(Self) Representations of Domestic Workers

(Self) Representations of Domestic Workers PDF Author: Alida Perrine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
On April 16, 2012, the much awaited primetime telenovela appropriately titled Cheias de Charme premiered on Rede Globo, the largest Brazilian television network, and viewers across the nation were introduced to as três Marias, the three charming protagonists who, in a rare occurrence on the network, are domestic workers. It is no surprise that domestic workers should be of interest to Brazilian television viewers; paid domestic work is an enormous part of daily life in Brazil and domestic workers make up nearly eight percent of the work force. This project builds on previous explorations of the unique relationships between domestic employers and employees in Brazil, as well as examinations of the traditional ways in which domestic workers have been imagined to draw a clearer image of the changing role of paid domestic work in Brazilian society. Part ethnographic study and part media analysis, this study is mainly preoccupied with exploring various representations of domestic workers. These representations speak to the tensions and contradictions surrounding the social dynamics of the intimate relationships between domestic workers and their employers, as well as the role of domestic work in Brazilian society, haunted by the legacy of nearly four-hundred years of slavery.

(Self) Representations of Domestic Workers

(Self) Representations of Domestic Workers PDF Author: Alida Perrine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
On April 16, 2012, the much awaited primetime telenovela appropriately titled Cheias de Charme premiered on Rede Globo, the largest Brazilian television network, and viewers across the nation were introduced to as três Marias, the three charming protagonists who, in a rare occurrence on the network, are domestic workers. It is no surprise that domestic workers should be of interest to Brazilian television viewers; paid domestic work is an enormous part of daily life in Brazil and domestic workers make up nearly eight percent of the work force. This project builds on previous explorations of the unique relationships between domestic employers and employees in Brazil, as well as examinations of the traditional ways in which domestic workers have been imagined to draw a clearer image of the changing role of paid domestic work in Brazilian society. Part ethnographic study and part media analysis, this study is mainly preoccupied with exploring various representations of domestic workers. These representations speak to the tensions and contradictions surrounding the social dynamics of the intimate relationships between domestic workers and their employers, as well as the role of domestic work in Brazilian society, haunted by the legacy of nearly four-hundred years of slavery.

Global Domestic Workers

Global Domestic Workers PDF Author: Marchetti, Sabrina
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529207916
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Drawing from the EU-funded DomEQUAL research project across 9 countries in Europe, South America and Asia, this comparative study explores the conditions of domestic workers around the world and the campaigns they are conducting to improve their labour rights. The book showcases how domestic workers’ movements put ‘intersectionality in action’ in representing the interest of various marginalized social groups from migrants and low-income groups to racialized and rural girls and women. Casting light on issues such as subjectification, and collective organizing on the part of a category of workers conventionally regarded as unorganizable, this ambitious volume will be invaluable for scholars, policy makers and activists alike.

Household Workers Unite

Household Workers Unite PDF Author: Premilla Nadasen
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807033197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, this book resurrects a little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing. In this groundbreaking history of African American domestic-worker organizing, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen shatters countless myths and misconceptions about an historically misunderstood workforce. Resurrecting a little-known history of domestic-worker activism from the 1950s to the 1970s, Nadasen shows how these women were a far cry from the stereotyped passive and powerless victims; they were innovative labor organizers who tirelessly organized on buses and streets across the United States to bring dignity and legal recognition to their occupation. Dismissed by mainstream labor as “unorganizable,” African American household workers developed unique strategies for social change and formed unprecedented alliances with activists in both the women’s rights and the black freedom movements. Using storytelling as a form of activism and as means of establishing a collective identity as workers, these women proudly declared, “We refuse to be your mammies, nannies, aunties, uncles, girls, handmaidens any longer.” With compelling personal stories of the leaders and participants on the front lines, Household Workers Unite gives voice to the poor women of color whose dedicated struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, and respect on the job created a sustained political movement that endures today. Winner of the 2016 Sara A. Whaley Book Prize

The Discourse of Powerlessness and Repression

The Discourse of Powerlessness and Repression PDF Author: Hans J. Ladegaard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317265491
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Drawing on a large corpus of narratives recorded at a church shelter for abused domestic helpers in Hong Kong, this monograph explores how the women discursively construct themselves in sharing sessions with other helpers. They see themselves as ‘helpers’ who have come to Hong Kong to help their families, to help the people in the city, and to serve God. A wide variety of competing identities are constructed in the narratives: submissive helper, sacrificial mother, daughter and wife, and powerless traumatised victim, but also resourceful indignant migrant women who, through sharing and peer support, become empowered to fight against abusive employers. This book provides a detailed discourse analysis of the women’s narratives, but it also explores larger issues such as global migration, exploitation, language and power, abuse and the psychology of evil, intergroup communication, and peer support and empowerment.

