The Measure of Industry

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-173
Author(s):  
Kirstie Blair
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Industrial Change

Chapter 4 turns to the ways in which poets engaged with industrial cultures. It argues against a persistent narrative that Victorian Scottish writers ignored industrial change and developments, and shows that in relation to working-class writers, this is not the case. The first subsection studies poetic representations of industry in Lanarkshire, especially the heavily industrialized towns of Coatbridge and Airdrie. The second remains in the Glasgow/Lanarkshire area, but concentrates on miner-poets and the ways in which they discussed their work, with particular attention to poet David Wingate. The final section considers form and rhythm in industrial poetics, using Scottish railway poets Alexander Anderson and William Aitken as examples of the incorporation of industrial rhythms into poetry.

Aftermaths

2021 ◽  
pp. 367-412
Author(s):  
Paul Watt
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Spatial Scale ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Empty Shell ◽  
New Residents ◽  
Mixed Communities

This chapter examines the provisional regeneration aftermaths at three estates – West Hendon (Barnet), Woodberry Down (Hackney) and Carpenters (Newham) – in relation to what kind of new places are being created. West Hendon and Woodberry Down form hybrid places consisting of the remaining old estate which is undergoing degeneration, displacement and demolition, and the redeveloped section which is receiving new residents. At the intermediate spatial scale, although some interviewees appreciated the enhanced security features in the new gated blocks, the latter were routinely described as soulless, hotel-like non-places (Auge). One major aim at both West Hendon and Woodberry Down was to create mixed-tenure communities. However, at neither estate had this been achieved as far as social tenants were concerned. Despite the attempts made to enhance community development, there was a common lament at both redeveloped estates – that their previous sense of community had been lost. There was also little evidence of class/tenure mixing, and these hybrid neighbourhoods constitute fragmented rather than mixed communities. The final section focuses on the Carpenters estate where no redevelopment has occurred despite its being nominally under regeneration for fifteen years. By 2019 it was a half-empty shell of a previously functioning multi-ethnic, working-class east London community.

scholarly journals Deindustrialisation and the Historical Sociological Imagination: Making Sense of Work and Industrial Change

Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 466-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Strangleman
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Half Life ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Industrial Change ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Industrial Decline

Following recent calls for a more self-aware and historically sensitive sociology this article reflects on the concept of deindustrialisation and industrial change in this spirit. Using EP Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class and his examination of industrialising culture with its stress on experience, the article asks how these insights might be of value in understanding contemporary processes of deindustrialisation and work. Drawing on a range of sociological, cultural and literary studies it conceptualises the differences and similarities between two historic moments of industrial change and loss. In particular it draws on the literary concept of the ‘half-life of deindustrialisation’ to explore these periods. The article has important implications for how we think about contemporary and historical industrial decline.

Viewpoint — Romantic Fictions: The Re-Emergence of the Crime as Politics Debate

1988 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The 1960S

Arising out of current debates in criminology over the nature of black criminality and black crime statistics, this paper focuses specifically on the argument that black/working class crime represents a form of political action. Attempts to infuse working class crime with political status have a sociological pedigree stretching back at least to the 1960s. This paper examines the links between contemporary and earlier work in this field, and critically appraises what are seen as often over-romanticised formulations. The final section attempts to indicate how a relevant theoretical framework may be constructed.

Contextualizing State Housing Programs in Latin America: Evidence from Leading Housing Agencies in Brazil, Ecuador, and Jamaica

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 653-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
T Klak
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Housing Programs ◽  
Agency Behavior ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Distorted Form

The policy literature offers many valid criticisms of government housing programs, but does not adequately trace housing-agency failures to their causes in the broader political and economic contexts of peripheral capitalist countries. The literature especially lacks an understanding of the role of interests within the state which benefit from housing programs in their current distorted form. In response to these analytical shortcomings, the author of this paper adapts a geographically hierarchical and comparative framework from locality studies that is capable of revealing both structural commonalities and contextual particularities of housing-agency behavior. The research is an examination and comparison of the performance of the major housing agencies in Brazil, Ecuador, and Jamaica. The diversity of economic resources and political regimes in these countries during the last three decades provides a spectrum of regional experiences. The investigation unfolds with the setting of the context of dependent capitalism, without which it is not possible to understand either the prominence or the incapacity of Latin American housing agencies. Next, the research adopts an historical vantage point to reveal key actors and events in housing-agency institutionalization. Having set the structural and historical contexts, the author then examines motives related to the state and its agents that help to explain why working-class housing programs have become self-centered patronage bureaucracies, to the neglect of their socially progressive goals. The author then explains how housing agencies have primarily used rhetoric, plans, and images, not material investment, to legitimize themselves to the disenfranchised working class. The final section synthesizes the paper's main points thereby establishing a political economic context for understanding Latin American housing programs.

scholarly journals E.P. Thompson, Shirley, and the Antinomian Tradition in West Riding Luddism and Popular Protest

2021 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-214
Author(s):  
Matthew Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Final Section ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
The West ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Relationship

The novelist Charlotte Brontë and the historian E.P. Thompson both claimed that the Yorkshire Luddites of the 1810s were Antinomians, descendants of the seventeenth-century radical Christian sects who claimed, as Christ’s elect, that they were not bound by the (moral) law. This article follows a thread that links Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (in which he made this claim) with his later study of William Blake, Witness against the Beast, which, far from being just an esoteric study of an esoteric figure, uncovered an antinomian tradition that linked the radicalism and protest of the ‘age of reason’ with the seventeenth century. In doing so, it revisits the relationship between Thompson and religion, still an underexplored aspect and too overshadowed by his polemical attacks on Methodism. Having sketched this antinomian tradition, the article then turns to Brontë’s novel Shirley, which recounts the Luddism of the West Riding, and situates it in the context of Thompson’s antinomian tradition, exploring why Brontë chose to present the Luddites as Antinomians. The final section tests the hypothesis of Brontë and Thompson that Luddites may have been Antinomians through a case study of Luddism in the West Riding and the place of religious enthusiasm in working-class protest and culture in the early nineteenth century.

“Smokestack Nostalgia,” “Ruin Porn” or Working-Class Obituary: The Role and Meaning of Deindustrial Representation

2013 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Strangleman
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Industrial Change ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Book Format ◽  
Post Industrial

AbstractThis article explores some of the visual imagery that has emerged from the process of deindustrialization. It seeks to understand the similarities and differences between post-industrial photography collected in book format in both North America and Europe and the critics of this genre. It makes sense of the value and meaning of this publishing trend and what it says about its market. While it would be easy to dismiss this material as “simply nostalgic,” representing another manifestation of “smokestack nostalgia,” this article suggests that we need a more nuanced account which asks questions about the continuing desire to reflect back and find value in the industrial past. In so doing it makes a contribution to a wider critical account of the role of cultural approaches to interpreting industrial change and working-class history.

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