The Making of the West End, 1850–1914

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
The West ◽  
Female Consumers ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Suburban Development ◽  
Modern Form

This chapter argues that the modern West End pleasure district really emerged in the years after 1850. Change was driven by several factors: the development of new middle-class audiences with suburban development, new female consumers, the railway age, and changes in the built environment including the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue and the Charing Cross Road in the 1880s as well as the creation of Piccadilly Circus in its modern form. Increasingly, the term ‘West End’ came to mean the pleasure district. The chapter then turns to the contrasting world of Soho, which was associated with a variety of foreign populations and thus stood for cosmopolitanism as well as poverty.

Macaulay’s (Cyber) Children

Dead Ringers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shehzad Nadeem
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The West ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Foreign Accents ◽  
Morality Play ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Executives And Managers

This chapter examines how globalization affects the identities and aspirations of outsourcing workers, managers, and employers. It first considers the rise of a “new middle class” in India and whether middle-class Indians can be meaningfully described as today's “mimic men” (and women) before discussing the ways that companies shape the identities and behavior of the employees within the workplace. It shows that Indian workers find the adoption of foreign accents, identities, and timings both exciting and disorienting. They increasingly identify with lifestyles and customs that are global in reach. Executives and managers, too, use their close engagement with the West to define themselves as something other than the “traditional” Indian. The chapter argues that globalization gives rise to an Indian morality play where the pleasure principle clashes with the demands of custom and obligation, where an uneasy relationship between kama (pleasure) and dharma (duty) is established.

The Choice of Health

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Bochow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Infection Rate ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
The Body ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Transnational Religion ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Right ◽  
Charismatic Christianity ◽  
Hiv Aids

Based on the reproductive histories of about seventy educated professional women and fifteen educated professional men in Botswana, a country with an HIV/AIDS infection rate of 25 to 30 per cent, this chapter discusses the exceptional life courses of Pentecostal women who have remained childless in their marriages. The chapter discusses Comaroff and Comaroff’s hypothesis of the creation of the ‘right bearing, responsible “free” individual’ launched by English nonconformist Methodist missionaries. It analyses how these women have come to prioritise their health over having children. Christian, and in particular Pentecostal, ethics are shown to be a pool of globally circulating biomedical ideas that stress the controllability of the body and favour postponement. As a transnational religion charismatic Christianity thus launches a health ethic that is attributed to the positionality of new middle-class subjectivities.

The Right to Dream: Gender, Modernity, and the Problem of Class in Kate O'Brien's Bourgeois Bildungsromane

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Naoise Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aristocratic Culture ◽  
Modern Form

Feminist critics have celebrated Kate O'Brien's pioneering approach to gender and sexuality, yet there has been little exploration of her innovations of the coming-of-age narrative. Creating a modern Irish reworking of the Bildungsroman, O'Brien's heroines represent an idealized model of female identity-formation which stands in sharp contrast to the nationalist state's vision of Irish womanhood. Using Franco Moretti's theory of the Bildungsroman, a framing of the genre as a thoroughly ‘modern’ form of the novel, this article applies a critical Marxist lens to O'Brien's output. This reading brings to light the ways in which the limitations of the Bildungsroman work to constrain O'Brien's subversive politics. Their middle-class status remains an integral part of the identity of her heroines, informing the forms of liberation they seek. Fundamentally, O'Brien's idealization of aristocratic culture, elitist exceptionalism and ‘detachment of spirit’ restricts the emancipatory potential of her vision of Irish womanhood.

The Missing Dimension in the Built Environment: A Challenge for the 21st Century

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Leo R. Zrudlo
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Unity In Diversity ◽  
The Creation ◽  
City Design

This article addresses architects, planners, and developers but should also interest any other professionals involved in the creation of the built environment. It begins by stating that the built environment is principally made up of buildings and groupings of buildings. Therefore, architecture and urban design are the major focus of the article. Definitions of architecture are then presented from a variety of authors and architects. An argument is made that there actually is a missing dimension in the built environment illustrated by quotations from architects, architectural theorists, amid critics. It becomes evident that architecture is unable to satisfy the emotional and aesthetic needs of people and also that the profession itself, which admits that modern architecture has created bleak and insensitive environments, is in profound disagreement on how to rectify the situation. Under the heading “Architecture–The Object” arguments for and against different architectural movements or stylistic tendencies are highlighted by quotations from the proponents of tile various styles and theories. A similar approach is taken for cities under the heading “Urban Design–The Juxtaposition of Objects.” The fact that something is missing from architectural and city design is concluded, and examples of a preoccupation for the spiritual aspect of architecture and urban design are used to illustrate this growing concern for a dimension that has been much neglected in tile previous several decades. The notion of “spiritual” is then defined, followed by a list of spiritual qualities. Two important principles, unity in diversity and consultation are discussed before presenting some concluding thoughts on how the designers of the built environment can begin finding ways of infusing their designs with a spiritual dimension.

Outsourcing the Self

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Call Center ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Self ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
First World ◽  
Class Youth ◽  
Call Center Workers

This chapter analyzes how call center workers, who are mostly middle- and working-class youth, create narratives that are described as expressing modern forms of “individualized Indianness.” The chapter demonstrates how call center workers produce narratives of individualized Indianness by engaging in practices of mimicry, accent training, and consumption; by going to public spaces such as bars and pubs; and by having romantic relationships that are largely hidden from their families. The narratives examined in this chapter are created out of an asymmetrical context of power as young Indians work as “subjects” of a global economy who primarily serve “First World” customers. The interviews with Indian youth reflect how tradition and modernity, mimicry and authenticity, collude with each other to dialogically create new middle-class subjectivities.

The New Islamic State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The West ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.

Green Politics and the New Class: Selfishness or Virtue?

1989 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Production Process ◽  
Green Movement ◽  
New Class ◽  
Green Parties ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Green Politics ◽  
Material Values

The predominantly new middle-class social composition of the green movement has become a matter of increasing interest in the wake of the success of green parties and the growth of an international green movement. This paper considers the concept of the ‘new class' in relation to two explanations for the social composition of the green movement. The class-interest argument seeks to show that green politics is a means of furthering either middle-class or new-class interests while the ‘new childhood’ argument claims that the development of the green movement is the result of the spread of post-material values, the main bearers of which are the new class. Against these arguments a more comprehensive explanation is presented, which focuses on the education of the new class and its relative structural autonomy from the production process.

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