The Middle Class versus the Ruling Party during the 1950s in Israel: The ‘Engine–Coach Car’ Dilemma

2008 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avi Bareli ◽  
Uri Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Class Versus ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Ruling Party

What Kind of Job Is That for a Nice Jewish Boy?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Kranson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
The Self ◽  
American Jews ◽  
New Models ◽  
Economic Position ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Jewish

In the 1950s and early 1960s, American Jews wrestled with new models of masculinity that their new economic position enabled. For many American Jewish novelists, intellectuals, and clergy of the 1950s and early 1960s, the communal pressure on Jewish men to become middle-class breadwinners betrayed older, more Jewishly-authentic, notions of appropriate masculinity. Their writing promoted alternative, Jewish masculine ideals such as the impoverished scholar and the self-sacrificing soldier, crafting a profoundly gendered critique of Jewish upward mobility.

The Paradoxes of Postwar Domesticity

Mahjong ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 203-220
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Household Labor ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Home Life ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Domestic Roles ◽  
Jewish Mother

At the height of the postwar domestic revival, a subset of women who fully participated in the culture of domesticity nonetheless claimed a unique space for leisure with their peers in the form of a weekly evening mahjong game. Although the culture of mahjong could reinforce their domestic roles as much as undermine them, the weekly mahjong ritual explicitly came at the expense of both household labor and their family members’ comfort. Despite their claims on autonomous domestic leisure, mahjong-playing middle-class women became emblematic of the trappings of stereotypical postwar domesticity. As Jewish mahjong players established their strong cultural norms in the 1950s and 1960s, they became embedded in the evolving stereotype of the domineering Jewish mother. This association signaled the waning of both postwar domestic norms and the patterns of leisured domesticity that thrived within them, as economic changes and generational shifts transformed middle-class home life.

scholarly journals DISCRIMINATION, OPPORTUNITY, AND MIDDLE-CLASS SUCCESS IN EARLY COMMUNIST HUNGARY

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 499-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES MARK
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
The State ◽  
Central European ◽  
Communist State ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S

This article explores the middle-class response to life under the early Communist state in Hungary. It is based on an oral history of the Budapest bourgeoisie, and challenges some of the dominant indigenous representations of the central European middle class as persecuted victims who were forced into ‘internal exile’ by the Stalinist state. Despite being officially discriminated against as ‘former exploiters’, large numbers achieved educational and professional success. Their skills were increasingly needed in the rapid modernization of the 1950s, and the state provided them with semi-official opportunities to remake themselves into acceptable Communist citizens. Middle-class testimony revealed how individuals constructed politically appropriate public personas to ensure their own upward mobility; they hid aspects of their pasts, created ‘class conscious’ autobiographies, and learnt how to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty. The ways in which individuals dealt with integrating into a system which officially sought to exclude them and which many disliked ideologically is then examined. In order to ‘cope with success’, respondents in this project invented new stories about themselves to justify the compromises they had made to ensure their achievements. These narratives are analysed as evidence of specifically Communist middle-class identities.

The Rise and Fall of Ace Records: A Case Study in the Independent Record Business

1990 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald J. Mabry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Record Industry ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Rock N Roll

The record industry in the United States was controlled until the 1950s by a half dozen major companies, which produced music directed primarily toward the white middle class. The following article uses the history of Ace Records, a small, regional, independent company, to examine the nature of the record industry in the 1950s and 1960s. The article explains the shifts in demography and technology that made possible the growth of the independents, as well as the obstacles and events that made their demise more likely. It also traces the changes that such companies, by recording and promoting rhythm and blues and early rock ‘n’ roll, introduced to the cultural mainstream.

„Samuel Beckett’s Decadent Turn”

Tekstualia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (55) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
S.E. Gontarski
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Marquis De Sade ◽  
Performance Artists ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
And Performance

„Samuel Beckett’s Decadent Turn” re-examines and reassesses Beckett’s relationship with certain experimental and countercultural forms of and movements in art often called „Decadent” – from his running afoul of the Irish Censorship of Publications Acts in the 1930s to the 1950s, through his search for „literature in the pornography, or beneath the pornography” in his translations of the Marquis de Sade and his battles with the Lord Chamberlain in the mid-1950s over the London productions of his fi rst two plays, to his close professional and personal associations with publishers who celebrated the work of the demimonde. Much of that term encompasses an opening to the fullness of human experience denied in previous centuries, and much of that has been sexual or decadent. Beckett’s aesthetics emerged from such encounters and those associations continued to inform his work and to develop into experimental modes that upended literary models and middle- class values, an aesthetics that, furthermore, has inspired any number of subsequent visual and performance artists.

scholarly journals Homem ideal em revista no Jornal das Moças (anos 1950)

