Sticky Reputations

The Politics of Collective Memory in Midcentury America

Gary Fine, Gary Alan Fine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136485640
• Print ISBN:
  9780415894982
• Subtopic: North American History

Sticky Reputations focuses on reputational entrepreneurs and support groups shaping how we think of important figures, within a crucial period in American history – from the 1930s through the 1950s. Why are certain figures such as Adolf Hitler, Joe McCarthy, and Martin Luther King cemented into history unable to be challenged without reputational cost to the proposer of the alternative perspective? Why are the reputations of other political actors such as Harry Truman highly variable and changeable? Why, in the 1930s, was it widely believed that American Jews were linked to the Communist Party of America but by the 1950s this belief had largely vanished and was not longer a part of legitimate public discourse? This short, accessible book is ideal for use in undergraduate teaching in social movements, collective memory studies, political sociology, sociological social psychology, and other related courses.

Chapter 1

The Chaining of Social Problems

Solutions and Unintended Consequences in the Age of Betrayal

Gary Alan Fine

The real revenge is not what we do intentionally against one another. It is the tendency of the world around us to get even, to twist our cleverness against us. Or it is our own unconscious twisting against ourselves? Either way, wherever we turn we face the ironic unintended consequences of mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical ingenuity—revenge effects, they might be called.

Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back

In March 1934 a liberal New York Congressman, Samuel Dickstein, a Democrat representing the Lower East Side of Manhattan, stood on the floor of the House of Representatives. Hitler had recently grabbed power in Germany and fascism seemed on the march. Even in Dickstein’s Manhattan, German supporters were goose-stepping at pro-Nazi rallies in Yorkville.

Dickstein believed that these subversive activities were dangerous and that Congress had an obligation to investigate Nazi propaganda. That month, the House approved a temporary committee, called the Dickstein Committee, that was formally chaired by Massachusetts Representative John McCormick (Goodman 1968:10). Even though the committee accomplished little (Morgan 2003:146), Dickstein kept pushing for an investigative committee to examine “slanderous or libelous un-American propaganda of religious, racial or subversive political prejudices” from the left and right of the political spectrum (Goodman 1968:14). Joining forces with conservative Texas Democrat, Martin Dies, in 1938, Dickstein persuaded his colleagues to establish the House Un-American Activities Committee. Dickstein was not appointed to the committee, which, at first, investigated people on either side of the political spectrum. But gradually, it emphasized investigations of the left, so that finally, after

World War II, that became the committee’s dominant focus—a far cry from Dickstein’s intent. It is a signal irony that Dickstein, the originator of the House Un-American Activities Committee, is the only member of the United States Congress known to have spied for the Soviet Union (Morgan 2003:146–47).

As Sam Dickstein was attempting to persuade his colleagues to investigate fascist bigotry, a young Manhattan sociologist, Robert Merton, was publishing the first of his numerous influential articles. In the inaugural volume of the American Sociological Review, Merton (1936) exhorted sociologists to recognize the importance of examining the “unanticipated consequences of purposive social action.” He described the conditions that permitted action to have dramatically different effects than had been intended. Among these was the Heisenberg-like effect of the prediction itself influencing the study design. Put another way, knowledge of the hypothesis affects the results, a point emphasized by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) in their studies of the Pygmalion effect and, more generally, the literature on experiment expectancy effects (Rosenthal 1966). The action reverberates throughout the social sphere, or as Merton phrased it, “precisely because a particular action is not carried out in a psychological or social vacuum, its effects will ramify into other spheres of value and interest”(1936:902). These effects, once recognized, continually encourage us to make adjustments to the unanticipated consequences, adjustments that themselves have unanticipated consequences (Tilly 1996). As Raymond Boudon (1982) recognized, these results play a vital role in producing social change (p. 5).

Merton was, by no means, either the first or the last to recognize the importance of “second order consequences” (Bauer 1969; Preston and Roots 2004). As social problems, these effects are referred to as “perverse effects” (Boudon 1982:1) or “reverse effects” (Sieber 1981:9–12). We can trace this theme of unpredicted outcomes to Bernard Mandeville’s earlyeighteenth century The Fable of the Bees and Adam Smith’s late-eighteenth century reference to the “invisible hand.” Perhaps most presciently Herbert Spencer (1892) wrote in 1850, in his Social Statics:

To mitigate distress having appeared needful for the production of the “greatest happiness,” the English people have sanctioned upwards of one hundred Acts of Parliament having this end in view; each of them arising out of the failure or incompleteness of Acts previously passed. … What is the statute-book but a record of such unhappy guesses? (Pp. 12–13)

Spencer also (1892) gives the following example:

