Newborn Socialist Things

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Coderre
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Contemporary China is seen as a place of widespread commodification and consumerism, while the preceeding Maoist Cultural Revolution is typically understood as a time when goods were scarce and the state criticized what little consumption was possible. Indeed, with the exception of the likeness and words of Mao Zedong, both the media and material culture of the Cultural Revolution are often characterized as a void out of which the postsocialist world of commodity consumption miraculously sprang fully formed. In Newborn Socialist Things, Laurence Coderre explores the material culture of the Cultural Revolution to show how it paved the way for commodification in contemporary China. Examining objects ranging from retail counters and porcelain statuettes to textbooks and vanity mirrors, she shows how the project of building socialism in China has always been intimately bound up with consumption. By focusing on these objects—or “newborn socialist things”—along with the Cultural Revolution’s media environment, discourses of materiality, and political economy, Coderre reconfigures understandings of the origins of present-day China.

scholarly journals The Fragility of Identity and the Imagination of Otherness in Bai Hua’s novel The Remote Country of Women

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-91
Author(s):  
Tânia Ganito ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Chinese Author ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Drawing on The Remote Kingdom of Women (1988), the novel written by Chinese author Bai Hua (1930-2019), this essay examines how post-Mao China articulated the notions of memory and identity, as well as of belonging and othering, as an attempt to overcome the state of fragility caused by the trauma of the Cultural Revolution and the post-revolutionary growing influence of Western culture. It proposes to explore the way some of the literary works produced during this period were to promote an encounter between a fragmented yet hegemonic culture and the cultures of the internal ethnic Other, and how this encounter between majority and minority subjects was to highlight precisely the condition of fragility that underlies the very concept of identity. Keywords: China; Literature; Bai Hua; Identity; Majority; Minorities.

Zwara (Zuwārah) Berber

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-387
Author(s):  
Carlos Gussenhoven
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Conservative Estimate ◽  
Coastal City ◽  
Scientific Term ◽  
The Media ◽  
Official Status ◽  
The Revolution ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Zwara Berber is a variety of Nafusi (ISO 639-3; Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016) which belongs to the eastern Zenati group within northern Berber (where Berber is the scientific term for Tamazight), a branch of Afro-Asiatic. Zwara (Zuwārah, Zuwara, Zuāra, Zuara, Zouara) is a coastal city located at 32.9° N, 12.1° E in Libya. The speakers refer to themselves as /at ˈwil.lul/ (also /ajt ˈwil.lul/) ‘those of Willul’ and to their specific variety of the language as /t.ˈwil.lult/ ‘the language of Willul’. Having no official status during the Italian colonization of Libya and the first period after the country's independence in 1951, repression of the language became severe after the Cultural Revolution of 1973. Its propagation through teaching and the media fell under a constitutional ban on the denial of the Arab identity of the state, and qualified as such as treason, a capital offense. Until the revolution of 2011 (‘17 February’), the language was therefore not spoken in cultural, educational or governmental domains and could not be taught, printed or broadcast. The number of Tamazight speakers in Libya is estimated at 184,000 in Lewis et al. (2016) and at 560,000 by Chakel & Ferkal (2012). In the absence of a municipal register, the number of inhabitants in Zwara is uncertain. A conservative estimate is between 50,000 and 100,000, which is also the number of speakers of the Zwara variety. Other than through exposure by radio and television, children learn Arabic only from age six, when attending school. Speakers have variable L2 Arabic competence depending on exposure to the language.

The Return of Advertising in China: A Survey of the Ideological Reversal

1990 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 485-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Stross
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
The Third ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
Advanced Capitalist ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

During the 1980s, bracketed by the Third Plenum in 1978 and the suppression of the democracy movement in 1989, China edged, step by step, away from the orthodoxies of the Cultural Revolution, and each reversal excited a certain amount of commentary both within and without China. As time passed, and the list of reintroduced institutions and practices grew ever longer, habituation reduced the surprise of succeeding announcements. But the reintroduction of advertising, a cental totem of advanced capitalist culture, occupied a particularly significant place on the list because its reappearance in China forced the Chinese to reconsider distinctions that had formerly been drawn between capitalist and socialist societies. For most of its history, the People's Republic had castigated advertising as the apotheosis of the capitalist religion of consumption. This was especially so in the late 1960s during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Afterwards few commercial billboards or newspaper advertisements interrupted the skein of relentlessly political messages that crossed public space. When advertising was officially reintroduced in 1979, and its sanctioned scope expanded beyond industrial goods, the state faced a daunting ideological task: rebuilding a case for advertising in a socialist system that had long defined itself as one that did not need commercial exhortation. In essence, it had to sell the legitimacy of selling.

scholarly journals Introduction: Communications Teaching and Research--Looking Forward from 2000

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowland Lorimer
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Research And Development ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The State ◽  
Complex Media ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Media

Abstract: This introductory essay examines the state of Canadian communications scholarship. It maintains that the dominant stance taken by Canadian communications scholars is rooted in a leftist critique of the media that has become both detached from the media and disengaged from informed strategic action. In the context of a complex media environment, the paper argues for a refocusing on communication itself, an embrace of professional training, and, in the context of technological and social change, a research strategy based on research and development. Résumé: Cet article d'introduction examine l'état de la recherche en communication au Canada. Il soutient que le parti-pris prédominant de chercheurs canadiens en communication se fonde sur une critique gauchiste des médias qui au fil du temps s'est détachée à la fois des médias et d'actions stratégiques averties. Tenant compte de la complexité de l'environnement médiatique actuel, cet article appuie un retour à des approches portant sur la communication elle-même, une mise en valeur de l'entraînement professionnel et, dans le contexte de changements technologiques et sociaux, une stratégie de recherche fondée sur recherche et développement.

