The Leisure Pursuits of Brisbane Children During the 1930s Depression

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Carolyn Leach

Neighbourhood children played lots of games together … no expensive material required … As there was no Presbyterian Church I went to the Methodist Sunday School. This church had a social evening of games every Friday night. Nobody worried about what religion we were, and we would all come home singing along the road.—Les B and Jean H, children of the DepressionOver the last 30 years, many books have appeared on different aspects of childhood in Australia. There has not, however, been an authoritative published history of childhood that is specific to the Depression years. Sue Fabian and Morag Loh'sChildren in Australia: An Outline Historyand Jan Kociumbas'sAustralian Childhood: A Historyinclude chapters that offer overviews of Australian childhood during the Depression, and Lynette Finch's special issue ofQueensland Review, Young in a Warm Climate, is the only major study specific to children in Queensland. This paper makes a contribution to Queensland Depression historiography and the history of Queensland children by exploring how the children of Brisbane's working-class unemployed spent their leisure hours, and what effect — if any — the Depression exerted over the choices that were made. It will show mat there was neither uniformity of experience nor a sharp discontinuity between the Depression years and those that preceded and followed this decade.

2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-587
Author(s):  
Alexandra Minna Stern

Chicana/o historians have transformed understandings of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, identity, labor, and space in the United States. In dialogue with the articles for this special issue, my commentary reflects on some of the significant contributions of Chicana/o history, highlighting the themes of complexity and spatial metaphors. I concur with the authors that there still is much historical reconstruction to do, and suggest that this work is important intellectually and politically, given the hostile climate toward Mexicans and immigrants in many parts of the country. This commentary also provides an opportunity to share the course of my scholarly engagement with Chicana/o history and consider its far-reaching influence on my work in the history of medicine and public health in the U.S. West.


2005 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Pittaway

The essays in this special issue by Jack R. Friedman, Sándor Horváth, Peter Heumos, and Eszter Zsófia Tóth, reflect a growing interest in the social history of industrial labor and industrial communities in postwar Central and Eastern Europe. While they approach their subjects in different ways and employing distinct methodologies, the essays suggest how the history of the working class and its relationship to postwar socialist state formation across the region might be rethought. They illustrate how the protracted construction and consolidation of socialist states in the region was negotiated on an everyday level by working-class citizens, and that this was a dynamic process in which state projects interacted with a variety of working-class cultures, that were in turn segmented by notions of gender, skill, generation, and occupation. The essays all demonstrate, in their different ways, how working-class Eastern Europeans were not simply acted upon by the operation of dictatorial state power, but played a role in state formation across the region. This role was characterized by an ambiguous relationship between workers and those in power who sought legitimacy by claiming that their states represented the interests of the “working class.” Yet the policies those in power pursued often confronted working-class communities directly in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, as these essays suggest. This produced a complex relationship characterized by consent, accommodation and conflict that varied from locality to locality, state to state, and from period to period.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Liarou

The article argues that the working-class realism of post-WWII British television single drama is neither as English nor as white as is often implied. The surviving audiovisual material and written sources (reviews, publicity material, biographies of television writers and directors) reveal ITV's dynamic role in offering a range of views and representations of Britain's black population and their multi-layered relationship with white working-class cultures. By examining this neglected history of postwar British drama, this article argues for more inclusive historiographies of British television and sheds light on the dynamism and diversity of British television culture.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Mohamed Chamekh

This article explores illegal migration through Tunisian rap. It considers this music an aspect of resistance and protest against the socio-economic and political conditions obliging thousands of Tunisians to cross the Mediterranean in makeshift boats in search of better prospects and challenging the increasing security and legislative measures crippling mobility imposed by the EU and Tunisian authorities. This article contends that harga songs document the history of the working class in Tunisia and carve the identity of harraga as people who have been marginalised for generations. It concludes that EU-Tunisia security talks and dialogues remain ineffective as long as the root causes of illegal migration have not been addressed. Keywords: illegal migration, Tunisian rap, resistance, marginalization, security, immobility, identity


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