CLAH Lecture: Harrods Buenos Aires. The Case of the Unwanted Dresses, 1912–1940

2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-360
Author(s):  
Donna J. Guy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Female Population ◽  
City Block ◽  
The Us ◽  
Dining Room ◽  
Small Department

ABSTRACTIn 1912, a small department store called Harrods opened in Buenos Aires, one that by the 1920s expanded to almost a city block. Although named after the founder of the London store, the manager of Harrods London, Richard Burbidge, his son Woodman, and a few board members planned the purchase of land and opened the business, and then presented it to the entire London board. Unfamiliar with Buenos Aires, believing that women consumed more than men, and presuming that upper-class women there had the same consumer desires of those in England, the store opened catering to the upper-class female population and focused on readymade dresses. And, to the great surprise of the local manager, women of all classes did not want these dresses because they preferred to purchase cloth and take it to their dressmakers.The dilemma facing Harrods Buenos Aires, detailed in company reports in the archive of Harrods London and in scans of Buenos Aires Harrods archives in the possession of British bookseller Jennifer Wilton-Williams, show that sales reports, rather than studies of the Argentine market like those published by the US Department of Commerce, shaped the new department store's response. Until the 1940s, Harrods Buenos Aires focused on the sale of less expensive articles that came from its dining room, its cosmetics department, and infants’ and children's clothing. Furthermore, employees purchased more than 40 percent of the clothing. Originally imagined as the flagship of the upper-class female shopper, it ended up as a store for the middle class, especially women who bought gifts and enjoyed being seen in the dining room. It closed in 1998.

Privilege Accumulation Among Upper Middle-Class Youth in Mexico

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minor Mora-Salas ◽  
Orlandina de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Mexican Families ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Upper Middle Class ◽  
Class Youth

This chapter demonstrates how upper middle-class Mexican families mobilize a vast array of social, cultural, and economic resources to expand their children’s opportunities in life and ensure the intergenerational transmission of their social position. The authors analyze salient characteristics of families’ socioeconomic and demographics in the life histories of a group of young Mexicans from an upper middle-class background. Many believe that micro-social processes, especially surrounding education, are key to understanding how upper-class families mobilize their various resources to shape their children’s life trajectories. These families accumulate social advantages over time that accrue to their progeny and benefit them upon their entrance to the labor market.

Ever-Single Heterosexual Couples in Nonmarital Cohabitation: Spirituality, Connectedness, and Adjustment

2021 ◽  
pp. 106648072110239
Author(s):  
Samta P. Pandya
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Relationship Quality ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Heterosexual Couples ◽  
Highly Qualified ◽  
Christian Couples ◽  
Work Intervention ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
Near Future

This article reports a study on the effectiveness of WhatsApp-based spiritual posts in promoting connectedness and adjustment among ever-single heterosexual couples in nonmarital cohabitation in four global cities. In comparison with trivia posts, the spiritual posts had greater impact and were more effective for Christian couples, middle class, highly qualified, and professionals-salaried cohabitants. This was in comparison with Hindu–Buddhist–Sikh dyads, upper class, with college degree, and entrepreneurs. However, cohabitation duration, initial cohabitation experience with other partners, having children/cohabitation dependents, and near future marriage plans were not significant predictors. Gender also did not significantly moderate spiritual intervention responses as proposed in the previous research. Couple intervention outcomes were mutually interdependent and intervention compliance in terms of number of posts read and do-it-yourself exercises posted were robust predictors of intervention success. With some subgroup-specific refinements, WhatsApp-based spiritual posts would be an effective spiritually sensitive social work intervention for improving relationship quality of nonmarital cohabitants.

scholarly journals Mid-century Modern Jazz: Music and Design in the Postwar Home

Popular Music ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Tom Perchard
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Modern Jazz ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Cover Art

AbstractThis article takes an imagined, transnational living room as its setting, examining jazz's place in representations of the ‘modern’ middle-class home across the post-war West, and exploring the domestic uses that listeners both casual and committed made of the music in recorded form. In magazines as apparently diverse asIdeal Homein the UK andPlayboyin the US, a certain kind of jazz helped mark a new middlebrow connoisseurship in the 1950s and 60s. Yet rather than simply locating the style in a historical sociology of taste, this piece attempts to describe jazz's role in what was an emergent middle-class sensorium. The music's sonic characteristics were frequently called upon to complement the newly sleek visual and tactile experiences – of furniture, fabrics, plastics, the light and space of modern domestic architecture – then coming to define the aspirational bourgeois home; an international modern visual aesthetic was reflected back in jazz album cover art. But to describe experience or ambience represents a challenge to historical method. As much as history proper, then, it's through a kind of experimental criticism of both music and visual culture that this piece attempts to capture the textures and moods that jazz brought to the postwar home.

Farm to School of Park County: A Journey from Program to Nonprofit (B)

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Karen L. Cates ◽  
Liz Livingston Howard
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
Case Series ◽  
School Organization ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Farm To School ◽  
The Us ◽  
Need To Evaluate ◽  
The Face ◽  
Independent Organization

This case series describes the startup of Farm to School of Park County, an emerging nonprofit organization in the US state of Montana. Case (A) describes the community, the need, and the origins of Farm to School in Livingston, Montana. The leaders of Farm to School face a budget crisis and need to evaluate four options to decide whether, when, and how it should become an independent organization. As Case (B) begins, Farm to School has decided to enter into a fiscal sponsorship agreement with the local community foundation. The next task for the organization's leaders is recruiting founding board members. They need to decide whom to ask and how to do it. In Case (C), the board develops a strategic plan and establishes committees. However, the board members and leaders start to feel fatigue in the face of the demands of a startup organization, leading to questions about what is truly strategic and how work will get done. The Farm to School organization in Case (D) has just issued its first annual report, filled with meaningful accomplishments. The leaders of the organization begin to plan to build an organization that will outlast them and the founding board members.