scholarly journals Navigating New Approaches for Grassroot Community Theatre in a (Post-)Covid World

2021 ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Kerrie Reading
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Cultural Shift ◽  
Community Theatre ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Theatre Companies ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The cultural revolution of 1968 paved the way for many artists to reconsider how and where theatre was made. Community theatre gained currency and one company who became prominent during this cultural shift was Welfare State, later Welfare State International. They were one of the theatre companies who focused not only on a community theatre aesthetic but a grassroot one. I examine the radicality of community theatre and consider the efficacy of the historical approaches to engaging with communities in a (Post-)Covid world. I acknowledge and explore the shifting understanding of communities and assert that a deeper engagement is needed to foster collectivity (Tannahill 2016; Fişek 2019; Weston 2020; Bartley 2021). To reconsider the role that theatre may play in the future, I focus on a grassroot approach to community-led work and posit that location will be a key component to how theatre is made as we emerge from a pandemic.

A Decade of Upheaval

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew G. Walder ◽  
Dong Guoqiang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Rural Regions ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
Political Groups ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This book chronicles the surprising and dramatic political conflicts of a rural Chinese county over the course of the Cultural Revolution. The book uncovers a previously unimagined level of strife in the countryside that began with the Red Guard Movement in 1966 and continued unabated until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Showing how the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution were not limited to urban areas, but reached far into isolated rural regions, the book reveals that the intervention of military forces in 1967 encouraged factional divisions in Feng County because different branches of China's armed forces took various sides in local disputes. The book also lays bare how the fortunes of local political groups were closely tethered to unpredictable shifts in the decisions of government authorities in Beijing. Eventually, a backlash against suppression and victimization grew in the early 1970s and resulted in active protests, which presaged the settling of scores against radical Maoism. A meticulous look at how one overlooked region experienced the Cultural Revolution, the book illuminates the all-encompassing nature of one of the most unstable periods in modern Chinese history.

Beyond Nostalgia

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-92
Author(s):  
Jing Meng
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In Chapter 3, 11 Flowers represents personal and fragmented memories of the Cultural Revolution from an 11-year-old boy’s perspective. These memories challenge the monolithic narrative of history and the Maoist rhetoric of revolution. At the same time, this fragmented narrative mode enables individual agency in narrating and constructing history. In addition, through portrayals of everyday life in the Maoist era, the film reveals how the dominant ideology at that time was strategically misinterpreted by ordinary people and was dispersed in everyday life. Socialism, in this context, becomes a mystery, a joke, and a traumatic awakening. In the lm, art possesses enlightening power for the 11-year-old boy, who begins to obtain self-awareness through painting. The film thus conveys the director’s authorial enunciation and his belief in art as a form of liberation, not only for a boy in the Cultural Revolution but also for Wang Xiaoshuai as a film-maker. The shifting trajectory of Wang’s film-making—from independent to art house—alludes to the shifting relations between film-making, the state, and the market. In 11 Flowers, personal memories become the hallmark of Wang’s auteur expression.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Jing Meng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
First Person ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Autobiography, then, has the unenviable task of confronting, confounding, and even confirming the assumptions, impressions, and (mis)conceptions about the author’s or filmmaker’s identificatory positionings. —Alisa S. Lebow1 1.Alisa S. Lebow, First Person Jewish (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), xviii. Born after the Cultural Revolution, I began to know about that historical event from the odd line in a textbook and through occasional films and television dramas set in that period. To a large extent, filmic representations, be they memoirs or fictions, form the way I perceive and make sense of this historical period that I never experienced. The Cultural Revolution, though known to many people as ten years of turmoil and disaster, seems to me a distant, tough, and yet passionate era. My parents recount anecdotes of their schooldays, and they sometimes even express longing for the ‘good old days’ of innocence and carefreeness. In the 1995 film ...

Chinese Art of the Cultural Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Ma
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The art of the Cultural Revolution in China, created during the ten-year period from 1967 to 1977, includes a large variety of visual materials in different media. Generally characterized by unambiguous and heroic images that appealed to the masses, these artworks became powerful tools of political propaganda. Most scholars attribute the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to the 1965 play HaiRui Dismissed from Office. Written by Wu Han, a local Communist official, the play was a thinly veiled critique of Mao Zedong. Though semi-retired in the early 1960s, Mao was determined to hold on to power by launching a new revolution to reawaken young Chinese people and root out the counterrevolutionary and anti-proletarian elements in society. Under Mao’s directive, people, places, and things representing the Four Olds (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas) were targeted and violently attacked by young people wearing red armbands and carrying the Little Red Book, a collection of quotes by Mao. Party officials, teachers, professors, authors, and artists had their homes raided and were publically dragged out by the Red Guards for public humiliation. In addition, historical and cultural sites were desecrated and vandalized. While the real violence only lasted the first few years, it set the tone of militarism and revolutionary fervor for the next decade, which permeated through all the arts.

The Performance of Industry During the Cultural Revolution: Second Thoughts

1986 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 625-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Michael Field
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Mao Zedong, dissatisfied with the growing ossification of the Party and government bureaucracies, in the spring of 1966 launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He believed that China's youth required a “revolutionary experience” to renew their faith in a revolution that had taken place before most of them had been born or were old enough to remember. The Cultural Revolution (1966–76) quickly became a period of widespread, often violent, social upheaval that affected the performance of industry.

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