Instrumental music? The social origins of broadcast music in British factories

Popular Music ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAREK KORCZYNSKI ◽  
KEITH JONES
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Social Life ◽  
World War Two ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
Industrial Psychology ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Principles ◽  
Central Argument

This paper explores the social origins and development of music relayed through loudspeakers in British factories during World War Two, focusing on the BBC programme Music While You Work, which provided a national soundtrack for factory work, and the contemporary institutions of Industrial Psychology, which promoted music as a highly ‘valuable’ accompaniment to work and formulated scientific principles governing its broadcast. Combining archival evidence from these organisations, the paper first outlines the historical circumstances of development, detailing the form of broadcasts and of the music itself. Subsequently, the causes of music's introduction to the factory are analysed. The central argument advanced is that the music resulted centrally from top-down initiatives from a ‘human relations school’ coalition of institutions and individuals, in which the aims of increased productivity and the humanisation of the workplace intermingled, but in which the aim of increased productivity dominated. Concluding remarks assess the argument and relate it to the growing literature on contemporary practices of the sound-tracking of social life.

Democracy and Dictatorship in the Cold War: the Two Germanies, 1949–1961

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew I. Port
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
German States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The ‘long 1950s’ was a decade of conspicuous contrasts: a time of dismantling and reconstruction, economic and political, as well as cultural and moral; a time of Americanization and Sovietization; a time of upheaval amid a desperate search for stability. But above all, it was a time for both forgetting and coming to terms with the recent past. This article focuses on the two forms of government that controlled Germany, democracy, and dictatorship. The Cold War was without doubt the main reason for the rapid rehabilitation and integration of the two German states, which more or less took place within a decade following the end of the Second World War. This article further elaborates upon the political conditions under dictatorship and its effect on the social life. East Germany, under the Soviet control underwent as much political upheaval. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Germany became a democracy.

scholarly journals Anthropology and the Development of African Studies

Africa ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryll Forde
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
First World ◽  
And Training

Opening ParagraphThe foundation and the broad policies of our Institute emerged from what proved a fortunate conjunction of diverse interests and opportunities that developed after the First World War. The initial phase of modern economic advance in tropical Africa, following the introduction of the telegraph, railways, all-weather roads, was by the twenties making apparent a wide range of needs and opportunities for further progress in Africa—progress in which both the interests of, and contribution by, its peoples would be closely concerned. Within African territories the demand for literacy and training in new skills both more extensive and at higher levels was becoming more and more obvious and pressing. The significance of the increasing and inevitable association of Africans and their communities with a world economy was beginning to be more widely appreciated. With this growing recognition of the need for a more positive and constructive response many questions arose concerning not only the means of fostering such developments, but also their effects on the attitudes, beliefs, and institutions that had hitherto sustained the cultures and the social life of largely autonomous tribes and chiefdoms.

scholarly journals The Enduring Influence of Female Special Operations Executive Agent Biopics on Cultural Memory and Representations in France and Great Britain

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. WLS144-WLS168
Author(s):  
Sylvie Pomiès-Maréchal
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Fictional Representations

Seventy-five years have elapsed since the end of World War Two. Yet, the memory of the conflict still occupies a central place in British and French collective consciousness. Fiction and film representations of the war act as powerful ‘vectors of memory’, to borrow an expression from French historian Henry Rousso, and as such, they have deeply contributed to shaping popular and cultural memories of the war. This article investigates a specific aspect of World War Two representations, namely the cinematic representations of the female agents from the SOE F section, focusing on the ‘generic’ or archetypal figure of the female SOE agent as generated by the post-war cultural industry. After a brief contextualisation focusing on Churchill’s clandestine organisation, the article will analyse the contribution of Odette (Herbert Wilcox, 1950) and Carve Her Name with Pride (Lewis Gilbert, 1958) to the construction of a World War Two ‘mythology’. It will then address more recent films, concentrating on Charlotte Gray (Gillian Armstrong, 2001) and Female Agents (Jean-Paul Salomé, 2008). How did the fictional construction of the female spy come to influence the social and cultural perception of the SOE agent? Are the tropes developed in such post-war films as Odette or Carve Her Name with Pride still current or have they evolved with time? The analysis of these fictional representations will reveal the permanence or evolution of certain representational patterns and also allow us to approach different perspectives on the cultural representation of World War Two on both sides of the Channel.

Genocide: Clarifying Concepts and Causes of Cruelty

2010 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Verdeja
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust

In the decades after World War Two, most scholars working on genocide focused on particular cases, providing historically detailed descriptions of the causes and patterns of mass violence but rarely branching out beyond a specific case. The study of the Holocaust is typical of this; the vast majority of works on the Nazi genocide had little comparative dimension and instead examined the ways in which anti-Semitism and certain policies condemned disfavored minorities to persecution and extermination. These earlier works are particularly important because they gave us rich understandings of the origins, sequencing, and dynamics of mass violence, as well as the roles of dehumanizing cultural views and ideologies that facilitated extermination. Nevertheless, multi-case studies were the exception, and generally received little attention in the social sciences.

scholarly journals How the Female Subject was Tempered. An Instructive History of 8 March and Its Media Representation in Naša Žena (Our Woman)

