scholarly journals The Ideology of Self-making and the White Working Class in Rebecca Harding Davis’ "Life in the Iron Mills"

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Sofía Martinicorena
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
The Self ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Rebecca Harding Davis ◽  
Economic Dynamics ◽  
Early American ◽  
White Working Class

Rebecca Harding Davis’ novella Life in the Iron Mills, published in 1861 in The Atlantic Monthly, is now considered a landmark of early American realism. This paper analyses the text’s depiction of the white working class and the ideological consequences of the myth of upward mobility and self-making, which are presented as an impossibility to Hugh Wolfe, the story’s main character. I will argue that Davis’ choice to offer a representation of the precarious lives of the workers of Northern industrial capitalism implies a criticism of the quintessentially American narrative of upward mobility, and a subsequent reflection on how foundational narratives operate in a society that is not homogeneous in terms of race or class. More specifically, I willmaintain that Life in the Iron Mills operates as a contestation to the myth of the self- made man, evinced by the comparison between Hugh Wolfe’s situation and that of the mill owners, who encourage his aspirations from an oblivious position of privilege. Lastly, Hugh’s tragic death will be taken as proof that the myth of self-making mystifies the actual social and economic dynamics of industrial capitalism.

scholarly journals “Walk Like the Heroes”: The Performed Identity of Bruce Springsteen and the Relationship to Contemporary Popular Music Performance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Petkovski
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Early American ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Performed Identity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

This thesis examines the trend of contemporary popular musicians referencing and being compared to Bruce Springsteen. To do so, the work analyzes the performed social identity of Springsteen and its relationship to popular music performance, particularly in terms of understanding and assessing the motivations behind comparisons with Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem, a band frequently though to represent Sprinsteen's influence. Two case studies were conducted to examine the performed personas of both artists, informed by theories of the communication of meaning and identity. Springsteen is found to portray a traditionally American, White, working class male, representative of the idealized image of early American republican philosophy. Alternately, Fallon is found to perform a similar social identity without the significant evocation of this republicanism. Comparisons between these artists are theorized as emerging from their use of similar identity representations and indicators of meaning, particularly in their communication of authenticity.

scholarly journals “Walk Like the Heroes”: The Performed Identity of Bruce Springsteen and the Relationship to Contemporary Popular Music Performance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Petkovski
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Early American ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Performed Identity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

This thesis examines the trend of contemporary popular musicians referencing and being compared to Bruce Springsteen. To do so, the work analyzes the performed social identity of Springsteen and its relationship to popular music performance, particularly in terms of understanding and assessing the motivations behind comparisons with Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem, a band frequently though to represent Sprinsteen's influence. Two case studies were conducted to examine the performed personas of both artists, informed by theories of the communication of meaning and identity. Springsteen is found to portray a traditionally American, White, working class male, representative of the idealized image of early American republican philosophy. Alternately, Fallon is found to perform a similar social identity without the significant evocation of this republicanism. Comparisons between these artists are theorized as emerging from their use of similar identity representations and indicators of meaning, particularly in their communication of authenticity.

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.

Immanence and Micropolitics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gilliam
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Conceptual Necessity ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Pure Immanence ◽  
Alternative Understanding

Christian Gilliam argues that a philosophy of ‘pure’ immanence is integral to the development of an alternative understanding of ‘the political’; one that re-orients our understanding of the self toward the concept of an unconscious or ‘micropolitical’ life of desire. He argues that here, in this ‘life’, is where the power relations integral to the continuation of post-industrial capitalism are most present and most at stake. Through proving its philosophical context, lineage and political import, Gilliam ultimately justifies the conceptual necessity of immanence in understanding politics and resistance, thereby challenging the claim that ontologies of ‘pure’ immanence are either apolitical or politically incoherent.

British Television's Lost New Wave Moment: Single Drama and Race

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Liarou
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Black Population ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Audiovisual Material ◽  
British Drama ◽  
History Of ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Written Sources

The article argues that the working-class realism of post-WWII British television single drama is neither as English nor as white as is often implied. The surviving audiovisual material and written sources (reviews, publicity material, biographies of television writers and directors) reveal ITV's dynamic role in offering a range of views and representations of Britain's black population and their multi-layered relationship with white working-class cultures. By examining this neglected history of postwar British drama, this article argues for more inclusive historiographies of British television and sheds light on the dynamism and diversity of British television culture.

Unification and Its Discontents

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Brian Kovalesky
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School District ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
The State ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
City Schools

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

Reflections on the Production of a Working Class Academic

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
David Greene
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
White Working Class

A white, working class professor's reflections on his life and career.

Nuanced and Dissenting Voices

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy J. Miller ◽  
Grace E. Cho
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Self ◽  
African American Parents ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
Bakhtinian Theory

Chapter 4, “Nuanced and Dissenting Voices,” examines the nuances diverse parents brought to their understandings of childrearing and self-esteem. Framed within Bakhtinian theory, this chapter gives voice to African American parents, working-class parents, conservative Christian parents, and mothers, particularly women who had experienced low self-esteem. These parents endorsed self-esteem, but refracted the language of the self-esteem imaginary in ways that made sense, given their diverse values and ideological commitments, social positioning, and idiosyncratic experiences. This chapter also describes the perspectives of two groups from the larger study who challenged key elements of the dominant discourse: grandmothers of Centerville children who raised their children in an earlier era, and Taiwanese parents who grew up in a different cultural context but were temporarily residing and raising their children in Centerville. These two groups of dissenters underscore again the book’s theme that self-esteem is rooted in time and place.

scholarly journals Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852098222
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Dave O’Brien ◽  
Ian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Privileged Class

Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ which act to downplay interviewees’ own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this ‘intergenerational self’ partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory.

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