scholarly journals The Critique of American Racism in Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
Danica Čerče
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
American Racism

Written in the light of critical discourse about the social value of literary sympathy and against the backdrop of critical whiteness studies, the article deals with John Steinbeck’s non-fiction book Travels with Charley in Search of America. Framed by an interest in how the writer responded to the racial separation in the United States, the article demonstrates that this work, which is often dismissed as a “charming portrayal of America,” is a serious intervention in all sites of discrimination and domination.  

scholarly journals European Whiteness? A Critical Approach

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolette B. Blaagaard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

Born out of the United States' (U.S.) history of slavery and segregation and intertwined EUROPEAN WHITENESS? 21 with gender studies and feminism, the field of critical whiteness studies does not fit easily into a European setting and the particular historical context that entails. In order for a field of European critical whiteness studies to emerge, its relation to the U.S. theoretical framework, as well as the particularities of the European context need to be taken into account. The article makes a call for a multilayered approach to take over from the identity politics so often employed in the fields of U.S. gender, race, and whiteness studies.

scholarly journals The emotion-valuation constellation: multiple emotions are governed by a common grammar of social valuation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Sznycer ◽  
Aaron Lukaszewski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Social Emotions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Valuation ◽  
Common Architecture ◽  
Substantial Degree

Social emotions are hypothesized to be adaptations designed by selection to solve adaptiveproblems pertaining to social valuation—the disposition to attend to, associate with, and aid atarget individual based on her probable contributions to the fitness of the valuer. To steerbetween effectiveness and economy, social emotions need to activate in precise proportion to the local evaluations of the various acts and characteristics that dictate the social value of self and others. Supporting this hypothesis, experiments conducted in the United States and India indicate that five different social emotions all track a common set of valuations. The extent to which people value each of 25 positive characteristics in others predicts the intensities of: pride (if you had those characteristics), anger (if someone failed to acknowledge that you have thosecharacteristics), gratitude (if someone convinced others that you have those characteristics), guilt (if you harmed someone who has those characteristics), and sadness (if someone died who had those characteristics). The five emotions track local valuations (mean r = +.72) and even foreign valuations (mean r = +.70). In addition, cultural differences in emotion are patterned: They follow cultural differences in valuation. These findings suggest that multiple social emotions are governed (in part) by a common architecture of social valuation, that the valuation architecture operates with a substantial degree of universality in its content, and that a unified theoretical framework may explain cross-cultural invariances and cultural differences in emotion.

Critical Whiteness Studies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Applebaum
Keyword(s):  
White Privilege ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
White People ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Black President

In 1903, standing at the dawn of the 20th century, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the color line is the defining characteristic of American society. Well into the 21st century, Du Bois’s prescience sadly still rings true. Even when a society is built on a commitment to equality, and even with the election of its first black president, the United States has been unsuccessful in bringing about an end to the rampant and violent effects of racism, as numerous acts of racial violence in the media have shown. For generations, scholars of color, among them Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Franz Fanon, have maintained that whiteness lies at the center of the problem of racism. It is only relatively recently that the critical study of whiteness has become an academic field, committed to disrupting racism by problematizing whiteness as a corrective to the traditional exclusive focus on the racialized “other.” Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) is a growing field of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege. CWS presumes a certain conception of racism that is connected to white supremacy. In advancing the importance of vigilance among white people, CWS examines the meaning of white privilege and white privilege pedagogy, as well as how white privilege is connected to complicity in racism. Unless white people learn to acknowledge, rather than deny, how whites are complicit in racism, and until white people develop an awareness that critically questions the frames of truth and conceptions of the “good” through which they understand their social world, Du Bois’s insight will continue to ring true.

scholarly journals Kritik på delagtighedens betingelser. Om at være et problem

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (122) ◽  
pp. 263-292
Author(s):  
Devika Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Global System ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
Academic Discourses

In this article, I discuss the issue of critique under conditions of complicity. Complicity and privilege might be said, in some sense, always to be conditions of possibility for critical discourse. But the complicity, I consider here, is not of this general or abstract, conceptual kind. Rather, I examine a critical genre – critique under conditions of complicity – in which the critical subject is both complicit in and privileged by the system, he or she is nevertheless attempting a critique of. I discuss three rather different examples of critique under conditions of complicity: A literary genre that I term ‘hypocrite fiction’, French anti-imperialism represented by Jean-Paul Sartre, and Critical Whiteness Studies. What these three critical positions share is, most importantly, their distaste of a global system of which they are themselves beneficiaries. Each of these three discourses thus respond in its own way to the systemic inequality and injustice caused by specific configurations of capitalism, imperialism, and racism, respectively. I argue that the experience of complicity, guilt, and hypocrisy recorded in these critical discourses are forms of moral-existential and critical thinking. I also suggest that the cultural, intellectual, public, and academic discourses that register complicity do not overall testify to the withering of critique.

The Cafeteria as Great Equalizer

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy L. Best
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
High School ◽  
School Lunch ◽  
The United States ◽  
System Of Care ◽  
Social Value ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Public System ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

This chapter examines the lunch menu at Thurgood High School, focusing on the work of food director Brenda, with the aim to deepen our understanding of the complexity of school lunch as a high-stakes public good. Brenda had a no-nonsense style about her; she rarely minced words, but was warm in her demeanor, knowledgeable, and accessible. She made the best of what she was given but hoped for a better food future and in this sense was both pragmatic and aspirational. She held her ground in the face of outside scrutiny, and acknowledged the social value in her work and its link to a public system of care. She recognized that a larger number of students she fed each day were part of the growing number of those who are food insecure in the United States, and her efforts to prepare food that kids wanted to eat expressed a deep commitment to addressing both health and hunger.

Documentary subversions and migrant agency: Towards an alternative audio-visual portrait of immigrant communities in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nieves Limón Serrano ◽  
Tamara Moya Jorge
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Diverse Communities ◽  
History Of

The movement of people across different countries has been a constant in the history of human civilization. This has been attested to by the so-called ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences. One of the most important recent instances of such a movement has been the mass migration of diverse communities to the United States. This migratory transit has been portrayed in numerous ways in different media. Among these, documentary films have played a crucial role in their approach to these migrant flows. In both, traditional forms and new web platforms, we find multiple examples of non-fiction that focus on portraying these communities. This article focuses on one of these platforms: Immigrant Nation Media. By highlighting the resistance practices the platform offers, this analysis focuses on its collaborative and educational dimensions, as well as its dedication to migrant empowerment.

Critical Whiteness Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
European Colonialism

Critical whiteness studies can be understood in terms of three overlapping waves ranging from the national to the international and from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Beginning in the Reconstruction era in the United States, the first wave criticized whiteness in the form of protection of white femininity, possessive ownership, and the public and psychological wages paid to white people during Jim Crow America. The second wave began after the end of World War II, when challenges to legalized racial segregation and European colonialism flourished. The third wave, whose beginning can be marked roughly at the end of the 20th century, is distinguished by increased examination of nonblack immigrants’ relation to whiteness, the growing number of white authors contributing to the field, and a blossoming international range of critical studies of whiteness.

Cross-space Consumption among Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Currency Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Migrants

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.

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