scholarly journals A Generational Approach to Somatic Cultures: Modes of Attention to the Young Body in Contemporary Portuguese Society

Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Vitor Ferreira

The aims of this article are to identify, describe, and sociologically understand the different somatic cultures in contemporary Portuguese society—i.e., the distinct ways in which different generations have thought about, used and lived the body from the time of the Estado Novo (the New State, which was the regime that governed Portugal from 1933 to 1974) until the present day. Beginning with the hypothesis that there are different, historically institutionalized, somatic modes of attention to the “young body”, the author uses the most relevant institutions of the socialization of the body as analytical dimensions and investigates their main incorporation strategies and models of corporality. This hypothesis is informed by different generational conditions that change people’s uses of their body, their experiences of living in it, and their thoughts on the matter. Using these analytical dimensions, the article presents a typology that identifies, describes, and comprehends the three somatic cultures in the recent history of Portuguese society: the culture of physical invigoration that forms part of the legacy of the New State; the culture of physical rejuvenation inherited from youth cultures of the 1960s and 70s, along with the growth of body design industries in the 1980s; and the culture of physical perfection inherited from the biotech culture in the 1990s, accompanied by the radicalization of the body design industry. This approach entails the discussion and reinterpretation of a corpus of historical literature, presenting research data on the body in a defined time period (1930 to date) and space (Portugal), analyzed from an embodied perspective of generational change.

2020 ◽  
Vol 107 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianfeng Yang ◽  
Julien Kimmig ◽  
Bruce S. Lieberman ◽  
Shanchi Peng

Abstract The Cambrian radiation represents a key time period in the history of life. Here, we add to the mounting evidence accumulating on the nature of deuterostomes from this time period through description of a new species of stalked deuterostome, Herpetogaster haiyanensis nov. sp., from the lower Cambrian (series 2, stage 3) Chengjiang biota of China. This represents the first occurrence of the genus in Gondwana, the first juvenile specimen, and the oldest specimens to date. Herpetogaster haiyanensis nov. sp. differs from H. collinsi Caron et al. (2010) in having a stolon that is separated into an outer and inner layer, the segmentation of the body and in the shape and number of branches of the tentacles. The new species reiterates earlier suggestions of deuterostome affinities of the genus―it appears closely related to Phlogites and then successively more distantly related to Cotyledon and Eldonia―and may have fed on hyolithids.


Author(s):  
Fabrice Teroni

This chapter focuses on fundamental trends in the philosophy of emotion since the publication of William James’ seminal and contentious view. James is famous for his claim that undergoing an emotion comes down to feeling (psychological mode) specific changes within the body (content). Philosophers writing after him have also attempted to analyse emotional modes in terms of other psychological modes (believing, desiring, and perceiving) and to adjust their contents accordingly. The discussion is organized around a series of contrasts that have played fundamental roles in shaping these approaches to the emotions. These contrasts are those between emotions and feelings, between specific and unspecific phenomenology, and between dependent and independent modes. Focus on these contrasts enables a review of some dramatic turning points in the recent history of theorizing about the emotions; it also serves to bring to light fundamental constraints bearing on emotion theory.


2021 ◽  
pp. 75-108
Author(s):  
Anna von der Goltz

This chapter engages with several major themes that have long animated research on the West German 1960s: protesters’ family backgrounds and wartime childhoods; the meaning of the Nazi past to their activism; and intergenerational relations. Like their student peers on the Left, centre-right activists had been raised in a post-genocidal society. Given that, how did they view and engage with Germany’s recent history of mass violence? The chapter highlights the centrality of anti-totalitarianism to their thinking. It also shows that, inspired by the so-called ‘‘45ers’ and nudged by social scientists who routinely portrayed student protest as a symptom of generational conflict, they began to think of themselves as a distinct generational community in the 1960s.


Author(s):  
Tim Hitchcock

Hitchcock’s chapter examines the impassioned response represented in a couple of cheap publications to the death in 1732 of Mary Whistle, in a workhouse in the London parish of St Giles in the Fields, where she had been confined with a view to making her work in return for aid. The story became a focus for public opposition to the new workhouses, in the process bringing an end to the career of the man in charge of this one, Matthew Marryott. Hitchcock contextualizes publications mobilizing shock at these events by evoking the recent history of innovation in the parish’s government; by giving a sense of the character of the publications in which outrage was expressed; and through analysis of the values which informed the response.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Marie Akou

Since their invention in the 1930s, t-shirts have become one of the most common styles of casual clothing in the United States ‐ worn by all ages, genders and social classes. Although ‘graphic’ t-shirts have existed for decades, twenty-first-century technologies have made them much faster and easier to produce. Students protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s wore black armbands and grew their hair long; today, students (and activists of all ages) are more likely to wear political t-shirts. In a time when anyone with modest computer skills can design a graphic and get t-shirts professionally printed and shipped in just two or three days, this medium for self- and group-expression is well-suited to the turbulence of politics. This article explores the recent history of political t-shirts in the United States in two parts. The first focuses on legislation and legal rulings, including a case heard by the US Supreme Court in 2018 regarding whether activists can wear political t-shirts in polling places (a space where any kind of campaign activity is generally forbidden). The second part explores the definition of a ‘political’ t-shirt. This section is grounded in a study of t-shirts that are currently turning up in thrift shops in Bloomington, IN ‐ a small, politically active community in a conservative state that voted for Obama in 2008 and then Trump in 2016.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-464
Author(s):  
Alexander von Schwerin

