No One in Control? China's Battler Poetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 165-185
Author(s):  
Maghiel Van Crevel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Force Field ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
City Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Expectations ◽  
Cultural Terms

No literary genre is fully predictable or controllable – but some are more unpredictable and uncontrollable than others, and China's battler poetry is a case in point. In China, up to three hundred million people have left the countryside to flee from poverty and make their way into city life. Exposed to the extreme dynamic of global capitalism, these ‘battlers’ are the foot soldiers of China's economic rise but not invariably its beneficiaries. Many live and work under gruelling conditions and are deprived of basic civil rights, as second-class citizens in socio-economic and cultural terms. And… they write poetry. Not all of them by any means, but enough for a phenomenon called ‘battler poetry’ to enter the public eye. What is battler poetry, and what does it do? What happens when dominant logics of ideology, literary aesthetics and cultural expectations encounter the circumstances of battler life? The force field around this poetry is dizzyingly complex and rife with opportunities for disconnect and the unexpected, throwing into sharp relief the randomness that is part and parcel of cultural production.

Sexual Harassment in School: The Public Performance of Gendered Violence

1995 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Stein
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Peer Sexual Harassment ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mixed Messages

In this article, Nan Stein argues that sexual harassment in schools is a form of gendered violence that often happens in the public arena. She presents the narratives of girls and boys about their experience of sexual harassment in schools and finds parallels with cases documented in court records and depositions. While highly publicized lawsuits and civil rights cases may have increased public awareness of the issue, inconsistent findings have sent educators mixed messages about ways of dealing with peer-to-peer sexual harassment. The antecedents of harassment, she suggests, are found in teasing and bullying, behaviors tacitly accepted by parents and teachers. Stein makes a case for deliberate adult intervention and the inclusion of a curriculum in schools that builds awareness of these issues.

The Surgical Elimination of Violence? Conflicting Attitudes towards Technology and Science during the Psychosurgery Controversy of the 1970s

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian P. Casey
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Violent Behavior ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Community Activists ◽  
Attitudes Towards Technology ◽  
Brain Operations ◽  
The One ◽  
Psychiatric Establishment

ArgumentIn the 1970s a public controversy erupted over the proposed use of brain operations to curtail violent behavior. Civil libertarians, civil rights and community activists, leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement, and some U.S. Congressmen charged psychosurgeons and the National Institute of Mental Health, with furthering a political project: the suppression of dissent. Several government-sponsored investigations into psychosurgery rebutted this charge and led to an official qualified endorsement of the practice while calling attention to the need for more “scientific” understanding and better ethical safeguards. This paper argues that the psychosurgery debate of the 1970s was more than a power struggle between members of the public and the psychiatric establishment. The debate represented a clash between a postmodern skepticism about science and renewed focus on ultimate ends, on the one hand, and a modern faith in standards and procedures, a preoccupation with means, on the other. These diverging commitments made the dispute ultimately irresolvable.

scholarly journals Bella Abzug, queer rights, and disrupting the status quo

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor G Gates ◽  
Margery C Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status

Workers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-identified have always been a part of the workplace in the United States, yet there has been a lack of awareness about how to advocate for the needs of these people. This lack of awareness was challenged by Congresswoman Bella Abzug. Abzug’s campaign for creating an equal working environment for sexual minorities initiated gradual changes in the public discourse concerning workplace and other broad equality measures for these communities. To frame these gradual transformations within a historical context, we use Lewin’s force field analysis framework to examine the change efforts of Abzug. Abzug had beginning success in thawing the status quo yet her visions for equality for LGBTQ people have yet to be realized. Using Abzug’s social action as an example, this article concludes that allies must continue to challenge societal oppression, power, and privilege and to demand civil rights protections for LGBTQ individuals.

scholarly journals Social and Political Consequences of the Pandemic for the Russian Orthodox Church

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-558
Author(s):  
Roman N. Lunkin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cyber Space ◽  
The Church

In the article analyzed the social and political consequences of pandemic of coronavirus for the Russian Orthodox Church in the context of the reaction of different European churches on the quarantine rules and critics towards the church inside Russia. The author used the structural-functional and institutional approaches for the evaluation of the activity of the Russian Orthodox Church, was analyzed the sources of mass-media and the public claims of the clergy. In the article was made a conclusion that Orthodox Church expressed itself during the struggle with coronavirus as national civic institute where could be represented various even polar views. Also the parish activity leads to the formation of the democratic society affiliated with the Church and the role of that phenomenon have to be explored in a future. The coronacrisis makes open the inner potential of the civic activity and different forms of the social service in Russian Church. In the same time pandemic provoked the development of the volunteer activity in the around-church environment and also in the non-church circles among the young people and the generation of 40th age where the idea of the social responsibility for themselves and people around and the significance of the civil rights was one of the popular ideas till 2019. The conditions of the self-isolation also forced the clergy to struggle for their parishioners and once again renovate the role of the church in the society and in the cyber space.