When it was enacted in Bavaria that no marriage should be allowed between those without capital, unless certain authorities could “see a reasonable prospect of the parties being able to provide for their children,” it was intended to advance the public weal by checking improvident unions, and redundant population. … Nevertheless this apparently sagacious measure has by no means answered its end. In Munich, the capital of the kingdom, half the births are illegitimate. (P. 11)

Max Weber (1958) writes similarly: “It is undeniably true, indeed a fundamental truth of all history that the final result of political activity often, nay, regularly, bears very little relation to the original intention: often, indeed it is quite the opposite of what is intended.” This point is similarly endorsed by Karl Marx in Das Kapital (Roots 2004:1381) and John Dewey (1922) in Human Nature and Conduct. In a similar vein, both Edward A. Ross and Georg Simmel have described the various unexpected consequences of modernity (Gross 2003). The recognition of unexpected consequences has been one of the hallmarks of the skeptical and contrarian nature of sociological theorizing (Mills 1959; Portes 2000:1).

While many of those who address the unintended consequences of purposive action are skeptical of government action (Bastiat 1950; McCord 2003; Roots 2004), this libertarian stance need not exhaust our perspective on unanticipated consequences, seemingly condemning both conservative and progressive policies to the dustbin of history. Choosing not to act is a policy, and non-action leaves unanticipated consequences in its wake (Portes 2000). Laissez-faire government has its own unintended consequences. Indeed, critics of modern capitalism, such as Anthony Giddens (1990), Charles Perrow (1984), and Ulrich Beck (1997) have argued that the complexities of contemporary society leads to unpredictability and the absence of technological control. Lewis Coser (1969) entitled his 1968 SSSP Presidential Address, “Unanticipated Conservative Consequences of Liberal Theorizing.” I hope that my essay, thirty-seven years after Coser’s, builds on the shoulders of this giant. If we cannot precisely predict repressive consequences of social action, we can continually be on guard to push policy adjustments to promote goals of freedom, justice, and opportunity for which the Society for the Study of Social Problems has continually fought. Discovering unexpected outcomes does not suggest a moral failure.

We students of social problems have set ourselves the noble and honorable task of bettering the world. We realize that this betterment is never value-neutral and we know that no solution can ever be objectively correct, but we persevere, because we understand that communities evolve through dialogue, debate, and collective action. We are morally obliged to link our actions to our values. Risking failure, we understand that apathy is a choice as well. We must avoid an ontological hopelessness in which the imperfection of solutions prevents active engagement. The solutions that we advocate result from cultural path dependency, tied to what we imagine can be achieved, and network embeddedness, tied to the relations of power that surround us.

Some solutions stick, even if at the time we may be unsure whether other problems will arise in their wake. Sometimes when we institutionalize a solution to a social problem, we hear no more of it for awhile—we define the problem as solved. The solution has the quality of settled law, whatever the hidden or long-term health and economic effects. In such cases closure has been established. Those who object are seen as social problem cranks, not taken seriously.

In this chapter I examine those instances in which a social problems solution generates the recognition of another social problem—a process that I term the chaining of social problems. There are several ways in which a solution may spawn a new problem (Evans 1995), just as organizations search for new goals to pursue after previous goals have been defined as solved, what Blau (1955; Sills 1957) defined a “succession of goals.” I briefly consider four processes by which problem succession occurs: incrementalism, slotting, counter-movements, and unintended consequences.

Incrementalism

Moral entrepreneurs have agendas (Becker 1963). Often they recognize that they cannot achieve the totality of their goals immediately, and so their preferred solution is instituted in stages. Each battle is a link in the chain, and the strategy is conscious in creating “domain expansion” (Best, personal communication, 2004). This process may involve pressing for solution segments (eliminating cigarette smoking in schools, in hospitals, in airplanes, in offices, in saloons, and perhaps eventually in homes, until the ashtray goes the way of the spitoon). In other cases, the steps progress to the full solution (such as by steadily decreasing the amount of toxins in air or water or gasoline until pollution becomes unmeasurable, and, thus for all practical purposes, absent).

Prohibitionist movements often have an incrementalist character. Prolife activists propose solutions for limited domains (banning late-term abortions, instituting waiting periods, or requiring parental notification) but the solutions are strategic attempts to eliminate abortions. The same can be said of proposals made by anti-tobacco activists, anti-death penalty activists, or, earlier, by abolitionists. The gun lobby claims that this is the strategy of their opponents. Each limit on gun ownership is seen as a step on the slippery slope toward the eventual elimination of firearms in private hands. One solution leads to a focus on a related problem. Although legislators do not always slide down slippery slopes (Volokh 2003), incrementalism remains a concern for opponents.

