scholarly journals Remembering Desirable Futures? Civil Defence Memories and Everyday Life in Sweden and the UK

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-231
Author(s):  
Marie Cronqvist ◽  
Matthew Grant
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Historical Ethnography ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Civil Defence

AbstractThis chapter explores how the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries can be used to examine civil defence as remembered. In focus stand oral histories testifying to the entanglement of civil defence in everyday life. The chapter employs a historical ethnography approach, using interviews and questionnaires collected between 2006 and 2012 in Sweden and the UK. The analysis, which departs from the three themes of localities, temporalities and mediations, illustrates the value of a more ‘bottom-up’ approach and discusses how we may refine the sociotechnical imaginaries framework to incorporate at least some elements of the ‘fuzziness’ of everyday life. It shows how elements of everyday culture relate to processes of embedding, resistance and extension of civil defence in Sweden, the UK and beyond.

scholarly journals Critique and Renewal in the Sociology of Music: Bourdieu and Beyond

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Prior
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
New Work ◽  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
Sociology Of Music ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Potential Problems ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Status Position

This paper reviews the status, position and legacy of Bourdieu in the sociology of music, the waxing and waning of his influence and the recent move away from Bourdieu towards something like a post-critical engagement with musical forms and practices. The idea is to show the reaction to and treatment of Bourdieu’s ideas as a gauge of where we are in the sociology of culture, the various strands of influence that emanate from his work, and to assess what is at stake in a ‘post-Bourdieu’ moment when a position once considered progressive and critical now acts as the foil against which new work is being conducted. The article engages with some recent contributions to the music/society debate from figures in the UK and France, and points to the ways these contributions move debates on musico-social relations into territories more sensitive to the complex mediating qualities of music. Such work is better placed, it is argued, to represent music as an animating force in everyday life, including its specific mediating qualities ‘in action’. At the same time, however, the construction of a new sociology of music is not without its perils. The article will conclude with some potential problems with these approaches, and take stock of what might be lost as well as gained by adherence to them.

scholarly journals Normalising Nuclear War: Narrative Scenarios, Imaginative Geographies and Sites of Leisure in 1950s Britain

2021 ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hogg
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Public Representation ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
Imaginative Geographies ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Civil Defence

AbstractThis chapter offers an interpretation of British regional civil defence activities in the 1950s. I argue that the persistent social impact of nationwide sociotechnical imaginaries of nuclear weapons cannot be fully understood without considering the localised social, geographical and discursive contexts in which civil defence was located and enacted. This chapter traces the ways in which a wider (officially maintained) sociotechnical imaginary appears to have been embedded in and intertwined with these localised contexts. After discussing the bespoke narrative scenarios created to frame civil defence exercises and offering analysis of their public representation, I focus on sites of leisure and forms of civic engagement linked to civil defence activity. Lastly, I turn to imaginative geographies to explore how sociotechnical imaginaries became localised in this era.

scholarly journals TOP-DOWN OR BOTTOM-UP? EMPLOYING A MIDDLE-GROUND APPROACH IN DESIGNING A UK ACADEMIC WRITING COURSE FOR ADVANCED CHINESE GRADUATES

2020 ◽  
pp. 095
Author(s):  
Ivo Ganchev
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Postgraduate Study ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
The Uk

This article documents the academic writing course design process for advanced Chinese learners aiming to pursue postgraduate degrees in business-related fields at their respective target universities in the UK. Four holders of BA degrees in the social sciences from second tier universities in Beijing were tested, surveyed and observed in detail to design a non-terminal twenty-hour pre-sessional writing course (ten two-hour sessions) to assist in their preparation for postgraduate study. All students held offers from Russell Group universities in the UK and had covered the IELTS requirement (6.5-7.0) for admission there prior to signing up for the EAP course discussed in this paper. The aim of the course is to enhance the students’ academic skills and improve their performance in the following year when they attend UK universities. The course design process is informed by two sets of principles, incorporating both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. The former is framed within an understanding of EAP as academic, rather than language training. The latter is based on needs analysis of student-specific weaknesses explored through the use of a questionnaire, a diagnostic writing test and in-class observations. Both perspectives feed into the course goals and objectives which serve as a basis for the course rationale. Aiming to bridge the gap between Chinese undergraduate and UK postgraduate study, the course combines textbooks with authentic materials and formative with summative assessment. Reflections on major constraints and limitations are provided throughout the process. This documented case of academic writing course design aims to reveal challenges faced by EAP practitioners working with UK and Chinese institutions, and to present a middle ground approach to resolving tensions between top-down and bottom-up pressures in the context of course design for advanced Chinese graduates.

