1970s decade essay
The s pronounced "nineteen-seventies"; shortened to "the ' 70s " was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, , and ended on December 31, In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the s as a "pivot of change" in world history, focusing especially on the economic upheavals [1] that followed the end of the postwar economic boom. In the United Kingdom, the election resulted in the victory of its Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher , the first female British Prime Minister. Industrialized countries, except Japan, experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal governments being created in Chile , where a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet took place in The term describes a general new attitude of Americans towards atomized individualism and away from communitarianism , in clear contrast with the s.
The “Me” Decade and the Third Great Awakening
The s pronounced "nineteen-seventies"; shortened to "the ' 70s " was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, , and ended on December 31, In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the s as a "pivot of change" in world history, focusing especially on the economic upheavals [1] that followed the end of the postwar economic boom.
In the United Kingdom, the election resulted in the victory of its Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher , the first female British Prime Minister. Industrialized countries, except Japan, experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries.
The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal governments being created in Chile , where a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet took place in The term describes a general new attitude of Americans towards atomized individualism and away from communitarianism , in clear contrast with the s.
In Asia, affairs regarding the People's Republic of China changed significantly following the recognition of the PRC by the United Nations , the death of Mao Zedong and the beginning of market liberalization by Mao's successors.
Despite facing an oil crisis due to the OPEC embargo, the economy of Japan witnessed a large boom in this period, overtaking the economy of West Germany to become the second-largest in the world. In , the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan , which led to an ongoing war for ten years. The s saw an initial increase in violence in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria declared war on Israel , but in the late s, the situation in the Middle East was fundamentally altered when Egypt signed the Egyptian—Israeli Peace Treaty.
Anwar El Sadat , President of Egypt , was instrumental in the event and consequently became extremely unpopular in the Arab world and the wider Muslim world. Political tensions in Iran exploded with the Iranian Revolution in , which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty and established an authoritarian Islamic republic under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Africa saw further decolonization in the decade, with Angola and Mozambique gaining their independence in from the Portuguese Empire after the restoration of democracy in Portugal. The continent was, however, plagued by endemic military coups, with the long-reigning Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie being removed, civil wars and famine. The economies of much of the developing world continued to make steady progress in the early s because of the Green Revolution.
The US—Soviet geopolitical rivalry nonetheless continued through the decade, although in a more indirect faction as the two superpowers jockeyed relentlessly for control of smaller countries. American and Soviet intelligence agencies gave funding, training, and material support to insurgent groups, governments, and armies across the globe, each seeking to gain a geopolitical advantage and install friendly governments.
Coups, civil wars, and terrorism went on across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and also in Europe where a spate of Soviet-backed Marxist terrorist groups were active throughout the decade. In , a new wrinkle appeared in the form of Islamic fundamentalism, as the Shia theocracy of Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran and declared itself hostile to both Western democracy and godless communism. People were deeply influenced by the rapid pace of societal change and the aspiration for a more egalitarian society in cultures that were long colonized and have an even longer history of hierarchical social structure.
The Green Revolution of the late s brought about self-sufficiency in food in many developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek urban prosperity over agrarian life.
This consequently saw the duality of transition of diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade across social class. Other common global ethos of the s world included increasingly flexible and varied gender roles for women in industrialized societies. More women could enter the work force. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a breadwinner.
The period also saw the socioeconomic effect of an ever-increasing number of women entering the non-agrarian economic workforce. The Iranian revolution also affected global attitudes to and among those of the Muslim faith toward the end of the s. The s were perhaps the worst decade of most industrialized countries' economic performance since the Great Depression. As a result, the s adversely distinguished itself from the prosperous postwar period between and The oil shocks of and added to the existing ailments and conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade.
