Social Outcasts Research Articles

“You’ll never meet someone like me again”: Patty Jenkins’s Monster as Rogue Cinema

Film is a powerful medium that can influence audience’s perceptions, values and ideals. As filmmaking evolved into a serious art form, it became a powerful tool for telling stories that require us to re-examine our ideology. While it remains popular to adapt a literary novel or text for the screen, filmmakers have more freedom to pick and choose the stories they want to tell. This freedom allows filmmakers to explore narratives that might otherwise go unheard, which include stories that feature marginal figures, such as serial killers, as sympathetic protagonists, which is what director Patty Jenkins achieves in her 2003 film Monster. Charlize Theron’s transformation into and performance as Aileen Wuornos, and Jenkins’s presentation of the subject matter, make this film an example of rogue cinema. In addition, Aileen Wuornos is portrayed as a clear example of the rogue character. This character trope frequently defies social standards, suffers from past trauma, is psychologically complex, and is often exiled. As a prostitute and social outcast, Aileen Wuornos exists on the fringes of society and rejects the hegemonic power structure and later heteronormativity of society, which makes her a rogue figure. While there are several aspects to consider when analyzing Jenkins’s film, my intention is to argue that this film is an example of rogue cinema because of its content. In order to accomplish this task, I examine Theron’s bodily transformation and her performance as Wuornos. Furthermore, I look at how Jenkins handles the depiction of romantic love and gendered violence and argue that her treatment of this content renders this film rogue.

Rescuing Masculinity: Giving Gender in the Wake of China’s Marriage Squeeze

China’s marriage squeeze poses a profound challenge to the construction of masculinity in rural regions, where marriage continues to play an important role in the production of gender identities, marking manhood and its virtues. What are the consequences when men fail to marry and to assert respected male seniority? We show that in the context of China’s imbalanced sex ratio, family members attempt to rescue or restore the dignity of their sons and brothers by “giving gender,” gestures of care that are aimed to bolster gender authenticity and thereby strengthen a young man’s marriage prospects. By discussing both the intergenerational and intragenerational dynamics of gender collaboration within the family, we furthermore challenge existing studies that project gender antagonism in the wake of radical demographic change, while complicating the image of China’s rural bachelors as social outcasts.

Anglo-American Travelers and the Hotel Experience in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nation, Hospitality, Travel Writing

Anglo-American Travelers and the Hotel Experience in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nation, Hospitality, Travel Writing

A Look Back in Doubt “Confessions of a Heretic”: Multicultural Literature in Australia.

It is argued that the emergence of ‘multiculturalism’ in Australia during the Nineteen-eighties was almost entirely determined by political considerations. An application of the concept to literary culture was not anticipated. Nor was there a discourse of migrant or ethnic literature before post-war immigration.As part of the Australia Council’s decision to sponsor a literary culture of ‘New Australians’ it encouraged the creation of a journal for multicultural literature, Outrider. This article is an attempt to characterise a group of perceived ‚multicultural writers’ by raising doubt about their real or assumed status. It is true they employ highly individual creative imagination and variations of literary style by questioning the nature of migration (often without being migrants themselves). However, such writing is hardly unique to inherent characteristics of ‚multicultural aesthetics’. Formally and thematically these authors’ language frequently employs a wide range of elective affinities, alienation techniques or correlative analogies. They can hardly be considered ‚minority writers’ of limited literary genius. In truth they are creators of sophisticated poetry and prose by overcoming (or ‘integrating’) foreign language restriction. To them migration is not merely a subject or theme: it is a consciousness manifesting itself in literary form and style. The best ‘migrant writing’ invokes dimensions of alienation shared by a readership whose cultural dislocation is not confined to refugees, asylum-seekers or social outcasts. In the contemporary global end game, migration has become a shared state of mind.A brilliant and complex linguistic approach to ‘multicultural writing’ has been argued by Australian sociolinguist Paul Carter. He rejects the negative view of immigration as a form of displacement. Applying his well-balanced analysis of “migrant aesthetic” dialogue promises not only “a new kind of history”. In the end it means refining a new, distinctively migrant poetics.

