Dual Powers, Class Compositions, and the Venezuelan People

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery R. Webber

George Ciccariello-Maher’sWe Created Chávezis the most important book available in English proposing an anti-capitalist framework for understanding the Bolivarian process in contemporary Venezuela, as well as its historical backdrop dating back to 1958. The book contains within it a laudable critique of Eurocentrism and a masterful combination of oral history, ethnography, and theoretical sophistication. It reveals with unusual clarity and insight the multiplicity of popular movements that allowed for Hugo Chávez’s eventual ascension to presidential office in the late 1990s.We Created Chávezhas set a new scholarly bar for social histories of the Bolivarian process and demands serious engagement by Marxists. As a first attempt at such engagement, this paper reveals some critical theoretical and sociological flaws in the text and other areas of analytical imprecision. Divided into theoretical and historical parts, it unpacks some of the strengths and weaknesses by moving from the abstract to the concrete. The intervention begins with concepts – the mutually determining dialectic between Chávez and social movements; ‘the people’; and ‘dual power’. From here, it grounds these concepts, and Ciccariello-Maher’s use of them, in various themes and movements across specific historical periods of Venezuelan political development – the rural guerrillas of the 1960s, the urban guerrillas of the 1970s, the new urban socio-political formations of the 1980s, Afro-Indigenous struggles in the Bolivarian process, and formal and informal working-class transformations since the onset of neoliberalism and its present contestation in the Venezuelan context.

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Winant ◽  
Andrew Gordon ◽  
Sven Beckert ◽  
Rudi Batzell

AbstractThis article introduces the present Special Theme on the global reception and appropriation of E.P. Thompson’sThe Making of the English Working Class(1963). It aims to interrogate Thompson’s legacy and potential vitality at a moment of renewed social and intellectual upheavals. It emphasizes the need for an interdisciplinary and global reflection on Thompson’s work and impact for understanding how class, nation, and “the people” as subjects of historical inquiry have been repeatedly recast since the 1960s. Examining the course of Thompson’s ideas in Japan and West Germany, South Africa and Argentina, as well as Czechoslovakia and Poland, each of the following five articles in the Special Theme is situated in specific and different locations in the global historiographical matrix. Read as a whole, they show how national historiographies have been products of local processes of state and class formation on the one hand, and transnational transfers of intellectual and historiographical ideas, on the other. They highlight the remarkable ability of Thompsonian social history to inspire new lives in varying national contexts shaped by different formations of race, class, and state.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-47
Author(s):  
Steven High

Oral history as a field of research, teaching, archival collection, community building or engagement, truth and reconciliation, and creative practice, emerged with the diffusion of the tape recorder in the 1960s and 1970s. This was a time of enormous social and political upheaval. As a result, oral history was quickly taken up by feminists, working-class and queer activists, racial minorities, and other marginalized people who sought to record the hidden stories that would otherwise be lost. This article introduces readers to the field of oral history, its methodology and ethics. Oral history is a creative practice, open to adaptation and experimentation. As it is a place of listening across difference, oral history interviewing presents itself as a unique learning landscape. Several pedagogical examples are also shared.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Fuhg

The emergence and formation of British working-class youth cultures in the 1960s were characterized by an ambivalent relationship between British identity, global culture and the formation of a multicultural society in the post-war decades. While national and local newspapers mostly reported on racial tensions and racially-motivated violence, culminating in the Notting Hill riots of 1958, the relationship between London's white working-class youth and teenagers with migration backgrounds was also shaped by a reciprocal, direct and indirect, personal and cultural exchange based on social interaction and local conditions. Starting from the Notting Hill Riots 1958, the article reconstructs places and cultural spheres of interaction between white working-class youth and teenagers from Caribbean communities in London in the 1960s. Following debates and discussions on race relations and the participation of black youth in the social life of London in the 1960s, the article shows that British working-class youth culture was affected in various ways by the processes of migration. By dealing with the multicultural dimension of the post-war metropolis, white working-class teenagers negotiated socio-economic as well as political changes, contributing in the process to an emergent, new image of post-imperial Britain.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 156-159
Author(s):  
Roy PP

Monica Ali was born in 1967 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, but grew up in England. Her English mother met her Bangladeshi father at a dance in northern England in the 1960s. Despite both of their families` protests, they later married and lived together with their two young children in Dhaka. This was then the provincial capital of East Pakistan which after a nine-month war of independence became the capital of the People`s Republic of Bangladesh. On 25 March 1971 during this civil war, Monica Ali`s father sent his family to safety in England. The war caused East Pakistan to secede from the union with West Pakistan, and was now named Bangladesh.


