Re-imagining Community of the 1950s American Lifestyle: A Case Study of Automobile and Christian Culture

This paper explores an unpredicted community whose core members (i.e. a few middle-aged, white American, males and females) combined a 1950s-themed car club with an evangelical church in order to pursue the constructed lifestyle of 1950s America, reconfiguring rebelliousness of that decade's youth cultures with a conservative notion of its mainstream adult culture. The data come from the author's doctoral dissertation research that adopt fieldwork and life-history methods for its data collection and the methods of open and focused coding and historical contextualization for its data analysis (Kung, 2012). Through the discussion of this community's beginning, growing and ending phases from 1999 to 2007, this paper presents how the trajectory of this community's development intertwined with life histories of its core members. Specifically, this paper illustrates the following three stages. The first is how these core members were spiritually and physically hurt by mainstream discourses of rationalization and Protestant work ethics, and recognized the necessity of revising a hegemonic version of white, working-class masculinity. The second is the process in which these core members exercised their agency to successfully carry out alternative cultural and religious practices. These practices helped form a mutual, family-oriented, masculine car culture in order to resist class structure and the above discourses, associated with the discourse of secularism, create this unpredictable community, and at the same time, reinforce patriarchal gender structure and the discourse of conservatism. The third stage is how the hegemony of white, working-class masculinity, those discourses of secularism and rationalization pushed back and forced this community to end. In conclusion, this paper shows the trajectory of a lifestyle-centered community and at the same time, demonstrates the notions that community is neither fixed nor finalized, and that community should remain open to the future and the coming of others, otherwise it could end easily.

關鍵字

Community ； American car culture ； Christianity ； 1950s Lifestyle ； Masculinity

並列摘要

本文探討一個超乎一般人想像的社群團體，其核心成員是一小群有男有女的美國中年白種人，這群人把美國1950年代的汽車文化與福音基督教會結合，用以追求一個由他／她們自己建構的1950年代生活風格，同時，這群人將那個年代青（少）年文化的反叛特質與當時社會上主流成人文化中的一個保守概念加以重新配置和組合，藉此形塑了這個社群團體的特質。這些證據資料是來自筆者的博士論文研究，這個研究採取了田野和生命史研究法、以及開放與聚焦譯碼和歷史脈絡化分析等方法（Kung,2012）。透過討論這個社群團體從1999年至2007年的起始、發展與結束，本文呈現它的發展進程是如何與這些核心成員的生命史纏繞在一起的。更精準地說，本文顯示這個社群的以下三個階段：第一，這些核心成員在精神上與生理上被主流的理性化與清教徒倫理等陳述所傷，並且意識到修改霸權性版本之白人勞工階級陽剛特質的必要。第二，這些核心成員運用他／她們的能動性成功落實了另類的文化與宗教實踐，這些實踐協助他／她們形塑一個互惠的、顧家的、陽剛的汽車文化，以抵抗階級結構與上述和世俗主義相關的陳述，並創造了這個難以預測的社群，且同時強化了性別結構與保守主義陳述。第三，霸權式白人勞工階級陽剛性、理性化與世俗主義陳述等勢力進行反撲，迫使這個社群終止了。總之，這篇文章呈現了一個以生活風格為中心之社群的發展歷程，同時也證實了社群既不能固定不變，而且需要開放地面對未來，以及他者的到來，不然，很容易就會消失。

並列關鍵字

社群；美國汽車文化；基督教； 1950年代生活風格；陽剛性

主題瀏覽