scholarly journals Becoming a Lady: Learning to be “Classy” in Polish Adaptations of Reality Shows

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Borys
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Reality Show ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Class Habitus

Given the lineup across much of our current television landscape, we could be forgiven for thinking that the medium is utterly obsessed with class struggle. One of the most popular TV genres to exploit class difference for dramatic purposes is the reality show. This essay examines Polish adaptations of three foreign reality show formats that rely on “clash of two worlds”-type tropes to drive their narratives. The shows in question are: Projekt Lady (prod. TVN, first aired in 2016), Damy i wieśniaczki (prod. TTV, first aired in 2016), and Rolnik szuka żony (prod. TVP, first aired in 2014). Drawing on sociological concepts of class as the embodiment of a specific collection of attributes and habits (Pierre Bourdieu), the author treats the shows in question as a particular sub-type of image designed to impart lessons in class. Calling on scholarship interpreting reality show programming as a neoliberal formula that gives weight to the middle-class habitus (Beverley Skeggs, Helen Wood), this analysis considers the specific nature of the Polish social structure, and interprets the relationship between class and gender in the analyzed programs. The inquiry elucidates what could be called the Polish strain of upward mobility, which compels reality show contestants to blend attributes associated with both the lower (“peasants”) and middle classes (“ladies”).

A divided city

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-184
Author(s):  
Alice Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Roman Catholics

Belfast’s middle classes lived in a divided city. Politically, Belfast was divided for the period under review into Conservative and Liberal camps. Religious divisions existed between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and within Protestantism itself. Society was also separated into different classes, with the middle classes positioned above the working classes and below the aristocracy. Political, religious and class tensions existed in every industrial city, of course. However, in Belfast, religious division assumed a particularly ugly and bitter hue. This chapter focuses on an elite living in a society divided along lines of both class and religion. The relationship of Belfast’s elite to the city’s working classes and the local aristocracy is explored; while a discussion of Belfast’s middle-class Roman Catholic community assesses the extent to which it was integrated into the city’s elite. The chapter also examines the relationship between the middle classes and the city’s growing sectarianism.

“The Whirl of Life” The Social Structure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Robert Reed
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Social

This chapter explores the intricacies of the first discernible class structure that conformed to normative standards of socioeconomic status in Chicago's history. Black Chicago developed a very small but distinguishable upper class, large segments within the broad middle classes, enormous laboring classes including industrial and service sector workers, and an underclass. The members of the upper class owned and managed businesses, chose housing commensurate with their status, consumed their disposable income with conspicuous delight, engaged in civic activities, and socially acted as a group apart from other segments of their racial cohort to which they traditionally held their primary social allegiance. The middle class focused on occupation, wealth production, educational attainment, cultural interests, and character. The working-class, however, formed the bulk of black Chicago's citizenry.

Practices of resistance: The Antwerp fashion scene and Walter Van Beirendonck’s subversion of masculinity

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 51-72
Author(s):  
Nicola Brajato ◽  
Alexander Dhoest
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Creative Resistance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
A Site ◽  
Fashion Designers ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The existing literature on the evolution of the Antwerp fashion scene is mainly concerned with the development of the Fashion Academy pedagogy from tradition to avant-garde, the role of the famous ‘Antwerp Six’ in putting the city under the international fashion spotlight, and the making of a specific cultural heritage which up to today continues to inspire young fashion designers. However, less has been said about its contribution to the redefinition of gender, and more specifically of masculinity. Consequently, the aim of the article is to contextualize Antwerp as a site for ‘creative resistance’ against the middle-class ideas of fashion, body and identity through the figure of Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck, articulating his contribution in deconstructing the normative understanding of the relationship between fashion and masculinity, providing a new metaphor to think about the process of body fashioning in everyday life. Therefore, Van Beirendonck’s creative practices as a sartorial form of resistance against the bourgeois understanding of masculinity and sexuality will be investigated through a qualitative analysis of visual and audio-visual archive materials generously provided by MoMu, the Antwerp fashion museum, showing how his creations are successful in stretching bodily borders and forming non-conventional masculinities. Far from offering an exhaustive overview of the field, the article constitutes a starting point for the understanding of a particular way of seeing the relationship between fashion, body and gender identity in the Antwerp fashion scene. Furthermore, it aims to stress the urgency to analyse the relevance of fashion in tackling issues of masculinity and the clothed body.

Middle class timelines: Ethnic humor and sexual modernity in Delhi

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kira Hall
Keyword(s):  
Gender Difference ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Economic Restructuring ◽  
Sexual Knowledge ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Bisexual And Transgender ◽  
Everyday Interaction ◽  
English Competence ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThe rise of India's global economy has reinforced a perception of English as a language of sexual modernity within the expanding middle classes. This article explores this perception in the multilingual humor of Hindi-speaking Delhi youth marginalized for sexual and gender difference. Their joking routines feature the Sikh Sardarji, a longstanding ethnic figure often caricatured as circulating in modernity but lacking the English competence to understand modernity's semiotics. Reflective of the economic restructuring that ushered in the millennium, the humor supports a normative progress narrative that prioritizes an ethnically unmarked urban middle class. At the same time, the lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth who tell these jokes—still criminalized under Section 377 when this fieldwork was conducted—shift this narrative by positioning sexual knowledge at modernity's forefront. The analysis reveals how sexual modernity—here viewed as constituted in everyday interaction through competing configurations of place, time, and personhood—relies on normativity even while defining itself against it. (Chronotope, ethnic humor, formulaic jokes, globalization, Hindi-English, Hinglish, media, middle class, normativity, sexual modernity, temporality)*

scholarly journals When Women Play: The Relationship between Musical Instruments and Gender Style

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Koskoff
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Gender Stratification ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Social Marginality ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

In many societies, musical roles are divided along gender lines: women sing and men play. Men also sing and women sometimes play; yet, unlike men, women who play often do so in contexts of sexual and social marginality. This essay surveys the literature on women's use of musical instruments in a variety of social and cultural contexts and presents some contemporary anthropological theories regarding the interrelationship between social structure and gender stratification. The author concludes that women's use of musical instruments is related to broader issues of social and gender structure, and that changes in the ideology of these structures often reflect changes that affect women as performers.

scholarly journals How does parental time relate to social class in a Nordic welfare state?

