Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle Class Life

Klein, Barbro; Frykman, Jonas; Löfgren, Orvar; Crozier, Alan

doi:10.2307/540114

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Within anthropological history, a branch of Scandinavian ethnology focused on the historical emergence of the conventions of industrial societies. Frykman and Löfgren (1987) proposed following the development of habits, customs, and traditions from a time when society operated smoothly without, say, celebrating birthdays (pp. 31-33), to their maturity as mandatory social conventions and markers of civilized behavior (Frykman & Löfgren 1996, pp.…”

Section: An Ethnological-historical Study Of Meaningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Shoham

2023

American Behavioral Scientist

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Can conventional rituals be meaningful? When and how can conventionality be part of processes of meaning-making rather than a mere obstacle that the cultural analyst must overcome? The article traces the meanings of minor rituals that populate the world of modern industrial societies and seem to have universal appeal. The article applies a Blochian regressive method to ethnological history in order to re-create the gradual process in which conventions appear, are disseminated, popularized, turned into group icons, and ritualized, and only then—and only sometimes—acquire discursive meanings that are often contested. This sequential model reveals the power of conventionality—the lack of contemplation about social conventions—in the processes of popularizing, ritualizing, and iconizing conventional acts. In the terms of Alexander’s meaning-centered performance theory, this conventionality exemplifies a “perfect” or “effortless” fusion of performers and audience. The article thus argues that the meanings of conventional rituals—and perhaps also of conventional performances of more “sacred” rituals—often lie not in symbolic significance or semiotic thickness, but in deep conventionality: meaningfulness encoded in the convention itself.

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Section: An Ethnological-historical Study Of Meaningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Shoham

2023

American Behavioral Scientist

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“…Scandinavian ethnologists have found that the middle class has been successful in defining the dominant codes of behaviour, establishing a middle‐class hegemony that neglects class differences (Frykman & Löfgren, 1987). They argue that class is highly present in Nordic societies, but the dominance of the middle class has rooted out the recognition of other classes, concealing the existing class systems in the welfare states (Sejersted, 2011: 255).…”

Section: Theoretical Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Am I that bad?’: Middle‐class moralism and weight stigma towards parents of children with higher weight

Aamann

Erlik

2023

Children & Society

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The purpose of this article is to explore how parents of children with higher weights are represented in policy documents constituted by health authorities in the Danish welfare state. It focuses on how discourses of moral judgements might play a role in child rearing, by framing child obesity as a parental problem in health professionals' practical guidelines. The article is based on a discursive analysis of cases from three guidelines published by two respected Danish health bodies. The cases describe how health professionals should perceive families with obesity when providing interventions. Using sociocultural class theories, we find that the cases in the guidelines display a middle‐class hegemony, which implies a preoccupation with moral judgements. Combining this with a post‐structuralist concept of discursive subject positions and representations, we reveal how mothers of obese children are subject to these judgements, either as passive and irresponsible lower‐class citizens or as morally worthwhile and responsible middle‐class citizens because of shame and fear of being judged. We conclude that the ways obesity is discursively constructed by the Danish health authorities is concerning because they build on outdated and stigmatising views on obesity. The moral implications of this might increase inequity in access to health by distributing stigma and thereby legitimating welfare retrenchment with reference to economic necessities and irresponsibility among the less privileged groups.

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Filth and Lucre: The Dirty Money Complex as a Taxation Regime

Peebles¹

2012

anq

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This review essay takes a synoptic view of the ethnographic record concerning the long-standing and cross-cultural associations between money and dirt. In questioning why this association crops up as often as it does, I turn to the anthropological literature on the study of metaphor and metonym. By doing so, I offer a reinterpretation of the money form, pointing out that dirt—as a transgressive mediator between discrete realms—is itself a cross-cultural trope that is often intimately tied to ideas and rituals of social reproduction and fertility. I suggest that the widespread denigration of money as dirty may serve as a sort of economic regulatory mechanism, which aims to reinvigorate money’s potential fertility when this latter has become sterile due to alleged acts of anti-social exchange or non-exchange.

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Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle Class Life

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

‘Am I that bad?’: Middle‐class moralism and weight stigma towards parents of children with higher weight

Filth and Lucre: The Dirty Money Complex as a Taxation Regime

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