Colonization and Domestic Service

Colonization and Domestic Service PDF Author: Victoria K. Haskins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317677935
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
This book brings together two key themes that have not been addressed together previously in any sustained way: domestic service and colonization. Existing studies of domestic service rarely make mention of colonization, but colonization offers a rich and exciting new paradigm for analysing the phenomenon of domestic labour by non-family workers, paid and otherwise. Scholars in diverse fields and disciplines here share new and stimulating insights on the various connections between domestic employment and the processes of colonization, both past and present, in a range of original essays.

The Work of Self-Representation

The Work of Self-Representation PDF Author: Ivy Schweitzer
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807864412
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
In The Work of Self-Representation Ivy Schweitzer examines early American poetry through the critical lens of gender. Her concern is not the inclusion of female writers into the canon; rather, she analyzes how the metaphors of "woman" and "feminine" function in Puritan religious and literary discourse to represent both the "otherness" of spiritual experience and the ways in which race and class function to keep the "other" in marginalized positions. Schwetizer argues that gender was for seventeenth-century new England -- and still is today -- a basic and most politically charged metaphor for the differences that shape identity and determine cultural position. To glimpse the struggle between gender ideology and experience, Schweitzer provides close readings of the poetry of four New Englanders writing between the Great Migration and the first wave of the Great Awakening: John Fiske, Edward Taylor, Anne Bradstreet, and Roger Williams. Schweitzer focuses exclusively on lyric poetry, she says, because a first-person speaker wrestling with the intricacies of individual consciousness provides fruitful ground for exploring the politics of voice and identity and especially problems of authority, intertextuality, and positionality. Fiske and Taylor define the orthodox tradition, and Bradstreet and Williams in different ways challenge it. Her treatment of the familiar poetry of Bradstreet and Taylor is solidly grounded in historical and literary scholarship yet suggestive of the new insights gained from a gender analysis, while discussions of Fiske and Williams bring their little-known lyric work to light. Taken together, these poets' texts illustrate the cultural construction of a troubled masculinity and an idealized, effaced femininity implicit in the Puritan notion of redeemed subjectivity, and constitute a profoundly disturbing and resilient part of our Puritan legacy.

Refiguring Domestic Work

Refiguring Domestic Work PDF Author: Elise Marcel Chatelain
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781267967732
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
In this dissertation, I explore the representation of domestic work in U.S. film and television, situating present-day cultural texts within their representational histories as well as the shifting context of domestic labor as an occupation, both in the United States and globally. I ground my analysis in a set of contemporary productions, from the 2004 film Spanglish to the more recent Downton Abbey and The Help (2011), using these largely as entry points for analyzing current cultural understandings of domestic work. While I focus mostly on the representation of the domestic worker, I also look at how various meanings of femininity are shaped across categories of race, class, and nation through discourses of domestic labor. I also interrogate the meanings surrounding the occupation of domestic labor itself, contextualizing the occupation in its historical, social, and economic specificity. With this approach, I enter into current feminist debates surrounding the issue of global/transnational domestic labor from a cultural studies perspective that emphasizes the complex interplays of meaning, context, and power. My overarching purpose is to make an offer to the epistemological and political practice of cultural studies, particularly through a reflective application of theories of representation and articulation, reworking these foundational concepts for studying popular culture in the contemporary moment.

Domestic Workers of the World Unite!

Domestic Workers of the World Unite! PDF Author: Jennifer N. Fish
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479848670
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"Look deep in your hearts": making a global domestic workers' movement -- "Dignity overdue": tracing a movement -- Getting "on the map": global policy as an activist stage -- "First to work; last to sleep": central policy debates -- "My mother was a kitchen girl": mobilizing strategies among domestic workers -- "Put yourself in her shoes": NGO, union, and feminist allies -- "A little bit of liberation": moving beyond rights

Non-Standard Work, Self-Employment and Precariousness

Non-Standard Work, Self-Employment and Precariousness PDF Author: Valeria Pulignano
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889667383
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description


Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers

Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004280146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
Domestic and caregiving work has been at the core of human existence throughout history. Poorly paid or even unpaid, this work has been assigned to women in most societes and occasionally to men often as enslaved, indentures, "adopted" workers. While some use domestic service as training for their own future independent households, others are confined to it for life and try to avoid damage to their identities (Part One). Employment conditions are even worse in colonizer-colonized dichotomies, in which the subalternized have to run the households of administrators who believe they are running an empire (Part Two). Societies and states set the discriminatory rules, those employed develop strategies of resistance or self-protection (Part Three). A team of international scholars addresses these issues globally with a deep historical background. Contributors are: Ally Shireen, Eileen Boris, Dana Cooper, Jennifer Fish, David R. Goodman, Mary Gene De Guzman, Jaira Harrington, Victoria Haskins, Dirk Hoerder, Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Majda Hrženjak, Elizabeth Hutchison, Dimitris Kalantzopoulos, Bela Kashyap, Marta Kindler, Anna Kordasiewicz, Ms Lokesh, Sabrina Marchetti, Robyn Pariser, Jessica Richter, Magaly Rodríguez García, Raffaella Sarti, Adéla Souralová, Yukari Takai, and Andrew Urban.