「中間層の危機」の時代 : アメリカ合衆国の事例から(大会報告・共通論題:中間層とはだれか-先進国と新興国の比較-)

抄録

Since the release of the 2010 US Census results, the problem of America's shrinking middle class has been raised repeatedly in the mass media and in political messages by the U.S. President and members of Congress. The federal government, economists, and the public have regarded the continual regeneration of the middle class as the very foundation of U.S. social stability and prosperity. Can the "vast middle class," however, in fact be regarded as having seen continual, stable regeneration in the U.S. politico-economic- social system? Or, on the contrary, was it the creation of the extremely specific political, economic, and social conditions of a unique time period between the 1910s and the 1950s or, at the latest, the early 1970s when U.S. economic decline began to be recognized? This study is a chronological examination of domestic and international factors that enabled the re-production of the U.S. middle class, and of the internal and external changes that caused the system to become dysfunctional. Drawing on the extensive research that has been done in U.S. social and cultural history with particular attention to "race-class-gender" analyses, this study examines the historic processes that gave rise to the so-called crisis of the U.S. middle class. Firstly, this paper examines the 1900s-1930s, focusing on the assimilation of immigrants, the emergence of mass consumer culture in the 1920s, and the Great Depression and New Deal. "Abundance" and "consumer culture" are the key terms for understanding the image that developed of the "American way of life" as depicted by renowned illustrator Norman Rockwell and embraced by immigrants of the time. Secondly, this study considers the role of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 -- known as the GI Bill of Rights? in creating a "vast middle class" by financially and educationally supporting the veterans of World War II and thereby producing "social capital" and networks of veterans. Thirdly, the study examines the U.S.'s Cold War-era policy of exporting the "American way of life," centered on the middle class, as a model for the world. Finally, this paper inquires into the influence of internal and external affairs, such as civil rights movements and the Vietnam War, on the shift into an era of "middle class crisis" in the United States.