An Archaeology of the Twentieth Century in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeast Pennsylvania

Author(s):  
Michael P. Roller

Chapter 1 provides a broad theoretical, historical, and ethnographic context to the research, and an overview of the major research questions addressed in the book. Topics such as the approach to the structural violence of everyday life in the twentieth century, the relationship between migrants and the sovereignty of political states, racialization, and the labor needs of late industrial capitalism are addressed. Relevant theoretical concepts from scholars such as Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin and Karl Marx are introduced here. The ethnographic and discursive context of immigrant discrimination in the present, and the manner in which it informs the broad trajectory of the research is presented. Lastly, the manner in which interdisciplinary data is applied to this research is also presented.

Author(s):  
Michael P. Roller

Using evidence of historical changes in landscape, community life, and material culture from a coal mining company town in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeast Pennsylvania, Michael Roller introduces an archaeological approach to the structural violence on workers, citizens, and consumers that developed across the twentieth century. The study begins with an analysis of a moment of explicit violence at the end of the nineteenth century, an event known as the Lattimer Massacre, in which as many as nineteen immigrant miners were shot by a posse of local businessmen. From this touchstone, material history and theoretical contexts across the twentieth century are documented in a manner both locally specific and broadly generalizable. Historical archaeology is used strategically, opportunistically, and dialectically, supported, amplified, and illuminated by archival and ethnographic research, spatial analysis, and social theory. In the process, attention is brought to contradictions, ironies, and absences in our understandings of this formative era in labor history. This study illuminates the development of systematized violence and soft forms of social control enacted by the collusion of state and capital through materialities such as infrastructure, urban redevelopment, mass consumerism, governmentality, biopolitics, and the shifting boundaries of sovereign power. Varied in its use of sources, the study returns again and again to the material life and the shifting landscapes of the company towns and shanty enclaves of the region, as well as the violence of the Massacre. This archaeology of the recent past shows us the unconscious material foundations for present social troubles.


Author(s):  
Kristin Emilie Willumsen Bjørndal ◽  
Svein-Erik Andreassen

The purpose of the article is to contribute to the discussion about the relationship between action research with qualitative data and generalization. Working towards this purpose, we look into two other elements of research design. These two are research questions and case study as a research strategy. We apply theoretical concepts about different types of action research, different types of case study and different types of generalization in qualitative research. We also derive various formulations of constructive research questions. By experimenting with compilations of the theoretical concepts and the various formulations of constructive research questions, we promote a possible mindset about how different types of action research can justify ambition or not ambition of generalization.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip L. Roth ◽  
Allen I. Huffcutt

The topic of what interviews measure has received a great deal of attention over the years. One line of research has investigated the relationship between interviews and the construct of cognitive ability. A previous meta-analysis reported an overall corrected correlation of .40 ( Huffcutt, Roth, & McDaniel, 1996 ). A more recent meta-analysis reported a noticeably lower corrected correlation of .27 ( Berry, Sackett, & Landers, 2007 ). After reviewing both meta-analyses, it appears that the two studies posed different research questions. Further, there were a number of coding judgments in Berry et al. that merit review, and there was no moderator analysis for educational versus employment interviews. As a result, we reanalyzed the work by Berry et al. and found a corrected correlation of .42 for employment interviews (.15 higher than Berry et al., a 56% increase). Further, educational interviews were associated with a corrected correlation of .21, supporting their influence as a moderator. We suggest a better estimate of the correlation between employment interviews and cognitive ability is .42, and this takes us “back to the future” in that the better overall estimate of the employment interviews – cognitive ability relationship is roughly .40. This difference has implications for what is being measured by interviews and their incremental validity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (Number 2) ◽  
pp. 67-77
Author(s):  
Anis Syamimi Abd Rahim ◽  
Mohd Norhasni Mohd Asaad

