scholarly journals The Rise and Decline of Soviet Morality: Culture, Ideology, Collective Practices

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 372
Author(s):  
Victor S. Martianov ◽  
Leonid G. Fishman
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Big Society ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
Legitimation Problem

In the article, it is proposed that the collapse of Soviet society was presaged by a growing crisis in late Soviet morality. On the periphery of late Soviet morality, collective cultural practices are seen to have successfully functioned based on a limited ethics of virtue. In the absence of an alternative to Soviet ideology, social regulation started to draw upon values intended for the reproduction of local communities. A growing contradiction between the limited values of the new social class/corporate entities and the need to develop universal values for a big society is currently the key ideological legitimation problem facing the Russian political order.

scholarly journals The Role of social Identity in James Joyce`s Dubliners within the Light of Cultural Materialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-99
Author(s):  
Mojgan Gaeini ◽  
Fatemeh Sadat Basirizadeh ◽  
Mahnaz Soqandi MA
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Cultural Materialism ◽  
Material Life ◽  
Raymond Williams

Language, Social identity and Religion are three major concerns of cultural studies. Language in literary texts plays a major role in constructing meaning and reflecting the author`s intention. Likewise religion as a cultural politics is a dominant factor in shaping mind as well in affecting the framework of literary text. Religion is one of the emerging issues in the modern era and forms the backbone of most literary works. Religion as a theme is seen to influence the operation of those who believe in it. It forms the functional framework that predetermines ones actions and behavior. Furthermore, social identity decides on the status of the social class and their material life situation.  Social identity relates to how we identify ourselves in relation to others according to what we have in common. All these issues are interrelated since they all cooperate and construct a social and cultural materiality. James Joyce could be placed among the most dominant cultural authors whose concern is the material life, social class, social identity and cultural crisis. As an outstanding author, Joyce is well known for his typical depiction, musical decoration as well as his sticking to proper cultural and social materials and issues such as religious matters. His major short story collection, Dubliners, revolves around the lifestyle of the Irish middle-class in Dublin around the late 1800s and early 1900s. This collection is decorated with violated norms and ritualistic behavior that are part of social constructs. Addressing social, religious and cultural issues, cultural materialists believe that “literature can serve as an agent of change”, since a culture`s hegemony is unstable. Raymond Williams views culture as a “productive process” that is, part of the means of production, and cultural materialism often identifies what he called “residual”, “emergent” and “oppositional” cultural elements. Seemingly, James Joyce`s Dubliners pertains to the notion of language, social identity and religion as cultural practices within the framework of cultural materialism. This study aims to clarify how James Joyce`s Dubliners reflects the notions of language, social identity and religion as cultural practices and how they construct social and cultural products within the framework of cultural materialism to show how James Joyce criticizes Irish culture at the beginning of the Twentieth century.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Glenda Goodman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Music Books ◽  
Instrumental Role

Amateurs musicians and their manuscript music books provide valuable insights into the nature of music in everyday life in the post-Revolutionary United States. Examining the cultural practices of amateur music-making allows us to see the instrumental role music played in the construction of gender, social class, race, and the nation. Much of the repertoire popular among white amateur women and men was imported from Britain and reflected an aesthetic conservatism that belied the impulse toward cultural nationalism in the early republic. Moreover, this repertoire was avowedly conventional and eschews the traits heralded as innovative by musicologists who work on the Classical and early Romantic periods. As nonprofessionals, as people engaged in manuscript copying in the age of print, and in their choice of repertoire, amateurs’ contributions have been triply obscured. Nevertheless, the experience of learning, copying, and performing such repertoire was critical for amateurs’ self-fashioning as genteel, erudite, pious, and cosmopolitan.

Marxist Traditions in Cultural Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Artz
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Relations Of Power

