AP World History (WHAP) Unit 9 Part 1: Societal and Cultural Change (20th century)

Summary

In this episode of Anti-Social Studies, Emily Glankler guides us through the intricate societal and cultural shifts of the 20th century, emphasizing the role of science and technology in global unification. Starting with the 1990s, Emily breaks down key aspects of Unit 9 in the AP World History curriculum, exploring globalization as a vital theme. Through innovations in communication, transportation, and medicine, she highlights how these advances have shattered geographical barriers, enabling a more interconnected, culturally unified world. Historical parallels, from the Silk Road to modern digital communication, illustrate this phenomenon. Social movements, cultural diffusion, and medical breakthroughs amidst crises show ongoing challenges and achievements, setting the stage for future economic discussions.

Highlights

• Instant messaging and the internet revolutionized communication in the 90s, bringing the world closer than ever before 💬.
• Medical innovations, while often born from necessity, have greatly enhanced quality and longevity of life 💪.
• The emergence of a global popular culture, largely influenced by western and particularly American media, reshaped cultural landscapes 🎬.
• International events like the Olympics demonstrate the unifying power of shared global experiences 🌍.
• Increased connectivity empowers historically oppressed groups to unite and push for change more effectively ✊.

Key Takeaways

• Science and technology have played a crucial role in unifying the globe by eliminating geographic barriers 📡.
• Major strides in communication, like instant messaging and the internet, changed how we connect across the globe 📱.
• Medical advancements, although often arising from crises, have extended and improved the quality of life 💉.
• Globalization has fostered a cross-cultural interaction leading to a universal popular culture 🌎.
• Historical parallels exist between ancient trade networks and today's digital communications 🌐.

Overview

The 20th century was a transformative era, characterized by rapid globalization largely driven by scientific and technological innovations. Emily Glankler, through her engaging teaching style, unpacks how communication tech like the internet and early instant messaging bridged global divides, creating immediate links across continents.

Medical science also saw leaps forward, with innovations often spurred by global health crises such as pandemics. These advancements not only extended life spans but also highlighted disparities that needed addressing. The global exchange of culture experienced a massive upswing, with American media and international spectacles like the Olympics crafting a shared cultural narrative.

