Search Results

Some Functions of Collective Forgetting

Paul Connerton

in Social Brain, Distributed Mind

Coerced forgetting — forgetting as repressive erasure — has been a hallmark of many of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. However, the act of forgetting is not always negative. This ... More

Coerced forgetting — forgetting as repressive erasure — has been a hallmark of many of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. However, the act of forgetting is not always negative. This chapter discusses three kinds of forgetting: prescriptive forgetting, or forgetting as an act of common good; forgetting as constitutive of the formation of a new identity; and forgetting as annulment, a response to a surfeit of information. Far from representing failures, all of these processes may play significant roles in the establishment and enhancement of social bonds.Less

A Room of Their Own: Friendship, Fellowship, and Fraternity

Sarah Wobick-Segev

in Homes Away from Home: Jewish Belonging in Twentieth-Century Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg

The first chapter explores how Jews integrated into European society while at the same time used leisure and consumer places to maintain senses of group cohesion and collective identity. In aiming to ... More

The first chapter explores how Jews integrated into European society while at the same time used leisure and consumer places to maintain senses of group cohesion and collective identity. In aiming to preserve but also in effect to recreate a sense of collectivity, an increasing number of Jewish individuals turned to new social spaces to make and nurture friendships and solidify networks and solidarity. The chapter is thus about boundaries: the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews and the boundaries between different Jewish groups as they were expressed in social spaces. In particular, the chapter explores how writers, intellectuals, artists, immigrants, and the working classes used cafés to create friendship and fraternity, and how they used hotels and restaurants for new forms of conviviality and community building.Less

Lifestyle: domestic labour and leisure activities

Rebecca Feasey

in Masculinity and Popular Television

Lifestyle programming has its roots in the hobbyist or enthusiast strand of television that was popular in 1960s Britain. By the turn of the 1990s, lifestyle programming or ‘infotainment’ or ‘factual ... More

Lifestyle programming has its roots in the hobbyist or enthusiast strand of television that was popular in 1960s Britain. By the turn of the 1990s, lifestyle programming or ‘infotainment’ or ‘factual entertainment’ focused on fashion style and grooming, gardening, home improvement, cookery, travelling and other topics that appeal to the so-called ‘popular obsessions’. While the genre was once dedicated to female, contemporary shows have presented the male as the client and expert respectively. This chapter introduces the history of lifestyle programming and then focuses on the representations of masculinity in these narratives of transformation. It examines programmes that present men engaging in traditionally feminine activities – cooking, decorating, designing – prompting the consideration of how men might be using domestic space and activities to generate new masculine identities that challenge gendered and sexualised norms. The chapter also looks at programmes such as The Naked Chef and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in order to consider the role of consumerism in contemporary masculinity and the ways in which domestic labour is being reclaimed as a masculine leisure activity.Less

In the Wilderness

Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist

in Perfect Children: Growing Up on the Religious Fringe

One of the biggest issues for the young adults who leave sectarian religious movements is finding themselves alone and in an unfamiliar place. For those interviewed, the outside world was perceived ... More

One of the biggest issues for the young adults who leave sectarian religious movements is finding themselves alone and in an unfamiliar place. For those interviewed, the outside world was perceived as an alien place in which the former members felt like exiles, akin to the Israelites “in the wilderness.” This chapter describes aspects of this journey from the old to the new, some of the different forms this journey can take, and possible consequences for the young people undertaking this journey.Less

The Historic Compromise?

in The New Politics of Sinn Féin

The chapter focuses on the partnership of Republicans and the British state that shifted towards a historic compromise. Various issues in the context of the Unionist perspective and other critics are ... More

The chapter focuses on the partnership of Republicans and the British state that shifted towards a historic compromise. Various issues in the context of the Unionist perspective and other critics are also examined and assessed against the developing negotiations in the peace process between Republicans and the British state. The chapter also talks about the changes in the structures of thought between the clashing movements and how they paved the way for reconciliation. The dialogues and discourses that the Republicans used to achieve its goals of reunification are also discussed, juxtaposed with the differences in the opposing forces' cultural and sociopolitical identities.Less

Intimacy, Masculinity, and Relating

Timothy Black and Sky Keyes

in It's a Setup: Fathering from the Social and Economic Margins

The era of neoliberalism has made it more difficult for low-income men to be fathers, at the same time that the expectations for them to be involved fathers has increased. The norms and expectations ... More

The era of neoliberalism has made it more difficult for low-income men to be fathers, at the same time that the expectations for them to be involved fathers has increased. The norms and expectations of “father involvement” have changed rapidly within one to two generations, and yet the labor force and state institutions have not supported low-income families in a way to achieve this. In this chapter, the authors examine how fathers have adapted to these changing circumstances. They consider how the casualization of the labor force has structured the casualization of family life; the essential and yet complicated role that kin play; the neotraditional formation of the family and the “new father” role; the efforts to father through generational family violence and to address toxic masculinity; and the contours of fatherhood as men age into second-generation fathers.Less