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Symbolic Resources (symbolic + resource)
Selected AbstractsThe Neighborhood in Cultural Production: Material and Symbolic Resources in the New BohemiaCITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 4 2004Richard Lloyd Drawing on an extended case study of the Chicago neighborhood Wicker Park, this article examines the role that neighborhood space plays in organizing the activities of young artists, showing how an urban district can serve as a factor in aesthetic production. The tendency of artists and fellow travelers to cluster in distinctive (usually older) urban neighborhoods is well known. While in recent decades many scholars have recognized that these creative congregations contribute to residential gentrification and other local patterns of increased capital investment, the benefits that such neighborhoods offer for aspirants in creative pursuits are generally assumed, not explained. I use the Wicker Park case to show how the contemporary artists' neighborhood provides both material and symbolic resources that facilitate creative activity, particularly in the early stages of a cultural producer's career. I further connect these observations to the production of culture as a commodity, showing how select neighborhoods fill quasi-institutional roles in the flexible webs that characterize contemporary culture industries. [source] Rinkeby Swedish and semilingualism in language ideological debates: A Bourdieuean perspectiveJOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2004Christopher Stroud The focus of this paper is on the mechanisms whereby liberal and well-meaning democratic societies propagate a cycle of disposession where immigrants are constructed as least resourced while the powerful retain their power. Specifically discussed is the semiotic management of traditional hierarchies of privilege and access through language ideological discourses pertaining to second language acquisition, multilingualism and heterogeneity. One notion in particular is discussed in this context, namely Rinkeby Swedish, a potential, imagined, pan-immigrant contact variety of Swedish. The discussion is framed within a primarily Bourdieuean conceptual apparatus using concepts of symbolic market, explaining the role of language boundaries and their institutional policing, and detailing the semiotic processes of iconization whereby immigrants are positioned as outside of a symbolically reconstituted community of ,real' Swedish speakers, in strategic attempts to restrict their access to important linguistic and symbolic resources. [source] The Cultural Power of Law and the Cultural Enactment of Legality: The Case of Same-Sex MarriageLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2003Kathleen E. Hull This paper examines the legal consciousness of same-sex couples with respect to marriage. Data from an interview-based study of 71 members of same-sex couples reveal strong consensus on the desirability of having samesex relationships legally recognized, and considerable variation in couples'attempts to enact marriage culturally through various practices, including the use of marriage-related terminology and public commitment rituals. I argue that some of these efforts to enact marriage culturally should also be read as attempts to enact legality in the absence of official law. The findings from this study challenge the idea that marginalized social actors will tend toward a resistant legal consciousness: Rather than seeking to avoid and evade legality in their everyday lives, most same-sex couples seem to embrace legality for its practical and symbolic resources, even as they stand "against the law" in their opposition to the exclusion of same-sex couples from the institution of legal marriage. Approaching marriage from the perspective of same-sex couples, this research demonstrates that the legal and cultural aspects of marriage are deeply intertwined. Cultural enactments of marriage enact legality even in the absence of official law, and many actors ascribe to law a cultural power that transcends its specific benefits and protections, the power to produce social and cultural equality. [source] Tolerant exclusion: expanding constricted narratives of wartime ethnic and civic nationalism1NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 2009REINA C. NEUFELDT ABSTRACT. During war, the demarcation ,enemy alien', whether on ethnic or civic grounds , can lead to loss of political, social or economic rights. Yet not all minorities are excluded even though they pose problems for civic and ethnic national categories of belonging. This article explores the experiences of an ethno-religious minority who posed an intriguing dilemma for ethnic and civic categorisation in North America during World War II. The Mennonite experience enables a close examination of the relationship between a minority ethnic (and religious) group and majority concepts of wartime civic and ethnic nationalism. The article supports arguments that both ethnic and civic nationalism produce markers for the exclusion of minority groups during wartime. It reveals that minority groups can unintentionally become part of majority ,nationalisms' as the content of what defines the national ideal shifts over time. The experiences also suggest that a minority group can help mobilise symbolic resources that participate in transforming what defines the national ideal. [source] The lenses of