Narrating Poverty and Precarity in Britain (Culture & Conflict, 5)

Poverty and precarity have gained a new societal and political presence in the twenty-first century's advanced economies. This is reflected in cultural production, which this book discusses for a wide range of media and genres from the novel to reality television. With a focus on Britain, its chapters divide their attention between current representations of poverty and important earlier narratives that have retained significant relevance today. The book's contributions discuss the representation of social suffering with attention to agencies of enunciation, ethical implications of 'voice' and 'listening', limits of narratability, the pitfalls of sensationalism, voyeurism and sentimentalism, potentials and restrictions inherent in specific representational techniques, modes and genres; cultural markets for poverty and precarity. Overall, the book suggests that analysis of poverty narratives requires an intersection of theoretical reflection and a close reading of texts. Culture and conflict unavoidably go together. The very idea of culture is marked by the notion of difference and creative, i.e. conflictual, interaction that inevitably support the key themes of the study of culture such as identity and diversity, memory and trauma, the translation of cultures and globalization, dislocation and emplacement, mediation and exclusion. This series publishes theoretically informed original scholarship from the fields of literary and cultural studies as well as media, visual and film studies, fostering a plural disciplinary dialogue on the multiple ways in which conflict supports and constrains the production of meaning in modernity, how the representation of conflict works, how it relates to the past and projects the present and how it frames scholarship within the humanities.Isabel Capeloa Gil , Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal; Paulo de Medeiros , University of Warwick, UK, Catherine Nesci , University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.Editorial Arjun Appadurai, New York University,Claudia Benthien, Universitt Hamburg,Elisabeth Bronfen, Universitt Zrich,Bishnupriya Ghosh, University of California, Santa Barbara,Joyce Goggin, Universiteit van Amsterdam,Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University,Ansgar Nnning, Universitt Gieen,Naomi Segal, University of London, Birkbeck College,Mrcio Seligmann-Silva, Universidade Estadual de Campinas,Antnio Sousa Ribeiro, Universidade de Coimbra,Roberto Vecchi, Universita di Bologna,Samuel Weber, Northwestern University,Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania,Christoph Wulf, FU Berlin,Longxi Zhang, City University of Hong Kong Narrating poverty and precarity in Britain: an introduction / Barbara Korte Envying the poor: contemporary and nineteenth-century fantasies of vulnerability / Carolyn Betensky Managing the unmanageable: paradoxes of poverty in Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-1834) / Joanna Rostek "We have learned the value of poverty": (Re)-presentations of the poor in nineteenth-century melodramas / Joachim Frenk The sexual exploitation of the poor in W.T. Stead's 'New Journalism': humanity, democracy, and the tabloid press / Frédéric Regard "The Amateur Casuals": immersion among the poor from James Greenwood to George Orwell / Marina Remy Abrunhosa - Flann O'Brien's The Poor Mouth and the deconstruction of stereotypes about Irish poverty / Marie-Luise Egbert Frames of recognition under global capitalism: Eastern European migrants in British fiction / Eveline Kilian "The Last Voice of Democracy": precarity, community and fiction in Alan Warner's Morvern Callar (1995) / Bomain Nguyen Van Life on the streets: parallactic ways of seeing homelessness in John Berger's King: A Street Story (1999) / George Zipp Poverty on the market: precarious lives in popular fiction / Barbara Korte Weaponizing prurience / Helen Hester. "Poverty and precarity have gained a new societal and political presence in the twenty-first century's advanced economies. This is reflected in cultural production, which this book discusses for a wide range of media and genres from the novel to reality television. With a focus on Britain, its chapters divide their attention between current representations of poverty and important earlier narratives that have retained significant relevance today"--Provided by publisher Poverty and precarity have gained a new societal and political presence in the twenty-first century{u2019}s advanced economies. This is reflected in cultural production, which this book discusses for a wide range of media and genres from the novel to reality television. With a focus on Britain, its chapters divide their attention between current representations of poverty and important earlier narratives that have retained significant relevance today Poverty and precarity have gained a new societal and political presence in the twenty-first century's advanced economies, which is reflected in cultural production. With a focus on Britain, this book discusses this topic for a wide range of media and genres from the novel to reality television.