Despre un posibil cimitir al deţinuţilor politic de la Poarta Albă, judeţul Constanţa / On a possible cemetery of political prisoners at Poarta Albă, Constanţa County

The construction of the Danube – Black Sea Canal started after 1948, during the communist regime. It was built with the effort of tens of thousands of political prisoners who manually (mostly) excavated the Canal which afterwards became part of the Carasu irrigation system. A series of memoirs, accounts and historical documents indicate that a great number of people died because of the strenuous work, malnutrition and poor conditions of hygiene. The dead were buried in mass graves or penal cemeteries. Marking these events in the field and also in the collective memory is the duty of both local authorities and historians. An area of almost 2000 m2 came to the attention of archaeologists. In the southern half, the A area, the land has an alveolar shape and it is formed of sediments of yellow clay. In the northern half, the B area, the soil is at the same level with the other cemeteries from the neighbourhood. The presence of a mass grave was the main assumed hypothesis while investigating the A area. This area is rectangular, 33 × 30 m, and oriented E– W. The lowest level is at -0,80 m below the present day one, measured on the northern side, where this entire formation is limited by a ridge. Archaeological excavations uncovered a cluster of large, 2 m deep pits that covered an area of ca. 150 m2. The pits were filled with black soil taken from the neighbouring area. Some of the pits were dug into the yellow clean virgin soil, but others cut and destroyed different pits filled with dirtyyellow soil with brown thin deposits. Chronologically, the pits were assigned to the contemporary period, more precisely to the communist age. In these pits no human bones were recovered from the latter pits and their function remains obscure so far. In the levelling layer overlapping the pits with dark soil, were founds lids marked RPR, thus prior to 1965. The functionality of these pits is obscure. It is worth retaining the account of some former prisoners who remembered that the firing of limestone (used in the construction of the canal) was done in pits. The possibility of slaking pits, where limestone was burnt in order to obtain the lime for the construction of the canal, can be taken into account. Five graves were discovered in Area B. The site plan and the orientation of the pits suggest a contemporary cemetery (post 1945). The graves are narrow and not very deep (-1 -1.40 m) and they correspond to the size of the “ coffins” used (wooden boxes). Certainly, it is a cemetery for social outcasts. During the communist era, the vast majority of such outcasts were political prisoners. The authors believe that some of the archaeological arguments (such as location, density of graves, lack of markers and grave goods) and the anthropological analysis of the skeleton discovered in Grave 3, suggest political prisoners buried in the area.

무속의 관점에서 보는 사회적 약자의 존재성-뒷전의 인물을 중심으로

무속의 관점에서 보는 사회적 약자의 존재성-뒷전의 인물을 중심으로

Being an adult child of an elderly person living in a nursing home: a phenomenological approach to the Turkish case

PurposeA long-established cultural norm of filial piety may cause ambivalent feelings for adult children who are considered the primary caregivers for their elderly parents in Turkish culture, and whose parents have been placed into nursing homes. The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight to the lived experiences of adult children of elderly people living in a nursing home in Turkey.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon dramaturgical theory and phenomenological methodology, the authors conducted interviews with ten adult children whose elderly parents had been admitted to a nursing home in Izmir, Turkey. Multi-stage purposeful random sampling was used as the sampling scheme. Thematic analysis was performed to interpret the data.FindingsThree themes emerged from the data: adult children’s coping strategies, the ways in which the adult children rationalize their decisions, and the ways in which the adult children manage the placement process. The interviews revealed that the adult children often feel like social outcasts and experience a wide range of difficulties, including social pressures, their own inner dilemmas, and negotiations with their elderly parents.Originality/valueAn exploration for the lived experiences of adult children relating to the nursing home placement of their elderly parents contributes an insight about the well-established cultural norms that produce feelings of ambivalence.

