scholarly journals Counter Class and Counter Identity: Confrontations of Power in Tony Harrison's Poetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-260
Author(s):  
Younes Poorghorban
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Personal Relationship ◽  
Class Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Struggles ◽  
Prejudice And Discrimination

Tony Harrison is a contemporary British author whose poetry is highly influential in encountering the issue of identity and class struggles. As a working-class student, Harrison was subject to prejudice and discrimination for his working-class accent. This paper investigates two of his highly admired poems, “On Not Being Milton” and “Them & uz” from a cultural standpoint, mainly concentrated on John Fiske’s theory of power and language. The role of language in the context of his poems is probed. The multiaccentuality of language is represented in his poetry and these two poems become the site of struggle for the imperialising and the localising power. It is intended to illuminate the sought space of identity which Harrison is constantly referring to as a member of the English working-class society. Lastly, the social and personal relationship between Harrison and Milton has been explored positing Harrison in a transcendental context in his relationship with Milton.

Transforming Labour: From the Workers’ State to the Post-Socialist Re-Organization of Industry and Workplace Communities

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-438
Author(s):  
Eszter Bartha
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
The Social ◽  
East German

Abstract The article seeks to place the workers’ road from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and Hungary in a historical context. It offers an overview of the most important elements of the party’s policy towards labour in the two countries under the Honecker and the Kádár regime respectively. It examines the highly paternalistic role of the factory as a life-long employer and provider of workers’ needs for the large industrial working class which the regime considered to be its main social basis. Given that the thesis of the working class as the ruling class was central to the legitimating ideology of the state socialist regimes, dissident intellectuals challenging this thesis were effectively marginalized or forced into exile. After the change of regimes, the “working class” again became an ideological term associated with the discredited and fallen regime. The article analyses the changes within the life-world of East German and Hungarian workers in the light of life-history interviews. It argues that in Hungary, the social and material decline of the workers – alongside the loss of the symbolic capital of the working class – reinforced ethno-centric, nationalistic narratives, which juxtaposed “globalization” and “national capitalism”, the latter supposedly protecting citizens from the exploitation by global capital. In the light of the sad reports of falling standards of living and impoverishment, the Kádár regime received an ambiguous, often nostalgic evaluation. While the East Germans were also critical of the new, capitalist society (unemployment, intensified competition for jobs, the disintegration of the old, work-based communities), they gave more credit to the post-socialist democratic institutions. They were more willing to reconcile the old socialist values which they had appreciated in the GDR with a modern left-wing critique than their Hungarian counterparts, for whom nationalism seemed to offer the only means to express social criticism.

Linking Moralisation and Class Identity: The Role of Ressentiment and Respectability in the Social Reaction to ‘Chavs’

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 18-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Le Grand
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Social Reaction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dialectical Process ◽  
White Working Class

This paper aims to link two fields of research which have come to form separate lines of inquiry: the sociology of moralisation and studies on class identity. Expanding on recent papers by Young (2009 , 2011 ) and others, the paper argues that the concepts of ressentiment and respectability can be used to connect moralisation processes and the formation of class identities. This is explored through a case study of the social reaction in Britain to white working-class youths labelled ‘chavs’. It is demonstrated that chavs are constructed through moralising discourses and practices, which have some elements of a moral panic. Moreover, moralisation is performative in constructing class identities: chavs have been cast as a ‘non-respectable’ white working-class ‘folk devil’ against whom ‘respectable’ middle-class and working-class people distinguish and identify themselves as morally righteous. Moralising social reactions are here to an important extent triggered by feelings of ressentiment. This is a dialectical process where respectability and ressentiment are tied, not only to the social control of certain non-respectable working-class others, but also to the moral self-governance of the moralisers.

The English Roman Catholic Bishops and The Social Order, 1918–26

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-564
Author(s):  
Kester Aspden
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Pastoral Letter ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Social ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
General Strike ◽  
The Church

It is ironic that it should have been the leader of the church with the greatest proportion of working-class members who took up the most hostile stance to the General Strike of 1926. While Francis Bourne (1862–1935), Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, won the plaudits of the Establishment for his unambiguous denunciation of the strike, that cautious septuagenarian Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, found himself cast in the unlikely role of the workers’ friend after his illstarred attempt to conciliate the two sides. Sheridan Gilley has highlighted another contrast: while in 1926 Bourne found himself sharply opposed to labour, in a 1918 pastoral letter he had been insistent that the Church should reach an accommodation with the ‘modern labour unrest’. While Gilley implies that his General Strike condemnation was uncharacteristic, Buchanan suggests that this was closer to expressing his ‘real political views’ than his 1918 statement. This article aims to provide a closer examination of the shift in Bourne’s attitude, and to consider the broader episcopal response to social and political questions during these fraught years.

scholarly journals On the specificity of the worldview of Erzya and Moksha matrimonial myths

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Elena Sharonova ◽  
Aleksandr Markovich Sharonov
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Special Contribution ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
Class Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Context ◽  
Family Based

Mythology is the form of consciousness of the primitive and early class society, which reproduces the views of a human on cosmos, God, and society. The object of this research is Erzya and Moksha myths on matrimonial relations. The subject of this research is the specificity of the worldview of Erzya and Moksha myths founded on the matrimonial relations. Detailed analysis is conducted on the specificity of reflection of philosophical and sociological motifs in the Erzya and Moksha matrimonial myths that emerged in the context of formation of the patriarchal family based on the social, moral and legal norms of existence. The author also explores the uniqueness of matrimonial relations with deities and people. Which gives a conceptual perspective on the type and character of the ethnic family, and the role of family in human life. The conclusion is made that stating a family by deities and people is a continuation of creation of the world in the sphere of family and social life. The author’s special contribution to this research consists in the proof that the presence of the indicated aspect in the myth is the reflection of the naive idealistic ideas and spontaneous materialistic views; substantiation of the high humanistic status of a woman in family life; designation of the heroic traits given to a woman by birth as fundamental; comprehension of matrimonial relations between deities and people through the prism of co-creation. This article is first to analyze the peculiarities of the worldview of matrimonial myths and introducing it into the scientific context, which defines its novelty.

