Geography and Country Music

Author(s):  
Jada Watson

The concept of place is integral to country music, a genre associated with geographic regions, rural landscapes, and community values. While the genre has traditionally been described as a product of rural communities of the US South, studies have demonstrated the role that urban communities played in the birth of country music and its prominent scenes. Despite the growing interest in the relationship between music and place, many studies overlooked the important role that place-themed songs play in constructing an artist’s persona. With Canadian alt-country artist Corb Lund as a case study, this study draws literature from musicology, literary studies, and cultural geography to demonstrate how the singer-songwriter describes life, work, and sociocultural issues in Alberta to create diverse conceptions of place. It develops a framework for considering how artists use music to negotiate relationships to place and construct elements of their “geo-cultural” identity.

Author(s):  
Joy Damousi

It is in the US that the case study genre is reinvented within a politicised psychiatric-psychoanalytical framework in the work of Viola Bernard. Bernard’s writings pose enduring questions about the relationship between activism and US psychiatry, politics and race relations. This chapter traces Bernard’s efforts to develop a new, authoritative and politically effective narrative through her case notes and advocacy about black subjects. This involved mobilising the case study genre in the public domain at large, for political as well as medical purposes, in the context of a turbulent period in US history.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Sinykin ◽  
Richard Jean So ◽  
Jessica Young

Abstract How has the language of economics, as codified by economics as a discipline, entered the US novel in the postwar period? Have economists influenced novelists at the level of language, and if so, how and how much? We begin with the belief, inferred from current scholarship on economics and culture, but never before empirically tested, that economic language became more prevalent around 1980, especially among white men—a belief that we strive to complicate and give nuance. Readers may detect an irony in the relationship between our method and case study. No academic discipline has valorized the use of quantification for social analysis more than economics. As a discipline, its language has become saturated with the language of modeling. Cultural and literary critics have long argued that economics has even harmed society by creating false accounts of how humans behave and think. Can we take their tools, however, and make them ours as a way to critique economics itself?


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mark Silverman ◽  
Kelly L. Patterson ◽  
Chihuangji Wang

Purpose There is a dearth of basic analysis about how the demographics of residents living in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) subsidized properties relate to the quality of housing. This research vacuum is often filled by popular stereotypes. This study aims to address this gap by examining the relationship between the demographics of residents and inspection scores. Design/methodology/approach Two data sources are drawn from the analysis: the 2018 HUD Picture of Subsidized Households database and HUD’s 2018 REAC Public and Multi-Family Housing Inspection Scores. Linear and logistic regression analysis were conducted, and selected data were mapped using GIS software. Findings The analysis examines the demographics of site-based subsidized properties in relation to inspection scores. In 2018, HUD identified 31,225 traditional public housing and other site-based multi-family properties in its Picture of Subsidized Households database. Residents living in these properties are often stereotyped as a homogeneous group that is predominantly composed of single, minority women with children who are welfare dependent. Similarly, properties are often portrayed as dilapidated, high-rise projects in segregated urban communities. The results from the analysis do not support these stereotypes about HUD-subsidized multi-family properties. By contrast, the results indicate that a diverse group of households lives in HUD-subsidized multi-family properties. Originality/value There is a need for scholars, advocates and practitioners to more aggressively challenge the popular stereotypes about site-based subsidized housing. In particular, there is a need for enhanced public scholarship focused on the dissemination of evidence-based research.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
JADA WATSON

AbstractThe concepts of “place,” “space,” and “home” are integral to the study of country music, a genre conventionally associated with geographic regions, rural landscapes, and domestic values. Place-songs have emerged as an important way in which country musicians communicate life experiences and define elements of their identity, emphasizing the influence of family and community on their character, beliefs, and values. However, just as place can signify belonging, it can also represent a constricting environment from which artists struggle to escape. Such narratives enable us to see vital parts of regional identity that would otherwise be hidden, obscured, or overshadowed.The Dixie Chicks’ song “Lubbock or Leave It” (2006) is an interesting case study for an inquiry into how artists struggle to define themselves within the country genre. The song spurred immediate uproar insofar as the lyrics portray lead singer Natalie Maines's hometown of Lubbock, Texas as small and narrow-minded. Many listeners and critics interpreted the song as a rejection of both Lubbock and country values. Drawing from the fields of cultural geography and musicology, this study examines how the Dixie Chicks draw on musical codes and conventions in an act of defiance and genre subversion, as they struggle with parochialism and conservative thinking.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (SI2) ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
Marlyana Azyyati Marzukhi ◽  
Farah Fazlina Fauzi ◽  
Oliver Hoon Leh Ling ◽  
Yusfida Ayu Abdullah