Public Service Media and Social TV: Bridging or Expanding Gaps in Participation?

2015 ◽  
Vol 154 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathon Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Tv ◽  
Content Consumption ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Cultural Intermediaries ◽  
The Public Sphere

The public service media (PSM) remit requires the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to provide for minorities while fostering national culture and the public sphere. Social media platforms and projects – specifically ‘social TV’ – have enabled greater participation in ABC content consumption and creation; they provide opportunities for social participation in collaborative cultural production. However it can be argued that, instead of deconstructing boundaries, social media platforms may in fact reconstruct participation barriers within PSM production processes. This article explores ABC co-creation between Twitter and the # 7DaysLater television program, a narrative-based comedy program that engaged its audience through social media to produce its weekly program. The article demonstrates why the ABC should engage with social media platforms to collaboratively produce content, with # 7DaysLater providing an innovative example, but suggests skilled cultural intermediaries with experience in community facilitation should carry out the process.

scholarly journals The Humanities And The University: Craig Calhoun Interviewed

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Peter Vale
Keyword(s):  
Technological Change ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Research Universities ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Face ◽  
The University

In this interview Craig Calhoun talks about universities, the Humanities and his own research. Universities reinvent themselves in the face of societal and technological change. In the midst of this change, however, universities are charged with maintaining old ideals, with informing the public and creating opportunities for human development. The Humanities often bemoan these changes but they are ideally positioned to contribute to the changing university – especially through teaching – and so protect the traditional place of the university in society. The Humanities must help to defend the canon but, at the same time, be open to new rethinking the canon by embracing alternative epistemologies. One means to do this is to opening knowledge up by embracing languages other than English. Calhoun’s own research is focussed on those ‘parts of globalisation’ that are not commonly investigated: Belonging and Identity, Social Emergencies as an exception; the fragility of Global capitalism.

Displaying Race for Dollars: Racial Realism in Media and Entertainment

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Skrentny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Financing ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
The Public ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Employment Sector ◽  
Racial Realism

This chapter explores racial realism in the advertising and entertainment industries (movies, TV, and professional sports). These cases are distinctive because they are almost totally focused on racial signaling—the image of the worker is very much the product that the employers are selling. Racial signaling is thus common in all of them, though rarer in sports than the other sectors, especially in the last few decades. Hence, the chapter shows that civil rights law does not authorize these practices. It also examines the possibility that television shows' dependence on use of federally regulated airwaves, and sports teams' dependence on the public financing of stadiums might provide legal openings for racial realism in these sectors. Since this employment sector is about expression, this chapter also explores possible First Amendment defenses for these employers, and shows that at least one court has found a constitutionally protected freedom to discriminate.

The Postblack Ethos in “Texts Out of Time”: Rosa Parks and the African American Freedom Struggle in Cultural Memory

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Bunch Davis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
African American Identity ◽  
The 1960S

This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that this narrative limits the representation of African American identity within the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest leadership in the segregated South and casts Malcolm X's advocacy of black nationalism and the ensuing Black Power/Arts Movement as undermining civil rights advances. Through an analysis of five case studies of African American identity staged in plays between 1959 and 1969, the book instead offers representations that engage, critique, and revise racial uplift ideology and reimagine the Black Arts Movement's sometimes proscriptive notions of black authenticity as a condition of black identity and cultural production. It also posits a postblack ethos as the means by which these representations construct their counternarratives to cultural memory and broadens narrow constructions of African American identity shaping racial discourse in the U.S. public sphere of the 1960s.

Changing Charlotte

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Rosen ◽  
Joseph Mosnier
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
School System ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Major Step ◽  
The Public ◽  
Racial Conflict ◽  
Mecklenburg County ◽  
National Media ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Time Position

Chapter 5 focuses on Chambers's impact on his new hometown, Charlotte. Chambers worked easily and well with the city's two leading civil rights figures, state NAACP director Kelly Alexander, Sr., and Rev. Dr. Reginald Hawkins, who was both younger and more convinced of the usefulness of protest and direct confrontation. In a major step, Chambers renewed litigation to desegregate the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County school system. He meanwhile led a successful effort to force desegregation of a popular high school all-star football game held annually in Charlotte. Although Chambers and Charlotte's handful of additional black attorneys were mostly shunned by the city's white lawyers, U.S. District Judge J. Braxton Craven Jr., impressed by Chambers's talent, appointed Chambers to the part-time position of U.S. Commissioner. Press coverage brought Chambers increasingly into the public eye. In November of 1965, Chambers was again the target of racist violence when his home, and those of Alexander, Alexander's brother, and Hawkins, were attacked with dynamite. National media coverage of the bombings threatened the image of Charlotte crafted by white elites as a moderate, business-friendly city largely free of racial conflict.

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