scholarly journals Resistance through realism: Youth subculture films in 1970s (and 1980s) Britain

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
Youth Subculture ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
The University ◽  
Class Youth ◽  
Made In

Film scholars have argued that the British social realist films of the late 1950s and early 1960s reflect the concerns articulated by British cultural studies during the same period. This article looks at how the social realist films of the 1970s and early 1980s similarly reflect the concerns of British cultural studies scholarship produced by the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies during the 1970s. It argues that the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ approach to stylised working-class youth subcultures is echoed in the portrayal of youth subcultures in the social realist films Pressure (1976), Bloody Kids (1979), Babylon (1980) and Made in Britain (1982). This article explores the ways in which these films show us both the strengths and weaknesses of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ work on subcultures.

The Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Institute

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
Victoria de Grazia
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Made In

The Feltrinelli Institute was founded in 1949 by the Milanese publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli – its aim “to promote the knowledge and study – carried out in accordance with strictly scientific criteria and complete ideological autonomy – of the history, the political and economic thought and the social ideas of the modern and contemporary eras; particular importance is to be given to Italy and to the economic phenomena, political doctrines and more historically important social movements of the country.” Feltrinelli's initiative, which began with the library and a rich collection of materials on French socialism, was an important first step toward filling the vacuum in documentation and research on the Italian working class and socialist movements left by two decades of Fascist government. In the following years, the library and research activities of the Institute played a leading role in the reconstruction of intellectual life and political debate in Italy. Its publications, especially Movimento Operaio (1947–1955) and the Annali (1958-) contained some of the most important contributions to the study of the Italian working class and peasantry, and socialist movements made in the postwar period.

The Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Institute

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
Victoria de Grazia
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Made In

The Feltrinelli Institute was founded in 1949 by the Milanese publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli – its aim “to promote the knowledge and study – carried out in accordance with strictly scientific criteria and complete ideological autonomy – of the history, the political and economic thought and the social ideas of the modern and contemporary eras; particular importance is to be given to Italy and to the economic phenomena, political doctrines and more historically important social movements of the country.” Feltrinelli's initiative, which began with the library and a rich collection of materials on French socialism, was an important first step toward filling the vacuum in documentation and research on the Italian working class and socialist movements left by two decades of Fascist government. In the following years, the library and research activities of the Institute played a leading role in the reconstruction of intellectual life and political debate in Italy. Its publications, especially Movimento Operaio (1947–1955) and the Annali (1958-) contained some of the most important contributions to the study of the Italian working class and peasantry, and socialist movements made in the postwar period.

scholarly journals Transatlantic Translations of the Button-down Shirt

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Weiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ivy League ◽  
Class System ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
Class Youth

This article looks at how the button-down shirt has been translated in the American and British contexts. Employing Barthes’ notion of ‘fashion narrative,’ I describe how in the United States, the button-down shirt is closely associated with the Ivy Look, a style that had emerged from the elite Ivy League universities but became mass fashion by the mid-1960s. While the garment remained youthful, continuing to draw on the collegiate fashion narrative, it also spoke to an American national imaginary of affluence, abundance and class mobility. Both the garment and its paratextual meanings circulated through the global fashion system, emerging in a very different context in 1960s Britain. Speaking to British imaginings of America, it remained youthful but was transformed by the particularities of the British class system, becoming closely associated with two of Britain’s working-class youth subcultures: the mods and the skinheads. Emblematic of the subterranean passion for clothing that characterised the culture of young working-class men in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century, the button-down shirt became a subcultural icon. In turn, the historicisation and commodification of these subcultures has ensured the button-down shirt’s place in the British national imaginary. Comparing publicity materials produced by American and British clothiers, I examine how the garment’s fashion narratives, both British and American, continue to circulate.

scholarly journals Around the Anthropocene in Eighty Names—Considering the Urbanocene Proposition

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 4458
Author(s):  
Franciszek Chwałczyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Negative Theology ◽  
Trading Zones ◽  
The Social ◽  
Made In

