scholarly journals Food and White Multiculturalism: Racial Aesthetics of Commercial Gentrification in Amsterdam’s Javastraat

2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110012
Author(s):  
Elisa Fiore ◽  
Liedeke Plate

In this article, we use Hage’s (2000) critique of White multiculturalism’s orientalizing logic of ethnic enrichment as a lens to analyze the multicultural valorization through ethnic food of the Javastraat, the commercial artery of Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt district. Stemming from a larger ethnographic study of gentrification in the area, the article provides evidence of how racial aesthetics have served as the central guiding principle in the transformation of the neighborhood from a dark space of grime, crime, and decay to the current space of hipness, coolness, and global culture. While being celebrated as a living example of multicultural society in the inner city, we argue that the area embodies a multicultural reality in which White, middle-class residents, and visitors are the prime occupiers of space and aesthetic organizing principle of the neighborhood’s landscape.

Author(s):  
Anna Bull

Through an ethnographic study of young people playing and singing in classical music ensembles in the south of England, this book analyses why classical music in England is predominantly practiced by white middle-class people. It describes four ‘articulations’ or associations between the middle classes and classical music. Firstly, its repertoire requires formal modes of social organization that can be contrasted with the anti-pretentious, informal, dialogic modes of participation found in many forms of working-class culture. Secondly, its modes of embodiment reproduce classed values such as female respectability. Thirdly, an imaginative dimension of bourgeois selfhood can be read from classical music’s practices. Finally, its aesthetic of detail, precision, and ‘getting it right’ requires a long-term investment that is more possible, and makes more sense, for middle- and upper-class families. Through these arguments, the book reframes existing debates on gender and classical music participation in light of the classed gender identities that the study revealed. Overall, the book suggests that inequalities in cultural production can be understood through examining the practices that are used to create a particular aesthetic. It argues that the ideology of the ‘autonomy’ of classical music from social concerns needs to be examined in historical context as part of the classed legacy of classical music’s past. It describes how the aesthetic of classical music is a mechanism through which the middle classes carry out boundary-drawing around their protected spaces, and within these spaces, young people’s participation in classical music education cultivates a socially valued form of self-hood.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-230
Author(s):  
Ronit Elk ◽  
Shena Gazaway

AbstractCultural values influence how people understand illness and dying, and impact their responses to diagnosis and treatment, yet end-of-life care is rooted in white, middle class values. Faith, hope, and belief in God’s healing power are central to most African Americans, yet life-preserving care is considered “aggressive” by the healthcare system, and families are pressured to cease it.


2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Scanlan

This study creates life history portraits of two White middle-class native-English-speaking principals demonstrating commitments to social justice in their work in public elementary schools serving disproportionately high populations of students who are marginalized by poverty, race, and linguistic heritage. Through self-reported life histories of these principals, I create portraits that illustrate how these practitioners draw motivation, commitment, and sustenance in varied, complicated, and at times contradictory ways.


Author(s):  
Lee Iskander

People who are nonbinary—one of many kinds of trans identity that do not fit neatly within a man/woman binary—face particular challenges when seeking employment in P–12 schools, which have historically been places where rigid gender norms are strictly enforced. This paper draws on semistructured interviews conducted in 2018 to explore how 16 nonbinary educators navigated the process of finding, securing, and keeping jobs in Canadian and American schools. I found that most participants were concerned about securing a job or potentially losing their job or their safety at work because others might be inhospitable to their gender identity or expression. At the same time, participants had strategies to ensure that they found and kept jobs they were comfortable with, such as investigating a school’s support for queer and trans people, forging positive relationships with administrators and staff, and presenting their gender in particular ways during the hiring process. This study illustrates the limitations of individualistic, tokenizing forms of trans inclusion and reveals the continued prevalence of gender normativity in schools, despite a rapidly shifting gender landscape. While trans inclusion, at least on the surface, may be a selling point for some schools, trans people continue to face barriers when the underlying structures that privilege White, middle-class, cisgender, and heteronormative gender expression remain intact. I argue that, if trans people are to be fully supported in the education workplace, an intersectional and broadly transformative approach to gender justice is necessary.


1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Schurman

Explores the creative roles men might play in a human liberation movement in which their privileged position will need to be modified. Sees pastoral counselors as “hope agents” who may faciliate the transition of men to new and different roles in which patriarchy will play less and less of a role in society. Details specific ways in which the loss of patriarchy can lead to a fresh and creative equality in which both men and women will experience new freedoms.


2001 ◽  
pp. 271-292
Author(s):  
Melvyn L. Fein

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Carroll

Who counts as a gay father? The answer to this question reaches beyond demographics, encompassing histories of family inequality, LGBTQ identity, and social movements. Presentations of gay fathers in the media and scholarship are often skewed toward white, middle-class, coupled men who became parents via adoption or surrogacy. Yet the demographic majority of gay parents continue to have children in heterosexual unions. My dissertation research uses ethnographic and interview data to argue that contemporary narratives of gay fatherhood have prematurely dismissed gay parents who have children in heterosexual unions. The choice to exclude gay fathers via heterosexual unions can be attributed to emerging narratives of LGBTQ identity and political strategies of the marriage equality movement. The consequences of gay fathers’ disproportionate visibility have led to a stratified system of access to gay parenting resources. By identifying the mechanisms that undermine gay fathers’ diversity in the public imagination and in gay parenting community settings, my dissertation amplifies the voices of marginalized gay fathers and offers an intersectional approach to the study of LGBTQ families through a social movements framework.


2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Sleeter

This chapter presents an interpretation of why the category of learning disabilities emerged, that differs from interpretations that currently prevail. It argues that the category was created in response to social conditions during the late 1950s and early 1960s which brought about changes in schools that were detrimental to children whose achievement was relatively low. The category was created by white middle class parents in an effort to differentiate their children from low-achieving low-income and minority children. The category offered their children a degree of protection from probable consequences of low achievement because it upheld their intellectual normalcy and the normalcy of their home backgrounds, and it suggested hope for a cure and for their ability eventually to attain higher status occupations than other low achievers.


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