Cultural studies seeks to understand and explain how culture relates to the larger society and draws on social theory, philosophy, history, linguistics, communication, semiotics, media studies, and more to assess and evaluate mass media and everyday cultural practices. Since its inception in 1960s Britain, cultural studies has had recognizable and recurring interactions with Marxism, most clearly in culturalist renderings along a spectrum of tensions with political economy approaches. Marxist traditions and inflections appear in the seminal works of Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson, work on the culture industry inspired by the Frankfurt School in 1930s Germany, challenges by Stuart Hall and others to the structuralist theories of Louis Althusser, and writings on consciousness and social change by Georg Lukács. Perhaps the most pronounced indication of Marxist influences on cultural studies appears in the multiple and diverse interpretations of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Cultural studies, including critical theory, has been invigorated by Marxism, even as a recurring critique of economic determinism appears in most investigations and analyses of cultural practices. Marxism has no authoritative definition or application. Nonetheless, Marxism insists on materialism as the precondition for human life and development, opposing various idealist conceptions whether religious or philosophical that posit magical, suprahuman interventions that shape humanity or assertions of consciousness, creative genius, or timeless universals that supersede any particular historical conjuncture. Second, Marxism finds material reality, including all forms of human society and culture, to be historical phenomenon. Humans are framed by their conditions, and in turn, have agency to make social changing using material, knowledge, and possibilities within concrete historical conditions. For Marxists, capitalist society can best be historically and materially understood as social relations of production of society based on labor power and capitalist private ownership of the means of production. Wages paid labor are less than the value of goods and services produced. Capitalist withhold their profits from the value of goods and services produced. Such social relations organize individuals and groups into describable and manifest social classes, that are diverse and unstable but have contradictory interests and experiences. To maintain this social order and its rule, capitalists offer material adjustments, political rewards, and cultural activities that complement the social arrangements to maintain and adjust the dominant social order. Thus, for Marxists, ideologies arise in uneasy tandem with social relations of power. Ideas and practices appear and are constructed, distributed, and lived across society. Dominant ideologies parallel and refract conflictual social relations of power. Ideologies attune to transforming existing social relations may express countervailing views, values, and expectations. In sum, Marxist historical materialism finds that culture is a social product, social tool, and social process resulting from the construction and use by social groups with diverse social experiences and identities, including gender, race, social class, and more. Cultures have remarkably contradictory and hybrid elements creatively assembled from materially present social contradictions in unequal societies, ranging from reinforcement to resistance against constantly adjusting social relations of power. Five elements appear in most Marxist renditions on culture: materialism, the primacy of historical conjunctures, labor and social class, ideologies refracting social relations, and social change resulting from competing social and political interests.

scholarly journals Approaching Chinese Freedom: A Study in Absolute and Relative Values

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Political Order ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
China Model ◽  
Western Values ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Party State

The rise of stability preservation to dominance in the political order coincided with a highly charged debate over “universal values” and a closely related discussion of a “China Model”. This paper analyses the critique of universal values as a “wedge issue” that is used to pre-empt criticism of the party-state by appealing to nationalism and cultural essentialism. Taking freedom as a case in point of a universal value, it shows that, while more developed in the West, freedom has an authentic Chinese history with key watersheds in the late Qing reception of popular sovereignty and the ending of the Maoist era. The work of Wang Ruoshui, Qin Hui and Xu Jilin display some of the resources liberals now bring to “de-wedging” universal values, not least freedom. They share a refusal to regard “Western” values as essentially hostile to Chinese.

Alexander Motyl: The End of Ideology?

1989 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-21 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Society ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
The One

My comments on ideology, unlike the two presentations that preceded mine, which were substantive and had something to report on, will be similar to the story about the dog that did not bark: a dog that barked incessantly in the Brezhnev era, ideology has literally stopped barking since then. In this sense, the most striking aspect of contemporary Soviet ideology is its silence. From one of the most insistent features of Soviet reality under Brezhnev, ideology has retreated into a dark corner, where, presumably, it is licking its wounds and plotting a return. Ideology is far from dead, however. The ace up ideology's sleeve is, of course, the Party. As long as the Party purports to play a leading role in Soviet society—and, as Gorbachev has suggested, its role will increase under conditions of perestroika—then something like ideology will be necessary to justify and legitimate the one-party rule of a party that, even by its own criteria, does not deserve to rule, let alone to rule alone.

scholarly journals The Role of Language and its Analysis in James Joyce`s Dubliners within the Light of Cultural Materialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Mojgan Gaeini ◽  
Mahnaz Soqandi ◽  
Fatemeh Sadat Basirizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Cultural Materialism ◽  
Material Life ◽  
Raymond Williams

Language, Social identity and Religion are three major concerns of cultural studies. Language in literary texts plays a major role in constructing meaning and reflecting the author`s intention. Likewise religion as a cultural politics is a dominant factor in shaping mind as well in affecting the framework of literary text. Religion is one of the emerging issues in the modern era and forms the backbone of most literary works. Religion as a theme is seen to influence the operation of those who believe in it. It forms the functional framework that predetermines ones actions and behavior. Furthermore, social identity decides on the status of the social class and their material life situation.  Social identity relates to how we identify ourselves in relation to others according to what we have in common. All these issues are interrelated since they all cooperate and construct a social and cultural materiality. James Joyce could be placed among the most dominant cultural authors whose concern is the material life, social class, social identity and cultural crisis. As an outstanding author, Joyce is well known for his typical depiction, musical decoration as well as his sticking to proper cultural and social materials and issues such as religious matters. His major short story collection, Dubliners, revolves around the lifestyle of the Irish middle-class in Dublin around the late 1800s and early 1900s. This collection is decorated with violated norms and ritualistic behavior that are part of social constructs. Addressing social, religious and cultural issues, cultural materialists believe that “literature can serve as an agent of change”, since a culture`s hegemony is unstable. Raymond Williams views culture as a “productive process” that is, part of the means of production, and cultural materialism often identifies what he called “residual”, “emergent” and “oppositional” cultural elements. Seemingly, James Joyce`s Dubliners pertains to the notion of language, social identity and religion as cultural practices within the framework of cultural materialism. This study aims to clarify how James Joyce`s Dubliners reflects the notions of language, social identity and religion as cultural practices and how they construct social and cultural products within the framework of cultural materialism to show how James Joyce criticizes Irish culture at the beginning of the Twentieth century.

