Citizen soldiers: National servicemen in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-95
Author(s):  
Grace Huxford
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Korean War ◽  
British Society ◽  
National Service ◽  
The Social ◽  
Citizen Soldiers ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This chapter examines how citizenship and selfhood were subtly recalibrated through conscription in Cold War Britain and uncovers details of the lives of young national servicemen in Korea. It begins with a discussion of military citizenship in the era of the Korean War, before turning to specific moments in national service life. Starting with recruitment (a recurring feature in most memoirs of national service), it explores the significance of masculinity, age, class and humour for the young men who were sent to Korea during their two years’ service. Together with the previous chapter, it sets out again the importance of experience to the social history of the Korean War in Britain. It considers how opinions on national service further informed the British views of the Korean War and how, like Korea, national service fitted uneasily within the narratives of post-war British society and culture. Like Korea, was national service obligatory, unglamorous and potentially of limited overall purpose?

Introduction: The Korean War in Britain

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Grace Huxford
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Korean War ◽  
British History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This introduction first gives an overview of Korean War historiography alongside a summary of the war itself, before exploring the position of the Korean War and the Cold War in British history-writing. It highlights how selfhood and citizenship have emerged as growing categories of analysis in Cold War studies and argues why it is important to consider them in the context of post-1945 Britain. It closes by exploring the challenges and possibilities of writing the social history of warfare and bringing domestic and military ‘spheres’ together in a meaningful way.

No woman wants any more war: Popular responses to the outbreak of war

2018 ◽  
pp. 30-51
Author(s):  
Grace Huxford
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nuclear Warfare

This chapter uses Mass Observation (MO) survey material to assess initial responses to the outbreak of war in the summer of 1950. It first explores the utility of MO surveys and diaries to the social history of the war, before analysing responses in detail, alongside early television and newspaper reports. It concludes that the first few months of the Korean War were a worrying time for many Britons, as anxieties gathered around several areas: aerial attack, nuclear warfare and the mobilisation of male citizens.

Framing The Fosters: jokes, racism and Black and Asian voices in British comedy television

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Schaffer
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Black British ◽  
Stand Up Comedy ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Cultural Leaders ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter interrogates the relationship between television comedy, power and racial politics in post-war Britain. In a period where Black and Asian Britons were forced to negotiate racism as a day-to-day reality, the essay questions the role played by television comedy in reflecting and shaping British multicultural society. Specifically, this chapter probes Black and Asian agency in comedy production, questioning who the joke makers were and what impact this had on the development of comedy and its reception. The work of scholars of Black and Asian comedy television such as Sarita Malik, and of Black stand-up comedy such as Stephen Small, has helped us to understand that Black- and Asian-led British comedy emerged belatedly in the 1980s and 1990s, hindered by the historical underrepresentation of these communities in British cultural production and the disinclination of British cultural leaders to address this problem. This chapter uses these scholarly frames of reference, alongside research that addresses the social and political functions of comedy, to re-open the social history of Black British communities in post-war Britain through the story of sitcom.

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF POST-WAR SOVIET LIFE

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 563-569
Author(s):  
MIRIAM DOBSON
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

A light burden: cultural discourse of light in Japan

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-134
Author(s):  
Lok Hang Hui
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Local Case ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Post War

PurposeThis paper explores the sensory experiences and cultural meanings of light in Japan in relation to Japanese changing lighting practices. It demonstrates that these sensory experiences and cultural meanings form an integral part of social life in Japan.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a blended approach that combines historical research and ethnographic data in the research on the meanings of light. The findings are presented in three parts. Two of them describe the social history of light, and the third draws on ethnographic data collected in suburban Japan.FindingsThe findings suggest that light in Japan has maintained a close symbolic connection with certain positive values despite the changing lighting practices. For example, light is related to cleanliness in early historical records on candle-making. In post-war Japan, new light metaphors such as “bright family” were invented to accommodate new aspirations for modernity and progress. In the latest development, the moral dimension of light is emphasised. This is evident in the concerns on being seen as a “bright person”, a person with a cheerful personality. Light in this way is related to the sensory experience of feeling a “social weight”, the pressure for one to act according to social norms.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to our anthropological understandings of light. It also provides a local case study of Japan, supported by original ethnographic research conducted by the author.

