Hindi Dalit Autobiography: an Exploration of Identity

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH BETH
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
North India ◽  
The Public ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Bahujan Samaj Party

Several powerful constructions of Dalit social and political identity are now circulating in very influential ways within the public sphere in North India, as various groups including both the Bahujan Samaj Party as well as Hindutva organisations compete to assert their influence over how these identities are defined, who they include, and what they mean. In this context, the rise of Hindi Dalit autobiographies as a source of Dalit cultural identity becomes especially important in North India, as they contest traditional conceptions of the Dalit community as ‘untouchables’ and attempt to re-inscribe Dalit identity in positive, self-assertive terms. However, Dalit autobiographies retain certain ambivalences, as the authors struggle to reconcile their low-caste identity with their current urban middle-class status, and more recently, as their claims to represent all members of the Dalit community are challenged by Dalits of the younger generation.

scholarly journals I Don't Want to Be a Citizen (if it Means I Have to Watch the ABC)

2002 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan McKee
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper argues that much writing about media and citizenship tends to rely on a set of realist or structuralist assumptions about what constitutes a state, a citizen and politics. Because of these assumptions, other forms of social organisation that could reasonably be described as nations, and other forms of social engagement that could be called citizenship are excluded from consideration. One effect of this blindness is that certain identities, and the cultural formations associated with them, continue to be overvalued as more real and important than others. Areas of culture that are traditionally while, masculine, middle-class and heterosexual remain central in debates, while the political processes of citizens of, for example, a Queer nation, continue to be either ignored or devalued as being somehow trivial, unimportant or less real. The paper demonstrates that this need not be the case — that the language of nation and citizenship can reasonably be expanded to include these other forms of social organisation, and that when such a conceptual move is made, we can find ways of describing contemporary culture that attempt to understand the public-sphere functions of the media without falling back into traditional prejudices against feminised, Queer, working class or non-white forms of culture.

Fragmented memories in a fragmented country: memory competition and political identity-building in today's Bosnia and Herzegovina

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 910-935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Moll
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Second World ◽  
Historical Periods

Bosnia and Herzegovina is politically fragmented, and so is the memory landscape within the country. Narratives of the 1992–1995 war, the Second World War, Tito's Yugoslavia, and earlier historical periods form highly disputed patterns in a memory competition involving representatives of the three “constituent peoples” of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks – but also non-nationalist actors within BiH, as well as the international community. By looking especially at political declarations and the practices of commemoration and monument building, the article gives an overview of the fragmented memory landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina, pointing out the different existing memory narratives and policies and the competition between them in the public sphere, and analyzing the conflicting memory narratives as a central part of the highly disputed political identity construction processes in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina. The paper also discusses the question whether an “Europeanization” of Bosnian memory cultures could be an alternative to the current fragmentation and nationalist domination of the memory landscape in BiH.

scholarly journals Post-Sekulerisme Islam Populis di Indonesia

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
M Mujibuddin ◽  
Rina Zuliana
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Qualitative Description ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
Library Research ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Aspects

<p>This article explores the phenomenology of post-secularism in Indonesia. Populist Islamic movement strike for islamization public sphere as a sign of post-secularism in Indonesia. The islamization proceeded both in government dan the public sphere. These phenomena show that the community of urban Muslims can’t leave religious aspects in the public sphere. This research uses the qualitative-description method and library research models. The first result of this research shows that Islamic populism is coming from the urban Muslim middle class who have access to the modern world. Second, the populist Islamic movement who did islamization of the public sphere shows the strengthening of religion's role in the public sphere.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Działalność publiczna Tadeusza Staniewskiego w Swarzędzu do roku 1918