nationhood: an optical model of identityNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 3 2008ERIC KAUFMANN ABSTRACT. This paper tries to make the case for a model of political identity based on an optical metaphor, which is especially applicable to nations. Human vision can be separated into sentient object, lenses and inbuilt mental ideas. This corresponds well to identity processes in which ,light' from a bounded territorial referent is refracted through various lenses (ideological, material, psychological) to focus in certain ways on particular symbolic resources like genealogy, history, culture or political institutions. Distinguishing between referent, lenses and resources helps us more precisely situate many hitherto disparate problems of national identity. These include the ,ethnic-civic' dilemma, the mystery of national identity before nationalism, and the relationship between local and national, and individual and collective, identities. The model also clarifies the place of universalist ideology, which currently fits poorly within the leading culturalist and materialist theories of nationalism. [source] Looking Forward by Looking Back: May Day Protests in London and the Strategic Significance of the UrbanANTIPODE, Issue 4 2004Justus Uitermark This paper deals with the question of how oppositional movements can adapt their protest strategies to meet recent socio-spatial transformations. The work of Lefebvre provides several clues as to how an alternative discourse and appropriation of space could be incorporated in such protest strategies. One of the central themes in Lefebvre's work is that the appearances, forms and functions of urban space are constitutive elements of contemporary capitalism and thus that an alternative narrative of urban space can challenge or undermine dominant modes of thinking. What exactly constitutes the "right" kind of alternative discourse or narrative is a matter of both theoretical and practical consideration. The paper analyses one case: the May Day protests in London in 2001, in which a protest group, the Wombles, managed to integrate theoretical insights into their discourse and practice in a highly innovative manner. Since cities, and global cities in particular, play an ever more important role in maintaining the consumption as well as production practices of global capitalism; they potentially constitute local sites where global processes can be identified and criticised. It is shown that the Wombles effectively made use of these possibilities and appropriated the symbolic resources concentrated in London to exercise a "lived critique" of global capitalism. Since the Wombles capitalised on trends that have not yet ended, their strategies show a way forward for future anti-capitalist protests. [source] Official minority-language education policy outside Quebec: The impact of Section 23 of the Charter and judicial decisionsCANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 1 2003Troy Q. Riddell The importance of looking beyond Charter jurisprudence to the broader policy impact of litigation and judicial decisions is revealed. The Supreme Court'sMahé decision was particularly important in putting omle policy on the agenda and for providing Francophone groups with important legal, political and symbolic resources that were effectively exploited to generate policy change. Sommaire: Ce texte soutient que les litiges et la jurisprudence déoulant de l'article 23 de la Charte ont joué un rôle essentiel dam l'élargissement et l'uniformisation de la politique relative à l'enseignement dans la langue de la minorité en dehors du Quebec. Il révèle l'importance de voir au-delè de la Charte quelles ont été les répercussions des litiges et de la jurisprudence sur la politique dans son ensemble. La dkision rendue par la Cour suprême dans l'affaire Mahé a été particulierement importante en mettant à l'ordre du jour la politique de l'enseignement dans la langue de la minorité et en offrant aux groupes francophones d'importantes ressources juridiques, politiques et symboliques dont ils ont effedivement su tirer parti pour engendrer une modification de la politique. [source] The Neighborhood in Cultural Production: Material and Symbolic Resources in the New BohemiaCITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 4 2004Richard Lloyd Drawing on an extended case study of the Chicago neighborhood Wicker Park, this article examines the role that neighborhood space plays in organizing the activities of young artists, showing how an urban district can serve as a factor in aesthetic production. The tendency of artists and fellow travelers to cluster in distinctive (usually older) urban neighborhoods is well known. While in recent decades many scholars have recognized that these creative congregations contribute to residential gentrification and other local patterns of increased capital investment, the benefits that such neighborhoods offer for aspirants in creative pursuits are generally assumed, not explained. I use the Wicker Park case to show how the contemporary artists' neighborhood provides both material and symbolic resources that facilitate creative activity, particularly in the early stages of a cultural producer's career. I further connect these observations to the production of culture as a commodity, showing how select neighborhoods fill quasi-institutional roles in the flexible webs that characterize contemporary culture industries. [source] | ||||||||||