Beyond Bieber Fever

2021 ◽  
pp. 100-127
Author(s):  
Kai Arne Hansen

The chapter inquires into Justin Bieber’s 2020 comeback, which followed a hiatus in his career in the late 2010s. After detailing some of the central themes and events in Bieber’s early career, it presents analyses of two music videos: Yummy (2020) and Holy (2020). Yummy is characterized by camp elements that fuel Bieber’s exhibition of a puerile playfulness, whereas Holy presents an earnest portrayal of a down-on-his-luck oil worker who finds solace in religious faith and romantic commitment. Addressing the flexibility with which Bieber adopts contrasting gender expressions in these videos, the author contemplates a number of questions related to the continual reinvention that characterizes the careers of many pop artists. The chapter also discusses how issues related to the sexualization of food, the gendering of work, and the social constraints associated with marriage are navigated within a pop context. If both Yummy and Holy seem to expand the boundaries of masculinity, they are simultaneously characterized by heteronormative elements that undermine such an effort. It is therefore concluded that Bieber’s strategic borrowing from the cultures and practices of black, queer, and working-class men increases his masculine capital without challenging existing relations of privilege and marginalization.

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.


2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-162
Author(s):  
Stefan Van den Bossche

Het menselijke tekort in het algemeen, het rampzalige van de oorlog, de sociale en  culturele aspecten van de Vlaamse beweging, het Vlaams kunstleven aan de IJzer, het activisme, het frontisme: al die geladen thema’s komen rechtstreeks of onrechtstreeks aan bod in de bijdrage van Stefan Van den Bossche over Jos Verdegem (1897-1957). Deze minder bekende Gentse schilder uit het interbellum kwam eerst in nauwe betrekking met de expressionistische dichter en journalist Wies Moens en met andere vooraanstaande Vlaamsgezinde kunstenaars. Verdegems (tijdelijk) verblijf in Parijs en zijn huwelijk met een Française leidde er uiteindelijk toe dat hij vervreemde van het Vlaamsgezinde milieu. Daarenboven droegen zijn hoekige karaktereigenschappen er toe bij dat hij “eerder berucht dan beroemd” werd.________"A quiet, ill-mannered working-class lad". Jos Verdegem (1897-1957), Wies Moens and "Ter Waarheid"This contribution by Stefan Van den Bossche about Jos Verdegem (1897-1957) deals directly or indirectly with a variety of very meaningful topics such as human failure in general, the calamity of war, the social and cultural aspects of the Flemish movement, Flemish art life on the IJzer, activism, and frontism.This lesser-known painter from Ghent from the Interbellum period first came in close contact with the expressionist poet and journalist Wies Moens and with other prominent Flemish nationalist artists. Verdegem's (temporary) stay in Paris and his marriage to a Frenchwoman caused his ultimate estrangement from the Flemish nationalist environment. Moreover, his awkward characteristics contributed to his becoming "infamous rather than famous".


1971 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Millicent E. Poole ◽  
T. W. Field

The Bernstein thesis of elaborated and restricted coding orientation in oral communication was explored at an Australian tertiary institute. A working-class/middle-class dichotomy was established on the basis of parental occupation and education, and differences in overall coding orientation were found to be associated with social class. This study differed from others in the area in that the social class groups were contrasted in the totality of their coding orientation on the elaborated/restricted continuum, rather than on discrete indices of linguistic coding.


2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-438
Author(s):  
Eszter Bartha

Abstract The article seeks to place the workers’ road from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and Hungary in a historical context. It offers an overview of the most important elements of the party’s policy towards labour in the two countries under the Honecker and the Kádár regime respectively. It examines the highly paternalistic role of the factory as a life-long employer and provider of workers’ needs for the large industrial working class which the regime considered to be its main social basis. Given that the thesis of the working class as the ruling class was central to the legitimating ideology of the state socialist regimes, dissident intellectuals challenging this thesis were effectively marginalized or forced into exile. After the change of regimes, the “working class” again became an ideological term associated with the discredited and fallen regime. The article analyses the changes within the life-world of East German and Hungarian workers in the light of life-history interviews. It argues that in Hungary, the social and material decline of the workers – alongside the loss of the symbolic capital of the working class – reinforced ethno-centric, nationalistic narratives, which juxtaposed “globalization” and “national capitalism”, the latter supposedly protecting citizens from the exploitation by global capital. In the light of the sad reports of falling standards of living and impoverishment, the Kádár regime received an ambiguous, often nostalgic evaluation. While the East Germans were also critical of the new, capitalist society (unemployment, intensified competition for jobs, the disintegration of the old, work-based communities), they gave more credit to the post-socialist democratic institutions. They were more willing to reconcile the old socialist values which they had appreciated in the GDR with a modern left-wing critique than their Hungarian counterparts, for whom nationalism seemed to offer the only means to express social criticism.


