<i>New Times</i>revisited: Britain in the 1980s

Hilton, Matthew; Moores, Christopher; Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Florence

doi:10.1080/13619462.2017.1306214

Cited by 91 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…77 Henry's evolution from thinking in terms of 'us and them' towards a more ecumenical view of class identity resonates with the idea that notions of class distinction were gradually replaced by more universalising expressions of ordinariness across the late twentieth century. 78 Martin, however, believed his social ascent, born of individual will, had made him middle class. 79 Paradoxically, it is Labourvoting Henry's view that more closely echoes Margaret Thatcher's rhetorical move to reorient opinion away from languages of class and towards a collective understanding that 'we are all working people who basically want the same things'.…”

Section: Ordinariness and The Generational Reproduction Of Class Work...mentioning

confidence: 99%

9 Fathers, sons, and ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’ family life, 1945–1974

Hall

2024

Men and Masculinities in Modern Britain

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As a number of historians of masculinity have argued, despite calls for greater engagement with masculine subjectivities over the last thirty years, more work remains to be done if we are to understand how men and boys negotiated available social structures and cultural scripts at any given historical moment. 1 Such work demands that we look intimately at male emotional lives, that we concern ourselves less with elusive claims to representativeness and more with the particularity of individual responses to society and culture. In this way, not only do we gain insight into some of the richness, texture, and range of historical lived experience, but we also learn more about the viability of established socio-cultural themes and chronologies. The experiences of fathers and sons in the decades following the Second World War offer rich potential for engagement with these dynamics. As Frank Mort argued in his autobiographical reflection on a post-war father-son relationship, 'the narratives of the post-war years are so portentous and authoritative that they constantly threaten to engulf subjectivity'. 2 Drawing on father-son relationships in fourteen families from a range of social backgrounds, as they were narrated in oral history interviews, this chapter assesses how masculine selfhoods were reproduced intergenerationally by exploring adult men's memories of post-war family life. 3 The stories of post-war socio-cultural change are well known. Most families lived healthier, longer lives, in improved homes, with more time and money to spend on leisure; there was a substantial shift from blue-collar to white-collar work and a dramatic increase in average incomes; access to education widened and secondary, further, and higher education was transformed; and the arrival of rock and roll, the seven-inch single, television, and mass consumerism created hitherto unknown cultural outlets for a new generation. 4 However, rather than the ensuing generational rupture described in some cultural accounts, Selina Todd and Hilary Young have argued that the opportunities wrought by post-war British society fostered continuities of classed solidarities across generations, as parents supported

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Section: Ordinariness and The Generational Reproduction Of Class Work...mentioning

confidence: 99%

9 Fathers, sons, and ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’ family life, 1945–1974

Hall

2024

Men and Masculinities in Modern Britain

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“…Coming from a structuralist background, Stuart Hall welcomed Gramsci as a sort of defense against “theoreticism” (Filippini, 2017, p. 119) and used the Sardinian's conceptual toolbox as an essential point of reference for his studies 11 . As a public intellectual and a leading scholar, Hall exerted a major influence on British historical and critical production to the extent that British historiography might need to be decoupled from Thatcherism as its starting point (Hilton et al., 2017). It is noteworthy that, similarly, British historiography should also be liberated from another indirect Gramscian category, the notion of omnipotent neoliberalism in the long 1980s, which was built on his conceptions of Americanism and Fordism (Torres, 2013; Lash, 2007).…”

Section: The Displacement Of Hegemony: Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffementioning

confidence: 99%

Reclaiming Gramsci's “historicity”: A critical analysis of the British appropriation in light of the “crisis of democracy”

Maccaferri

2022

Constellations

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Any approach to the legacy of Antonio Gramsci represents a substantial challenge. Today, the thinking of this Italian intellectual is not only acknowledged as one of the most significant contributions to 20th century social theory, but has also been one of the most frequently employed frameworks for different disciplines and approaches. His categories, and especially his further development of the concept of hegemony, have provided the basis for new approaches in fields that include international relations, political theory, critical geography, literary criticism, media studies, and feminism, and for entirely new fields such as cultural and postcolonial studies. 1 The international success of Gramsci's work, now considered essential reading in political theory, derived from the political and cultural atmosphere of Cold War Europe as well as from its very favorable reception within the emancipation movements in the United States.While this first phase of the international spread of Gramsci's thinking was characterized by the explicitly political use of his writing within the context of Marxist internationalism (Liguori, 2012), a second phase, coinciding with the new century and reaching almost all corners of the globe, has been characterized by a shift in the application of Gramscian theoretical instruments which has sometimes resulted in the detachment, often unintentional, of his concepts from the Marxist spheres in which they were forged (Filippini, 2017;Frosini, 2008).The "globalization" of Gramsci, or, to paraphrase Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000), the provincialization of Gramsci (meaning the fragmentation and weakening of Gramsci's concepts as a way of giving them new life in different contexts; see also Harootunian, 2020) is not incompatible with a philological reading of his work, as Joseph Buttigieg (1990) and Italian scholarship have abundantly demonstrated (

