Videri - User contributions [en]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T03:13:39Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]
}}

Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What if these influences appeared to be global in nature? If these questions are true, then what are the implications of this identity creation? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders. Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

Each chapter in The Modern Girl Around the World is concerned with a different country and its regional version of the trend. Some, such as the United States and France, are more well-known. But the authors also discuss the modern girl phenomenon in India, South Africa, and China. These other regions of the globe bring the modern girl into the globalization discussion.

Ultimately, this book is able to prove that the modern girl can in fact be used as a case study for globalization. However, this thesis is the lifeblood of the anthology. If you do not accept the idea that the modern girl is a spontaneous global creation, then the argument falls apart. Much of the evidence presented is, as mentioned, visual in nature, as well as contemporaries discussing the girls in question.

One question that the book brought up as I was reading it was why there are not more studies into trends such as the modern girl. Where is a discussion of the cultural relevancy of, say, the punk movement of the 1960s, or even a more relevant “hipster” study? My hope is that more of these works will be written over time.

Another point this work brings up is the usefulness of interdisciplinary study. The Modern Girl Around the World relies on scholars outside of the historical field for many of its articles. These outside influences make the anthology feel more fleshed-out than your standard monograph. Hopefully, this work will show how more fields can come together to generate more effective content for readers.

Another benefit of The Modern Girl Around the World is its ease of access online. Duke University Press has the book available in an e-reader format on its website. It is accessible for anyone with university access. The formatting is well-done, with the reader able to search within the text for keywords, as well as skip to specific page numbers and chapters.Unlike other online versions of books, the page numbers online coincide with the page numbers in the paperback, which makes it wonderful to pick up reading online where you left off.

This anthology would work well in a world history reading list for a graduate student. Its layout works well for using chapters in comps, as well as being a fairly easy read in terms of grammar. From a scholarly perspective, The Modern Girl Around the World is a well-researched piece of literature.By using interdiscuplinary study into a global trend, the book shows how consumerism, questions about modernity, and mass globalization allowed the modern girl to flourish across the globe. It was a true phenomenon, a creation unique to its time. By studying the modern girl, its appearance in media, and its lingering effects on women’s roles and culture, we can see how different societies dealt with the rapid changes taking place in the early twentieth century.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T02:58:08Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]
}}

Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What is these influences appeared to be global in nature? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders. Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

Each chapter in The Modern Girl Around the World is concerned with a different country and its regional version of the trend. Some, such as the United States and France, are more well-known. But the authors also discuss the modern girl phenomenon in India, South Africa, and China. These other regions of the globe bring the modern girl into the globalization discussion.

Ultimately, this book is able to prove that the modern girl can in fact be used as a case study for globalization. However, this thesis is the lifeblood of the anthology. If you do not accept the idea that the modern girl is a spontaneous global creation, then the argument falls apart. Much of the evidence presented is, as mentioned, visual in nature, as well as contemporaries discussing the girls in question.

One question that the book brought up as I was reading it was why there are not more studies into trends such as the modern girl. Where is a discussion of the cultural relevancy of, say, the punk movement of the 1960s, or even a more relevant “hipster” study? My hope is that more of these works will be written over time.

Another point this work brings up is the usefulness of interdisciplinary study. The Modern Girl Around the World relies on scholars outside of the historical field for many of its articles. These outside influences make the anthology feel more fleshed-out than your standard monograph. Hopefully, this work will show how

This anthology would work well in a world history reading list for a graduate student. Its layout works well for using chapters in comps, as well as being a fairly easy read in terms of grammar.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T02:56:49Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]}

Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What is these influences appeared to be global in nature? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders. Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

Each chapter in The Modern Girl Around the World is concerned with a different country and its regional version of the trend. Some, such as the United States and France, are more well-known. But the authors also discuss the modern girl phenomenon in India, South Africa, and China. These other regions of the globe bring the modern girl into the globalization discussion.

Ultimately, this book is able to prove that the modern girl can in fact be used as a case study for globalization. However, this thesis is the lifeblood of the anthology. If you do not accept the idea that the modern girl is a spontaneous global creation, then the argument falls apart. Much of the evidence presented is, as mentioned, visual in nature, as well as contemporaries discussing the girls in question.

One question that the book brought up as I was reading it was why there are not more studies into trends such as the modern girl. Where is a discussion of the cultural relevancy of, say, the punk movement of the 1960s, or even a more relevant “hipster” study? My hope is that more of these works will be written over time.

Another point this work brings up is the usefulness of interdisciplinary study. The Modern Girl Around the World relies on scholars outside of the historical field for many of its articles. These outside influences make the anthology feel more fleshed-out than your standard monograph. Hopefully, this work will show how

This anthology would work well in a world history reading list for a graduate student. Its layout works well for using chapters in comps, as well as being a fairly easy read in terms of grammar.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T02:56:01Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]

}Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What is these influences appeared to be global in nature? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders. Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

Each chapter in The Modern Girl Around the World is concerned with a different country and its regional version of the trend. Some, such as the United States and France, are more well-known. But the authors also discuss the modern girl phenomenon in India, South Africa, and China. These other regions of the globe bring the modern girl into the globalization discussion.

Ultimately, this book is able to prove that the modern girl can in fact be used as a case study for globalization. However, this thesis is the lifeblood of the anthology. If you do not accept the idea that the modern girl is a spontaneous global creation, then the argument falls apart. Much of the evidence presented is, as mentioned, visual in nature, as well as contemporaries discussing the girls in question.

One question that the book brought up as I was reading it was why there are not more studies into trends such as the modern girl. Where is a discussion of the cultural relevancy of, say, the punk movement of the 1960s, or even a more relevant “hipster” study? My hope is that more of these works will be written over time.

Another point this work brings up is the usefulness of interdisciplinary study. The Modern Girl Around the World relies on scholars outside of the historical field for many of its articles. These outside influences make the anthology feel more fleshed-out than your standard monograph. Hopefully, this work will show how

This anthology would work well in a world history reading list for a graduate student. Its layout works well for using chapters in comps, as well as being a fairly easy read in terms of grammar.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T02:55:39Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]
}
Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What is these influences appeared to be global in nature? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders. Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

Each chapter in The Modern Girl Around the World is concerned with a different country and its regional version of the trend. Some, such as the United States and France, are more well-known. But the authors also discuss the modern girl phenomenon in India, South Africa, and China. These other regions of the globe bring the modern girl into the globalization discussion.

Ultimately, this book is able to prove that the modern girl can in fact be used as a case study for globalization. However, this thesis is the lifeblood of the anthology. If you do not accept the idea that the modern girl is a spontaneous global creation, then the argument falls apart. Much of the evidence presented is, as mentioned, visual in nature, as well as contemporaries discussing the girls in question.

One question that the book brought up as I was reading it was why there are not more studies into trends such as the modern girl. Where is a discussion of the cultural relevancy of, say, the punk movement of the 1960s, or even a more relevant “hipster” study? My hope is that more of these works will be written over time.

Another point this work brings up is the usefulness of interdisciplinary study. The Modern Girl Around the World relies on scholars outside of the historical field for many of its articles. These outside influences make the anthology feel more fleshed-out than your standard monograph. Hopefully, this work will show how

This anthology would work well in a world history reading list for a graduate student. Its layout works well for using chapters in comps, as well as being a fairly easy read in terms of grammar.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T02:55:17Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]
}Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What is these influences appeared to be global in nature? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders. Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

Each chapter in The Modern Girl Around the World is concerned with a different country and its regional version of the trend. Some, such as the United States and France, are more well-known. But the authors also discuss the modern girl phenomenon in India, South Africa, and China. These other regions of the globe bring the modern girl into the globalization discussion.

Ultimately, this book is able to prove that the modern girl can in fact be used as a case study for globalization. However, this thesis is the lifeblood of the anthology. If you do not accept the idea that the modern girl is a spontaneous global creation, then the argument falls apart. Much of the evidence presented is, as mentioned, visual in nature, as well as contemporaries discussing the girls in question.

One question that the book brought up as I was reading it was why there are not more studies into trends such as the modern girl. Where is a discussion of the cultural relevancy of, say, the punk movement of the 1960s, or even a more relevant “hipster” study? My hope is that more of these works will be written over time.

Another point this work brings up is the usefulness of interdisciplinary study. The Modern Girl Around the World relies on scholars outside of the historical field for many of its articles. These outside influences make the anthology feel more fleshed-out than your standard monograph. Hopefully, this work will show how

This anthology would work well in a world history reading list for a graduate student. Its layout works well for using chapters in comps, as well as being a fairly easy read in terms of grammar.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T01:51:07Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]
}}
Can a Woman be made? I am not talking about using technology to create a cyborg, a la Metropolis. I mean, can an idea of what a woman is be curated, be formed by outside influences? What is these influences appeared to be global in nature? Such are the questions brought up in the anthology The Modern Girl Around the World. Weinbaum, along with other authors from various disciplines, discuss the global trend of “modern girls” and their appearance in the early twentieth century.

While the name might have been different (flappers, garconnes, and neue Frauen) depending on the country, young women began to behave radically different than their Victorian-era counterparts. No longer did they seek the traditional roles of wife and mother. They dressed in risque fashions, embraced their sexaulity, and were not okay staying in their own sphere. This trend emerged at around the same time, and was experienced across borders. Each article discusses the modern girl in a different culture and region, in an attempt to link the trend as a global example of consumerism.

Many of the contributors to the anthology come from the University of Washington, where a conference panel grew to a monograph. The work is interdisciplinary, with authors working in the fields of gender studies, history, consumption, and political economy. For their methods in research, the editor makes a large effort to describe the modern girl as a “heuristic device.” That is to say, examples of the Modern Girl across studies enabled the authors to make broader claims. Namely, that the concept of the Modern Girl flourished as local and regional influences met the global trends in advertising.

The articles that make up this anthology can be explained generally by the book’s subtitle: consumerism, modernity, and globalization.

Firstly, Consumerism. The majority of visual evidence presented in The Modern Girl Around the World is advertisments. Namely, American cosmetics and advertising agencies were responsible for promoting products across the globe. This was allowed to occur due to the nation’s dominance in the film and contemporary media industries following World War One, a time when Europe was in shambles. Thus, part of being a modern girl was using particular cosmetics and dressing in certain fashions, all of which had ad campaigns in newspapers and radio.

Secondly, Modernity. The anthology places itself in the common historical question of what exactly “modernity” is. For some it was liberation, for others it was anarchy. Modern Girls, wherever they appeared, challenged traditions and reflected what modernity held in store for people. These contemporaries took from it what they chose.

Thirdly, Globalization. This is perhaps the simplest one to explain as it uses the two previous themes to present itself. Due to the mass consumerism and struggles of modernity at hand, the modern girl and her presence across continents is an example of how globalization influences cultures. This book was released at a time when globalization studies was a new trend of study in the historical discipline, and the authors sought to place themselves at the forefront of this new field.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

File:ModernGirlCover.jpg

2017-02-20T00:11:14Z

Jdent8:

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T00:10:46Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:ModernGirlCover.jpg|alt=image]]
}}
Corruption in Chicago politics serves as subject matter for numerous historians. The machine politics that emerged in the 1930s, consolidated by the first Richard Daley in 1955, often symbolize the city’s political history. However, Robin L. Einhorn’s work ''Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833 – 1872'' examines the political and economic history of the metropolis’ experiment with a segmented government system. Unlike the machine politics of latter eras, the segmented system prevented corruption to such an extent that “its government was clean enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of urban reformers.” (xv). Drawing on the “privatism” (“an outright unapologetic rejection of public oriented civic responsibility”) thesis of Sam Bass Warner, Terrance McDonald’s emphasis on a “low tax consensus” (similar to ''My Blue Heaven’s'' 20th century blue collar suburbs), and Amy Bridges’ attention to the relevance of city politics in the national context (“that the nineteenth century American city was an integral part of the nineteenth century national political community, truly a “city in the republic.”). Einhorn pushes each of these scholars ideas further, “American cities were “cities in the republic”, not only in Bridges sense of sharing political culture influenced by an enfranchised working class, but also in their uses of government. Urban politics reflected McDonald’s “consensus” on low taxes but in ways that promoted localized rather than low cost government. Cities were very successful in building public works, and they accomplished this by local and privatized strategies long before the triumph of the central coordination that Teafod describes. Finally American cities were, as Warner argued, “private cities.” Yet by nineteenth century standards, this was their strength rather than their pathology.” (xvi)

The segmented system reflected the idea of strict constructionism and Jacksonian ideology by limiting the power of the government, preventing monopoly, and maintaining low taxes. The diversification of the cities expanding economy along with its polyglot population led many to believe that “city wide consensus” were no longer possible. The segmented system prevented any kind of redistribution upwards or downwards, while enabling working, middle, and upper class property owners to expand infrastructure in their communities according to local demands. The segmented system depended on special taxes, fire limits (fire limits rules were used to ensure certain Chicago neighborhoods built homes out of more expensive brick than wood, thus preventing working class peoples from building such homes “The fire limit could have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction, but also by determining land use. If in legal theory, modern zoning grew out of nuisance regulation while fire limits developed into building codes, in practice, mid nineteenth century Chicagoans used the fire limit as a tool for land use control.” (129)) and assessments as economic and political tools to control development while maintaining low taxes. Citywide development did not exist because the political culture of the period did not acknowledge modern conceptions of the general “public interest”. Replacing Boosterism, “Segmentation rested on the principle of local control of city building decisions. Only those property owners whose real estate would be affected by a particular decision had a right to participate in making that decision. Only owners whose properties reaped benefits from an improvement paid for that improvement. Notions of the public good all but disappeared from municipal policy debate as Chicagoans turned their attention to the rapid creation of physical infrastructure.” (76). Assessments required local property owners and the appropriate alderman to build a consensus for development. While cities such as San Francisco and Milwaukee also used a segmented system but Chicago’s remained the purest.

