Progress and Nostalgia

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-97
Author(s):  
Sarah Farmer

In the 1970s, autobiographies and life stories by French peasants became bestsellers. Appearances on television turned some of these authors into celebrities. Their popularity reflected a passionate interest in peasant life and peasant society among the general reading public and scholars alike. Peasant memoirists recounted the old ways, but they also bridged the rift between France’s rural past and its modern technological present by addressing contemporary issues that the social and political activism of May 1968 had put on the agenda: environmentalism, feminism, regionalism (including movements seeking Breton and Occitan autonomy), and an interest in the local as a place for utopian experiment and renewal. This chapter focuses on some of the best-known peasant memoirists: Émilie Carles, Pierre Jakez Hélias, Ephraïm Grenadou, and Antoine Sylvère. It also describes the fame of “La mère Denis,” a country washerwoman who starred in washing machine advertisements.

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (12) ◽  
pp. 133-151
Author(s):  
Claudia de Lima Costa

This paper retraces the debates on life-histories before and after the linguistic turn in the social sciences, and, more specifically, in the anthropological tradition. It stresses how poststructuralist feminist methodological, theoretical, and political appropriations of personal narratives represent a significant textual intervention in the gendered social-cultural scripts of women’s lives.


1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 326-339
Author(s):  
Georg Braulik

Liturgy possesses a socio-critical potential which greatly surpasses political activism. It bypasses the systems of a "complex society", such as socialisation, communication and economics, through its factual logic which stands independent of faith. This political fo-rce is already developed by the feast on Sinai, to which Israel is lead out of Egypt (Ex 5:1-3). There, Israel receives the Torah, in order that its life as the people or community of Yahweh may be successful in the Promised Land. The community is to renew itself on occasion of the three pilgrimage festivals. For this purpose, Deuteronomy developed two basic types of popular liturgy within the scope of its theology of the people of God. The first is constituted by the passion commemoration of the passover (Dt 16:1-8). It aims at the social liberation of everyone in Israel, in commemorating their being lead out of Egyptian slavery. The second type is presented in the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles (16:9-12, 13-15). They initiate a fraternal society devoid of poverty, and already realise this in a realistic-symbolic way, through the communal meal of rejoicing in which all are to participate before Yahweh. According to this model, the eucharistic celebrative joy of the first Jerusalem congregation (Acts 2:44-46) reveals its community-changing force in the fact that "no poor were to be found any more" among the believers (Dt 15:4 in Acts 4:32-34).


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela Cornejo ◽  
Carolina Rocha ◽  
Nicolás Villarroel ◽  
Enzo Cáceres ◽  
Anastassia Vivanco

The current memory struggles about the Chilean dictatorship makes it increasingly relevant to hear a diverse range of voices on the subject. One way of addressing this is to study autobiographical narratives, in which people construct a character to present themselves as the protagonists of a story by taking multiple positions regarding what is remembered. This article presents a study that analyzed the life stories of Chilean people (diverse in their generations, cities, experiences of political repression, political orientations and socio-economic levels) and that distinguished between the positions that they take when presenting themselves as the protagonists of an autobiographical story about the Chilean dictatorship. The results point to salient and recurrent positions that allow people to earn the right to be considered part of the social history of the dictatorship, that involve different definitions regarding those responsible and the victims of what happened, and that unveil a strong family and filial logic of remembering.


Author(s):  
Derek A. Hutchinson ◽  
M. Shaun Murphy

Drawing on a broader narrative inquiry into the curriculum making of participants who compose identities dissonant with dominant stories of gender and sexuality, this article explores the shaping influence of the social (relationships, communities, and contexts) in one participant's life story around sexuality from a curricular perspective. The term curriculum making represents an ongoing process through which individuals make sense and meaning of experience, position curriculum broadly as a course of life, and shift notions of curriculum and curriculum making beyond the bounds of school. Individuals engage in identity making as they make sense of themselves in relation to their curriculum making, narratively understood as the composition of stories to live by. This inquiry highlights the ways that life stories are composed alongside, connected to, and shaped by other people and draws the attention of educators to the complex lives unfolding in schools.