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“…Like the “nuclear crisis,” a long British nuclear 1980s needs to consider the socio‐economic shifts that occurred in 1960s Britain (e.g., Donnelly, ; Harrison, ; Hoefferle, ; Marwick, ; Moores, ; Thomas, , ). Similarly, it must pay attention to the 1970s as the decade both preceding and shaping many of the social, political, and cultural issues prevailing in Britain and elsewhere between 1979 and 1985 (Hilton, Moores, & Sutcliffe‐Braithwaite, , p. 150; Black, Pemberton, & Thane, ). What makes the 1970s so crucial for the politics of uncertainty in the early 1980s is the fact that that decade gave rise to a range of uncertainties in the wake of the oil and energy crises, influencing many developments such as the major structural changes in the British economy during the 1980s (Robinson, Schofield, Sutcliffe‐Braithwaite, & Thomlinson, ; Borstelmann, ; Ferguson et al, ; Doering‐Manteuffel & Raphael, ; Geyer, ; Graf, ; Hilton et al, ; Hilton et al, ; Jarausch, ; Villaume, Mariager, & Porsdam, ).…”

Section: Britain's Long Nuclear 1980smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, it must pay attention to the 1970s as the decade both preceding and shaping many of the social, political, and cultural issues prevailing in Britain and elsewhere between 1979 and 1985 (Hilton, Moores, & Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, 2017b, p. 150;Black, Pemberton, & Thane, 2013). What makes the 1970s so crucial for the politics of uncertainty in the early 1980s is the fact that that decade gave rise to a range of uncertainties in the wake of the oil and energy crises, influencing many developments such as the major structural changes in the British economy during the 1980s (Robinson, Schofield, Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, & Thomlinson, 2017;Borstelmann, 2012;Ferguson et al, 2011;Doering-Manteuffel & Raphael, 2012;Geyer, 2010;Graf, 2014;Hilton et al, 2017a;Hilton et al, 2017b;Jarausch, 2008;Villaume, Mariager, & Porsdam, 2016). At the same time, these growing socio-political and economic uncertainties accentuated an ongoing tendency towards Britain's decline (Tomlinson, 2000(Tomlinson, , 2009.…”

Section: Of 18mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…133-158;Knoblauch, 2017b;Shaw, 2005).3 In an article in History Compass, Stephen Brooke commented on the burgeoning field of 1980s British social and cultural history(Brooke, 2014). To date, the more comprehensive analyses of this crucial period in British history have largely taken the form of popular histories(Beckett, 2016;McSmith, 2011;Stewart, 2013;Turner, 2010; for a notable exception, see the contributions inHilton, Moores, & Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, 2017a) or have often focused on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the supposed centrality of Thatcherism to this period (e.g.,Jackson & Saunders, 2012a;Moore, 2013;Vinen, 2009;Filby, 2015).…”

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The politics of the unknown: Uncertainty and the nuclear threat in Britain, 1979–1985

Laucht

2018

History Compass

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This article seeks to map out possibilities for conducting a microhistorical study of the socio‐political and cultural roles that uncertainty, as a consequence of a lack of verifiable knowledge, played in political debates over the nuclear threat in Britain in the Second Cold War. Focusing on this politics of the unknown in the period from 1979 to 1985 when Britain witnessed resurging fears of nuclear war, this exploratory essay sets out to make three main interventions: First, it conceptualizes “uncertainty” as a subjective social and cultural construct with fluid meanings that does not necessarily have to hold exclusively negative connotations but might offer opportunities for historical actors. Second, this essay proposes an examination of the politics of the unknown about the anticipated effects of a nuclear war within a wider synchronic economy of non‐nuclear‐weapons‐related concerns such as de‐industrialization or unemployment. Finally, the article introduces the periodization of “Britain's long nuclear 1980s” to allow for a consideration of relevant diachronic aspects of this politics of the unknown, thereby adding further depth to the microhistory. Throughout, this exploratory study draws on historical examples to illustrate its key theoretical points.

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New Timesrevisited: Britain in the 1980s

Cited by 91 publications

References 81 publications

9 Fathers, sons, and ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’ family life, 1945–1974

9 Fathers, sons, and ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’ family life, 1945–1974

Reclaiming Gramsci's “historicity”: A critical analysis of the British appropriation in light of the “crisis of democracy”

The politics of the unknown: Uncertainty and the nuclear threat in Britain, 1979–1985

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