“Work in the Factory Itself ”

2018 ◽  
pp. 149-182
Author(s):  
Elizabeth D. Esch
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor White ◽  
Social Scientific

This chapter examines how the Poor White Investigation of the Carnegie Corporation provided a social-scientific rationale for the racial segregation of industrial work with which Ford, who would become one of the most powerful multinational employers in South Africa, complied. Targeted during the antiapartheid movement to divest, the roots of Ford’s relationship with this racist state are in the 1920s and 1930s, built on Ford’s reputation for racial paternalism and so-called progressivism in the United States. In South Africa, an interest in Ford’s processes of mass production and mass consumption were both mobilized in projects of racial improvement, though the Carnegie report specifically endorsed the idea of work in the factory as the most effective route to the racial improvement and discipline of so-called poor whites, recommending “white managerialist” efforts to address the “problem of poor whites.”

scholarly journals Levinas, Social Vulnerability, and the Logic of South African Racism

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
Robert Bernasconi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor White ◽  
The Way

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas was at the forefront of the promotion of the idea of vulnerability in philosophy. For Levinas, my primary vulnerability concerns not my pain, but my pain at the other’s pain. Vulnerablity also has an ambiguous character in so far as it is not easily separated from my self-absorption in enjoyment. In this paper I show how Levinas’s account can illuminate the way that the idea of vulnerability sometimes operates within racist societies to maintain existing divisions. In particular I focus on the Carnegie Commission’s 1932 study The Poor White Problem in South Africa where concern for the vulnerability of poor whites concealed a tendency to naturalize the vulnerability of South African Blacks. Keywords: Carnegie commission, poor whites, racism, vulnerability, Emmanuel Levinas,South Africa

Poverty, Sterilization, and Eugenics in Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road

2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAREN A. KEELY
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Family Study ◽  
Rural Poverty ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
White Family ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
Erskine Caldwell ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Family ◽  
Poor White

Two primary manifestations of the eugenics movement in America were the involuntary sterilization of certain classes of people, including the mentally ill and disabled and some types of criminals, and the “family study,” genealogical reports that traced criminal behavior, immorality, and mental problems throughout family trees to determine whether the characteristics are inheritable. Both family studies and sterilization proved to be important fodder for American literary authors, who made significant use of the rhetoric of family and propagation. Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road is particularly interesting to read with eugenics in mind, for the 1932 novel is intrinsically bound up with issues of breeding, heredity, and degeneration. Caldwell's text, which he characterized as literary realism, relies not only on the genre of family study in general but more particularly on a study conducted by Caldwell's father in 1928 and published two years later in the journal Eugenics; Ira Caldwell had attempted to rescue a poor white family from what he saw as the conditions of their ongoing degeneracy but was rejected completely by the family, leading to his renunciation of many of his social reform ideals in favor of sterilization programs. Erskine Caldwell drew heavily on his father's failed attempt at reform, and Tobacco Road ultimately argues for the sterilization of Georgia's poor whites, but with the pessimistic caveat that the problems of degeneracy and rural poverty have no final solution. Caldwell's manipulation of his audience, his observation of his father's eugenics experimentation, and his use of extended metaphors, both mechanical and agricultural, for family all create a deeply cynical novel that condemns America's economic modus operandi for the living conditions of the poor but also condemns those poor as being permanently beyond help. In the end, Caldwell argues that the poor – in both money and breeding – will be always with us and that we are doomed to witness the full horror of their degradation without the possibility of either relieving their plight or eradicating them.

scholarly journals Black theology versus black spirituality and black faith: The centrality of spirituality and faith in black theology of liberation in the South African context

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olehile A. Buffel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

Black theology, which is linked to black power in the context of the United States of America and black consciousness in the context of South Africa is often regarded as having nothing to do with spirituality, faith and salvation. It is often regarded by critics as radical, militant and political. In some circles its theological character is questioned. Advocates of liberation theology, past and present are accused of mixing religion with politics. The article traces the history of black theology, as part of liberation theology, which started in the 1960s in three contexts, namely Latin America, United States of America and South Africa. The article argues that spirituality, faith and salvation are central to black theology of liberation. The critical theological reflection that black theology of liberation is all about happens in the context of the spiritual journey of the poor believer and oppressed.Contribution: The contribution that this article makes is to serve as a corrective discourse that rebuts the mistaken accusation that black liberation theology has nothing to do with spirituality and faith. The article makes a direct link between spirituality and faith on the one hand and on the other hand liberating Christian praxis of the poor in their spiritual journey, in the context of South Africans as they struggle to liberate themselves amid poverty, service delivery struggles and COVID-19 and its implications.

