scholarly journals Identity and Hair Narrative in Adichie's Americanah

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 859-864
Author(s):  
Dr. Angela Ngozi Dick
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Human Hair ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Calendar

Although the social construction of the human hair varies from culture to culture, the symbolic function of hair varies from person to person. In Adichie’s  Americanah, the characters are primarily defined by their hair before the construction of their race, career and  personality. The human hair becomes the premise for brotherhood and sisterhood in. Many episodes take place in the salon, thereafter a person’s hair is qualified as either good or bad. The theoretical framework for this paper is New Historicism which interrogates social life and power relations among people in the society. In this work we conclude that Adichie tells the story of human hair not for its sake but to portray the problem of immigrants, religious fanaticism, disruption of academic calendar and the frustration therein, loveless marriage, the environment and other human conditions. Finally, the hair shows that every person is a complete human being first and foremost

Snark Hunting in Canadian Law: Art and Authenticity

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (03) ◽  
pp. 417-436
Author(s):  
Josh Nelson ◽  
Adie Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Canadian Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
Settler Societies

Abstract This reflection on the social construction of authenticity analogizes the quest for artistic authenticity to snark hunting. To illustrate the instability of this term, it employs various Canadian examples, including the “Michelangelo” terracotta sculptures donated to the Museum of Vancouver, the “Igloo tag,” the importation of a sculpture by Edward Chukwuweike Madukaego, and the work of Bill Reid. It posits that proclamations of authenticity and fraudulence are ultimately utterances denoting and invoking power relations. It also reveals, through the use of specific examples, how negotiations around artistic authenticity in settler societies can replicate and re-entrench colonialist power.

The Melancholy of Faith

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jermaine Singleton
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Hierarchy ◽  
Gendered Power

This chapter addresses the question of how unresolved racial grief works through the demands of capital, racialization, and sacred ritual practice to enact a gender hierarchy. It thinks through James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), to explore how testifying serves as a technology of black patriarchy—a ritual that arises out of the need for racial and economic redemption yet unfolds within and propagates gendered power relations. It examines how the content and structure of Baldwin's Bildungsroman, set in Harlem's Pentecostal community during the Great Depression, allegorizes the conversion of John Grimes, who embodies the “weak, feminine flesh” of his matrilineal line that is sacrificed to secure his “manchild” status of salvation. The chapter is punctuated by a section that situates Baldwin's novel as a form of sexual testifying on the part of Baldwin himself. In doing so, it places Baldwin's novel in conversation with its dramatic sequel, The Amen Corner (1954), to explore how both texts anticipate and extend queer theoretical conversations about the social construction of black, gay subject-formations.

The Social Life of Rumors

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-474
Author(s):  
Ammara Maqsood
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social World ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Tribal Areas

Abstract In the aftermath of 9/11, with respect to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan have been the site of immense violence and destruction, including from US drone attacks, ground military operations by the Pakistan Army, and retaliatory attacks by different factions of Taliban fighters. Using uncertainty as an analytic and ethnographic concept, this article traces the social life of the rumors, conspiracy theories, and stories that float around this violence. It draws attention to their multiple and often contradictory effects: rumors simultaneously breed fear and confusion, help forge intimacy, and provide certainty and coherence. Rather than subvert power relations or simply critique the powerful, I suggest that rumors and conspiracy theories provide the means through which tribal Pashtuns live and make their way in a social world in which they remain unequal, but coeval, participants.

scholarly journals Bourdieusian Reading of Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Pegah Marandi ◽  
Alireza Anushiravani
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Caryl Churchill ◽  
The Social ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Material Conditions

<p>Caryl Churchill is one of the most widely performed female dramatists in contemporary British theatre. She is arguably the most successful and best-known socialist-feminist playwright to have merged from Second Wave feminism. Her plays have been performed all over the world. In her materialist plays, she shows the matters of culture, education, power, politics, and myth. Her oeuvre hovers over the material conditions which testify to the power relations within society at a given time in history. Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, and theorist in cultural studies points out the dynamics of power relations in social life throughout ideas such as capital, field, habitus, symbolic violence, theories concerned with class and culture. The overarching concern for the purpose of this essay is to analyse Churchill’s <em>Serious Money </em>(1987) in the light of Bourdieu’s sociological concepts. In accordance with Bourdieu, there exist various kinds of capital (cultural, economic, social, and symbolic) which distinguish every individual’s status both in society and in relation to other individuals. The present study attempts to show that in <em>Serious Money</em>, the capital especially economic capital forms the foundation of social life and dictates one’s position within the social order and respectively, determining the power discourse in the matrix of social life.</p>

