Camping with Bigfoot: Sasquatch and the Varieties of Middle-Class Resistance to Consumer Culture in Late Twentieth-Century North America

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-58
Author(s):  
Joshua Blu Buhs
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Beckett's Present Moments

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-25
Author(s):  
Rodney Sharkey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
European Society ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

As a comfortable middle-class Protestant in Southern Ireland, Beckett was well placed to live the life of what Badiou ironically refers to as ‘the deserving body’ (59). However, Beckett moved beyond such home comforts to witness at close hand some of the most disruptive moments of twentieth century European history. This essay proposes that his work is both a manifestation of that history and a complex response to it in its content, and, particularly, in its form. In Aesthetic Theory, Theodore Adorno proposes that ‘the unsolved antagonisms of reality return in artworks as immanent problems of form’ (7). Exemplifying Adorno's proposition that ‘aesthetic form is sedimented context’ (9) Beckett's work remains disruptive of Western late capital commodification through the restatement of historical antagonisms that involve characters having to choose between privilege and impoverishment, quietism and protest, and being and its obliteration. The result is a body of work that continues to present, for its readers’ consideration, the parameters of a politics of choice which are repeatedly instantiated by the traces of the tumultuous history the work carries within itself. As the decisions facing Beckett's characters reflected those faced by late twentieth century European society, so too his work now resonates in the present moment as the contemporary world struggles in the shadow of neo-liberal capitalism and COVID-19.

scholarly journals Changes of Glaciers and Climate in Northwestern North America during the Late Twentieth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (15) ◽  
pp. 4117-4134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Arendt ◽  
John Walsh ◽  
William Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Recent Period ◽  
Freezing Level ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Air Temperatures ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Climate Station ◽  
Northwestern North America ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract About 75% of 46 glaciers measured using repeat airborne altimetry in Alaska and northwestern Canada have been losing mass at an increasing rate from the mid-1990s to the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, relative to an earlier period beginning in the 1950s–70s. The remaining glaciers have been either gaining mass during the more recent period or continuing to lose mass, but at a decreasing rate. Temperature and precipitation data at 67 climate stations were examined to explain these changes. Nearly all significant changes in winter (October–April) and summer (May–September) air temperatures were positive (2.0° ± 0.8° and 1.0° ± 0.4°C) between 1950 and 2002, and all seasonally averaged values of freezing level heights (FLH) increased during the same time period. A small increase in precipitation was observed, but these changes were significant at only 17% of the stations. Regional glacier changes, modeled using mass balance sensitivities and climate station temperature and precipitation changes, agreed with observations to within the limits of reported errors. Seasonal variations in accumulation resulted in large uncertainties in the recent period mass variations. In nearly all regions, increasing summer temperatures accounted for most of the glacier mass losses. FLH variations show that the maritime glacier systems are more sensitive to variations in the mean position of the winter FLH than interior regions, suggesting that strong winter warming has affected these regions in addition to the summer changes. These measurements augment the increasingly strong evidence of late twentieth-century climate change in northwestern North America.

Walls of Silence and Late Twentieth Century Representations of the Foreign Female Domestic Worker: The Case of Filipina and Indonesian Female Servants in Malaysia

1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine B. N. Chin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Domestic Worker ◽  
Labor Legislation ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Employment Agencies

This article analyzes the distinct ways in which public walls of silence continue to surround the absence of labor rights and benefits for foreign female domestic workers in the receiving country of Malaysia. Key state and nonstate actors involved in regulating and/or encouraging Filipina and Indonesian female domestic workers’ migration to, and employment in, Malaysia are identified. It is argued that the actions and perceptions of labor-sending and receiving state officials, middle-class employers, and representatives from private domestic employment agencies have had the effect of representing Filipina and Indonesian female domestic workers respectively as economic soldiers, criminal-prostitutes and pariahs, girl-slaves, and/or commodities. Taken individually and collectively, such representations obscure the fact that foreign female domestic workers are workers who ought to be protected by labor legislation.

scholarly journals Tree-Ring-Reconstructed Summer Temperatures from Northwestern North America during the Last Nine Centuries*

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (10) ◽  
pp. 3001-3012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin J. Anchukaitis ◽  
Rosanne D. D’Arrigo ◽  
Laia Andreu-Hayles ◽  
David Frank ◽  
Anne Verstege ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Tree Ring ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Latewood Density ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Summer Temperatures ◽  
Northwestern North America ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract Northwestern North America has one of the highest rates of recent temperature increase in the world, but the putative “divergence problem” in dendroclimatology potentially limits the ability of tree-ring proxy data at high latitudes to provide long-term context for current anthropogenic change. Here, summer temperatures are reconstructed from a Picea glauca maximum latewood density (MXD) chronology that shows a stable relationship to regional temperatures and spans most of the last millennium at the Firth River in northeastern Alaska. The warmest epoch in the last nine centuries is estimated to have occurred during the late twentieth century, with average temperatures over the last 30 yr of the reconstruction developed for this study [1973–2002 in the Common Era (CE)] approximately 1.3° ± 0.4°C warmer than the long-term preindustrial mean (1100–1850 CE), a change associated with rapid increases in greenhouse gases. Prior to the late twentieth century, multidecadal temperature fluctuations covary broadly with changes in natural radiative forcing. The findings presented here emphasize that tree-ring proxies can provide reliable indicators of temperature variability even in a rapidly warming climate.

