The following chapter presents findings from group interviews with Muslims and Jews conducted in Norway between May 2016 and May 2017. Six groups were interviewed; three had Jewish participants and three had Muslim participants. The chapter explores interpretative patterns among the interviewees, focusing on the ways in which antisemitism and Islamophobia were expressed or rejected in the conversations, and how antisemitism and Islamophobia were perceived as contemporary societal problems. Photographs were used as visual prompts during the interviews and served as a starting point for the analysis of the social interaction between the interviewees. A central question of the analysis is how intergroup attitudes were negotiated and eventually regulated throughout the conversations.
This paper relates Arendt's critique of a labor society to her thoughts on the "good life." I begin with the claim that in the post-mass production era, Western societies, traditionally centered around gainful employment, encounter a decrease in the relevance of labor and can thus no longer rely on it as a resource for individual or social meaning. From Arendt's perspective, however, the current situation allows for the possibility ofa transition from a society based on labor to a society centered around activities. I explore Arendt's different types of activities-labor, work, action-with respect to the question of justice between the genders.What is most impressive in The Human Condition is the visionary foresight of Arendt's analysis ofa labor society and its approaching end. Her prediction dates back to the 1950s, when industrial nations were in the midst of the recovery boom after World War I1 and still held an optimistic belief in an uninhibited progress. "What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse." Arendt recognized even then that the concurrence of dropping employment quotas, resulting from technological advancement, and increasing productivity would not liberate modern industrialized societies but rather pose an existential threat.
The article introduces an analytical perspective which can assist in charting generation-specific modes of sense-making and self-understanding in memory accounts, biographical and historical narratives. The point of departure is the double meaning of “generation” as it is found in the theoretic debate. On the one hand, generational positioning is informed by the genealogical sequence of parents, children and grand-children–corresponding with the intergenerational transmission of memories. On the other hand, we the fact of being part of a specific age cohort provides a framework for the interpretation of former experiences, mirrored in Karl Mannheim’s concept of the generation as a community of shared experiences. The two modes of generational selfpositioning, which are coined as “genealogical” and “archaeological” here, inform processes of historical sense-making and interpretation. Which type of generational “logic” applies has a major impact on the ways in which coherent and meaningful links between past, present and future are constructed. Tracing up generational positioning in memory accounts and narratives of the past can, thus, be used as an analytical tool for getting access to narrative patterns–and to the functioning of historical consciousness as a provider of identity and orientation. This will be illustrated below with empirical evidence.
This paper relates Arendt's critique of a labor society to her thoughts on the "good life." I begin with the claim that in the post-mass production era, Western societies, traditionally centered around gainful employment, encounter a decrease in the relevance of labor and can thus no longer rely on it as a resource for individual or social meaning. From Arendt's perspective, however, the current situation allows for the possibility ofa transition from a society based on labor to a society centered around activities. I explore Arendt's different types of activities-labor, work, action-with respect to the question of justice between the genders.What is most impressive in The Human Condition is the visionary foresight of Arendt's analysis ofa labor society and its approaching end. Her prediction dates back to the 1950s, when industrial nations were in the midst of the recovery boom after World War I1 and still held an optimistic belief in an uninhibited progress. "What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse." Arendt recognized even then that the concurrence of dropping employment quotas, resulting from technological advancement, and increasing productivity would not liberate modern industrialized societies but rather pose an existential threat.
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