Author(s):  
Timur Gimadeev

The article deals with the history of celebrating the Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia organised by the state. Various aspects of the history of the holiday have been considered with the extensive use of audiovisual documents (materials from Czechoslovak newsreels and TV archives), which allowed for a detailed analysis of the propaganda representation of the holiday. As a result, it has been possible to identify the main stages of the historical evolution of the celebrations of Liberation Day, to discover the close interdependence between these stages and the country’s political development. The establishment of the holiday itself — its concept and the military parade as the main ritual — took place in the first post-war years, simultaneously with the consolidation of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Later, until the end of the 1960s, the celebrations gradually evolved along the political regime, acquiring new ritual forms (ceremonial meetings, and “guards of memory”). In 1968, at the same time as there was an attempt to rethink the entire socialist regime and the historical experience connected with it, an attempt was made to reconstruct Liberation Day. However, political “normalisation” led to the normalisation of the celebration itself, which played an important role in legitimising the Soviet presence in the country. At this stage, the role of ceremonial meetings and “guards of memory” increased, while inventions released in time for 9 May appeared and “May TV” was specially produced. The fall of the Communist regime in 1989 led to the fall of the concept of Liberation Day on 9 May, resulting in changes of the title, date and paradigm of the holiday, which became Victory Day and has been since celebrated on 8 May.


2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-73
Author(s):  
Helena Ruotsala

Nature and environment are important for the people earning their living from natural sources of livelihood. This article concentrates on the local perspective of the landscape in the Pallastunturi Fells, which are situated in Pallas-Ylläs National Park in Finnish Lapland. The Fells are both important pastures for reindeer and an old tourism area. The Pallastunturi Tourist Hotel is situated inside the national park because the hotel was built before the park was established 1938. Until the 1960s, the relationship between tourism and reindeer herding had been harmonious because the tourism activities did not disturb the reindeer herding, but offered instead ways to earn money by transporting the tourists from the main road to the hotel, which had been previously without any road connections. During recent years, tourism has been developed as the main source of livelihood in Lapland and huge investments have been made in several parts of Lapland. One example of this type of investment is the plan to replace the old Pallas Tourist hotel, which was built in 1948, with a newer and bigger one. It means that the state will allow a private enterprise to build more infrastructures for tourism inside a national park where nature should be protected and this has sparked a heated debate. Those who oppose the project criticise this proposal as the amendment of a law designed to promote the economic interests of one private tourism enterprise. The project's supporters claim that the needs of the tourism industry and nature protection can both be promoted and that it is important to develop a tourist centre which is already situated within the national park. This article is an attempt to try to shed light on why the local people are so loudly resisting the plans by a private tourism enterprise to touch the national park. It is based on my fieldwork among reindeer herding families in the area.


Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor

This article is an attempt to comprehend deindustrialisation and the impact of plant downsizing and closures in Scotland since the 1970s through listening to the voices of workers and reflecting on their ways of telling, whilst making some observations on how an oral history methodology can add to our understanding. It draws upon a rich bounty of oral history projects and collections undertaken in Scotland over recent decades. The lush description and often intense articulated emotion help us as academic “outsidersˮ to better understand how lives were profoundly affected by plant closures, getting us beyond statistical body counts and overly sentimentalised and nostalgic representations of industrial work to more nuanced understandings of the meanings and impacts of job loss. In recalling their lived experience of plant run-downs and closures, narrators are informing and interpreting; projecting a sense of self in the process and drawing meaning from their working lives. My argument here is that we need to listen attentively and learn from those who bore witness and try to make sense of these diverse, different and sometimes contradictory stories. We should take cognisance of silences and transgressing voices as well as dominant, hegemonic narratives if we are to deepen the conversation and understand the complex but profound impacts that deindustrialisation had on traditional working-class communities in Scotland, as well as elsewhere.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurwan Nurwan ◽  
Ali Hadara ◽  
La Batia

