An Anatomy of Facelessness: On Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker Trilogy

AbstractA significant contribution to the social history of immigration in the Nordic countries, Halfdan Pisket’sDanskertrilogy (2014–2016) is also a resonant visual-verbal reflection on the relationship between the face and the mask and its impact on the formation of individual and cultural identity. Pisket’s depiction of the hardship and alienation of the struggling immigrant is marked by a striking symbolism, and the article addresses how the three books collectively can be said to outline “an anatomy of facelessness”. The analysis revolves around three central aspects of Pisket’s depiction of the trilogy’s central protagonist: the imaginative re-appropriation of the myth of the Minotaur, the ambiguous deployment of the hooded figure, and the use of the facial portrait as an ambivalent emblem of the reservoir of individual human experience.

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Spaces of Exclusion: The Significance of Cultural Identity in the Formation of European Residential Districts in British Hong Kong, 1877–1904

Environment and Planning D Society and Space ◽

10.1068/d310 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 223-252 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

G Alex Bremner ◽

David P Y Lung

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Cultural Identity ◽

Social History ◽

Urban Form ◽

European Population ◽

Capital City ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

Residential District ◽

Cultural Self

In this paper we discuss the role and significance of European cultural identity in the formation of the urban environment in 19th-century and early-20th-century British Hong Kong. Our purpose is to offer an alternative reading of the social history of Hong Kong-the orthodox accounts of which remain largely predominant in the general historical understanding of that society-by examining the machinations that surrounded attempts by the European colonial elite to control the production of urban form and space in the capital city of Hong Kong, Victoria. Here the European Residential District ordinance of 1888 (along with other related ordinances) is considered in detail. An examination of European cultural self-perception and the construction of colonial identity is made by considering not only the actual ways in which urban form and space were manipulated through these ordinances but also the visual representation of the city in art. Here the intersection between ideas and images concerning civil society, cultural identity, architecture, and the official practices of colonial urban planning is demonstrated. It is argued that this coalescing of ideas, images, and practices in the colonial environment of British Hong Kong not only led to the racialisation of urban form and space there but also contributed to the apparent anxiety exhibited by the European population over the preservation of their own identity through the immediacy of the built environment.

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Framing The Fosters: jokes, racism and Black and Asian voices in British comedy television

Adjusting the Contrast ◽

10.7228/manchester/9781526100986.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Gavin Schaffer

Keyword(s):

Social History ◽

Cultural Production ◽

Racial Politics ◽

Black British ◽

Stand Up Comedy ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

Post War ◽

Cultural Leaders ◽

The Relationship

This chapter interrogates the relationship between television comedy, power and racial politics in post-war Britain. In a period where Black and Asian Britons were forced to negotiate racism as a day-to-day reality, the essay questions the role played by television comedy in reflecting and shaping British multicultural society. Specifically, this chapter probes Black and Asian agency in comedy production, questioning who the joke makers were and what impact this had on the development of comedy and its reception. The work of scholars of Black and Asian comedy television such as Sarita Malik, and of Black stand-up comedy such as Stephen Small, has helped us to understand that Black- and Asian-led British comedy emerged belatedly in the 1980s and 1990s, hindered by the historical underrepresentation of these communities in British cultural production and the disinclination of British cultural leaders to address this problem. This chapter uses these scholarly frames of reference, alongside research that addresses the social and political functions of comedy, to re-open the social history of Black British communities in post-war Britain through the story of sitcom.

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Social History in Greece: New Perspectives

East Central Europe ◽

10.1163/18763308-0340350102006 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽

pp. 101-130

Author(s):

Yannis Yannitsiotis

Keyword(s):

