Private Spheres

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke Weesjes
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Family Time ◽  
Home Life ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Soviet Ideology

Based on a series of interviews with 38 British and Dutch cradle communists who participated in an oral history project about communist family life, this chapter explores communist home life and focuses on participants’ political and cultural upbringing. It shows the more practical ways in which family time was structured, before discussing parental prescriptions and aspirations. What kind of parents did Communist Party members want to be and were they inspired by Soviet ideology? Were their aspirations fundamentally different from those of non-communist working-class parents? Searching for answers to these questions, this chapter maps the theory and practice of a communist upbringing and examines the considerable contrast between the two. It specifically looks at gender roles, sexuality, pedagogical values, and morality.

The Hopscotch of Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-98
Author(s):  
Ashwin Desai ◽  
Goolam Vahed
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Home Life ◽  
Indian Family ◽  
Extended Families ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
The 1960S

In this chapter, we delve into the lives of working class women, many of whom obtained jobs in the clothing and textile industry from the 1960s, and whose incomes were crucial for upward mobility. It reveals how they negotiate life in an environment of extended families and patriarchal relations and how paid work offered them freedoms from the strictures of home life. Of particular relevance is showing how post 1990 the opening of the economy to cheap imports affected the lives of working class women and in turn, what consequences this had for Indian family life.

Nation, Locality and Radical Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Left ◽  
National Model ◽  
Selection Of

Concentrating upon the years between the 1924 and 1929 general elections, which separated the first and second minority Labour governments, this chapter traces the rise of a modernised, national vision of Labour politics in Scotland. It considers first the reworking of understandings of sovereignty within the Labour movement, as the autonomy enjoyed by provincial trades councils was circumscribed, and notions of Labour as a confederation of working-class bodies, which could in places include the Communist Party, were replaced by a more hierarchical, national model. The electoral consequences of this shift are then considered, as greater central control was exercised over the selection of parliamentary candidates and the conduct of election campaigns. This chapter presents a study of the changing horizons of the political left in inter-war Scotland, analysing the declining importance of locality in the construction of radical political identities.

“Scrap-Heap Storiesˮ: Oral Narratives of Labour and Loss in Scottish Mining and Manufacturing

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-2018) ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Industrial Work ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Plant Closures ◽  
The Impact

This article is an attempt to comprehend deindustrialisation and the impact of plant downsizing and closures in Scotland since the 1970s through listening to the voices of workers and reflecting on their ways of telling, whilst making some observations on how an oral history methodology can add to our understanding. It draws upon a rich bounty of oral history projects and collections undertaken in Scotland over recent decades. The lush description and often intense articulated emotion help us as academic “outsidersˮ to better understand how lives were profoundly affected by plant closures, getting us beyond statistical body counts and overly sentimentalised and nostalgic representations of industrial work to more nuanced understandings of the meanings and impacts of job loss. In recalling their lived experience of plant run-downs and closures, narrators are informing and interpreting; projecting a sense of self in the process and drawing meaning from their working lives. My argument here is that we need to listen attentively and learn from those who bore witness and try to make sense of these diverse, different and sometimes contradictory stories. We should take cognisance of silences and transgressing voices as well as dominant, hegemonic narratives if we are to deepen the conversation and understand the complex but profound impacts that deindustrialisation had on traditional working-class communities in Scotland, as well as elsewhere.

