Cycles of Empowerment? The Bicycle and Everyday Technology in Colonial India and Vietnam

2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 971-996 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Arnold ◽  
Erich DeWald
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Sewing Machine ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Technology Transfers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Capital Intensive ◽  
Innovation And Entrepreneurship

In recent years, discussion of technology in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century colonial world has moved away from earlier insistence on the centrality of imperial agency and the instrumentality of empire's technological “tools” of conquest and exploitation. There has been a broad shift from diffusionist preoccupations with a one-way traffic in “technology transfers” that privileged Euro-American innovation and entrepreneurship, to consideration of the “social life of things” within the colony. This has corresponded with a move away from understanding technology through European representations of machines as the measure of the imperial self and colonized other, to rethinking technology's role in reconfiguring social hierarchies and cultural practices in colonized or semi-colonized non-Western societies. Without ignoring empire's importance in facilitating change or restricting the socio-economic parameters within which innovative technologies might operate, there has been a growing tendency to identify colonialism as a conduit for technological modernity rather than its primary embodiment. The colony is understood as a locally constituted, rather than merely imperially derivative, site for engagement with techno-modernity and its discontents. Scholars now commonly eschew emphasis on the implanting of “big technologies” such as railroads, telegraphs, steamships, modern weaponry, major irrigation works, and electrification systems (capital-intensive, often state-managed technologies that figured proudly in the rhetoric of imperial achievement), in favor of the ways in which these were understood, assimilated, and utilized by local agency. There has also been growing interest in small-scale, “everyday technologies,” from the sewing machine, wristwatch, and radio, to the typewriter, camera, and bicycle. Colonial regimes were unable to monopolize or disinclined to control these, and they passed with relative ease into the work-regimes, recreational activities, social life, and cultural aspirations of colonized and postcolonial populations.

Archaic Sovereignty and Colonial Law: The reintroduction of corporal punishment in colonial India, 1864–1909

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 1712-1747
Author(s):  
ALASTAIR MCCLURE
Keyword(s):  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Penal Law ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
Discretionary Powers

AbstractThe judicial and summary punishment of whipping—absent from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860—was passed into law through Act No. VI of 1864. This legislation, tacked on as an appendage to the IPC, invested the judge with wider discretionary powers to administer violence across Indian society. In this case what emerged was an evolving attempt to enlarge the colonial state's capacity for quotidian violence, targeting certain bodies to reaffirm, manage, and police the social hierarchies upon which colonial sovereignty depended. In the context of a slow imperial movement away from the cast-iron distinctions that had been made between groups in the early nineteenth century—distinctions that had, among other things, supported a legally enforced system of slavery—new methods to mark the value of different bodies were created. The events of the 1850s, in particular the rebellion of 1857–1858, saw the re-emergence of the colonial idea that certain bodies could withstand violence, and that violence itself could be used to create economically productive colonial societies, in debates around penal law and punishment. This article will trace this history through formal legal restrictions and informal legal-cultural practices in relation to corporal punishment in colonial India. Over the course of the period under study, this legislation introduced into law what one official termed ‘the category of the “whippable”’.1 Charting the changing shape of this legal category along lines of race, gender, caste, class, and age, the article will argue that a logic of exceptionality, channelled here through the application of judicial violence, attempted to structure and manage Indian society in complicated ways.

scholarly journals Framing Sálvame: Public debates on taste, quality and television in Spain

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinald Besalú ◽  
Mercè Oliva ◽  
Óliver Pérez-Latorre
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Legal Issue ◽  
Regulatory Body ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Celebrity Gossip ◽  
Working Class Women

Abstract The main aim of this article is to analyze the social circulation of discourses on non-hegemonic cultural practices, in particular, on what is called “trash TV”, and how they are connected to struggles over cultural and social hierarchies. To do so, it takes a specific event as starting point: the injunction that the CNMC (the Spanish broadcasting regulatory body) filed against Mediaset (a commercial TV operator) to adjust the contents of Sálvame Diario (a celebrity gossip program frequently associated with “trash TV”) to the requirements of what is known as the “child protection time slot”. This paper uses constructionist framing to analyze how this event was discussed by different social actors. Our analysis shows that while the CNMC and the press painted the conflict as a legal issue, Sálvame and social media users focused their discussion on the social acceptability of celebrity gossip media and their viewers (specifically working-class women).

