Remaking inequalities in the neoliberal institution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christy Kulz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
White Subject ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
Education Market ◽  
Recent Policy

Firstly this chapter discusses how Dreamfields’ 'oasis in the desert' allegedly built to transform urban children is changing urban culture in unanticipated ways. Besides grafting cultural capital onto students, it actively seeks out those who already have the capitals it requires to excel in the education market. Secondly, it explores how race and class are lived out in Dreamfields’ neoliberal regime. Whiteness does not rely on the white subject to be materialised, while the racialised subject is conceptualised through the lens of class. Both pathological blackness and dirty whiteness can be 'lost' through the application of middle-class behaviours, yet this shift requires labour, loss and conformity. Thirdly, the allure of the ‘good life’ acts a powerful tool of neoliberal governance that motivates many parents, students and teachers to willingly embrace Dreamfields’ demands. Finally, the chapter reviews how recent policy developments further centralize education and curtail participation, yet suggests there are cracks appearing in this consensus.

Holding the Center

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-255
Author(s):  
Michan Andrew Connor
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Central City ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The City

Early television shows that focused on Los Angeles as subject, such as The City at Night (KTLA) and Jack Linkletter's On the Go (CBS), assured white, middle-class, suburban viewers that they had a place in the larger metropolis by presenting a selective knowledge of its features and issues. On the Go surpassed the entertainment level of The City at Night to address some serious social issues. By the mid-sixties, suburbanization had been fully embraced as the "good life." Shows such as Ralph Story's Los Angeles (KNXT), instead of engaging suburban viewers in metropolitan issues, entertained them with glimpses of the city's "oddities." The change in tone marked the passing of the center of cultural identity from the central city to the suburbs.

scholarly journals Structures, feelings and savoir faire: Ghana's middle classes in the making

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 470-488
Author(s):  
Rachel Spronk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Raymond Williams

AbstractThe concept of ‘middle class’ in African societies has been recognized recently but at the same time it resists clear-cut definition. Rather than seeking clearer classification, I propose to embrace its contested nature as productive, seeing ‘middle class’ not as a category that we can find ‘out there’ and measure, but as a classification-in-the-making. Middle-class status, or a particular idea of the good life, is a position people strive towards, but what this entails depends on context and place. The study of the pursuit of social mobility in Ghana during colonialism, independence and the post-Cold War period – of those who have successfully improved their livelihoods – provides knowledge about the middle class in the making in different eras and under different conditions. I propose a three-pronged approach to study this processual nature: Raymond Williams’ notion of ‘structures of feeling’ helps unravel the shifting affective qualities of the changing political economy, while Sara Ahmed's focus on the ‘feelings of structure’ zooms in on agency as an important tool to analyse how middle-class trajectories unfold over time. Lastly, the availability of advantageous conditions is not enough to stimulate change; one needs the savoir faire to enact them.

scholarly journals Making a Living: How Middle-Class Couples in Warsaw Start and Practice a Household

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Marta Olcoń-Kubicka ◽  
Mateusz Halawa
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
At Home

This article is a study of the domestic monetary and financial life of young middle-class couples in Warsaw, Poland, and its suburbs. We use ethnographic evidence presented as case studies to illuminate the practices in which our interlocutors actively appropriate, mobilize, and transform money and finance to pursue moral visions of the good life. The article focuses on the household understood in processual terms of ongoing negotiations between moral and market dimensions. The first section is focused on the ways in which young couples perform relational work aimed at achieving or maintaining moral order. Couples match the diverse possible uses of money at home to their changing notions of the kind of couple they are or wish to become. The second section proceeds from the observation of a widening gap between rising middle-class aspirations and economic possibilities in contemporary Poland and explores the practices of negotiating various forms of assistance from parental households. The third and final section argues that the incursion of technologies into domestic life means that artifacts like software or digital banking increasingly materialize and mediate morality and thus actively contribute to the shaping of the household as a project of a good life.

“I have a good story”

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-184
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
High Status ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Good Story ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Church And Community

This chapter demonstrates how asking the question “What is the good life?” leads to different knowledge than asking questions like “How can we generate employment?” or “How can we achieve economic growth?” The chapter offers a deeper look into the lives of four individuals who said they were currently living the good life: an engineer in a high-status job, an artist forging new relationships through his church and community, a low-wage worker in an unusual shoe factory, and a recently unemployed woman starting a small business. The stories offer evidence that the good life does not necessarily depend on employment status. Instead, the good life comes about through complex interactions of social and individual factors, as well as the ways by which people learn to make meaning out of their circumstances. The four individuals shaped concepts of the good life that made sense of their experiences within an antiblack and segregated society. They found themselves in socially embedded economic structures, and spaces where black cultural capital was validated. The fact that they often attributed these circumstances to good fortune should not prevent us from imagining and implementing ways to replicate such structures.

Tensions Between the Good Life, the Good Profession, and the Good Society

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (10) ◽  
pp. 667-668
Author(s):  
Isaac Prilleltensky
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Good Society

Is the Good Life the Easy Life?

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie K. Napa ◽  
Laura A. King
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life
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