In contrast, Japan and West Germany experienced economic booms and started overtaking the U. In , Japan overtook West Germany to become the world's second-largest economy. In the US, the average annual inflation rate from to was approximately 2. From —, however, the average rate was 7. The prime rate hit The average price of a new home in the U. By the time of , when U. President Jimmy Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan , the misery index the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate had reached an all-time high of Faith in government was at an all-time low in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, as exemplified by the low voter turnout in the United States presidential election.
There was also the —74 stock market crash. Great Britain also experienced considerable economic turmoil during the decade as outdated industries proved unable to compete with Japanese and German wares. Labor strikes happened with such frequency as to almost paralyze the country's infrastructure. Following the Winter of Discontent , Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in with the purpose of implementing extreme economic reforms.
In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies began showing signs of stagnation, in which successes were persistently dogged by setbacks. The oil shock increased East European, particularly Soviet, exports, but a growing inability to increase agricultural output caused growing concern to the governments of the COMECON block, and a growing dependence on food imported from democratic nations. On the other hand, export-driven economic development in Asia, especially by the Four Asian Tigers Hong Kong , South Korea , Singapore , and Taiwan , resulted in rapid economic transformation and industrialization.
Their abundance of cheap labor, combined with educational and other policy reforms, set the foundation for development in the region during the s and beyond. Economically, the s were marked by the energy crisis which peaked in and see oil crisis and oil crisis. After the first oil shock in , gasoline was rationed in many countries. Europe particularly depended on the Middle East for oil; the United States was also affected even though it had its own oil reserves. Many European countries introduced car-free days and weekends.
In the United States, customers with a license plate ending in an odd number were only allowed to buy gasoline on odd-numbered days, while even-numbered plate-holders could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered days. The realization that oil reserves were not endless and technological development was not sustainable [ citation needed ] without potentially harming the environment ended the belief in limitless progress that had existed since the 19th century.
The s witnessed an explosion in the understanding of solid-state physics, driven by the development of the integrated circuit , and the laser. Stephen Hawking developed his theories of black holes and the boundary-condition of the universe at this period with his theory called Hawking radiation. The biological sciences greatly advanced, with molecular biology, bacteriology, virology, and genetics achieving their modern forms in this decade. Biodiversity became a cause of major concern as habitat destruction, and Stephen Jay Gould 's theory of punctuated equilibrium revolutionized evolutionary thought.
As the s ended, the United States had made two successful manned lunar landings. Many Americans lost interest afterward, feeling that since the country had accomplished President John F. Kennedy 's goal of landing on the Moon by the end of the s, there was no need for further missions. There was also a growing sentiment that the billions of dollars spent on the space program should be put to other uses.
Plans for missions up to Apollo 20 were canceled, and the remaining Apollo and Saturn hardware was used for the Skylab space station program in —, and for the Apollo—Soyuz Test Project ASTP , which was carried out in July Many of the ambitious projects NASA had planned for the s were canceled amid heavy budget cutbacks, and instead it would devote most of the decade to the development of the Space Shuttle.
ASTP was the last manned American space flight for the next five years. The year witnessed the spectacular reentry of Skylab over Australia.
NASA had planned for a Shuttle mission to the space station, but the shuttles were not ready to fly until , too late to save it. Meanwhile, the Soviets , having failed in their attempt at manned lunar landings, canceled the program in By then, however, they had already begun Salyut , the world's first space station program, which began in It eventually proved a success, with missions as long as six months being conducted by the end of the decade.
In terms of unmanned missions, a variety of lunar and planetary probes were launched by the US and Soviet programs during the decade. The most successful of these include the Soviet Lunokhod program, a series of robotic lunar missions which included the first unmanned sample return from another world, and the American Voyagers , which took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets to visit all of them except Pluto by the end of the s.
