scholarly journals The Desensitization to Violence and the Perpetuation of Oppression and Slavery in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilog

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 75-83
Author(s):  
Bryce Longenberger
Keyword(s):  
Social Structures ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
History Of

This paper analyzes slavery in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy by contextualizing her works within the history of Roman gladiator fighting and by examining the social structures of oppression within the society that Collins creates. The essay explores how the trilogy highlights the ways that people can perpetuate systems of slavery within a society when they become desensitized to violence and both benefit from and are entertained by the exploitation of others. 75

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

scholarly journals Hope and equilibrium in the dystopian world of The Hunger Games

2021 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
María Sandra Peña-Cervel ◽  
Andreea Rosca
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
Accurate Picture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
The Status ◽  
Selection Of

This paper provides evidence of the fruitfulness of combining analytical categories from Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis for the analysis of complex literary characterizations. It does so through a detailed study of the “tributes”, i.e. the randomly selected children who have to fight to death in a nationally televised show, in The Hunger Games. The study proves the effectiveness of such categories to provide an analytically accurate picture of the dystopian world depicted in the novel, which is revealed to include a paradoxical element of hope. The type of dehumanization that characterizes the dystopian society of Panem is portrayed through an internally consistent set of ontological metaphors which project negative aspects of lower forms of existence onto people. This selection of metaphors promotes a biased perspective on the poor inhabitants of Panem, while legitimizing the social inequalities the wealthy Capitol works hard to immortalize. However, Katniss undergoes a metamorphosis through her discovery of her own identity, which hints at an emerging female empowerment. This transformation, together with her identification with the Mockingjay, a supernatural being that voices her beliefs and emotions, contributes to disrupting the status quo imposed by the almighty Gamemakers and to purveying a message of optimism.

scholarly journals New ways: the pandemics of science fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Glyn Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Creative Space

In unprecedented times, people have turned to fiction both for comfort and for distraction, but also to try and understand and anticipate what might come next. Sales and rental figures for works of fiction about pandemics and other disease outbreaks surged in 2020, but what can pandemic science fiction tell us about disease? This article surveys the long history of science fiction's engagement with disease and demonstrates the ways in which these narratives, whether in literature or film, have always had more to say about other contemporary cultural concerns than the disease themselves. Nonetheless, the ideas demonstrated in these texts can be seen perpetuating through the science fiction genre, and in our current crisis, we have seen striking similarities between the behaviours of key individuals, and the manner in which certain events have played out. Not because science fiction predicts these things, but because it anticipates the social structures which produce them (while at the same time permeating the culture to the extent that they become the touchstones with which the media choose to analyse current events). This paper demonstrates that science fiction can be a valuable tool to communicate widely around a pandemic, while also acting as a creative space in which to anticipate how we may handle similar events in the future.

Supporting Visibility and Resilience in Play

2017 ◽  
pp. 950-967
Author(s):  
Gabriela T. Richard
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Online Gaming ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Related Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Supportive Community ◽  
Gaming Communities

Scholars have highlighted the learning opportunities afforded by online gaming communities of practice, which include providing authentic and meaningful contexts for engaging in and learning 21st century skills and digital literacies. However, lesser attention has been paid to how these environments can be inequitable in including and supporting members across gender. This chapter highlights the importance of gender supportive online gaming communities and their role in increasing the visibility of and resiliency necessary for equitable online play and learning. The history of a gender-supportive community and its structures are explored. The chapter further provides recommendations for educators, based on the social structures of this gender-supportive community and related research on educational climates and equitable learning.

Supporting Visibility and Resilience in Play

2014 ◽  
pp. 170-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela T. Richard
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Online Gaming ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Related Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Supportive Community ◽  
Gaming Communities

Scholars have highlighted the learning opportunities afforded by online gaming communities of practice, which include providing authentic and meaningful contexts for engaging in and learning 21st century skills and digital literacies. However, lesser attention has been paid to how these environments can be inequitable in including and supporting members across gender. This chapter highlights the importance of gender supportive online gaming communities and their role in increasing the visibility of and resiliency necessary for equitable online play and learning. The history of a gender-supportive community and its structures are explored. The chapter further provides recommendations for educators, based on the social structures of this gender-supportive community and related research on educational climates and equitable learning.