Furthermore, technology didn't just catalyze cultural exchange; it fueled social movements, offering a platform for oppressed voices worldwide. As part of this evolution, Unit 9 in AP World History outlines the pivotal shifts toward an interconnected global community, setting the foundation for future economic chapters in Emily's series.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Unit 9 The chapter introduces Unit 9 of the AP World History curriculum, focusing on the theme of globalization, particularly during the post-Cold War period in the 1990s. The host, Emily Glankler, expresses enthusiasm in teaching this era, emphasizing that it's a time she experienced personally. While Unit 9 encompasses the entire 20th century, the emphasis is on the transformations brought about by globalization, with the 1990s serving as a pivotal decade in this context.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Breakdown of Unit 9 and AP Exam Tips The chapter titled 'Breakdown of Unit 9 and AP Exam Tips' is divided into three main parts. The focus is on understanding the evolving global landscape in the 2000s and beyond. It acknowledges that students may experience events discussed during this timeframe. The chapter is elaborated more than others because Unit 9 might not be covered by teachers before the AP exams. To compensate for this, students are encouraged to watch relevant videos provided as an alternative learning resource. Additionally, it suggests that Unit 9 can be covered quickly, providing a swift, efficient review route for exam preparation.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Overview of Unit 9's Easiest Aspects Chapter Overview of Unit 9's Easiest Aspects discusses how understanding this unit is intuitively easier because it involves recent historical events that many people have lived through. Unlike other units that require deep historical analysis, this unit allows learners to utilize their personal experiences and knowledge of recent decades to grasp the historical concepts. It stresses the importance of viewing recent history through a broader historical perspective rather than just personal or contemporary viewpoints. It mirrors the structure of Unit 1, where the need for depth is less strenuous, allowing a more relatable and personal engagement with the material.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Guiding Question for Unit 9 - Science and Technology's Impact The chapter focuses on a guiding question from the AP World History curriculum, which asks students to explain the extent to which science and technology have brought change from 1900 to the present. The discussion is divided into three parts, with the today's focus on how science and technology unify the globe. This unification facilitates unprecedented social and economic advancement and exchange, similar to the significant regional trade seen between 1200 and 1450.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Global Unification Through Science and Technology The chapter discusses the concept of global unification through advancements in science and technology, drawing parallels to historical networks like the Silk Road in the Indian Ocean that facilitated cultural diffusion. It highlights how these changes are now occurring almost instantaneously worldwide. The chapter serves as an introduction to a series that will explore how technology and science accelerate economic growth, focusing on economic changes from the 1990s to today. It also tees up a discussion of modern challenges related to these advancements.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Technological Advancements in Communication The chapter titled 'Technological Advancements in Communication' discusses how science and technology unify people, facilitating social and economic advancements. It highlights how new technology is breaking down geographic barriers, leading to more efficient communication and transportation. The chapter starts with the mention of radio as a key technological advancement in communication.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Internet and Digital Communication in the 1990s The chapter delves into the evolution of digital communication in the 1990s, highlighting key developments such as the advent of instant messaging with services like AIM (America Online Instant Messaging). It explores the cultural impact of these technologies, especially for the 90s youth who engaged extensively in instant messaging, waiting eagerly for the appearance of friends' and crushes' screen names online. This was a precursor to the more advanced social media and communication platforms used today.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Advancements in Transportation and Medical Innovations The chapter discusses the cultural and technological evolution of communication during the 1990s, highlighting the emergence of chat rooms and instant messaging as revolutionary tools of the era.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Innovations Stemming from Global Health Crises The chapter titled 'Innovations Stemming from Global Health Crises' discusses the evolution and impact of communication technologies over time, highlighting significant milestones such as the launch of the iPhone by Apple in 2006. It also traces the historical progression from radio in the early 1900s, which enabled simultaneous listening across regions, to television in the mid-20th century that fostered unified cultures. The chapter concludes with the transformative role of the internet from the 1990s onwards in breaking down communication barriers globally.