scholarly journals Historical Perspectives on Precarious Work: The Cases of Egypt and India under British Imperialism

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Bent
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

<p>The concept of precarious work is used by social scientists to describe work that is “uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg, 2009: 2). This paper argues that such work can take a variety of forms, beyond those seen in the transition from the stable post-WWII era to the neo-liberal era in the West. Egypt and India offer instructive case studies. Industrialisation (or lack thereof) in Egypt and India has been thoroughly documented by others. The purpose of this paper is to argue that these developments can be seen as the emergence of precarious, industrial working arrangements. This framework is useful for demonstrating that precarious work has come along with industrial development in a range of countries during different time periods. In this light, the stable employment arrangements characteristic of the post-war West were an anomaly. The global economic and social history of industrialisation is characterised by precarious working arrangements, as seen in colonial-era Egypt and India.</p>

Disability Rights Activism in Kenya, 1959–1964: History from Below

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fikru Negash Gebrekidan
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Historical Agency

Abstract:This article examines the early history of disability rights activism in Kenya. The transitional years from colonialism to independence were a period of great expectations. For persons with disabilities in particular, decolonization held additional possibilities and potential. National independence promised not just majority rule but also an all-inclusive citizenship and the commitment to social justice. Among the visually impaired of Kenya, such collective aspirations led to the birth of the Kenya Union of the Blind in 1959. In 1964, after years of futile correspondence with government officials, the Union organized a street march to the prime minister's office to attract attention to its grievances. The result was a government panel, the Mwendwa Committee for the Care and Rehabilitation of the Disabled, whose published report became the blueprint for social and rehabilitation programs. The government possessed limited resources, and the reforms that ensued were long overdue. Yet the sociohistorical dynamics behind the march are of particular significance. From the social historian's point of view, they affirm not only the historical agency of persons with disabilities, but also the need to recast and broaden the scope of African social history.

scholarly journals PERAN KAUM MUSLIM TRADISIONALIS DALAM PEMBARUAN PENDIDIKAN ISLAM DI PALEMBANG PADA ERA KOLONIAL

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismail Ismail
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Islamic Education ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Theoretical Assumption ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

There have been a lot of studies on the history and development of Islamic education in Indonesia conducted by various groups. At least, there are three important aspects that should be noted in this study. First, from the aspect of the region, the history of Islamic education in South Sumatera which has never been comprehensively studied since the colonial era. Second, related to theoretical assumption, the question of whether the development of the system and the modern Islamic institution in Palembang during colonial era tend to be dominated by Muslim reformers or Muslim traditionalists. Third, from the point of view of methodology which tends to be descriptive and chronological, though recently there arises an analytical approach in which the system and the institution are not seen as things that can stand on their own, but are attached to social, religious, cultural, and political aspects. It is this approach which will be used in this study. Therefore, this study will try to look into the relationship between various social changes in Palembang and the system and Islamic educational institutions in the colonial era.

A social history of precarity in journalism: Penny-a-liners, Bohemians and larrikins

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Henrik Örnebring
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Occupational Culture ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Worker Identity ◽  
History Of Journalism

In the past decade, journalism scholars have started to pay more attention to what we could call the precarization of journalism: the large-scale job loss and downsizing in the news industry (at least in some countries) combined with a shift towards per-item payment and production rather than permanent, full-time contracts. In this essay, I sketch a history of precarious work in journalism and argue that unionization and other forms of collective action in journalism has been made difficult due to an occupational culture rooted in this history of journalism as precarious work. In the late nineteenth century, journalists in many countries opted to create a culture rather than to create unions, and this culture has both mythologized and naturalized precarity. In Australia, however, journalists unionized early. Besides the obvious structural factors behind this early unionization, the existence of the cultural figure of the larrikin and its role in journalistic culture likely also encouraged taking on a worker identity rather than seeking to emulate an upper-class writerly culture.

A Book Review in the Form of a Polemic Chad Elias's Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon and the Old New World Order

ARTMargins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Ghalya Saadawi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
World Order ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Post War

Chad Elias' 2018 book Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon attempts to deal with the question of post-civil war representation, image-making and contemporary art from the perspective of memory studies in Lebanon. Dealing with a particular group of artists working since the 1990's in installation, video, film, and performance, the book attempts to create a relation between their artistic propositions and narratives on the one hand, and the post-war reckoning with the missing and disappeared, the history of former Leftist combatants, neglected space programs, reconstruction and urban space, on the other. The book has a series of shortcomings and structural, theoretical blind spots that this review essay attempts to redress. For instance, Posthumous Images has no framework for the notions of communities of witnessing, collective memory, or post-war amnesia that seems to underpin its claims, as they seem to figure only nominally. In these theoretical omissions, the essay argues, the book adopts and furthers the ideology human rights as this relates to the politics of remembrance, as well as to Lebanon's neoliberal post-war realities. Moreover, it lacks a rigorous art historical frame to study the given artworks formally, or theoretically, leaving the book open to a post-historical method that disavows a critical, social history of art needed for an analysis of post-civil war and post-Cold war art forms in Lebanon and beyond.

