakening fashion hegemony.
Industry:Culture
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 of 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 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 pop 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 of 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.
Industry:Culture
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 police 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.
Industry:Culture
Beyond those who immigrate via legal and illegal channels each year, 70,000–80,000 people also enter the United States as designated “victims” of political and other repressive conditions worldwide. Some of these people have established flourishing communities in the US, while others struggle to gain the support granted to those identified with Cold War struggles.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, US government policy favored refugees from “enemy” nations (and failures of US foreign policy—hence 38,000 Hungarians were accepted after the failed uprising of 1956). Later, thousands arrived after Castro’s emergence in Cuba and plans to reunify families, as well as massive boatlifts and escapes from the island. Other large populations of refugees followed the Vietnam War, including those evacuated for political reasons and subsequent waves of boat people who survived ocean travails and refugee camps to find American sponsorship. Many of these refugees were initially dispersed as church and civic groups across the country supported them. In time, new and specialized enclaves emerged—100,000 Hmong resettled in the Minnesota area, while other Southeast Asians clustered in Los Angeles and suburban Washington, DC.
Refugee policy has shifted only slowly from its anti-communist visage to wider political and human-rights issues, including right-wing regimes in Central America and those oppressed by conditions of poverty exacerbated by globalization. Nonetheless, families from Bosnia and Kosovo or leaders of the Tiananmen incidents in China have been lionized in mass media and popular support, while those fleeing female circumcision in Africa or other human-rights issues have faced more obstacles. Also, many, especially those from Latin America, contest the marginal status they are given as illegal immigrants rather than escapees from terror abetted by American intervention in their homelands.
Industry:Culture
Biodiversity refers to the complexity of interactions among life forms and the environment, expanding conceptually on terms like ecosystem. The term has also taken on a strategic value as biologists and ecologists seek to influence policy by acting as spokespeople for nature and its values in planning and policy This campaign, and the varying views of contemporary American scientists from Rachel Carson to E.O. Wilson, are collected and explored in David Takacs’ The Idea of Biodiversity.
Industry:Culture
Biological events and changes of human life are given social meanings through both private reflection and public actions in American culture. From rituals welcoming the birth of a child through the fears surrounding death, these transitions are celebrated, acknowledged as points of crisis and stress, and incorporated into family, work and community. In so far as there is a typical or “model” American life cycle, these transitions tend to reflect the order of Judaeo-Christian traditions, codified and expanded by the state and glossed by consumerism and marketing. Questions arise, however, when Americans differ in their recognition and response to life cycles or are unable to recognize them because of economic insecurity Moreover, rituals and meanings sometimes seem to fail to respond to changing conditions, like the increasing complexities of the transition to adulthood or the meanings of an extended period of mature adulthood, from the fifties into the eighties.
The birth of a child has social, psychological and religious significance for the family and the community into which the child is born. Rituals and medicine converge in the pregnancy and birth process, where technology has radically changed issues of infertility and control of births since the Second World War. Americans belonging to different religious and ethnic groups mark this in different ways: through ancestral or generational names, religious consecration, community celebrations and exchanges of gifts. High teenage and single-birth rates challenge these social celebrations, although the new child may provide important meanings for the mother, father and network. Public recognition of adoptions also has been adapted to these formats.
Birthdays, thereafter, remain important individual holidays, although they change over time. While children expect gifts, parties (and costly entertainment in suburban, middleclass homes), adults may play down these events. Special concern is attached to those that mark thresholds of a new decade—thirty forty fifty etc. Hence, sitcoms joke about women who celebrate their twenty-ninth birthday repeatedly while banter and pranks may alleviate the watershed of reaching the big “five-O.” Coming of age demarcates a second major stage, although there are many variations on how and when this is marked. Adolescence constitutes an extended component of the American life cycle where changes are social as well as biological. If adolescence is a time of multiple recognitions of change, adulthood proves much vaguer in its passages.
American advertising and marketing strategies, for example, define distinct demographic categories of eighteen to twenty-four, twenty-five to thirty-four and thirty-four to fifty; in popular speech, “twenty-somethings” or young adults or “middle-age” also imply differences without any clear-cut transition.
Adulthood, in fact, implies a stabilization of social relationships, where the dominant culture model remains a family. Despite advertisers’ insistence on the importance of attracting people of the opposite sex, dating and courtship in America do not follow any single pattern; they are segmented by region, culture, ethnicity class, gender and religion as well as individual dynamics. Nor do they produce any single outcome. Nonetheless, roughly 70 percent of the population chooses to live in some form of a family whose definitions continue to change on the basis of divorce and remarriage, as well as recognition of many kinds of commitment.
