Disease and hygiene in the construction of a nation: The public sphere, public space, and the private domain in Buenos Aires, 1871–1910

The maturation of the public sphere in Argentina during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a critical element in the nation-building process and the overall development of the modern state. Within the context of this evolution, the discourse of disease generated intense debates that subsequently influenced policies that transformed the public spaces of Buenos Aires and facilitated state intervention within the private domains of the city’s inhabitants. Under the banner of hygiene and public health, municipal officials thus Europeanized the nation’s capital through the construction of parks and plazas and likewise utilized the press to garner support for the initiatives that would remedy the unsanitary conditions and practices of the city. Despite promises to the contrary, the improvements to the public spaces of Buenos Aires primarily benefited the porteño elite while the efforts to root out disease often targeted working-class neighborhoods. The model that reformed the public space of Buenos Aires, including its socially differentiated application of aesthetic order and public health policies, was ultimately employed throughout the Argentine Republic as the consolidated political elite rolled out its national program of material and social development.

A face humana do complexo industrial da CU.F. : Um património a preservar

Tendo por base o contexto histórico e patrimonial no qual se desenvolveu o interesse pelo património industrial em Portugal, a partir do último quartel do século passado, este trabalho procura ser um contributo para a valorização histórica e patrimonial de um espaço industrial de grandes dimensões como foi o caso do Complexo Industrial da C.U.F. no Barreiro. O trabalho estrutura-se em duas partes, na primeira parte abordamos o tema Património Industrial na sua génese e enquadramento histórico como conceito e suas perspetivas de preservação e valorização; seguidamente faremos uma pequena síntese histórica do Barreiro até ao Complexo Industrial da C.U.F., onde abordaremos também o aumento populacional e o crescimento urbano, passando pelo problema da habitação e o surgimento dos Bairros Operários até aos espaços de lazer e catividades culturais ligadas ao Operariado, não esquecendo as estruturas de saúde, assistência, lazer e as politicas sociais. Na segunda parte abordaremos a importância de valorizar o património industrial e consequentemente o Complexo Industrial com a proposta de um programa de valorização do mesmo, através da criação de núcleos museológicos e de um roteiro de Património Industrial. ABSTRACT: The Human Facet of the Industrial Complex of C.U.F.- a Heritage to Preserve The foundation of this Project is the historical heritage for which developed the interest in Portugal's industrial heritage from the last quarter of the past century. This project has the intention to contribute to the historical and heritage valorization of one of the biggest industrial complexes, which was the case of the Industrial Complex C.U.F. in Barreiro. This project has two parts, the first part will be about defining the theme of industrial heritage and its genesis and the historical setting as a concept and its perspectives of preservation and valorization; afterwards, we will do a small historical synopsis of Barreiro including the Industrial Complex of C.U.F., where we will also refer to the increase in population growth and the urban development, followed by the housing problem and consequently the increase of working class neighborhoods, even to the prices of leisure and culture activities related to the working class, not forgetting the health structures, assistance, leisure and social politics. ln the second part, we will also talk about the importance of valorizing industrial heritage, and subsequently the Industrial Complex, with a proposal of a valorization programme of the Complex with the creation of a museological core as well as an industrial heritage guide.

Class contestations and Australia’s resource boom : the emergence of the ‘cashed-up bogan’

This article examines the figure of the ‘Cashed-up Bogan’ or ‘Cub’ in Australian media from 2006 to 2009. It explains that ‘Bogan’, like that of ‘Chav’ in Britain, is a widely engaged negative descriptor for the white working-class poor. In contrast, ‘Cubs’ have economic capital. This capital, and the Cub’s emergence, is linked to Australia’s resource boom of recent decades when the need for skilled labour allowed for a highly demarcated segment of the working class to earn relatively high incomes in the mining sector and to participate in consumption. We argue that access to economic capital has provided the Cub with mobility to enter the everyday spaces of the middle class, but this has caused disruption and anxiety to middle-class hegemony. As a result, the middle class has redrawn and reinforced class-infused symbolic and cultural boundaries, whereby, despite their wealth, pernicious media representations mark Cubs as ‘other’ to the middle-class deservingness, taste and morality.

