4 Reconciling the classes Many contemporaries were convinced that by the 1960s class barriers had been at least attenuated compared with the 1930s. The children of manual workers were believed to be better able to enter the middle class; and it was thought that many of those remaining on the factory floor were adopting bourgeois ways. Labour members appeared more divided over this issue than they actually were. While the left considered ‘affluence’ made only a modest impact on the social structure and revisionists thought its influence profound, few denied
ITLP_C07.QXD 18/8/03 9:59 am Page 101 7 Class and politics in the work of Henry Pelling Alastair J. Reid In the ranks of that distinguished generation of post-war British academics who established labour history on a professional footing, Henry Pelling is generally regarded as worthy but rather dull. For he did not share the more colourful far-left political affiliations of figures such as Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Thompson. Indeed, when these Marxists were at the height of their influence in the late 1960s and 1970s, Pelling’s careful history of the British
’ ( Guardian , 2018 ). It is not that everyone within NGOs refuses to accept that this problem exists or its potential severity, but Goldring’s comments demonstrate a tendency among white, male, middle-class figures who are senior in these organisations – who are unlikely themselves to be the target of sexual harassment, abuse or intimidation – to downplay the risk of this occurring and to respond to accusations slowly and reluctantly. British
Humanitarian actors touting financial inclusion posit that access to financial services builds refugees’ resilience and self-reliance. They claim that new digital financial tools create more efficient and dignified pathways for humanitarian assistance and enable refugees to better manage their savings and invest in livelihoods, especially during protracted displacement. Our in-depth, repeat interviews with refugees in Kenya and Jordan refute this narrative. Instead, self-reliance was hindered primarily by refugees’ lack of foundational rights to move and work. Financial services had limited ability to support livelihoods in the absence of those rights. The digital financial services offered to refugees under the banner of ‘financial inclusion’ were not mainstream services designed to empower and connect. Instead, they were segregated, second-class offerings meant to further isolate and limit refugee transactions in line with broader political desires to encamp and exclude them. The article raises questions about the circumstances in which humanitarian funding ought to fund financial service interventions and what those interventions are capable of achieving.
Introduction ‘In Syria, I was always like, bring me this, bring me that.’ Before the Syrian conflict, 38-year-old Marwa 1 lived in various working-class neighbourhoods in Damascus, sheltered by her parents and, later, by her husband. At the age of 17, Marwa dropped out of high school to get married to a tradesman and thereafter never left the house unaccompanied. Seven years after the family fled to Jordan, we met with Marwa in Al Hashmi Al
role of ongoing knowledge production in biomedical and public health fields as defining features of the pandemic response. However, his analysis highlights the importance of social factors, notably ‘the intersections of questions of race, class and power with public health interventions’ as key mediators in the success of health responses. Questions of biopolitics and power loom over the discussions of public health interventions, especially in the call to consider the possibility of a plague
‘Central America’, displayed reproductions of images from the IDPL, including some by renowned Canadian photographers like Dilip Metha, accompanied by the words of writers and the editor-in-chief. ‘We also made maps by continent, we had … Africa, Asia and the Americas,’ recounted Marc Rockbrune. ‘We also had a silent map. It was just the outline of the world and the educators could work in class with a map on which there was just the outline, you didn’t see the countries. It was an interesting tool’ ( ACDI, 1986 ; CIDA, 1988 ; Canadian Geographic Education, 2008
. Moreover, important topics or questions remain to be explored by further research, including the practical ways in which humanitarianism can engage in gender-transformative action, its complementarity to the longstanding work of feminist activists, and the relationship between humanitarian action and other cultural identity factors, such as race, ethnicity, class, caste, age, disability and legal status. Definitions Building on Enloe (2004 : 4
.1080/13552074.2019.1664046 . Martin de Almagro , M. ( 2017 ), ‘ Producing Participants: Gender, Race, Class, and Women, Peace and Security ’, Global Society , 1 – 20 , published online 11 October, doi: 10.1080/13600826.2017.1380610 . Martínez , S. and Libal , K. ( 2011 ), ‘ Introduction: The Gender of
working-class women adopt in exile in Jordan, the article carefully interrogates shifting gender and power dynamics. In doing so it questions the fashionable humanitarian focus on self-reliance and entrepreneurship, as well as youth, but demonstrates how individual and family well-being often relies on rather different parameters. A better understanding among humanitarian actors of what refugee women themselves perceive as valuable lives would be a welcome step in advancing gendered aspirations