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Pandemics and Their Global Impact The chapter, 'Pandemics and Their Global Impact,' discusses the advancement of transportation and medical innovations in the 20th and 21st centuries. Efficient shipping methods, massive ships, planes, and services like Amazon Prime have revolutionized transportation. Meanwhile, medical innovations have significantly improved the quality and longevity of life. However, many of these medical advancements have been born out of necessity due to numerous global health crises. While this topic may seem premature, it is essential to understand these developments and their implications.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Technology and Global Popular Culture The chapter discusses the impact of technological and medical advancements on global popular culture. It highlights the introduction of groundbreaking medical innovations like vaccinations for diseases such as polio, smallpox, and measles, which became more prevalent in the 20th century as medicine advanced. Additionally, the chapter delves into birth control evolution, with a focus on the emergence of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s, which significantly empowered women by giving them more control over their reproductive choices. These advancements not only improved public health but also contributed to an enhanced quality of life, reflecting broader trends of progress and empowerment in society.
• 11:00 - 13:00: Global Influence of American Culture The chapter discusses the global demographic shifts and changes in family planning, noting how advancements in economies and societies lead to a decrease in birth rates. It also highlights how modern medicine and technology, such as advancements in HIV/AIDS treatment since the 1980s, play a crucial role in these changes.
• 13:00 - 15:30: Cultural Exchange and Influence The development of the COVID vaccine is a significant advancement in modern medicine, achieved in a remarkably short time and building on previous vaccines. However, such medical advancements often emerge from global crises like pandemics. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which historians believe may have originated in Kansas rather than Spain, was exacerbated by World War I. This pandemic involved a particularly strong flu variant, showcasing how global conflicts can facilitate the spread of diseases.
• 15:30 - 18:00: Global Sporting Events and Shared Experiences The chapter explores the spread of global sporting events and their impact on shared experiences across different cultures. It begins by tracing an analogy to how the Spanish flu spread globally, starting in Kansas in 1917. As U.S. troops joined World War I, they carried the flu to trench warfare environments where it mutated before being spread worldwide at the war's end. The flu became known as the 'Spanish flu' because Spain, being neutral in World War I, did not censor its news, thus the first publicly reported cases were widely publicized there, unlike in countries like the U.S., Britain, and France that avoided spreading potential panic.
• 18:00 - 20:00: Oppressed Groups and Global Advancements The chapter titled 'Oppressed Groups and Global Advancements' discusses various global crises, namely pandemics, and how they have been labeled or misrepresented historically. It touches on the flu pandemic of 1918, often incorrectly referred to as the 'Spanish Flu,' and mentions modern pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, emphasizing the global nature of these health crises. Additionally, the chapter examines how technology is enabling a global popular culture for the first time, parallel to historical examples of cultural diffusion, such as the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road or Christianity and Islam through trade and conquest.
• 20:00 - 24:30: Global Human Rights Movements The chapter titled 'Global Human Rights Movements' discusses the emergence of a global popular culture post-1950s, primarily characterized by the influence of American culture, which has resulted in the creation of a cultural empire. Hollywood is highlighted as a key example of this influence, serving as the epicenter of the film industry before its influence spread and adapted globally.
• 24:30 - 26:30: Social Movements and Progress This chapter discusses the impact of syncretic cultures, such as Bollywood in India, which adopt elements from the American film and TV industries and adapt them to their own culture. This cultural blending is compared to historical examples like the mixing of Arabic and Bantu languages in Swahili. Additionally, the chapter highlights the role of social media in creating a global popular culture, allowing people, especially the youth, to engage with and discuss the same events worldwide.
• 26:30 - 28:00: Conclusion and Next Steps In this chapter, the discussion focuses on the exchange of cultural influences between the East and the West. It highlights the global rise of K-pop as an example of how non-Western cultures, such as Korean, are gaining influence in the Western world. This is seen as part of a broader pattern where cultures from different parts of the world are becoming more interconnected. Additionally, the role of mega sporting events in fostering global connections is acknowledged. These developments are viewed as a distribution of cultural influence and globalization, with implications for future cultural exchanges.