Literacy, place, and pedagogies of possibility: Working against residualization effects and deficit discourses in poor school communities

Australia has a long history of policy attention to the education of poor and working-class youth (Connell, 1994), yet currently on standardized educational outcomes measures the gaps are widening in ways that relate to social background, including race, location and class. An economic analysis of school choice in Australia reveals that a high proportion of government school students now come from lower Socio-Economic Status (SES) backgrounds (Ryan & Watson, 2004), indicating a trend towards a gradual residualisation of the poor in government schools, with increased private school enrolments as a confirmed national trend. The spatial distribution of poverty and the effects on school populations are not unique to Australia (Lupton, 2003; Lipman, 2011; Ryan, 2010). Raffo and colleagues (2010) recently provided a synthesis of socially critical approaches towards schooling and poverty arguing that what is needed are shifts in the balances of power to reposition those within the educational system as having some say in the ways schooling is organized. ‘Disadvantaged’ primary schools are not a marginal concern for education systems, but now account for a large and growing number of schools that serve an ever increasing population being made redundant, in part-time precarious work, under-employed or unemployed (Thomson 2002; Smyth, Down et al 2010). In Australia, the notion of the ‘disadvantaged’ school now refers to those, mostly public schools, being residualised by a politics of parental choice that drives neoliberalising policy logic (Bonner & Caro 2007; Hattam & Comber, forthcoming 2014; Thomson & Reid, 2003)...

A feminist trade union agenda? The continued significance of class, gender and race.

During the 1990s attempts to identify a feminist trade union agenda have focused on both the content and process of such a potential agenda. In a period in which trade unions have changed significantly, the general national agenda appears to be changing, acknowledging issues of importance to women. UNISON, Britain's largest trade union, has enshrined proportionality and fair representation in its constitution, developing national initiatives aimed at improving opportunities in work and in the union for women, black workers, manual workers, disabled workers, etc. who traditionally have been less well represented. Many issues affecting women generally have moved to centre stage, yet issues affecting women ancillary workers seem as excluded as ever. Through a study of cleaners in the National Health Service this article argues that workplace interests reflect wider social divisions, but in a variety of patterns depending on the social organization of work. Despite thewidening trade union agenda, particular interests — more specifically the workplace interests of working-class women and black women — continue to be neglected.

Social Class Variation in Risk: A Comparative Analysis of the Dynamics of Economic Vulnerability

A joint concern with multidimensionality and dynamics is a defining feature of the pervasive use of the terminology of social exclusion in the European Union. The notion of social exclusion focuses attention on economic vulnerability in the sense of exposure to risk and uncertainty. Sociological concern with these issues has been associated with the thesis that risk and uncertainty have become more pervasive and extend substantially beyond the working class. This paper combines features of recent approaches to statistical modelling of poverty dynamics and multidimensional deprivation in order to develop our understanding of the dynamics of economic vulnerability. An analysis involving nine countries and covering the first five waves of the European Community Household Panel shows that, across nations and time, it is possible to identify an economically vulnerable class. This class is characterized by heightened risk of falling below a critical resource level, exposure to material deprivation and experience of subjective economic stress. Cross-national differentials in persistence of vulnerability are wider than in the case of income poverty and less affected by measurement error. Economic vulnerability profiles vary across welfare regimes in a manner broadly consistent with our expectations. Variation in the impact of social class within and across countries provides no support for the argument that its role in structuring such risk has become much less important. Our findings suggest that it is possible to accept the importance of the emergence of new forms of social risk and acknowledge the significance of efforts to develop welfare states policies involving a shift of opportunities and decision making on to individuals without accepting the 'death of social class' thesis.

Explaining Social Class Inequalities in Smoking: The Role of Education, Self-Efficacy, and Deprivation

Rates of smoking have decreased dramatically in most Northern European countries over the last 50 years or so, but manual working class groups are substantially more likely to smoke daily than are the professional and managerial classes. This article examines three hypotheses about the processes producing these inequalities. The first argues that social class inequalities reflect differences across education groups in knowledge of the risks of smoking. The second suggests that the living conditions of lower social class groups leads to the development of lower self-efficacy and a lower propensity to quit smoking. The third states that smoking has a functional use among poorer individuals. This article draws upon data from the Republic of Ireland to assess these hypotheses. Our analysis provides some support for the first hypothesis in that education independently reduces the odds of a manual class person smoking relative to a non-manual by 12 per cent. The second hypothesis is not supported by the data. The third hypothesis gains the most support: measures of disadvantage and deprivation account for almost one-third of the class differential in smoking. The results suggest that smoking cessation policy should reflect the importance of social and economic context in quitting behaviour.

