Kelroy’s Shifting City

Chapter 6, “Kelroy’s Shifting City,” centers on Rebecca Rush’s 1812 Philadelphia novel Kelroy, which charts Philadelphia’s transition from a cosmopolitan urbanity where family, blood, and inheritance are reliable indicators of class and status, to a more fluid and performative urbanity. In Kelroy, Rebecca Rush constructs—and distorts—a Philadelphia of the past that offers a useful window on fantasies and anxieties about US urban life and urban spaces on the cusp of great political and cultural change. Set in 1790s Philadelphia, which by 1812 was fading into memory, Kelroy actively frames and fictionalizes a vision of a past Philadelphia that looks toward a different future than earlier authors imagined. Kelroy teaches cosmopolitan codes of gentility but violently undermines them as well. The novel thus reveals and emphasizes the limits of self-making, especially for the women, immigrants, and working-class people who might benefit most from performative modes of status and power. Kelroy gestures toward a developing US urbanity that includes characters of diverse classes, races, and ethnicities, but paradoxically reasserts the power of white men, foreshadowing dynamics that would structure the literature and culture of the Jacksonian period.

Fishing Livelihoods and Social Diversity

This chapter shifts scale from Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-79591-7_2 to focus on the local context and analyse the everyday sets of social relationships that frame the lives of those engaged in fishing livelihoods. The broad structural forces of migration, technology and markets along with the wider economy all intersect with local sets of social structures to shape the conditions in which fishing livelihoods operate. Here we present two examples of how different forms of social differentiation interact with fishing livelihoods. In the Western Philippines, class and status intersect with cultural values to generate power relations and hierarchies in different roles associated with fishing livelihoods. In Pacific Island countries, gender norms structure the different types of fishing activities in which men and women are involved.

Exhuming and highlighting the nearly forgotten Gold Coast intelligentsia: The life and times of Prince Kwamin Atta Amonoo V

The name K. A. Amonoo sits in the Roll of Honour in the entrance hall of Queen’s College, Taunton, Somerset, England together with the names of other former pupils who served in the First World War. In recent times, focus on K. A. Amonoo has been on his palatial residence, which he built in Anomabo, a coastal town in Ghana, in colonial Gold Coast, as Micots (2015 and 2017) have sought to emphasize in terms of the architectural design of his residence. Therefore, what this paper seeks to do is to bring to light a historically significant narrative of who Amonoo was, as a case study to examine and foreground the contributions of some of the nearly forgotten African intelligentsia of coastal Ghana. Through close analysis, the paper also places a central gaze on his activism within colonial Gold Coast and Calabar in colonial Nigeria as subtle moves to counter the growing authority of the British administration. Utilizing a set of key biographical prompts, the paper reflects on thematic issues such as class and status, modernity, and resistance to British colonial hegemony.

Nationalism, Class, and Status: How Nationalists Use Policy Offers and Group Appeals to Attract a New Electorate

How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supply-side explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation’s political and cultural status and the socio-economic status of its median member. Drawing on several original datasets, this expectation is tested on Imperial Austria in 1907, where multiple nationalist parties competed in first-time mass elections. We find that group appeals to the nation and promises to improve its political and cultural status resonate very well with agricultural workers, whose economic sector was declining, but not with industrial workers, whose sector was on the rise. By contrast, offering social policy helps nationalists among industrial workers, but less clearly so among agricultural workers. This article shows that nationalist mobilization is not a mere distraction from class politics; rather, the politics of nationalism, class, and status are closely intertwined.

Knowledge or competencies? A controversial question in contemporary curriculum debates

The question of knowledge versus competency in contemporary curricula is controversial. In this article we endeavour to show that the controversy has much to do with the way society is conceptualized as either a class differentiated or a function differentiated society. We examine Michael Young’s input to the curriculum debate concerning the question of knowledge with the aim of showing that his knowledge-centred approach, which considers class and status to be the main structuring influences on society, does not address the problems captured by a function differentiated perspective (society differentiated in function systems). We demonstrate that to understand knowledge adequately in the context of the challenges of a modern function differentiated society it is better conceptualized within a competency context. Finally, we argue that criticism from a class perspective does not adequately target specific problems arising from function differentiation.