ABSTRAK: Inti pokok masalah dalam penelitian ini meliputi latar belakang gerakan sosial masyarakat Kampung Labaluba Desa Kontumere Kecamatan Kabawo Kabupaten Muna, Faktor-faktor yang mendorong gerakan sosial masyarakat Kampung Labaluba Desa Kontumere Kecamatan Kabawo Kabupaten Muna, proses gerakan sosial masyarakat Kampung Labaluba Desa Kontumere Kecamatan Kabawo Kabupaten Muna dan akibat gerakan sosial masyarakat Labaluba Desa Kontumere Kecamatan Kabawo Kabupaten Muna? Latar belakang gerakan sosial masyarakat Kampung Labaluba yaitu keadaan kampungnya yang hanya terdiri dari beberapa kepala keluarga tiap kampung dan jarak yang jauh masing-masing kampung membuat keadaan masyarakatnya sulit untuk berkomnikasi dan tiap kampung hanya terdiri dari lima sampai dengan tujuh kepala keluarga saja. Kampung ini letaknya paling timur pulau Muna terbentang dari ujung kota Raha sekarang sampai kampung Wakuru yang saat ini. Kondisi ini juga yang menjadi salah satu faktor penyebab kampung ini kurang berkembang baik dibidang ekonomi, sosial politik, pendidikan maupun di bidang kebudayaan. Keadaan ini diperparah lagi dengan sifat dan karakter penduduknya yang masih sangat primitif. Faktor yang mendorong adanya gerakan sosial masyarakat Kampung Labaluba Desa Kontumere Kecamatan Kabawo Kabupaten Muna adalah adanya ketidaksesuaian antara keinginan pemerintah setempat dan masyarakat yang mendiami Kampung Labaluba pada waktu itu. Sedangkan proses gerakan sosial masyarakat Kampung Labaluba Desa Kontumere Kecamatan Kabawo Kabupaten Muna bermula ketika pemerintah seolah memaksakan kehendaknya kepada rakyat yang menyebabkan rakyat tidak setuju dengan kebijakan tersebut. Akibat yang ditimbulkan dari adanya gerakan sosial masyarakat Kampung Labaluba Desa Kontumere Kecamatan Kabawo Kabupaten Muna terbagi dua yaitu akibat positif dan akibat negatif.Kata Kunci: Gerakan Sosial, Factor dan Dampaknya ABSTRACT: The main issues in this study include the background of the social movement of Labaluba Village, Kontumere Village, Kabawo Sub-District, Muna District, Factors that encourage social movements of Labaluba Kampung Sub-village, Kontumere Village, Kabawo Sub-District, Muna District, the social movement process of Labaluba Village, Kontumere Village, Kabawo Sub-District Muna Regency and due to Labaluba community social movements Kontumere Village Kabawo District Muna Regency? The background of the Labaluba Kampung community social movement is that the condition of the village consists of only a few heads of households per village and the distance of each village makes it difficult for the community to communicate and each village only consists of five to seven households. This village is located east of the island of Muna stretching from the edge of the city of Raha now to the current village of Wakuru. This condition is also one of the factors causing the village to be less developed in the economic, social political, educational and cultural fields. This situation is made worse by the very primitive nature and character of the population. The factor that motivated the existence of the social movement of Labaluba Village in Kontumere Village, Kabawo Subdistrict, Muna Regency was the mismatch between the wishes of the local government and the people who inhabited Labaluba Village at that time. While the process of social movements in Labaluba Village, Kontumere Village, Kabawo District, Muna Regency began when the government seemed to impose its will on the people, causing the people to disagree with the policy. The consequences arising from the existence of social movements in Labaluba Village, Kontumere Village, Kabawo District, Muna Regency are divided into two, namely positive and negative effects. Keywords: Social Movements, Factors and their Impacts


Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

This chapter examines working-class autobiographies and oral history testimonies created in the 1970s by the ‘history from below’, oral history, and community publishing movements. It finds that most working-class autobiographers felt that class divisions had weakened and changed radically in the post-war years: they identified improvements in housing, the NHS, education, and the power of workers as key alterations. The disappearance of live-in domestic service was a particularly powerful symbol of the changes that had taken place. Though none thought class had disappeared, many thought class divides were less powerful. While some working-class autobiographers wrote that their experiences made them instinctive socialists, in fact political activism did not flow straightforwardly from experience, but was the result of political education and context. Working-class experience was highly diverse, and as this became clear to many in the community publishing movement, it led to changes in their activist practice in the 1980s.


Author(s):  
Adane Zawdu ◽  
Sarah S. Willen

A fundamental building block of the Zionist vision is the claim of a primordial link between modern-day Jews and the people and territory of ancient Israel. This claim, which has proven remarkably durable despite its changing form and its tension with understandings of Palestinian indigeneity, continues to inform conceptions of nativeness in the modern-day state of Israel. This chapter explores how constructions of Jewish nativeness in Israel have changed in relation to successive immigration processes. Taking sociocultural and political dynamics as its focus, the chapter examines the cultural and institutional practices through which the notion of Jewish nativeness, its boundaries, and its logics of inclusion and exclusion were constructed and enforced in four historical periods. In each period, an increase in ethnic and religious heterogeneity challenged established notions of Jewish nativeness and membership in new ways. Although conceptions of Jewish nativeness have changed over time, they continue to shape social boundaries by signaling, and qualifying, membership in the Israeli collective.


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