Economies of Accomplishments

2020 ◽  
pp. 136-165
Author(s):  
Glenda Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The Self ◽  
Musical Ability ◽  
Critical Mode ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Amateur Musicians ◽  
Prescriptive Literature

Amateur music-making was often labeled a feminine “accomplishment”—a designation that carried ambivalent connotations. The extensive and contradictory prescriptive literature about accomplishments, and the broader discussion about women’s education of which it was a part, deemed musical ability at once essential and frivolous. The justifications for accomplishments cohered primarily around the theme of patriarchal authority: pleasing fathers and husbands and attracting potential mates. Warnings regarding accomplishments stemmed from scenarios where such justifications went awry (with foolish fathers and rakish suitors). Yet the lived experiences of amateur musicians show that young women took pleasure in the self-fashioning opportunities musical performances afforded. Moreover, in courtship and marriage, music served not simply to please and entertain others, but, as Sarah Brown’s experiences demonstrate, also was a critical mode through which family intimacy was built and maintained.

The Well-Mannered Auditor

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Deaville
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Drawing Room ◽  
The Way

The chapter explores the way English-language etiquette books from the nineteenth century prescribe accepted behavior for upwardly mobile members of the bourgeoisie. This advice extended to social events known today as “salons” that were conducted in the domestic drawing room or parlor, where guests would perform musical selections for the enjoyment of other guests. The audience for such informal music making was expected to listen attentively, in keeping with the (self-) disciplining of the bourgeois body that such regulations represented in the nineteenth century. Yet even as the modern world became noisier and aurally more confusing, so, too, did contemporary social events, which led authors to become stricter in their disciplining of the audience at these drawing room performances. Nevertheless, hosts and guests could not avoid the growing “crisis of attention” pervading this mode of entertainment, which would lead to the modern habit of inattentive listening.

Affective Transmission and the Invention of Characters in the Victorian Bildungsroman

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-691
Author(s):  
Amanda Auerbach
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Interpersonal Emotions

“Affective Transmission and the Invention of Characters in the Victorian Bildungsroman” reconsiders several novels about young women as they make their way into a larger social world. Rather than achieving self-discipline, as has frequently been argued, heroines such as Lucy Snowe, Maggie Tulliver, and Margaret Hale tend to be overpowered by interpersonal emotions. They distance themselves from these affects by attributing them to fictitious characters. The gendered variation of the larger tradition this article sketches out calls into question the premise of the bildungsroman as a whole, raising the possibility that the adjustment of the self to external realities is never as complete as it seems.

Psychotic, acritical and precarious? A Lacanian exploration of the neoliberal consumer subject

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliette Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Mental Health Issues

Extending the critical project of interrogating the consumer subject form, in this study, the consumer subject is read as potentially acritical, precarious and psychotic through Dufour’s Lacanian-inspired analysis of neoliberal subjectivity. Reflecting on two case studies from an ethnographic-type study of young women, identity and consumer culture, I demonstrate how participants attempt to fulfil neoliberal ideals related to agency, productivity and creativity. Relying on commodities for symbolic anchoring in doing so, a ‘psychotic’ and precarious subject position is evidenced. While the findings could certainly be interpreted as productive, tendencies toward materialism, uncertainty and anxiety, along with pervasive mental health issues, provided the impetus to further problematise dominant understandings of the consumer. Neoliberal consumer culture is evidenced as a harmful, dehumanising ideology that fosters competitiveness, individuality and meritocratic tendencies, encouraging a reliance on ever-changing, transient commodities to (in)form the self. This occurs at the expense of compromise, communality and social welfare, through which subjects may find more stable and emancipatory symbolic anchors. Only by recognising critical theorisations of the consumer as dominant subject positions of neoliberalism can cultural consumer researchers begin to imagine opportunities for resistance and emancipatory change.

scholarly journals DOWRY, ‘DOWRY AUTONOMY’ AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AMONG YOUNG MARRIED WOMEN IN INDIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saseendran Pallikadavath ◽  
Tamsin Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Women’S Autonomy ◽  
Women's Autonomy ◽  
Paid Employment ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Women In India

SummaryDowry practice, women’s autonomy to use dowry (‘dowry autonomy’) and the association of these with domestic violence were examined among young married women in India. Data were taken from the ‘Youth in India: Situation and Needs Study’ carried out in six Indian states during 2006–07. A total of 13,912 women aged 15–24 years were included in the study. About three-quarters of the women reported receiving a dowry at their marriage, and about 66% reported having the ability to exercise autonomy over the use of it – ‘dowry autonomy’. Dowry given without ‘dowry autonomy’ was found to have had no protective value against young women experiencing physical domestic violence in India. While women’s participation in paid employment increased the odds of them experiencing physical domestic violence, women’s education and marrying after the age of 18 years reduced the likelihood of experiencing physical domestic violence.

