Yankee Twang

Author(s):  
Clifford R. Murphy

Merging scholarly insight with a professional guitarist's keen sense of the musical life, this book delves into the rich tradition of country and western music that is played and loved in the mill towns and cities of the American northeast. The book draws on a wealth of ethnographic material, interviews, and encounters with recorded and live music to reveal the central role of country and western in the social lives and musical activity of working-class New Englanders. As the book shows, an extraordinary multiculturalism informed by New England's kaleidoscope of ethnic groups created a distinctive country and western music style. But the music also gave—and gives—voice to working-class feeling. Yankee country and western emphasizes the western, reflecting the longing for the mythical cowboy's life of rugged but fulfilling individualism. Indeed, many New Englanders use country and western to comment on economic disenfranchisement and express their resentment of a mass media, government, and Nashville music establishment they believe neither reflects nor understands their life experiences.

Author(s):  
Torun Reite ◽  
Francis Badiang Oloko ◽  
Manuel Armando Guissemo

Inspired by recent epistemological and ontological debates aimed at unsettling and reshaping conceptions of language, this essay discusses how mainstream sociolinguistics offers notions meaningful for studying contexts of the South. Based on empirical studies of youth in two African cities, Yaoundé in Cameroon and Maputo in Mozambique, the essay engages with “fluid modernity” and “enregisterment” to unravel the role that fluid multilingual practices play in the social lives of urban youth. The empirically grounded theoretical discussion shows how recent epistemologies and ontologies offer inroads to more pluriversal knowledge production. The essay foregrounds: i) the role of language in the sociopolitical battles of control over resources, and ii) speakers’ reflexivity and metapragmatic awareness of register formations of fluid multilingual practices. Moreover, it shows how bundles of localized meanings construct belongings and counterhegemonic discourses, as well as demonstrating speakers’ differential valuations and perceptions of boundaries and transgressions across social space.


2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-438
Author(s):  
Eszter Bartha

Abstract The article seeks to place the workers’ road from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and Hungary in a historical context. It offers an overview of the most important elements of the party’s policy towards labour in the two countries under the Honecker and the Kádár regime respectively. It examines the highly paternalistic role of the factory as a life-long employer and provider of workers’ needs for the large industrial working class which the regime considered to be its main social basis. Given that the thesis of the working class as the ruling class was central to the legitimating ideology of the state socialist regimes, dissident intellectuals challenging this thesis were effectively marginalized or forced into exile. After the change of regimes, the “working class” again became an ideological term associated with the discredited and fallen regime. The article analyses the changes within the life-world of East German and Hungarian workers in the light of life-history interviews. It argues that in Hungary, the social and material decline of the workers – alongside the loss of the symbolic capital of the working class – reinforced ethno-centric, nationalistic narratives, which juxtaposed “globalization” and “national capitalism”, the latter supposedly protecting citizens from the exploitation by global capital. In the light of the sad reports of falling standards of living and impoverishment, the Kádár regime received an ambiguous, often nostalgic evaluation. While the East Germans were also critical of the new, capitalist society (unemployment, intensified competition for jobs, the disintegration of the old, work-based communities), they gave more credit to the post-socialist democratic institutions. They were more willing to reconcile the old socialist values which they had appreciated in the GDR with a modern left-wing critique than their Hungarian counterparts, for whom nationalism seemed to offer the only means to express social criticism.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 18-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Le Grand

This paper aims to link two fields of research which have come to form separate lines of inquiry: the sociology of moralisation and studies on class identity. Expanding on recent papers by Young (2009 , 2011 ) and others, the paper argues that the concepts of ressentiment and respectability can be used to connect moralisation processes and the formation of class identities. This is explored through a case study of the social reaction in Britain to white working-class youths labelled ‘chavs’. It is demonstrated that chavs are constructed through moralising discourses and practices, which have some elements of a moral panic. Moreover, moralisation is performative in constructing class identities: chavs have been cast as a ‘non-respectable’ white working-class ‘folk devil’ against whom ‘respectable’ middle-class and working-class people distinguish and identify themselves as morally righteous. Moralising social reactions are here to an important extent triggered by feelings of ressentiment. This is a dialectical process where respectability and ressentiment are tied, not only to the social control of certain non-respectable working-class others, but also to the moral self-governance of the moralisers.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Dominik Dorosz

