Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily E. LB. Twarog
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cost Of Living ◽  
Traditional Family ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Second Wave

The introduction traces the involvement of working-class housewives in political action from the 1930s as their involvement in cost of living protests, such as meat boycotts, led to a complicated involvement in organized political action. Tracing the entrance of these women into the political sphere through the emergence of the conservative right, it argues that as housewives negotiated the intersection of their homes, labor, community, and the marketplace, they formed a unique political constituency group in the twentieth century, which failed to find cohesion with the second-wave feminism in the 1970s, which dismissed domestic politics that these women were engaged in because it was rooted in the traditional family model, viewed with suspicion by works like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. This left a distinctive form of activism to pave the way for conservative women’s movement made famous by anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly and the conservative watch group the Eagle Forum.

The 1935 Meat Boycott and the Evolution of Domestic Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily E. LB. Twarog
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
City Council ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Cost Of Living ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Protest Activity

This chapter opens in Hamtramck, Michigan during the Great Depression with the story of Mary Zuk, a working-class housewife who spearheaded a national boycott against the high cost of meat in 1935. This chapter considers the shift that working-class housewives began to experience during the 1930s as their involvement in cost of living protests, such as meat boycotts, led to a more sustained involvement in organized political action. With the exception of a handful of working-class women, this was a relatively new result of protest activity. It also marks a turning point in women’s activism as Zuk used her experience during the meat boycott to continue her activism rather than fall back into the shadows. After the end of the boycott, Zuk continued to organize and eventually launch a successful bid for Hamtramck city council.

Resiliency or Resignation: Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Austro-Marxism, and the Psychology of Unemployment, 1919–1933

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Charles H. Clavey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Present State ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Unemployed

The Unemployed of Marienthal (1933) has long been esteemed as a classic of twentieth-century social science; its portrait of the effects of joblessness on individual minds and social institutions has inspired generations of researchers. But this reception has largely overlooked the political origins and implications of the study. This essay resituates Marienthal in the context of its creation and dissemination: the distinctive Marxism of interwar Austria. Specifically, it demonstrates that Marienthal introduced social-psychological methods and findings into Marxist debates about the present state and future prospects of the working class. Led by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, the Marienthal researchers adopted the Austro-Marxist goal of creating a model proletariat through a program of “anticipatory socialism.” But by finding that unemployment confounded efforts to reform the working class, Marienthal undermined the very program it aimed to support. In fact, the essay shows, Marienthal authorized arguments that the unemployed were unreliable political actors—“declassed” workers as likely to become reactionaries as revolutionaries. The essay concludes by considering whether Marienthal embodied a distinctively Austro-Marxist “style” of thinking and research.

scholarly journals Returning to the root: Radical feminist thought and feminist theories of International Relations

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-375
Author(s):  
David Duriesmith ◽  
Sara Meger
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Radical Feminism ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Second Wave

AbstractFeminist International Relations (IR) theory is haunted by a radical feminist ghost. From Enloe's suggestion that the personal is both political and international, often seen as the foundation of feminist IR, feminist IR scholarship has been built on the intellectual contributions of a body of theory it has long left for dead. Though Enloe's sentiment directly references the Hanisch's radical feminist rallying call, there is little direct engagement with the radical feminist thinkers who popularised the sentiment in IR. Rather, since its inception, the field has been built on radical feminist thought it has left for dead. This has left feminist IR troubled by its radical feminist roots and the conceptual baggage that feminist IR has unreflectively carried from second-wave feminism into its contemporary scholarship. By returning to the roots of radical feminism we believe IR can gain valuable insights regarding the system of sex-class oppression, the central role of heterosexuality in maintaining this system, and the feminist case for revolutionary political action in order to dismantle it.

scholarly journals Modern Rape-Revenge Movies and Shelley’s The Cenci

k ta ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-78
Author(s):  
Sahar Jamshidian ◽  
Fazel Asadi Amjad
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal System ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Female Victim ◽  
Prometheus Unbound ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Face ◽  
Traditional Pattern ◽  
Second Wave

Viewing Shelley’s The Cenci from the political upheavals of the nineteenth century would limit one’s response to the play to the issues of that century. However, this play continues to be played in the twenty first century, which makes one wonder how a modern spectator with a feminist inclination might react to the theme of rape and revenge. The Cenci shares with a number of movies flourishing with the rise of the second wave feminism during the 1970s, the theme of a female victim transformed into a hero-avenger, who takes law into her own hands and avenges herself in the face of a dysfunctional legal state. As revisions of the archetypal narratives of violation-revenge-violation, these modern movies have been praised for depicting heroines who are no longer powerless, miserable and victimized, but strong enough to avenge themselves with impunity. Though The Cenci repeats the traditional pattern of violation-revenge-violation, it focuses on the corruption and irresponsibility of the patriarchal legal system as well as its reformation, which have been neglected by both mythical narratives and modern rape-revenge movies. By reading The Cenci along with William Blake’s “Visions of the Daughters of Albion” and Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound,” we examine how The Cenci challenges the modern rape-revenge movies and how Beatrice could have used her agency and her anger in a more effective way to fight against tyranny. 