There are now at least 80–90 proposed alternatives to the term “the Anthropocene”, following critique mainly from the social sciences. The most popular seem to be Moore’s Capitalocene and Haraway’s Chthulucene, but there are others, such as: Hornborg’s Technocene, Mann’s Homogenocene, Wilson’s Eremocene, Stiegler’s neganthropocene, Parikka’s Anthrobscene… Furthermore, similar recognitions and critiques have been made in urban studies (Urban Age, Planetary Urbanization…). What should we make of this multiplicity? Those propositions are approached here from the philosophical and cultural studies perspectives, in the spirit of Galison’s trading zones and Bal’s travelling concepts. They are treated with engaged pluralism (introduced through geography and urban studies) and, because of their eschatological dimension, with (secular) negative theology. The Urbanocene is also outlined using Nowak’s ontological imagination. None of the propositions are sufficient on their own. Most contribute to a better understanding of the Anthropocene. Those concerning the role of cities and urbanization (Astycene, Urbanocene, Urbicene, Metropocene) are insufficient. This entails that there is a need for an Urbanocene proposition to be formulated. This proposition draft is briefly outlined here by linking an example of exceeded planetary boundaries (levels of phosphorus and nitrogen) with urbanization, drawing on the works of Mumford and Gandy.

scholarly journals Critical and Cultural Studies

Communication ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meenakshi Gigi Durham
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The University

Critical and cultural studies of communication are focused on the analysis of cultural artifacts and practices in relation to the social formations in which they exist. The interrelationships of cultural signs, their conditions of production, and their reception by audiences are at the core of such studies. Critical and cultural studies derive from Marxist approaches to society and culture but have expanded to engage a broad range of theoretical and methodological areas, including semiotics and structuralism, literary theory, rhetoric, philosophy, sociology, ethnography, film theory, gender studies, critical race theory, cybercultures, politics, and the fine arts, among others. Critical theory is generally associated with the ideas of the University of Frankfurt’s Institute for Social Research, often referred to as the “Frankfurt School,” while cultural studies had its genesis in the UK, principally at the Birmingham Center for Critical and Cultural Studies. But critical theory and cultural studies are deeply mutually implicated, and their interrelationships are significant. Critical and cultural studies have proliferated internationally, with distinct perspectives and approaches characterizing their various national, political, and societal contexts. The project of critical and cultural studies of communication is tied to praxis. Critical and cultural studies represent a radical and subversive intervention in the academy because of their basic goal of troubling the term “culture” and linking it to social power and the construction and dissemination of knowledge.

Attempting to transgress neoliberal value: Constructing a micro-foundation of social values of working-class youth in vocational schools in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 1050-1065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny C. Lu ◽  
Anita Koo ◽  
Ngai Pun
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Vocational Schools ◽  
Social Mechanism ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Youth

In contrast to the existing argument that the logic of capital has monetised almost every aspect of human relationships to the realm of exchange value, this article explores the social values that are practised by Chinese working-class youth as an alternative form of agency and everyday practice. Instead of understanding social values as a realm of value operating entirely outside the logic of exchange value, this article takes social values as the constitutive other of exchange value embodied in the neoliberalised form of capitalism. It attempts to develop a micro-foundation of social values or a social mechanism of values for understanding social protection and class solidarity. Employing in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations in vocational schools in China, at sites for the education and nurture of working-class youth, we ask what social values are, how they are perceived and exercised, and by whom. From students’ practices of care in schools, cooperation in the workplace and solidarity in the community, our goal is to build a micro-foundation of social values that challenges and goes beyond the logic of exchange value.

Avoiding Blackness

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Roth-Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Black People ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Class Youth ◽  
Social Imperative ◽  
Made In

Chapter 5 explores the “flip side” of boa aparência (or whitening), as middle-class youth and parents seek to secure the investment that they have made in their family’s whiteness by avoiding contact with black people and black spaces. Stronger than the fear of physically “black” bodies, however, is the fear of embodied practices associated with blackness, practices which circulate independent of dark-skinned people while threatening to steal the whiteness of middle-class youth. These fears, and the social imperative to avoid contact with blackness, are presented through the case study of Bola, a moreno (brown-skinned) middle-class youth who boldly disregards established social and racial borders. This chapter also expands on the struggle over prime urban spaces in Rio de Janeiro, showing how the presence of black youth in private, air-conditioned, and exclusive shopping malls inspires increased racial anxiety.

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