Off-price versus price-off

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (10) ◽  
pp. 902-928 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald L. Hess Jr ◽  
Lawrence Ring
Keyword(s):  
Marketing Research ◽  
Extreme Points ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Store Attributes ◽  
The Us ◽  
Retail Format ◽  
Retail Formats

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to better understand the unique competitive positioning characteristics of off-price retailers and how they compare to other types of retailers. The authors compare off-price and upscale off-price retailers with four major formats of retailers: first, discount department store/warehouse club retailers; second, moderate department store retailers; third, department store retailers; and finally, specialty department store retailers. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs a representative sample that was randomly drawn from four primary metropolitan cities in the USA. The data were collected using telephone interviews by a prominent, marketing research firm. A series of discriminant analyses were conducted to examine the data. Findings – The findings of the paper indicate that the off-price formats were consistently positioned at extreme points along the price/value continuum, signifying the strongest value-orientation among the other retail formats. The authors also found that while the upscale off-price format followed the specialty department stores in terms of fashion. The results point to an important disadvantage of the off-price format – although strong on price/value, they often fall short on fashion and many other store attributes that may be important to luxury-oriented customers. Research limitations/implications – The paper employed a sample from several cities collected using a telephone interview methodology within the US. Due to these limitations, the findings of this paper may be hampered by this methodology and not generalize to regions outside of the US. Future research should examine how the demise of most of the upscale off-price retailers and growth of flash web sites have changed the competitive structure of retailing. Practical implications – The results demonstrate that the positioning of the off-price retail format is unique from other formats. The retail formats occupy distinct positions. The off-price retail format is strongly associated with the price/value position but only moderately fashionable to customers, especially when compared with the department and specialty department store formats. In contrast, the upscale off-price format, while also strongly positioned along the price/value continuum, is considered much more fashionable than the off-price retail format. In fact, the upscale off-price retail format only trails the specialty department store format in terms of fashion. Originality/value – The unique characteristics of the off-price retail format and growing interest from upscale department stores underscores the need for a comprehensive understanding of the motives of the off-price shopper. This paper provides retailers with a more complete understanding of the store attributes that differentiate the off-price retail format from other major retail store formats. The overall objective of this study is to offer a comprehensive view of the positioning of off-price retailers compared with many alternative retail formats.

scholarly journals Eligibility Criteria for the Upper Middle Class

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meilutė Taljūnaitė
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Class Model ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Us ◽  
Upper Middle Class

Each country has its own criteria for the upper middle class. On the other hand, it is clear that even the general principles that define the middle class in different countries differ markedly between them. The US and British criteria are often compared. The role of the family as an element of social stratification is important in the British upper middle class model. The article advocates the influence of family stratification on the formation of the upper (and not only) middle class in Lithuania. Not only does the upper middle class have self-employment, its income is above average and it has higher education, it also influences, identifies trends and fundamentally shapes public opinion (an aspect of its ‘social role’). The broad upper middle class is not so much a guarantor of the welfare state but of social stability in the country.

In Reply: Breast-Feeding and Infectious Illness, Power and Confidence Intervals

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 1080-1080
Author(s):  
J. F. JEKEL ◽  
D. H. RUBIN ◽  
J. M. LEVENTHAL ◽  
P. A. KRASILNIKOFF ◽  
B. WEILE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Confidence Intervals ◽  
Breast Feeding ◽  
The United States ◽  
Feeding Rates ◽  
Industrialized Nations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Infectious Illness ◽  
Developed Nations

The issues raised by Hopkinson in her letter in this issue are important questions. Hopkinson doubted that our findings are applicable to the United States, because the overall rate of initiating breast-feeding is different from Denmark. We suggested that our findings could be applied to middle class populations in the US because breast-feeding rates in Denmark are similar for this group, but we stated ". . . nor can they be extrapolated to rural or poor urban populations in developed nations." By not making a distinction between different groups within the US or other industrialized nations, Hopkinson unnecessarily limits the potential implications of our study.

Protestantism and the Latin American Middle Class

1971 ◽  
Vol os-18 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Charles F. Denton
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
The Church ◽  
Positive Force

The author feels that the development of a middle class in Latin America has been fostered by the effects of Protestant evangelism among the lower classes, which has spurred upward social mobility. But instead of becoming a positive force for social and economic reform, this middle class has become as reactionary as the small traditional upper class. This, together with the inability of most Protestant pastors to minister effectively to middle class persons and intellectuals, is a serious problem for the church in Latin America.

The Lady Lisle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Ifill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Child

The Lady Lisle features two near-identical boys from different ends of the social spectrum. The possibility of altering the development of their inborn natures through upbringing and education is explored and contested when the two are swapped by the villain, Major Varney. The upper-class child is sent to a middle-class school where he is raised in such a way as to negate detrimental qualities which initially seemed innate. Contrastingly, the lower-class child, James, impersonates the true heir and proves to be selfish, violent and eventually murderous, like his father. Yet it is never entirely clear to what extent James’s behaviour is due to heredity or to his emotionally abusive upbringing. A shift in narrative tone is identified which moves from making allowances for James due to ‘nurture’ towards castigating him as bad by ‘nature’. In this way Braddon raises questions about the malleability or fixity of the personality, about how we define, recognise and value naturalness, but ultimately combines the forces of education and hereditary degeneracy in order to segregate the lower classes, and to bring the morally upright middle classes together with the affluent upper classes.

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