Gender in Middle Range Societies: A Case Study in Casas Grandes Iconography

2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine S. VanPool ◽  
Todd L. VanPool
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Casas Grandes ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The People ◽  
Gender Complementarity ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
The Social ◽  
Males And Females

Gender analyses have provided useful insights into the social organization of the people anthropologists study. Here we demonstrate how Casas Grandes gender roles influenced other aspects of Casas Grandes worldview and social life. Medio period (A.D. 1200–1450) iconography depicts differences between males and females. Gender roles were not only defined by their proximity to males and females but to birds and serpents. Furthermore, Casas Grandes cosmology was based on gender complementarity that combined the productive, reproductive, and ritual activities of men and women within a single system. The development of social differentiation was tied to this system, indicating that gender complementarity and the accumulation of productive and ritual power into a limited group of women and men may have been an important factor in the development of social hierarchies in many Middle Range societies.

Guns in Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Brahm
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Professional Groups ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Forms Of Violence

Guns have loomed large in many African societies since early modern times. This has much to do with their military and economic potential, but also with the influential social life they often obtained. Being instruments of destruction in the first place, the history of guns is closely connected with various forms of violence, especially with warfare and hunting; however, the significance of the gun went far beyond this. Guns were, for instance, applied in every-day protection of crops and livestock and integrated into ceremonies and festivities; they became signifiers of royal and chiefly power, objects of gender identification, attributes of professional groups, and markers of social status and racial difference. Studying the social life of guns allows for new insights into the material foundations of cultural domains and the construction of social hierarchies; at the same time, it demonstrates that the social and cultural meanings of objects, including guns, are never stable and are subject to constant change. The history of guns in Africa is also one of appropriation and domestication of foreign technology, rising consumerism, and efforts to overcome dependency from importation. The presence of guns often had strong impacts on social and natural environments, both physically and mentally. Studying gun violence and arms regimes from an historical perspective helps us to better understand processes of political centralization and fragmentation, practices of resistance against colonial rule, and also the forming of authoritarian regimes and criminal organisations. The ambiguous history of the gun resonates in contemporary images and memories, connected with both order and violence and liberation and oppression.

El Sancocho, la Bandera y la Familia: The Social Life of Food and its Implications for Dominican Immigrant Health and Well-Being

2020 ◽  
pp. 152483992097460
Author(s):  
Linda Sprague Martinez ◽  
Cristina Araujo Brinkerhoff ◽  
Bailey Conner ◽  
Magalis Troncoso Lama ◽  
C. Eduardo Siqueira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Dietary Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Well Being

In order to better understand factors that influence the health and well-being of Dominican immigrants, we explored the ways in which immigration influences cultural practices, health behavior, and health. Dominican immigrants (n = 42) took part in five reflective and unstructured group discussions and (n = 5) participated in an intergenerational photovoice group. The loss of the familial and social context in which Dominican dietary practices traditionally take place was a salient theme. For participants, eating became a rushed, perfunctory activity involving fewer people and less socializing. Dietary practices in the Dominican Republic are set in the context of familial norms and social processes, which provide support as well as opportunities for socializing and the transmission of cultural practices across generations. In the United States, broader sociopolitical forces are guided by individualism and do not support the development or maintenance of these factors for Dominicans. Policies that promote work–life balance may have important implications for dietary practices in new immigrant communities.

Crossing Borders? Sociology, Globalization and Immobility

2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Ray
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Classical Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Globalization Theory

Globalization theorists frequently claim that the disembedding of social relations across various dimensions renders obsolete the former object of sociology, namely ‘society’. The exceptional change to social life arising from globalization demands that sociality is viewed in more fluid and complex ways than in the past. A closer examination of classical concepts of the social would reveal more nuanced and multidimensional concepts. I suggest that globalization does not entail the stretching of social relations beyond recognition, but reconfigures spaces and identities according to powerful dynamics. Classical theory emphasizes the embeddedness of exchanges and flows in social and cultural relations. This will be exemplified with reference to migration, which both epitomizes globalizing tendencies and illustrates its limitations. Along with mobile subjects there are immobile subjects (racialized migrants) policed by actual and threatened violence, who have been underplayed in globalization theory. The paper concludes that concepts of the ‘social’ may need rethinking but central to this should be an understanding of the interlocking of mobility with the circulation of capital, commodities and cultural practices.

