scholarly journals Future past I am a coolie-al…and I reside as an invisible island inside the ocean: Tidalectics, transoceanic crossings, coolitude and a Tamil identity

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-172
Author(s):  
Yaso Nadarajah
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Malay Archipelago ◽  
Squatter Settlement ◽  
Tamil Identity ◽  
The City

The politics of Tamil working-class identity in Malaysia continue to be articulated in subaltern terms, employing term such as ‘coolie’, which is elsewhere an archaic usage from colonial days. Yet the power of the coolie narrative appears salient, and the coolie odyssey is far from over. Drawing upon the author’s longitudinal work with a Tamil squatter settlement in the heart of the city of Kuala Lumpur in the Malay Archipelago, this paper moves from third to first and then second narrative to capture the broad range of ruptures and transformations of Tamil sensibilities, a ‘coolitude’ that grew a pattern of life which emerged from a journey that began on the sea. In this article, the author envisions the ‘black ocean’ as an invisible island; shaped by colonial and imperial histories, racial capitalism and ocean crossings. These transoceanic crossings carried the weight of Tamil histories, rooted in the seas as an invisible island—as both the rupture of an identity and a translation from western namings and discourses. What remains is the ‘island’, rooted in the seas as a colonial wound of history, a tidalectic between transoceanic migration, personhood and language. This community is more than just its resilience, its assertions of power, its affair with identity and belonging, and its response to deep social inequalities in its homeland. It is also a space of a poetics of resoluteness to recover an identity that is not fractured, not alienated from place and transoceanic crossings. This paper attempts a retelling of a hidden hyphen that held the labourer and the personhood apart, but also together. It navigates through the concept of tidalectics first postulated by Barbadian poet and historian Kamau Braithwaite (2003) in conjunction with Valentine Daniel’s (2008) The Coolie and Khal Torabully’s (1992) Coolitude. The paper seeks to understand more deeply the performativity of the hyphen as an invisible island inside the ocean.

Gentrification and neighborhood melancholy. Collective sadness and ambivalence in Dortmund’s Hörde district

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402098725
Author(s):  
Susanne Frank
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Residential Area ◽  
Artificial Lake ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
The Core ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City ◽  
The Phoenix

Since 2000, the City of Dortmund has pursued an ambitious flagship project in the district of Hoerde. On the enormous site of a former steel plant, and in the middle of an impoverished working class district, a large new upper-middle class residential area (Phoenix) has been developed around an artificial lake. Qualitative fieldwork suggests that the project has generated mixed feelings among longtime working class dwellers in the old part of Hoerde. Widespread enthusiasm about new lakeside living is interwoven with emotions of sadness and loss, reflecting a neighborhood transformation which unmistakably demonstrates their social, cultural, and political marginalization – feelings that were not allowed to become part of the jubilant official discourse which has marketed the Phoenix project as a shining example of the City’s successful post-industrial structural change. Ever since its announcement, the project has been blamed for triggering gentrification processes – despite the fact that there are still no empirical signs of rising rents or displacement. I argue that the concept of gentrification has been taken up so readily because it is popular, polyvalent, polemical, and critical, enabling citizens to find a language to denounce the blatant social inequalities and power imbalances that competitive urbanism has fostered in Dortmund. However, I also claim that the core of the prevailing sadness – the loss of the familiar neighborhood which could not be grieved over – remains under the radar of standard gentrification discourse. The article thus proposes neighborhood melancholy as a concept to account for the unclear, subconscious, and deeply ambivalent ways in which long-established residents experience their neighborhood’s transformation, expressed within the rubric of gentrification.

scholarly journals Classificatory struggles in the midst of austerity: Policing or politics?

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-143
Author(s):  
Bob Jeffery ◽  
Peter Thomas ◽  
Dawn Devine
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Dominant Discourses ◽  
The City

This article reports findings on class identities amongst a small sample of mainly working-class residents in the City of Salford. We attempt to develop a Rancièrian framework for understanding class identities, centred on his key concept of dissensus, and how these ideas have been developed by Imogen Tyler through the notion of ‘classificatory struggles’. From this, we identify a continuum of responses that are discernible in relation to the neoliberal order of classifications: from those orientated to a ‘policing’ function, either accepting and internalising dominant discourses or attempting to displace abjection onto others, to those that tend more towards ‘politics’ in either asserting alternative circuits of value or through an appeal to the name of the proletariat as a political claim to radical equality. In examining our data, we note that although a majority disavowed an explicit working-class identity, they nonetheless engaged in a range of classificatory struggles.

scholarly journals Working-class communities and ecology: reframing environmental justice around the Ilva steel plant in Taranto (Apulia, Italy)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Barca ◽  
Emanuele Leonardi
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Community Ecology ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Environmental Sociology ◽  
Environmental Consciousness ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Steelmaking Complex ◽  
Class Community

The first part of this chapter offers a critical review of environmental sociology and political ecology, highlighting the contribution they have made to a redefinition of class, and social inequalities in general. The authors then elaborate on their definition of ‘Working-Class Community Ecology.’ The second part of this chapter applies this concept to the case of a working-class community in the city of Taranto, southern Italy, where the 2012 confiscation of a giant steelmaking complex, the ILVA plant – due to serious violations of environmental regulations – is jeopardizing thousands of jobs, thus forming a threat to the local community’s subsistence and identity. The authors investigate the surreptitious way through which both governmental and business actors have actively prevented the making of a class-based environmental consciousness in Taranto.