Weddings place civil and, in many cases, religious approval on the union of two persons. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the average age of the bride and groom at their first marriage has risen to the middle twenties. Weddings are notable occasions to display status and wealth. Yet, at this time, approximately 22 percent of the US population has never married.
Family in turn, has been associated with an independent home, especially since suburban expansion opened new opportunities for the separation of nuclear families from parents and community Many families also choose to have children, who may assure the continuity of family names, traditions and more. The sitcom model of a detached home, two photogenic kids, a dog and a station wagon (or SUV in the 1990s) masks many variations in real life. Above all, families have decreased in size—in 1994 the average family consisted of 3.19 members—and nearly half of all marriages end in divorce.
Family stages are also shaped by work, whether postponed, precluded or adapted to the increasing demands of families in which all parents work outside the home. Work itself provides a life cycle network for many adults, whether in baby showers or office romances. Work also produces adult crises, especially amidst the economic divisions and changes of the postwar period, in which dramatic expansions have been met with recessions and lay-offs as well as exclusions.
American media have not treated the aging process kindly or with dignity although most of the country’s discretionary income rests with individuals fifty-five and over, who, in the early twenty-first century may have decades of life ahead of them. As baby boomers have reached “middle age,” they have found themselves caught between the youth culture they affirmed and negative images of old age. Some cultural historians have identified late middle age, usually in the forties and fifties, as a second adolescence, a time of significant transition, loss of one’s identity and re-establishment of self as one considers the inevitability of aging and one’s own death. Since this may reflect diverse intersections of marriage, work and family (shaped by race, gender and class), such transitions are not clearly demarcated socially Instead of celebrating, in fact, many Americans talk about “midlife” crises, which may draw upon social and cultural features (especially “youthful” actions and changed appearance) as well as biology (menopause).
Advertising and marketing divide mature adulthood into two stages—fifty to sixty-four and sixty-five and over—reflecting traditions of the workplace as much as biological or social changes. Social Security has affirmed retirement at sixtyfive as a widespread milestone. Aging changes the family and household (the “empty nest” as children depart for college and independent life; disposal of a home and relocation). Other critical issues in these years may include loss of a spouse, adjustments to fixed and reduced incomes, and healthcare issues. Family roles may be celebrated as rites of passage: the new role of grandparent may provide opportunities for nurturing, while newspapers and community and religious groups will join in the celebration of anniversaries, especially silver (twenty-five years) and golden (fifty years). Yet loneliness and burdens also arise. Caring for a spouse during this time may give purpose and direction, for example, but, despite medical assistance, it may exhaust the family’s life savings. With individuals living longer, economic, health, educational, religious, media and marketing strategies continue to seek and map out the demographic trends that now extend into categories of the “old old” (those beyond their eighties), a rapidly expanding group.
Choosing how to manage this cycle of life, whether passively or aggressively often determines the approach to the final stage, dying and death. The American way of dying is a multibillion-dollar industry building on widespread beliefs in a life beyond human death. Nevertheless, it is the ultimate passage, irrevocably disrupting family and community whether it comes at the end of a long and rich life or severs childhood, youth or young adulthood (taken as unnatural by most contemporary Americans, raised without local war or epidemics). Grief and mourning may be acknowledged through funeral rituals; the family and bereaved are encouraged to rely on the support of their friends, but to get on with life, or the family may divide over the will and disposition of the estate. A wide variety of public and private memorials—from commemorative monuments and cemeteries to more personal expressions and souvenirs—negotiate the finality of this passage.
In most of these experiences and interpretations, Americans scarcely differ from other global societies who endeavor to make sense of regular and intrusive changes in the lives of the men and women who compose them. Nonetheless, the diversity of peoples, expressions and interpretations evoked by these passages and the divergences between experience and established recognition underscore the complexity and changes of American culture.
Growth, transitions and rituals in American life have been investigated by social scientists, pondered by humanists and described in countless works of fiction and mass media.