Music as Feminine Capital in Napoleonic France: Nancy Macdonald’s Musical Upbringing

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Women And Music ◽  
French Student ◽  
Musical Activities

Abstract This microhistory situates the musical activities of Nancy Macdonald, a French student at Madame Campan’s National Institute for Young Women and Napoleon Bonaparte’s school for daughters of Legion of Honour Recipients, in broader discourses about women and music in Napoleonic France. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of capital, it eschews a simplistic assessment of music as either constraining or liberating young women, by arguing instead that performance operated as a kind of ‘feminine capital’, accrued and then circulated to achieve tangible socio-economic ends. A feminine-capital framework exposes the paradoxes inherent in female music-making and reveals how values about music were enculturated from girlhood to womanhood in France. This approach contributes to recent scholarship that challenges the rigid binaries previously defining women’s musical labour during the Classical era and inserts France into historiographies of women’s musical practices in the early nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Experiencing Transformative Learning: An Autoethnographic Journey through Ethical Dilemma Story Pedagogy (EDSP)

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Kashiraj Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Ethical Dilemma ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The Self ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
The Subject

I believe our cultural heritage has so much potential for creating new forms of knowing about the self, others, community, and environment while also revealing the interconnected spaces and realities that reside between cultures and people. The Nepalese heritage encompasses through a rich tradition of narratives in storying. For the purpose of present research, I composed two ethical dilemma stories and discussed them in classrooms with a critically reflective understanding of the subject matter where I utilised the local, lived contexts and characters from the Nepalese society. The results have shown that this study, with the use of ethical dilemma stories as a key tool to interact with the research participants, gave sufficient challenges and possibilities for transformative learning. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the unification of my personal, professional, and cultural spheres that are focused on the importance of transformative learning using an autoethnographic methodology. The paper also tries to document my lived experiences through stories as the understanding of my own self, other selves, and cultures around me.

scholarly journals Problematizing the Postfeminist Gaze: A Critical Exploration of Young Women’s Readings of Gendered Power Relations in Advertising

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 546-562
Author(s):  
Alexandra Serra Rome ◽  
Stephanie O’Donohoe ◽  
Susan Dunnett
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Exploration ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Women As Readers ◽  
Blind Spots

This article explores young women’s engagements with gendered power relations embedded in advertising. Drawing on four case studies, we demonstrate how their readings of gendered ads are informed by postfeminist discourse, which, for all its contradictions, presents gender inequality as a thing of the past. Specifically, we illustrate and theorize the problematic workings of a postfeminist gaze directed at both models in ads and young women as readers of ads, with judgements shaped by postfeminist ideals and blind spots concerning intersections of gender, class, and race. We contribute to macromarketing scholarship by (1) illustrating how, in the context of gendered ads and young American women, gendered power relations and a postfeminist sensibility are both produced by and productive of gendered readers; and (2) highlighting the insidious nature and limitations of this sensibility informing young women’s lived experiences, engagements with media culture, and position in society.

Fate, Memory, and the Postcolonial Construction of the Self: The Life-Narrative of a Vietnamese Spirit Medium

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten W. Endres
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Narrative Research ◽  
The Self ◽  
Life Narrative ◽  
Cultural Concepts ◽  
Dialogic Process ◽  
Multiple Discourses

Life-history and narrative research have a long tradition as insightful methods in anthropology. This article presents the life-story of an elderly Hanoian spirit medium who does not conform to dominant ideals of Vietnamese femininity, exploring how cultural concepts and religious imageries shape female notions of fate and agency. By applying Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, the analysis illustrates how the creative act of self-narrative interweaves with multiple discourses in a dialogic process that tries to make sense of historical contingencies, culturally prescribed ideals, and the lived experiences of the self.

scholarly journals Agentic Practice and Privileging Orientations Among Privately Educated Young Women

2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 800-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Maxwell ◽  
Peter Aggleton
Keyword(s):  
Private Schools ◽  
Young Women ◽  
The Self ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Family ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Affective Experiences

This paper examines factors driving the agentic practices of young women who are privately educated. The analysis informing this paper comes from a three-year study, in which 91 young women aged 15–19 years were interviewed. Four private schools in one area of middle England participated in the research, and over half of the young women were re-interviewed 12–18 months later. Our starting point is the degree to which particular orientations within families are aligned to those being promoted within the various private schools in our study. The affective experiences of alignment but also of disorientation within and between the family and the school, drive significant forms of internal conversation ( Archer, 2003 ). In this paper we examine two kinds of internal conversations found within our study – one that is assured and optimistic, and another, which is more fractured. These different internal conversations lead to the emergence of differing projects of the self, expressed through practices that by their very nature of being committed to self-directed progress can be understood as being agentic. The consequences of these different projects of the self suggest that the reproduction of class privilege cannot be taken for granted – but is always provisional and contested, even among those who are privately educated.

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