Eat the Rich: The Parasitic Relationship Between Socioeconomic Groups as explored through film by Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite and Snowpiercer

Bong Joon-Ho’s portrayal of Class and the war between those who inhabit either end of the socioeconomic spectrum has long been noted and explored by critics and scholars for years. In particular, his films Parasite and Snowpiercer offer a dynamic exploration of this topic. Existing conversation about these films delves deeply into the symbolism for class and status, but rarely do they come from an emphasis in food studies and the way food can be used to denote socioeconomic structures. While that conversation is growing, I hope to expand it further by focusing on the space and method in which food is consumed in these films through a socioeconomic lens. Parasite and Snowpiercer are essential to this conversation because of their careful use of space. There is a clear spatial divide between the lower and upper classes in these movies that is invaded by a group. With this spatial divide, we see food spaces change in order to reinforce a binary idea of how class structure exists. Along with the change in space, change in method is equally important to analyze. The difference between eating around a table and eating on the couch can be a subtle but powerful image to emphasize socioeconomic position. For these reasons, I seek to explore the way Bong Joon-ho uses food and consumption spaces in order to reinforce socioeconomic divisions in order to comment on the impact of class division through every aspect of the human experience.

Food Studies and Communication

Food is much more than fuel for our bodies. It is an essential part of human cultures, and as such it carries meanings that shape and reflect individual and communal identities in terms of race, ethnicity, class, age, social class, and status, among others. It is both deeply physical and highly symbolic. Challenging the fundamental opposition between inside and outside, eating requires ingestion, bringing the outside inside, which is both exciting and terrifying. For this reason, food is both a source of pleasure and comfort and a cause for anxieties and concerns ranging from purity to propriety, heath, and wellness, just to mention a few. All food communicates meaning. We are implicitly trained to get cues from the world that surrounds us, and food is not excluded from these dynamics. We can obtain information from products and ingredients; from dishes and recipes; from the material objects that surround the act of eating, from tableware to furniture, interior design, built environments such as markets, stores, and supermarkets; from urban design and landscapes; from performative acts that include selling, cooking, serving, and eating food, as well as even disposing of leftovers; from every component of food systems, from agricultural production to manufacturing, packaging, transportation, distribution, trade, retail, and consumption; invisible infrastructures such as supply chains, cold chains, and more recently electronic traceability and blockchain. This bibliographical article focuses on the study of the intentional forms of communication that revolve around material, visual, and textual representations of food, and how they reflect, shape, or at times even problematize the explicit and implicit meanings food is able to generate. Research on these matters has grown in recent years with the emergence and growth of food studies as an interdisciplinary academic field. However, scholars from other disciplines, from literary studies to art history, media studies, gender studies, and politics, have engaged with the role of food in communication, often embracing multidisciplinary approaches in dialogue with food studies. The article is divided in two parts. The first part examines publications that look at food in different means of communication, from TV to fine arts and digital media, investigating the specificities of each means in its relationship with food discourse and practices. The second part instead explores research on food representations in the communication that involves different aspects of cultural and social life, from gender to politics. Some overlapping between the two sections is inevitable, but nevertheless the organization of the bibliographical entries in these two large sections can help the reader better navigate the content of the article and the rapidly expanding literature.

Housing Transformation in Kampala, Uganda: Causes and Opportunities

This paper discusses house transformation by owners in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, examining the reasons for the phenomenon and highlighting its nature, opportunities it offers and what be done to formalise it and take advantage of some of these opportunities for the benefit of the community. The main objective of the study was to investigate the factors and processes leading to house transformation in Kampala’s owner-occupied houses. The study revealed that the processes of house development and transformation in Kampala are largely informal, excluding professionals and local authorities. House transformations were a means of expression of the changing needs of the owners, in terms of sizes, income, class and status. House transformations are characterised by phased alterations/modifications, which result in more space for the household needs, income generation and house improvement and status uplift. The process being widespread, almost inevitable and addressing the largely genuine concern. The research recommends formalisation of guided house transformation and phased construction by Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) under the consultation of house-owners and professionals.