ArgumentThis paper brings together the history of risk and the history of DNA repair, a biological phenomenon that emerged as a research field in between molecular biology, genetics, and radiation research in the 1960s. The case of xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), an inherited hypersensitivity to UV light and, hence, a disposition to skin cancer will be the starting point to argue that, in the 1970s and 1980s, DNA repair became entangled in the creation of new models of the human body at risk – what is here conceptually referred to as the vulnerability aspect of body history – and new attempts at cancer prevention and enhancement of the body associated with the new flourishing research areas of antimutagenesis and anticarcinogenesis. The aim will be to demonstrate that DNA repair created special attempts at disease prevention: molecular enhancement, seeking to identify means to increase the self-repair abilities of the body at the molecular level. Prevention in this sense meant enhancing the body's ability to cope with the environmental hazards of an already toxic world. This strategy has recently been adopted by the beauty industry, which introduced DNA care as a new target for skin care research and anti-aging formulas.


Author(s):  
Simon Cox

How does the soul relate to the body? Through the ages many religions and intellectual movements have posed answers to this question. Many have gravitated to the notion of the subtle body, positing some kind of subtle entity that is neither soul nor body, but some mixture of the two. This book traces the history of this idea from the late Roman Empire to the present day, touching on how philosophers, wizards, scholars, occultists, psychologists, and mystics have engaged with the idea over the past two thousand years. The book begins in the late Roman Empire, moving chronologically through the Renaissance, the British project of colonial Indology, the development of theosophy and occultism in the nineteenth century, and the Euro-American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.


Author(s):  
Paulinho da Viola

In this interview, singer and songwriter Paulinho da Viola comments on the documentary Partido alto (1976–1982) and his friendship with director Leon Hirszman. He also describes the origins of partido-alto as a variety of samba, the transformations of samba schools in the 1960s and 70s and his relationship with audiovisual media during this time period, including the music documentary Saravah (Pierre Barouh, 1972) and televised music festivals. A crucial figure in the history of samba, Paulinho da Viola was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1942. As a son of a middle-class choro guitar player, he soon became interested in the samba that was played in the slums, most notably Samba School Portela in the Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood of Oswaldo Cruz. Paulinho’s career, which started in the 1960s and continues today, combines a plethora of vital song releases such as “Foi um rio que passou em minha vida” (“A River Broke into My Life”, 1970) and “Dança da solidão” (“The Dance of Loneliness”, 1972) that helped rejuvenate samba, with a political stance that vindicates the roots of this music genre as a popular community practice. In line with his political beliefs, in 1970 Paulinho used his popularity to endorse the first album by Velha Guarda da Portela, a band of senior singer-songwriters who had been marginalised by the music industry. In the mid-1970s, Paulinho became increasingly critical with the gradual commodification of samba and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, to the point of breaking up with Portela Samba School when traditional composers, such as those from Velha Guarda, were ignored by the directorship. His involvement with Hirszman’s Partido alto was strongly attuned with that moment in his career, because partido-alto contains a variety of archaic, improvised samba that contrasts with commercial, commodified practices. He worked as a consultant, interviewer and narrator for that film, as well as a performer, alongside his admired colleagues from Velha Guarda da Portela.


The study of the desire, acquisition, use, and disposal of goods and services, consumption, has grown enormously in recent years, and has been the subject of major historiographical debates: Did the eighteenth century bring a consumer revolution? Was there a great divergence between East and West? Did the twentieth century see the triumph of global consumerism? Questions of consumption have become defining topics in all branches of history, from gender and labour history to political history and cultural studies. This publication offers an overview of how our understanding of consumption in history has changed in the last generation, taking the reader from the ancient period to the twenty-first century. It includes articles on Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America; brings together new perspectives; highlights cutting-edge areas of research; and offers a guide through the main historiographical developments. Contributions from leading historians examine the spaces of consumption, consumer politics, luxury and waste, nationalism and empire, the body, well-being, youth cultures and fashion. The volume also showcases the different ways in which recent historians have approached the subject, from cultural and economic history, to political history and technology studies, including areas where multidisciplinary approaches have been especially fruitful.


Author(s):  
Matt Eisenbrandt

This chapter provides an overview of the recent history of El Salvador, with a focus on the importance of coffee as a crop that built fortunes for a small group of families. The wealth concentrated in the hands of oligarchs led to massive economic inequality throughout the twentieth century, and an uprising in the 1930s was put down in such a brutal manner that it stifled opposition for decades and came to be known as the Matanza. This chapter chronicles U.S. government support for anti-Communism and counterinsurgency efforts that created the death squads in El Salvador, continued military repression amid growing cries for reform in the 1960s and 1970s, the rise of insurgent groups targeting the oligarchs, and the bloody response of the military and death squads. After a reformist military coup in 1979, Roberto D’Aubuisson and civilian supporters carried out a public crusade denouncing advocates of reform as Communists, with the country getting closer to civil war.


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