ABSTRACT

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 Chapter 1|21 pages

The Chaining of Social Problems

Solutions and Unintended Consequences in the Age of Betrayal

chapter Chapter 2|28 pages

The Cultural Frameworks of Prejudice

Reputational Images and the Postwar Disjuncture of Jews and Communism

chapter Chapter 3|26 pages

Erasing the Brown Scare

Referential Afterlife and the Power of Memory Templates

chapter Chapter 4|14 pages

The Construction of Historical Equivalence

Weighing the Red and Brown Scares

chapter Chapter 5|21 pages

Resurrecting the Red

Pete Seeger and the Purification of Difficult Reputations

chapter Chapter 6|32 pages

Notorious Support

The America First Committee and the Personalization of Policy

chapter Chapter 7|6 pages

An Isolationist Blacklist?

Lillian Gish and the America First Committee

chapter Chapter 8|32 pages

Honest Brokers

The Politics of Expertise in the “Who Lost China?” Debate

chapter Chapter 9|24 pages

Sticky Reputations

Adolf Hitler and the Stigma of Memory Work