Sangre sin Revolución

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Manley
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Many ◽  
Second Wave

Chapter 6 addresses the ways in which many Dominican activists interrogated the role of Balaguer’s government in the regulation of individual’s women’s lives and families and challenged many of its violent, dictatorial tendencies. Refuting the regime’s argument for a “revolution without blood,” many women described the government’s agenda to national and inter-American audiences as “blood without revolution” and continued to mobilize within the opposition through the discourse of motherhood and family. However, the chapter also looks at the many cracks developing in the discourse of maternalism that, coupled with an ever-deepening awareness of the tools and tactics of international second-wave feminism, pushed many women to challenge a model of political participation that constructed their roles in the political arena merely as nurturers and caretakers.

1975 The Year of Women

Making Waves ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Diana Holmes ◽  
Imogen Long
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Student Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Status ◽  
Cultural Themes ◽  
Impossible Task ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second Wave

The relationship between 1970s French radical feminists (the MLF) and Françoise Giroud, the first ‘Minister for Women’ in France, was a difficult one. Second-wave feminism in France was grounded in the contestation of the status quo, in the wake of the 1960s student movement out of which some of the groups emerged. Being part of the political establishment was therefore in itself an anathema to some second-wave feminists, as can be seen, for example, by satirical feminist films mocking Giroud’s role and her interventions. Through the prism of 1975, officially declared ‘International Women’s Year’ by the United Nations, this chapter explores the key campaigning and cultural themes of the MLF and their relationship to Giroud’smore reformist and, arguably, impossible task as Minister for Women.

Miners and National Politics in Peru, 1900–1974

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Laite
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Processes

For much of the twentieth century the Peruvian working-class has been limited in size and divided between different groups with divergent political objectives. Successive Peruvian governments have been able to capitalize on these features in their attempts to control the working-class, directly regulating workers' organizations or playing off one group against another. Yet, despite these limits and divisions, workers have on several occasions staged general strikes and pressured governments into taking account of their demands. Consequently, the political development of sectors of the working-class at the local level has been closely affected by political processes at the national level.

Explaining Social Movement Outcomes

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 499-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Franceschet
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity Structure ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Action Frame ◽  
Second Wave

This article compares the outcomes of first- and second-wave feminism in Chile. The author argues that the double-militancy strategy of second-wave feminists emerged out of shifts in the political opportunity structure that led the movement to adapt its collective action frame. First-wave feminists had constructed a gender frame that depicted women as apolitical. In a context in which political parties were class based and saw little need to address women’s issues, neither the gender frame nor the political opportunity structure invited a double-militancy strategy. The context for second-wave activists was different. The politicization of women’s maternal identities altered the meaning of the maternal gender frame. Because the prodemocracy parties needed the support of women’s movements (and female voters), they invited women’s participation. Thus, the political opportunity structure and a more politicized gender frame encouraged a double-militancy strategy, ultimately leading to the realization of some of the movement’s goals.

scholarly journals “The road from Mandalay to Wigan is a long one and the reasons for taking it aren’t immediately clear”: A World-System Biography of George Orwell

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-338
Author(s):  
Brendan McQuade
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Action ◽  
World System ◽  
George Orwell ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Road ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Historical Moment

George Orwell is one the best known and highly regarded writers of the twentieth century. In his adjective form—Orwellian—he has become a “Sartrean ‘singular universal,’ an individual whose “singular” experiences express the “universal” character of a historical moment. Orwell is a literary representation of the unease felt in the disenchanted, alienated, anomic world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This towering cultural legacy obscures a more complex and interesting legacy. This world-system biography explains his contemporary relevance by retracing  the road from Mandalay to Wigan that transformed Eric Blair, a disappointing-Etonian-turned-imperial-policeman, into George Orwell, a contradictory and complex socialist and, later, literary icon. Orwell’s contradictory class position—between both ruling class and working class and nation and empire—and resultantly tense relationship to nationalism, empire, and the Left  makes his work a particularly powerful exposition of the tension between comsopolitianism and radicalism, between the abstract concerns of intellectuals and the complex demands of local political action. Viewed in full, Orwell represents the “traumatic kernel” of our age of cynicism: the historic failure and inability of the left to find a revolutionary path forward between the “timid reformism” of social democrats and “comfortable martyrdom” of anachronistic and self-satisfied radicals.

scholarly journals User Errors: Reason, (Xeno)-Feminism and the Political Insufficiency of Ontology

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 54-68
Author(s):  
Ben Woodard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Vexed Question ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second Wave

This paper revisits elements of second wave feminism—in its psychoanalytic, radical, materialist, Marxist and deconstructionist aspects—the better to understand how it is we might define sexual difference today. The vexed question of sexuation, of what it means to be a woman in particular has today generated great tensions at the theoretical, legal and philosophical level. This paper is an attempt to return to aspects of the second wave—an unfinished project where many enduring feminist concerns were for the first time thoroughly and metaphysically articulated—the better to defend the importance of sexual difference. To this end, the transcendental and parallax dimensions of sexed life will be discussed, alongside a defence of the centrality of the mother to our thinking about the relevance and necessity of preserving the importance of sexual difference, not only for thought but also for political and legal life. Author(s): Ben Woodard  Title (English): User Errors: Reason, (Xeno)-Feminism and the Political Insufficiency of Ontology Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 54-68 Page Count: 15 Citation (English): Ben Woodard, “User Errors: Reason, (Xeno)-Feminism and the Political Insufficiency of Ontology,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 54-68. Author Biography Ben Woodard, Independent Researcher Ben Woodard is an independent scholar living in Germany. His work focuses on the relationship between naturalism and idealism during the long nineteenth century. He is currently preparing a monograph on the relation of naturalism and formalism in the life sciences. His book Schelling’s Naturalism was published in 2019 by Edinburgh University Press.

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