Chicago’s boosters did not relinquish their activity in municipal government. Instead, they consolidated power through non-partisan elections while alderman essentially represented real estate interests. Unlike the cosmopolitan elite of New York, Chicago’s boosters remained intricately tied to the city’s growth, thus they shared a common interest. Moreover, again in contrast to New York whose ward map often reflected ethnic neighborhoods, Chicago’s organized real estate interests to facilitate the use of assessments and private development. While Chicago’s segmented system might have been more extreme than other cities, it was based on Eastern examples. The system diminished political conflict by requiring the construction of local consensus, it even enabled working class communities to prevent unwanted development. Special taxes enabled the city to limit taxation for services such as street lamps to neighborhoods that required or demanded them without placing any tax burden on the entire city. However, the segmented system “made the American urban landscape a physical expression of political inequality.” (104). By preventing redistribution, the city’s neighborhoods exhibited this class division as poorer communities often lacked the infrastructure that wealthier homeowners illustrated, “While the wealthy paid for their control of policy making in high special assessment levies, therefore, the poor paid for their low tax costs in voicelessness, in a governmental decision making process based directly on wealth rather than, either directly or indirectly, on the power of number of ballots.” (116)

The segmented system faced difficulties as Chicago grew. As acknowledged, it led to incongruous development, “With no central coordination, it had allowed local groups of property owners to build a huge amount of physical infrastructure without integrating their efforts over space or time.” (169). The creation of the Board of Public Works and the eventual extension of authority granted it, chipped away at segmented system. In addition, national debates over temperance, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Civil War altered the nature of non-partisan elections, that had enabled booster elites to consolidate power within the system. With local politics now “enmeshed in a vigorous national party system. Chicagoans also were adopting a new idea of their local public interest. Like their interest in the Union war effort, this local interest submerged party in the urgency of government action. It also destroyed the segmented system” (188). Civil war recruitment and bounties ended up redistributing taxes downwards, an action segmentation had avoided. Local debates concerning pollution and the environmental effects of packinghouses also helped to slowly shift opinion toward a broader public interest. Within state legal circles, the segmentation faced obstacles. An 1864 Illinois Supreme Court decision “announced that Chicago’s new public interest extended to the street building arrangements at the heart o the segmented system” (215). When street railway companies began to construct transit infrastructure, “a segmented approach was rejected from the start.” (218). The passage of the Ninety Nine Year Act (along with a handful of similar acts) removed all local control from abutters and property owners. Companies held too much power and eliminated the influence of the former booster elites. When alderman challenged such acts, the Supreme Court rejected their complaints siding with street railway companies. Still the Civil War period represented incredible growth for Chicago’s infrastructure, “After more than a decade of segmented localism, Chicagoans used city government to help meet their recruiting quotas, clean a desperately polluted river, and build a transit system.” (224). Thus, citizens reshaped municipal government “to strike a new balance between public and private, keeping privatism for the many along with new public interests for the few.” (225)

A key point in post Civil War’s abandonment of the segmented system lay in the changing elite. Booster elites faded to be replaced by Gilded Age millionaires who “took less active roles in the community”. (225) This new elite class did not compete with each other since they had established themselves in different industries. They viewed municipal government as a nuiscance rather than a partner and resisted all taxation placed upon them. Since boosters had been especially active in real estate infrastructure and development served their interests. The new millionaire class hoped to speak in the language of the “public interest” as too reduce their own tax responsibilities by placing them on the larger populace. Ultimately, the segmented system faded to be replaced by “a system that used government to redistribute wealth in accordance with public policy decisions made through power politics and interest group competition.” (229) The rise of Jacksonian pluralism in this context meant “the completion of interest groups to define public interests” resulted in “few democratic outcomes in the Gilded Age.” (242) If anything, pluralism enabled the new elite to define the public interest . However, Einhorn carefully notes that the machine politics that emerged did not bring democratization either, “Chicago’s first government transition, from boosterism to segmentation, that was decentralizing. It was the second transition, however, that brought bummers and machine politics. Neither of these transitions can be described as democratizing.” (243) Not until the “social reform” movements of the early 20th century (Einhorn argues especially that of the 1930s) did such democratizing effects find expression in municipal government.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

File:Name of File.jpg

2017-02-20T00:08:57Z

Jdent8: Jdent8 uploaded a new version of File:Name of File.jpg

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T00:08:12Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:Name of File.jpg|alt=image]]
}}
Corruption in Chicago politics serves as subject matter for numerous historians. The machine politics that emerged in the 1930s, consolidated by the first Richard Daley in 1955, often symbolize the city’s political history. However, Robin L. Einhorn’s work ''Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833 – 1872'' examines the political and economic history of the metropolis’ experiment with a segmented government system. Unlike the machine politics of latter eras, the segmented system prevented corruption to such an extent that “its government was clean enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of urban reformers.” (xv). Drawing on the “privatism” (“an outright unapologetic rejection of public oriented civic responsibility”) thesis of Sam Bass Warner, Terrance McDonald’s emphasis on a “low tax consensus” (similar to ''My Blue Heaven’s'' 20th century blue collar suburbs), and Amy Bridges’ attention to the relevance of city politics in the national context (“that the nineteenth century American city was an integral part of the nineteenth century national political community, truly a “city in the republic.”). Einhorn pushes each of these scholars ideas further, “American cities were “cities in the republic”, not only in Bridges sense of sharing political culture influenced by an enfranchised working class, but also in their uses of government. Urban politics reflected McDonald’s “consensus” on low taxes but in ways that promoted localized rather than low cost government. Cities were very successful in building public works, and they accomplished this by local and privatized strategies long before the triumph of the central coordination that Teafod describes. Finally American cities were, as Warner argued, “private cities.” Yet by nineteenth century standards, this was their strength rather than their pathology.” (xvi)

The segmented system reflected the idea of strict constructionism and Jacksonian ideology by limiting the power of the government, preventing monopoly, and maintaining low taxes. The diversification of the cities expanding economy along with its polyglot population led many to believe that “city wide consensus” were no longer possible. The segmented system prevented any kind of redistribution upwards or downwards, while enabling working, middle, and upper class property owners to expand infrastructure in their communities according to local demands. The segmented system depended on special taxes, fire limits (fire limits rules were used to ensure certain Chicago neighborhoods built homes out of more expensive brick than wood, thus preventing working class peoples from building such homes “The fire limit could have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction, but also by determining land use. If in legal theory, modern zoning grew out of nuisance regulation while fire limits developed into building codes, in practice, mid nineteenth century Chicagoans used the fire limit as a tool for land use control.” (129)) and assessments as economic and political tools to control development while maintaining low taxes. Citywide development did not exist because the political culture of the period did not acknowledge modern conceptions of the general “public interest”. Replacing Boosterism, “Segmentation rested on the principle of local control of city building decisions. Only those property owners whose real estate would be affected by a particular decision had a right to participate in making that decision. Only owners whose properties reaped benefits from an improvement paid for that improvement. Notions of the public good all but disappeared from municipal policy debate as Chicagoans turned their attention to the rapid creation of physical infrastructure.” (76). Assessments required local property owners and the appropriate alderman to build a consensus for development. While cities such as San Francisco and Milwaukee also used a segmented system but Chicago’s remained the purest.

Chicago’s boosters did not relinquish their activity in municipal government. Instead, they consolidated power through non-partisan elections while alderman essentially represented real estate interests. Unlike the cosmopolitan elite of New York, Chicago’s boosters remained intricately tied to the city’s growth, thus they shared a common interest. Moreover, again in contrast to New York whose ward map often reflected ethnic neighborhoods, Chicago’s organized real estate interests to facilitate the use of assessments and private development. While Chicago’s segmented system might have been more extreme than other cities, it was based on Eastern examples. The system diminished political conflict by requiring the construction of local consensus, it even enabled working class communities to prevent unwanted development. Special taxes enabled the city to limit taxation for services such as street lamps to neighborhoods that required or demanded them without placing any tax burden on the entire city. However, the segmented system “made the American urban landscape a physical expression of political inequality.” (104). By preventing redistribution, the city’s neighborhoods exhibited this class division as poorer communities often lacked the infrastructure that wealthier homeowners illustrated, “While the wealthy paid for their control of policy making in high special assessment levies, therefore, the poor paid for their low tax costs in voicelessness, in a governmental decision making process based directly on wealth rather than, either directly or indirectly, on the power of number of ballots.” (116)

The segmented system faced difficulties as Chicago grew. As acknowledged, it led to incongruous development, “With no central coordination, it had allowed local groups of property owners to build a huge amount of physical infrastructure without integrating their efforts over space or time.” (169). The creation of the Board of Public Works and the eventual extension of authority granted it, chipped away at segmented system. In addition, national debates over temperance, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Civil War altered the nature of non-partisan elections, that had enabled booster elites to consolidate power within the system. With local politics now “enmeshed in a vigorous national party system. Chicagoans also were adopting a new idea of their local public interest. Like their interest in the Union war effort, this local interest submerged party in the urgency of government action. It also destroyed the segmented system” (188). Civil war recruitment and bounties ended up redistributing taxes downwards, an action segmentation had avoided. Local debates concerning pollution and the environmental effects of packinghouses also helped to slowly shift opinion toward a broader public interest. Within state legal circles, the segmentation faced obstacles. An 1864 Illinois Supreme Court decision “announced that Chicago’s new public interest extended to the street building arrangements at the heart o the segmented system” (215). When street railway companies began to construct transit infrastructure, “a segmented approach was rejected from the start.” (218). The passage of the Ninety Nine Year Act (along with a handful of similar acts) removed all local control from abutters and property owners. Companies held too much power and eliminated the influence of the former booster elites. When alderman challenged such acts, the Supreme Court rejected their complaints siding with street railway companies. Still the Civil War period represented incredible growth for Chicago’s infrastructure, “After more than a decade of segmented localism, Chicagoans used city government to help meet their recruiting quotas, clean a desperately polluted river, and build a transit system.” (224). Thus, citizens reshaped municipal government “to strike a new balance between public and private, keeping privatism for the many along with new public interests for the few.” (225)

A key point in post Civil War’s abandonment of the segmented system lay in the changing elite. Booster elites faded to be replaced by Gilded Age millionaires who “took less active roles in the community”. (225) This new elite class did not compete with each other since they had established themselves in different industries. They viewed municipal government as a nuiscance rather than a partner and resisted all taxation placed upon them. Since boosters had been especially active in real estate infrastructure and development served their interests. The new millionaire class hoped to speak in the language of the “public interest” as too reduce their own tax responsibilities by placing them on the larger populace. Ultimately, the segmented system faded to be replaced by “a system that used government to redistribute wealth in accordance with public policy decisions made through power politics and interest group competition.” (229) The rise of Jacksonian pluralism in this context meant “the completion of interest groups to define public interests” resulted in “few democratic outcomes in the Gilded Age.” (242) If anything, pluralism enabled the new elite to define the public interest . However, Einhorn carefully notes that the machine politics that emerged did not bring democratization either, “Chicago’s first government transition, from boosterism to segmentation, that was decentralizing. It was the second transition, however, that brought bummers and machine politics. Neither of these transitions can be described as democratizing.” (243) Not until the “social reform” movements of the early 20th century (Einhorn argues especially that of the 1930s) did such democratizing effects find expression in municipal government.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T00:06:33Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[]]
}}
Corruption in Chicago politics serves as subject matter for numerous historians. The machine politics that emerged in the 1930s, consolidated by the first Richard Daley in 1955, often symbolize the city’s political history. However, Robin L. Einhorn’s work ''Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833 – 1872'' examines the political and economic history of the metropolis’ experiment with a segmented government system. Unlike the machine politics of latter eras, the segmented system prevented corruption to such an extent that “its government was clean enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of urban reformers.” (xv). Drawing on the “privatism” (“an outright unapologetic rejection of public oriented civic responsibility”) thesis of Sam Bass Warner, Terrance McDonald’s emphasis on a “low tax consensus” (similar to ''My Blue Heaven’s'' 20th century blue collar suburbs), and Amy Bridges’ attention to the relevance of city politics in the national context (“that the nineteenth century American city was an integral part of the nineteenth century national political community, truly a “city in the republic.”). Einhorn pushes each of these scholars ideas further, “American cities were “cities in the republic”, not only in Bridges sense of sharing political culture influenced by an enfranchised working class, but also in their uses of government. Urban politics reflected McDonald’s “consensus” on low taxes but in ways that promoted localized rather than low cost government. Cities were very successful in building public works, and they accomplished this by local and privatized strategies long before the triumph of the central coordination that Teafod describes. Finally American cities were, as Warner argued, “private cities.” Yet by nineteenth century standards, this was their strength rather than their pathology.” (xvi)

The segmented system reflected the idea of strict constructionism and Jacksonian ideology by limiting the power of the government, preventing monopoly, and maintaining low taxes. The diversification of the cities expanding economy along with its polyglot population led many to believe that “city wide consensus” were no longer possible. The segmented system prevented any kind of redistribution upwards or downwards, while enabling working, middle, and upper class property owners to expand infrastructure in their communities according to local demands. The segmented system depended on special taxes, fire limits (fire limits rules were used to ensure certain Chicago neighborhoods built homes out of more expensive brick than wood, thus preventing working class peoples from building such homes “The fire limit could have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction, but also by determining land use. If in legal theory, modern zoning grew out of nuisance regulation while fire limits developed into building codes, in practice, mid nineteenth century Chicagoans used the fire limit as a tool for land use control.” (129)) and assessments as economic and political tools to control development while maintaining low taxes. Citywide development did not exist because the political culture of the period did not acknowledge modern conceptions of the general “public interest”. Replacing Boosterism, “Segmentation rested on the principle of local control of city building decisions. Only those property owners whose real estate would be affected by a particular decision had a right to participate in making that decision. Only owners whose properties reaped benefits from an improvement paid for that improvement. Notions of the public good all but disappeared from municipal policy debate as Chicagoans turned their attention to the rapid creation of physical infrastructure.” (76). Assessments required local property owners and the appropriate alderman to build a consensus for development. While cities such as San Francisco and Milwaukee also used a segmented system but Chicago’s remained the purest.

