The Illam and Its Dispersion

Author(s):  
Ester Gallo

Chapter four examines Nambudiri houses and the place they hold in the material phenomenology of kinship memories. Houses are understood here not only as ‘private domestic’ places but as domains where families’ engagement with political history is expressed, visualiszd (or hidden) in internal spatial dispositions, in the presentation of objects, in the daily routine, and in consumption practices. Indeed, houses are conceived as sites where kinship is ‘made’ by either reproducing the past, or by searching a distance from it. The social and symbolic significance of past Illams architecture (Nambudiri ancestral houses) is contrasted with the meanings ascribed to present middle-class dwellings and to the way people choose to inhabit the latter. The relation between gender, class mobility, and kinship will be developed by comparing middle-class Nambudiri men and women narratives.

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 23-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Stefanoni

The arrival of Evo Morales to power in January of 2006 –supported with an unprecedent 54% of the votes– marked a milestone in Bolivian political history and opened the way to an ambitious project of re-foundation of the country. Those events were translated in the call for a Constituent Assembly and in the nationalization of hydrocarbons, within the framework of a strong “ruralización de la política”. More than five years of that one triumph has passed and after a re-election with 64% of the votes in December 2009 that consolidated the “evista” hegemonyhas declined.  Now the government faces a series of challenges tied to the effective materialization of the change proposed in the re-foundational speeches. This article analyses the novel experience of “Indians in the power” centered in the tension between the changes implemented and the inertias of the past in spheres such as the democratic radicalization, the social equality, the model of development, and the political project. All these themes affected by a powerful, and yet somehow vague objective: the decolonization of the country.La llegada de Evo Morales al poder en enero de 2006 ―avalado con un inédito 54% de los votos― marcó un punto de inflexión en la historia política boliviana y abrió paso a un ambicioso proyecto de refundación del país. Esos ejes se tradujeron en la convocatoria a una Asamblea Constituyente y en la nacionalización de los hidrocarburos, en el marco de una fuerte “ruralización de la política”.  A más de cinco años de aquel triunfo y luego de una reelección con el 64% en diciembre de 2009 que consolidó la hegemonía “evista”, el gobierno enfrenta una serie de retos vinculados a la materialización efectiva del cambio propuesto en los discursos refundacionales. En este artículo se analiza esta experiencia novedosa de “los indios en el poder” centrada en la tensión entre los cambios operados y las inercias del pasado en esferas como la radicalización democrática, la igualdad social, el modelo de desarrollo y el proyecto político. Temas todos ellos atravesados por un objetivo tan poderoso como por momentos impreciso: la descolonización del país.


Author(s):  
Patrick Chura

This chapter looks at the effects of capitalism and social stratification on notions of class identity in two groups of American realist novels. First, it analyzes a pair of literary responses by William Dean Howells to the 1886 Chicago Haymarket bombing as the lead-in to a discussion of realist works about voluntary downward class mobility or “vital contact.” With Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes as a reference point and paradigm, the chapter also explores the ideologies implicit in several novels about upward social mobility, noting how both groups of texts are ultimately guided by a genteel perspective positioned between dominant and subordinate classes. In similar ways, the novels treated in the chapter balance middle-class loyalties against identities from higher and lower on the social scale while sending messages of both complicity and subversion on the subject of capitalist class relations.


Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.


Literator ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlies Taljard

This article aims to illustrate how Hans du Plessis, in his novel Die pad na Skuilhoek [The path to Skuilhoek] (a place of shelter), subverts the way in which history had been presented in historical novels in the past by addressing social issues that contemporary readers find relevant. The first part of the article deals with the social codes that shape the identities of the main characters and how these identities are relevant in terms of the social framework within which the novel is received. In the second place the focus will shift towards Du Plessis’s representation of cultural and national identities. The question: ‘Who were the Afrikaners at the time of the Great Trek?’ will be answered with reference to these identities. In conclusion it will be pointed out how Du Plessis avoids dated practices of historical interpretation by choosing ecocrticism as the ideological framework for his novel and is, in this way, constructing a new social myth about the Great Trek.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 777-783
Author(s):  
Dragana Frfulanović-Šomođi ◽  
Milena Savić

The design of socialist Yugoslavia received a particularly new look through the creation of Aleksandar Joksimović, which gave the new elements a traditional look, equally putting them in rank with world-famous designs of celebrated designers. This paper was created with the idea of emphasizing the importance of the creativity of Joksimović, which is within the framework of socialist norms, as an artist, remained insufficiently recognized, although his work was in the service of exclusive promotion of the cultural aspects of his country. His concept of design based on the medieval cultural tradition emerged from the framework of the then socialist clothes, and it is called grandiose exoticism. The names of the first collections given by the historical figures of medieval Serbian history are a clear indication that it is possible to draw inspiration from the past, if it is professionally approached and adequately, by contemporary trends, the audience and the market. Joksimovic's individualism, apart from design, was also reflected in the way the collection itself was modeled through models and choreographies, and clearly once again showed his step ahead of time, while the social and political circumstances forced him to stay one step behind.