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-43
Author(s):  
Paula Petričević
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Female Subject ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Abstract The author explores the socialist emancipation of women in Montenegro during World War II and its aftermath, using the example of the 8 March celebrations. The social life of this ‘holiday of the struggle of all the women in the world’ speaks powerfully of the strength and fortitude involved in the mobilization of women during the war and during the postwar building of socialist Yugoslavia, as well as the sudden modernization and unprecedented political subjectivation of women. The emancipatory potential of these processes turned out to be limited in the later period of stabilization of Yugoslav state socialism and largely forgotten in the postsocialist period. The author argues that the political subjectivation of women needs to be thought anew, as a process that does not take place in a vacuum or outside of a certain ideological matrix, whether socialist or liberal.

scholarly journals Jane Addams and the Lost Paradigm of Sociology

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-228
Author(s):  
Vessela Misheva
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Mission ◽  
Jane Addams ◽  
Scientific Mission ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normal Period ◽  
Auguste Comte

The present work is the beginning of a discussion that again addresses the question of Jane Addams’ sociological heritage. That latter is defined as a puzzle which may finally have a solution in that all of the pieces now appear to have been collected. The approach taken to recovering Addams’ identity as a sociologist involves a historico-sociological exploration of the influences upon the formation of her sociological thought, with a focus on Auguste Comte, the Father of Sociology. The article argues that Addams emulated Comte’s scientific mission and took upon herself the task of continuing his project by following another route to the goal. She is thus Comte’s successor, and even rival, insofar as she sought to establish sociology as a science that may be placed in charge of producing knowledge about social life and has the social mission of finding solutions to social problems that politicians proved incapable of tackling. Addams emerges from the discussion as the creator of a sociological paradigm that was dismissed, dismantled, and then lost in the process of the scientific revolution that took place unnoticed after the end of World War I, when the normal period of the scientific development of sociology in America came to an end. The suppression during the 1920s of the type of sociology that Addams developed and adhered to has left sociology in a state of unresolved identity crisis and arrested scientific development.

Myth and Reality

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-125
Author(s):  
Elissa Bemporad
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soviet Jewry

Chapter 5 maps out the social life of the myth (and reality) centered on the absence of pogroms. It captures the use of the term in calls to reject Jewish political agency and resist Stalin’s policies. While the state stigmatized this form of violence, pogroms did occur on rare occasions. They were an exception to the rule until World War II, which drastically changed the habits and discourses of violence: pogroms reappeared in the context of collaboration with German forces. The return of the unthinkable was triggered by the idiosyncratic contingencies of war: in 1945 a pogrom broke out in Kiev. The myth of Soviet Jewry was temporarily shattered. During the postwar years the state reasserted its monopoly over violence. And while it promoted antisemitism and ignored the complaints of Jews bewildered by the change, it never crossed the line of tolerating eruptions of spontaneous violence against them.

scholarly journals After Practice? Material Semiotic Approaches to Consumption and Economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 340-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Material Forces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theories Of Practice ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cultural Turn

The ‘turn’ to practice in social theory is proving influential in the sociological study of consumption (following Warde, 2005). This article joins current debates that appraise the contributions of this growing body of work, specifically its relationship with – and possible mode of succession to – cultural studies of consumption. It considers two claims about the impact and status of practice theoretic repertoires in consumption scholarship (Warde, 2014). First, that they invite greater attention than the cultural turn to objects and technologies as material forces. Second, that they have not yet found ways to locate consumption in the context of wider economic processes. My central argument is that theories of practice offer a partial reading of materiality, and that engagement with a greater range of material semiotic approaches can help in making better links between consumption and economy. This argument is illustrated through reference to market agencements, the social life of things, and ontological politics. I suggest these perspectives are compatible with practice theoretic approaches and that taken together, they represent some promising responses to a suite of fundamental challenges confronting consumption studies. I conclude that theories of practice – plural – have not yet run their course as an approach to consumption and economy. The parameters of consumption scholarship are also considered alongside the relationships between political economy and cultural analysis.

scholarly journals Secondary school principals and liminality in Polish Upper Silesia (1919-1939)

2021 ◽  
pp. 161189442199268
Author(s):  
Machteld Venken
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Secondary School Principals ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Elite Education ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
History Curriculum ◽  
The Social

Establishing and implementing rules that would teach young people to become active citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after World War I into lived social spaces. This article analyses how principals of borderland secondary schools negotiated transformation in Polish Upper Silesia with the help of Arnold Van Gennep’s notion that a shift in social statuses possessed a spatiality and temporality of its own. The article asks whether and how school principals were called on to offer elite training that would make Polish Upper Silesia more cohesive with the rest of Poland in terms of the social origins of pupils and the content of the history curriculum. In addition, it examines the extent to which borderland school principals accepted, refuted, or helped to shape that responsibility. The social origins of pupils are detected through a quantitative analysis of recruitment figures and the profiles of pupils’ parents. This analysis is combined with an exploration of how school principals provided a meaningful explanation of the recent past (World War I and the Silesian Uprisings). The article demonstrates that while school principals were historical actors with some room to make their own decisions when a liminal space was created, changed, and abolished, it was ultimately a priest operating in their shadows who possessed more possibilities to become a master of ceremonies leading elite education through its rites of passage.

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