Study Guide for Gillon Chapter 14

· In what ways did Falwell’s Moral Majority movement represent a break with past fundamentalist Christian traditions? In what ways did it represent continuity?

· According to Gillon what was “at the heart of the culture wars of the 1980s”? What does he outline as the two main “competing views of the meaning of American identity”?

· What factors does Gillon point to as facilitating the growth of conservative religion in the 1980s? What political party (and president) did the religious conservatives tend to support?

· What problems did social conservatives identify in American society? What did they blame for these problems?

· What issues did liberals champion as an attempt to divert from the conservatives’ definition of “family values”?

· Why was anti-abortion an effective political issue for conservatives in the 1980s as they sought to break the Democrats?

· How did the conception of motherhood differ between pro-choice and anti-abortion activists?

· What issue was ACT UP dedicated to?

· Why was stigma attached to the disease AIDS?

· What impact did the AIDS have on gay culture in the 1980s? How did cultural conservatives react?

· How did the Reagan administration respond to the AIDS crisis? How did the majority of Americans react? Why?

· How did the populations affected by AIDS change by the end of the decade?

· In terms of immigration, how did the 1980s compare with the early 20^th century? Where were immigrants coming from, and where were they coming to?

· In what ways did controversies over the new immigrants enter politics?

· In what ways did multiculturalism emerge in universities, and why was it controversial?

· Is Gillon a defender or critic of diversity/multiculturalism? What historical argument does he use to allay fears about newcomers?

· How does Gillon connect the Reagans to the “money culture” – the “culture of greed”?

· What was the “merger mania,” why did it emerge, and what attitudes did it symbolize?

· What were (are) yuppies? (what does the word stand for?) What did they care about?

· What was the televangelists’ attitude toward the consumer culture?

· How did the “money culture” show up in popular culture?

· What does Gillon point out about the paradox of conservatives’ celebration of consumerism and wealth?

· What was the “key selling strategy of the decade,” and in what ways did America see the media and other industries emphasize it?

· Using television as an example, how does Gillon see culture at the end of the 20^th century differing from culture in the middle of the century?

· Why does Gillon use the metaphor of an hourglass to describe American society in the 80s?

· How did the “nature of poverty” change in the 1980s? What does “feminization of poverty” mean?

· According to Gillon, what factors account for the rise in homelessness during the decade?

· What happened to the middle-middle class in those years?

· What structural economic changes does Gillon attribute the “hourglass” society to – both at home and globally?

· How did “urban renewal” and “gentrification” affect the urban poor?

· How were farmers faring in the eighties? Union members?

· What happened to the cost of living during the era?

· Were American races and classes moving closer together or farther apart? What factors caused “hypersegregation”?

· How did the political influence of urban areas change near the end of the century?

· You should know the significance of the court case Milliken v. Bradley, which originated in Detroit.