2021 ◽  
pp. 000169932110520
Author(s):  
Anne Lise Ellingsæter ◽  
Ragni Hege Kitterød ◽  
Marianne Nordli Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Parental Time ◽  
Childcare Time ◽  
Upper Middle Class ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
The Relationship

Time intensive parenting has spread in Western countries. This study contributes to the literature on parental time use, aiming to deepen our understanding of the relationship between parental childcare time and social class. Based on time-diary data (2010–2011) from Norway, and a concept of social class that links parents’ amount and composition of economic and cultural capital, we examine the time spent by parents on childcare activities. The analysis shows that class and gender intersect: intensive motherhood, as measured by time spent on active childcare, including developmental childcare activities thought to stimulate children's skills, is practised by all mothers. A small group of mothers in the economic upper-middle class fraction spend even more time on childcare than the other mothers. The time fathers spend on active childcare is less than mothers’, and intra-class divisions are notable. Not only lower-middle class fathers, but also cultural/balanced upper-middle class fathers spend the most time on intensive fathering. Economic upper-middle and working-class fathers spend the least time on childcare. This new insight into class patterns in parents’ childcare time challenges the widespread notion of different cultural childcare logics in the middle class, compared to the working class.

The stratified middle class and the formation of ethnic identities

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682110253
Author(s):  
Guy Abutbul Selinger ◽  
Avraham Shnider
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Ethnic Boundaries ◽  
Minority Adolescents ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Minority Ethnic

This article analyzes the relationship between middle-class belonging and minority ethnic identification through the narratives of Israeli adolescents in contrasting middle-class spaces. While current literature suggests that middle-class belonging will either weaken or strengthen ethnic identification, this paper demonstrates that the effect of class on ethnic identity varies between different spaces. Analyzing the narratives of 52 middle-class minority adolescents shows that spatial ethnic boundaries operating in the rural middle class lead these adolescents to construct a salient ethnic identity that can produce feelings of incongruence and subordination. However, in the urban middle-class, where spatial ethnic boundaries are less significant, adolescents develop a thin, interchangeable ethnic identity in accordance with shallow and superficial public classifications. These findings demonstrate that the middle classes are not monolithic but diverse within themselves, and point to the need to study the variety of ways diverse middle classes can affect the shaping of minority ethnic identification.

scholarly journals Feminism and the Politics of Resilience: Essays on Gender, Media and the End of Welfare

2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-93
Author(s):  
Çağatay Burcu
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Female Body ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Competitive Environment ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
At Home

Encouraging women to work has revealed the relationships between neoliberalism and gender. Neoliberalism, which is based on high performance, has also reflected this feature on the female body. Women, who are constantly asked to be hardworking both at home and at work, have also been exposed to the emphasis on having a fit body seen in women's magazines. This emphasis on success is more for the middle class. While this situation created a competitive environment with women in the lower classes, it negatively affected the psychology of young girls. Therefore, the relationship between neoliberalism and feminism leads to new discussions on the issue of gender equality.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gallo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
South India ◽  
Political History ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction highlights the importance of understanding how, in globalizing south India, families engage through memory with the question of how kinship norms, ideals, and experiences can enhance social mobility. It critically reviews and bridges three sets of literature: firstly, the historical critique developed within postcolonial and feminist tradition on the relation between colonialism, middle classes, and gendered family reforms; secondly, classical and recent anthropological approaches on political history and memory; thirdly, contemporary analysis of kinship within and beyond South Asia. The introduction argues that an analysis of the relationship between kinship, memory, and social mobility reveals to be timely and original to reconnect the well-known colonial middle-class projects of family modernity with the much less explored dimension of how (actual and aspiring) middle classes have engaged across history with these projects.

The Fall of Gods

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gallo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
The Relationship

The book explores the relationship between colonial history and memory from the perspective of middle- class intergenerational relations. Drawing from a prolonged research conducted with Malayali middle classes in Kerala and in the diaspora, the analysis focuses on how specific historical events are retrieved in the present to shape kinship relations and to legitimize trajectories of class mobility. The book bridges historical analysis of gendered family relations as they developed in colonial and postcolonial times with an anthropological inquiry of the symbolic and material premises of kinship among contemporary middle classes. It provides an ethnographically grounded analysis of how middle-class status in contemporary south India is expressed by recalling family histories, and how remembrance shapes kinship ideals, norms, and experiences in domains as different as houses, conjugality, parenthood, reproduction and family size, intergenerational love and genealogical transmission. The book offers original insights on the continuities and differences between colonial and contemporary middle classes, and the role played by migration and diaspora in both contexts. It originally contributes to two interrelated and undertheorized fields within social sciences. Firstly, it addresses the need to develop further our understanding of how gendered kinship and family relations result from and express class belonging. Secondly, it unravels the complex and ambivalent relation between political history, memory, and the ‘private’ domain of family relations.

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