Dale Mineshima-Lowe
Social Change, Economic Upheavals: America in the 1970s
Summary
In the 1970s, America saw the rise of several new movements that changed society in ways still felt today. These included the environmental movement, antiwar clashes, oil crises, and the ongoing struggle for agency felt by marginalised groups across the country. This talk will explore contrasting perspectives of 1970s America, as both a continuation of the 1960s and a repudiation of the cultural shifts that marked the preceding decade.
Dale Mineshima-Lowe
Dale Mineshima-Lowe has been teaching in the UK at various higher education institutions over the past 20 years—across a range of politics and human geography topics, as well as teaching politics and social history topics (particularly American history, European modern history, and Japanese history) at the adult-continuing education level for the past 12 years. She is also managing editor for the Center of International Relations, a think tank based in Washington, DC. And when she isn’t teaching, researching, or editing, she sits and jots down ideas for books she’d like to write one day.
Throughout American history, there has always been this fear and worry about immigrants for different reasons, whether it’s religion, employment, or competition. There is this perception that immigrants will come and take jobs, but there’s also this impression that many immigrants will take the lower paying jobs as well. There’s a bit of a mixture in terms of both in the 1970s.
One could argue you’re still seeing some of the same social issues that you would use to explain changes in other demographics and racial groups as well. But actually we see an increase in population partly because the way in which populations are growing. We would need to delve in deeper to the census data because there other factors in terms of how one is identifying oneself on things like the census data that may have changed during those time frames.