Chicago’s boosters did not relinquish their activity in municipal government. Instead, they consolidated power through non-partisan elections while alderman essentially represented real estate interests. Unlike the cosmopolitan elite of New York, Chicago’s boosters remained intricately tied to the city’s growth, thus they shared a common interest. Moreover, again in contrast to New York whose ward map often reflected ethnic neighborhoods, Chicago’s organized real estate interests to facilitate the use of assessments and private development. While Chicago’s segmented system might have been more extreme than other cities, it was based on Eastern examples. The system diminished political conflict by requiring the construction of local consensus, it even enabled working class communities to prevent unwanted development. Special taxes enabled the city to limit taxation for services such as street lamps to neighborhoods that required or demanded them without placing any tax burden on the entire city. However, the segmented system “made the American urban landscape a physical expression of political inequality.” (104). By preventing redistribution, the city’s neighborhoods exhibited this class division as poorer communities often lacked the infrastructure that wealthier homeowners illustrated, “While the wealthy paid for their control of policy making in high special assessment levies, therefore, the poor paid for their low tax costs in voicelessness, in a governmental decision making process based directly on wealth rather than, either directly or indirectly, on the power of number of ballots.” (116)

The segmented system faced difficulties as Chicago grew. As acknowledged, it led to incongruous development, “With no central coordination, it had allowed local groups of property owners to build a huge amount of physical infrastructure without integrating their efforts over space or time.” (169). The creation of the Board of Public Works and the eventual extension of authority granted it, chipped away at segmented system. In addition, national debates over temperance, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Civil War altered the nature of non-partisan elections, that had enabled booster elites to consolidate power within the system. With local politics now “enmeshed in a vigorous national party system. Chicagoans also were adopting a new idea of their local public interest. Like their interest in the Union war effort, this local interest submerged party in the urgency of government action. It also destroyed the segmented system” (188). Civil war recruitment and bounties ended up redistributing taxes downwards, an action segmentation had avoided. Local debates concerning pollution and the environmental effects of packinghouses also helped to slowly shift opinion toward a broader public interest. Within state legal circles, the segmentation faced obstacles. An 1864 Illinois Supreme Court decision “announced that Chicago’s new public interest extended to the street building arrangements at the heart o the segmented system” (215). When street railway companies began to construct transit infrastructure, “a segmented approach was rejected from the start.” (218). The passage of the Ninety Nine Year Act (along with a handful of similar acts) removed all local control from abutters and property owners. Companies held too much power and eliminated the influence of the former booster elites. When alderman challenged such acts, the Supreme Court rejected their complaints siding with street railway companies. Still the Civil War period represented incredible growth for Chicago’s infrastructure, “After more than a decade of segmented localism, Chicagoans used city government to help meet their recruiting quotas, clean a desperately polluted river, and build a transit system.” (224). Thus, citizens reshaped municipal government “to strike a new balance between public and private, keeping privatism for the many along with new public interests for the few.” (225)

A key point in post Civil War’s abandonment of the segmented system lay in the changing elite. Booster elites faded to be replaced by Gilded Age millionaires who “took less active roles in the community”. (225) This new elite class did not compete with each other since they had established themselves in different industries. They viewed municipal government as a nuiscance rather than a partner and resisted all taxation placed upon them. Since boosters had been especially active in real estate infrastructure and development served their interests. The new millionaire class hoped to speak in the language of the “public interest” as too reduce their own tax responsibilities by placing them on the larger populace. Ultimately, the segmented system faded to be replaced by “a system that used government to redistribute wealth in accordance with public policy decisions made through power politics and interest group competition.” (229) The rise of Jacksonian pluralism in this context meant “the completion of interest groups to define public interests” resulted in “few democratic outcomes in the Gilded Age.” (242) If anything, pluralism enabled the new elite to define the public interest . However, Einhorn carefully notes that the machine politics that emerged did not bring democratization either, “Chicago’s first government transition, from boosterism to segmentation, that was decentralizing. It was the second transition, however, that brought bummers and machine politics. Neither of these transitions can be described as democratizing.” (243) Not until the “social reform” movements of the early 20th century (Einhorn argues especially that of the 1930s) did such democratizing effects find expression in municipal government.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T00:05:21Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[cover.jpg]]
}}
Corruption in Chicago politics serves as subject matter for numerous historians. The machine politics that emerged in the 1930s, consolidated by the first Richard Daley in 1955, often symbolize the city’s political history. However, Robin L. Einhorn’s work ''Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833 – 1872'' examines the political and economic history of the metropolis’ experiment with a segmented government system. Unlike the machine politics of latter eras, the segmented system prevented corruption to such an extent that “its government was clean enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of urban reformers.” (xv). Drawing on the “privatism” (“an outright unapologetic rejection of public oriented civic responsibility”) thesis of Sam Bass Warner, Terrance McDonald’s emphasis on a “low tax consensus” (similar to ''My Blue Heaven’s'' 20th century blue collar suburbs), and Amy Bridges’ attention to the relevance of city politics in the national context (“that the nineteenth century American city was an integral part of the nineteenth century national political community, truly a “city in the republic.”). Einhorn pushes each of these scholars ideas further, “American cities were “cities in the republic”, not only in Bridges sense of sharing political culture influenced by an enfranchised working class, but also in their uses of government. Urban politics reflected McDonald’s “consensus” on low taxes but in ways that promoted localized rather than low cost government. Cities were very successful in building public works, and they accomplished this by local and privatized strategies long before the triumph of the central coordination that Teafod describes. Finally American cities were, as Warner argued, “private cities.” Yet by nineteenth century standards, this was their strength rather than their pathology.” (xvi)

The segmented system reflected the idea of strict constructionism and Jacksonian ideology by limiting the power of the government, preventing monopoly, and maintaining low taxes. The diversification of the cities expanding economy along with its polyglot population led many to believe that “city wide consensus” were no longer possible. The segmented system prevented any kind of redistribution upwards or downwards, while enabling working, middle, and upper class property owners to expand infrastructure in their communities according to local demands. The segmented system depended on special taxes, fire limits (fire limits rules were used to ensure certain Chicago neighborhoods built homes out of more expensive brick than wood, thus preventing working class peoples from building such homes “The fire limit could have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction, but also by determining land use. If in legal theory, modern zoning grew out of nuisance regulation while fire limits developed into building codes, in practice, mid nineteenth century Chicagoans used the fire limit as a tool for land use control.” (129)) and assessments as economic and political tools to control development while maintaining low taxes. Citywide development did not exist because the political culture of the period did not acknowledge modern conceptions of the general “public interest”. Replacing Boosterism, “Segmentation rested on the principle of local control of city building decisions. Only those property owners whose real estate would be affected by a particular decision had a right to participate in making that decision. Only owners whose properties reaped benefits from an improvement paid for that improvement. Notions of the public good all but disappeared from municipal policy debate as Chicagoans turned their attention to the rapid creation of physical infrastructure.” (76). Assessments required local property owners and the appropriate alderman to build a consensus for development. While cities such as San Francisco and Milwaukee also used a segmented system but Chicago’s remained the purest.

Chicago’s boosters did not relinquish their activity in municipal government. Instead, they consolidated power through non-partisan elections while alderman essentially represented real estate interests. Unlike the cosmopolitan elite of New York, Chicago’s boosters remained intricately tied to the city’s growth, thus they shared a common interest. Moreover, again in contrast to New York whose ward map often reflected ethnic neighborhoods, Chicago’s organized real estate interests to facilitate the use of assessments and private development. While Chicago’s segmented system might have been more extreme than other cities, it was based on Eastern examples. The system diminished political conflict by requiring the construction of local consensus, it even enabled working class communities to prevent unwanted development. Special taxes enabled the city to limit taxation for services such as street lamps to neighborhoods that required or demanded them without placing any tax burden on the entire city. However, the segmented system “made the American urban landscape a physical expression of political inequality.” (104). By preventing redistribution, the city’s neighborhoods exhibited this class division as poorer communities often lacked the infrastructure that wealthier homeowners illustrated, “While the wealthy paid for their control of policy making in high special assessment levies, therefore, the poor paid for their low tax costs in voicelessness, in a governmental decision making process based directly on wealth rather than, either directly or indirectly, on the power of number of ballots.” (116)

The segmented system faced difficulties as Chicago grew. As acknowledged, it led to incongruous development, “With no central coordination, it had allowed local groups of property owners to build a huge amount of physical infrastructure without integrating their efforts over space or time.” (169). The creation of the Board of Public Works and the eventual extension of authority granted it, chipped away at segmented system. In addition, national debates over temperance, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Civil War altered the nature of non-partisan elections, that had enabled booster elites to consolidate power within the system. With local politics now “enmeshed in a vigorous national party system. Chicagoans also were adopting a new idea of their local public interest. Like their interest in the Union war effort, this local interest submerged party in the urgency of government action. It also destroyed the segmented system” (188). Civil war recruitment and bounties ended up redistributing taxes downwards, an action segmentation had avoided. Local debates concerning pollution and the environmental effects of packinghouses also helped to slowly shift opinion toward a broader public interest. Within state legal circles, the segmentation faced obstacles. An 1864 Illinois Supreme Court decision “announced that Chicago’s new public interest extended to the street building arrangements at the heart o the segmented system” (215). When street railway companies began to construct transit infrastructure, “a segmented approach was rejected from the start.” (218). The passage of the Ninety Nine Year Act (along with a handful of similar acts) removed all local control from abutters and property owners. Companies held too much power and eliminated the influence of the former booster elites. When alderman challenged such acts, the Supreme Court rejected their complaints siding with street railway companies. Still the Civil War period represented incredible growth for Chicago’s infrastructure, “After more than a decade of segmented localism, Chicagoans used city government to help meet their recruiting quotas, clean a desperately polluted river, and build a transit system.” (224). Thus, citizens reshaped municipal government “to strike a new balance between public and private, keeping privatism for the many along with new public interests for the few.” (225)

A key point in post Civil War’s abandonment of the segmented system lay in the changing elite. Booster elites faded to be replaced by Gilded Age millionaires who “took less active roles in the community”. (225) This new elite class did not compete with each other since they had established themselves in different industries. They viewed municipal government as a nuiscance rather than a partner and resisted all taxation placed upon them. Since boosters had been especially active in real estate infrastructure and development served their interests. The new millionaire class hoped to speak in the language of the “public interest” as too reduce their own tax responsibilities by placing them on the larger populace. Ultimately, the segmented system faded to be replaced by “a system that used government to redistribute wealth in accordance with public policy decisions made through power politics and interest group competition.” (229) The rise of Jacksonian pluralism in this context meant “the completion of interest groups to define public interests” resulted in “few democratic outcomes in the Gilded Age.” (242) If anything, pluralism enabled the new elite to define the public interest . However, Einhorn carefully notes that the machine politics that emerged did not bring democratization either, “Chicago’s first government transition, from boosterism to segmentation, that was decentralizing. It was the second transition, however, that brought bummers and machine politics. Neither of these transitions can be described as democratizing.” (243) Not until the “social reform” movements of the early 20th century (Einhorn argues especially that of the 1930s) did such democratizing effects find expression in municipal government.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T00:03:10Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[]]
}}
Corruption in Chicago politics serves as subject matter for numerous historians. The machine politics that emerged in the 1930s, consolidated by the first Richard Daley in 1955, often symbolize the city’s political history. However, Robin L. Einhorn’s work ''Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833 – 1872'' examines the political and economic history of the metropolis’ experiment with a segmented government system. Unlike the machine politics of latter eras, the segmented system prevented corruption to such an extent that “its government was clean enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of urban reformers.” (xv). Drawing on the “privatism” (“an outright unapologetic rejection of public oriented civic responsibility”) thesis of Sam Bass Warner, Terrance McDonald’s emphasis on a “low tax consensus” (similar to ''My Blue Heaven’s'' 20th century blue collar suburbs), and Amy Bridges’ attention to the relevance of city politics in the national context (“that the nineteenth century American city was an integral part of the nineteenth century national political community, truly a “city in the republic.”). Einhorn pushes each of these scholars ideas further, “American cities were “cities in the republic”, not only in Bridges sense of sharing political culture influenced by an enfranchised working class, but also in their uses of government. Urban politics reflected McDonald’s “consensus” on low taxes but in ways that promoted localized rather than low cost government. Cities were very successful in building public works, and they accomplished this by local and privatized strategies long before the triumph of the central coordination that Teafod describes. Finally American cities were, as Warner argued, “private cities.” Yet by nineteenth century standards, this was their strength rather than their pathology.” (xvi)