2011 ◽  
pp. 3371-3388
Author(s):  
Pippa Norris

The core issue for this study concerns less the social than the political consequences of the rise of knowledge societies; in particular, the capacity of the Internet for strengthening democratic participation and civic engagement linking citizens and government. To consider these issues, Part I summarizes debates about the impact of the Internet on the public sphere. The main influence of this development, as it is theorized in a market model, will be determined by the “supply” and “demand” for electronic information and communications about government and politics. Demand, in turn, is assumed to be heavily dependent upon the social characteristics of Internet users and their prior political orientations. Given this understanding, the study predicts that the primary impact of knowledge societies in democratic societies will be upon facilitating cause-oriented and civic forms of political activism, thereby strengthening social movements and interest groups, more than upon conventional channels of political participation exemplified by voting, parties, and election campaigning. Part II summarizes the sources of survey data and the key measures of political activism used in this study, drawing upon the 19-nation European Social Survey, 2002. Part III examines the evidence for the relationship between use of the Internet and indicators of civic engagement. The conclusion in Part IV summarizes the results and considers the broader implications for governance and democracy.


Author(s):  
Pippa Norris

The core issue for this study concerns less the social than the political consequences of the rise of knowledge societies; in particular, the capacity of the Internet for strengthening democratic participation and civic engagement linking citizens and government. To consider these issues, Part I summarizes debates about the impact of the Internet on the public sphere. The main influence of this development, as it is theorized in a market model, will be determined by the “supply” and “demand” for electronic information and communications about government and politics. Demand, in turn, is assumed to be heavily dependent upon the social characteristics of Internet users and their prior political orientations. Given this understanding, the study predicts that the primary impact of knowledge societies in democratic societies will be upon facilitating cause-oriented and civic forms of political activism, thereby strengthening social movements and interest groups, more than upon conventional channels of political participation exemplified by voting, parties, and election campaigning. Part II summarizes the sources of survey data and the key measures of political activism used in this study, drawing upon the 19-nation European Social Survey, 2002. Part III examines the evidence for the relationship between use of the Internet and indicators of civic engagement. The conclusion in Part IV summarizes the results and considers the broader implications for governance and democracy.


Author(s):  
John Swain

Abe Kōbō (1924–1993) was a pivotal shingeki playwright and director as Japanese contemporary theatre matured after World War II. Known also as a novelist, Abe addressed themes of Japan’s struggle to redefine itself after the social and physical devastations of World War II. He did so without following a specific socialist agenda, and before the rise of 1960s counterculture political activism characterised by angura theatre. His works of fiction and drama have surreal characteristics, and his drama verges on Absurdism.


Author(s):  
Pippa Norris

The core issue for this study concerns less the social than the political consequences of the rise of knowledge societies; in particular, the capacity of the Internet for strengthening democratic participation and civic engagement linking citizens and government. To consider these issues, Part I summarizes debates about the impact of the Internet on the public sphere. The main influence of this development, as it is theorized in a market model, will be determined by the “supply” and “demand” for electronic information and communications about government and politics. Demand, in turn, is assumed to be heavily dependent upon the social characteristics of Internet users and their prior political orientations. Given this understanding, the study predicts that the primary impact of knowledge societies in democratic societies will be upon facilitating cause-oriented and civic forms of political activism, thereby strengthening social movements and interest groups, more than upon conventional channels of political participation exemplified by voting, parties, and election campaigning. Part II summarizes the sources of survey data and the key measures of political activism used in this study, drawing upon the 19-nation European Social Survey, 2002. Part III examines the evidence for the relationship between use of the Internet and indicators of civic engagement. The conclusion in Part IV summarizes the results and considers the broader implications for governance and democracy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-89
Author(s):  
Indrė Balčaitė

AbstractThis study probes the relationship between legal precarity and transborder citizenship through the case of the Karen from Myanmar in Thailand. Collected through ethnographic multi-sited fieldwork between 2012 and 2016, interconnected individual life stories evolving across the Myanmar-Thailand border allow the critical interrogation of the political and legal categories of ‘migrancy’, ‘refugeeness’, and ‘citizenship’, teasing out their blurry boundaries in migrants’ experience. Following the recent critical research in legal ethnography, this study demonstrates that legal precarity is not simply an antithesis to citizenship. The social and legal dimensions of citizenship may diverge, creating in-between areas of not-yet-full-citizenship with varying levels of heft (Macklin 2007). The article consists of three parts. First, it offers a theoretical framework to reconcile the Karen legal precarity (even de facto statelessness) and citizenship, even on both sides of the border (legally impossible). Second, it presents the three groups of Karen in Thailand, produced by the interaction of three major waves of Karen eastward migration and tightening Thai citizenship and migration regulations: Thai Karen, refugees, and migrant workers. All three face varying levels of legal precarity of temporary status without full citizenship. However, the last part demonstrates the intertwined nature of those groups. A grassroots transborder perspective reveals the resilience of the Karen networks when pooling together resources of the hubs established on Thai soil by the three waves. Even the most recent arrivals in Thailand use those resources to move from one precarious legal status to another and even to clandestinely obtain citizenship.


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