Life during Wartime: Grassroots America in the 1970s and 1980s

这项申请是为了支持完成一部关于1970年代和1980年代美国的重要专著。六年前，我开始写这本书，目的是写一篇关于这一时期的简明综合，我将通过努力断言基层政治的重要性，在史学上做出适度的贡献。但随着时间的推移，随着我研究的深入，随着越来越多的学者开始写关于同一时期的文章，两件事变得明显：首先，大多数学者倾向于强调国家政治趋势，这导致了对这一时期的歪曲解释；第二（也是相关的），尽管一些问题——特别是所谓的“文化战争”——已经被学者们很好地涵盖了，但许多其他问题和运动几乎完全被忽视了。结果，这本书的范围扩大和深化了。现在，它是一个更加雄心勃勃的项目，旨在彻底推翻对20世纪60年代后美国历史的主流解读。到目前为止，我已经写了前七章的草稿——超过400页的打印稿。在过去的一年里，我的进步停滞不前，主要是因为我（和我的家人）从纽约搬到了谢菲尔德，并适应了一份新工作和一个新的国家。因此，本申请寻求支持，以争取我写书的最后两章所需的时间，修改整个手稿（与我的编辑和其他学者协调），并研究和获得转载随文照片的权利。在60%的买价下，我将能够履行我的承诺，教授我的特殊课程（谢菲尔德明年只开设两门美国历史课程之一），并且仍然能够在2010-2011学年结束前完成这本书。在所有有关这一时期的最有影响力的专著中，60年代后的美国都被视为20年来美国经历了巨大社会动荡的平淡结局。我们被告知，民权运动、学生运动、反文化挑战、妇女解放运动以及围绕越南战争的激烈辩论和示威所引发的骚动，被一种新的后越南共识所取代。理查德·尼克松的“沉默的大多数”拒绝了20世纪60年代的自由主义和激进主义，在政治上转向右翼——最终导致了“里根革命”——同时转向内部，远离公民参与和社会抗议。《战时生活》挑战了美国人在这一时期是被动的传统观点，考察了公民身份是如何行使和重新配置的。为了对1970年至1990年代的美国政治文化进行更细致、更准确的描述，作者注意到了地方和国家趋势之间的不连续性，探讨了参与政治的美国人如何塑造了一个充满活力的基层行动主义时代。到20世纪60年代末，一种有组织的抗议精神在美国社会盛行，以至于所有政治派别的人都参加了基层组织。我认为，关键的因素是，在经济不景气的时期，美国人动员起来保卫家园和家庭。我称之为“前廊政治”。也就是说，当美国人站在自家前廊（或者在城市里，站在自家门廊）的有利位置看他们的国家和生活时，他们看到了对个人和家庭安全的威胁。不管原因是什么——经济驱动的服务的退出，用校车接送孩子来强迫融合，呼吁或反对妇女和同性恋的平等权利，失去工作和农场，有毒废物的发现等等——美国人在大大小小的社区动员起来，从国家的一端到另一端，保卫自己和家人。这可能不是60年代的激进主义，但在某些方面，70年代和80年代更像“60年代”，而不是60年代本身。

This application for an AHRC Fellowship seeks support for completion of a major monograph on America in the 1970s and 1980s. I began work on this book six years ago, with the intention of writing a succinct synthesis on the period, one in which I would make a modest historiographical contribution by trying to assert the importance of grassroots politics. But over time, as my research deepened, and as more and more scholars began to write about the same period, two things became apparent: first, that most scholars' tendency to emphasize national political trends was producing a skewed interpretation of the period; second (and related), that although some issues - particularly the so-called 'culture wars' - had been well-covered by scholars, many other issues and movements had been almost entirely overlooked. As a result, the book's scope grew and deepened. It is now a much more ambitious project aimed at completely overturning the prevailing interpretations of post-1960s American history. To date, I have written drafts of the first seven chapters - more than 400 typescript pages. In the last year, my progress has stalled, mostly owing to my (and my family's) move from New York to Sheffield, and adjusting to a new job and a new country. Therefore, this application seeks support to buy the time I need to write the last two chapters of the book, revise the entire manuscript (in coordination with my editor and other scholars), and to research and acquire the rights to reprint the photographs that will accompany the text. At a 60% buy-out, I will be able to keep my commitment to teach my special subject (one of only two to be offered in American history at Sheffield next year), and still be able to complete the book by the end of the 2010-2011 academic year. In all of the most influential monographs on the period, post-1960s America is presented as a bland sequel to two decades in which the nation experienced tremendous social upheaval. The tumult arising from the civil rights movement, the student movement, countercultural challenges, the women's liberation movement, and the impassioned debate and demonstrations over the Vietnam War were, we are told, replaced with a new post-Vietnam consensus. Richard Nixon's 'great silent majority' rejected the liberalism and radicalism of the 1960s, moved to the right politically - leading, ultimately, to the 'Reagan Revolution' - and simultaneously turned inward, away from civic engagement and social protest. Challenging the conventional view that Americans were passive in this period, Life during Wartime examines how citizenship was exercised and reconfigured. Alert to discontinuities between local and national trends, it probes the ways in which politically engaged Americans shaped an era of dynamic grassroots activism, in order to present a more nuanced and accurate account of US political culture from 1970 to the 1990s. By the end of the 1960s, an ethos of organized protest pervaded American society to such an extent that people of all political persuasions took to grassroots organizing. The key factor, I argue, is that in harsh economic times, Americans mobilized at the grassroots in defense of home and family. I call this 'front porch politics.' That is, as Americans looked at their country and their lives from the vantage point of their own front porches (or, in the city, from their front stoops), they saw threats to their individual and family security. Regardless of the cause - the economically-driven withdrawal of services, busing children to force integration, calls for and against equal rights for women and gays, the loss of jobs and farms, toxic waste discoveries, etc.- Americans mobilized in communities large and small, from one end of the country to the other to defend themselves and their families. This may not have been the 'Sixties' activism, but, in some ways, the 1970s and 1980s were more like "the Sixties" than were the 1960s themselves.