The North Atlantic Triangle

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker R. Berghahn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Direct Investments ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Consumer Durables ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
The North ◽  
Financial Power ◽  
First Time

This chapter deals with the period between the 1923 economic crisis and an even more severe economic breakdown in 1929. This period saw an engagement of the United States in Europe that had not been possible in the immediate postwar years, generating a few years of relative stability and prosperity in which American manufacturing companies and banks played a major role. It was the phase in which the United States succeeded in deploying its superior industrial and financial power in an attempt to uplift the economies of Europe. During those five years it was not only American ideas and practices of rationalized mass production that came to Europe through massive foreign direct investments; rather Europe, again for the first time, got a taste of mass consumption, even if it was still quite limited in terms of affordable consumer durables.

American Lessons in Mass Production and Mass Consumption: Danish Study Visits to the United States under the Marshall Plan's Technical Assistance Programme

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 582-600
Author(s):  
SISSEL BJERRUM FOSSAT
Keyword(s):  
Mass Production ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Scandinavian Country ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
Assistance Programme ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Danish Study

This article discusses the main lessons of the Marshall Plan's Technical Assistance Programme. The point of departure is the Danish case, but the perspective is wider, and the article aims at broadening the somewhat narrow chronology and geography often applied in studies on the history of the Marshall Plan. When following the Technical Assistance up until the mid-1950s in a Scandinavian country it becomes clear that American diplomats didn't just want the Europeans to work harder, but that their drive for productivity also promoted Americanisation in the form of an US-style business and consumer culture. The ‘American Way’ presented through the Technical Assistance Programme, though not uncontested, was a powerful and appealing model for prosperity applicable to all areas of the economy, from agriculture to retail.

Managing Difference: White Parenting Practices in Socioeconomically Diverse Neighborhoods

2021 ◽  
pp. 153568412098101
Author(s):  
Megan R. Underhill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Parenting Practices ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spatial Distance ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
The Poor ◽  
White Parents ◽  
Black Residents ◽  
Block Level ◽  
Poor White

Drawing on 40 interviews with white parents in two mixed-income neighborhoods—one that is majority-white and the other that is multiracial—this article examines how residence in socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods conditions the parenting practices of middle-class whites, specifically concerning parents’ management of their children’s contact with the poor. The data reveal that white parents in both neighborhoods work to ensure symbolic and spatial distance between their children and their poor neighbors resulting in distinctive patterns of micro-segregation in each neighborhood. However, how parents engage in this work depends on the race of their neighbors and the block-level geography of their community. I find that parents deploy more contact-avoidant practices toward their poor white rather than their poor black neighbors. Among participants, poor whites conjure feelings of disgust and are actively avoided, whereas poor black residents provoke feelings of ambivalence, as contact with them is judged to be both valuable and threatening.

Elevated above the Real: The Poor White Southerner in Cormac McCarthy’s Early Novels

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Southern Literature ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
White Trash ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor White ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Child Of God ◽  
White Southerner

This chapter discusses the work of Cormac McCarthy, whose early novels depicted the poor white southerner. In The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Robert Benson praises McCarthy for his vivid and honest portrayal of east Tennessee and its people—the lower classes in particular. Benson accurately characterizes McCarthy's work as a critical shift in the representation of lower-class characters in southern literature. McCarthy's focus on exploring and illuminating the lives of those often called “white trash” suggests a direct and important link between his work of the 1960s and early 1970s and the work of later southern writers invested in recovering the poor white southerner from the margins of literary representation. And yet, for several reasons, McCarthy's connection to later Rough South writers is decidedly complex. Furthermore, not all critics have been as quick as Benson to praise McCarthy's portrayal of southern poor whites. This chapter examines McCarthy's first three novels: The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark (1968), and Child of God (1973).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document