1811 research outputs found
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The Value in Imperfect Endeavors: Exploring Postcapitalist and Prefigurative Practices at East Wind Intentional Community
Get PDFFrom the emergence of modern capitalism, people have searched for alternatives through building communal societies. The 1960s hippie movement in the United States inspired a surge of communal living, centered around non-violence and living in balance with the environment. The East Wind Intentional Community, an income-sharing egalitarian commune in Missouri, was born of this movement and still exists today, as people continuously look for ways to escape the “rat race” of mainstream society, 9-5 jobs, and economic insecurity arising from a globalized and neoliberal economic system. My research, grounded in interviews and participant observation, focuses on East Wind’s relationship with capitalism and how its members practice a less exploitative present and future for themselves. Using a constructive lens of prefigurative politics, I argue that outsiders should stop judging intentional communities with outcome-oriented frameworks and comparisons to utopia, and I advocate we instead look at the processes and relationships present in these postcapitalist systems. When looking at prefigurative politics and postcapitalism in relation, one sees that complexities and contradictions are not indicative of failure, and imperfection is inevitable. I discuss the prefigurative processes that East Winders engage with in order to live their values of autonomy and egalitarianism, the tradeoffs involved in decentralizing power, and the contradictions and complexities in management within community. I weave postcapitalist theory throughout to show how East Winders still participates in capitalism but engages in daily practices to live less exploitatively and more equally than the capitalist “status quo.” Finally, I conclude that with a prefigurative postcapitalist framework, communities such as East Wind can be realistically understood as successful, serving as a model of what is possible for the rest of American society
Consuming Ideology: Advertising, Algorithms, and Individuation
No full textIt is difficult, if not impossible, to navigate the internet nowadays without encountering a single advertisement. Multinational corporations have co-opted the popularization of images to forward marketing tactics and increase profits by inundating consumers with advertisements with every click and scroll. The internet—and its escalating circulation of images—once functioned as an arena for a developing mass culture through its potential for images to reach further and wider to bring people together. The recent mechanisms by which companies target consumers with ads, though, have shaped the internet into an increasingly more divisive space. Through data accumulation and algorithmic selection, corporations carefully construct and display images with which to target individual consumers, veiling the process along the way. Advertisements reflect particular political and cultural ideologies—social justice initiatives, for example— with which consumers are meant to identify, as they receive advertisements that align with views they exhibit in prior internet activity; this identification, then, motivates purchases. The ads we view, the products we buy, and the ideologies they reflect, therefore, reify the division of our current political moment. I am interested in examining how advertisements achieve this goal in two ways: first, their use of visual signs to reflect certain political/ cultural ideologies, and second, the processes/ technologies by which these images are shown to consumers
Unpacking The Imposed: The Colonial Binary, Hijras, and the Queering of India
Get PDFMost scholarship concerning hijras and other queer groups in India are limited to the late 1990s and early 2000s. Originally, my project sought to rely on primary source materials mainly from the National Archive located in New Delhi. I requested that some key documents be digitized prior to the second Indian lockdown early in the summer. Therefore, my project became more of an historiographical project, relying on two main monographs, several scholarly articles, and interviews with leading scholars of hijras. Three main sections comprise this work: précis of the two main monographs that have been published to date on hijras, a sketch of my own theory of regime construction of gender and sexual in India that is derived from my broader reading in the field this summer, and a series of academic interviews I completed with experts of South Asia, gender & sexuality, family, and imperialism
“We’re Just Trying to Get Through It”: Looking at the Main Concerns of Mothers During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFOver the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly informed the way that people conduct their lives. Kitchen tables and spare bedrooms have been turned into office spaces and classrooms, trips to the grocery store have been replaced by curbside delivery services, and significant life events like weddings and graduations have been “attended” through computer screens. Mothers have been particularly impacted by the consequences of COVID-19: in addition to employment and caregiving responsibilities, they are more likely than fathers to oversee their children’s at-home education. Immersed in the world of “pandemic mothering,” this research draws on responses from middle-class and working-class mothers to the question “How has the pandemic affected you?” The answers these women provide shed light on the way in which social class influences the life experiences of modern American individuals. Working-class mothers are more likely to be part of “essential worker” households and express concern about their families’ financial situations, while middle-class mothers tend to define themselves and their family members as “very social people” and describe their inability to socialize regularly due to COVID-19 restrictions. Although more research is needed to fully understand class differences in perceptions of the pandemic, this study reveals how class inequality is reproduced, a process that has only been exacerbated by COVID-19
Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Development in Transylvanian Rural Landscapes
Get PDFCommunities constantly produce and reinforce notions of cultural heritage in their expressions of identity and memory. Especially in rural communities, this process of engaging with heritage is deeply rooted in a landscape, embedded in how people experience connection with the landscape. Preservation of this heritage greatly influences senses of social, cultural, and historical identity at individual, community, and nation levels. As contexts that express a unique sense of place, rural traditional landscapes encounter threats to their heritage in the face of modern development, unemployment, and changing policies. In this paper, we explore the potential for community engagement rooted in archaeology and how it can play a role in sustainable development of rural landscapes. In particular, we present several ongoing projects focused on the prehistoric archaeology of rural landscapes in Alba County, Transylvania. Drawing on theories of placemaking, memory, and monumentality, this paper explores the strong connection between people and place over time as a justification for drawing upon archaeology to reimagine how communities engage with landscape in the present and future. We highlight the potential for community-based cultural heritage revitalization as a way to promote sustainable development in Transylvania’s rural landscapes. Knowledge of how people of the past engaged with landscape gives opportunity to reinterpret how people engage with landscape and their cultural heritage. As it is argued, projects geared towards sustainable cultural heritage preservation ignite cultural pride and encourage cultural expression, maintained through social memory creation and key economic opportunities and benefits across different scales. Ultimately, archaeology in concert with community-engaged cultural heritage outreach efforts can be useful to counterbalance urbanization and enhance investment in rural communities
HR Executive Perspectives on Alignment with Executive Strategy: Conclusions from Six Conversational Interviews
Get PDFHuman Resources (HR) scholarship often frames aligning and supporting firm strategy as a foundational goal for HR executives. Strategic alignment is heralded with enabling better decision making and increasing companies’ chances of success. Yet the literature on HR executives’ alignment with executive strategies often lacks input from the most important source: HR leaders themselves. Drawing conclusions from interviews with six HR executives, this paper illustrates how HR executives view their role within executive leadership, how they attempt to align with firm strategy, and how they cooperate with and challenge other executives as they attempt to work on behalf of employees. While cooperation with executive leadership and alignment with firm strategy is central to HR leadership, this paper reveals the importance of effectively challenging other executives’ notions of success and employee needs. Working as representatives of employees, effectively shaping firm strategy to represent the needs of employees emerges as a vital goal for HR executives, on par with strategy alignment. Often as the sole people-focused voice in the executive team, HR leaders must work not only to align with firm strategy but to challenge cutthroat executive decision making to include and prioritize employee concerns
Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis
No full textImmigrants and Comics is an interdisciplinary, themed anthology that focuses on how comics have played a crucial role in representing, constructing, and reifying the immigrant subject and the immigrant experience in popular global culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Nhora Lucía Serrano and a diverse group of contributors examine immigrant experience as they navigate new socio-political milieux in cartoons, comics, and graphic novels across cultures and time periods. They interrogate how immigration is portrayed in comics and how the ‘immigrant’ was an indispensable and vital trope to the development of the comics medium in the twentieth century. At the heart of the book‘s interdisciplinary nexus is a critical framework steeped in the ideas of remembrance and commemoration, what Pierre Nora calls lieux de mémoire.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, English, Ethnic Studies, Francophone Studies, American Studies, Hispanic Studies, art history, and museum studies.https://digitalcommons.hamilton.edu/books/1110/thumbnail.jp
Unsung Heroines: Why Do Mothers Feel Forgotten?
Get PDFThough our project titled Unintentional Homeschoolers: Navigating At-Home Learning and Care During a Global Pandemic initially began in May 2020, the continuation of this project in January 2021 enabled us to draw data from across diverse race and class backgrounds. I, alongside three interviewers and Professor Mahala Stewart, had the opportunity to talk with 22 mothers about their daily schedules, social life adjustments, the division of household chores, and their general feelings regarding mothering under COVID-19. While the study taught us a number of things like the toll parenting and employment under a global pandemic has on mothers’ mental health, the one thing I believe was incredibly important to highlight was how these women, regardless of their race and class, had become the unsung heroines of COVID-19. The vulnerability and honesty present in their stories are a testament of how difficult being a mother can be in a time where the feeling of solitude and subconscious sentiments of guilt are belittled and perceived as weak by external audiences. For this reason, this blog works to make the invisible visible: Mothers are resilient, caring, and strong, and in the same way that we applaud for healthcare workers and teachers, we must applaud for mothers as well