The segmented system reflected the idea of strict constructionism and Jacksonian ideology by limiting the power of the government, preventing monopoly, and maintaining low taxes. The diversification of the cities expanding economy along with its polyglot population led many to believe that “city wide consensus” were no longer possible. The segmented system prevented any kind of redistribution upwards or downwards, while enabling working, middle, and upper class property owners to expand infrastructure in their communities according to local demands. The segmented system depended on special taxes, fire limits (fire limits rules were used to ensure certain Chicago neighborhoods built homes out of more expensive brick than wood, thus preventing working class peoples from building such homes “The fire limit could have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction, but also by determining land use. If in legal theory, modern zoning grew out of nuisance regulation while fire limits developed into building codes, in practice, mid nineteenth century Chicagoans used the fire limit as a tool for land use control.” (129)) and assessments as economic and political tools to control development while maintaining low taxes. Citywide development did not exist because the political culture of the period did not acknowledge modern conceptions of the general “public interest”. Replacing Boosterism, “Segmentation rested on the principle of local control of city building decisions. Only those property owners whose real estate would be affected by a particular decision had a right to participate in making that decision. Only owners whose properties reaped benefits from an improvement paid for that improvement. Notions of the public good all but disappeared from municipal policy debate as Chicagoans turned their attention to the rapid creation of physical infrastructure.” (76). Assessments required local property owners and the appropriate alderman to build a consensus for development. While cities such as San Francisco and Milwaukee also used a segmented system but Chicago’s remained the purest.

Chicago’s boosters did not relinquish their activity in municipal government. Instead, they consolidated power through non-partisan elections while alderman essentially represented real estate interests. Unlike the cosmopolitan elite of New York, Chicago’s boosters remained intricately tied to the city’s growth, thus they shared a common interest. Moreover, again in contrast to New York whose ward map often reflected ethnic neighborhoods, Chicago’s organized real estate interests to facilitate the use of assessments and private development. While Chicago’s segmented system might have been more extreme than other cities, it was based on Eastern examples. The system diminished political conflict by requiring the construction of local consensus, it even enabled working class communities to prevent unwanted development. Special taxes enabled the city to limit taxation for services such as street lamps to neighborhoods that required or demanded them without placing any tax burden on the entire city. However, the segmented system “made the American urban landscape a physical expression of political inequality.” (104). By preventing redistribution, the city’s neighborhoods exhibited this class division as poorer communities often lacked the infrastructure that wealthier homeowners illustrated, “While the wealthy paid for their control of policy making in high special assessment levies, therefore, the poor paid for their low tax costs in voicelessness, in a governmental decision making process based directly on wealth rather than, either directly or indirectly, on the power of number of ballots.” (116)

The segmented system faced difficulties as Chicago grew. As acknowledged, it led to incongruous development, “With no central coordination, it had allowed local groups of property owners to build a huge amount of physical infrastructure without integrating their efforts over space or time.” (169). The creation of the Board of Public Works and the eventual extension of authority granted it, chipped away at segmented system. In addition, national debates over temperance, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Civil War altered the nature of non-partisan elections, that had enabled booster elites to consolidate power within the system. With local politics now “enmeshed in a vigorous national party system. Chicagoans also were adopting a new idea of their local public interest. Like their interest in the Union war effort, this local interest submerged party in the urgency of government action. It also destroyed the segmented system” (188). Civil war recruitment and bounties ended up redistributing taxes downwards, an action segmentation had avoided. Local debates concerning pollution and the environmental effects of packinghouses also helped to slowly shift opinion toward a broader public interest. Within state legal circles, the segmentation faced obstacles. An 1864 Illinois Supreme Court decision “announced that Chicago’s new public interest extended to the street building arrangements at the heart o the segmented system” (215). When street railway companies began to construct transit infrastructure, “a segmented approach was rejected from the start.” (218). The passage of the Ninety Nine Year Act (along with a handful of similar acts) removed all local control from abutters and property owners. Companies held too much power and eliminated the influence of the former booster elites. When alderman challenged such acts, the Supreme Court rejected their complaints siding with street railway companies. Still the Civil War period represented incredible growth for Chicago’s infrastructure, “After more than a decade of segmented localism, Chicagoans used city government to help meet their recruiting quotas, clean a desperately polluted river, and build a transit system.” (224). Thus, citizens reshaped municipal government “to strike a new balance between public and private, keeping privatism for the many along with new public interests for the few.” (225)

A key point in post Civil War’s abandonment of the segmented system lay in the changing elite. Booster elites faded to be replaced by Gilded Age millionaires who “took less active roles in the community”. (225) This new elite class did not compete with each other since they had established themselves in different industries. They viewed municipal government as a nuiscance rather than a partner and resisted all taxation placed upon them. Since boosters had been especially active in real estate infrastructure and development served their interests. The new millionaire class hoped to speak in the language of the “public interest” as too reduce their own tax responsibilities by placing them on the larger populace. Ultimately, the segmented system faded to be replaced by “a system that used government to redistribute wealth in accordance with public policy decisions made through power politics and interest group competition.” (229) The rise of Jacksonian pluralism in this context meant “the completion of interest groups to define public interests” resulted in “few democratic outcomes in the Gilded Age.” (242) If anything, pluralism enabled the new elite to define the public interest . However, Einhorn carefully notes that the machine politics that emerged did not bring democratization either, “Chicago’s first government transition, from boosterism to segmentation, that was decentralizing. It was the second transition, however, that brought bummers and machine politics. Neither of these transitions can be described as democratizing.” (243) Not until the “social reform” movements of the early 20th century (Einhorn argues especially that of the 1930s) did such democratizing effects find expression in municipal government.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-20T00:00:33Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =[[File:Property Rules.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
Corruption in Chicago politics serves as subject matter for numerous historians. The machine politics that emerged in the 1930s, consolidated by the first Richard Daley in 1955, often symbolize the city’s political history. However, Robin L. Einhorn’s work ''Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833 – 1872'' examines the political and economic history of the metropolis’ experiment with a segmented government system. Unlike the machine politics of latter eras, the segmented system prevented corruption to such an extent that “its government was clean enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of urban reformers.” (xv). Drawing on the “privatism” (“an outright unapologetic rejection of public oriented civic responsibility”) thesis of Sam Bass Warner, Terrance McDonald’s emphasis on a “low tax consensus” (similar to ''My Blue Heaven’s'' 20th century blue collar suburbs), and Amy Bridges’ attention to the relevance of city politics in the national context (“that the nineteenth century American city was an integral part of the nineteenth century national political community, truly a “city in the republic.”). Einhorn pushes each of these scholars ideas further, “American cities were “cities in the republic”, not only in Bridges sense of sharing political culture influenced by an enfranchised working class, but also in their uses of government. Urban politics reflected McDonald’s “consensus” on low taxes but in ways that promoted localized rather than low cost government. Cities were very successful in building public works, and they accomplished this by local and privatized strategies long before the triumph of the central coordination that Teafod describes. Finally American cities were, as Warner argued, “private cities.” Yet by nineteenth century standards, this was their strength rather than their pathology.” (xvi)

The segmented system reflected the idea of strict constructionism and Jacksonian ideology by limiting the power of the government, preventing monopoly, and maintaining low taxes. The diversification of the cities expanding economy along with its polyglot population led many to believe that “city wide consensus” were no longer possible. The segmented system prevented any kind of redistribution upwards or downwards, while enabling working, middle, and upper class property owners to expand infrastructure in their communities according to local demands. The segmented system depended on special taxes, fire limits (fire limits rules were used to ensure certain Chicago neighborhoods built homes out of more expensive brick than wood, thus preventing working class peoples from building such homes “The fire limit could have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction, but also by determining land use. If in legal theory, modern zoning grew out of nuisance regulation while fire limits developed into building codes, in practice, mid nineteenth century Chicagoans used the fire limit as a tool for land use control.” (129)) and assessments as economic and political tools to control development while maintaining low taxes. Citywide development did not exist because the political culture of the period did not acknowledge modern conceptions of the general “public interest”. Replacing Boosterism, “Segmentation rested on the principle of local control of city building decisions. Only those property owners whose real estate would be affected by a particular decision had a right to participate in making that decision. Only owners whose properties reaped benefits from an improvement paid for that improvement. Notions of the public good all but disappeared from municipal policy debate as Chicagoans turned their attention to the rapid creation of physical infrastructure.” (76). Assessments required local property owners and the appropriate alderman to build a consensus for development. While cities such as San Francisco and Milwaukee also used a segmented system but Chicago’s remained the purest.

Chicago’s boosters did not relinquish their activity in municipal government. Instead, they consolidated power through non-partisan elections while alderman essentially represented real estate interests. Unlike the cosmopolitan elite of New York, Chicago’s boosters remained intricately tied to the city’s growth, thus they shared a common interest. Moreover, again in contrast to New York whose ward map often reflected ethnic neighborhoods, Chicago’s organized real estate interests to facilitate the use of assessments and private development. While Chicago’s segmented system might have been more extreme than other cities, it was based on Eastern examples. The system diminished political conflict by requiring the construction of local consensus, it even enabled working class communities to prevent unwanted development. Special taxes enabled the city to limit taxation for services such as street lamps to neighborhoods that required or demanded them without placing any tax burden on the entire city. However, the segmented system “made the American urban landscape a physical expression of political inequality.” (104). By preventing redistribution, the city’s neighborhoods exhibited this class division as poorer communities often lacked the infrastructure that wealthier homeowners illustrated, “While the wealthy paid for their control of policy making in high special assessment levies, therefore, the poor paid for their low tax costs in voicelessness, in a governmental decision making process based directly on wealth rather than, either directly or indirectly, on the power of number of ballots.” (116)

The segmented system faced difficulties as Chicago grew. As acknowledged, it led to incongruous development, “With no central coordination, it had allowed local groups of property owners to build a huge amount of physical infrastructure without integrating their efforts over space or time.” (169). The creation of the Board of Public Works and the eventual extension of authority granted it, chipped away at segmented system. In addition, national debates over temperance, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Civil War altered the nature of non-partisan elections, that had enabled booster elites to consolidate power within the system. With local politics now “enmeshed in a vigorous national party system. Chicagoans also were adopting a new idea of their local public interest. Like their interest in the Union war effort, this local interest submerged party in the urgency of government action. It also destroyed the segmented system” (188). Civil war recruitment and bounties ended up redistributing taxes downwards, an action segmentation had avoided. Local debates concerning pollution and the environmental effects of packinghouses also helped to slowly shift opinion toward a broader public interest. Within state legal circles, the segmentation faced obstacles. An 1864 Illinois Supreme Court decision “announced that Chicago’s new public interest extended to the street building arrangements at the heart o the segmented system” (215). When street railway companies began to construct transit infrastructure, “a segmented approach was rejected from the start.” (218). The passage of the Ninety Nine Year Act (along with a handful of similar acts) removed all local control from abutters and property owners. Companies held too much power and eliminated the influence of the former booster elites. When alderman challenged such acts, the Supreme Court rejected their complaints siding with street railway companies. Still the Civil War period represented incredible growth for Chicago’s infrastructure, “After more than a decade of segmented localism, Chicagoans used city government to help meet their recruiting quotas, clean a desperately polluted river, and build a transit system.” (224). Thus, citizens reshaped municipal government “to strike a new balance between public and private, keeping privatism for the many along with new public interests for the few.” (225)

A key point in post Civil War’s abandonment of the segmented system lay in the changing elite. Booster elites faded to be replaced by Gilded Age millionaires who “took less active roles in the community”. (225) This new elite class did not compete with each other since they had established themselves in different industries. They viewed municipal government as a nuiscance rather than a partner and resisted all taxation placed upon them. Since boosters had been especially active in real estate infrastructure and development served their interests. The new millionaire class hoped to speak in the language of the “public interest” as too reduce their own tax responsibilities by placing them on the larger populace. Ultimately, the segmented system faded to be replaced by “a system that used government to redistribute wealth in accordance with public policy decisions made through power politics and interest group competition.” (229) The rise of Jacksonian pluralism in this context meant “the completion of interest groups to define public interests” resulted in “few democratic outcomes in the Gilded Age.” (242) If anything, pluralism enabled the new elite to define the public interest . However, Einhorn carefully notes that the machine politics that emerged did not bring democratization either, “Chicago’s first government transition, from boosterism to segmentation, that was decentralizing. It was the second transition, however, that brought bummers and machine politics. Neither of these transitions can be described as democratizing.” (243) Not until the “social reform” movements of the early 20th century (Einhorn argues especially that of the 1930s) did such democratizing effects find expression in municipal government.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

The Modern Girl Around the World

2017-02-19T23:59:24Z

Jdent8: Created page with "{{Infobox book | name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization | author = Alys Weinbaum,et al | publisher = Duke University..."

