People and places left behind: work,culture and politics in the rural United States

Using interview and survey data, we argue there are three types of places in the rural United States, and that their social and economic conditions help us understand emerging political trends, including the rural support for Donald Trump. More rural votes were cast for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 than in other recent elections, yet shifts to Republican votes were greatest in places undergoing the most significant economic transitions. Work in rural communities has been a source of pride and cultural identity for people as well as places, but many feel the new economy is not working for them.     

Origins and evolution of Maoism in Argentina, 1968–1971

An apparently strange phenomenon in the history of ideas, Maoism was the only new ideological current to emerge in the western Hemisphere after the Second World War. With constant references to popular China, but situated in a local context, Maoism developed as a unique ideology with a particular physiognomy that was forged in the sphere of the political left. In Argentina, the principle organisations that represented it – the Communist Vanguard and the Revolutionary Communist Party – were deeply involved in the class struggles of the industrial proletariat of Córdoba. Following an explication of our understanding of the role of political ideas in labour struggles through the work of the Chilean historical sociologist Tomás Moulian, we describe two foundational phases for these parties: the organisational and ideological. We situate these in the broader context of both the historical development of the working class in Córdoba and the explosive moments of Cordobazo. From here, we assess the tensions and contradictions in these phases and discuss the impact on their efforts to become the ‘vanguard’ party of the working class, thereby showing the importance of tracing the origins and evolution of Maoism for understanding the radical labour history of Córdoba.     

‘East’ and ‘West’ in contemporary Turkey: threads of a new universalism

The tired old civilisational categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’, loosely identified with ‘Islam’ and ‘modernity’, are alive and well, nowhere more so than in contemporary Turkey. The Justice Development Party (AKP) currently in government employs them assiduously to political advantage but they have a long history, having defined the parameters of societal identity and political discourse throughout the history of the Turkish Republic. The paper takes the strength of the categories as its starting point but moves beyond them by asking if discourses, narratives and identities, individual and collective, exist in Turkey which question, overcome and ultimately undermine the categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’. The paper starts by investigating the evolution of ideas about East and West since the late Ottoman period and accepts that they are still dominant. However, since the 1980s in particular, they are being undermined in a de facto way by cultural developments in literature and music, new trends in historiography and novel ways of relating to the past. In some ways in contemporary Turkey, the paper concludes, culture trumps the inherently essentialist idea of ‘civilisation’ and Turkish society is ahead of its political and intellectual elites.     

The culture of skilled work in a Norwegian shipyard, 1945–90

We anatomise the culture of skilled work in the Solheimsviken shipyard in Bergen, Norway, from 1945 to 1990, linking it to democratic impulses within the workforce. This independent culture had strong if bounded democratic elements that were ultimately reflected in the institutions of a worker’s cooperative which operated from 1985. However, a shift away from shipbuilding immediately preceded the cooperative’s foundation and eroded the position of the older skilled workers who had carried the culture, undermining it even before the cooperative’s collapse.     

Culture as Values or Culture in Action? Street Codes and Student Violent Offending

ABSTRACT

The authors draw on two competing cultural perspectives—culture as values and culture in action—to examine the relationship between street codes and the propensity to violently victimize others. Specifically, they explore whether individual-level and school-level street codes, net of one another, are related to 3 types of violence: assault, robbery, and sexual battery. In addition, they consider whether these effects vary according to 3 contextual characteristics: (a) the location of the offending—in school versus out of school, (b) school-level economic disadvantage, and (c) school efficacy. Three-level ordinal logistic regression models are estimated using four waves of survey data from over 3,000 students nested within 103 schools. Results provide evidence that individual-level street codes are related to violent offending in a manner that is, largely speaking, not tied to context. However, there is some evidence that the effects of school-level street codes on offending differ between outside of school and in school settings and are conditioned by levels of school disadvantage and efficacy. Overall, some support is offered for both the culture-as-values and culture-in-action perspectives.     

Single,straight, wants kids: media framing of single,heterosexual fatherhood via assisted reproduction

The new reproductive technologies have made possible various postmodern family forms. I highlight an emerging form that has received little attention: single fathers by choice (SFCs), created by single men using egg donation and surrogacy. I focus on heterosexual SFCs, which have been largely ignored in the scholarly literature even as gay and lesbian parenthood have increasingly become topics of feminist inquiry. This type of fatherhood raises several important questions for gender and family scholars about the ‘traditional’ family, the relationship between masculinity and fatherhood, and men’s own desires for parenthood without a female partner. I analyze US media framing to explore cultural sense-making of SFCs. While media framing cannot tell us about men’s lived experiences as intentional single fathers, it does point to larger discourses that potentially impact these men as they engage in non-normative fathering. I identify three core themes within the media frames: (1) viewing men and women as similar, but ultimately different, (2) addressing the tension between bachelorhood and fatherhood, and (3) representing the gender of paternal desire in multiple, conflicting ways. Overall, I argue that further investigations of SFCs can illuminate issues about men’s desires for children and agency in becoming fathers.     

Call me Caitlyn: making and making over the ‘authentic’ transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture

A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this ‘wrong body’ paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain.     

发扬“工匠精神”对于振兴实体经济的现实意义

自2016年3月5日李克强总理作政府工作报告时首次正式提出"工匠精神"以来,党和国家领导人为振兴实体经济多次提出要发扬"工匠精神"。发扬"工匠精神"对于振兴实体经济有着重大的现实意义。我国实体经济在经济社会转型期表现出的发展缓慢问题,在国际市场上表现竞争力不强问题,根本原因之一就在于我国企业缺乏更多拥有"工匠精神"的高素质职工队伍。培育、关心尤其要大幅提高拥有"工匠精神"品牌职工的待遇和地位,是打造更多享誉世界的"中国品牌"的前提和基础。以弘扬"工匠精神"为目标的职工文化是振兴我国实体经济的有力抓手。     

Assessing Local Government Capacity for Implementing Sustainable Transportation: The Role of Political Culture

Transportation development increasingly relies on local governments to implement sustainable strategies, yet implementation success varies widely. This begs an important question, why are some cities successful and others not? In response, this study focuses on the political culture characteristics of city leadership and staff pertaining to sustainable transportation. Employing semi-structured interviews with officials in two case study cities—Pomona and Pasadena, California—the study identifies and traces the impact of cultural characteristics on network interactions and the resulting transportation innovation. Finally, this research suggests key political and department characteristics that contribute to political cultures that facilitate sustainable transportation development.