|
|
|
REVIEWS
THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE NEW WEST
|
edited by Jeff Roche
foreword by David Farber
|
| University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2008. Illustrations, photographs, notes, index. 396 pages. $40.00 cloth. $24.95 paper. |
| This very interesting volume brings together twelve essays originally presented at a symposium sponsored by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. The Clements Center, which dates to 1996, has rapidly become an important focusing agent for historical scholarship about a broadly conceived Southwest that stretches from the sandy shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the sometimes precipitous coast of California, and these essays enhance its reputation. |
1
|
|
Editor Jeff Roche and the assembled authors are all engaged in an effort to look behind the voting returns at the basic values and social patterns that underlie electoral politics. The common concept is "political culture," a term that tends to make political scientists uneasy (how do you measure it?) but that may bring smiles to the faces of historians because we get to talk about "soft" topics such as the meanings of Barry Goldwater's cowboy hat or the political implications of hip entrepreneurialism á la Patagonia clothing. |
2
|
|
Several of the chapters take a new look at a familiar historical category. Douglas Hurt draws on his expertise in agricultural history to describe the transformation of agricultural policy in which claims for protection by small farmers were appropriated by agricultural industrialists. Ignacio Garcia examines Latino political culture, Bradley Shreve looks at the rise of a national political movement among American Indians, and Scott Tang explores the tangled racial politics of post–World War II San Francisco. |
3
|
|
Another group of scholars probe the ways in which ideas of "West" and "westernness" have affected political life. Robert Goldberg follows his earlier biography of Barry Goldwater with a fascinating discussion of the way Goldwater and Ronald Reagan defined themselves as rugged westerners as much by their choice of clothing (those cowboy hats) as their actual policy choices, a trope that George W. Bush utilized somewhat less convincingly. In a very different way, as Karen Merrill points out, the image and self-image of the "Texas wildcatter" as a self-made pioneer had a deep and not necessarily positive impact on U.S. energy policy as the nation shifted from oil exporter to oil importer after World War II. In sharp contrast is the California/western radicalism of writer and activist Carey McWilliams as analyzed by Michael Steiner. To throw in another dimension of Southern California's complex politics, Darren Dochuk explores the importance of evangelical religion, as spread by ex-southern "hillbilly preachers" and "cowboy preachers," in supporting the rise of conservative politics among recent migrants from the mid South to Los Angeles. It is worth the price of admission to learn that Billy Graham first gained national attention as a tent evangelist in Los Angeles in 1949 with sermons like "Amos the Hillbilly Preacher" (a reasonably accurate characterization of the Biblical prophet). |
4
|
|
A topic of its own is the way that hip capitalism found fertile soil in the West. Amy Scott explores the transformation of Boulder into a pioneer of socially conscious consumerism (including tea company Celestial Seasonings) and self-consciously green politics via the transitional stage of hippie lifestyle radicalism. Drawing from his research on The Whole Earth Catalog, Andrew Kirk tells a parallel story under the title "Free Minds and Free Markets." The environmental radicalism of books like Ecotopia and The Monkey Wrench Gang turns out to have much in common with cyberfrontier geeks and right-leaning libertarians (reminding us that John Perry Barlow, a one-time writer of lyrics for the Grateful Dead, also campaigned for Dick Cheney). There are, it seems, lots of technophiles in the green ranks — but only advocates of "appropriate" technologies, of course. This section concludes with John Herron's musings on the implications of cell phones in the wilderness and David Wrobel's historical contextualizing of the anti-California prejudice that is shared so widely outside the Golden State. Raising the question of who has appropriated the identity of "pioneer" at different points in the western past, he reminds us that Illinoisan Ronald Reagan was part of a long tradition of new westerners claiming authentic westernness for themselves. |
5
|
|
Many readers of OHQ will have personal recollections or opinions about the recent history covered in the essays. They will remember the first time they brewed some Celestial Seasonings tea, heard about Puget Sound fish-ins, or saw a "Don't Californicate Oregon" sticker on a bumper. The valuable contribution of the essays is to take the historian's backward step and put current events into the framework of social and intellectual change. As politicians wonder which western states will go "blue" and which "red" in 2012, reflective readers can use this book to help think about the cultural values and changes that will underlie election day decisions. |
6
|
|
|
| CARL ABBOTT
|
| Portland State University |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|