scholarly journals Canonical Generations and the British Left: The Narrative Construction of the Miners’ Strike 1984–85

Sociology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nettleingham

‘Generations’ have been invoked to describe a variety of social and cultural relationships, and to understand the development of self-conscious group identity. Equally, the term can be an applied label and politically useful construct; generations can be retrospectively produced. Drawing on the concept of ‘canonical generations’ – those whose experiences come to epitomise an event of historic and symbolic importance – this article examines the narrative creation and functions of ‘generations’ as collective memory shapes and re-shapes the desire for social change. Building a case study of the canonical role of the miners’ strike of 1984–85 in the narrative history of the British left, it examines the selective appropriation and transmission of the past in the development of political consciousness. It foregrounds the autobiographical narratives of activists who, in examining and legitimising their own actions and prospects, (re)produce a ‘generation’ in order to create a relatable and useful historical understanding.

2014 ◽  
Vol 556-562 ◽  
pp. 6631-6637
Author(s):  
Somchai Seviset

China has had her relations with Thailand for many centuries since the Sukhothai Period (A.D. 1250-1438) including trade contact, diplomatic relations set forth as per an abundance of documentary evidences, architectural works, and artistic object with significant artistic evidences of a long history of Thai-China relations. In Ayutthaya Period (A.D.1350-1767) which was corresponding to China’s Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644) there were Xi Yuan’s supporting written literature (A.D. 1565-1628). He was a Chinese historian who noted that China sent a large junk ship for trade to Ayutthaya fetching goods of silk, and chinaware from China for sale to Siam Court. Thai Traditional Cupboard Furniture in the past also had an interesting mix of Chinese art. Chinese artwork which appeared in the Thai Traditional Cupboard Furniture made from hardwood with surrounding decoration around it were created during the period of A.D. 18-19. From a number of Thai ancient cupboard furniture exhibited in the Phra Nakhon National Museum (the Largest National Museum in Bangkok Metropolis). This case study will explain the inspiration of Chinese art which the Thai craftsmen applied on the design to decorate the cupboard.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Käthe Anne Lemon

Canadian University Press (CUP) is a co-operative national student news group that produces a news service and unites student newspapers across the country. Since its establishment in 1938, CUP has brought campus newspapers from across the country together to share news and information as well as training with one another. From 1965 to 1991 CUP's policies stated that the major role of the student newspaper was to "act as an agent of social change." During this time CUP and its members took on an educative and active political role. Using CUP as a case study of a politically engaged press organization that saw its role as an active participant in the events it reported, this thesis illuminates the factors that can encourage a politically engaged press taking into consideration both theory and practice. This study examines the factors that made it possible for CUP to act as an agent of social change, how that role was interpreted, and the changes that resulted in the organization moving away from that role.


2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (8) ◽  
pp. 1084-1099 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biswarup Sen

In 2001, India’s first private FM station – Radio City, Bangalore – came on air, ending an era of state broadcasting that began in 1930. In the past decade, FM radio has enjoyed spectacular success: over 200 stations are now in operation, and the FM industry has seen spectacular growth in listenership and revenues. FM’s impact goes beyond economics; it is now a cultural signifier synonymous with modernity – as the ‘tagline’ for a popular FM network puts it ‘Radio Mirchi – it’s hot!’ FM, I argue in this article, represents a new kind of radio. The shift from state-controlled, nationwide AM transmission to corporate-owned local FM broadcasting signals a profound change in the very philosophy of radio in India. This article offers a brief account of the history of Indian radio and analyzes the social and economic factors that necessitated a change in modes of broadcasting. It also brings its claims into focus through using a case study that looks at the business structure, programming policies, and audience management strategies of one very popular FM station – Radio Mirchi, Kolkata – in order to demonstrate how these newly shaped practices are reinventing the role of radio in contemporary India.


