Left Behind in the Hungarian Rustbelt: The Cultural Political Economy of Working-Class Neo-Nationalism

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1159-1177
Author(s):  
Gábor Scheiring
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Cultural Political Economy ◽  
Shared Narrative ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

Nationalism is back with a renewed force. Hungary is a virulent example of the new nationalist ascendancy. As the country was a former liberal star pupil, Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn has been puzzling researchers for years. This study goes beyond the entrenched polarisations in the literature by highlighting the dynamic interplay between culture, structure and identity. It proposes to conceptualise Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn as a Polanyian countermovement against commodification, globalisation and deindustrialisation. The article presents the results of a thematic analysis of 82 interviews with workers in four towns in Hungary’s rustbelt and highlights how the multiscalar lived experience of commodifying reforms violated an implicit social contract and changed workers’ narrative identities. In the absence of a class-based shared narrative and lacking a viable political tool to control their fate, working-class neo-nationalism emerged as a new narrative identity to express workers’ anger and outrage.

“Scrap-Heap Storiesˮ: Oral Narratives of Labour and Loss in Scottish Mining and Manufacturing

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-2018) ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Industrial Work ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Plant Closures ◽  
The Impact

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.

scholarly journals Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852098222
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Dave O’Brien ◽  
Ian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Privileged Class

Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ which act to downplay interviewees’ own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this ‘intergenerational self’ partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory.

The Political Economy of the American Working Class

1977 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Mackenzie ◽  
Harry Braverman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Working Class

scholarly journals Qualitative research to explore the symptoms and impacts experienced by children with ulcerative colitis

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason A. Randall ◽  
Aiste Guobyte ◽  
Laure Delbecque ◽  
Louise Newton ◽  
Tara Symonds ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Ulcerative Colitis ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Gastrointestinal Disease ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Related Quality ◽  
High Level

Abstract Background Ulcerative Colitis (UC) is a chronic gastrointestinal disease that often presents during one’s most productive years and is characterized by colon inflammation. Key symptoms and impacts in adults are well-known, however, experiences among pediatric populations have not been well documented. The purpose of this study was to understand the health-related quality of life and symptomatic experience of children (2–11 years) living with UC. Methods Qualitative, semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted. Children aged 5–11 years were interviewed, as well as their parents/caregivers in matched dyads. Parents/caregivers of children aged2–4 years were interviewed within a parent/caregiver-only cohort. All participants were recruited from the United States. Interviews were coded using thematic analysis. Results Key symptoms and impacts reflecting the lived experience of UC were identified following thematic analysis, generating a conceptual model. A total of 32 participants (20 parents/caregivers and 12 children) were interviewed. Results identified a substantial burden of UC in children. All children and parents/caregivers reported that they/their child experienced stomach/abdominal pain. Other symptoms discussed by over 75% were blood in stool, diarrhea/loose stools, stool urgency, incomplete evacuation, stool frequency, and feeling gassy/passing gas. The most frequently discussed impacts by over 75% of participants were on emotional and practical aspects, seriously affecting quality of life. Conclusions Qualitative analysis of the interviews identified a substantial burden of UC on children, with a profound impact on their lives. The symptomatic experience is reflective of adults and adolescents. A high level of agreement between parents/caregivers and children was demonstrated regarding the perception of the presence or absence of symptoms. Children aged 8–11 years showed higher levels of agreement with parents/caregivers than did younger children, indicating appropriateness of self-report of symptom data in the 8–11 years age group.

Informality, Class Structure, and Class Identity in Contemporary Argentina

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolfo Elbert
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
America Latina ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Los Grupos

The dynamics of peripheral capitalism in Latin America includes the employment or self-employment of a significant proportion of the working class under informal arrangements. The neoliberal transformations of the 1990s deepened this feature of Latin American labor markets, and it was not reversed during the period of economic growth that followed the collapse of neoliberalism. In this context, sociological debates have focused on the relationship between the formal and the informal fractions of the working class. Examination of the biographical and family linkages between formal and informal workers in Argentina and the effect of these connections on the patterns of class self-identification of individuals shows that lived experience across the informality boundary makes formal workers similar to informal workers in terms of class self-identification. This research provides preliminary evidence that the two kinds of workers belong to the same social class because of the fluidity of the boundary that separates them. Instead of a class cleavage, this boundary is better defined as the separation between fractions of the working class. La dinámica del capitalismo periférico en América Latina implica la informalidad laboral (sea entre trabajadores contratados o autónomos) de una sustancial parte de la clase obrera. Las transformaciones neoliberales de los años noventa profundizaron esta característica de los mercados de trabajo latinoamericanos, y el problema no se revirtió durante el período de crecimiento económico que siguió al colapso del neoliberalismo. En este contexto, los debates sociológicos se han centrado en la relación entre los grupos formales e informales de la clase obrera. Un análisis de los vínculos biográficos y familiares entre los trabajadores formales e informales en Argentina y el efecto de dichas conexiones en los patrones individuales de autoidentificación de clase muestra que la experiencia vivida en los límites de la informalidad hace que los trabajadores formales se consideren similares a los informales en términos de identificación de clase. Esta investigación brinda evidencia preliminar de que los dos tipos de trabajadores pertenecen a la misma clase social.

Richard Whately and political economy in school books, 1833-80

1966 ◽  
Vol 15 (58) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.M. Goldstrom
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Hours ◽  
Richard Whately ◽  
School Books

Throughout the nineteenth century, books, pamphlets and periodicals offered widely-ranging advice to the working class. One theme, appearing about 1820, was political economy: ‘Next to religion’, a royal commission reported, ‘the knowledge most important to a labouring man is that of the causes which regulate the amount of his wages, the hours of his work, the regularity of his employment, and the prices of what he consumes’. And Richard Whately, former Drummond Professor of political economy at Oxford, now archbishop of Dublin, urged similarly the need to teach political economy to the poor : ‘The lower orders’, he said, ‘would not … be, as now, liable to the misleading of every designing demagogue … If they were well grounded in the outlines of the science, it would go further towards rendering them provident, than any other scheme that could be devised.’

The lived experience of stigmatisation in patients after stoma reversal

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Owen ◽  
Alexia Papageorgiou
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Stoma Reversal ◽  
And Coping

Aim: This small−scale, exploratory, qualitative study was conducted to investigate how the experiences of having a stoma and subsequent stoma reversal affected the lives of the participants.Method: Five participants were interviewed about their experiences. Manual thematic analysis, using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), was employed to interpret the data. Results: Common themes were identified as emerging from the data. Themes before reversal were: acceptance and coping; social impact; and anticipation of returning to normal. Post−reversal themes were: returning to normal; interference with anticipated return to normal; and ongoing social impact. Conclusion: This exploratory study provides a rich account of the experiences of stoma patients who underwent reversal operations. It enhances our understanding of the transition encountered when changing from a person with a stoma into someone without one. This research has found that the anticipated return to normal can be hampered by a mix of physical and psychological processes.

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