{{Infobox book
| name = The Modern Girl Around The World:Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
| author = Alys Weinbaum,et al
| publisher = Duke University Press
| pub_date = 2008-12-03
| pages = 448
| isbn = 0822343053
| image =
}}
Corruption in Chicago politics serves as subject matter for numerous historians. The machine politics that emerged in the 1930s, consolidated by the first Richard Daley in 1955, often symbolize the city’s political history. However, Robin L. Einhorn’s work ''Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833 – 1872'' examines the political and economic history of the metropolis’ experiment with a segmented government system. Unlike the machine politics of latter eras, the segmented system prevented corruption to such an extent that “its government was clean enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of urban reformers.” (xv). Drawing on the “privatism” (“an outright unapologetic rejection of public oriented civic responsibility”) thesis of Sam Bass Warner, Terrance McDonald’s emphasis on a “low tax consensus” (similar to ''My Blue Heaven’s'' 20th century blue collar suburbs), and Amy Bridges’ attention to the relevance of city politics in the national context (“that the nineteenth century American city was an integral part of the nineteenth century national political community, truly a “city in the republic.”). Einhorn pushes each of these scholars ideas further, “American cities were “cities in the republic”, not only in Bridges sense of sharing political culture influenced by an enfranchised working class, but also in their uses of government. Urban politics reflected McDonald’s “consensus” on low taxes but in ways that promoted localized rather than low cost government. Cities were very successful in building public works, and they accomplished this by local and privatized strategies long before the triumph of the central coordination that Teafod describes. Finally American cities were, as Warner argued, “private cities.” Yet by nineteenth century standards, this was their strength rather than their pathology.” (xvi)

The segmented system reflected the idea of strict constructionism and Jacksonian ideology by limiting the power of the government, preventing monopoly, and maintaining low taxes. The diversification of the cities expanding economy along with its polyglot population led many to believe that “city wide consensus” were no longer possible. The segmented system prevented any kind of redistribution upwards or downwards, while enabling working, middle, and upper class property owners to expand infrastructure in their communities according to local demands. The segmented system depended on special taxes, fire limits (fire limits rules were used to ensure certain Chicago neighborhoods built homes out of more expensive brick than wood, thus preventing working class peoples from building such homes “The fire limit could have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction, but also by determining land use. If in legal theory, modern zoning grew out of nuisance regulation while fire limits developed into building codes, in practice, mid nineteenth century Chicagoans used the fire limit as a tool for land use control.” (129)) and assessments as economic and political tools to control development while maintaining low taxes. Citywide development did not exist because the political culture of the period did not acknowledge modern conceptions of the general “public interest”. Replacing Boosterism, “Segmentation rested on the principle of local control of city building decisions. Only those property owners whose real estate would be affected by a particular decision had a right to participate in making that decision. Only owners whose properties reaped benefits from an improvement paid for that improvement. Notions of the public good all but disappeared from municipal policy debate as Chicagoans turned their attention to the rapid creation of physical infrastructure.” (76). Assessments required local property owners and the appropriate alderman to build a consensus for development. While cities such as San Francisco and Milwaukee also used a segmented system but Chicago’s remained the purest.

Chicago’s boosters did not relinquish their activity in municipal government. Instead, they consolidated power through non-partisan elections while alderman essentially represented real estate interests. Unlike the cosmopolitan elite of New York, Chicago’s boosters remained intricately tied to the city’s growth, thus they shared a common interest. Moreover, again in contrast to New York whose ward map often reflected ethnic neighborhoods, Chicago’s organized real estate interests to facilitate the use of assessments and private development. While Chicago’s segmented system might have been more extreme than other cities, it was based on Eastern examples. The system diminished political conflict by requiring the construction of local consensus, it even enabled working class communities to prevent unwanted development. Special taxes enabled the city to limit taxation for services such as street lamps to neighborhoods that required or demanded them without placing any tax burden on the entire city. However, the segmented system “made the American urban landscape a physical expression of political inequality.” (104). By preventing redistribution, the city’s neighborhoods exhibited this class division as poorer communities often lacked the infrastructure that wealthier homeowners illustrated, “While the wealthy paid for their control of policy making in high special assessment levies, therefore, the poor paid for their low tax costs in voicelessness, in a governmental decision making process based directly on wealth rather than, either directly or indirectly, on the power of number of ballots.” (116)

The segmented system faced difficulties as Chicago grew. As acknowledged, it led to incongruous development, “With no central coordination, it had allowed local groups of property owners to build a huge amount of physical infrastructure without integrating their efforts over space or time.” (169). The creation of the Board of Public Works and the eventual extension of authority granted it, chipped away at segmented system. In addition, national debates over temperance, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Civil War altered the nature of non-partisan elections, that had enabled booster elites to consolidate power within the system. With local politics now “enmeshed in a vigorous national party system. Chicagoans also were adopting a new idea of their local public interest. Like their interest in the Union war effort, this local interest submerged party in the urgency of government action. It also destroyed the segmented system” (188). Civil war recruitment and bounties ended up redistributing taxes downwards, an action segmentation had avoided. Local debates concerning pollution and the environmental effects of packinghouses also helped to slowly shift opinion toward a broader public interest. Within state legal circles, the segmentation faced obstacles. An 1864 Illinois Supreme Court decision “announced that Chicago’s new public interest extended to the street building arrangements at the heart o the segmented system” (215). When street railway companies began to construct transit infrastructure, “a segmented approach was rejected from the start.” (218). The passage of the Ninety Nine Year Act (along with a handful of similar acts) removed all local control from abutters and property owners. Companies held too much power and eliminated the influence of the former booster elites. When alderman challenged such acts, the Supreme Court rejected their complaints siding with street railway companies. Still the Civil War period represented incredible growth for Chicago’s infrastructure, “After more than a decade of segmented localism, Chicagoans used city government to help meet their recruiting quotas, clean a desperately polluted river, and build a transit system.” (224). Thus, citizens reshaped municipal government “to strike a new balance between public and private, keeping privatism for the many along with new public interests for the few.” (225)

A key point in post Civil War’s abandonment of the segmented system lay in the changing elite. Booster elites faded to be replaced by Gilded Age millionaires who “took less active roles in the community”. (225) This new elite class did not compete with each other since they had established themselves in different industries. They viewed municipal government as a nuiscance rather than a partner and resisted all taxation placed upon them. Since boosters had been especially active in real estate infrastructure and development served their interests. The new millionaire class hoped to speak in the language of the “public interest” as too reduce their own tax responsibilities by placing them on the larger populace. Ultimately, the segmented system faded to be replaced by “a system that used government to redistribute wealth in accordance with public policy decisions made through power politics and interest group competition.” (229) The rise of Jacksonian pluralism in this context meant “the completion of interest groups to define public interests” resulted in “few democratic outcomes in the Gilded Age.” (242) If anything, pluralism enabled the new elite to define the public interest . However, Einhorn carefully notes that the machine politics that emerged did not bring democratization either, “Chicago’s first government transition, from boosterism to segmentation, that was decentralizing. It was the second transition, however, that brought bummers and machine politics. Neither of these transitions can be described as democratizing.” (243) Not until the “social reform” movements of the early 20th century (Einhorn argues especially that of the 1930s) did such democratizing effects find expression in municipal government.

[[Category:Global History]]
[[Category:Gender History]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Alys Weinbaum]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century World]]

Global History

2017-02-19T23:39:37Z

Jdent8: /* Book Summaries */

==Reading Lists==
* [[Theories of International Relations]]
* [[Transnationalism - Reft]]
* [[The US and the World in the Nineteenth Century - Perl-Rosenthal]]

==Book Summaries==
* Arjun Appadurai. [[Modernity At Large|Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization]] (1996).
* Giovanni Arrighi. [[The Long Twentieth Century|The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times]] (1994).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Aviva Chomsky. [[Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class]] (2008).
* Faisal Devji. [[The Terrorist in Search of Humanity|The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics]] (2008).
* Friedmann, J. [[The World City Hypothesis]]. ''Development and Change'', 17(1) , 69–83. (2008).
* David Harvey. [[Consciousness and the Urban Experience]] (1985).
* David Harvey. [[A Brief History of Neoliberalism]] (2005).
* E. J. Hobsbawm. [[Nations and Nationalism since 1780|Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality]] (1990).
* Michael J. Hogan. [[America in the World|America in the World: The Historiography of US Foreign Relations since 1941]] (1996).
* Kristin L. Hoganson. [[Consumer’s Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920]] (2007)
* Kilminster, R. [[Globalization as an Emergent Concept]]. from: ''The Limits of Globalization: Cases and Arguments''. London: Routledge, 257–283. (1997).
* Anthony D. King. [[The Bungalow|The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture]] (1984).
* Paul A. Kramer. [[The Blood of Government|The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines]] (2006).
* Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds. [[Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality]] (2008)
* Georges Lefebvre. [[The Coming of the French Revolution|The Coming of the French Revolution]] (2005).
* Martin W. Lewis & Kären E. Wigen. [[The Myth of Continents|The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography]] (1997).
* Peter Marcuse and Ronald Van Kempen, [[Globalizing Cities|Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order?]] (2000).
* Peter Marcuse & Ronald van Kempen. [[Of States and Cities|Of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space]] (2002).
* Adam M. McKeown. [[Melancholy Order|Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders]] (2008).
* J. R. McNeill, John Robert McNeill, & Paul Kennedy. [[Something New Under the Sun|Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World]] (2001).
* N. Dos Santos Oliveira. [[Favelas and Ghettos|Favelas and Ghettos: Race and Class in Rio de Janeiro and New York City]]. ''Latin American Perspectives'', 71–89. (1996).
* Gary Y. Okihiro. [[Island World]] (2008)
* Robert B. Potter. [[Cities and Development in the Third World]] (1990).
* Jeremy Prestholdt. [[Domesticating the World|Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization]] (2008).
* Ananya Roy. [[City Requiem|City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender And The Politics Of Poverty]] (2002).
* Saskia Sassen. [[The Mobility of Labor and Capital|The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow]] (1988).
* Saskia Sassen. [[The Global City|The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.]] (1991).
* Allison L. Sneider. [[Suffragists in an Imperial Age|Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870-1929]] (2008).
* Albert Soboul. [[The Sans-Culottes|The Sans-Culottes: The Popular Movement and Revolutionary Government, 1793-1794]] (1968).
* Tamara Sonn. [[Interpreting Islam|Interpreting Islam: Bandali Jawzi’s Islamic Intellectual History]] (1996).
* Jeremi Suri. [[Power and Protest|Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente]] (2003).
* Timothy Tackett. [[Becoming a Revolutionary|Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture]] (1996).
* Immanuel Wallerstein. [[The Decline of American Power|The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World]] (2003).
* Immanuel Wallerstein. [[World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction|World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction]] (2004).
* Odd Arne Westad. [[The Global Cold War|The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times]] (2005).
* Alys Weinbaum. [[The Modern Girl Around the World|The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization]] (2008).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).

Black, White, and Indian

2015-09-27T01:09:54Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family
| author = Claudio Saunt
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| pub_date = 2005-4-21
| pages = 300
| isbn = 9780195176315
| image = [[File:BlackWhiteandIndian.jpg]]
}}
“What do you define yourself as?” “Check the box that BEST describes your race.” It is impossible to escape race in America. Our society is filled with questions like those above. People act surprised when somebody is black, because they “never would have guessed.” Racial identity permeates our culture. We live in an age when news outlets report on a member of the Black Lives Matter movement having a white relative. Somehow, this makes him not fit for the movement. What is race anymore? Amerindians have asked similar questions since first contact with Europeans. Perhaps no other group of peoples have experienced the muddling of racial and ethnic boundaries then them. Claudio Saunt opens his monograph Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family with a look at Dartmouth College’s national conference on black Indians. Tensions are high throughout. Expletives are thrown, arguments are had, and the conference is marked by more discontent than the healing some expected. Some Indians are quoted as asking “I want to be Afro-American, can I be?” showing the divide that exists, even among the same groups (Saunt 7). It all begs the question: Who is a Native American?

