Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Le Zotte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
Heroin User ◽  
Average Consumer ◽  
Cultural Currency ◽  
The Social ◽  
Used Goods

The epilogue discusses the contining role of secondhand commerce and style in the twenty-first century United States. Throughout the twentieth century, used goods economies codified and expanded, branching out into million-dollar industries. Vintage exhibitionism and elective poverty merged even more decisively at the end of the millennium. After habitual heroin user Kurt Cobain took his own life with a shotgun in 1994, styles straight-facedly called shabby chic, heroin chic, or poor chic enjoyed greater cultural currency than ever before. Voluntary secondhand dress persists precisely because it suggests both cultural and economic distinction, and shoppers continued to view secondhand venues as exceptions to the social and economic critiques of dominant capitalisms. Secondhand styles satisfy a desire to be seen as different than the average consumer dupe, as willing to invest time in the cultivation of originality without utilizing class and wealth privilege. The success of the 2013 song, “Thrift Shop,” by independent rappers Macklemore and Lewis—born and raised in the hometown of grunge, Seattle— attests to the continuing relevance of secondhand to popular culture.

Technology’s Retreat: The Decline of Rural Telephony in The United States, 1920-1940

1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-327
Author(s):  
Claude S. Fischer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Diffusion Of Innovation ◽  
Technology Diffusion ◽  
Social Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
The Social

One million fewer American farms had telephones in 1940 than in 1920; the instrument was disconnected in at least a third of the farm homes that once had it. Knowing how and why this “devolution” (Mattingly and Aspbury, 1985) occurred can expand our understanding of the social role of technology, diffusion of innovation, and more generally, twentieth-century modernization in America.

scholarly journals The Lower Clergy and Popular Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Bárth
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Written Form

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of the Christian lower priesthood in local communities in eighteenth–twentieth century Hungary and Transylvania in cultural transmission. The author intends to map out the complex and changing conditions of the social function, everyday life, and mentality of the priests on the bottom rung of the clerical hierarchy. Particular emphasis is placed on the activity of priests active at the focus points of interaction between elite and popular culture who, starting from the second half of the eighteenth century, often reflected both directly and in a written form on the cultural practices of the population of villages and market towns. The theoretical questions and possible approaches are centered around the complex relations of the priest and the community, their harmonious or conflict-ridden co-existence, questions of sacral economy, stereotypes of the “good priest” and the “bad priest” as shaped from above and from below, the subtleties of “priest-keeping”, the intentions related to preserving traditions and creating new customs, and the different temperaments of priests in relation to these issues.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Emily Klancher Merchant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The introduction situates Building the Population Bomb’s historical narrative in the context of current debates over whether the world’s population is growing too quickly or not quickly enough, and over what should be done about it. It lays out two positions—moderate and extreme—and explains that, rather than taking one side or the other, the book tells the story of how these positions emerged in tandem between the 1920s and the 1970s. It contends that population growth has been unfairly blamed for many of the world’s problems, and promises to explain how this happened and who has benefited from it. The introduction describes how Building the Population Bomb contributes to the history of the social sciences, furthers our understanding of the role of the United States in promoting global development in the second half of the twentieth century, and advances the contemporary project of reproductive justice.

Voluntary action, New Labour and the ‘third sector’1

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Alcock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
First Century ◽  
Voluntary Action ◽  
Policy Intervention ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Third Sector

This chapter charts the relationships between the state and the voluntary sector under the 1997–2010 Labour governments. The period inaugurated a new stage in the social welfare role of voluntary action, which has developed since the nineteenth century from leading provision, through complementarity and supplementarity with regards to state welfare programmes in the twentieth century, and into the partnership seen at the start of the twenty-first century. Charting the various initiatives and institutional innovations of these years, the chapter makes the case for a ‘strategic unity’ amongst all the key agents and agencies, who had a collective interest in maintaining and developing the third sector as a space for policy intervention and forward planning. Overall, it demonstrates the significance of adaptation and renewal within the sector, rather than decline or co-option.