The purpose of this study is to review the implementation of ISO 9001:2015 in order to improve the quality of services at Pusat Kesihatan Universiti (PKU), Universiti Utara Malaysia. The respondents of this study were customers at the PKU, UUM. The questionnaire was distributed to 50 respondents. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version 24. The data were tested using descriptive statistics, and correlation analysis to answer the research questions and to achieve the objectives. The findings show that customers agree that implementation of ISO 9001:2015 give service at PKU, UUM is good and satisfied. Through the correlation test, the results showed that the relationship between the implementation of ISO 9001:2015 has a positive and significant impact on customer satisfaction and the effect of implementing ISO 9001:2015 has a positive and significant impact in improving quality of service at PKU, UUM.Through mean and standard deviation tests, results show that tangible dimensions are the main dimensions of customer satisfaction while dimensions with low values are dimensions of responsiveness.Therefore, all aspects of service in PKU, UUM will be strengthened and all aspects of the weaknesses could be addressed to improve the service in order to maintain good quality services.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


Author(s):  
Lital Levy

A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. This book brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine. More than that, the book presents a captivating portrait of the literary imagination's power to transgress political boundaries and transform ideas about language and belonging. Blending history and literature, the book traces the interwoven life of Arabic and Hebrew in Israel/Palestine from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, exposing the two languages' intimate entanglements in contemporary works of prose, poetry, film, and visual art by both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. In a context where intense political and social pressures work to identify Jews with Hebrew and Palestinians with Arabic, the book finds writers who have boldly crossed over this divide to create literature in the language of their “other,” as well as writers who bring the two languages into dialogue to rewrite them from within. Exploring such acts of poetic trespass, the book introduces new readings of canonical and lesser-known authors, including Emile Habiby, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Anton Shammas, Saul Tchernichowsky, Samir Naqqash, Ronit Matalon, Salman Masalha, A. B. Yehoshua, and Almog Behar. By revealing uncommon visions of what it means to write in Arabic and Hebrew, the book will change the way we understand literature and culture in the shadow of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Noorlaila Yunus ◽  
Cairul Azwa Azimi

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) has been widely studied across the boarders especially in the western countries. This workplace voluntary behaviour is associated with many predictors that may bring whether major, minor or negative influence towards the engagement of employees’ OCB. Basically, this study is focusing on motivation as the predictor or independent variable that influence employees’ engagement on the OCB (altruism, conscientiousness, courtesy, civic virtue and sportsmanship) behaviour. Herzberg’s motivator factor (achievement, advancement, recognition and growth) has been chosen as the independent variable. A total of 150 questionnaires were distributed conveniently to respondents. With 125 questionnaires returned, researcher was able to analyze the data based on the research questions and hypotheses developed. The findings showed moderate and weak, significant relationship between the variable excluding the relationship between independent variable and civic virtue and sportsmanship. Thus, Herzberg’s motivator factor was not a predictor to civic virtue and sportsmanship behaviour. However for the strongest predictor; achievement, growth and growth are strongly predicts the altruism, conscientiousness and courtesy behaviour respectively. However, with the absence of relationship between independent variable and civic virtue as well as sportsmanship, therefore the strongest predictor cannot be determined as the value recorded was below the criterion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.


Author(s):  
James Tweedie

Like the tableau vivant, the cinematic still life experienced a stunning revival and reinvention in the late twentieth century. In contrast to the stereotypically postmodern overload of images, the still life in film initiates a moment of repose and contemplation within a medium more often defined by the forward rush of moving pictures. It also involves a profound meditation on the relationship between images and objects consistent with practices as diverse as the Spanish baroque still life and the Surrealist variation on the genre. With the work of Terence Davies and Alain Cavalier’s Thérèse (1986) as its primary touchstones, this chapter situates this renewed interest in the cinematic still life within the context of both the late twentieth-century cinema of painters and a socially oriented art cinema that focuses on marginal people and overlooked objects rather than the hegemonic historical narratives also undergoing a revival at the time.


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