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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: August 8, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: August 8, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Karst, Chapter 1: Imposing Order

1. Introduction Why I chose to share this reading.
2. Focus: Main point of this reading.
3. Reading Full identification of source for reading AND excerpt.
4. Concepts: Concepts and Key Words.
5. Discussion Discussion questions.
6. Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses What this has to do with our class.

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Introduction:

• Lecture notes for Karst, Chapter 1

Focus:

• Id like you to come away with a sense of who is imposing order on whom and by what means?

Concepts and Key Words:

• social issues agenda: name Karst gives to the counterrevolution that is struggling for the pre-Vietnam values and social status rankings

• family values: ". . . a cluster of traditional beliefs concerning marriage and family, the roles of men and women, and sexuality" (Karst, at p.1.)

Reading:

• Chapter 1: Imposing Order: Law and the Origins of the Social Issues Agenda

Discussion Questions:

1. Whose order?

   That of those who felt excluded and uncomfortable during the 1960s and early 1970s. Who would that have been? Primarily the parents of the kids who were flower children. The generation of women that had filled the factories during the Second World War, and the generation of minorities, especially Blacks and Hispanics, who had found a tiny measure of access in the Armed Services, had been pushed aside upon their return to this country to make room for the returning white male war heroes. The suburbs were born. And those who had found their places in the suburban housewife's home, those who supported those suburban houswives in their suburban home with two parents and two children, and those who found working class jobs in the factories, were appalled by the 60s flower chilldren who rebelled against the sterility of their suburbs, the competitiveness of their success, a loss of creativity and diversity that might have inspired new paths. They wanted to impose order again, as they had known it after the war, and as the children who had grown up in that period.

2. What were the issues in this counterrevolution looking backwards after the 60s?

   • "the place of religion in public life" - oddly enough, the same spirituality their children were looking for, except that the children were tired of the hypocrisy of the Sunday Schools, where they had "hung out" while their parents were in church, and the children wanted a "deeper spirituality." New Age and Eastern religion took precedence over Sunday School. The parents wanted a return to the "proper life" of the Sunday School..

   • "family values" - ". . . a cluster of traditional beliefs concerning marriage and family, the roles of men and women, and sexuality" (Karst, at p.1.) This would translate to women in the kitchen "where they belong" and men at a workplace not overrun by women, and sex hidden ("my goodness, don't let the neighbors know") The people of this counterrevolution would see having "Rosie the Riveter" in factories as leading to women learning inappropriate openness of behavior, both in occupational life and in their social life.

References:

The Second World War Period - a necessary revolution begins

• "Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park.
• The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
• Women at War: Redstone's WWII Female "Production Soldiers" by Dr. Kaylene Hughes. College of Staten island Library, CUNY.
• What Did YOU Do in the War, Grandma? Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter o nthe cover of POST.

  Post World War II - the "suburban housewife"

  Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:

  • Agencies:
    Sample linking: Ways in which underlying assumptions of assimilation affect services offered and clients' ability to access and use those services. How does this reading illustrate the need for social agencies, for more generalized agencies, for what Bolman and Deal would call "leadership" AND "management"? How does this reading suggest ways in which we could be more effective in rendering help, and what is the reading's relationship to a "safety net" for those who need help?

  • Criminal Justice:
    Sample linking: Ways in which some groups are underrepresented in the unstated assumptions of our theories. How does this reading serve to illustrate adversarialism, mutuality, retribution, revenge, illocutionary understanding, the definition and operation of the criminal justice system?

  • Law:
    Sample linking: Extent to which laws are made on the assumption that we are all essentially assimilated to the dominant culture. How does this reading help us see the need for contextual readings in law? How does it relate to our natural instincts to seek some kind of natural law? What facts and principles does the reading offer for discourse that could clarify for Others validity claims presented by an Obscure Other?

  • Moot Court:
    Sample linking: Ways in which to make validty claims of harm understood by those who have never experienced many of the world's different perspectives. How can this reading enlighten our praxis in terms of different kinds of discourse, like instrumental, illocutionary, governance?

  • Women in Poverty:
    Sample linking: The culture of poverty and assimilation. How does the reading deal with our underlying assumptions about poverty, especially poverty of the exploited, the NOT- male? What does the reading suggest of the interrelationship between our society and its children, generally cared for by women, often poor?

  • Race, Gender, Class:
    Sample linking: The extent to which silence has been imposed by these affiliations so that domination and discrimination have entered our unstated assumptions in interpersonal relations and the structural context arising from them. What does the reading tell us about exploitation and alternative ways to deal with one another? What does it tell us about institutionalized -isms and our denial of complicity? What does it tell us about our common humanity?

  • Religion:
    Sample linking: The spiritual component. Humans are spiritual creatures, creatures that recognize moments that go beyond ourselves to God, Allah, Isis, Gaia, the Universe, or a deep sense of responsibility to create our own meanng. How does the reading fit into our ability, our need to create such meaning in life?

  • Love !A:
    Sample linking: What's the aesthetic link in this reading? How does it bring us closer to one another as humans? What does it tell us about our need for love, unconditional love, not rewards for doing well or being well, but caring and acceptance for being who we are?

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