Youth and 'The Movement' – Social Life in a Rural District of Buryatia

Inner Asia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Anatoliy Breslavsky
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural District ◽  
Economic Environment ◽  
Eastern Siberia ◽  
Criminal Networks ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
The Social

AbstractThis article describes the development of criminal youth networks in rural Buryatia, Eastern Siberia. As it shows, the criminal gangs emerging out of the state collapse in the 1990s have colonised entire villages: a movement originally offering escape from a harsh economic environment has acquired the power to dictate the social reality of the regions it occupies. This piece also investigates the extent to which the practices mediating power relations within these criminal networks generate a distinct subculture, using Huizinga's analysis of culture as a 'game', which has to be 'played out' according to mutually understood conventions and norms.

scholarly journals About the rights with which we are born: The radical natural law and the social justice from K. Marx up to neoliberalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Todor Kuljic
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hierarchical Position

The natural law is a overempiric law that does not owe his dignity to the legal norm than to the intrinsic qualities of a human being. This paper presents a different hierarchical position of the natural law in the critics of capitalism from K. Marx to our days and its different intonation as a superpositive framework of justice. One should analytically differentiate between (1) theoretical search for social justice in the philosophy of the natural law (K.Marx, M.Weber, G.Radbruch, L.Strauss, E.Bloch, Lj.Tadic) and (2) empirical identification of power relations that allowed or hindered social justice in the reality. The paper provides analysis of historically different relationships between positive and radical natural law in both the compressed 20th century epochal conscience and today?s neoliberal one. In addition, it compares role of the natural law in capitalism and socialism and differentiates between social justice from above and social justice from below. The first one is gratuitous, paternalistic and limited, the second one is radical and has to be conquered. Radical natural law should express itself as a fully developed social justice liberated from capitalism. Critic of social unjustice from the viewpoint of natural law has no practical effects in our days, and in spite of it, it is not anachronistic.

scholarly journals The social construction of gender relation reality: an analysis of time management applied on sustainable bamboo forestry among families in Ngadha, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 917 (1) ◽  
pp. 012016
Author(s):  
B D Prasetyo ◽  
D Ekawati ◽  
Handoyo ◽  
D Djaenudin ◽  
Indartik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Time Allocation ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Time Management ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Fair Division ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Social Construction Theory ◽  
The Social

Abstract Gender discourse in Indonesia is currently developing very rapidly. On one hand, gender activists have focused on gender mainstreaming. On the other hand, the socio-cultural reality in Indonesia persists with the old traditional construction of power relations between men and women. Feminists fight for justice and inclusiveness for women. However, their struggle must be confronted with the fact that the prevailing socio-cultural norms still tend to be male-dominant. This paper will reveal how the social reality of power relations in the realm of gender is constructed in rural areas in Indonesia. The subjects studied are families at the clan level who are managing sustainable bamboo forestry in Ngadha Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The research was conducted in 2019-2021. The methods used are participatory rural appraisal (PRA), in-depth interviews, and observation as participants. Time allocation is used as the object of this study to create gender mapping. The analysis is carried out using a social construction theory. This study concluded that the clan of Neguwulacan adopt the HBL system. This is reflected in the emergence of local initiatives to manage finances, the workforce, groups, as well as build and implement them at the clan level. The gender relations that exist in SBF practice at the clan of Neguwula are relative. First, in terms of family lines, women obtain benefits because could hold matrilineal law. Political decisions remain in the hands of women. Second, practically speaking, women work twice as much in domestic and commercial work. Third, in some cases, deliberation is put forward for a fair division of labor. At this point, inclusiveness emerges as a reality that colors gender relations.

scholarly journals The social construction of the competent, self-governed child in documentation: Panels in the Swedish preschool

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Liljestrand ◽  
Annie Hammarberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Competent Self ◽  
Children's Activities ◽  
Visual Methodology

Documentation has become an important issue for policy, practice and accountability in many national contexts. The documentation of children’s activities is a requirement in the national syllabus for the Swedish preschool. However, the documentation of children is always a social construction that focuses on certain things and excludes (possible) others. Such constructions can be linked to broader discourses of the competent and self-governed child, and the tendency to label the child as autonomous and competent in policy documents. The purpose of this article is to explore how constructions of the competent and self-governed child are performed in documentation panels in Swedish preschools. The theoretical framework is taken from visual methodology combined with an analysis of intertextuality. Three images (pictures and written text) of the preschool are discerned: the child as a good pal; the child as an autonomous investigator; and the child as a public speaker. In all three images, the children are depicted as competent in different respects. The result is discussed by relating the findings to broader discourses emphasising the competent and self-governed child.

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