Concrete Monsters of the Welfare State: Discussions of Brutalist Architecture on Social Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110193
Author(s):  
Max Holleran
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Welfare State

Brutalist architecture is an object of fascination on social media that has taken on new popularity in recent years. This article, drawing on 3,000 social media posts in Russian and English, argues that the buildings stand out for their arresting scale and their association with the expanding state in the 1960s and 1970s. In both North Atlantic and Eastern European contexts, the aesthetic was employed in publicly financed urban planning projects, creating imposing concrete structures for universities, libraries, and government offices. While some online social media users associate the style with the overreach of both socialist and capitalist governments, others are more nostalgic. They use Brutalist buildings as a means to start conversations about welfare state goals of social housing, free university, and other services. They also lament that many municipal governments no longer have the capacity or vision to take on large-scale projects of reworking the built environment to meet contemporary challenges.

The Irreversible Welfare State: Its Recent Maturation, its Encounter with the Economic Crisis, and its Future Prospects

1986 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Therborn ◽  
Joop Roebroek
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
State Growth ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Welfare State

The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s meant important changes within the Western states: apparatuses of armed forces, bureaucratic ordering, and public transport and communication became institutions of transfer payments to households, and public education, caring and social services. In this article we describe the influence of the current economic crisis on the welfare state. Average yearly growth of social security expenditure continues, but has declined since 1981. Generous systems of social security clearly provide no security against the consequences of the economic crisis, especially unemployment. Public commitment to social security and full employment are largely independent of each other. We describe how, under the surface of welfare state growth, the political relations of force have changed in favor of those social forces advocating fundamental reappraisal of the welfare state over those supporting its maintenance or extension. The resistance to significant changes is so strong, however, that fundamental reconstruction of the welfare state is as yet excluded. We hold that the welfare state is an irreversible major institution of advanced capitalist countries, as long as democracy prevails. The building of a majoritarian anti-welfare state coalition seems impossible for the foreseeable future, but in some countries significant cuts must be expected; we end by specifying some economic and political preconditions for such cuts.

Two stabilization plans for a developed economy: West Germany and Israel

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 471-518
Author(s):  
Anghel N. Rugina
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Stable Equilibrium ◽  
West Germany ◽  
New Era ◽  
Social Thinking ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Almost All ◽  
New System ◽  
The Welfare State

Investigates, in Part 1, the effects of West German stagnation in the 1980s following on from the welfare state doctrine of the 1960s and 1970s, which led to an economic and social crisis becoming inevitable. Shows this is not purely a German problem but one that also affects almost all other capitalist countries – either developed or developing. Expresses irony that the former communist bloc countries should also be engulfed in such crises. Proffers explanations and recommendations to offset the problems in Germany. Part II looks at Israel and how it has begun to emerge from its 1974 austerity programme by Rabin. States that Israel must initiate a new system of stable equilibrium to open a new era that is very possible, but involves economic and social thinking to avoid previous mistakes.

Public Opinion, Party Politics, and the Welfare State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Lindvall ◽  
David Rueda
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Party System ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter examines the long-run relationship between public opinion, party politics, and the welfare state. It argues that when large parties receive a clear signal concerning the median voter’s position on the welfare state, vote-seeking motivations dominate and the large parties in the party system converge on the position of the median voter. When the position of the median voter is more difficult to discern, however, policy-seeking motivations dominate, and party positions diverge. This argument implies that the effects of government partisanship on welfare state policy are more ambiguous than generally understood. The countries covered in the chapter are Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom (going back to the 1960s). The number of observations is (necessarily) limited, but the diverse cases illustrate a common electoral dynamic centered around the position of the median voter.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Individual Psychology ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Second World

This introductory chapter describes the life and career of Luigi Nono (1924–1990). It also provides an overview of the present volume. Born on January 29, 1924, in Venice, Nono's education and musical apprenticeship took place during the crucial years of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, in a family and intellectual milieu which were solidly middle class while being fundamentally hostile to fascism. In 1950, Nono approached his first orchestral composition, Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell'op. 41 di Arnold Schönberg—Schoenberg's opus 41. During the 1960s and 1970s, political commitment, social conflict, denunciation, and the treatment of individual psychology always in relation to the collective drama became constants of Nono's production as the concept of engagement took on for him the value of a “moral imperative” (Jean-Paul Sartre) to match the aesthetic imperative.

Consciousness-Raising

2020 ◽  
pp. 232-245
Author(s):  
Tabatha Leggett
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
First Person ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
Collective Voice ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
Feminist Consciousness ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines consciousness-raising as a means of challenging oppression. Bringing the #MeToo movement into contact with first-person accounts and criticisms of the radical feminist consciousness-raising groups that formed in New York and Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s, it suggests that they remain an essential force to challenge female oppression today. It touches on the various ways that patriarchal structures silence women, how consciousness-raising undercuts this silencing by giving women a collective voice, and how social media can amplify this voice. Finally, it addresses common criticisms of consciousness-raising movements, especially concerning the disproportionate focus on white women’s concerns that they have historically represented and universalized. It touches on Kimberlé Crenhaw’s theory of intersectionality as well as Paulo Friere’s conception of critical consciousness theory to explore the notion of truly inclusive consciousness-raising movements.

