scholarly journals Neoliberalism, Class and Culture: The 2008 Federal Elections in Canada and the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Fowler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Economic Relation ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cultural Variable

In the 2008 federal elections in Canada and The United States, conservative parties used class rhetoric in an attempt to draw votes from the working class. They did so by defining class along narrowly cultural lines, so excluding economic concerns. This research note examines the cases of ‘Ordinary Canadians Don’t Care About The Arts’ and ‘Joe the Plumber’ to show how conservative parties in Canada and the United States are redefining class as a purely cultural variable. Although the rhetoric was not entirely successful, the cases are instructive about the ways that the understandings and importance of class as an economic relation is suppressed by pro-capitalist parties in political elections.

Middle-Class Victorian Street Arabs: Modern Re-creations of the Baker Street Irregulars

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Street Children ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Upward Shift

In three of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories there are brief appearances of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of ‘street Arabs’ who help Holmes with his investigations. These children have been re-imagined in modern children's literature in at least twenty-seven texts in a variety of media and with writers from both Britain and the United States. All these modern stories show a marked upward shift in the class of the Irregulars away from the lower working class of Conan-Doyle's originals. The shift occurs through attributing middle-class origins to the leaders of the Irregulars, through raising the class of the Irregulars in general, and through giving the children life environments more comfortable, safe, and financially secure than would have been possible for late-Victorian street children. Because of the variety in texts and writers, it is argued that this shift is not a result of the conscious political or ideological positions of individual writers, but rather reflects common unconscious narrative choices. The class-shift is examined in relation to the various pressures of conventions in children's literature, concepts of audience, and common concepts of class in society.

Impact of the 2020 crises on the arts and culture in the United States: The effect of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement in historical context

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-465
Author(s):  
Stanley N. Katz ◽  
Leah Reisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Organizations ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Arts And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Sector ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement on the arts and cultural sector in the United States, placing the 2020 crises in the context of the United States’s historically decentralized approach to supporting the arts and culture. After providing an overview of the United States’s private, locally focused history of arts funding, we use this historical lens to analyze the combined effects of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement on a single metropolitan area – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We trace a timeline of key events in the national and local pandemic response and the reaction of the arts community to the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that the nature of these intersecting responses, and their fallout for the arts and cultural sector, stem directly from weaknesses in the United States’s historical approach to administering the arts. We suggest that, in the context of widespread organizational vulnerability caused by the pandemic, the United States’s decentralized approach to funding culture also undermines cultural organizations’ abilities to respond to issues of public relevance and demonstrate their civic value, threatening these organizations’ legitimacy.

scholarly journals Systematic Review of Arts-Based Interventions to Address Suicide Prevention and Survivorship in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 53S-63S
Author(s):  
Jill Sonke ◽  
Kelley Sams ◽  
Jane Morgan-Daniel ◽  
Andres Pumariega ◽  
Faryal Mallick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Suicide Prevention ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Study Objective ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Arts

Study Objective. Suicide is a serious health problem that is shaped by a variety of social and mental health factors. A growing body of research connects the arts to positive health outcomes; however, no previous systematic reviews have examined the use of the arts in suicide prevention and survivorship. This review examined how the arts have been used to address suicide prevention and survivorship in nonclinical settings in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Design and Setting. Ten bibliographic databases, five research repositories, and reference sections of articles were searched to identify published studies. Articles presenting outcomes of interventions conducted between 2014 and 2019 and written in English, were included. Primary Results. Nine studies met inclusion criteria, including qualitative, quantitative randomized controlled trials, quantitative nonrandomized, quantitative descriptive, and mixed-methods studies. The programs studied used film and television (n = 3), mixed-arts (n = 3), theatre (n = 2), and quilting (n = 1). All nine interventions used the arts to elicit emotional involvement, while seven also used the arts to encourage engagement with themes of health. Study outcomes included increased self-efficacy, awareness of mental health issues, and likelihood for taking action to prevent suicide, as well as decreases in suicidal risk and self-harming behaviors. Conclusions. Factors that influence suicide risk and survivorship may be effectively addressed through arts-based interventions. While the current evidence is promising with regard to the potential for arts programs to positively affect suicide prevention and survivorship, this evidence needs to be supplemented to inform recommendations for evidence-based arts interventions.

scholarly journals Toward a Culture of Health in the United States: Introducing the HPP Arts in Public Health Supplement