2020 ◽  
pp. 001083672093840
Author(s):  
Ayşe Betül Çelik

This study analyzes how peace processes in socio-political environments that do not support ‘confronting the past’ (CTP) initiatives are affected by the exclusion and delegitimization of alternative narratives different from dominant ones concerning the nature and history of ethnic conflicts, focusing on Turkey’s failed peace process as a case study. It pays specific attention to the resistance against acknowledging alternatives to dominant narratives by considering the role played by bystanders and antagonistic citizens, who are not directly part of the conflict but nonetheless support it by remaining passive or directly/indirectly supporting dominant narratives. Driven by agonistic peace theory, the article shows how failing to turn these groups into agonistic citizens through some form of agonistic CTP initiative and allowing a space for alternative narratives can result in the fragility of efforts towards a transition to peace.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Käthe Anne Lemon

Canadian University Press (CUP) is a co-operative national student news group that produces a news service and unites student newspapers across the country. Since its establishment in 1938, CUP has brought campus newspapers from across the country together to share news and information as well as training with one another. From 1965 to 1991 CUP's policies stated that the major role of the student newspaper was to "act as an agent of social change." During this time CUP and its members took on an educative and active political role. Using CUP as a case study of a politically engaged press organization that saw its role as an active participant in the events it reported, this thesis illuminates the factors that can encourage a politically engaged press taking into consideration both theory and practice. This study examines the factors that made it possible for CUP to act as an agent of social change, how that role was interpreted, and the changes that resulted in the organization moving away from that role.


2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 219-242
Author(s):  
Lóránt Péteri

Writings on the socio-cultural complexities of Mahler’s identity and his music in context vary in relation to four basic motifs: his Jewishness; his Germanness; the partly Slav environment of his early years; and his relationship to the Austro-Hungar-ian Dual Monarchy. Studies combine these elements, or privilege one above another. It may help to rethink this subject if we consider that his self-awareness formed amid a changing social environment; if his personal identity will be studied in the context of the identity history of his family; and through scrutinizing the decisive socializing role of the localities in which he lived. These conclusions can reveal the unparalleled mobility of his career in a rapidly-transforming context. Late nineteenth-century Central European societies drew at once on the “past” (post-feudal, pre-modern attitudes and practices), “present” (constitutionalism based on equal civilian rights, and nationalism), and “future” (populist and racist ideologies questioning the enlightened, liberal consensus). All three impacted not only Mahler’s identity, but his image: how the surrounding society perceived him. These approaches also facilitate critical readings of the contemporaneous attempts to embed Mahler’s music in national, regional, and ethno-cultural contexts. This paper examines the reception of the third movement of Symphony No. 1 as a case study, exploring how Mahler’s construed images were reflected in different interpretations of this music.


Design Issues ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83
Author(s):  
David Kirk ◽  
Abigail C. Durrant ◽  
Jim Kosem ◽  
Stuart Reeves

Spomenik (“monument”) was a digital memorial architecture that transposes in time otherwise hidden cultural memories of atrocity. Spomenik, was designed as a simple digital audio guide, embedded in a remote rural location (Kočevski Rog, Slovenia) to work without the infrastructure normally present at national memorial sites. By resurrecting voices and cultural narratives of the deceased and placing them back into the landscape through digital means, Spomenik opens a dialogue about the events of the past and their relation to networks of the living; it explored the role of voice and agency, as serviced through design, in the act of memorialization. This article presents a detailed case study of a design-led inquiry about digital memorialization and digital preservation of cultural heritage. It offers a reflective account of the nature of legacy and the extent to which it is (and perhaps should be) necessarily bound to networks of collective memory, mediated through designed cultural tools.


2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuefei Ren

This article examines the role of historical preservation in the spatial restructuring of postindustrial cities through a detailed case study of Xintiandi, a preservation–based redevelopment project in the inner city of Shanghai. At Xintiandi, two blocks of Shikumen houses, Shanghainese tenements built by Western landlords for Chinese tenants in the colonial period, were turned into a posh entertainment quarter by international developers and architects, with support from local governments. The history of Shikumen as dwellings of lower–middle–class tenants through the twentieth century is being carefully erased. The private–public coalition has repackaged Shikumen into a symbol of Shanghai's cosmopolitan colonial past by emphasizing its Western–influenced architecture. This article argues that historical preservation, far from hindering urban growth, serves the same development goal in globalizing Shanghai. Historical elements in the built environment are selectively recycled to produce a new transnational space.


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.


Author(s):  
Stefan Collini

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.


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