Industry:Culture
Birth control has long been a contentious issue in the US. Indeed, despite decades of battles by advocates like Margaret Sanger to disseminate information, only in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) did the Supreme Court bar state laws censoring contraceptive advice. In the early twenty-first century nonetheless, the issues surrounding contraception—sexual education, condom distribution, abortion, religion—remain volatile. Religious organizations, most notably the Christian Right and the Roman Catholic Church, represent the dominant conservative voices in the debate over contraception. Their fundamentalist opposition to premarital sex, abortion and contraception, in any form, promotes abstinence (no sex at all) as the only acceptable form of birth control. Anything else represents a moral transgression.
Though most people recognize that abstinence is, indeed, the best way to avoid pregnancy and STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), contraception has numerous advocates, like Planned Parenthood. In fact, many Americans believe that premarital sex has become an inevitable reality in our society Accordingly they have opted to work for the good of young people with the understanding that many of them have sex (often with more than one partner) prior to getting married. In this way more liberal Americans accuse pro-abstinence contingents of being out of touch with the nation’s youth. To minimize unplanned pregnancies and STDs they recommend far-reaching educational programs which inform young people about the dangers of unprotected sex. Some also support the distribution of free condoms in public schools.
Condoms are among the most widely used contraceptives, in part, because they also protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The birth-control pill is considered the most effective safeguard against pregnancy; moreover, it operates internally and does not interfere with the sexual act as the condom does. Its introduction in the 1960s, in fact, became a foundation for an American sexual revolution. Yet, the pill has potential sideeffects and no effect on preventing the transmittal of STDs like AIDS. Alternatives like intra-uterine devices (IUDs) became controversial, with claims about devastating effects of the 1970s Dalkon shield, against which over 150,000 American women filed claims for $2.5 billion in damages (although critics accused the company and US agencies of dumping these IUDs into planning programs abroad). Diaphragms, on the whole, have been less common in the US than in other countries worldwide.
Purchasing condoms in stores is not only expensive, but also an embarrassing experience for many teenagers (and hence a staple of teenage movies). Distributing free condoms promotes safe sex and ensures that the contraceptives reach the people who need them most, ultimately reducing both births and abortions. Conservatives, however, contend that this encourages sexual activity among people whom, they believe, should not be having intercourse in the first place.
Most Americans, however, seem not to espouse beliefs as radical as these. While not everyone endorses the condom distribution plan, most appreciate the virtues of contraception. Condoms and pills are advertised on television, and doctors have prescribed the pill and other solutions to countless women.
Industry:Culture
Body modification has existed around the world for centuries, but, in America, body piercing and tattooing rapidly shifted from a sign of subcultural membership to mainstream style. Although once associated with sailors, criminals and other supposedly “dubious” citizens, in the 1970s, body modification flourished among “modern primitives,” who viewed the body as a site of expression and sexual freedom. The term “modern primitive” associates body modification with mystico-religious interpretations of rites de passage.
Early modification media (1970s to 1980s) included tattooing magazines and one piercing magazine, The Piercing Fans International Quarterly. Vale and Juno’s Modern Primitives (1989) inspired a modification renaissance in the early 1990s, though piercing had already gained popularity with punks.
Piercing and tattooing became fashionable in the early 1990s. Body modification was featured everywhere: Gautier fashions, the Aerosmith video “Cryin,” showing a girl getting tattooed and pierced, and Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell, supermodels with pierced navels. Later, there was the piercing “rush” by adrenaline needle resuscitation of Uma Thurman’s heroin overdose in Pulp Fiction (Tarantino 1994) and the X-Files’ Agent Scully’s brush with tattooing that left her with a poisonous, hallucinogenic urobouros at the base of her spine.
Marketed to Generation X as a way to complete a “look” of personal “difference,” commodification of body piercing and tattooing peaked with rub-on tattoos and fake clipon piercing jewelry. But, despite the hype, the meaning of body modification ranges from group affiliation, modern rite of passage and method of teenage rebellion to an expression of body aesthetics and reclamation.
Industry:Culture
Born as utilitarian farm structures to shelter livestock, cure tobacco and store hay grain and machinery barns have matured into coveted residential architecture. Classified stylistically as German, Dutch or English, they comprise innumerable shapes and have elaborate, timbered, post and beam framed internal spaces. As suburbs and edge cities engulfed farming areas and second recreational homes for urban residents proliferated, a passionate effort to preserve, restore and convert barns emerged. Barns, and their cousins, covered bridges, typify a romanticized nostalgia, partially nurtured by folklore, for the more civil values of the rural, small-town America of past centuries.
Industry:Culture