Black, White, and Indian is an attempt to answer this question. It is written in a narrative style, and generally flows well between chapters. In between, profiles cover different members of the Creek nation, representing both sides of the argument of the racial argument. While the profiles do split the narrative up, they do add supplementary info to Saunt’s argument. It is a generally readable book, lacking tangents and keeping on his thesis throughout.

Saunt’s case study for this book is the Grayson family. Tracing their history to a Creek settlement in the 1700s. The family, of Indian/Scottish origin, would grow to include former slaves and their mixed children, all of whom claim to be part of the Creek family. The family would be divided along racial lines, disown one another, and even fight on opposing sides during the Civil War. The division of the Graysons, Saunt says, reflects the greater division occurring among other Native American tribes. It can be said, based off Saunt’s book, that there is no real answer to the question above. If there is an answer, then it surely has changed, adapted over time to reflect policy, in an attempt by Indians to keep their heritage alive.
Saunt begins his book with the marriage of Robert Grierson, the Scottish patriarch of the Grayson family, to a Creek woman named Sinnugee. Sinugee is already an enigma for Saunt to exemplify. She was not born into the Creek village of Hilabi where she lived; she was a refugee from Spanish Florida. The racial conflicts seen in the coming centuries were evident here. Robert had numerous slaves. Despite being married to a Creek, he whipped those that stole. This led to the Grayson homestead coming under attack during the Redstick revolt in 1813. The Redsticks were a group of revolutionary Creeks who used violence to resist the encroaching politics and culture of white settlers. Robert, despite his Creek wife, was a rancher, and a slaveowner. He married in, but was seen as an outsider. Even before the family was relocated to Indian Territory, Creeks were already trying to sort out.

The larger conflicts began in July. Katy, Robert’s young daughter, had 2 children, by what her grandson would call “a Negro” (Saunt 21). This came at the same time the Creeks were developing racial law codes. The timing of these codes, Saunt mentions, coincides with increased white incursion into Creek lands. These incursions normally resulted in the selling of Creek lands. A pattern emerges, showing an attempt at assimilation by Creeks, taking their dress, legal codes, and material goods. The pattern of assimilation is nothing new. The Cherokees created an alphabet, lived in American-style brick houses, and owned slaves. Katy’s situation is nothing new. There is a blurring effect; white, black, and Indian culture were in a constant state of flux.

So, were the out-of-wedlock Grayson children black, or Indian? Katy would chose to later own slaves. Her brothers Watt and Sandy became involved in shady land deals with the government. They chose to adapt to white culture. Her brother William would make an even more drastic decision. He not only began a relationship with an inherited slave, Judah, but eventually freed and married her. This came in 1834, as the Creeks’ land was sold from under their feet, and they were forced to relocate to what is now Oklahoma. William and his family moved independently, but suffered from his relationship with Judah. Katy stayed in Creek land in Alabama, remarried, and kept slaves. She lived as the whites in the area did. But, in 1837, she, too, left for Indian Territory. She, however, was forced out, escorted by the Army.

Katy could have asked William for help. They could have bought land nearby, united as ousted Creek Indians, and make their family whole again. But that is not what they did. Katy settled thirty miles away from William. They, like many other Creeks during the antebellum period, chose their whiteness as their distinguishing factor. They owned slaves. They began to call themselves “white Indians” (Saunt 67). Wash Grayson, Katy’s nephew, and whose autobiography served as the catalyst for Saunt’s book, commanded himself as a white man. During the Civil War, when many Native groups in Indian Territory were divided over who to fight for, Wash chose the Confederacy. The Creeks, along with the Choctaws, passed laws banning abolitionists and strengthening bondage. Indians were forced to choose sides; black or white?

This question came to a head when the Dawes Commission came to the Indian Territory. Laws passed in the 1890s allowed for the allotment of the Indian Territory and the subsequent dismantling of the Five Tribes. Allotment, and access to the Creek heritage (and treasury) was based off two rolls; Creeks “by blood” and the “freedmen” (Saunt 154). This spelled disaster for the “black Indians” of the Creeks, including the sons of William and Judah Grayson. Record-keeping in the Creek Nation was unreliable, and the concept of blood-ties was misguided. It came down to, unfortunately, skin color and hearsay. Judah was a former slave; therefore, they were no longer Creek. Wash Grayson and the “by blood” members of the family did not acknowledge their existence. One side entered the realm of whiteness; the other fell under racist laws and subjugation.

Black, White, and Indian, first and foremost, is a book about choices and family. The Grayson children were bound by kinship, but chose to break off from each other based on an outside concept of race. Their story is not unique; not in the worldview, nor in Native American tribes. However, it is a case study for the struggles faced by many Indians, and African-Americans, who faced similar choices in the nineteenth century. These choices made by Katy, William, and Wash Grayson would have lasting effects on their lives and their children’s lives. More importantly, the book is about identity. Creeks were obsessed with figuring out who was a true member of the tribe. It is a question that was impossible to answer when Sinugee married Robert Grierson; the Creeks were a mishmash of freed slaves, white traders, refugees and captives from other ethnic groups. The question of true Creek-ness was made based of racial laws created after the fact in the 1830s; decisions made to ensure the survival of the Creeks. It was, it appers, all for naught, as their lands, and their name, was torn out from under them by the United States government. Their identity as black or white Indians did not matter; they were Indians first, and this put them last.

Who is a Native American? After reading this book, one might still not know the answer. To some, it is only the Indians from the Dawes census. To others, it is those labeled as “freedmen,” or the outcast “mixed” children. Perhaps it could be anybody. Some tribes of dubious origins allow anyone to be an Indian for a nominal fee. In western Georgia, where I live, people always claim to be a fraction Creek or Cherokee. Are these people Indians? Saunt argues that who is Indian depends on who is asking the questions.

I would submit that race is a construct. An ingrained construct, perhaps, but a created state of being nonetheless. I would also argue that it is fluid; the questions of race change over time. Who is considered black, white, or Indian is not the same today as it was in the days of Wash Grayson. Saunt’s book shows the transformation of the Creeks from a culture of inclusivity to an exclusive tribal nation. It was an attempt at to keep their tribe afloat at the hands of the United States government. The Grayson family was forced to choose sides. Some chose to assimilate into white culture. Some were forced into black culture. All of them part of a greater struggle for identity that would affect Native Americans for generations.

[[Category:Nineteenth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category: Claudio Saunt]]

File:BlackWhiteandIndian.jpg

2015-09-27T01:07:46Z

Jdent8:

Black, White, and Indian

2015-09-27T01:06:04Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family
| author = Claudio Saunt
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| pub_date = 2005-4-21
| pages = 300
| isbn = 9780195176315
| image = [[File:File:Name of File.jpg|alt=image]]
}}
“What do you define yourself as?” “Check the box that BEST describes your race.” It is impossible to escape race in America. Our society is filled with questions like those above. People act surprised when somebody is black, because they “never would have guessed.” Racial identity permeates our culture. We live in an age when news outlets report on a member of the Black Lives Matter movement having a white relative. Somehow, this makes him not fit for the movement. What is race anymore? Amerindians have asked similar questions since first contact with Europeans. Perhaps no other group of peoples have experienced the muddling of racial and ethnic boundaries then them. Claudio Saunt opens his monograph Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family with a look at Dartmouth College’s national conference on black Indians. Tensions are high throughout. Expletives are thrown, arguments are had, and the conference is marked by more discontent than the healing some expected. Some Indians are quoted as asking “I want to be Afro-American, can I be?” showing the divide that exists, even among the same groups (Saunt 7). It all begs the question: Who is a Native American?

Black, White, and Indian is an attempt to answer this question. It is written in a narrative style, and generally flows well between chapters. In between, profiles cover different members of the Creek nation, representing both sides of the argument of the racial argument. While the profiles do split the narrative up, they do add supplementary info to Saunt’s argument. It is a generally readable book, lacking tangents and keeping on his thesis throughout.

Saunt’s case study for this book is the Grayson family. Tracing their history to a Creek settlement in the 1700s. The family, of Indian/Scottish origin, would grow to include former slaves and their mixed children, all of whom claim to be part of the Creek family. The family would be divided along racial lines, disown one another, and even fight on opposing sides during the Civil War. The division of the Graysons, Saunt says, reflects the greater division occurring among other Native American tribes. It can be said, based off Saunt’s book, that there is no real answer to the question above. If there is an answer, then it surely has changed, adapted over time to reflect policy, in an attempt by Indians to keep their heritage alive.
Saunt begins his book with the marriage of Robert Grierson, the Scottish patriarch of the Grayson family, to a Creek woman named Sinnugee. Sinugee is already an enigma for Saunt to exemplify. She was not born into the Creek village of Hilabi where she lived; she was a refugee from Spanish Florida. The racial conflicts seen in the coming centuries were evident here. Robert had numerous slaves. Despite being married to a Creek, he whipped those that stole. This led to the Grayson homestead coming under attack during the Redstick revolt in 1813. The Redsticks were a group of revolutionary Creeks who used violence to resist the encroaching politics and culture of white settlers. Robert, despite his Creek wife, was a rancher, and a slaveowner. He married in, but was seen as an outsider. Even before the family was relocated to Indian Territory, Creeks were already trying to sort out.

The larger conflicts began in July. Katy, Robert’s young daughter, had 2 children, by what her grandson would call “a Negro” (Saunt 21). This came at the same time the Creeks were developing racial law codes. The timing of these codes, Saunt mentions, coincides with increased white incursion into Creek lands. These incursions normally resulted in the selling of Creek lands. A pattern emerges, showing an attempt at assimilation by Creeks, taking their dress, legal codes, and material goods. The pattern of assimilation is nothing new. The Cherokees created an alphabet, lived in American-style brick houses, and owned slaves. Katy’s situation is nothing new. There is a blurring effect; white, black, and Indian culture were in a constant state of flux.

So, were the out-of-wedlock Grayson children black, or Indian? Katy would chose to later own slaves. Her brothers Watt and Sandy became involved in shady land deals with the government. They chose to adapt to white culture. Her brother William would make an even more drastic decision. He not only began a relationship with an inherited slave, Judah, but eventually freed and married her. This came in 1834, as the Creeks’ land was sold from under their feet, and they were forced to relocate to what is now Oklahoma. William and his family moved independently, but suffered from his relationship with Judah. Katy stayed in Creek land in Alabama, remarried, and kept slaves. She lived as the whites in the area did. But, in 1837, she, too, left for Indian Territory. She, however, was forced out, escorted by the Army.

Katy could have asked William for help. They could have bought land nearby, united as ousted Creek Indians, and make their family whole again. But that is not what they did. Katy settled thirty miles away from William. They, like many other Creeks during the antebellum period, chose their whiteness as their distinguishing factor. They owned slaves. They began to call themselves “white Indians” (Saunt 67). Wash Grayson, Katy’s nephew, and whose autobiography served as the catalyst for Saunt’s book, commanded himself as a white man. During the Civil War, when many Native groups in Indian Territory were divided over who to fight for, Wash chose the Confederacy. The Creeks, along with the Choctaws, passed laws banning abolitionists and strengthening bondage. Indians were forced to choose sides; black or white?

This question came to a head when the Dawes Commission came to the Indian Territory. Laws passed in the 1890s allowed for the allotment of the Indian Territory and the subsequent dismantling of the Five Tribes. Allotment, and access to the Creek heritage (and treasury) was based off two rolls; Creeks “by blood” and the “freedmen” (Saunt 154). This spelled disaster for the “black Indians” of the Creeks, including the sons of William and Judah Grayson. Record-keeping in the Creek Nation was unreliable, and the concept of blood-ties was misguided. It came down to, unfortunately, skin color and hearsay. Judah was a former slave; therefore, they were no longer Creek. Wash Grayson and the “by blood” members of the family did not acknowledge their existence. One side entered the realm of whiteness; the other fell under racist laws and subjugation.

Black, White, and Indian, first and foremost, is a book about choices and family. The Grayson children were bound by kinship, but chose to break off from each other based on an outside concept of race. Their story is not unique; not in the worldview, nor in Native American tribes. However, it is a case study for the struggles faced by many Indians, and African-Americans, who faced similar choices in the nineteenth century. These choices made by Katy, William, and Wash Grayson would have lasting effects on their lives and their children’s lives. More importantly, the book is about identity. Creeks were obsessed with figuring out who was a true member of the tribe. It is a question that was impossible to answer when Sinugee married Robert Grierson; the Creeks were a mishmash of freed slaves, white traders, refugees and captives from other ethnic groups. The question of true Creek-ness was made based of racial laws created after the fact in the 1830s; decisions made to ensure the survival of the Creeks. It was, it appers, all for naught, as their lands, and their name, was torn out from under them by the United States government. Their identity as black or white Indians did not matter; they were Indians first, and this put them last.

Who is a Native American? After reading this book, one might still not know the answer. To some, it is only the Indians from the Dawes census. To others, it is those labeled as “freedmen,” or the outcast “mixed” children. Perhaps it could be anybody. Some tribes of dubious origins allow anyone to be an Indian for a nominal fee. In western Georgia, where I live, people always claim to be a fraction Creek or Cherokee. Are these people Indians? Saunt argues that who is Indian depends on who is asking the questions.