Negotiating Mobility: Royal Dockyard Workers as Railway Excursion Agents and Social Entrepreneurs, 1880–1918

2021 ◽  
pp. 002252662110434
Author(s):  
Melanie Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Entrepreneur ◽  
Social Entrepreneurs ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
Working People

From their creation in the mid-nineteenth century in Britain railway excursions provided working people with the means to expand their horizons and create new opportunities for identity- and money-making. This article explores the role of the social entrepreneur and their affect on social mobility. It also re-evaluates working-class leisure in the south of England and challenges the notion that the working-classes were not proactive in establishing their own unique commercial leisure cultures. Using a case study of two dockyard excursion enterprises, which were operated as sideline ventures by skilled artisans of the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK, the article will demonstrate how local working-class access to travel and cultural experiences were broadened and transformed through their initiatives and analyse the role and influence of these men on their co-workers and in wider society.

Equality and Difference Queering Guyane?

2018 ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Bill Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Social Processes ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
Class Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Reality

This chapter begins by presenting the role of Christiane Taubira in defending and promoting the 'mariage pour tous' legislation in France, including the references made to the work of Léon Gontron-Damas. This is then linked to two conceptual signposts: firstly, Tzvetan Todrov's La Conquête de l’Amérique (1982) and his exploration of 'the two elementary figures of alterity'; and secondly, Didier Eribon's Une Morale du minoritaire (2001), which makes links between the social processes of inferiorisation inherent to class society, colonialism, and homophobia. This conceptual section will then be followed by an analysis of Caribbean sexualities, and their theorisations, in relation to the specificities of Guyane, including the racial and sexual inversions associated with the period of the penal colony. Positing an active queerING in this context – with the emphasis on the process - and its capacity creatively to build on the anomalies of Guyane's history and contemporary reality, the article ends by looking at recent fiction that exemplifies this process.

Yankee Twang

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford R. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Musical Activity ◽  
Live Music ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Rich

Merging scholarly insight with a professional guitarist's keen sense of the musical life, this book delves into the rich tradition of country and western music that is played and loved in the mill towns and cities of the American northeast. The book draws on a wealth of ethnographic material, interviews, and encounters with recorded and live music to reveal the central role of country and western in the social lives and musical activity of working-class New Englanders. As the book shows, an extraordinary multiculturalism informed by New England's kaleidoscope of ethnic groups created a distinctive country and western music style. But the music also gave—and gives—voice to working-class feeling. Yankee country and western emphasizes the western, reflecting the longing for the mythical cowboy's life of rugged but fulfilling individualism. Indeed, many New Englanders use country and western to comment on economic disenfranchisement and express their resentment of a mass media, government, and Nashville music establishment they believe neither reflects nor understands their life experiences.

The “Chiliasm of Despair” Reconsidered: Revivalism and Working-Class Agitation in County Durham

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Jaffe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Radicalism

The role of evangelical religion in the social history of the English working class has been an area of both bewildering theories and un-founded generalizations. The problem, of course, was given a degree of notoriety by Elie Halévy who, according to the received interpretation, claimed that the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the Continental working class in the first half of the nineteenth century was drained from its British counterpart because of the latter's acceptance of Evangelicalism, namely, Methodism.It was revived most notably by E. P. Thompson, who accepted the counterrevolutionary effect of Methodism but claimed that the evangelical message was really an agent of capitalist domination acting to subordinate the industrial working class to the dominion of factory time and work discipline. Furthermore, Thompson argued, the English working class only accepted Methodism reluctantly and in the aftermath of actual political defeats that marked their social and economic subordination to capital. This view has gained a wide acceptance among many of the most prominent labor historians, including E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé who believe that Evangelicalism was the working-class's “chiliasm of despair” that “offered the one-time labour militant … compensation for temporal defeats.”There could hardly be a starker contrast between the interpretation of these labor historians and the views of those who have examined the social and political history of religion in early industrial Britain. Among the most important of these, W. R. Ward has claimed that Methodism was popular among the laboring classes of the early nineteenth century precisely because it complemented political radicalism.

scholarly journals Infrahumanization and affective prejudice as drivers of teacher discrimination against Romani students: A conceptual replication of Bruneau et al. (2020)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sauro Civitillo ◽  
Francesca Ialuna ◽  
Dwayne Sean Noah Lieck ◽  
Philipp Jugert
Keyword(s):  
Academic Performance ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
National Context ◽  
Turkish Origin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Educational Tracks ◽  
Prejudice And Discrimination

Bruneau’s work repeatedly focused on the Roma minority, worldwide, one of the most dehumanized ethnic groups. In a preregistered design, we replicated one of his previous studies (Bruneau et al., 2020) in a different national context (i.e., Germany) in testing the hypotheses that pre-service teachers make biased educational-track recommendations discriminating against Romani students and that infrahumanization drives this behaviour. In line with Bruneau et al.’s work, pre-service teachers judged placing self-identified Romani students into lower educational tracks as more appropriate than self-identified Turkish-origin and German students, despite equal academic performance. Although participants infrahumanized Romani students at greater levels compared to non-Romani students, in contrast to the Bruneau et al.’s study, educational-track recommendations were positively associated with affective prejudice but not with infrahumanization. These findings extend Bruneau’s insights on dehumanization, prejudice, and discrimination against people of Romani background, highlighting the role of the social context in which these associations are studied.

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