How Poetry Matters

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kosick
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Visual Poetry ◽  
Concrete Poetry ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Linguistic Material

This chapter opens a discussion of how language’s vitality registers in and as material. It assesses the reception of material poetics in late twentieth century North America and compares the examples featured in this book with other investments in poetic materiality. The chapter offers a discussion of the term ‘concrete poetry’ which has lost some of the contextual specificity that historically adhered to it. This history is proved as a way of situating Brazilian concretism and as a way of distinguishing the term’s use from other names for sympathetic forms such as ‘visual poetry’. This chapter makes the case for the term ‘material poetics’ and demonstrates how many of the hybrid linguistic-material practices in the Americas built on early theorisations of language’s matter, which were undertaken with notable depth by the so-called ‘noigandres’ group of Brazilian concrete poets. Literary studies’ adoption of theories of objects and matter are explored along with debates within literary studies that investigate how we read. The introduction takes this book’s featured artists and poets to be its primary theorists and works to test and reframe contemporary thinking on objects by positing the matter of language as its object of study.

Decreasing Reliability and Increasing Synchroneity of Western North American Streamflow

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 613-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaleen Jain ◽  
Martin Hoerling ◽  
Jon Eischeid
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
North America ◽  
Atmospheric Circulation ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Hydrologic Change ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Major River ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract Assessing climate-related societal vulnerability and mitigating impacts requires timely diagnosis of the nature of regional hydrologic change. A late-twentieth-century emergent trend is discovered toward increasing year-to-year variance (decreasing reliability) of streamflow across the major river basins in western North America—–Fraser, Columbia, Sacramento–San Joaquin, and Upper Colorado. Simultaneously, a disproportionate increase in the incidence of synchronous flows (simultaneous high or low flows across all four river basins) has resulted in expansive water resources stress. The observed trends have analogs in wintertime atmospheric circulation regimes and ocean temperatures, raising new questions on the detection, attribution, and projection of regional hydrologic change induced by climate.

scholarly journals Comunicação e as transformações na cultura do consumo

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 208
Author(s):  
Tarcyanie Cajueiro Santos
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Good Image ◽  
Emotional Connection ◽  
Research Communication ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Este artigo faz parte da pesquisa “Comunicação, consumo e novas subjetividades: um estudo sobre as práticas mediáticas na sociedade”, financiada pela FAPESP. Nele, analisamos a sociedade da comunicação e da cultura de consumo, que se difunde nas sociedades do final do século XX e início do XXI, buscando compreender as transformações que têm ocorrido em sua esfera e o modo como incide nas subjetividades contemporâneas. Para tanto nos detemos no campo da publicidade e do marketing. Do ponto de vista do campo publicitário e dos anúncios, nota-se uma mudança de valores onde o empreendimento voltado para a “construção da marca” objetiva criar uma boa imagem da empresa. Do ponto de vista do marketing, busca-se estabelecer uma relação emocional com o consumidor, objetivando satisfações intangíveis, que produzem reações sensoriais. **************************************************** ABSTRACT This essay is part of the research “Communication, consumption and new subjectivities: a study of media practices in society”, financed by FAPESP. It focuses on the communication society and consumer culture, which is spreading on the societies in the late twentieth century and the beginning of the century. We are seeking to understand the changes that have occurred in this societies and how it reverberates on contemporary subjectivities. For that we’ve focused on advertising and marketing. From the view of the advertising, there is a change of values where the “branding” aims to create a good image of the company. Marketing instead establish an emotional connection with consumers, aiming intangible satisfactions that produce sensoryreactions.

A study of/on India’s middle class

Novos Debates ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Soumodip Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Economic Liberalization ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

In order to establish the context of its emergence and the contemporary nature of the Indian middle class, this paper briefly presents its intricate link with colonialism and with economic liberalization. While this debate is focused and concentrated on the discussions in India, it also outlines how international approaches have been used to study it. In doing so, it assesses the ways in which contemporary scholarship is expanding on the theories of class as designed by late nineteenth and early twentieth century thinkers, Karl Marx and Max Weber. It then examines how the ideas of late twentieth century theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu are integrated in understanding and comprehending the new middle class in its relationship with capitalism.

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