'My own fireside': the creation of the middle-class home

2018 ◽  
pp. 357-396
Author(s):  
Leonore Davidoff ◽  
Catherine Hall
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The Creation

Ordering Empire and Democracy, 1902–1921

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-67
Author(s):  
Tobias Harper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
British Empire ◽  
British Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Order ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Opening Up

This chapter examines the creation of new orders at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was the culmination of a prolonged period of “unprecedented honorific inventiveness” starting in the late nineteenth century. In Britain the new Order of the British Empire was branded the “Order of Britain’s Democracy” in recognition of the fact that it extended far deeper into non-elite classes in British society than any previous honour. Between 1917 and 1921 more than 20,000 people in Britain and throughout the British Empire were added to this new Order. This was an unprecedented number, orders of magnitude larger than honours lists in previous years. While the new Order was successful in reaching a wider, more middle-class audience than the honours system before the war, which was socially narrow, there was a substantial backlash to what was widely perceived by elites to be an excessive (and diluting) opening-up of the “fount of honour.” This backlash was connected to political controversies about the sale of honours that eventually helped bring about Lloyd George’s downfall. This chapter also contains a brief description of all the components of the British honours system at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Shinpa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Jortner
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
New School ◽  
Documentary Theater ◽  
Japanese Word ◽  
Historical Dramas ◽  
The Creation

Shinpa, the shortened version of the Japanese word shinpageki, or new school drama, was an early Japanese attempt at reforming the theater along modernist lines. The plays featured flamboyant kabuki performance styles and modern realistic dialog; they were a mélange of plays from domestic dramas, to documentary theater to the early Japanese adaptations of Shakespeare. Shinpa dramas were generally based on stories of contemporary domestic life instead of historical dramas. Its plays often exploited the traditional kabuki devices of social obligations conflicting with love or other emotions (giri vs. ninjō). Initially, plays were composed by company actors and modified during performance runs. Many shinpa playwrights were essentially adapters who took serialized fiction novels and rewrote them for the stage. Shinpa also staged adaptations of Western drama including works of Shakespeare, Maeterlinck, and Sardou. These plays were often heavily adapted attempts at interweaving classical Japanese performance forms with Western texts. Other authors focused on the creation of gendaigeki [contemporary plays], which were about domestic problems among Japan’s growing middle class.

Re-scripting Riyadh’s historical downtown as a global destination: a sustainable model?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Klingmann
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Adaptive Reuse ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
World City ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
The Creation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the planned urban renewal and re-scripting of Riyadh’s downtown as part of the capital’s aim to become a globally recognized city. Specifically, this paper examines in how far internationally established values and narratives are leveraged in the creation of an urban mega-destination that seeks to attract a transnational class of knowledge workers and tourists. The question is explored, in how far and to what extent urban heritage sites and iconic architectural projects are used as strategic tools to promote a process of cultural and economic transformation and in how far the resulting symbolic capital is leveraged to create a status of singularization that appeals to a national and international audience. This study investigates several neighborhoods in the area, analyzing how these will be transformed by Riyadh’s plan to turn the downtown into a commercially viable mixed-use destination by means of designated heritage destinations and iconic architecture. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the views and experiences of governmental agencies, architects, developers and residents who are directly or indirectly involved with the planned restructuring of Riyadh’s historical downtown. In total, 40 semi-structured interviews were drawn from this stakeholder group to investigate their current understanding of the downtown associated with the effort to convert Riyadh’s historical downtown into a profitable urban destination. Five of these interviews were conducted with involved planning offices, and 35 with current residents in the area. In addition, a detailed site survey was conducted through a series of maps to reveal existing land uses, building typologies, states of disrepair, activity levels, pedestrian and car circulation patterns, as well as landmarks, and public spaces in each of the areas. Findings The subsequent data show that despite many positive outcomes in terms of commercial redevelopment, the adaptive reuse of the existing urban fabric is not considered, nor the preservation of underutilized or abandoned buildings along with its resident diverse communities, activities and milieus, many of which carry on evolving traditions. Research limitations/implications This is significant because this paper presents a massive case study that ties into a larger debate on cultural globalization where similar practices around the world entail a spatial reorientation of urban districts to attract a transnational cosmopolitan middle class along with a simultaneous displacement of diverse and migrant communities, albeit on a much larger scale. While highlighting the rationale and effectiveness of this approach to create a well-packaged commodity, this paper also underscores the ambiguous consequences of this strategy, which entails the loss of a layered urban fabric that documents the city’s evolution through different economic periods, along with the dispersal of migrant communities and their vernacular practices. Social implications Within this context, the current cultural value of the downtown as a heterogeneous, dynamic and multilayered fabric is debated, which documents the socio-economic conditions of the times in which these layers were formed. Departing from the UNESCO’s 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape and globally accepted sustainability standards, this study contrasts the proposed top-down tabula rasa approach proposed by the local authorities with an inclusive bottom-up approach, which would focus on the adaptive reuse of existing structures by taking into consideration the social meanings of belonging that heritage has for contemporary communities while fostering a more inclusive understanding of heritage as an ongoing cultural process. Originality/value The implications of the planned conversion of Riyadh’s historical downtown into an urban destination have not been previously explored and as a result, there is a conflict of interest between the creation of a marketable image, the preservation of heritage values, sustainable urban practices, social inclusion and Riyadh’s aim to become a globally recognized city. Plain abstract This paper explores the employment of urban renewal and city branding within the context of Riyadh’s aim to become a world city. Within this framework, the paper examines the capital’s plan to convert the historic downtown into a mega-destination for the country’s middle class and national and international tourists.

