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.

“Maid’s Day Off”: Leisured Domesticity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (4) ◽  
pp. 1316-1331
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Household Labor ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Home Based ◽  
American Model ◽  
Jewish Americans ◽  
Domestic Roles ◽  
Family Centered

Abstract At the height of the mid-twentieth-century domestic revival, middle-class Jewish women created forms of “leisured domesticity,” marked by temporary female-only recreational spaces in their family-centered arenas. In contrast to other forms of recreation, with mahjong second-generation Jewish women gained an entitlement to peer-oriented leisure in the site of domestic labor: the home. Based on extensive oral histories, Heinz argues that consistent cultural patterns emerged around mahjong. These commonalities created a widespread culture that reached its height in the postwar years of upward mobility, experienced in particularly pronounced ways by Jewish Americans. Although the culture of mahjong could reinforce women’s domestic roles as much as undermine them, the weekly mahjong ritual demanded a temporary reallocation of household labor. Understandings of postwar life have largely been shaped by a duality between what defined an idealized domesticity in theory (devoted mothers in family-centered middle-class homes) and the ways that women resisted or were excluded from these norms. In contrast, the practices of leisured domesticity illuminate a multidimensional reality. Mahjong-playing mothers neither overthrew nor fully acquiesced to the powerful norms of postwar American “model” domesticity. Creating a widely accepted rhythm of women’s recreation made domesticity more livable by carving out patterns of leisure within it.

Translation and Its Affects

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-215
Author(s):  
William A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Language ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Vanity Fair ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
Do So

Vanity Fair (1848) famously opens with a departure. As Becky Sharpe flounces off from Miss Pinkerton's academy, she takes leave of her patron by telling her “in a very unconcerned manner … and with a perfect accent, ‘Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux.’” Miss Pinkerton, we learn, “did not understand French, she only directed those who did: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosed head … said, ‘Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning’” (7). This performance of befuddlement on the part of a respectable schoolmistress bespeaks a whole collection of Victorian cultural norms about language competence in general and about the French language in particular. Even though the action is set in a period when Becky's speaking “French with purity and a Parisian accent … [was] rather a rare accomplishment” (11), the novel was written for a mid-nineteenth-century audience that could mainly count on middle-class young ladies to have acquired this degree of refinement—or at least to aspire to do so.

Parents displaying family consumption in Ireland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Kiely ◽  
Debbie Ging ◽  
Karl Kitching ◽  
Máire Leane
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Entire Field ◽  
The Family ◽  
Irish Study ◽  
Family Consumption

This article considers qualitative data collected from 78 parents in an Irish study on the commercialisation and sexualisation of children. It makes a distinctive contribution in showing that the framework of family display (Finch, 2007) can be productively applied to the entire field of family consumption. It shows that consumption narratives can be viewed as a tool that is used to display family – in other words, showing how family is done – to internal family members and to outsiders. While family display has been more often applied empirically with non-conventional families, its relevance for all families is reasserted by our data. Our application of the family display framework shows that middle-class parenting ideals are stretched and can become unstuck when displayed by middle-class parents, the constituency most associated with their production and propagation.

The Taming of Highland Masculinity: Interpersonal Violence and Shifting Codes of Manhood, c. 1760–1840

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Abrams
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
The Law ◽  
Violent Assault

This chapter argues that male interpersonal violence provides a way in which divergent, conflicting and shifting codes of manliness in Scottish society can be discerned. Historians of masculinity have argued that the eighteenth century saw a change in the model of manhood as male interpersonal violence in defence of honour and reputation was replaced by the advocacy of self-governance and recourse to the law. Using court records of violent assault, this chapter focusses on a type of modernizing society – the Scottish Highlands 1760-1840 - in which a code of violence governed by an indigenous culture of manhood was gradually superceded by new cultural norms. An earlier association of masculinity with interpersonal violence in the Highlands was challenged increasingly from around 1800 by those who advocated civility and restraint amongst men, especially in the growing Highland town of Inverness, the centre of an emerging middle-class culture with changing social sensibilities

The Mobility Puzzle and Irreconcilable Choices

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranita Ray
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Work Function ◽  
Service Industry ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Marginalized Youth ◽  
Early Parenthood ◽  
Cultural Turn ◽  
Expansion Of Higher Education

This chapter provides an overview of academic debates around the role of structure, culture, and agency in understanding the reproduction of poverty. It is argued that the recent “cultural turn” in poverty studies continues to construct drugs, gangs, violence, and early parenthood as central narratives in the lives of poor black and brown youth, while it privileges middle-class cultural norms. In doing so, scholars ignore the trajectories of youth who continuously struggle to become upwardly mobile. Families, romantic ties, and institutions of school and work function in paradoxical ways in the lives of marginalized youth—providing support while creating impediments as youth are forced to figure out a complex mobility puzzle while piecing together the scant resources available to them. This chapter also highlights how expansion of higher education and the service industry shapes educational and occupational trajectories of marginalized youth. It concludes with a discussion on issues of fieldwork and methodology.

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.

Portrait of a civic elite

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-48
Author(s):  
Alice Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
Dynamic Community ◽  
Class Community

This chapter sketches a group portrait of Belfast’s middle-class elite, taking in geographical, religious and class origins, education, wealth, and standards of living. A key focus of this chapter is the mid-century civic elite: that is, those people who dominated municipal life in Belfast in the middle decades of the century. The chapter does, however, go beyond this group, using various case-studies to branch into a much broader discussion of middle-class wealth, standards of living and social mobility. It provides an overview of the Victorian middle-class community as a whole. A fresh look is cast on suburbanisation and how it affected Belfast’s middle-class community. Suburbanisation is a phenomenon related to social mobility and demographic and economic changes, and as such is highly relevant when studying a dynamic community over a period of time.

‘It depends on the consultation’: revisiting use of family members as interpreters for general practice consultations – when and why?

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Hilder ◽  
Ben Gray ◽  
Anthony Dowell ◽  
Lindsay Macdonald ◽  
Rachel Tester ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Family Member ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Patient Comfort ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Communication Analysis ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Medical Consultations ◽  
Potential Risks

Family members continue to be used as interpreters in medical consultations despite the well-known risks. This paper examines participant perceptions of this practice in three New Zealand clinics chosen for their frequent use of interpreters and their skill in using them. It is based on a detailed study of 17 video-recorded interpreted consultations and 48 post-consultation interviews with participants (5 doctors, 16 patients and 12 interpreters, including 6 family members). All participants expressed satisfaction with the communication. Analysis of the interviews explored what participants liked or valued about family member interpreters (FMIs). Key themes were the FMIs’ personal relationship and knowledge, patient comfort, trust, cultural norms, time efficiency and continued help outside the consultation. General practitioners (GPs) expressed awareness of potential risks and how to manage them, in contrast to patients and FMIs. Although the use of professional interpreters needs to be strongly promoted, a well-informed decision to use a family member is appropriate in some situations. GPs need to be well trained in how to assess and manage the risks. Rather than striving for ‘best practice’ (i.e. universal use of professional interpreters), it is better to aim for ‘good practice’ where a considered judgement is made about each situation on an individual basis.

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.

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