A chesterfield is a couch ...
Community A social structure? A cultural structure?
Romantic Community Community romanticised Stable Supportive and warm Close
UK Soaps Coronation Street East Enders Celebrate working-class urban community - fictional but with a strong hold on the British imagination
Imagined Golden Age In UK: Golden Age of stable working-class communities disrupted - by WW2
- suburbanization
- mass culture
Reality Working-class communities unstable - high rates of residential turnover
- harsh poverty and living conditions
- abusive gender relations
- unhealthy, hard, short lives
- malnutrition
UK First World War Recruitment Chronic malnutrition in late C19th, early C20th in working class urban areas Many recruits too short to be enlisted in the army in WW1 - Create special “Bantam” battalions
Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson (1983) Imagined Communities - The imagination is vital in creating nations and other large social groupings
"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." -- Sir Winston Churchill
UK 2001 Census Internet-based campaign to get people to list their religion as “Jedi knight” Sufficient participation that “Jedi knight” had to be added to the list of religions
Located around Grace & College Sts - One of the historic reception areas for Italian immigrants
“Little Italy” on the street signs - Business Improvement Association
Neighbourhood is now largely Portuguese
Dufferin & St Clair Another “Italian” area - Italian sports bars, restaurants, churches, clothing stores
Declining Italian population
The Portuguese The “Portuguese” community in Toronto is largely Azorean
Les Miserables
Les Miz Original book is a grim tale of inhumanity Musical made the grim life of the urban underclass entertaining - Poor people just love to dance and sing
Poplar
Poplar 1920s London East-End working-class district Place of considerable poverty Remembered by old people in the 1980s as: - an urban village, socially warm
- strong social networks
- isolation of elderly, conflicts, petty territoriality
Poplar 1920s Poplar’s Labour Party councillors in solidarity: 1921 Rate Strike - A landmark in East End politics
- 30 Councillors jailed in dispute over the financing of poor relief
- Council met 32 times in Brixton prison
An imagined community: real implications
British Muslim Asians - see themselves as part of a local “Asian community”
- a distinct alternative to the majority culture
- required adherence to Muslim and Asian community values
The Myth of the West
Myth of Frontier Community Imagined as - a place of rugged individuals
- a masculine territory
- where White men “won” the west
Not just in Blazing Saddles ...
Reality of Frontier Community
Don’t Mess with Texas "English was good enough for Jesus Christ and it's good enough for the children of Texas." -- Miriam "Ma" Ferguson Texas Governor Texas as an imagined Anglo community
Scarlet Riders Mythological Canadian frontier community contains Mounties Who always get their man
Mounties Mythologised Key phase of myth-making in 1920s-1930s Mainly by American pulp fiction, movies Canadian Govenment helped finance the “Mountie” movies
1954 (Universal) Mountie and loyal Cree rescue Shelley Winters from the Sioux. Cameo role for Jay Silverheels (Tonto) Filmed in Banff
The Myth of the Canadian Frontier Community Mounties are heroic clean-living white men - speak accented English
- have non-Anglo names
Sgt Cameron of the Mounted 1920
Rose Marie (MGM 1962)
1941 publication intended to boost wartime US dollar earnings by promoting US tourism in Canada
It’s a small world after all ...
Mounties in Reality Rough frontier men and social misfits - Included Charles Dickens’ son
High rates of alcoholism, STDs Patchy reputation with First Nations, Metis Did they really get their man?
Making Community Take Place Sense of community aided by creation of place - emergence of informally-accepted community territory
- generally-recognized ethnic enclaves
- formally-designated community territory
- community festivals
Calgary Stampede “Where the world meets the West! July 9-18,1999 The Calgary Stampede is a ten day, city wide celebration of western hospitality and fun in the heart of the Canadian Rockies”
“greatest outdoor show on earth” Cowboy hats Prairie oysters
Calgary Stampede: Reality Rodeo not a C19th Alberta tradition - First promoted 1912 by Guy Weadick
1923 first chuckwagon races - regularly kill horses, riders
1932 Stampede merges with Calgary industrial exhibition
Calgary Stampede: Reality Comments from Patricia Wood: - Calgary’s Anglo establishment takes a strong role in the organization
- Tsuu-Tina First Nation also participates as a significant partner
- often brushed aside by the Calgary establishment in other spheres
- Stampede celebrates an imagined community
Imagined Community Community may be imagined but this does not prevent it from being real Reality and imagination connected
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