Saritā and the 1950s Hindi Middlebrow Reader

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (06) ◽  
pp. 1797-1815
Author(s):  
AAKRITI MANDHWANI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
State Building ◽  
National Language ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Family ◽  
Popular Magazine ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Right

AbstractThe article discusses Saritā, one of the best-selling Hindi magazines of the 1950s, and the part it played in the establishment of the Hindi ‘middlebrow’ reader. While a rich and vibrant journal culture in Hindi had existed since the nineteenth century, what distinguishes the post-1947 Hindi popular magazine is the emergence of the middle class as a burgeoning consumer. Saritā defied prescriptions of Nehruvian state building, as well as the right-wing discourses of nationalism and national language prevalent in the post-Independence space. In addition, it reconfigured biases towards gendered reading and consumption processes, as well as encouraging increased reader participation. This article argues for Saritā’s role in the creation of a middlebrow reading space in the period immediately following Independence, since it not only packaged what was deemed wholesome and educational for the family as a unit, but also, most significantly, promoted readership in segments, with a focus on each individual's reading desires.

The Contemporary Defended Neighborhood: Maintaining Stability and Diversity through Processes of Community Defense

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1220-1239
Author(s):  
Joy Kadowaki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Housing Market ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Collateral Consequences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Residents ◽  
Diverse Community ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Contemporary Context

This article extends Suttles’ (1972) theory of the defended neighborhood by applying the framework to a contemporary context and exploring the social processes that residents of a diverse community used to defend their neighborhood from change. Drawing on data from an ethnography of Beverly—a stably diverse, highly efficacious, upper middle–class neighborhood on Chicago's far southwest side—I identify and examine three defensive processes used by residents: cultivating neighbors and a culture of surveillance, demarcating and enforcing boundaries, and the creation of an insider housing market. I show how residents employed these neighborhood defense processes to maintain desirable conditions and stable diversity in their community. Defensive processes, however, also resulted in collateral consequences for Black residents, who experienced more scrutiny and surveillance than did White residents. These findings demonstrate how residents’ defensive processes can promote neighborhood stability, but may also result in the social exclusion of perceived outsiders including their own neighbors.

Public School Elites in Early-Victorian England: The Boys at Harrow and Merchant Taylors' Schools from 1825 to 1850

1982 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public School ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Elite ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The One

Historians agree that the public schools played a central role in the creation of Victorian society and that in particular they were seminal in the construction of that “mid-Victorian compromise” which made the mid-century an era of “balance,” “equipoise,” and accommodation. There is further agreement that the cadre of boys produced by the newly reformed public schools became that mid-Victorian governing and social elite which was at once larger, more broadly based, more professional and, to many, more talented than the one which preceded it. The importance of the public schools in this regard was, as Asa Briggs affirms, twofold. They assimilated the “representatives of old families with the sons of the new middle classes,” thereby creating the “social amalgam” which, in Briggs' view, “cemented old and new ruling groups which had previously remained apart.” Secondly, the singular expression of that amalgamation was an elite type, the “Christian Gentleman”—the result of an “education in character” administered under the influence of Dr. Arnold. Arnold was able to do this because he “reconciled the serious classes” (that is, the commercial middle class) “to the public schools,” sharing as he did “their faith in progress, goodness, and their own vocation.” At first, the schools “attracted primarily the sons of the nobility, gentry and professional classes.” Later, it was the “sons of the leaders of industry” who were, like earlier generations of boys, amalgamated with “the sons of men of different traditions” in a broadened “conception of a gentleman.”

scholarly journals Local Beer: The construction of masculinity through the production and consumption of local beer

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Neave Saris
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Significant Implication ◽  
Craft Beer ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Creation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Made In

<p>Ideas of masculinity in Wellington, NZ are co-constructed in the creation of ‘craft’ or ‘local’ beer. This thesis explores the production and consumption of a commodity and its cultivation of ‘self’ to understand why only certain kinds of people drink beer. I draw on data gathered from interviews and participant observation to explore this self-making process. Results indicate that there is a movement from mainstream beer to craft beer locally produced and consumed. In the process of creating local beer the local consumer is also made. Beer is a self- making process. Key to my argument is the emergence of a particular type of masculinity. By producing and consuming locally, people reject the type of masculinity that has historically been established by mainstream beer, the white colonial male. Attributes include, hardworking, rugged, linked to the earth, and working class. Local beer, by way of contrast, promises a celebration of a myriad of identities in its celebration of all different styles and flavours of beer. My findings indicate that this is only a perception.  In Wellington, a new kind of man is being made in craft brewpubs, the ‘cultural omnivore’. The cultural omnivore is a man of middle or upper-middle class, has ‘taste’ and appreciation for flavourful beer, and is metropolitan. A significant implication of this research is the insight gained on how a commodity, beer, can facilitate in the making of certain kinds of people. This research contributes to anthropological scholarship on the creation of self and gender, at the level of the local consumer.</p>

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