The Beginnings of the Nordic Welfare States: Similarities and Differences

1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 9-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stein Kuhnle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Compulsory Insurance ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Welfare State

The beginning of our present stage in the development of the welfare state can be traced to Bismarck's large-scale social insurance schemes of the 1880s. The article compares various political and economic macro-characteristics of the Nordic countries at that time, and proposes hypotheses about the timing of legislation in the Nordic nations, and about the likelihood for Nordic imitations of the principle of compulsory insurance. The article discusses why Denmark was expected to become, and in fact became, a forerunner in the Nordic context, and why the principle of compulsory insurance stood a better chance of gaining acceptance in Norway than in Denmark and Sweden.

scholarly journals Generation Crisis: How Population Research Defined the Baby Boomers

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Bouk
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Baby Boom ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
Baby Boom Generation ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Mature Population ◽  
The Welfare State

This article presents an intellectual and social history of the concept of the baby boom. Researchers first invented the notion of a population bulge in the mid-twentieth-century United States to explain birth rates that were higher than predicted by their theories of a mature population and economy. As the children born during this “baby boom” entered schools in the 1950s, they were drawn into a pre-existing conversation about an educational emergency that confirmed researchers’ suspicions that the bulge would spread crisis over time throughout all of the nation's age-graded institutions. New sociological and demographic explanations of the bulge subsequently merged with heightened talk of generational conflict during the 1960s and 1970s to define, with journalistic help in 1980, the “baby boom generation” and the “baby boomer.” Crisis talk has pursued the boomers into the present, mobilized most effectively by opponents of the welfare state.

scholarly journals Resistance to Anti-Discrimination Law in Central and Eastern Europe–a Post-Communist Legacy?

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Havelková
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Substantive Equality ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Uk

AbstractPost-communist Central and Eastern European ('CEE') legislators and judges have been resistant to equality and antidiscrimination law. This Article argues that these negative attitudes can be explained in part by the specific trajectory that EAL has taken in CEE during and after state socialism, which has differed from Western Europe. In the UK/EU, the formal guarantees of equal treatment and prohibitions of discrimination of the 1960s and 1970s were complemented by a more substantive understanding of equality in the 1990s and 2000s. This development was reversed in CEE—substantive equality, of a certain kind, preceded rather than followed formal equality and antidiscrimination guarantees.The State Socialist concern with equality was real, and yet the project was incomplete in several significant ways. It saw only socio-economic, but not socio-cultural inequalities (relating to dignity, identity or diversity). It was transformative with regards to class, but not other discrimination grounds, especially not gender. While equality was a constitutionally enshrined principle, there was an absence of any corresponding enforceable antidiscrimination right. Finally, the emphasis on the “natural” differences between the sexes meant that sex/gender discrimination was not recognized as conflicting with women's constitutional equality guarantees.

Understanding Homelessness in Neoliberal City: A Study from Delhi

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-297
Author(s):  
Subhamay Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Structural Problem ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
The Welfare State

‘Homelessness’ is the worst form of urban poverty, and in the wake of neoliberalism it has become more pervasive in cities across the world. Taking the case of Delhi, the study focuses on the making of homelessness, the connotation of being homeless, and the nature of responses from a governing institution to homelessness in the neoliberal city. The study reveals that large scale slum demolition in the last three decades has rendered thousands of people homeless. They are denied of basic human rights and human necessities. They are not even allowed to reside in the open spaces of the city. Governing actors have bypassed their duties by setting up only a ‘few’ night-shelters in the city, most of which remained unoccupied because of several adversities. The study also reveals that homelessness is the outcome of governance failure and the failure of the welfare state. But the structural problem of homelessness is completely overlooked both in policy and by ‘other’ sections of society.

The Pluralist Interpretation of Chinese Marxist Aesthetics in Contemporary European Scholarship

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Qilin Fu ◽  
Shubo Gao
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Variation Theory ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Universal Applicability

In Europe there have appeared several important collections on Marxist literary theory, such as Francis Mulhern’s Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism (1992) and Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne’s Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (1996). However, Chinese voices are not included at all in these volumes. Maybe this lacuna results from a lack of awareness of Chinese Marxist aesthetics on the part of most European literary historians and critics. In this article, we seek to discuss the circumstances of European scholars’ contacts with Chinese Marxist aesthetics, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. Starting from the variation theory perspective proposed by Shunqing Cao we will discuss how European scholars read and misread what they perceived as the meaning and universal applicability of what was happening in China at the time. The discussion is divided into three parts: the utopian interpretation of the Chinese theory of revolution in France, the critical reception by Eastern European Marxists, and the sympathetic interpretation by sinologists such as the Dutch diplomat and literary scholar Douwe Fokkema.

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