scholarly journals Corporate headquarters in the twenty-first century: an organization design perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Kunisch ◽  
Markus Menz ◽  
David Collis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Organization Design ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
First Century ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Corporate Headquarters ◽  
Special Collection ◽  
Design Perspective ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract The corporate headquarters (CHQ) of the multi-business enterprise, which emerged as the dominant organizational form for the conduct of business in the twentieth century, has attracted considerable scholarly attention. As the business environment undergoes a fundamental transition in the twenty-first century, we believe that understanding the evolving role of the CHQ from an organization design perspective will offer unique insights into the nature of business activity in the future. The purpose of this article, in keeping with the theme of the Journal of Organization Design Special Collection, is thus to invigorate research into the CHQ. We begin by explicating four canonical questions related to the design of the CHQ. We then survey fundamental changes in the business environment occurring in the twenty-first century, and discuss their potential implications for CHQ design. When suitable here we also refer to the contributions published in our Special Collection. Finally, we put forward recommendations for advancements and new directions for future research to foster a deeper and broader understanding of the topic. We believe that we are on the cusp of a change in the CHQ as radical as that which saw its initial emergence in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Exactly what form that change will take remains for practitioners and researchers to inform.

Conclusion: Sincerity Dreams

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Rutten
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Cultural Paradigms ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Inclusive Analysis

This conclusion reflects on today's dreams of renewing or revitalizing sincerity and rejects the notion that they are outdated or do not deserve any of our attention. It cites the work of several scholars to show that sincerity is anything but obsolete in twenty-first-century popular culture. Indeed, today's strivings to renew sincerity have not been neglected by scholars such as R. Jay Magill Jr., Epstein, and Yurchak. The rhetoric on new sincerity has been addressed in thoughtful analyses of contemporary culture that have helped the author in crafting a comprehensive and geographically inclusive analysis of present-day sincerity rhetoric. In post-Communist Russia, debates on a shift to late or post-postmodern cultural paradigms are thriving with at least as much fervor as—and possibly more than—in Western Europe or the United States. This conclusion discusses the newly gained insights which the author's sincerity study offers.

Rewriting the Captivity Narrative for Contemporary Children: Speare, Bruchac, and the French and Indian War

2011 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara L. Schwebel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Captivity Narratives ◽  
French And Indian War ◽  
Captivity Narrative ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Indian War ◽  
War Stories

Juxtaposing the French and Indian War stories of Elizabeth George Speare, a mid-twentieth- century Anglo-American children's author, against those of Joseph Bruchac, a twenty-first- century Abenaki children's author, reveals how flexible and powerful captivity narratives have been in shaping arguments about gender, nationhood, citizenship, and land in the postwar United States.

Planning or Improvisation

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-120
Author(s):  
Alasdair Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Governance Strategies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Imperfect Knowledge

This chapter assesses the role of planning in the design of governance strategies. Enthusiasm for large-scale planning—also known as overall, comprehensive, long-term, economic, or social planning—boomed and collapsed in twentieth century. At the start of that century, progressive reformers seized on planning as the remedy for the United States' social and economic woes. By the end of the twentieth century, enthusiasm for large-scale planning had collapsed. Plans could be made, but they were unlikely to be obeyed, and even if they were obeyed, they were unlikely to work as predicted. The chapter then explains that leaders should make plans while being realistic about the limits of planning. It is necessary to exercise foresight, set priorities, and design policies that seem likely to accomplish those priorities. Simply by doing this, leaders encourage coordination among individuals and businesses, through conversation about goals and tactics. Neither is imperfect knowledge a total barrier to planning. There is no “law” of unintended consequences: it is not inevitable that government actions will produce entirely unexpected results. The more appropriate stance is modesty about what is known and what can be achieved. Plans that launch big schemes on brittle assumptions are more likely to fail. Plans that proceed more tentatively, that allow room for testing, learning, and adjustment, are less likely to collapse in the face of unexpected results.

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