AP World History (WHAP) Unit 9 Part 1: Societal and Cultural Change (20th century) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello welcome back to antisocial studies i'm emily glankler and i'm so excited because today i get to teach you about the 90s it was a time when i was alive okay we're not only covering the 90s today but we are covering the beginning the first part of unit 9 and unit 9 is like the previous two units in the ap world history curriculum in theory it's the entire 20th century but the theme of unit 9 is globalization which is really the buzzword for kind of the post-cold war world the 90s
• 00:30 - 01:00 and the 2000s and like hey y'all will be alive during some of this unit so i'm going to break this down into three parts um focusing on different aspects of kind of the changing globalizing world and the reason why i'm going a little bit more in depth in unit 9 that i have in the other unit intros is because your teachers might not make it here for the ap exam and if they don't that's totally fine uh just watch these videos instead that's what i'm having my own kids do and so the good news here is that this is the unit that you can go the quickest
• 01:00 - 01:30 through you don't have to necessarily have the level of depth that you've needed for other units it's kind of similar to unit one in that way and so also i think it's the easiest unit because like i mentioned before you've lived through some of this unit and you're still living through some of this unit and so a lot of it is relatively intuitive so what you really just need is you need to just see you know really the 90s through today and to kind of maybe the last 100 years more generally through the lens of history as opposed to the lens of like just what you know right so the guiding
• 01:30 - 02:00 question for unit 9 comes from the ap world history curriculum and they want you to be able to explain the extent to which science and technology brought change in the period from 1900 to the present we're going to answer this question in three parts part one that we're going to focus on today is the fact that science and technology is going to unify the globe it unifies people and it facilitates social and economic advancement and exchange in a way that we've never seen before so in a lot of ways unit nine is actually pretty similar to like the period of 1200 1450 where we're seeing massive regional trade
• 02:00 - 02:30 networks like the silk road in the indian ocean connecting people having cultural diffusion but it's just happening now almost instantaneously and all around the globe kind of happening at the same time i will just give you a little preview the next topic that we're going to talk about in part two of this video series is going to be how technology and science is going to accelerate economic growth and so the changing economy from you know the last hundred years but more specifically the 90s to today and then the third part of the series is going to be about really the modern set of problems that
• 02:30 - 03:00 we're facing and that's going to be the video of you just going yeah we know emily we know about climate change so let's focus first on how science and technology is unifying people and it's allowing social and economic advancement in a way that we've never seen before so really there's a few topics here that i want to cover one is that new technology is eliminating geographic barriers um it's allowing for better and more efficient communication and transportation and a lot of this is pretty obvious when we're talking communication you have the radio like the radio is
• 03:00 - 03:30 invented at least like the commercial radio that can be used in people's home right around 1900s the beginning of the century obviously we're eventually going to have tvs i really want to talk to you for a second about a thing called instant messaging gen z instant messaging or aim from america online instant messaging was it was like ahead of its time if you were a 90s kid you could just sit on your aim instant messaging thing all weekend and hope that the person that you liked screen name would pop up that
• 03:30 - 04:00 they were online too and then there was this whole weird dance of like if you had to go away what your away message would be and you want it to be really cute the point is this was at the time the internet really exploding into people's homes where you could start to use like chat rooms before they were super creepy maybe they're always creepy and i just didn't realize and you could use instant messaging where you could sit there and like text through your computer instantaneously with your friends and whoever you wanted to i know this seems really basic now but it was very exciting in the 90s okay um obviously now we have the iphone
• 04:00 - 04:30 right the iphone comes out from apple in 2006 which is probably later than you thought it was and so all of this is creating these elimination of barriers of communication where you can now um first in the early 1900s you just have like across the country or even across the world you can have different people listening to the same thing the same speech whatever by the 1950s 60s you have television uniting nations together and creating more unified culture and cultural experiences and then the internet like really booming in the 1990s and beyond okay it also eliminates barriers of
• 04:30 - 05:00 transportation so we start to have way more efficient uh shipping methods huge shipping containers that can be carried on these massive ships uh planes obviously amazon prime yada yada you get it okay the second thing is we have a lot of medical innovations that improve the length and quality of life but the problem is that a lot of those medical innovations are created out of necessity because there are also a lot of global health crises in the 20th and now 21st centuries this is gonna be a little bit too soon but we gotta learn about it so
• 05:00 - 05:30 first is you have the rise of vaccinations like um polio and the smallpox vaccination and measles and whatever and so that's really rising in the 20th century as medicine gets more advanced you have various forms of birth control kind of escalating into the pill in the 1960s which just gives women a lot more control over when or if they want to have children and really that's an interesting piece of evidence because it's also evidence of just improving quality of life anyway because one if you're more confident that your
• 05:30 - 06:00 children that you have will survive you're not going to have as many but also as economies around the world and societies grow more developed and advanced for moving away from kind of subsistence agriculture families don't really have an incentive to have more than i don't know one to three kids lastly you also have um new advancements in medicine and technology like a lot of new treatments for hiv aids after the aids epidemic that started and is ongoing but started in the 1980s um i mean we're all living this right now right we have the development of the
• 06:00 - 06:30 coven vaccine in like an insanely short amount of time but that built on earlier vaccines that had been developed through modern medicine the problem like i said is that a lot of these modern medical advancements come out of crises they come out of global pandemics so you have the spanish flu pandemic in 1918 i'm using air quotes because it did not start in spain as far as we know it actually started in kansas either on a pig farm or a military base but the point is that actually world war one spreads this spanish flu so um it was a really especially kind of strong variant of the flu
• 06:30 - 07:00 it starts we believe in kansas when the u.s troops enter world war 1 in 1917 they take it over with them it then sort of lives in these gross dirty trenches and kind of mutates over that year and then when the war ends and all the soldiers go home they spread it all around the world the reason why we caught the spanish flu is because spain was neutral in world war one and so they were not censoring their news so the first reported cases that were like publicized were coming out of spain because they were like we don't we don't care we're not censoring what people know whereas in the us and britain and france they didn't want to create any other
