Thoughts on Kammen

In section three in the fourth chapter “The Pivotal Decade: The 1930s” Kammen argues that the 1930’s was an important decade because it was the last time that popular culture was the main feature of American society (83). According to Kammen, during the Great Depression people read more by borrowing books more frequently from public libraries. Book clubs also became more popular, while people also enjoyed a wide variety of cheap pulp magazines. He lists other activities such as gardening, and the formation of gardening clubs among women, jigsaw puzzles, bingo, Monopoly, Bridge, roller-skating, bicycling, dancing, craft clubs, theatre groups, etc. (83-85). In a decade that is usually associated with tumultuous upheaval, instability, and mass migration, Kammen presents popular amusements enjoyed by people at home. His evidence seems to support an attachment to place that is comfortable and stable.

For people to enjoy these kinds of leisure, they didn’t need to travel much. According to Mike Steiner, an expert in regionalism and folk culture, the majority of Americans moved less, and the flow of people from rural to urban areas slowed and actually reversed itself for the first time in American history (Steiner, 442) Steiner writes in his article “Regionalism in the Great Depression,” Demographic evidence and folk testimony confirmed that the traditional promise of mobility deferred to an attachment to place during the depression” (442). Contrary to the image of anxiety, displacement, and dislocation that dominates our historical imagination of the 30’s, the 1930’s, as Kammen quotes Warren Susman, was the “the decade of participation and belonging” (84).

Matt Nelson