‘Born in the corridors of the OECD’: the forgotten origins of the Club of Rome, transnational networks, and the 1970s in global history

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Schmelzer
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Transnational Networks ◽  
Global History ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Club Of Rome

AbstractThis article re-examines a contested chapter in the international and environmental history of the 1970s. Even though largely neglected by historical research and in the public memory, the Club of Rome – widely remembered for its 1972 report The limits to growth – was not only born within the OECD, but was also in its early period strongly influenced by debates within this think tank of the industrialized countries. Using previously overlooked sources, this article analyses this highly unlikely OECD–Club of Rome nexus. It not only offers a privileged view into the social history of international policy-making and the related personal entanglements and ideological transfers at a key moment of post-war history. It also demonstrates that the social, intellectual, and economic turmoil of the late 1960s prompted a rethinking of the economic growth paradigm, even within those technocratic institutions that had aspired to guide the post-war industrial growth regime. The article argues that these links are not only vital for our understanding of the relationship between acquisitive growth capitalism and environmentalism, but also enable a more profound understanding of the role of transnational networks in global history and the appreciation of the place of the 1970s in world history.

Gregory King and the Social Structure of pre-industrial England

1977 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 41-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Post War

Despite the rich and exciting work of recent years, the social history of England between the Restoration and the Industrial Revolution still bears something of a hangdog look, scarcely war-ranting, as yet, the cosmic conclusions and ferocious controversies to which students of early Stuart and early nineteenth-century society have grown accustomed. Yet, thanks to the work of one remarkable Englishman, who was born in 1648 and died in 1712, there is one aspect of this pre-industrial period—its social structure—on which we are all happy to pontificate. Gregory King's table of ranks and degrees, on which in the last resort so much of this confidence rests, has now acquired a unique cachet. The continual reproduction in post-war textbooks of this famous document, which we think of as King's ‘social table’ but which he described as his ‘Scheme of the Income and Expense of the Several Famillies of England’, is just the most obvious symptom of its dominant historiographical influence.

Book lists from the Cairo Genizah: a window on the production of texts in the middle ages

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Frenkel
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medieval Islam ◽  
Cairo Genizah ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many

AbstractThe historicity of books – their role as a force in history – has been addressed in post-war literary studies from different perspectives and across various disciplines. Nevertheless, the scholarship on the history of the book in medieval Islam is still relatively sparse, even though this society underwent a thorough process of textualization. But even authors who do consider the social and cultural role of books in medieval Islam look only at the production and consumption of Arabic books within the boundaries of Muslim society, relying on Islamic sources which reflect mainly the courtly milieu of scribes and secretariats. None discuss books produced and consumed by the religious minorities that were an indispensable part of this society, and none have made use of the abundant Genizah documents as source material. In the present programmatic article, I call attention to the many book lists found in the Cairo Genizah and to their potential as significant tools for developing a better understanding of the cultural and social history of the medieval Islamicate world.

The Publishing of Popular Social History Books

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-54
Author(s):  
Laura Carter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social History ◽  
British Society ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
Post War ◽  
History Books

Chapters 1 and 2 make up Part I of this book, which explains how the ‘history of everyday life’ developed and why it had such purchase in mid-twentieth-century British society. This chapter uses the publishing of popular history books to investigate the emergence of the ‘history of everyday life’ as a new genre of popular social history in the inter-war period. Between the wars, publishers competed to capture burgeoning educational markets as the market for ‘traditional’ narrative and literary histories declined. As a result, they began to repackage illustrated source books, memoirs, and diaries as history books after 1918. This fed the appetites of an altered, post-war reading public, including women and juvenile workers.

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