• 07:00 - 07:30 panics while we were also trying to fight the war so we called the spanish flu that's wrong really the more correct form would just be like the flu pandemic of 1918. okay you also like i mentioned before have modern pandemics uh like the hiv aids pandemic the modern pandemic y'all get it technology is also facilitating a global popular culture really for the first time in this whole course we've been talking about cultural diffusion a lot we've been talking about the spread of buddhism along the silk road the spread of christianity the spread of islam through trade and conquest that sort of thing
• 07:30 - 08:00 but what we have really in the post-1950s world is really for the first time a global popular culture and what that really looks like is a global western culture and really american culture this is something where the united states has created the most successful cultural empire that we've ever seen in world history some examples of that would be hollywood like the united states hollywood being kind of the center of the film industry although that then spreads and diffuses and adapts and creates
• 08:00 - 08:30 syncretic cultures like bollywood in india and other film industries that are sort of taking what they've learned from the american film and tv industry and then adapting it to their own culture which is really cool that like takes us all the way back to like swahili right with arabic and the bantu language is mixing that's all that's happening right now in something like bollywood you also have social media i don't need to lecture you all about social media that is helping create a global popular culture where like people from across the globe especially young people can all be like watching the same event talking about the same event whatever
• 08:30 - 09:00 k-pop i don't know i i could not name it i don't know what band this is i have no idea i'm looking like i have a producer that can like tell me it's just me but i don't know what band this is but like k-pop's an example right of it's not just western culture flowing outward other civilizations are rising to where we're also getting like korean culture into the west as well you have mega sporting events that are really bringing together the world in a way that's very literal for a
• 09:00 - 09:30 few weeks or a month at a time that could be like the world cup that could be the olympics olympic opening ceremonies for example are i did like a whole dissertation on this in undergrad for history but they're a whole like distillation of what is going on at the world at that moment and it's really fascinating and so finally you just have global culture with like food and clothing the american jeans which started out as like sturdy for american farmers spread and become just sort of this like very general piece of clothing that most
• 09:30 - 10:00 cultures have you have mcdonald's all around the world sorry you had for a while a starbucks in the forbidden city in china which just blows my mind and then the chinese people were like that seems like a little bit too far so it closed down so those are all examples the other thing is that technology and increased communication this increasing connection and better communication and lowering of barriers is going to allow historically oppressed groups to unite and push for their own advancement more efficiently than ever before
• 10:00 - 10:30 so you have uh my love eleanor roosevelt here she is she's always next to me hey eleanor uh she is going to get together with the new united nations and these countries are going to literally be able to come together and sit in the same room and she comes together with this u.n council to create the universal declaration of human rights where we are literally attempting to create a global philosophy like think about it we've talked about how confucianism has united china for example the un is attempting to do that globally and say we as an entire
• 10:30 - 11:00 world culture on planet earth are going to try to decide morally and ethically what we can and cannot do to other human beings it has not worked perfectly but i mean we haven't given it that much time yet we also have examples of other groups that had been previously dispersed like black people who had been forcibly spread around the globe as a result of slavery in the african diaspora they're not able to connect back together and have some shared experience as black people in white dominated cultures and governments and so you have
• 11:00 - 11:30 african american leaders like w e b du bois working with jamaican leaders like marcus garvey and with kind of african leaders uh kwame nkrumah for example and they're all starting to come together and they have these literal meetings these conferences throughout the 1900s to discuss what are the common issues facing black people all around the globe in latin america you have a really interesting religious development that's happening within the catholic church which is called liberation theology so essentially this can go all the way back to the conquest right where catholicism was forced onto
• 11:30 - 12:00 a lot of the american cultures but we've talked about from the beginning that latin american catholicism from the beginning has been distinct it has always taken still some of the indigenous elements of their indigenous religions and kind of melded to create this new syncretic form of catholicism well that really reaches its peak in like the 1960s 1970s when a lot of latin american catholic priests start applying catholic teachings to social issues that are being experienced in latin america so the plight of peasants the necessity
• 12:00 - 12:30 of land redistribution fighting against military-dominated governments that are not allowing freedom of expression you start to see priests like oscar romero who are using their catholic teachings to directly apply them to the plight of the poor and this quote unquote common people in latin america finally access to education and professional opportunities also expands to more social classes and minorities and so you have something like the reservation quota system in india which is an attempt to undo a lot of the damage of the millennia of the caste system so gandhi
• 12:30 - 13:00 pushed to abolish the caste system formally in india but of course like we see in a lot of societies like the united states we still see systemic racism and systemic issues continuing and so india has implemented a thing called the reservation quota system that is sort of like affirmative action in the united states for the lower caste to ensure that they are given equitable opportunity in education and housing and business etc you have the women's suffrage movement right first it's really applying mostly
• 13:00 - 13:30 to kind of white western women but then eventually we're trying to expand voting rights to all sectors of each population and around the globe we're still working on that in some regions of the world um and you have the dismantling of white supremacy around the world at least formally so you have movements like the anc and the anti-apartheid movement which leads to the rise of nelson mandela finally dismantling one of the last at least formal white supremacist governments in apartheid south africa this is where the american civil rights movement would factor into the global
• 13:30 - 14:00 these global social movements for rights obviously we still have a long way to go but these formal systems of kind of this social darwinist like rooted in the kind of 18th and 19th centuries white supremacist governments are being formally dismantled thanks to technology and increased communication being able to facilitate this change so that is how science and technology is bringing significant change it is unifying people it's facilitating social and economic advancement next episode we're going to talk about the accelerated economic growth
• 14:00 - 14:30 that we experienced throughout the 1900s as a result of that improved science and technology all right i hope this is helpful follow me on all my channels especially my tic tac i'm going to be starting especially after spring break posting a an ap world history video every day on tick tock from then until the ap exam so check me out there and if you really like the content i'm making then check out my patreon at patreon.com anti-social studies enjoy the 90s