Contemporary society

About: Contemporary society is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3991 publications have been published within this topic receiving 91755 citations.

Old people as users and consumers of healthcare: a third age rhetoric for a fourth age reality?

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the emergence of consumerism as a dominant theme in the culture surrounding the organisation and provision of welfare in contemporary societies. In it we address the dilemmas produced by a consumerist discourse for older people's healthcare, dilemmas which may be seen as the conflicting representations of third age and fourth age reality. We begin by reviewing the appearance of consumerism in the recent history of the British healthcare system, relating it to the various reforms of healthcare over the last two decades and the more general development of consumerism as a cultural phenomenon of the post World War II era. The emergence of consumer culture, we argue, is both a central theme in post-modernist discourse and a key element in the political economy of the New Right. After examining criticisms of post-modernist representational politics, the limitations of consumerism and the privileged position given to choice and agency within consumerist society, we consider the relevance of such critical perspectives in judging the significance of the user/consumer movement in the lives of retired people.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Men in a Woman’s Job, Male Domestic Workers, International Migration and the Globalization of Care:

Abstract: Very little scholarship exists, which investigates male domestic workers. Yet they constitute a highly interesting vantage point from which to analyze the gendered and racialized division of labor as well as the social constructions of masculinity in both contemporary societies and in the past. In several countries nowadays a large number of domestic workers are migrants. By focusing on men employed as domestic workers in different societies, in both the global North and the global South (Italy, France, United Kingdom, India, Ivory Coast, and Congo), the articles presented in this special issue investigate the gendered dimensions of globalization and international migration, while avoiding the essentialist association of ‘‘gender’’ with ‘‘women.’’ They cover a wide range of disciplines (sociology, anthropology, and history) and methodologies (both qualitative and quantitative). Despite this variety of themes and approaches, all identify domestic service as a site where ‘‘hegemonic’’ and ‘‘subaltern’’ masc...

The myth of the reflexive worker: class and work histories in neo-liberal times:

Abstract: Several influential social theorists contend that the increased insecurity injected into the labour market by neo-liberal economic policies, coupled with a discourse of flexibility concretised in lifelong learning initiatives, have contributed to the withering of class in contemporary society. Careers and job shifts now follow a ‘de-standardised’ pattern, they argue, in which people incessantly switch between divergent occupations, education, training and benefits, all propelled by a socially-induced reflexivity that knows no class bounds. Empirical assessments of this bold assertion have, so far, been far from supportive but, being chiefly quantitative in orientation, leave many important questions unanswered. This paper, starting out from a theory of class indebted to the late Pierre Bourdieu, draws on a qualitative research project examining the life histories of 55 individuals to fill in the gaps and demonstrate how work trajectories, despite changes that have taken place, are still driven along class...

Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives

Abstract: In Crossover Fiction, Sandra L. Beckett explores the global trend of crossover literature and explains how it is transforming literary canons, concepts of readership, the status of authors, the publishing industry, and bookselling practices. This study will have significant relevance across disciplines, as scholars in literary studies, media and cultural studies, visual arts, education, psychology, and sociology examine the increasingly blurred borderlines between adults and young people in contemporary society, notably with regard to their consumption of popular culture.