Art, Idleness and Food: The Ethics of War Communism and the Origins of Production Art, 1918–1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-287
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Early Production ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Theory Of Production

The article examines the impact of the discourses concerning idleness and food on the formation of “production art” in the socio-political context of revolutionary Petrograd. The author argues that the development of the theory and practice of this early productionism was closely related to the larger political, social and ideological processes in the city. The Futurists, who were in the epicenter of Petrograd politics during the Civil War (1918–1921), were well acquainted with both of the discourses mentioned, and they contrasted the idleness of the old art with the dedicated labor of the “artist-proletarians” whom they valued as highly as people in the “traditional” working professions. And the search for the “right to exist” became the most important goal in a starving city dominated by the ideology of radical communism. The author departs from the prevailing approach in the literature, which links the artistic thought of the Futurists to Soviet ideology in its abstract, generalized form, and instead elucidates ideological influences in order to consider the early production texts in their immediate social and political contexts. The article shows that the basic concepts of production art (“artist-proletarian,” “creative labor,” etc.) were part of the mainstream trends in the politics of “red Petrograd.” The Futurists borrowed the popular notion of the “commune” for the title of their main newspaper but also worked with the Committees of the Rural Poor and with the state institutions for procurement and distribution. They took an active part in the Fine Art Department of Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Education). The theory of production art was created under these conditions. The individualistic protest and “aesthetic terror” of pre-revolutionary Futurism had to be reconsidered, and new state policy measures were based on them. The harsh socio-economic context of war communism prompted artists to rethink their own role in the “impending commune.” Further development of these ideas led to the Constructivist movement and strongly influenced the extremely diverse trends within the “left art” of the 1920s.

Working-Class Autobiography, c.1970–1985

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Post War ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Community Publishing

This chapter examines working-class autobiographies and oral history testimonies created in the 1970s by the ‘history from below’, oral history, and community publishing movements. It finds that most working-class autobiographers felt that class divisions had weakened and changed radically in the post-war years: they identified improvements in housing, the NHS, education, and the power of workers as key alterations. The disappearance of live-in domestic service was a particularly powerful symbol of the changes that had taken place. Though none thought class had disappeared, many thought class divides were less powerful. While some working-class autobiographers wrote that their experiences made them instinctive socialists, in fact political activism did not flow straightforwardly from experience, but was the result of political education and context. Working-class experience was highly diverse, and as this became clear to many in the community publishing movement, it led to changes in their activist practice in the 1980s.

Together in the Same Boat: Exiled Nationalist State and Chinese Civil War Exiles in 1950s Taiwan

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Population Movement ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
The People ◽  
Main Factors

Abstract When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power, one million mainland Chinese were forcibly displaced to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's regime. Today, this event is still largely considered as a relocation of government or a military withdrawal operation instead of a massive population movement. Contrary to popular belief, many of the displaced mainlanders were not Nationalist elites. Most were common soldiers, petty civil servants, and war refugees from different walks of life. Based on newspapers, magazines, surveys, declassified official documents produced in 1950s Taiwan and contemporary oral history, this article uncovers the complicated relationship between the regime in exile and the people in exile. It argues that the interdependency between the two, in particular between the migrant state and the socially atomized lower class migrants, was formed gradually over a decade due to two main factors: wartime displacement and the need to face an unfriendly local population together.

scholarly journals How being appreciative creates change – theory in practice from health and social care in Scotland

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Sharp ◽  
Belinda Dewar ◽  
Karen Barrie ◽  
Julienne Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Change Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Home Life ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
Design And Testing

This paper develops understanding of appreciative action research that generates curiosity and motivation as a better platform for collaborative change. Blending theory and practice it draws on the example of the My Home Life leadership programme in Scotland that explores the concepts and approaches of ‘Caring Conversations’ and ‘playful provocation’ in care homes for older people. The paper shows how they expand notions of appreciation and help people to deepen inquiry, explore values, acknowledge and express emotion without dispute or judgement, articulate tacit knowledge and give voice to things previously thought to be ‘unsayable’. We explore how these generative approaches act as a powerful positive ‘disruption’ that brings existing relationships to life, supports a positive attitude to risk-taking and helps to devise new approaches to the local design and testing of approaches to problems. Ultimately these approaches play an important part in developing understanding of how to do appreciative action research to enhance relationships and more strengths or assets-based and collaborative ways of working and so, to develop new possibilities for changing social systems and a more future-making orientation to action research.

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