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 5S-7S
Author(s):  
Jill Sonke ◽  
Lourdes Rodríguez ◽  
Melissa A. Valerio-Shewmaker
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Public Health Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
The University ◽  
Critical Public Health ◽  
Health Promotion Practice

The arts—and the arts and culture sector—offer fertile ground for achieving a culture of health in the United States. The arts and artists are agents of change and can help enable this vision and also address the most critical public health issues we are contending with, including COVID-19 and racism. The arts provide means for engaging dialogue, influencing behaviors, disrupting paradigms and fueling social movements. The arts uncover and illuminate issues. They engage us emotionally and intellectually. They challenge assumptions. They call out injustice. They drive collective action. They heal—making arts + public health collaboration very relevant in this historic moment. In this special Health Promotion Practice supplement on arts in public health, you’ll find powerful examples and evidence of how cross-sector collaboration between public health and the arts can advance health promotion goals and impacts, and make health promotion programs not only more accessible to diverse populations but also more equitable and effective in addressing the upstream systems, policies, and structures that create health disparities. You will see how the arts can empower health communication, support health literacy, provide direct and measurable health benefits to individuals and communities, and support coping and resilience in response to COVID-19. This issue itself exemplifies cross-sector collaboration, as it was created through partnership between Health Promotion Practice, the Society for Public Health Education, ArtPlace America, and the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and presents voices from across the public health, arts, and community development sectors.

The Other America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harris Beider ◽  
Kusminder Chahal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Race Identity ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The Right

Widely stereotyped as anti-immigrant, against civil-rights, or supporters of Trump and the right, can the white working class of the United States really be reduced to a singular group with similar views? This book begins with an overview of how the term “white working class” became weaponized and used as a vessel to describe people who were seen to be “deplorable.” The national narrative appears to credit (or blame) white working-class mobilization across the country for the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 US elections. Those who take this position see the white working class as being problematic in different ways: grounded in norms and behaviors that seem out of step with mainstream society; at odds with the reality of increased ethnic diversity across the country and especially in cities; blaming others for their economic plight; and disengaged from politics. Challenging populist views about the white working class in the United States, the book showcases what they really think about the defining issues in today's America—from race, identity, and change to the crucial on-the-ground debates occurring at the time of the 2016 U.S. election. As the 2020 presidential elections draw near, this is an invaluable insight into the complex views on 2016 election candidates, race, identity and cross-racial connections.

Preaching with Their Lives

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
The Arts

This volume tells the little-known story of the Dominican Family—priests, sisters, brothers, contemplative nuns, and lay people—and integrates it into the history of the United States. Starting after the Civil War, the book takes a thematic approach through twelve essays examining Dominican contributions to the making of the modern United States by exploring parish ministry, preaching, health care, education, social and economic justice, liturgical renewal and the arts, missionary outreach and contemplative prayer, ongoing internal formation and renewal, and models of sanctity. It charts the effects of the United States on Dominican life as well as the Dominican contribution to the larger U.S. history. When the country was engulfed by wave after wave of immigrants and cities experienced unchecked growth, Dominicans provided educational institutions; community, social, and religious centers; and health care and social services. When epidemic disease hit various locales, Dominicans responded with nursing care and spiritual sustenance. As the United States became more complex and social inequities appeared, Dominicans cried out for social and economic justice. Amidst the ugliness and social dislocation of modern society, Dominicans offered beauty through the liturgical arts, the fine arts, music, drama, and film, all designed to enrich the culture. Through it all, the Dominicans cultivated their own identity as well, undergoing regular self-examination and renewal.

The Lebanese Civil War 1975–90

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-124
Author(s):  
Jamal Wakim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Lebanese Civil War ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Leftist Parties

This article argues that the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) was in essence a terror of state directed by mercantile economic and political elites (the comprador class) controlling the Lebanese state and society against the middle and poorer classes (the working class). The aim of this terror or organized violence was to subdue the subordinate classes, which in the late 1960s and early 1970s rebelled against the confessional system that operated for the benefit of the comprador class. The rebellion was expressed by members of the working-class joining cross-confessional nationalist and leftist parties. Hence, violence was aimed at reestablishing the confessional order as a means to restore a hegemonic system that served the interests of the comprador class at a time when this class was rehabilitating its economic role by resurrecting the financial system, which had received a severe blow in the late 1960s. It effected this rehabilitation through the Taif Agreement signed between Lebanese parliamentarians in 1989, under the auspices of Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, to favor the new mercantile elite led by Rafiq Hariri.

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