scholarly journals The Lower Clergy and Popular Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Bárth
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Written Form

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of the Christian lower priesthood in local communities in eighteenth–twentieth century Hungary and Transylvania in cultural transmission. The author intends to map out the complex and changing conditions of the social function, everyday life, and mentality of the priests on the bottom rung of the clerical hierarchy. Particular emphasis is placed on the activity of priests active at the focus points of interaction between elite and popular culture who, starting from the second half of the eighteenth century, often reflected both directly and in a written form on the cultural practices of the population of villages and market towns. The theoretical questions and possible approaches are centered around the complex relations of the priest and the community, their harmonious or conflict-ridden co-existence, questions of sacral economy, stereotypes of the “good priest” and the “bad priest” as shaped from above and from below, the subtleties of “priest-keeping”, the intentions related to preserving traditions and creating new customs, and the different temperaments of priests in relation to these issues.

scholarly journals Klasse og kultur på danske universitetsuddannelser

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Peter Thomsen
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Horizontal Stratification ◽  
University Programs ◽  
National Register Data ◽  
The University

Denne artikel beskæftiger sig med social ulighed på lange videregående uddannelser i Danmark. Ved at betragte de interne forskelle i det danske universitetsfelt undersøges omfanget og karakteren af den sociale differentiering på de lange videregående uddannelser. For at forstå disse sociale differentieringsprocesser anlægges et henholdsvis makro- og mikrosociologisk perspektiv på betydningen af social klasse og kulturel praksis på uddannelserne, og der stilles det overordnede spørgsmål: Hvad er sammenhængen mellem unges valg af videregående uddannelse, deres sociale oprindelse og de kulturelle praktikker på de forskellige videregående uddannelser? Empirien udgøres af såvel registerdata som af feltarbejde på tre udvalgte universitetsuddannelser, og der bruges følgelig såvel kvantitative som kvalitative metoder. Analysen af universitetsfeltet viser at der er meget stor forskel på de forskellige uddannelsers sociale profil, at der er en tydelig klassestruktur i det danske universitetsfelt, at den kulturelle praksis der kendetegner udvalgte uddannelser kan forstås meningsfuldt i sammenhæng med denne klassestruktur, og endelig at det kræver bestemte forudsætninger at mestre kulturen på de forskellige uddannelser. Søgeord: Social differentiering, social klasse, videregående uddannelser, universitetsstuderende, uddannelseskultur, uddannelsesvalg. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Jens Peter Thomsen: Social Class and Culture in Danish Universities In this article I address the question of social inequality in higher education. By looking at the horizontal stratification in the Danish university field I examine the extent and nature of the processes of social differentiation within the different university programs. In order to understand the processes of differentiation, a macro- and micro-sociological perspective on the significance of social class and cultural practice in the university programs is applied. The main question is: What is the relationship between young people’s choice of university program, social class origin and the cultural practices in the different university programs? National register data as well as fieldwork carried out in three different university programs make up the empirical basis of the research, and both quantitative and qualitative methods are applied. The analysis of the university field shows that: A) The university field is highly structured by social class, B) there are great differences in the class characteristics of the student body in the different programs, C) the class structure in the university field is closely related to the cultural practices characterizing specific programs, and finally, D) that students from certain social backgrounds are better prepared than other students for the practical mastery of these cultural practices. Key words: Higher education, social class, horizontal stratification, university students, educational cultures, choice of higher education.

Profiles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Older Men ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Red Army ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Soviet Population

This chapter paints a collective portrait of those who deserted from the Red Army across the frontline to the Germans. It investigates their age, ethnicity, social class, and gender. It concludes that defectors from the Red Army were broadly representative of the Soviet population at large. While minority nationalities, older men, and the lower social orders were over-represented, the largest group were Russians and 40 per cent were 30 years or younger. Every ethnicity, class, and age group in Soviet society thus contained defectors. The one exception is gender. While there were a significant number of women serving in the Red Army, defectors were nearly exclusively male.

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