Class Distinction (class + distinction)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Class and the Construction of the 19th Century German Male Body

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2002
Berit Elisabeth Dencker
Between 1848 and 1871, the German male identity created by the popular German gymnastics movement became a civilized bourgeois identity, distinguished from an aristocratic identity and one associated with manual labor. Bourgeois gymnasts initiated this process but the rest of the mainly petty bourgeois gymnasts eventually adopted the civilized identity embodied through gymnastics. Complementing studies that show that the bourgeoisie's increasing social dominance was reflected in the class-based restriction of access to voluntary associations, this article shows that it also involved the adoption of practices that expressed a restrictive bourgeois identity. The article challenges previous explanations of changing gymnastics practices and Pierre Bourdieu's emphasis on the role of class distinction in explaining changes in sports practices. [source]


Between love and property: Voice, sentiment, and subjectivity in the reform of daughter's inheritance in Nepal

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2009
LAURA KUNREUTHER
ABSTRACT In this article, I trace the relation between the figure of voice and subjectivity by examining a Nepali reform movement that sought to give daughters a birth right to ancestral property. At its heart was a contest over emerging class and gender subjectivities that were repeatedly defined through the figure of the voice and related practices of address, hailing, and recognition. The competing formations of voice I discuss here entail shifting notions of intimacy. To challenge property relations thus meant to change existing practices of speech, sentiment, and the meaning of voice itself. [voice, sentiment, property, subjectivity, Nepal, gender, class distinction] [source]


Working Through Tradition: Experiential Learning and Formal Training as Markers of Class and Caste in North Indian Block Printing

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 2 2005
Alicia Ory DeNicola
Abstract Located about 40 kilometers west of Jaipur, India, Bagru is home to a nationally renowned cluster of about 100 artisan families who use wooden blocks and rely heavily on regionally manufactured natural dyes to hand print upscale boutique textiles for the world market. As printers have successfully entered into export markets, they have sold their products as "traditional," marking their commodities as distinct from mass-produced, screen-printed textiles made with chemical dyes in urban factories. At the same time, designers have played an important role in introducing these traditional products to a global market, marking their role as "innovative." In this article I argue that the articulation and practice of tradition and innovation within different works, then, serve to mediate and maintain class distinctions in an arena where a rising middle class is still self-consciously creating itself. This article explores the distinctive formal and experiential learning associated with tradition and innovation alongside the discourses that accompany them. What is implicitly at stake in this narrative is the construction and maintenance of a class distinction: one that borrows from local caste understandings of patronage and responsibility at the same time that it manages to negotiate local and global systems,both exploiting and being exploited by the consistently reconstructed boundaries of the market. [source]


Neoliberalism and the Aestheticization of New Middle-Class Landscapes

ANTIPODE, Issue 2 2009
Choon-Piew Pow
Abstract:, If according to Terry Eagleton (The Ideology of the Aesthetic 1990:28), the aesthetic is from the start "a contradictory, double-edged concept", how are seemingly innocent acts of viewing and consuming aesthetically pleasing landscapes implicated in the neoliberal politics of urban restructuring? Using contemporary Shanghai as a case study, this paper critically examines the role of the aesthetic in the politics of exclusion and urban segregation in post-Socialist Shanghai where the restructuring and commodification of erstwhile public welfare housing have led to the rapid development of private "middle-class" gated enclaves. A central objective of this paper is to excavate the underlying cultural politics of neoliberalism and demonstrate how the aestheticization of urban spaces in Shanghai has become increasingly intertwined with and accentuated by neoliberal ideologies and exclusionary practices in the city. Imbricated in the pristine neighborhoods of Shanghai's gated communities are the fault lines of social division and class distinction that are rapidly transforming urban China. [source]


Working Through Tradition: Experiential Learning and Formal Training as Markers of Class and Caste in North Indian Block Printing

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 2 2005
Alicia Ory DeNicola
Abstract Located about 40 kilometers west of Jaipur, India, Bagru is home to a nationally renowned cluster of about 100 artisan families who use wooden blocks and rely heavily on regionally manufactured natural dyes to hand print upscale boutique textiles for the world market. As printers have successfully entered into export markets, they have sold their products as "traditional," marking their commodities as distinct from mass-produced, screen-printed textiles made with chemical dyes in urban factories. At the same time, designers have played an important role in introducing these traditional products to a global market, marking their role as "innovative." In this article I argue that the articulation and practice of tradition and innovation within different works, then, serve to mediate and maintain class distinctions in an arena where a rising middle class is still self-consciously creating itself. This article explores the distinctive formal and experiential learning associated with tradition and innovation alongside the discourses that accompany them. What is implicitly at stake in this narrative is the construction and maintenance of a class distinction: one that borrows from local caste understandings of patronage and responsibility at the same time that it manages to negotiate local and global systems,both exploiting and being exploited by the consistently reconstructed boundaries of the market. [source]