Social History ◽

Political System ◽

Human Experience ◽

Recent Period ◽

Class A ◽

Economic Phenomenon ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

Greek Historiography ◽

And Gender

This article focuses on the evolution of Greek historiography since the 1970s, with an emphasis on issues of class and gender. It is argued that, in the last decades, Greek historiography has been liberated from traditional nationalistic narratives in favor of new intellectual perspectives dealing with social history and the history of “society.” During the 1970s and 1980s, the concept of class—a fundamental concern of social history in European historiography—did not find much room in Greek historiography. Debates about the socioeconomic and political system in modern Greece focused on the importance of immobile political and economic structures as main barriers to modernization and Europeanization. The 1990s were marked by the renewal of the study of the “social,” articulated around two main methodological and theoretical axes, signaling the shift from structures to agency. The first was the conceptualization of class as both a cultural and economic phenomenon. The second was the introduction of gender. The recent period is characterized by the proliferation of studies that conceptualize the “social” through the notion of culture, evoking the historical construction of human experience and talking about the unstable, malleable, and ever changing content of human identities. Cultural historians examine class, gender, ethnicity, and race in their interrelation and treat these layers of identity as processes in the making and not as coherent and consolidated systems of reference.

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Art and its Objects: William Ivins and the Reproduction of Art

The Sociological Review ◽

10.1111/j.1467-954x.1987.tb00083.x ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 35 (1_suppl) ◽

pp. 65-98

Author(s):

Gordon Fyfe

Keyword(s):

Social Construction ◽

Social History ◽

Visual Communication ◽

Fine Art ◽

Modes Of Representation ◽

The Social ◽

Photographic Reproduction ◽

History Of ◽

Art Reproduction ◽

The Relationship

This paper is a critique of the contribution of William Ivins's Prints and Visual Communication (1953) to an understanding of the meaning of fine art reproductions. Ivins showed that photographic reproduction was constructed in relation to, and displaced, older ways of reproducing art which were carried out by handicraft engravers. His analysis alerts us to the fact that ambiguity characterized art reproduction before photographs. Art reproductions, then, were interpretations in line based on conventional modes of representation – what Ivins calls a visual syntax. In this respect he enhances our understanding of the social construction of the artist. For Ivins the social history of reproduction seems to end with the camera. This completed an individuation of creativity ushered in with the Renaissance, but which was always qualified by the interfering visual syntax of craftsmen-interpreters. It is argued that the value of Ivins's account resides in its reconstruction of the relationship between handicraft engraving, fine art reproduction and aesthetic objects that have long since slipped from our consciousness.

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Win the match and vote for me: the politicisation of Ghana's Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko football clubs

The Journal of Modern African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022278x08003649 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 19-39 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Kevin S. Fridy ◽

Victor Brobbey

Keyword(s):

Cultural Politics ◽

Social History ◽

Football Clubs ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

The Relationship ◽

Common Perception ◽

Athletic Competitions

ABSTRACTThere is a common perception in Ghana that Accra Hearts of Oak is the soccer club of the National Democratic Congress, and Kumasi Asante Kotoko that of the New Patriotic Party. In this paper we explore the roots of these perceptions by examining the social history of these two clubs specifically, and the Ghanaian soccer league system in general, with an eye for the actors, practices and events that injected political airs into purportedly ‘apolitical’ athletic competitions. With this social history clearly defining the popularly perceived ‘us’ versus ‘them’ of the Hearts/Kotoko rivalry, we analyse on the basis of a modest survey some of the assumptions these widely held stereotypes rely upon. We find that ethnicity and location matter both in terms of predicting one's affinity for a given soccer club and partisan inclinations. These factors do not, however, completely dispel the relationship between sports and politics as spurious. Though not conclusive, there is enough evidence collected in the survey to suggest that one's preferred club, even when controlling for ethnicity and location, does have an effect on one's partisan leanings, or perhaps vice versa. This finding highlights the independent role that often-understudied cultural politics can play.

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RELATIONS BETWEEN MOSQUE AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION

HUNAFA Jurnal Studia Islamika ◽

10.24239/jsi.v16i1.531.142-153 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 142-153

Author(s):

Anna Triayudha ◽

Rateh Ninik Pramitasary ◽

Hermansyah Akbar Anas ◽

Choirul Mahfud

Keyword(s):