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Barbara Ksit
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Present Article ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
City Council ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Social Activist ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

mieście Swarzędz. Funkcję tę pełnił społecznie przez dziewięć miesięcy. Ponownie wybrany burmistrzem w 1929 r., pełnił tę funkcję do 1939 r. Dotychczasowe opracowania omawiają działalność Tadeusza Staniewskiego w Swarzędzu, począwszy od listopada 1918 r. Niniejszy artykuł ma być próbą poszerzenia wiadomości na jego temat we wcześniejszym okresie. Syn nauczyciela, ukończył Gimnazjum Fryderyka Wilhelma w Poznaniu. Na początku XX w. osiadł w Swarzędzu, gdzie zyskał uznanie jako kupiec i społecznik. W odniesieniu do lat 1900–1918, kiedy Tadeusz Staniewski stawiał pierwsze kroki w działalności publicznej, najlepszym źródłem jest prasa wielkopolska, zwłaszcza „Postęp” i „Orędownik” – czasopisma reprezentujące interesy drobnomieszczaństwa. Działalność Tadeusza Staniewskiego była omawiana na ich łamach szczególnie w kontekście dwóch wydarzeń istotnych dla Polaków w Swarzędzu – wyborów do Rady Miejskiej w 1909 r. i sprawy budowy Domu Katolickiego. Public activity of Tadeusz Staniewski in Swarzędz until the year 1918 In 1919, Tadeusz Staniewski was the first Pole to become mayor of Swarzędz, a town just outside of Poznań. He held this position for 9 months with no remuneration. He was re-elected in 1929 and remained the mayor of Swarzędz until 1939. Previous articles on the activity of Tadeusz Staniewski in Swarzędz discuss his life from November 1918. The present article aims at expanding this timespan and includes information about him in earlier periods. Son of a teacher, he graduated from Frederick William College in Poznań. In the early 20th century he settled down in Swarzędz, where he gained recognition as a tradesman and social activist. Regarding the years 1900–1918, when Tadeusz Staniewski entered the public sphere, the best sources are press articles published in Greater Poland journals, especially “Postęp” and “Orędownik” which represented the interests of the lower middle class. The activity of Tadeusz Staniewski was discussed there particularly with regard to two events of major importance for Poles in Swarzędz: the 1909 City Council elections and the construction of the Catholic House.

New Technologies, New Work

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Job Market ◽  
The Public ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Gender

This chapter argues that towards the end of the nineteenth century in Spanish America the acceleration of technological innovation and the development of a middle class created new opportunities for middle-class women to enter the labor market. Although women increasingly worked outside the home, writers typically sent the message that women’s work is not valuable or important, that women should avoid work, especially paid work, as much as possible, and that men should help them stay out of the labor force and the capitalist job market. This chapter reads these statements as contesting certain discourses of modernity from the metropolis that privileged women’s entry into the public sphere via paid employment as a vital component of the modernizing project and as taking advantage of modernity’s newfound emphasis on domesticity. Technologies of transportation (trains) and communication (telephones) in Matto de Turner’s Aves sin nido, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera’s La novela del tranvía, the Chilean journals Zig-Zagand Familia, and the Guatemalan La Ilustración Guatemalteca. Depictions of work, consumer culture, and gender in Gorriti’s La oasis en la vida, César Duáyen’s Mecha Iturbe and Federico Gamboa’s Santa are also analysed.

Hadassah Makes You Important

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Kranson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Time Away

During the postwar years, American Jewish women received contradictory advice over how they ought to conduct their lives as they entered the middle-class. As Jewish men felt pressure to become breadwinners, the mores of the middle-class stipulated that married women limit their interests to the needs of home and family. Some Jewish leaders supported these middle-class gender ideologies and warned Jewish women against spending too much time away from domestic responsibilities; others encouraged Jewish women to defy postwar gender norms and engage fully and deeply in the public sphere. Significantly, both those leaders who believed that Jewish women needed to contributed to the world outside their homes and those who feared that they were spending too much time away from their families all tended to agree that the rising affluence of American Jews posed a threat to Jewish women and the Jewish families they were supposed to be raising.

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