Religion, Race, and Popular Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lerone A. Martin ◽  
J. Kameron Carter
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
The Social

This chapter discusses the intersection of race, religion, and popular culture. Race is posited here not as synonymous with people of color, but rather as an analytic category that examines the social construction and very real reality of racialization: the process of becoming and identifying whiteness, blackness, and so on. Two broad approaches to the study of race, religion, and popular culture are examined: Popular Culture in Religion, and Religion as or in Popular Culture. The chapter then offers a brief overview of how these two approaches have both broadened standard narratives of American religious history as well as illuminated scholarly understandings of how religio-racial identities are constructed, perpetuated, challenged, and queered through the use of popular culture forms such as print, phonograph, radio, televangelism, celebrity, and hip-hop.

The Denial of Competence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Hatt
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Teacher Power ◽  
Student Identities ◽  
Sociocultural Processes ◽  
And Gender

The legacy of the social construction of race, class, and gender within the social construction of smartness and identity in US schools are synthesized utilizing meta-ethnography. The study examines ethnographies of smartness and identity while also exploring what meta-ethnography has to offer for qualitative research. The analyses demonstrate that race, class, and gender are key factors in how student identities of ability or smartness are constructed within schools. The meta-ethnography reveals a better understanding of the daily, sociocultural processes in schools that contribute to the denial of competence to students across race, class, and gender. Major themes include epistemologies of schooling, learning as the production of identity, and teacher power in shaping student identities. The results are significant in that new insights are revealed into how gender, class, and racial identities develop within the daily practices of classrooms about notions of ability.

Immunizing Strategies: Hip-Hop and Critique in Tanzania

Africa ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Stroeken
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Political History ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Exposure

AbstractTanzania has in the last decade seen a vibrant form of hip-hop emerge that is gaining wide public exposure thanks to its political tenor. First, this article illustrates how rap lyrics reflect Tanzanian political history and in part determine it. Bongo Flava, as the local hip-hop genre is called, has gained credibility by reinterpreting Nyerere's normative legacy and by expanding freedom of expression in the country, while unhampered by factors that normally mitigate the social impact of popular culture. Second, the article explores the global relevance of their social critique. Bongo Flava attempts to outwit the sophisticated indifference and neoliberalism of postcolonial rulers and ruled. Partly inspired by African American popular culture, many songs expose the postcolonial strategy of survival, which is to immunize oneself against the threat of commodification by fully embracing it, the contamination yielding extra power. The lyrics, in their irony and pessimism, exhibit the same immunizing tendency. However, this tendency is curbed by two principles that safeguard streetwise status: the rapper's willingness to ‘duel’ and the Kiswahili credo of activating bongo, ‘the brains’.

Iranian migrant women’s beauty practices and (un)veiling in Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-32
Author(s):  
Ladan Rahbari
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
Iranian Women ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Belgian Society ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The hijab has been considered a notable factor in increasing women’s tendency to practise beauty in Iran. Experiences of beauty practices by Iranian women in diaspora can shed light on the extent of the influence that the practice of (un)veiling might have on beauty regimes. This study uses semi-structured interviews amongst a group of Iranian women in Belgium to investigate the development of beauty practices after migration. The study draws on feminist studies on beauty practices and ethnic/racial identities to explore whether beauty practices create a sense of normalcy or are forms of self-governance in compliance with the dominant discourses of female embodiment. The findings point to the complex intertwinement of racialisation with gendered embodiment and illustrate the strategies that women develop either to embrace their difference or to eliminate the perceived embodied differences and counter racialised othering. The analysis draws on feminist theory to examine participants’ perceptions of the social construction of women’s imagery as migrants and their self-perceptions as racialised minorities in the Belgian society.

The Social Gospel as “the Total Message of the Christian Salvation”

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-198
Author(s):  
Christopher H. Evans
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Religious History ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Definition Of

In 1921, Shailer Mathews coined what became a classic, yet somewhat obtuse, definition of the social gospel in North American religious history. He defined it as “the application of the teaching of Jesus and the total message of the Christian salvation to society, the economic life, and social institutions such as the state, the family, as well as to individuals.” For all the problems with Mathews's definition, it does serve as a useful template for understating the social gospel, especially interpreting what Mathews meant by the phrase, “the total message of the Christian salvation.”

scholarly journals "It’s a Jungle Out There:" Blackness and Disability in Monk

2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Therí A Pickens
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
Black Man ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Missed Opportunity

In <em>Monk</em>, the social structures that create disability have a relationship of reciprocal maintenance with the structures that sustain race. Specifically, I examine the moments in which Adrian&rsquo;s disability and other characters&rsquo; blackness creates tension. These scenes are typically understood as humorous, drawing on Adrian&rsquo;s disability and stock figures like the angry black man, Mammy, and the murderous hip-hop star. Yet, the commitment to these narratives remains tenuous because the tension between Adrian and the black characters is not always contentious, nor is it a consistently missed opportunity for nuance. Instead, I argue <em>Monk</em> reveals a more complex interplay between narratives of blackness, disability, and white liberalism. Namely, Adrian&rsquo;s awkward exchanges lay bare the tensions present and open up space to see that we read disabled and racial identities in contact according to a logic determined not just by ability, but also by race.

T-Shirts, style and the social construction of modern masculinities in urban Fiji

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geir Henning Presterudstuen
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Body Shape ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Scripts ◽  
The Social

In this article I consider fashion as a key modality through which young Fiji citizens experience modernity and construct contemporary self-identities in dialogue with global popular culture. A multi-dimensional tool, fashion is effectively used as self-performance; a way of carrying the body in public spaces, including dress and style as well as mannerisms, demeanour, body shape and comportment. It follows that fashion also intersects with other social categories such as gender, sexual identity and race in order to inform local social scripts in which people judge their own and others’ appearance and define the nature of a desirable, modern body.

The Power of a Line

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-555
Author(s):  
Jessamyn R. Abel
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Transportation Infrastructure ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physical Infrastructure ◽  
Bullet Train

Japan’s first bullet train played a central role in the reshaping of both the urban geographies and metropolitan identities of Tokyo, Osaka, and the region as a whole. This article considers the 1964 opening of the “New Tōkaidō Line” in terms of the social construction of space in order to highlight the interaction between ideas and physical infrastructure, and to consider the dynamics of power over space. The discourse surrounding the bullet train’s debut—including planning materials, passengers’ impressions, and representations in popular culture—shows the mutual influence among transportation infrastructure, the physical contours of cities, and how people not only lived in them but also envisioned and understood them.

The Social Construction of Our Bodies

1992 ◽  
Vol 37 (11) ◽  
pp. 1186-1186
Author(s):  
Garth J. O. Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
The Social
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