Slotting

As Stephen Hilgartner and Charles Bosk (1988) emphasize, the media are organized by beats or news slots. Once a social problem is established in the public mind as news, it becomes a routine journalistic topic. Problems may be either acute or chronic, or oscillate between the two. Acute problems call for immediate action and are addressed until resolved (or until the public or editors lose interest). When interest is lost or solutions deemed impossible an acute problem can become a chronic condition. “Important” trials typically have an acute aspect, covered until they are resolved by a jury, as are short wars and other foreign crises. When a problem settles into a routine, the topic is shelved until something newsworthy occurs, until some event or claim is defined as calling for a media update to a chronic condition.

Some problems oscillate between an active, acute phase and a latent, chronic phase. These constitute punctuated problems, depending on the drama of events and on the needs of claims-makers. The core problem image is available for public claims. For instance, the morality of Hollywood entertainment is always potentially capable of being drawn upon by problems entrepreneurs, but “Hollywood” as a problem appears and disappears, depending on the strategic interests of claimants and on choices of the media as gatekeepers of problems discourse.

When the solutions are embraced by relevant institutions, the problem can, for the moment, be moved from its news slot, leaving room for a replacement problem. Potential social problems come to be treated as significant through their rhetorical placement, as Gamson (1989) notes of nuclear power. Since newspapers are organized by beats (Fishman 1980; Tuchman 1978), only a few stories are possible on each beat at any given time. A news hole cannot easily be filled with a new problem as long as the current problem is defined as acute. Chronic problems, in contrast, can be trumped by those defined as acute.

Countering

Some social problems generate a pitched battle between opponents who hold dramatically different values and beliefs. As Chip Berlet (personal communication, 2004) suggests, movements may stigmatize their opponents, using “apocalyptic dualism,” taking threats and magnifying them into manichean struggles, creating a demand for coercive purity. Social concerns such as alcohol prohibition and the death penalty generate partisans on both sides. These advocates confront each other directly. In such circumstances, a legislative or judicial “resolution” may reverse the sides, but does not muffle the debate. Supporters of what had been the status quo now strive to overturn the new reality. The classic case in recent American politics is abortion rights. With the 1973 Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, the sides reversed. Prochoice activists, who in 1972 demanded that the problem of dangerous abortions be solved by legislation legalizing voluntary and elective abortions, were replaced the following year by pro-life activists who demanded that the state no longer permit the killing of innocent babies. Abortion remained a problem, but the sides had altered.

When countering is central, two sides exist, one that supports the status quo and another that opposes it. Such cleavages often characterize public opinion (Blumer 1969:200). Given the intensity of belief, public opinion may have a social control function in determining the possibility of solutions (Noelle-Neumann 1993). A contentious public opinion may constrain the discovery of common ground.

This explicit rivalry is distinctly different from those problems, such as homelessness, child abuse, pornography, or pollution, where such conditions have no defenders. Debates involve disagreement on the tactics of mitigation. Were these problems magically to vanish, opposing activists would not wish them back. In contrast, in the case of problems with movements and counter movements any “solution” may shift power and tactics, but not the underlying clash.

Unintended Consequences

The final type of problem succession involves unintended—and perverse— consequences of a solution. Sometimes a solution is consensually agreed to have resolved a problem, but in its wake other undesirable consequences emerge. This recognition of the perversity of social intervention is central to libertarian objections to deliberate social change (Hirschman 1991; Roots 2004; Schneider 1975), but all policies can have perverse effects.

A dramatic example of this process concerns changes in attitudes towards the treatment of mental patients during the 1950s and 1960s. The large mental hospitals of the period were emptied out releasing their chronic patients, a result of changes in psychiatric ideology and public awareness, coupled with advances in pharmaceuticals. The problem of warehousing the mentally ill had been solved. But to what end? Without social services and institutional support, a significant number of these troubled individuals wound up on the streets. The presence of odd men and women contributed to the recognition...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Chaining of Social Problems: Solutions and Unintended Consequences in the Age of Betrayal
• Chapter 2: The Cultural Frameworks of Prejudice: Reputational Images and the Postwar Disjuncture of Jews and Communism
• Chapter 3: Erasing the Brown Scare: Referential Afterlife and the Power of Memory Templates
• Chapter 4: The Construction of Historical Equivalence: Weighing the Red and Brown Scares
• Chapter 5: Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purification of Difficult Reputations
• Chapter 6: Notorious Support: The America First Committee and the Personalization of Policy
• Chapter 7: An Isolationist Blacklist?: Lillian Gish and the America First Committee
• Chapter 8: Honest Brokers: The Politics of Expertise in the “Who Lost China?” Debate
• Chapter 9: Sticky Reputations: Adolf Hitler and the Stigma of Memory Work
• Permission Credits
• Index