This study examines the social impact of foreign immigrants on urban communities in Taman Taming Jaya, Selangor.The scope covers the overall social impact on the presence of foreign immigrants on urban communities,family relationship,the relationship among the local community, the relationship between locals and foreigners,the acceptance of foreigners by local residents,sense of belonging and the safety aspect.A total of 95 questionnaires survey were carried out among local respondents.Besides,direct observation was conducted to investigate the condition of the study area.The findings revealed that most of the respondents felt that the presence of foreign immigrants has negatively impacted their life. Keywords: social, impact, urban, community eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5iSI2.2524.


2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-322
Author(s):  
Ryamond Vernon

The article is a case study of the relationship between the American government and US multinational corporation. It argues that while the state - MNE relationships vary from country to country, the US pattern is one of a very limited transnational role for government. Main factors in this pattern are the division of powers between the various branches and agencies of the US government, and changes in administrative staff following each national election. Few cases of government effort at business guidance are found: antitrust policy, foreign aid to friend governments, ineffectual protests again nationalisation of foreign subsidiaries of US MNE, exceptional cases of purposeful intervention, and the US adherence to international guide lines to MNE conduct sponsored by OECD. The article studies in more detail the case of oil, in which the US government is supposed to have intervened in a more direct way. The article concludes that US foreign policy is too complex to be understood simply in terms of government support of US multinational abroad. Besides us industry and the American government are themselves too split to produce a single and homogeneous pattern of policy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-198
Author(s):  
Tariq Dana

This article sheds light on the relationship between Israeli high-tech innovation and military/security production in the framework of settler-colonialism and the prolonged occupation of the Palestinian territories. It analyzes the global rise of Israel in military and security innovation as a result of decades-long colonial ventures and regional wars, which have been a key variable for dynamic and extensive innovation and productivity. Moreover, the article argues that Israeli military and security would not have been attainable without the extraordinary official assistance and private investment from the United States, especially since the aftermath of the 1967 war. Besides the structural dependency on the US, this article highlights other characteristics that define Israel’s military and security production, such as the vicious nature of these innovations, complicity in global atrocities, and profitability of innovation to Israel’s war economy. Finally, the article presents Gaza’s Great March of Return (gmr) as a case study to present evidence on the ways in which Israeli military forces and security companies are jointly involved in experimentation, using new weapons and unmanned devices on the Palestinian civilians.


2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (5) ◽  
pp. 389-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Mountz ◽  
J. Loyd

Abstract. This article examines transnational framings of domestic carceral landscapes to better understand the relationship between offshore and onshore enforcement and detention regimes. US detention on mainland territory and interception and detention in the Caribbean serves as a case study. While the US domestic carceral regime is a subject of intense political debate, research, and activism, it is not often analyzed in relation to the development and expansion of an offshore "buffer zone" to intercept and detain migrants and asylum seekers. Yet the US federal government has also used offshore interception and detention as a way of controlling migration and mobility to its shores. This article traces a Cold War history of offshore US interception and detention of migrants from and in the Caribbean. We discuss how racialized crises related to Cuban and Haitian migrations by sea led to the expansion of an intertwined offshore and onshore carceral regime. Tracing these carceral geographies offers a more transnational understanding of contemporary domestic landscapes of detention of foreign nationals in the United States. It advances the argument that the conditions of remoteness ascribed frequently to US detention sites must be understood in more transnational perspective.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enock Ndawana

The nexus between foreign policy and the granting of asylum exists, but scholars have not yet reached a consensus regarding the nature of the relationship. This study examines the role of foreign policy in the granting of asylum using the case of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the United States (US). It found that although other factors matter, foreign policy was central to the outcomes of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the US. It asserts that explaining the outcomes of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the US needs to go beyond the role of foreign policy and be nuanced because the case study rejects a monolithic understanding.


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