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

AHRC奖学金的这一申请寻求支持，以完成20世纪70年代和80年代美国的一本主要专著。六年前，我开始写这本书，打算写一个关于这一时期的简明综合，我将在其中通过努力断言基层政治的重要性来做出一个小小的史学贡献。但随着时间的推移，随着我研究的深入，越来越多的学者开始写同一时期的文章，两件事变得明显：第一，大多数学者强调国家政治趋势的倾向正在产生对这一时期的歪曲解释;二（及相关），虽然有些问题--特别是所谓的“文化战争”--已经被学者们很好地涵盖了，许多其他问题和运动几乎完全被忽视。因此，这本书的范围扩大和深化。现在，这是一个更加雄心勃勃的项目，旨在彻底推翻对20世纪60年代后美国历史的普遍解释。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，以争取我所需的时间来撰写本书的最后两章，修改整个手稿（与我的编辑和其他学者协调），并研究和获得重印文字附带照片的权利。在60%的买断，我将能够保持我的承诺，教我的特殊科目（只有两个之一，将提供在美国历史在谢菲尔德明年），仍然能够完成这本书在2010-2011学年结束。在所有关于这一时期最有影响力的专著中，20世纪60年代后的美国都被描述为这个国家经历了巨大社会动荡的二十年的平淡续集。我们被告知，民权运动、学生运动、反文化挑战、妇女解放运动以及关于越南战争的激烈辩论和示威所引起的骚动，被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“--同时转向内向，远离公民参与和社会抗议。除了传统观点认为美国人在这一时期是被动的，战争期间的生活考察了公民身份如何行使和重新配置。警惕地方和国家趋势之间的不连续性，它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，以便对1970年至1990年代的美国政治文化进行更加细致入微和准确的描述。到20世纪60年代末，有组织的抗议活动的风气在美国社会中普遍存在，以至于所有政治信仰的人都开始组织基层抗议活动。我认为，关键因素是，在经济困难时期，美国人在基层动员起来保卫家园和家庭。我称之为“前廊政治。也就是说，当美国人从他们自己的前廊（或者，在城市中，从他们的前门廊）的Vantage位置看待他们的国家和生活时，他们看到了对他们个人和家庭安全的威胁。不管原因是什么--经济驱动的服务退出，用公共汽车接送儿童强迫融合，呼吁和反对妇女和同性恋的平等权利，失业和农场的丧失，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“六十年代”的激进主义，但是，在某些方面，20世纪70年代和80年代更像是“六十年代”，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.