Class,ethnicity, and voting behaviour in Australia∗

This paper assesses the importance of a range of social structural influences on Australian electoral behaviour, with specific reference to ethnicity and occupational class. The analysis is conducted on two levels. Firstly, aggregate level data is employed, using the 1976 census matched by federal electorate to the 1977 election results. Techniques from factorial ecology are used to construct conceptually unambiguous measures of constituency characteristics, and these are related to voting behaviour using multivariate techniques. Secondly, individual level survey data collected in 1979 are used to confirm the importance of the socioeconomic cleavage and urban‐rural divisions. They also indicate that ethnicity has an appreciable influence on electoral behaviour among those born in Mediterranean countries. Northern Europeans (mainly British) prove to be no different in their electoral behaviour than native‐born Australians, while the results for Eastern Europeans are inconclusive.     

Jane Holt,Milliner, and Other Women in Business: Apprentices,Freewomen and Mistresses in The Clothworkers’ Company, 1606–1800

Abstract

This article uses the newly digitised Registers of Apprentices and Freedom Admissions of The Clothworkers’ Company to provide a comprehensive survey of female membership in one City of London Livery Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By analysing who these apprentices, Freewomen and mistresses were and what they did, it aims to shed new light on women’s work in this period. It shows that apprenticeship was used by girls of middling and genteel social status to enter the textile trades and, although few went on to take up their Freedom of the Company, the Clothworkers’ records show an increasing level of female membership over time. Freewomen required membership in order to operate businesses within the City — although patrimony may also have been used to gain access to Company alms — and most mistresses operated through the Company as the wives or widows of Freemen, demonstrating that marriage was no bar to economic activity. Textile-related occupations predominated, with a significant cluster of female milliners in business in prominent City locations, charging high premiums to train apprentices in one of the few genteel and potentially lucrative trades open to women in this period.     

Rancière,Derrida, and Egalitarian Politics in Pseudo-Dionysius

Abstract

Using the work of Jacques Rancière, I argue for an egalitarian reading of the political hierarchy in Pseudo-Dionysius. I first analyze various historical attempts to derive a political theory from Pseudo-Dionysius in the work of Juan Miguel Garrigues, René Roques, and Dominic O’Meara. I then turn to Jacques Derrida's attempt to distinguish deconstruction from negative theology, and consider especially the political effects of this strategy. I argue that Derrida's attempt to undermine Psuedo-Dionysius's system from within is unsuccessful, and suggest instead that Rancière provides the conceptual tools to identify an egalitarianism within Dionysian political theory     

Judaism and communism: Hanukkah,Passover, and the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and Israel, 1919–1965

This article explores the mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic aspects of the ways in which the festivals of Hanukkah and Passover were celebrated by the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and the State of Israel. It illustrates how elements of Zionist-socialist culture were adopted by Jewish Communists and integrated in their cultural activities. In a gradual process starting in the1920s and culminating in the mid-1960s, the Jewish Communists created a combination of Marxist ideology and Zionist-socialist cultural practices. However, when a group of young Sabra activists reinforced the Zionist-socialist elements, the balance was undermined, contributing to the rift within Israeli communism.     

French cosmographers and navigators in England and Scotland, 1542–1547

The term “social geography” was used by French sociologists of the Le Play School by 1884 and, perhaps independently, by the geographer Elisee Reclus in 1895. Neither Le Play's sociology nor Reclus’ geography was very influential in university circles, but they were adopted and modified by Patrick Geddes in Great Britain. The term “social geography” has had some popularity in Britain since 1930, but Americans did not readily adopt it, perhaps because their “cultural geography” had similar content. In the postwar period, the term has gained currency in Europe and North America, and the present‐day social geographers often espouse views that are reminiscent of; Reclus and the Le Playists even though the latter are little read today. This paper is an historical sketch of French and English usage, and it does not seek to define social geography or to suggest guidelines for future work.     

Working in the shade: agriculture,race, and recreational landscapes in Connecticut, 1940–1950

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, shade tobacco growers in the state of Connecticut employed white high school students from Florida and Pennsylvania, as well as African Americans from southern black colleges and high schools to harvest and process their crop. This paper traces the history of these workers as a means for examining overlooked processes of racialization in rural New England, and for expanding on discussions of race, agriculture, and rural landscapes through the context of leisure. I argue that racialization among student workers unfolded according to the structure, management, and representation of leisure and the recreational landscapes that were opened (or closed) to them. Additional contexts bearing on this process included gender, class, and status as resident or non-resident, each of which informed race-based discussions about leisure and recreational landscapes. This empirical study infuses cultural geographic studies of race and agriculture, whether in New England or beyond, with a depth of perspective not normally associated with rural landscapes. It argues for the extension of cultural geographic inquiry on leisure and racialization into the contexts of agricultural and rural landscapes.     

Building identities in post-Soviet “de facto states”: cultural and political icons in Nagorno-Karabakh,South Ossetia,Transdniestria, and Abkhazia

Abstract

For states that have recently declared their independence but remained unrecognized “de facto states,” building a national identity is critical in the face of international rejection of their political status. Key elements of this new or re-animated national identity are political and cultural icons symbolizing the new political entity but with historical antecedents. Following Anthony Smith’s ethno-symbolism approach to the study of nationalism and motivated by Jean Gottmann’s research on iconographies in political geography, the article reports the results of nationally representative samples in four post-Soviet de facto states, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transdniestria, and Abkhazia. Respondents were asked to name up to five political and cultural figures that they admired. The collated results show a great array of local and Russian names in the four republics. Categorizing the names by historical era and by provenance allows a clarification of the extent to which nation building can rely on local heroes. Among the four republics, Nagorno-Karabakh stands out for its ethno-symbolic local character, while Transdniestrian respondents identified few iconic figures. South Ossetia shows a mix of local and Russian names while the respondents in Abkhazia were divided by nationality in their choices.     

‘Dirty old ladies,’ mothers,and others: Age and gender in cultural and biological perspectives

Brown, Judith K., and Virginia Kerns, eds. In Her Prime: A New View of Middle‐Aged Women. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1985. xii + 217 pp. including individual chapter bibliographies and combined index. $25.95 cloth; $14.95 paper.

Davis, Dona Lee. Blood and Nerves: An Ethnographic Focus on Menopause. St. Johns, Newfoundland: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1983. x + 234 pp. including maps, appendices, and bibliography. $9.00 paper.

Rossi, Alice S., ed. Gender and the Life Course. New York: Aldine, 1985. xxi + 368 pp. including chapter references and author and subject indices. $34.94 cloth; $15.95 paper.