Marginalization, deprivation, and fatalism in the Republic of Ireland. Class and underclass perspectives

The emergence of large-scale long-term unemployment in the Republic of Ireland suggests that it might provide an interesting case to which to apply the concept of an 'underclass'. In this paper we explore the relationship between labour-market marginality, deprivation, and fatalism. The available evidence in relation to both social isolation and milieu effects suggests that the term 'underclass' can have only a very limited applicability in the Irish case. Instead, what we ate confronted with is different types of working-class marginalization arising from the rapid and uneven nature of class transformation in Ireland and changing patterns of emigration. In relation to what we have termed 'pervasive marginalization' the costs of economic change have been borne disproportionately by those members of the younger cohorts originating in the lower working class rather than by those in particular locations. The evidence relating to the social and psychological consequences of labour-market detachment, rather than providing support for the value of an 'underclass' perspective, confirms the continued relevance of class analysis.

‘Reconsidering Dermot Bolger’s Grotesquery: Class and Sexuality in The Journey Home’

Dermot Bolger's The Journey Home (1990) narrates an often hyperbolic and overblown diatribe against a litany of social and political ills, which elicited frequently critical responses to the novel from reviewers. Yet Bolger's seminal work remains both popular and controversial because of its capacity to shock and upbraid the false morality of Irish society--a society that the author considered to be riven by class inequalities and official abuses. Bolger employs sexual abuse as a metonym for political corruption in the novel, and this essay explores The Journey Home's surreal story of youth in a working-class Dublin suburb in light of more recent revelations of Ireland's legacy of institutional sexual abuse.

Keep calm and don't mention class:Popular culture and the crisis of neoliberalism

This article explores recent developments in cultural studies debates regarding the representation of class in British and Irish life.

‘A dance for all the outcasts’: Class and Postcolonialism in Brendan Behan’s An Giall and The Hostage

As Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi argue, ‘translation does not happen in a vacuum, but in a continuum; it is not an isolated act, it is part of an ongoing process of intercultural transfer’. In understanding Brendan Behan's most celebrated and controversial translation, of his spare Irish language play An Giall (1958) to its riotous English counterpart The Hostage (1958), understanding the problematic ‘intercultural transfer’ between British and Irish life in the 1950s is crucial. Comparisons between both works reveal significant changes that illuminate Behan's relationship with both nations and provide a sometimes oblique metacommentary regarding his most pressing political and personal anxieties. Yet for all their differences, the plays also share a common desire to transcend the divisions forged by the colonial experience through critical understandings of life on either side of the Irish Sea. In this essay, I argue that Behan's act of transculturation reveals a great deal more reflexivity and depth than many of his critics would allow, developing an iconoclastic dialogue between British and Irish mid-century life.

Charabancs and Social Class in 1930s Britain

The renowned writer J. B. Priestley suggested in 1934 that the motor-coach had annihilated the old distinction between rich and poor passengers in Britain. This article considers how true this was by examining the relationship between charabancs, motor coaches and class. It shows that this important vehicle of inter-war working class mobility had a complicated relationship with class, identifying three distinct forms of this method of travel. It positions the charabanc alongside historical responses to unwelcome steamer and railway day-trippers, and examines how resorts provided separate class-based entertainment for these holidaymakers. Using the case study of a new charabancwelcoming pub, the Prospect Inn, it proposes that, in the late 1930s, some pubs were beginning to offer charabanc customers facilities that were almost the match of their middle class equivalent. Motor coaches and charabancs contributed to the process of social convergence in inter-war Britain.

The troubling concept of class: reflecting on our ‘failure’ to encourage sociology students to re-cognise their classed locations using autobiographical methods

The troubling concept of class: reflecting on our ‘failure’ to encourage sociology students to re-cognise their classed locations using autobiographical methods Abstract This paper provides a narrative of the four authors‟ commitment to auto/biographical methods as teachers and researchers in „new‟ universities. As they went about their work, they observed that, whereas students engage with the gendered, sexualised and racialised processes when negotiating their identities, they are reluctant or unable to conceptualise „class-ifying‟ processes as key determinants of their life chances. This general inability puzzled the authors, given the students‟ predominantly working-class backgrounds. Through application of their own stories, the authors explore the sociological significance of this pedagogical „failure‟ to account for the troubling concept of class not only in the classroom but also in contemporary society.