2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Esteve Palós

A partir de los microdatos de los censos mexicanos de 1970, 1990 y 2000, en este artículo se examina la homogeneidad de los matrimonios y uniones atendiendo al nivel de instrucción de los cónyuges en las últimas tres décadas, caracterizadas por una fuerte expansión de la escolaridad, por el incremento de los rendimientos de la educación y por la reducción progresiva de las diferencias de género en materia educativa. Tres conclusiones brotan del examen de los datos: el aumento significativo de la homogamia entre los más escolarizados, la consolidación de dos zonas extendidas de homogamia, y la reducción de las diferencias en torno a la manera en que los hombres y las mujeres incorporan la educación en la selección conyugal. AbstractOn the basis of microdata from Mexican censuses taken in 1970, 1990 and 2000, this article examines the homogeny of marriages and consensual marriages by level of spousal educational attainment over the past three decades, characterized by the enormous expansion of schooling, the increase in educational performance and the progressive reduction in gender differences in educational matters. Three conclusions emerge from the examina­tion of the data: the significant increase in homogamy among those with the highest levels of educational attainment, the consolidation of two extended zones of homogamy and the reduction of differences between the way men and women incorporate education in the selection of marriage partners.


2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212093295
Author(s):  
Oscar MacClure ◽  
Emmanuelle Barozet ◽  
Ana María Valenzuela

In order to understand the way in which people self-identify in society and as a contribution to debates about class identity in Latin America, in this article the authors assess how individuals categorize themselves and others socially, and discuss whether a significant portion of the population classifies itself as middle class. They address the question of whether or not individuals’ representation of their social position is linked to social class, examining whether that position incorporates a socio-economic dimension, a hierarchical dimension, or even an element of moral value. The authors focus on how individuals name their own social position by means of a vignette-based survey applied in 2016 to a randomized sample of 2000 people in Chile. The results show that the theoretical notion of class is still of relevance to subjective positioning criteria, and that such criteria are specific to individuals who self-identify with lower or higher social positions.


The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes—from the development of democracy to the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation—have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also posed problems for the historians who have researched and written about Britain’s past politics. This volume shows the ways in which political historians have responded, and provides a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodological innovation within historical studies. It comprises thirty-three thematic essays written by leading and emerging scholars in the field. Collectively, these essays assess and rethink the nature of modern British political history itself, and suggest avenues and questions for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History thus provides a unique resource for those who wish to understand Britain’s political past and a thought-provoking ‘long view’ for those interested in current political challenges.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 215-255
Author(s):  
Lucie Ryzova

This essay looks at a little studied genre of photographic albums—‘peer albums’—created by young Egyptian men and women through the middle decades of the twentieth century. These strongly gendered albums are characterized by the visual exclusion of social seniors, and were typically kept hidden from them. As photographic objects embedded in particular social relationships and contexts, these albums speak of how a classed and gendered self emerged in early- to mid-twentieth-century Egypt through a range of practices, of which photography-making (and album-making) was part. But photography also had its own agency in engendering new practices. The social efficacy of vernacular photographs was predicated on a combination of photographic indexicality and performativity. Through the making of such albums, young modernity-claiming Egyptians were asserting, performing and negotiating the parameters of their middle-class urbanity, their emerging positions as modern gendered subjects and as adolescents. Together with the range of peer activities in which they were embedded, these albums represented zones of autonomy free from patriarchal control, but still nested within larger patriarchal structures. Ultimately these albums show how particular historical subjects come to be through engagements with objects; and how patriarchy and individualism construct each other.


1982 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 145-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. B. Rutherford

These hours of backward clearness come to all men and women, once at least, when they read the past in the light of the present, with the reasons of things, like unobserved finger-posts, protruding where they never saw them before. The journey behind them is mapped out, and figured with its false steps, its wrong observations, all its infatuated, deluded geography.Henry James,The Bostonians, ch. xxxixThis paper is intended to contribute to the study of both Homer and Greek tragedy, and more particularly to the study of the influence of the epic upon the later poets. The current revival of interest among English scholars in the poetic qualities of the Homeric poems must be welcomed by all who care for the continuing survival and propagation of classical literature. The renewed emphasis on the validity of literary criticism as applied to presumably oral texts may encourage a more positive appreciation of the subtlety of Homeric narrative techniques, and of the coherent plan which unifies each poem. The aim of this paper is to focus attention on a number of elements in Greek tragedy which are already present in Homer, and especially on the way in which these poets exploit the theme of knowledge—knowledge of one's future, knowledge of one's circumstances, knowledge of oneself. Recent scholarship on tragedy has paid much more attention to literary criticism in general and to poetic irony in particular: these insights can also illuminate the epic. Conversely, the renewed interest in Homer's structural and thematic complexity should also enrich the study of the tragedians, his true heirs.


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