During 39th session of UNESCO General Conference which held on 7 November 2017 the date May 16th was proclaimed as International Day of Light (IDL). This decision was made after the success of the International Year of Light (IYL) celebrated in 2015. It confirmed that raising awareness of the social role of photonics is crucial for further development. Based on the rich experience of IYL 2015 ("more than 13,000 activities took place in 147 countries to reach an estimated 100 million people"), the most important goals are to be followed by the IDL, including: raising social awareness, education, showing the influence of photonics on culture and art, promoting foreign cooperation and the important role of conducting basic research. As a result, it will lead to the creation of new solutions based on photonic technology, which has resulted in increased energy efficiency and improved quality of our life.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Linda Newman ◽  
Loveth Obed

Many scholars and researchers now have a broadened vision of literacy that encompasses the social practices that surround literacy learning. What accompanies this vision is a shift towards thinking that children, and their families, can contribute actively to literacy learning by drawing on their strengths and life experiences to create and draw meaning from a broad range of everyday sources. For many, reading and writing from print-based texts is no longer considered the only, or most desirable, avenue to literacy learning. It is now recognised that children’s social and cultural lives should be used as a resource for literacy learning. Using four literacy learning lenses, we examine the Nigerian National Policy for Integrated Early Childhood Development. These lenses are: collaboration with families, the role of educators, literacy-rich environments, and diversity and multimodality. Recent research around early literacy learning underpins our analysis to identify where the policy could more strongly refer to the role of families and educators and to argue that there is scope for greater attention to early literacy learning in the policy.


2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-564
Author(s):  
Kester Aspden

It is ironic that it should have been the leader of the church with the greatest proportion of working-class members who took up the most hostile stance to the General Strike of 1926. While Francis Bourne (1862–1935), Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, won the plaudits of the Establishment for his unambiguous denunciation of the strike, that cautious septuagenarian Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, found himself cast in the unlikely role of the workers’ friend after his illstarred attempt to conciliate the two sides. Sheridan Gilley has highlighted another contrast: while in 1926 Bourne found himself sharply opposed to labour, in a 1918 pastoral letter he had been insistent that the Church should reach an accommodation with the ‘modern labour unrest’. While Gilley implies that his General Strike condemnation was uncharacteristic, Buchanan suggests that this was closer to expressing his ‘real political views’ than his 1918 statement. This article aims to provide a closer examination of the shift in Bourne’s attitude, and to consider the broader episcopal response to social and political questions during these fraught years.