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-192
Author(s):  
Lucas Santos Rosa ◽  
Maria Cecilia Barreto Amorim Pilla
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Family Life ◽  
The 1950S

Cada período constrói estereótipos e seus próprios meios e regramentos que podem ser veiculados de diversas formas, os periódicos podem ser importantes maneiras de divulgar esses padrões, incutir ensinamentos, moldar categorias. Dessa forma é que o presente artigo pretende conhecer modelos que corresponderiam ao desejado “homem ideal”, o tão almejado “bom para casar”, que garantiria uma vida familiar segura e digna. Para tanto, constituem fontes dessa pesquisa a revista Jornal das Moças ao longo dos anos 1950, um periódico quinzenal que dirigido às mulheres das classes médias das cidades brasileiras aconselharam suas leitoras a buscarem idealizações de si mesmas e que em sua íntima procura e responsabilidade seriam capazes de encontrar seus pares que revelariam qualidades a elas complementares correspondentes ao companheiro “ideal”. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: “homem ideal”; “marido ideal”, estereótipo do masculino.   ABSTRACT Each period builds stereotypes and its own means and regulations that can be conveyed in different ways, journals can be important ways to disseminate these standards, instill teachings, shape categories. In this way, the present article intends to know models that would correspond to the desired "ideal man", the longed for "good to marry", that would guarantee a safe and dignified family life. Therefore, the sources of this research is the “Jornal das Moças” during the 1950s, a biweekly magazine aimed at middle-class women in Brazilian cities that advised their readers to seek idealizations of themselves and that in their intimate search and responsibility they would be able to find their peers who would reveal complementary qualities corresponding to their "ideal" companion. KEYWORDS: “ideal man”, “ideal husband”, male stereotype

scholarly journals Bossa Nova: the reinvention and reinvigoration of samba in the 1950s

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
Martinus Helmiawan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Bossa Nova ◽  
National Music

<p>In a society where music becomes the core of its people’s life, many discourses emerge and root in music. In Brazil, for instance, samba as the national music represents the chronicle of the Brazilians, which starts from the slavery in eighteenth century. However, at the start of the era of Brazil’s modernism in 1950s, samba was deemed stagnant. It was unable to cope with the fast developments of Brazil’s politics, societies, and cultures. This essay observes the history of samba, investigates the reasons why samba becomes stagnant and reviews the efforts made to revitalize it through the invention of Bossa Nova. In the process of redefining samba, American jazz plays an important role as the agent which brings modernity and revolution to the original samba. The ideology of the Brazilian urban middle class is also important, as well as Brazilian 1950s musicians’ efforts such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, or Vinicius de Moraes. This paper aims to analyze Bossa Nova’s contributions in revitalizing and redefining samba, with its jazz influence which could be traced from the ideology of the Brazilian urban middle class. The paper also highlights the contradiction between foreign influences and traditional heritages in the music.</p>

‘Forgive Me, Love…It Was Stronger than I am’: Negotiating Intimacy and Sexuality

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-91
Author(s):  
Niamh Cullen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Common Site ◽  
Time Out ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter explores intimacy and sexuality in courtship. The ordinary experiences of the diaries and memoirs are set against the (somewhat) differing codes of morality dictated by the Catholic Church, the Communist Party (PCI), and mass culture so that we can see how people often measured their choices and experiences against their ideas of how a model man or woman should behave. We see how the rituals, rules, and surveillance common in upper- and middle-class courtships in the 1950s often left little room for intimacy. Meanwhile, the piazza, a common site of courtship in most towns and cities, was all too often about display rather than real communication. By the late 1950s, the economic boom was beginning to open up new spaces of leisure and intimacy for young Italians, particularly the beach and the car. As couples began to spend more time out of the home together, courtship was becoming both more public and more private, with these new spaces providing more space for intimacy and sexuality, with increasingly shared leisure and communication between the sexes.

Expresso Bongo and Make Me an Offer: The ‘Angry Young Musical’ in the 1950s

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Wells
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
British Society ◽  
British Identity ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The 1950S

Following on from John Osborne’s infamous play Look Back in Anger of 1956, London’s stage saw the emergence of the ‘Angry Young Man’, realistic portrayals of working-class men in a difficult age. Expresso Bongo and Lily White Boys, works of the mid-to-late 1950s, demonstrate that the angry young man was also present in London’s musicals, previously an upper- and middle-class genre. Featuring the Soho district, gangsters, prostitutes and rock music, this unique era of musical theatre changed expectations of what musical theatre could and would offer to a jaded urban audience. These astonishing musical theatre works offer potent commentary on British society, British identity and particularly disenfranchised young British men, and offer insights into American and British relations, gender roles and expectations, and the complicated role of working-class men in the new Elizabethan era.

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