Using Online Job Vacancies to Understand the UK Labour Market from the Bottom-Up

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Thurgood ◽  
Arthur Turrell ◽  
David Copple ◽  
Jjyldy Djumalieva ◽  
Bradley Speigner
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Uk

scholarly journals Sociotechnical imaginaries of low-carbon waste-energy futures: UK techno-market fixes displacing public accountability

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-641
Author(s):  
Les Levidow ◽  
Sujatha Raman
Keyword(s):  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Public Accountability ◽  
Energy Futures ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
Waste Energy ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Low Carbon Technologies

To implement EU climate policy, the UK’s New Labour government (1997–2010) elaborated an ecomodernist policy framework. It promoted technological innovation to provide low-carbon renewable energy, especially by treating waste as a resource. This framework discursively accommodated rival sociotechnical imaginaries, understood as visions of feasible and desirable futures available through technoscientific development. According to the dominant imaginary, techno-market fixes stimulate low-carbon technologies by making current centralized systems more resource-efficient (as promoted by industry incumbents). According to the alternative eco-localization imaginary, a shift to low-carbon systems should instead localize resource flows, output uses and institutional responsibility (as promoted by civil society groups). The UK government policy framework gained political authority by accommodating both imaginaries. As we show by drawing on three case studies, the realization of both imaginaries depended on institutional changes and material-economic resources of distinctive kinds. In practice, financial incentives drove technological design towards trajectories that favour the dominant sociotechnical imaginary, while marginalizing the eco-localization imaginary and its environmental benefits. The ecomodernist policy framework relegates responsibility to anonymous markets, thus displacing public accountability of the state and industry. These dynamics indicate the need for STS research on how alternative sociotechnical imaginaries mobilize support for their realization, rather than be absorbed into the dominant imaginary.

scholarly journals A technology and its vicissitudes: playing the gramophone in Sweden 1903–1945

Popular Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-236
Author(s):  
Ulrik Volgsten
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
Scientific Curiosity ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Musical Communication

AbstractThis inquiry deals with the changing role of the technology and the use of phonographs and gramophones during the first half of the 20th century. Rather than looking at the UK or USA, which much previous research has done, the focus is on peripheral Sweden. More specifically the question is how phonography turned from being a scientific curiosity into becoming an everyday media technology, and how it thereby influenced culture and everyday musical communication. The findings show two distinct approaches to recorded music, which intermingle in today's unprecedented musicalisation of culture and everyday life around the globe – approaches respectively described as utilitarian and solipsistic.

scholarly journals Between Bare Life and Everyday Life : Spatializing Europe’s Migrant Camps

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irit Katz
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Northern France ◽  
Analytical Strategies

The migrant and refugee camps that proliferated in Europe over recent years reflect extreme, if not bipolar, architectural conditions. While fenced carceral camps with prefabricated units were created top-down by state and municipal authorities, informal makeshift camps of tents and self-made shelters were formed bottom-up along Europe’s migration routes. These contrasting spatial typologies often appear side by side in the open landscapes of rural fields, in urban landscapes at the heart or in the fringes of cities, and in the architectural landscapes of abandoned institutions and facilities such as factories, prisons, airports, and military barracks. The different ways in which camps are created, function, and are managed by multiple and changing actors and sovereignties, substantially influence the form of these spaces. So far, however, the radically different spatial typologies of the camp and the intersections between them have not been comparatively analysed. Based on empirical studies of the recently created migrant camps in Europe, this paper sets out to investigate their various configurations, what they reflect, and how they correspond with the culture and politics that shape them. While this paper mainly focuses on three particular camps in northern France – the container camp in Calais, the makeshift camp in Calais known as the “Jungle,” and La Linière camp in Grande-Synthe – it offers observations and analytical strategies relevant to camp spaces in other spaces and contexts and to camp studies more broadly.

Improvisation in Dance and the Movement of Everyday Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 52-64
Author(s):  
Libby Worth
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
The Us ◽  
Dance Improvisation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Insight Into

Dance improvisation, as developed in the UK and the US in particular, has become associated with a number of tropes that apparently offer means of best practice. By attending to a few of these, I examine how they might offer insight into dance improvisation. This incorporates research into ways in which improvisation is a part of everyday life, as demonstrated most clearly in examples of infant movement and cognitive development. Taking Henry Montes and Marcus Coates’s dance film A Question of Movement as a case study example, I consider how their innovative way of dancing responses to life questions connects with the infant’s reliance on ‘thinking in movement’, a term offered by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone. Finally, I consider what dancers can learn from people living with chronic dementia-related diseases who forge ways to live in a perpetual present and, conversely, what insight dancers might offer through integration of dance improvisatory processes in caregiving.

scholarly journals Decarbonising the cement sector: A bottom-up model for optimising carbon capture application in the UK

2016 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 1351-1361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hills ◽  
Nicholas Florin ◽  
Paul S. Fennell
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Uk
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