Social History ◽

Growth And Development ◽

Early Period ◽

Islamic Education ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

And Function ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Relationship ◽

Role And Function

The growth and development of Islamic Education is inseparable from the growth of institutions. The Prophet made it happen by establishing institutions that had a role in developing and advancing Islamic education, one of which was a mosque. Research on the relationship of mosques with the social history of Islamic education is discussed by using descriptive qualitative methods that are oriented to literature review. This paper shows that in the early period of Islamic education, the Prophet provided exemplary by building and empowering mosques. The example of the Prophet continued with the Caliphs afterwards until the present era. The mosque was built by the Prophet from the Al Haram mosque located in Makkah, Quba Mosque located in Quba, Nabawi mosque located in Medina and so on. The role and function of the mosque at that time was as a place of prayer, a place of prayer, a place for discussion or deliberation, a meeting place to develop a war strategy and others related to the problems and needs of Muslims. From time to time, the role or function of the mosque has changed slightly. In essence, mosques are currently influencing the development of the social history of Islamic education in Indonesia.

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Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante: An Essay in the Social History of an African People

History in Africa ◽

10.2307/3171512 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 125-154 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

T.C. McCaskie

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Social History ◽

Time Perspective ◽

Social Anthropology ◽

African People ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

African Context ◽

The Relationship ◽

Causative Link

There is a considerable literature dealing with the phemenon of twentieth-century anti-witchcraft cults among the Akan peoples of Ghana, and notably the Asante. This literature is written from the disciplinary perspective of social anthropology and it may be divided into two interpretative views of the matter. The first espouses the theory that such cults are ‘new’--creations of the twentieth century--in that they represent a reflexive response to the social disorientation assumed to have been engendered by colonial overrule. The second questions the causative link between the twentieth century and increased anomie, and suggests the location of such cults in a time perspective reaching back into the distant--but undefined--pre-colonial past. For a social historian interested in the problem of witchcraft and its suppression this literature presents a resistant difficulty. It concerns itself with the material appurtenances and the impressionistic ‘psychohistory’ of cult practices, but it is almost entirely bereft of historical data and it indulges in generalizations erected upon the flimsiest of factual considerations. McLeod, who has ably reviewed this literature, has commented upon this deficiency with regret, but--at least so far--has done little to rectify it.In this paper I am concerned with the discrete history--social, economic and political--of three important anti-witchcraft cults that flourished in Asante between the late 1870s adn the late 1920s; in chronological order these were, domankama (‘The Creator’), aberewa (‘The Old Woman’) and hwe me so (‘Watch Over Me’). In discussing these cults as historical phenomena I seek to explicate or otherwise to dissolve some of the generalizations evident in the existing literature. I seek too to say something concerning the construction of a valid Asante (and African) social history, the relationship between social history and social anthropology in the African context, and the significance for the historian of Africa of socio-cultural phenomena such as witchcraft.

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R.B. Outhwaite, editor. Marriage & Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage. (The Europa Social History of Human Experience.)New York: St. Martin's Press. 1982. Pp. 284. $27.50.

Albion A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies ◽

10.2307/4048675 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 143-144

Author(s):

Lee Holcombe

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Social History ◽

Human Experience ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

History Of Marriage

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The Words of Ina Beasley: Glimpses from a Life in British Sudan

Hawwa ◽

10.1163/156920810x549758 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 317-347

Author(s):

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Social History ◽

Female Circumcision ◽

Multiple Roles ◽

Social Rights ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

Women And Children ◽

Women And Girls ◽

The Relationship

AbstractThis essay presents a woman whose ideas not only signifies a challenge to conventional approaches to the relationship between colonialism and feminism, but also enables us to appreciate the intricacies and diversities of colonial experiences and the multiple roles played by individuals who wielded some level of authority in a colonised society. Since this essay is a tribute to Ina Beasley, it reproduces substantial excerpts from her papers on the subjects that engaged her most deeply during her Sudan service. Her writings shed new light on the social history of human rights during the Condominium, which matters both to scholars and to concerned citizens. In recognition of Ina Beasley, who devoted her life to improving the lives of women and children in a society rife with hardship and discriminatory practices, the essay addresses her work on education and its relevance to eradicating female circumcision that was universally practiced at the time. The essay begins with a brief discussion of Sudanese politics at the time of her arrival and then examines her work as educator who managed to craft several influential programs to empower women and girls. The rest of the paper focuses on her reproductive health advocacy as exemplified in a formidable body of work that articulated her activities and approaches to social rights.

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