China entered the space race in with the launching of its first satellite , but technological backwardness and limited funds would prevent the country from becoming a significant force in space exploration. Japan launched a satellite for the first time in The European Space Agency was founded during the decade as well. An artist impression of an American Apollo spacecraft and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docking, a propaganda portrait for the Apollo—Soyuz Test Project mission. America's first space station Skylab in orbit February 8, Viking 1 , the first of two spacecraft sent to Mars , takes this picture of the landing site in Chryse Planitia Social science intersected with hard science in the works in natural language processing by Terry Winograd and the establishment of the first cognitive sciences department in the world at MIT in The fields of generative linguistics and cognitive psychology went through a renewed vigor with symbolic modeling of semantic knowledge while the final devastation of the long-standing tradition of behaviorism came about through the severe criticism of B.
Skinner 's work in by the cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky. The first scientific hand-held calculator HP is introduced. A Philips N video cassette recorder , with wooden cabinet. British Rail introduced high-speed trains on InterCity services. The trains consisted of British Rail Class 43 diesel-electric locomotives at either end with British Rail Mark 3 carriages.
Amtrak was formed in the United States in , assuming responsibility for inter-city passenger operations throughout the country. In , Conrail was formed to take over assets of six bankrupt freight railroads in the northeastern US. The s was an era of fuel price increases, rising insurance rates, safety concerns, and emissions controls. The oil crisis caused a move towards smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles.
Attempts were made to produce electric cars, but they were largely unsuccessful. In the United States, imported cars became a significant factor for the first time, and several domestic-built subcompact models entered the market. It was believed that the Cadillac Eldorado would be the last American-built convertible; ending the open body style that once dominated the auto industry. Cars in the U.
Wood paneling and shag carpets dominated the interiors. Many automobiles began to lose their character and looked the same across brands and automakers, as well as featuring "luxury" enhancements such as vinyl roofs and opera windows.
Automobiles in the U. Ford followed suit two years later, with Chrysler offering new small front-wheel-drive models, but was suffering from a worsening financial situation caused by various factors. By , the company was near bankruptcy , and under its new president Lee Iacocca who had been fired from Ford the year before , asked for a government bailout.
American Motors beat out the U.
The s was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, , and ended Novelist Tom Wolfe coined the term "'Me' decade" in his essay "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening", published by New York. The s can accurately be described as a decade of crisis, with the nadir of a PAPER 14 – THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF MODERN BRITAIN. ESSAY 2. 2.
In most histories of how Americans became so polarized, the Great Inflation of the s is given short shrift — sometimes no shrift at all. This is wrong. Inflation was as pivotal a factor in our national crackup as Vietnam and Watergate. Inflation changed how Americans thought about their economic relationships to their fellow citizens — which is to say, inflation and its associated economic traumas changed who we were as a people.
Thats a nice aticle. Could you send me a link where you got the data from ons?
Bruce J. Instead he argues that during the s the United States experienced a transformation in multiple facets of its character that helped shape our current time.
1970s decade essay
But then nothing much is going to happen in the s anyway. Moynihan is a politician famous for his predictions, and this one seemed for a long time to be dead-on. The seventies, even while they were in progress, looked like an unimportant decade, a period of cooling down from the white-hot sixties. You had to go back to the teens to find another decade so lacking in crisp, epigrammatic definition. It only made matters worse for the seventies that the succeeding decade started with a bang. In the country elected the most conservative President in its history, and it was immediately clear that a new era had dawned.
The Decade That Invented the Future: The 1970s
From the August 23, issue of New York Magazine. Me and My Hemorrhoids. They even provided vomit bags, like the ones on a , in case you literally let it gush out! Just so! That was how she ended up in her present state … stretched out on the wall-to-wall carpet of the banquet hall of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles with her eyes closed and her face pressed into the stubble of the carpet, which is a thick commercial weave and feels like clothes-brush bristles against her face and smells a bit high from cleaning solvent. That was how she ended up lying here concentrating on her hemorrhoids. Eyes shut! Many others are stretched out on the carpet all around her; some other souls, in fact.
Christopher Lydon—journalist, intellectual, radio host, and Boston presence— interviewed me when I was in Cambridge about the declining faith in American institutions, including the press. Like I said, America is a divided country.