The Age of Pearl Barley

2020 ◽  
pp. 100-131
Author(s):  
Anna Hájková
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Self Administration ◽  
The Social ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mass Starvation ◽  
Access To Food ◽  
Good Access

This chapter presents a hidden history of how food and hunger shaped the politics of everyday life in Terezín. It offers a social and cultural history of food, eating, and hunger, and of how food defined social structures and kinship. The German authorities consigned Jews to Terezín and restricted the supply of food. Shortages led to maldistribution, caused by the food categories introduced by the Jewish self-administration and corruption, which vastly increased rates of hunger and death. Maldistribution was a consequence of inmate society. The social hierarchy in Theresienstadt resulted in stark differences in access to food, with younger prisoners enjoying relatively good access while the underfed elderly population was deprived and had an extremely high mortality rate. Mass starvation in Theresienstadt was caused more by maldistribution than by lack of food.

Ideology, Chiefly Power, and Material Culture: An Example from the Greater Antilles

1996 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Antonio Curet
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Greater Antilles ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean

AbstractTemporal changes in material culture normally have been used by archaeologists to reconstruct the cultural history of an area or site. In the case of the Caribbean, shifts in artifactual style have been used to trace prehistoric migrations and interactions between different cultural groups. Unfortunately, there have been few attempts to explain these changes in terms of the social structures of these cultures. This paper reviews the archaeological evidence for cultural change in eastern Puerto Rico and proposes a model to explain it. Basically, the model suggests that changes in material culture in Puerto Rican prehistory are related to the development of social complexity. Shifts in decoration and types of artifacts are seen as an attempt by elite groups to have greater control over the symbolism represented in the artifacts in order to acquire and maintain their power. These changes are not abrupt, but gradual, as social organization evolves from simple to more complex chiefdoms.

scholarly journals Mechanism of Power

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Mohamad Haj Mohamad
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Democratic Rule ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
Definition Of

This paper attempts an examination of the concept of the mechanism of power in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy The Hunger Games. The author conducts an analytical approach to the way power is practiced, the measure that helps establish a clandestine of power relations affecting people’s life, mentality of thinking, politics and even economy.The introduction delves to present a definition of power and its concept and how it gets activated and why. Power, according to Collins is the backbone and even the elixir of life upon which the very survival of the authoritarian state headed by President Snow depends. The paper goes on to explicate the need for keeping power in place to secure the government’s grip on power. Mechanism of power as shown in the novel works on so many levels. Divide and rule marks the first and most necessary and effective means as a divisive policy aiming at preventing any potential unity among people who might employ this unity to rise up against the totalitarian government. Media and sport and economic factors are used effectively to ensure government’s control on man’s mind, body and soul and intimidate them whenever needed. Collins presents power and its mechanism as the sole relation between people and government in the novel. Absence of democratic rule in Panem, or, American states, leaves power as the only means to describe the social bond between man and state, a bond that is unilaterally respected and practiced.

Bringing What State Back In? Neo-Marxism and the Origin of the Committee on States and Social Structures

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 714-726
Author(s):  
Rafael Khachaturian
Keyword(s):  
New Left ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the interdisciplinary movement to “bring the state back in,” advanced during the 1980s by the Committee on States and Social Structures. Drawing on the Committee’s archives at the Social Science Research Council, I show that its influential neo-Weberian conception of the state was developed in dialogue with earlier neo-Marxist debates about the capitalist state. However, its interpretation of neo-Marxism as a class reductive and functionalist variant of “grand theory” also created a narrative that marginalized the latter’s contributions to the literature on the state. This displacement had lasting consequences, for while neo-Marxist approaches had provided a critical perspective on the relationship between the social sciences and the state, the Committee’s narrative had a depoliticizing effect on this subject matter. Reconstructing this moment both recovers the forgotten influence of the New Left and neo-Marxist scholarship on postwar political science and sociology, and elaborates on the contested history of the state as a political concept.

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