The Peer Group’s Agency in a Brazilian School

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Cinthia Torres Toledo ◽  
Marília Pinto de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
School Engagement ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Brazilian Literature ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Educational Trajectories ◽  
Schooling Process ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban State

Black working-class boys are the group with the most significant difficulties in their schooling process. In dialogue with Raewyn Connell, we seek to analyze how the collective conceptions of peer groups have influenced the school engagement of Brazilian boys. We conducted an ethnographic research with students around the age of 14 at an urban state school in the periphery of the city of São Paulo. We analyzed the hierarchization process between two groups of boys, demonstrating the existence of a collective notion of masculinity that works against engagement with the school. Well-known to the Anglophone academic literature, this association is rather uncommon in the Brazilian literature. We have therefore attempted to describe and analyze here the challenges faced by Black working-class Brazilian boys to establish more positive educational trajectories.

THE SUBURBANISATION OF THE KUALA LUMPUR METROPOLITAN REGION

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamalunlaili Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
The Past ◽  
Klang Valley ◽  
The City

The Klang Valley has been experiencing rapid urbanisation especially during the past two decades. The area has expanded to become a larger entity known as the Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Region (KLMR). But this development comes at the expense of Kuala Lumpur. The city had consistently recorded net-out migration during the period. This development has consequences on the urban fabric of the city and can lead to the problem

scholarly journals Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852098222
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Dave O’Brien ◽  
Ian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Privileged Class

Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ which act to downplay interviewees’ own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this ‘intergenerational self’ partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory.

scholarly journals A Field Study on Urban Rail Transits in City of Kuala Lumpur: Passenger Views on Train Noise and Vibration

2015 ◽  
Vol 773-774 ◽  
pp. 839-844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Idrus bin Mohd Masirin ◽  
Nur Farrina Johari ◽  
Noor Hafiza Nordin ◽  
Abdul Halid Abdullah ◽  
Mohd Isom Azis
Keyword(s):  
Research Work ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Sound Level ◽  
Urban Rail Transit ◽  
Vibration Velocity ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
The Public ◽  
Urban Rail ◽  
Noise Data ◽  
The City

Malaysia is a fast developing country which thrives on the growth of its population and economy. Kuala Lumpur is the capital of Malaysia with an area of 243 km2 has a population of 1.4 million [1]. From the statistics, the number of passengers using intercity train services in Malaysia in was 187,345,149 in the year 2012 [2]. Comfortability of a service is a major factor that influences the public. The research will be conducted at the City of Kuala Lumpur, PUTRA LRT (Kelana Jaya Line) and MONOREL Line is selected as the main focus of the research. The data collection will be conducted in the train coaches with two parameters. The noise and vibrations in the train coaches will be taken using the Sound Level Meter (NOR118) and Vibration Meter (Movipack 01dB-Steel) respectively. The noise data were obtained from the interior of the train coaches during operation, while the vibrations were obtained from the wall surface of the coach interior. The vibration aspect for this research is more focused on three parameters which are displacement (μm), vibration velocity (mm/s) and vibration frequency (Hz)[7]. Questionnaires were given out to the train passengers in order to obtain public opinions and satisfaction feedbacks relating their experiences on the train coaches. In this paper it also discusses on the outcomes of the field research work conducted and it was found that PUTRA LRT has a lower vibration value when compared to the MONOREL. The public opinion has also showed unanimous agreement to the field observations conducted by the researchers. However, MONOREL records lower noise levels compared to PUTRA LRT which means quieter journey experience to the commuters. It is hoped that this study will enable the operators to enhance their service weaknesses with the public playing a part in improving the urban rail transit in the City of Kuala Lumpur. Keywords:Comfortability,Noise,Vibration,LRT,MONOREL,

scholarly journals Social inequalities and the rise in violent deaths in Salvador, Bahia State, Brazil: 2000-2006

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (suppl 2) ◽  
pp. s298-s308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Antonio Chaves Viana ◽  
Maria da Conceição Nascimento Costa ◽  
Jairnilson Silva Paim ◽  
Ligia Maria Vieira-da-Silva
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Study ◽  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Risk Of Death ◽  
Spatial Inequalities ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
External Causes ◽  
Inequalities In Mortality ◽  
The City

An ecological study was carried out using information zones as units of analysis in order to assess the evolution of socio-spatial inequalities in mortality due to external causes and homicides in Salvador, Bahia State, Brazil, in 2000 and 2006. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE) and the City Health Department (Secretaria Municipal de Saúde) provided the data sources, and causes of death were reviewed and reclassified based on reports from the Institute of Legal Medicine (Instituto Médico Legal). The information zones were classified into four social strata according to income and schooling. The ratio between mortality rates (inequality ratio) was calculated and confirmed a rise of 98.5% in the homicide rate. In 2000, the risk of death due to external causes and murders in the stratum with the worst living conditions was respectively 1.40 and 1.94 times greater than in the reference stratum. In 2006 these figures were 2.02 and 2.24. The authors discuss the implications for inter-sectoral public policies, based on evidence from the study's findings.

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