“To Show the People in Paris How We Live Here”: Working-Class Representation, Paul Carpita, and Film History

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Sabine Haenni
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Film History ◽  
The People ◽  
Class Representation

The Vaccine Revolt of 1904, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrique Cukierman
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Smallpox Vaccine ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Poor

A review of the literature on the Vaccine Revolt shows that it continues to be treated in an overly simplistic manner as a “structure” subjected to some form of regulation, from which its dynamics can be explained and its “root causes” identified. It is possible to forge a new, more cautious historiographical path, seeking to view this “structure” as a rhizome, as a loosely connected ensemble that exists under unstable circumstances whose precarious (dis)order cannot be grasped in its complexity by a reductionist analysis. Another historiographical approach that can shed new light on the popular revolt of 1904 situates it in the context of its links to the history of the smallpox vaccine and its diffusion. Viewing the episode as equally relevant to the history of science and technology, this article proposes to “vaccinate the Vaccine Revolt”—that is, to reintroduce the smallpox vaccine as a protagonist in the events—highlighting the need to treat the revolt as a chapter of a sociotechnical history; after all, what could be more sociotechnical than a technoscientific artifact that gave its name to a popular revolt? This is a history of scientists convinced of the superiority of their technical knowledge and of their right to exercise their power for the good of the public, who would be obliged to comply; most of all, it is a history without the problematic distinctions between content and context, between rationality and irrationality, between science and society. It is also a history of the popular mobilization on the streets of downtown Rio de Janeiro, exemplified by the vigorous resistance mounted in the working-class neighborhood of Saúde under the command of the Black man known as Prata Preta, which serves as a counterpoint to top-down historical narratives more concerned with the comings and goings of White political elites and coup-plotting, positivist-inspired generals, marked by the symptomatic exclusion of Black and working-class actors. It also serves to emphasize the symptomatic absence of the voice of Prata Preta, who was imprisoned and summarily banished without any due process. The fact that he was silenced has made it easier to construct allegories about “the people,” portraying them as heroic opponents of elite oppression or the exact opposite: an antiheroic, dangerous, and disposable rabble. Among the entourage of characters who have been silenced, one should also note the absence of women’s voices; although vaccine opponents rallied around the claim that they were defending against the “violation” of women’s bodies, nothing was heard from women’s mouths. Finally, revisiting the history of the Vaccine Revolt offers another opportunity to unmask the project of an authoritarian political, military, and scientific elite, with a particular focus on Oswaldo Cruz, one of Brazil’s greatest champions of science. In the name of science and public health, that elite envisioned a modern Brazil, while remaining ignorant of the daily nightmare lived by the vast majority of the Black, poor, and marginalized population.

“Tangled Passions”: Realism and Lyricism in the Plays of Peter Gill

Modern Drama ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-457
Author(s):  
William McEvoy
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
History Of ◽  
Class Representation ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This article argues that the work of Welsh theatre director and playwright Peter Gill occupies a unique place in post-1960s’ British playwriting. It explores Gill’s plays as – using theatre critic Susannah Clapp’s phrase – the “missing link” between kitchen-sink realism and more self-consciously poetic forms of theatre text. Gill’s plays make an important contribution to the history of working-class representation in UK theatre for three main reasons: first, the centrality he gives to Wales, Welsh working-class characters, and the city of Cardiff; second, his emphasis on the experience of women, especially mothers; and third, his focus on young male characters expressing and exploring the complexities of same-sex desire. The plays make advances in terms of realist dialogue and structure while also experimenting with layout, repetition, fragmentation, poetic description, and monologue narration. Gill’s work realistically documents the impact of poverty, cramped housing conditions, and social deprivation on his characters as part of a political project to show the lives of Welsh working-class people on stage. While doing so, Gill innovates in his handling of time, perspective, viewpoint, and genre. His plays occupy a distinctive place in the history of British, working-class, gay theatre, helping us to rethink what each of these three key terms means.

Government by the Privileged

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Nicholas Carnes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Service Industry ◽  
White Collar ◽  
The United States ◽  
Manual Labor ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Office ◽  
Labor Service

This chapter opens the discussion on why working-class Americans—people employed in manual labor, service industry, or clerical jobs—almost never go on to hold political office in the United States. It suggests that the economic gulf between politicians and the people they represent—a so-called government by the privileged or white-collar government—has serious consequences for the American democratic process. Although journalists and scholars have always had hunches about what keeps working-class Americans out of office, to date there has been almost no actual research on why the United States is governed by the privileged or what reformers might do about it. This book tries to change that. It argues that workers are less likely to hold office not because they are unqualified or because voters prefer more affluent candidates, but because workers are simply less likely to run for public office in the first place.

The Rough South of Ron Rash

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ærvold Bjerre
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
White Trash ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
The People ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Violent Conflicts ◽  
North And South

This chapter discusses the fiction of Ron Rash, who sets almost all of his work—poems, short stories, and novels—in the Carolinas and focuses on the people who live or have lived there. Rash was born in Chester, South Carolina, in 1953, and grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. While not a direct heir to the “Southern Redneck and White Trash” tradition, Rash fills his work with characters firmly embedded in the Rough South—mostly lower-class whites from Appalachian North and South Carolina. Rash's work illustrates his concern with working-class characters and their struggles, with poor whites and their violent conflicts. His interest in the working class reflects his own family background. Rash published his first collection of poetry, Eureka Mill, in 1998. He also wrote novels that depict violence, such as One Foot in Eden, The World Made Straight, and Serena.

“The Workingman's Bible”: Robert Blatchford's Merrie England, Radical Literacy, and the Making of Debsian Socialism, 1895–1900

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason D. Martinek
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social System ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Moral Indignation ◽  
Missionary Zeal ◽  
The People ◽  
Adequate Food

Turn-of-the-century socialists radicalized literacy. Unlike middle-class reformers, whose desire for mass literacy arose from the need for a hardworking, compliant workforce, socialists used it to undermine capitalism. Through their printed culture of dissent, they not only sought to transform individual lives, but an entire social system. They took up the task of using literacy to convert workers with a missionary zeal. Moral indignation fueled their crusade. In a nation of such wealth, they asked, why was it that so many industrious people did not have enough to provide themselves and their families with adequate food, clothing, and shelter? Their answer was that America's political and economic institutions had been corrupted by the nation's monied power. In their minds, only an enlightened, educated working-class could challenge the prerogatives of capital and make these institutions fully socially accountable to the people.

Dual Powers, Class Compositions, and the Venezuelan People

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery R. Webber
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Political Development ◽  
The People ◽  
Analytical Imprecision ◽  
Urban Guerrillas ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Dual Power

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.

scholarly journals The October Revolution as Leftist Fascism: From the Curbing of Capitalists to the Curbing of Artists

Monitor ISH ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Bernard Nežmah
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
The People ◽  
Actual Duration ◽  
The Revolution

The paper discusses the phenomenon of the October Revolution through the prism of Lenin’s article The State and Revolution, which describes and anticipates the mechanisms of revolutionary action intended to eliminate the exploitation of the working class and to establish a more just social order. The study compares Lenin’s theory with his revolutionary practice by accentuating the concept of ‘the curbing of capitalists’, illuminated by and examined through a series of synchronic and diachronic perspectives, which ultimately led to the formation of the term ‘enemy of the people’ (‘class enemy’). At the same time, it attempts to define and historically determine the actual duration of the October Revolution. The second part of the paper applies the concept of ‘curbing’ to the situation of artists within the Bolshevik state. Thus it presents a range of artists’ attitudes to the Revolution, which had lumped critical and independent artists together with capitalists as ‘enemies of the people’.

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