I would submit that race is a construct. An ingrained construct, perhaps, but a created state of being nonetheless. I would also argue that it is fluid; the questions of race change over time. Who is considered black, white, or Indian is not the same today as it was in the days of Wash Grayson. Saunt’s book shows the transformation of the Creeks from a culture of inclusivity to an exclusive tribal nation. It was an attempt at to keep their tribe afloat at the hands of the United States government. The Grayson family was forced to choose sides. Some chose to assimilate into white culture. Some were forced into black culture. All of them part of a greater struggle for identity that would affect Native Americans for generations.

[[Category:Nineteenth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category: Claudio Saunt]]

Black, White, and Indian

2015-09-27T01:01:31Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family
| author = Claudio Saunt
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| pub_date = 2005-4-21
| pages = 300
| isbn = 9780195176315
| image = [[File:The Death of Reconstruction.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
“What do you define yourself as?” “Check the box that BEST describes your race.” It is impossible to escape race in America. Our society is filled with questions like those above. People act surprised when somebody is black, because they “never would have guessed.” Racial identity permeates our culture. We live in an age when news outlets report on a member of the Black Lives Matter movement having a white relative. Somehow, this makes him not fit for the movement. What is race anymore? Amerindians have asked similar questions since first contact with Europeans. Perhaps no other group of peoples have experienced the muddling of racial and ethnic boundaries then them. Claudio Saunt opens his monograph Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family with a look at Dartmouth College’s national conference on black Indians. Tensions are high throughout. Expletives are thrown, arguments are had, and the conference is marked by more discontent than the healing some expected. Some Indians are quoted as asking “I want to be Afro-American, can I be?” showing the divide that exists, even among the same groups (Saunt 7). It all begs the question: Who is a Native American?

Black, White, and Indian is an attempt to answer this question. It is written in a narrative style, and generally flows well between chapters. In between, profiles cover different members of the Creek nation, representing both sides of the argument of the racial argument. While the profiles do split the narrative up, they do add supplementary info to Saunt’s argument. It is a generally readable book, lacking tangents and keeping on his thesis throughout.

Saunt’s case study for this book is the Grayson family. Tracing their history to a Creek settlement in the 1700s. The family, of Indian/Scottish origin, would grow to include former slaves and their mixed children, all of whom claim to be part of the Creek family. The family would be divided along racial lines, disown one another, and even fight on opposing sides during the Civil War. The division of the Graysons, Saunt says, reflects the greater division occurring among other Native American tribes. It can be said, based off Saunt’s book, that there is no real answer to the question above. If there is an answer, then it surely has changed, adapted over time to reflect policy, in an attempt by Indians to keep their heritage alive.
Saunt begins his book with the marriage of Robert Grierson, the Scottish patriarch of the Grayson family, to a Creek woman named Sinnugee. Sinugee is already an enigma for Saunt to exemplify. She was not born into the Creek village of Hilabi where she lived; she was a refugee from Spanish Florida. The racial conflicts seen in the coming centuries were evident here. Robert had numerous slaves. Despite being married to a Creek, he whipped those that stole. This led to the Grayson homestead coming under attack during the Redstick revolt in 1813. The Redsticks were a group of revolutionary Creeks who used violence to resist the encroaching politics and culture of white settlers. Robert, despite his Creek wife, was a rancher, and a slaveowner. He married in, but was seen as an outsider. Even before the family was relocated to Indian Territory, Creeks were already trying to sort out.

The larger conflicts began in July. Katy, Robert’s young daughter, had 2 children, by what her grandson would call “a Negro” (Saunt 21). This came at the same time the Creeks were developing racial law codes. The timing of these codes, Saunt mentions, coincides with increased white incursion into Creek lands. These incursions normally resulted in the selling of Creek lands. A pattern emerges, showing an attempt at assimilation by Creeks, taking their dress, legal codes, and material goods. The pattern of assimilation is nothing new. The Cherokees created an alphabet, lived in American-style brick houses, and owned slaves. Katy’s situation is nothing new. There is a blurring effect; white, black, and Indian culture were in a constant state of flux.

So, were the out-of-wedlock Grayson children black, or Indian? Katy would chose to later own slaves. Her brothers Watt and Sandy became involved in shady land deals with the government. They chose to adapt to white culture. Her brother William would make an even more drastic decision. He not only began a relationship with an inherited slave, Judah, but eventually freed and married her. This came in 1834, as the Creeks’ land was sold from under their feet, and they were forced to relocate to what is now Oklahoma. William and his family moved independently, but suffered from his relationship with Judah. Katy stayed in Creek land in Alabama, remarried, and kept slaves. She lived as the whites in the area did. But, in 1837, she, too, left for Indian Territory. She, however, was forced out, escorted by the Army.

Katy could have asked William for help. They could have bought land nearby, united as ousted Creek Indians, and make their family whole again. But that is not what they did. Katy settled thirty miles away from William. They, like many other Creeks during the antebellum period, chose their whiteness as their distinguishing factor. They owned slaves. They began to call themselves “white Indians” (Saunt 67). Wash Grayson, Katy’s nephew, and whose autobiography served as the catalyst for Saunt’s book, commanded himself as a white man. During the Civil War, when many Native groups in Indian Territory were divided over who to fight for, Wash chose the Confederacy. The Creeks, along with the Choctaws, passed laws banning abolitionists and strengthening bondage. Indians were forced to choose sides; black or white?

This question came to a head when the Dawes Commission came to the Indian Territory. Laws passed in the 1890s allowed for the allotment of the Indian Territory and the subsequent dismantling of the Five Tribes. Allotment, and access to the Creek heritage (and treasury) was based off two rolls; Creeks “by blood” and the “freedmen” (Saunt 154). This spelled disaster for the “black Indians” of the Creeks, including the sons of William and Judah Grayson. Record-keeping in the Creek Nation was unreliable, and the concept of blood-ties was misguided. It came down to, unfortunately, skin color and hearsay. Judah was a former slave; therefore, they were no longer Creek. Wash Grayson and the “by blood” members of the family did not acknowledge their existence. One side entered the realm of whiteness; the other fell under racist laws and subjugation.

Black, White, and Indian, first and foremost, is a book about choices and family. The Grayson children were bound by kinship, but chose to break off from each other based on an outside concept of race. Their story is not unique; not in the worldview, nor in Native American tribes. However, it is a case study for the struggles faced by many Indians, and African-Americans, who faced similar choices in the nineteenth century. These choices made by Katy, William, and Wash Grayson would have lasting effects on their lives and their children’s lives. More importantly, the book is about identity. Creeks were obsessed with figuring out who was a true member of the tribe. It is a question that was impossible to answer when Sinugee married Robert Grierson; the Creeks were a mishmash of freed slaves, white traders, refugees and captives from other ethnic groups. The question of true Creek-ness was made based of racial laws created after the fact in the 1830s; decisions made to ensure the survival of the Creeks. It was, it appers, all for naught, as their lands, and their name, was torn out from under them by the United States government. Their identity as black or white Indians did not matter; they were Indians first, and this put them last.

Who is a Native American? After reading this book, one might still not know the answer. To some, it is only the Indians from the Dawes census. To others, it is those labeled as “freedmen,” or the outcast “mixed” children. Perhaps it could be anybody. Some tribes of dubious origins allow anyone to be an Indian for a nominal fee. In western Georgia, where I live, people always claim to be a fraction Creek or Cherokee. Are these people Indians? Saunt argues that who is Indian depends on who is asking the questions.

I would submit that race is a construct. An ingrained construct, perhaps, but a created state of being nonetheless. I would also argue that it is fluid; the questions of race change over time. Who is considered black, white, or Indian is not the same today as it was in the days of Wash Grayson. Saunt’s book shows the transformation of the Creeks from a culture of inclusivity to an exclusive tribal nation. It was an attempt at to keep their tribe afloat at the hands of the United States government. The Grayson family was forced to choose sides. Some chose to assimilate into white culture. Some were forced into black culture. All of them part of a greater struggle for identity that would affect Native Americans for generations.

[[Category:Nineteenth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category: Claudio Saunt]]

Black, White, and Indian

2015-09-27T01:00:37Z

Jdent8:

{{Infobox book
| name = Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family
| author = Claudio Saunt
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| pub_date = 2005-4-21
| pages = 300
| isbn = 9780195176315
| image = [[File:The Death of Reconstruction.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
“What do you define yourself as?” “Check the box that BEST describes your race.” It is impossible to escape race in America. Our society is filled with questions like those above. People act surprised when somebody is black, because they “never would have guessed.” Racial identity permeates our culture. We live in an age when news outlets report on a member of the Black Lives Matter movement having a white relative. Somehow, this makes him not fit for the movement. What is race anymore? Amerindians have asked similar questions since first contact with Europeans. Perhaps no other group of peoples have experienced the muddling of racial and ethnic boundaries then them. Claudio Saunt opens his monograph Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family with a look at Dartmouth College’s national conference on black Indians. Tensions are high throughout. Expletives are thrown, arguments are had, and the conference is marked by more discontent than the healing some expected. Some Indians are quoted as asking “I want to be Afro-American, can I be?” showing the divide that exists, even among the same groups (Saunt 7). It all begs the question: Who is a Native American?
Black, White, and Indian is an attempt to answer this question. It is written in a narrative style, and generally flows well between chapters. In between, profiles cover different members of the Creek nation, representing both sides of the argument of the racial argument. While the profiles do split the narrative up, they do add supplementary info to Saunt’s argument. It is a generally readable book, lacking tangents and keeping on his thesis throughout.
Saunt’s case study for this book is the Grayson family. Tracing their history to a Creek settlement in the 1700s. The family, of Indian/Scottish origin, would grow to include former slaves and their mixed children, all of whom claim to be part of the Creek family. The family would be divided along racial lines, disown one another, and even fight on opposing sides during the Civil War. The division of the Graysons, Saunt says, reflects the greater division occurring among other Native American tribes. It can be said, based off Saunt’s book, that there is no real answer to the question above. If there is an answer, then it surely has changed, adapted over time to reflect policy, in an attempt by Indians to keep their heritage alive.
Saunt begins his book with the marriage of Robert Grierson, the Scottish patriarch of the Grayson family, to a Creek woman named Sinnugee. Sinugee is already an enigma for Saunt to exemplify. She was not born into the Creek village of Hilabi where she lived; she was a refugee from Spanish Florida. The racial conflicts seen in the coming centuries were evident here. Robert had numerous slaves. Despite being married to a Creek, he whipped those that stole. This led to the Grayson homestead coming under attack during the Redstick revolt in 1813. The Redsticks were a group of revolutionary Creeks who used violence to resist the encroaching politics and culture of white settlers. Robert, despite his Creek wife, was a rancher, and a slaveowner. He married in, but was seen as an outsider. Even before the family was relocated to Indian Territory, Creeks were already trying to sort out.
The larger conflicts began in July. Katy, Robert’s young daughter, had 2 children, by what her grandson would call “a Negro” (Saunt 21). This came at the same time the Creeks were developing racial law codes. The timing of these codes, Saunt mentions, coincides with increased white incursion into Creek lands. These incursions normally resulted in the selling of Creek lands. A pattern emerges, showing an attempt at assimilation by Creeks, taking their dress, legal codes, and material goods. The pattern of assimilation is nothing new. The Cherokees created an alphabet, lived in American-style brick houses, and owned slaves. Katy’s situation is nothing new. There is a blurring effect; white, black, and Indian culture were in a constant state of flux.
So, were the out-of-wedlock Grayson children black, or Indian? Katy would chose to later own slaves. Her brothers Watt and Sandy became involved in shady land deals with the government. They chose to adapt to white culture. Her brother William would make an even more drastic decision. He not only began a relationship with an inherited slave, Judah, but eventually freed and married her. This came in 1834, as the Creeks’ land was sold from under their feet, and they were forced to relocate to what is now Oklahoma. William and his family moved independently, but suffered from his relationship with Judah. Katy stayed in Creek land in Alabama, remarried, and kept slaves. She lived as the whites in the area did. But, in 1837, she, too, left for Indian Territory. She, however, was forced out, escorted by the Army.
Katy could have asked William for help. They could have bought land nearby, united as ousted Creek Indians, and make their family whole again. But that is not what they did. Katy settled thirty miles away from William. They, like many other Creeks during the antebellum period, chose their whiteness as their distinguishing factor. They owned slaves. They began to call themselves “white Indians” (Saunt 67). Wash Grayson, Katy’s nephew, and whose autobiography served as the catalyst for Saunt’s book, commanded himself as a white man. During the Civil War, when many Native groups in Indian Territory were divided over who to fight for, Wash chose the Confederacy. The Creeks, along with the Choctaws, passed laws banning abolitionists and strengthening bondage. Indians were forced to choose sides; black or white?
This question came to a head when the Dawes Commission came to the Indian Territory. Laws passed in the 1890s allowed for the allotment of the Indian Territory and the subsequent dismantling of the Five Tribes. Allotment, and access to the Creek heritage (and treasury) was based off two rolls; Creeks “by blood” and the “freedmen” (Saunt 154). This spelled disaster for the “black Indians” of the Creeks, including the sons of William and Judah Grayson. Record-keeping in the Creek Nation was unreliable, and the concept of blood-ties was misguided. It came down to, unfortunately, skin color and hearsay. Judah was a former slave; therefore, they were no longer Creek. Wash Grayson and the “by blood” members of the family did not acknowledge their existence. One side entered the realm of whiteness; the other fell under racist laws and subjugation.
Black, White, and Indian, first and foremost, is a book about choices and family. The Grayson children were bound by kinship, but chose to break off from each other based on an outside concept of race. Their story is not unique; not in the worldview, nor in Native American tribes. However, it is a case study for the struggles faced by many Indians, and African-Americans, who faced similar choices in the nineteenth century. These choices made by Katy, William, and Wash Grayson would have lasting effects on their lives and their children’s lives. More importantly, the book is about identity. Creeks were obsessed with figuring out who was a true member of the tribe. It is a question that was impossible to answer when Sinugee married Robert Grierson; the Creeks were a mishmash of freed slaves, white traders, refugees and captives from other ethnic groups. The question of true Creek-ness was made based of racial laws created after the fact in the 1830s; decisions made to ensure the survival of the Creeks. It was, it appers, all for naught, as their lands, and their name, was torn out from under them by the United States government. Their identity as black or white Indians did not matter; they were Indians first, and this put them last.
Who is a Native American? After reading this book, one might still not know the answer. To some, it is only the Indians from the Dawes census. To others, it is those labeled as “freedmen,” or the outcast “mixed” children. Perhaps it could be anybody. Some tribes of dubious origins allow anyone to be an Indian for a nominal fee. In western Georgia, where I live, people always claim to be a fraction Creek or Cherokee. Are these people Indians? Saunt argues that who is Indian depends on who is asking the questions.
I would submit that race is a construct. An ingrained construct, perhaps, but a created state of being nonetheless. I would also argue that it is fluid; the questions of race change over time. Who is considered black, white, or Indian is not the same today as it was in the days of Wash Grayson. Saunt’s book shows the transformation of the Creeks from a culture of inclusivity to an exclusive tribal nation. It was an attempt at to keep their tribe afloat at the hands of the United States government. The Grayson family was forced to choose sides. Some chose to assimilate into white culture. Some were forced into black culture. All of them part of a greater struggle for identity that would affect Native Americans for generations.

