Generative Themes

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-72
Author(s):  
Paul Apostolidis
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Critical Awareness ◽  
Oppressed People ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Working People ◽  
Multiple Levels

This chapter crafts a vision for social research that provokes critical opposition to the forces driving precaritization by drawing on popular education. Freire suggests that researchers should listen methodically for the “generative themes”—characteristic uses of language—through which oppressed people name their daily struggles. Folding such thematic inquiry into a broader approach called “critical-popular research” opens two complementary trajectories of social critique and political activation. As focal points for local popular-educational dialogues, such themes can spark critical awareness and practical resolve among the poor and excluded. A theme’s generative potential also springs from its resonances with existing critical-theoretical accounts of general social tendencies that affect certain groups especially harshly but also implicate working people at large. In association with a politics of the “demand,” critical-popular research can invite affective, reflective, and practical responses that combine militancy with receptivity and challenge precarity on multiple levels.

Youth-Led REP: Building Critical Consciousness for Social Change

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
Jonathan London ◽  
Melissa Chabrán
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Empowerment Evaluation ◽  
Community Based Research ◽  
The Social

If knowledge is a form of power, then to lack knowledge is to lack power, and to build knowledge is to build power. This seemingly basic notion is at the source of diverse streams of theory and practice entitled participatory action research, community-based research, counter mapping, popular education and empowerment evaluation. It is from these historical, political and methodological headwaters that a relatively new stream of work, called youth-led action research, evaluation and planning, arises. These practices, while distinct, all represent attempts to build the power and capacity of those at the margins of society to examine, define, and ultimately shape their worlds according to their needs, visions and values. Youth-led action research, evaluation and planning expands the social critique and progressive stance towards breaking the monopolies of power/knowledge to include age-based inequities, along with (and in relationship to) inequities based on race, ethnicity, class gender, sexuality and other markers of difference.

Marxism, Morality and Ideology the Marxist Moral Paradox and the Struggle for Social Justice

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-239
Author(s):  
Mokgethi B.G. Mothlabi
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Moral Issue ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
The People ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Working People ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One

AbstractThere is a certain paradox inherent in Marx's criticism of morality. On the one hand, he rejects morality as a form of bourgeois ideology which serves mainly to justify the status quo. The status quo in question is one which is mainly detrimental to ordinary working people, while favouring property owners as well as owners of the means of production. In this sense Marx's condemnation of morality resembles his condemnation of religion, which he saw as the opium of the people. On the other hand, Marx employs morally significant language to challenge what he regards as the evils of capitalism and their destructive effects on the working class. It becomes clear from all this that capitalism cannot be seen as purely an economic matter. Insofar as it affects the lives and well-being of people, it is also a moral issue and deserves to be judged accordingly. How Marx steers between his seeming rejection of morality and, at the same time, using it to criticise capitalism is the main concern of this article. In the process, Marx's concept of ideology is explained while the focus and motivation of his social critique is also briefly considered.

The biographical approach in (post-) subcultural studies: Exploring punk in China

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 707-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
Biographical Approach ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary

While the biographical approach is widely employed in applied and theoretical social research, it is less fully developed in the specific field of (post-) subcultural studies. The article demonstrates the utility of the biographical method for (post) subcultural studies by presenting research on the punk phenomenon in an authoritarian social context within China. The discussion draws upon a qualitative study based on interviews with 34 Chinese punk musicians. Although the article focuses on one of these musicians in particular, the arguments are informed by broader research findings. Specifically, emphasis is placed on examining how the punk musician experiences the gradual process of deepening commitment to the punk scene and, through this, the multiple levels of power relations in his life. It is argued that the biographical approach can highlight the subjectivity of individual participants in their everyday practices and the wider social context in which they are actors. This article forms part of ‘On the Move’, a special issue marking the twentieth anniversary of the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

scholarly journals Ontario Retailers in the Early Twentieth Century: Dismantling the Social Bridge

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-227
Author(s):  
David Monod
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Working People ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Abstract This article explores the theory that late-nineteenth century and eary-twentieth century retailing served as an avenue to upward mobility. An examination of retailing in Ontario suggests two things: first, that shopkeeping was a deeply stratified occupation in which the poor remained marginalized at the bottom: and second, that over the course of the early twentieth century interest in retailing declined among working people as the business of storekeeping “professionalized”.

scholarly journals Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) Production in the Cameroonian Cotton Basin between the Dynamics of Structuring an Agricultural Value Chain and Sustainability Issues

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Joël Fofiri Nzossié ◽  
Christophe Bring
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Agricultural Activities ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Working People ◽  
Glycine Max L ◽  
Real Value ◽  
Sustainability Challenges ◽  
And Control

Over the past ten years, the Cameroonian cotton front, in the Sudano-Sahelian region, has experienced dynamics in soybean production, resulting in significant changes in agro-systems. From a simple hut culture not referenced in regional agricultural statistics, since 2010, soybean ranks 2nd in legumes cultivated after peanuts, followed by cowpea and voandzou, yet culturally and economically more adopted by the populations. The rapid development of cultivated areas from 6,705 ha in 2008 to 15,020 ha in 2018 is indicative of the enthusiasm shown by farmers for this speculation which, despite the almost lack of supervision on the part of public authorities, now structures a real value chain with challenges for improving farmers’ incomes, in a space where more than 80% of working people live from agricultural activities. The objective of this research is therefore to analyse the sustainability challenges of a productive and market dynamics built around speculation subject to strong demands of international competitiveness. The results show that the viability of this dynamics remains precarious through a set of constraints inherent in the proven inability of farmers to empower themselves to optimise production and control marketing, as well as the poor technical supervision of cultivation.

Prophetic Preaching, Liberation Theology and the Holy Land

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-244
Author(s):  
Duncan Macpherson
Keyword(s):  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Prophetic Preaching ◽  
Oppressed People ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Preferential Option ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

For Christian preachers the Holy Land is essential to understanding the Bible. Preachers often leave modern Israel-Palestine out of their preaching picture. Others, fundamentalist preachers, support modern Israel for its part in an apocalyptic drama of the last times. A third group sees the land as the recompense to the Jewish people for their sufferings – reinforced for some by a residually literalist interpretation of Scripture. Still others show solidarity with indigenous Palestinian Christians, developing a theology of liberation emphasising God's preferential option for the poor – the Palestinians and all oppressed people. Homiletic strategies will be sketched to illustrate this last approach.

ANTISEMITISM AND SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN DICKENS'SOLIVER TWIST

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Physical Violence ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social

WHEN SIKES AND NANCY RECAPTURE OLIVER, in Dickens'sOliver Twist, intending to return him to the gang of thieves, Sikes warns Oliver against crying out to passersby, announcing that his dog will go for Oliver's throat if he so much as speaks one word. Looking at the dog, who is eyeing Oliver and growling and licking his lips, “with a kind of grim and ferocious approval,” Sikes tells Oliver, “He's as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn't!” (109; ch. 16). Sikes of course simply intends to say that his dog is as good as human, but Dickens's joke, in the context of the novel, is a chilling one. Sikes's bloodthirsty dogisas willing as the novel has shown many a professed Christian to be to exercise brute power over the weak and helpless, to drive Oliver into a life of crime, and to commit physical violence against him. In the course of the novel, Dickens shows what professed Christians have been willing to do to the poor and invites his readers to contemplate what they as Christians should instead be willing to do.Oliver Twistis of course deeply concerned with the condition of England's poor, and Dickens invokes the idea of Christianity as a rhetorical tool through which to make the social commentary that is at the novel's moral center.

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