Life in the city shadows: Work, identity and social status

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Briggs ◽  
Rubén Monge Gamero
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Work Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City

Valdemingómez, however, revolves around its own norms and codes which defy and violate conventional everyday conceptions of normative behaviour. This congregation of crime, violence and victimization in a spatial and legal no-mans land like Valdemingómez means that grave misdemeanours occur without consequences and violence is normalized part of the everyday fabric of social life. For this reason, in Valdemingómez almost anything goes and this produces a series of tensions in the social hierarchies that are attached to cultural interactions in the area which permeate elements of work and labour, the moral economy, daily life and social relations. In this chapter, we take a detailed look at the cultural milieu of Valdemingómez and its operations, and show how people survive there and how the various players attempt to foster some self-respect from these harsh realities.

scholarly journals The Language of Advertising in English Sport Magazines

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2 (20)) ◽  
pp. 20-31
Author(s):  
Gevorg Barseghyan
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Big Business ◽  
The Social ◽  
Radio Frequencies

Advertising plays a crucial role in our reality. It invades our lives through TV screens, radio frequencies, the pages of newspapers and journals. Being a unique phenomenon in our reality, which is designed for thousands of readers, listeners, viewers, it has given birth to different approaches and opinions. Advertising is a rapidly developing phenomenon, quick in responding to major and minor changes in the social life. Today it has penetrated into sports as well. Sport is a big business and many companies use sport as a means of publicizing their product. Thus, the present paper intends to study sport ads with the aim of presenting them as a register standing out for uniqueness, containing a small scale plot which aims to draw the attention of the reader to the phenomenon. Usually such small texts use the names of world famous sportsmen which immediately attract attention. In sport ads the plot usually includes certain qualities which demonstrate the skills of a given sportsman, and the object is advertised through creating a text which is combined with illustrations of the very object.

scholarly journals Mobilność artefaktów protestu. Maska Guya Fawkesa w cyklu kontestacji 2008–2017

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Bartosz Ślosarski
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Given

The mobility of protest artifacts: The Guy Fawkes mask in the cycle of contestation in the years 2008–2017The aim of the article is to present the process of protest artifacts’ mobility using the example of the social biography of Guy Fawkes’ mask. The applied theoretical approach is based on a three-ele­ment concept of the social biography of the artifact which includes transformations in the field of cultural practices what is done with an object, industrialization of an object how and by whom it is made, and the change and acquisition of new meanings by the given artifact in which cultural contexts it is located. The example of the Guy Fawkes mask, as well as masking policy in general, is considered in the context of protests against ACTA in Poland and the other events in the world from the 2008–2017 contestation cycle. The mask leads its own social life, being active and mobile, both in the spaces in which it occurs, social groups that use it and what they do with it, and the forms that it takes.

scholarly journals Functions and value of personal self-employed agriculture in social and economic development of rural Ukrainian areas

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Ishchenko
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Rural Population ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Rural Households ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
The Social

It was established that the market transformation of property relations in agriculture led to the formation of a complex economy, the development of small-scale production, which is organically combined and successfully complements large and medium forms of management. It is proved that the social significance of personal country farms manifests itself in counteracting unemployment, creating opportunities for income growth, improving the quality of life, social security, self-organization of rural residents. The social aspect of OSG's activity is particularly important in times of economic crisis, when in agriculture and most other sectors massive job cuts are applied. It is generalized that in view of the diversity and diversity of the OSG functions, in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the essence of the investigated category, the classification of functions of rural households on the orientational basis of interaction with various spheres of social activity was conducted. It is substantiated that this characteristic corresponds to the essence of the OSG to the greatest extent, since it allows us to comprehensively characterize the research object as a complex category, which is an organic and inalienable component of several different socioeconomic systems different in its nature. The typical functions of a personal country economy are systematized, taking into account the requirements of three components of social life: social, economic, organizational. It is concluded that the functions of OSG population in their essential content are similar to the functions of agrarian entrepreneurship subjects. It is proved that personal country farms, despite the low marketability, carry out a number of socially important functions now, is an additional reserve for ensuring the growth of agricultural output, which the rural population perceives as a need for survival. It was emphasized that the development of OSG is closely linked with the provision of food security of the country, which led to the idea of ​​strengthening their role and importance in the formation of commodity supply and sustainable development of rural areas. It is envisioned that in case of non-dilution of the OSG value in the development of agriculture in the country, the conversion of a country farmer into an ordinary hired worker may lead to negative consequences for the whole society, such as the settlement of the rural population, the loss of their sense of ownership on their land and motivation to work, rural lifestyle and ultimately the domestic country traditions and culture. Key words: personal country economy, function, rural population, rural territories, rural households.

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