[[Category:Nineteenth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category: Claudio Saunt]]

Black, White, and Indian

2015-09-27T00:59:53Z

Jdent8: Created page with "{{Infobox book | name = Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family | author = Claudio Saunt | publisher = Harvard University Press..."

{{Infobox book
| name = Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family
| author = Claudio Saunt
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| pub_date = 2005-4-21
| pages = 300
| isbn = 9780195176315
| image = [[File:The Death of Reconstruction.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
“What do you define yourself as?” “Check the box that BEST describes your race.” It is impossible to escape race in America. Our society is filled with questions like those above. People act surprised when somebody is black, because they “never would have guessed.” Racial identity permeates our culture. We live in an age when news outlets report on a member of the Black Lives Matter movement having a white relative. Somehow, this makes him not fit for the movement. What is race anymore? Amerindians have asked similar questions since first contact with Europeans. Perhaps no other group of peoples have experienced the muddling of racial and ethnic boundaries then them. Claudio Saunt opens his monograph Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family with a look at Dartmouth College’s national conference on black Indians. Tensions are high throughout. Expletives are thrown, arguments are had, and the conference is marked by more discontent than the healing some expected. Some Indians are quoted as asking “I want to be Afro-American, can I be?” showing the divide that exists, even among the same groups (Saunt 7). It all begs the question: Who is a Native American?
Black, White, and Indian is an attempt to answer this question. It is written in a narrative style, and generally flows well between chapters. In between, profiles cover different members of the Creek nation, representing both sides of the argument of the racial argument. While the profiles do split the narrative up, they do add supplementary info to Saunt’s argument. It is a generally readable book, lacking tangents and keeping on his thesis throughout.
Saunt’s case study for this book is the Grayson family. Tracing their history to a Creek settlement in the 1700s. The family, of Indian/Scottish origin, would grow to include former slaves and their mixed children, all of whom claim to be part of the Creek family. The family would be divided along racial lines, disown one another, and even fight on opposing sides during the Civil War. The division of the Graysons, Saunt says, reflects the greater division occurring among other Native American tribes. It can be said, based off Saunt’s book, that there is no real answer to the question above. If there is an answer, then it surely has changed, adapted over time to reflect policy, in an attempt by Indians to keep their heritage alive.
Saunt begins his book with the marriage of Robert Grierson, the Scottish patriarch of the Grayson family, to a Creek woman named Sinnugee. Sinugee is already an enigma for Saunt to exemplify. She was not born into the Creek village of Hilabi where she lived; she was a refugee from Spanish Florida. The racial conflicts seen in the coming centuries were evident here. Robert had numerous slaves. Despite being married to a Creek, he whipped those that stole. This led to the Grayson homestead coming under attack during the Redstick revolt in 1813. The Redsticks were a group of revolutionary Creeks who used violence to resist the encroaching politics and culture of white settlers. Robert, despite his Creek wife, was a rancher, and a slaveowner. He married in, but was seen as an outsider. Even before the family was relocated to Indian Territory, Creeks were already trying to sort out.
The larger conflicts began in July. Katy, Robert’s young daughter, had 2 children, by what her grandson would call “a Negro” (Saunt 21). This came at the same time the Creeks were developing racial law codes. The timing of these codes, Saunt mentions, coincides with increased white incursion into Creek lands. These incursions normally resulted in the selling of Creek lands. A pattern emerges, showing an attempt at assimilation by Creeks, taking their dress, legal codes, and material goods. The pattern of assimilation is nothing new. The Cherokees created an alphabet, lived in American-style brick houses, and owned slaves. Katy’s situation is nothing new. There is a blurring effect; white, black, and Indian culture were in a constant state of flux.
So, were the out-of-wedlock Grayson children black, or Indian? Katy would chose to later own slaves. Her brothers Watt and Sandy became involved in shady land deals with the government. They chose to adapt to white culture. Her brother William would make an even more drastic decision. He not only began a relationship with an inherited slave, Judah, but eventually freed and married her. This came in 1834, as the Creeks’ land was sold from under their feet, and they were forced to relocate to what is now Oklahoma. William and his family moved independently, but suffered from his relationship with Judah. Katy stayed in Creek land in Alabama, remarried, and kept slaves. She lived as the whites in the area did. But, in 1837, she, too, left for Indian Territory. She, however, was forced out, escorted by the Army.
Katy could have asked William for help. They could have bought land nearby, united as ousted Creek Indians, and make their family whole again. But that is not what they did. Katy settled thirty miles away from William. They, like many other Creeks during the antebellum period, chose their whiteness as their distinguishing factor. They owned slaves. They began to call themselves “white Indians” (Saunt 67). Wash Grayson, Katy’s nephew, and whose autobiography served as the catalyst for Saunt’s book, commanded himself as a white man. During the Civil War, when many Native groups in Indian Territory were divided over who to fight for, Wash chose the Confederacy. The Creeks, along with the Choctaws, passed laws banning abolitionists and strengthening bondage. Indians were forced to choose sides; black or white?
This question came to a head when the Dawes Commission came to the Indian Territory. Laws passed in the 1890s allowed for the allotment of the Indian Territory and the subsequent dismantling of the Five Tribes. Allotment, and access to the Creek heritage (and treasury) was based off two rolls; Creeks “by blood” and the “freedmen” (Saunt 154). This spelled disaster for the “black Indians” of the Creeks, including the sons of William and Judah Grayson. Record-keeping in the Creek Nation was unreliable, and the concept of blood-ties was misguided. It came down to, unfortunately, skin color and hearsay. Judah was a former slave; therefore, they were no longer Creek. Wash Grayson and the “by blood” members of the family did not acknowledge their existence. One side entered the realm of whiteness; the other fell under racist laws and subjugation.
Black, White, and Indian, first and foremost, is a book about choices and family. The Grayson children were bound by kinship, but chose to break off from each other based on an outside concept of race. Their story is not unique; not in the worldview, nor in Native American tribes. However, it is a case study for the struggles faced by many Indians, and African-Americans, who faced similar choices in the nineteenth century. These choices made by Katy, William, and Wash Grayson would have lasting effects on their lives and their children’s lives. More importantly, the book is about identity. Creeks were obsessed with figuring out who was a true member of the tribe. It is a question that was impossible to answer when Sinugee married Robert Grierson; the Creeks were a mishmash of freed slaves, white traders, refugees and captives from other ethnic groups. The question of true Creek-ness was made based of racial laws created after the fact in the 1830s; decisions made to ensure the survival of the Creeks. It was, it appers, all for naught, as their lands, and their name, was torn out from under them by the United States government. Their identity as black or white Indians did not matter; they were Indians first, and this put them last.
Who is a Native American? After reading this book, one might still not know the answer. To some, it is only the Indians from the Dawes census. To others, it is those labeled as “freedmen,” or the outcast “mixed” children. Perhaps it could be anybody. Some tribes of dubious origins allow anyone to be an Indian for a nominal fee. In western Georgia, where I live, people always claim to be a fraction Creek or Cherokee. Are these people Indians? Saunt argues that who is Indian depends on who is asking the questions.
I would submit that race is a construct. An ingrained construct, perhaps, but a created state of being nonetheless. I would also argue that it is fluid; the questions of race change over time. Who is considered black, white, or Indian is not the same today as it was in the days of Wash Grayson. Saunt’s book shows the transformation of the Creeks from a culture of inclusivity to an exclusive tribal nation. It was an attempt at to keep their tribe afloat at the hands of the United States government. The Grayson family was forced to choose sides. Some chose to assimilate into white culture. Some were forced into black culture. All of them part of a greater struggle for identity that would affect Native Americans for generations.

[[Category:Nineteenth Century United States]]

[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category: Claudio Saunt]]

Nineteeth Century United States

2015-09-27T00:55:59Z

Jdent8:

==Book Summaries==
* Philip S. Klein. [[President James Buchanan| President James Buchanan: A Biography]] (1962).
* Menahem Blondheim. [[News over the Wires|News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897]] (1994).
* Paul Boyer. [[Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920]] (1992).
* Amy Bridges. [[A City in the Republic|A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics]] (2008).
* Francis G. Couvares. [[The Remaking of Pittsburgh|The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City 1877-1919]] (1984).
* Albert Bricker. [[Democracy of Soundz|Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century]]
* Robin L. Einhorn. [[Property Rules|Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872]] (2001).
* Philip J. Ethington. [[The Public City|The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900]] (2001).
* Ann Fabian. [[Card Sharps and Bucket Shops|Card Sharps and Bucket Shops: Gambling in Nineteenth-Century America]] (1999).
* Eric Foner. [[Reconstruction|Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877]] (2002).
* Eugene D. Genovese. [[Roll, Jordan, Roll|Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made]] (1976).
* Paul Gilroy [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/the-modern-paul-gilroy-modernity-transnationalism-and-the-impact-of-the-black-atlantic-on-history/ The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness] (1993).
* Steven Hahn. [[A Nation under Our Feet|A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration]] (2005).
* Harper-Ho, V. [[Noncitizen Voting Rights|Noncitizen Voting Rights: The History, the Law and Current Prospects for Change]]. Immigr. & Nat’lity L. Rev., 21, 477. (2000).
* Steven Hertzberg. [[Strangers Within the Gate City|Strangers Within the Gate City: The Jews of Atlanta, 1845-1915]] (1978).
* Thomas R. Hietala. [[Manifest Design|Manifest Design: American Exceptionalism and Empire]] (2002).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Richard Hofstadter.[[Social Darwinism in American Thought]] (1992).
* John R. Hornady.[[Atlanta, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow]] (1922).
* Amy Kaplan.[[The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture]] (2005).
* Larry D. Kramer, [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Drew R. McCoy. [[The Elusive Republic|The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America]] (1996).
* Pearson, R. [[Towards an Historical Model of Services Innovation|Towards an Historical Model of Services Innovation: The Case of the Insurance Industry, 1700–1914]]. The Economic History Review, 50(2) , 235–256. (1997).
* Wallace Putnam Reed. [[History of Atlanta, Georgia|History of Atlanta, Georgia: with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers]] (2011).
* Heather Cox Richardson. [[The Death of Reconstruction|The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901]] (2004).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* Mary P. Ryan. [[Women in Public|Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880]] (1992).
* Allison L. Sneider. [[Suffragists in an Imperial Age|Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870-1929]] (2008).
* Christine Stansell. [[City of Women|City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860]] (1987).
* Jr, Sam Bass Warner. [[The Private City|The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth]] (1987).
* Sean Wilentz. [[Chants Democratic|Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850, 20th Anniversary Edition]] (1984).
* T. Harry Williams.[[Lincoln and His Generals]] (1952).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
* Claudio Saunt. [[Black, White, and Indian|Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family]] (2005).