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

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.

An Unexpected Path to Modernisation: The Case of German Artisans during the Second World War

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Mckitrick
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

On 10 July 1950, at the celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Wiesbaden Chamber of Artisans (Handwerkskammer), its president Karl Schöppler announced: ‘Today industry is in no way the enemy of Handwerk. Handwerk is not the enemy of industry.…’ These words, which accurately reflected the predominant point of view of the post-war chamber membership, and certainly of its politically influential leadership, marked a new era in the social, economic and political history of German artisans and, it is not too much to say, in the history of class relations in (West) Germany in general. Schöppler's immediate frame of reference was the long-standing and extremely consequential antipathy on the part of artisans towards industrial capitalism, an antipathy of which his listeners were well aware.

Counting Americans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
History Of

By telling how the US census classified and divided Americans by race and origin from the founding of the United States to World War II, this book shows how public statistics have been used to create an unequal representation of the nation. From the beginning, the census was a political undertaking, torn between the conflicting demands of the state, political actors, social scientists, businesses, and interest groups. Through the extensive archives of the Bureau of the Census, it traces the interactions that led to the adoption or rejection of changes in the ways different Americans were classified, as well as the changing meaning of seemingly stable categories over time. Census workers and directors by necessity constantly interpreted official categories in the field and in the offices. The difficulties they encountered, the mobilization and resistance of actors, the negotiations with the census, all tell a social history of the relation of the state to the population. Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups, and on immigrants, as well as on the troubled imposition of US racial categories upon the population of newly acquired territories, the book demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation, and discrimination.

Dissent and Catholicism in English Society: A Study of Warwickshire, 1660-1720

1976 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith J. Hurwich
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Practical Point ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Society ◽  
History Of

Puritanism has long fascinated students of the relationship between religion and society. Indeed, the social history of Puritanism has probably been studied more intensively than that of any other religious movement in modern history. However, most studies of Puritanism in England end either at the beginning of the Civil Wars or at the Restoration. The history of those Puritans who became Dissenters after 1660 has been left to denominational historians, who are understandably more concerned with the ecclesiastical and theological history of their own particular groups than with the broader question of the place of Dissent in English society.This neglect of post-Restoration Nonconformity is unfortunate for the study of the social history of Puritanism, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. When English Puritans are cited as the classical practitioners of the “Protestant ethic,” reference is often made to the success of Nonconformists in finance and industry after 1660. Tawney's application of the Weber thesis to England relies heavily on the writings of such post-Restoration divines as Baxter and Steele, and on the rise of Nonconformist capitalists in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tawney's hypotheses cannot be evaluated unless we have more information about the social background of Dissent: not merely a few exceptional individuals, but the group as a whole. From the practical point of view, quantitative studies of the social structure — both of the religious group and of the larger society—are more easily undertaken for the period after 1660 than for the period before that date.

scholarly journals Theories and Methods for a Social History of Historical Events — A Reply to Hermann Rebel

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-418
Author(s):  
Andreas Suter
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Slow Motion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
History Of

My study of the Swiss Peasants' War of 1653 has received four reviews in the United States. I am grateful to Hermann Rebel for supplying another, most unusual review to Central European History. It is unusual not only in length but also in judgment. Where the other reviews wrote positively about the book, Rebel rejects it completely.If I read Rebel correctly, his criticism covers four main points. First, he criticizes the book's theoretical point of view, alleging that the call for a “return to historical events in social history” means a return to “histoire événementielle” and would lead to “high antiquarianism.” Second, Rebel criticizes my methodological inferences from this theoretical point: systematic attention to the cultural dimension of human action; the expansion of social history's traditional methods of analysis and perspectives on time (longue durée, temps sociale) to include cultural and anthropological insights (from, i.e., Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, and Clifford Geertz); and the introduction of a “slow-motion” perspective.

Black German

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodor Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Second World War ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Second World

This is the first English translation of an important document in the history of the black presence in Germany and Europe: the autobiography of Theodor Michael. Theodor Michael is the last surviving member of the first generation of ‘Afro-Germans’: Born in Germany in 1925 to a Cameroonian father and a German mother, he grew up in Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic. As a child and teenager he worked in circuses and films and experienced the tightening knot of racial discrimination under the Nazis in the years before the Second World War. He survived the war as a forced labourer, founding a family and making a career as a journalist and actor in post-war West Germany. Since the 1980s he has become an important spokesman for the black German consciousness movement, acting as a human link between the first black German community of the inter-war period, the pan-Africanism of the 1950s and 1960s, and new generations of Germans of African descent. His life story is a classic account of coming to consciousness of a man who understands himself as both black and German; accordingly, it illuminates key aspects of modern German social history as well as of the post-war history of the African diaspora.

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