Ambivalent Relationships: London's Youth Culture and the Making of the Multi-Racial Society in the 1960s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Fuhg
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Class Youth

The emergence and formation of British working-class youth cultures in the 1960s were characterized by an ambivalent relationship between British identity, global culture and the formation of a multicultural society in the post-war decades. While national and local newspapers mostly reported on racial tensions and racially-motivated violence, culminating in the Notting Hill riots of 1958, the relationship between London's white working-class youth and teenagers with migration backgrounds was also shaped by a reciprocal, direct and indirect, personal and cultural exchange based on social interaction and local conditions. Starting from the Notting Hill Riots 1958, the article reconstructs places and cultural spheres of interaction between white working-class youth and teenagers from Caribbean communities in London in the 1960s. Following debates and discussions on race relations and the participation of black youth in the social life of London in the 1960s, the article shows that British working-class youth culture was affected in various ways by the processes of migration. By dealing with the multicultural dimension of the post-war metropolis, white working-class teenagers negotiated socio-economic as well as political changes, contributing in the process to an emergent, new image of post-imperial Britain.

Working Class Youth Culture.

Social Forces ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 964
Author(s):  
John Leggett ◽  
Geoff Mungham ◽  
Geoff Pearson ◽  
Serge Mallet
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Class Youth

THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE CAPITALIST FIRM, c. 1950–1970

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIM TOMLINSON
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Issue Framing ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Capitalist Firm ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

One of the most profound challenges facing the Labour party in the post-war period was its ability to understand and make policy to reform the private sector. Before the Attlee government, Labour had little to say on this issue, but that government's experience exposed the dangerous ‘vacuum’ this involved. In the 1950s the nature of the capitalist firm ranked alongside the alleged ‘embourgoisement’ of the working class as an issue framing Labour's ideological and policy debate. The centrality of this issue reflected the fact that understanding the firm was inextricably linked to a raft of broader arguments within the Left about the nature of modern capitalism. The benign view of the corporation that flowed from the revisionist wing of the party was challenged by the ‘declinist’ politics of the 1960s, and in office after 1964 Labour pursued a modernizing agenda which centrally involved seeking to shape the behaviour of the private sector in order to deliver the higher economic growth that Labour so much desired. The failure of this growth to materialize led to great disillusion across the party about the policies pursued by the Wilson government, and this in turn led to a fundamental rethink of policy that was to underpin the radical agenda of the party in the 1970s.

Sociology, theories of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Empirical Processes ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Fundamental Properties ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

Throughout the history of sociology, three types of theorizing have co-existed, sometimes uneasily. ‘Theories of’ provide abstract models of empirical processes; they function both as guides for sociological research and as sources for covering laws whose falsification or validation is intended to provide the basis for a cumulative science. ‘Presuppositional studies’ abstract away from particular empirical processes, seeking instead to articulate the fundamental properties of social action and order; meta-methodological warrants for the scientific investigation of societies; and normative foundations for moral evaluations of contemporary social life. ‘Hermeneutical theory’ addresses these basic sociological questions more indirectly, by interpreting the meanings and intentions of classical texts. The relation between these three forms of theorizing varies historically. In the post-war period, under the institutional and intellectual influence of US sociologists like Parsons and Merton, presuppositional and hermeneutical issues seemed to be settled; ‘theories of’ proliferated and prospects seemed bright for a cumulative, theoretically-organized science of society. Subsequent social and intellectual developments undermined this brief period of relative consensus. In the midst of the crises of the 1960s and 1970s, presuppositional and hermeneutical studies gained much greater importance, and became increasingly disarticulated from empirical ‘theories of’. Confronting the prospect of growing fragmentation, in the late 1970s and early 1980s there appeared a series of ambitious, synthetical works that sought to reground the discipline by providing coherent examples of how the different forms of sociological theory could once again be intertwined. While widely read inside and outside the discipline, these efforts failed in their foundational ambitions. As a result of this failure, over the last decade sociological theory has had diminishing influence both inside the discipline and without. Inside social science, economic and anthropological theories have been much more influential. In the broader intellectual arena, the most important presuppositional and hermeneutical debates have occurred in philosophy and literary studies. Sociological theorists are now participating in these extra-disciplinary debates even as they have returned to the task of developing ‘theories of’ particular institutional domains. The future of specifically sociological theory depends on reviving coherent relationships between these different theoretical domains.

The challenges of cross‑racial coalition building

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Harris Beider ◽  
Kusminder Chahal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Strategic Plan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines the possibilities of building cross-racial coalitions between the white working class and communities of color as the United States transitions from majority white to a minority white country. Fifty years after the campaign for civil rights and the passage of landmark legislation during the 1960s, there is little evidence of formal and sustainable cross-racial coalition building at the grassroots or grasstops level between the white working class and communities of color. White working-class communities wanted to engage with communities of color but did not have the means of engaging across racial boundaries beyond a superficial everyday level. Discussions between different communities were “soft-wired” and based on fleeting exchanges in informal spaces rather than becoming “hard-wired” in a strategic plan that can create a framework for coalition building. Stakeholders were largely ambivalent and occasionally hostile toward engaging with white working-class communities to build effective cross-racial alliances. Similar to white working-class communities in relation to communities of color, stakeholders found it challenging to engage with these groups.

scholarly journals BOURGEOIS TENDENCIES IN THE SOCIAL LIFE AND MENTALITY OF THE SOVIET SOCIETY OF THE 1950S TO 80S.

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Mikhail А. Beznin ◽  
Tatyana M. Dimoni ◽  
Anna S. Stoletova
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Post War ◽  
State Library ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
High Level

The article raises the question of a signifi cant trend in the socio-economic development of post-war Soviet society. As a study of the formation of bourgeois trends, the authors note class restructuring, a change in the organisation of labour, the formation of entrepreneurial skills, including in the sectors of the «ghost» and «shadow» economies, and the desire for a high level of consumption. Among the mechanisms of the formation of bourgeois trends, a signifi cant role was played by the position of the state, which, on the one hand, made efforts to stimulate interest in material security (including through the promotion of advanced workers, the formation of a new consumer culture), and on the other hand, restrained the processes of material differentiation according to ideological concepts of social justice. The article was prepared on the basis of materials from the Russian State Archive of Recent History, the Russian State Archive of Economics: documents from the Communist Party bodies, reviews of law enforcement agencies, letters from citizens, as well as basing on study of the results of sociological surveys of the 1960s and the 1980s. (Some of those were recovered from the former special security service of the Russian State Library). The authors come to the conclusion that by the end of the Soviet period as a result of ongoing processes, ideological cliches about a socially homogeneous society had signifi cantly outlived their usefulness.

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