2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Damien Carraz

RESUMO: As ordens militares, como senhores eclesiásticos, exerceram a justiça temporal sobre populações das quais elas estavam encarregadas. A historiografia, se ele se interessou pelos conflitos de jurisdição que opuseram os poderes soberanos às comendadorias, subestimou, salvo exceções, as atividades judiciárias destas últimas. Os ricos arquivos das ordens do Hospital e do Templo, no Midi Francês, fornecem belas séries de atas da prática judiciária – clamores, inquéritos criminais, processos verbais de condenações... O caso dos dois senhorios templários de Lansac e de Montfrin e as comparações oferecidas pela importante jurisdição hospitalária de Manosque, recentemente e notavelmente estudada, autorizam uma contribuição sobre o papel dos irmãos guerreiros na difusão dos usos jurídicos e no controle social. O pessoal empregado no serviço destas pequenas justiças senhoriais, os procedimentos utilizados pela justiça criminal, a repressão da delinquência ordinária que assolava estes castra da Baixa Provença e, enfim, os limites opostos ao poder coercitivo do Templo pela organização das comunidades e pelo reforço do Estado foram sucessivamente evocados. O funcionamento, os ideais almejados, assim como a ação repressiva, pouco evidenciam a especificidade desta justiça da Igreja que não recusava o exercício do merum imperium e a aplicação das penas aflitivas. Centradas sobre o século XIII, período de transição na história do procedimento, estas primeiras observações desejariam ser prosseguidas para os dois séculos seguintes: a originalidade da justiça do Hospital, com a instauração de uma ordem moral, mais do que cívica, apareceria mais, tanto que seria necessário avaliar a resistência destes senhorios às reconquistas jurisdicionais do Estado principesco. ABSTRACT:The military orders, as ecclesiastical gentlemen, exercised the temporal justice over populations which they were in charge of. The historiography, if he got interested about the jurisdiction conflicts that have opposed the sovereign powers to the commanderies, underestimated, with some few exceptions, the judicial activities of these last ones. The rich archives from the orders of the hospital and the temple, at the French Midi, provide beautiful series of the judicial practices - clamors, criminal investigations, verbal processes of condemnations... The case of the two templary landlords of Lansac and of Montfrin and the comparisons offered by the important hospitaller jurisdiction of Manosque, recently and notably studied, authorize an contribution over the role of the warrior brothers on the difusion on the juridical uses and on the social control. The people who ar e employed on the service of those small stately justices, the procedures used by the criminal justice, the repression of the ordinary delinquency that plagued those castra of the Low Provence and, ultimately, the limits opposed to the coercive power of the temple for the organization of the communities and for the reinforcement of the state were successively evoked. The operation, the desired ideals, just like the repressive action, do not show at all the specificity of the church's justice which wouldn't refuse the exercise of merum imperium and the application of the afflictive feathers. Centered over the 13th century, period of transaction on the history of procedure, these first observations would desire to be pursued for the two following centuries: the originality of the hospital's justice, with the establishment of a moral order, more than civic, would appear so much more that it would be necessary to evaluate the resistance of tho se landlords to the court re-conquests of the princely State.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002252662110434
Author(s):  
Melanie Bassett

From their creation in the mid-nineteenth century in Britain railway excursions provided working people with the means to expand their horizons and create new opportunities for identity- and money-making. This article explores the role of the social entrepreneur and their affect on social mobility. It also re-evaluates working-class leisure in the south of England and challenges the notion that the working-classes were not proactive in establishing their own unique commercial leisure cultures. Using a case study of two dockyard excursion enterprises, which were operated as sideline ventures by skilled artisans of the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK, the article will demonstrate how local working-class access to travel and cultural experiences were broadened and transformed through their initiatives and analyse the role and influence of these men on their co-workers and in wider society.


IKON ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 75-107
Author(s):  
Fabio Introini

- Sociologists of migration are paying increasing attention to the transnational aspects of migratory phenomena. In particular, the term ‘transnationalism' refers mainly to the tight-knit network of exchanges and two-way connections that migrants create between their countries of origin and of destination. It also refers to the fact that often - but not always - these same migrants commit to, and simultaneously participate in, the social lives of their places of origin and of residence. This article analyzes how the first and second generation Egyptians and Peruvians, living in Milan, interact with the society in which they live and with the society they come from. Relations in which the role of communication and information media is almost always crucial.


1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Jaffe

The role of evangelical religion in the social history of the English working class has been an area of both bewildering theories and un-founded generalizations. The problem, of course, was given a degree of notoriety by Elie Halévy who, according to the received interpretation, claimed that the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the Continental working class in the first half of the nineteenth century was drained from its British counterpart because of the latter's acceptance of Evangelicalism, namely, Methodism.It was revived most notably by E. P. Thompson, who accepted the counterrevolutionary effect of Methodism but claimed that the evangelical message was really an agent of capitalist domination acting to subordinate the industrial working class to the dominion of factory time and work discipline. Furthermore, Thompson argued, the English working class only accepted Methodism reluctantly and in the aftermath of actual political defeats that marked their social and economic subordination to capital. This view has gained a wide acceptance among many of the most prominent labor historians, including E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé who believe that Evangelicalism was the working-class's “chiliasm of despair” that “offered the one-time labour militant … compensation for temporal defeats.”There could hardly be a starker contrast between the interpretation of these labor historians and the views of those who have examined the social and political history of religion in early industrial Britain. Among the most important of these, W. R. Ward has claimed that Methodism was popular among the laboring classes of the early nineteenth century precisely because it complemented political radicalism.


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