2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itamar Shatz

Recruiting participants is a necessary step in many studies. With the advent of online research techniques, scientists are looking for new places where participants can be recruited online, in order to overcome the limitations of current sources and avoid the issues associated with sample overuse. The social media website “Reddit” is a potential source for recruitment, as it allows for free and rapid data collection from large samples, while enabling researchers to target specific populations when needed. The ability to recruit for free is especially important because it enables students and early career researchers, for whom even low recruitment costs can be prohibitive, to benefit from the opportunity of conducting research that they otherwise would not be able to. The current article therefore aims to bring this prospective, untapped resource to the attention of the research community. The article discusses current online recruitment sources and their limitations, provides an overview of Reddit, validates its use for research purposes, examines participation data from previous studies which recruited through Reddit, highlights its advantages and limitations as a participant pool, and suggests guidelines that can improve recruitment and retention rates for scientists looking to use Reddit for their research.


Soundings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (79) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Tony Jefferson

This article addresses the Labour Party's apparent inability to capitalise on the ready availability of good, progressive ideas. It suggests the key is to be found in the idea that the Labour Party no longer represents working-class people, a disjunction that can be best understood using Gramsci's distinction between 'common sense' and 'good sense'. Good sense is a more coherent development of everyday, commonsense thinking, based on its 'healthy nucleus'. However, it must never lose contact with common sense and become abstract and disconnected from life. Using this distinction, a critique of the common-sense notion of meritocracy follows, since the educational disconnect between Labour politicians and their working-class supporters is one of its malign results. This critique builds from the evidence of working-class rejection of meritocracy - the healthy nucleus that recognises the inadequacy of its justifying principle of equality of opportunity. To this is counterposed a good-sense notion of equality - one that embraces equal access to the means for achieving a flourishing life. This notion of equality is then used to explore a number of currently circulating political ideas concerned with equality, both their relationship to common sense and their potential to meet good sense criteria. These ideas include universal basic income, the Conservatives' proposed 'levelling up' agenda, and the demands of Black Lives Matter for racial justice, including the demand to 'defund the police'. A second thread is focused on the relationship between these discourses of common or good sense and the social forces with which they can be connected.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (61) ◽  
pp. 449-464
Author(s):  
Nicola Pizzolato

Abstract The social protest that engulfed Italy in the 1970s found a theoretical analysis in the work of the operaisti. Through a series of concepts, they outlined a new revolutionary practice that aimed to return to a more authentic reading of Marxism. This article focuses on the notion of 'refusal of work' and the ancillary concept of 'appropriation' and examines how these theoretical tools emerged out of radical protest in factories and were put forward by the operaisti as a central plank of a revolutionary strategy for the working class.


Author(s):  
Jane Kirkby ◽  
Julianne Moss ◽  
Sally Godinho

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present how the social learning theory of Bourdieu (1990; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990) can be a valuable tool to investigate mentoring relationships of beginning teachers with their more experienced colleagues. Bourdieu’s work provides a lens to magnify the social exchanges that occur during the mentoring relationship, so that what tends to be hidden in the “logic of practice” (Bourdieu, 1990) is drawn into view. The paper shows how the mentor is ascribed power that enables domination, and how this tends to result in cultural reproduction. A case study is used to identify aspects of social and cultural learning that demonstrate this process. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on a year-long narrative inquiry of beginning secondary teachers’ mentoring experiences in the state of Victoria, Australia. The data were generated through in-depth interviews and participants’ diary entries to answer the research question “What personal, professional knowledge is developed through beginning teachers’ early experiences with induction and mentoring?” Findings The researcher found that attention to minutiae of mentor/mentee interactions can suggest how symbolic violence shapes personal, professional knowledge. Research limitations/implications This small-scale study has some limitations. However, as an illustration of organisational learning, with strong connections to Bourdieu’s theoretical work, it can provide some illuminating insights into how policy can be enacted at the micro-level. In particular, there are implications for how mentor teachers engage in their roles and understand the potential impact of their interactions with beginning teachers. Originality/value This study applies Bourdieu’s framework of cultural reproduction as an analysis tool for a qualitative study of the mentoring of beginning teachers.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document