Between man, woman and dog: Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm

The dog in Schreiner’s novel is represented both as an individualized human companion and as a figure of the social outcast. This split signification is homologous with other such instances in the novel – the anomaly of a “failed” bildungsroman, the narrative division between the real and the dreamlike, the aporia of human consciousness in the face of nature, the entanglements of gender, the problematics of race. Focusing on Waldo, Lyndall, and the dog Doss, the paper tracks the way in which the dog refracts not only the relation between human and animal but also a range of other relations in the novel, social and metaphysical. Reading the novel and its late nineteenth-century contexts of thought from the retrospective standpoint of the present – a hermeneutic position that is itself the site of a split signification – the paper considers the dog good to think with.

Optimal Design of Serious Games for Consumer Engagement in the Smart Grid

Serious games are a promising approach for demand-side management that aims to higher user engagement and active participation. In this paper, we introduce the problem of optimal serious-game design for achieving specific energy-consumption reduction goals. We consider a serious game, where a serious-game designer entity presents publicly to all consumers a list of top-K consumers and a list of bottom-M consumers according to their respective energy-consumption reduction at peak hours. The driving forces of this serious game are the user discomfort due to demand load reduction, the user desire for social approval and the user sensitivity to social outcasting. We formulate the problems of the serious-game designer as an operational-cost minimization one for the utility company and that of each consumer as a utility-maximization one. The serious-game-design problem is to decide on K, M, and on the feedback provided to the consumers, while the consumer-side problem amounts to selecting the behavioral change to energy consumption that maximizes the expected user utility. By a series of simulations, we show how the choices of K, M affect the energy consumption reduction for different types of customers.

Государство и социальные маргиналы в СССР: проблемы инкорпорации цыган в социалистическое общество во второй половине 50-х — начале 70-х гг. XX в.

Государство и социальные маргиналы в СССР: проблемы инкорпорации цыган в социалистическое общество во второй половине 50-х — начале 70-х гг. XX в.

Double Trouble: Counting the Cost of Jephthah

The Judges 10:6 list of the gods of the surrounding nations to which Israel adhered in preference to Yahweh is unprecedented in its detail. Moreover, it forms the literal center of the book of Judges according to the Masoretic verse count. In the composition’s rhetorical plan, similarly, it constitutes the fulcrum in the account of the relations between Yahweh and his people. The worship of these deities and the syncretistic application of aspects of their cults to normative Yahwism provoke the response from Israel’s god that he will deliver them no more and that they should “appeal to the gods you have chosen” for deliverance. This rupture in the relationship sets the scene for Jephthah’s rise. The Gileadites, in extremis, take the initiative to engineer a human solution to a divine problem by approaching Jephthah, a social outcast with proven leadership and combat skills. The article analyses the place and role of Jephthah in Judges, the repercussions of his brief ascendancy, his relationship with the minor judges, as well as with Ehud and Abimelech, and the meaning of the shibboleth incident. The conclusions challenge the widely held scholarly view, originally proposed by Martin Noth, that Jephthah is the common denominator between the judge-deliverer figures and the minor judges. In addition, it advances a new interpretation of the significance of the choice of the noun shibboleth as the password at the Jordan fords.

Zabor ou Les psaumes by Kamel Daoud

married, Tomás’s schooling will take him to Oxford for a doctoral degree in foreign languages. A stellar student, whose learning of Spanish and English began naturally at home in Madrid, Tomás soon becomes an admired polyglot by his professors at Oxford. Upon graduation, because of his great ability to speak many languages and imitate many accents, he is recruited by the British secret service and thus begins his life as an underground agent. As is the case with many of Marías’s protagonists, Tomás, or Tom, is an individual of many identities. Truly multicultural and multilingual, he can claim more than one place of belonging while also being perfectly capable of feeling at ease in more than one cultural setting. Such a trait proves to be useful for his job, although he is never free to reveal his many identities or his whereabouts to his wife; instead, he is forced to create many masks for himself in order to justify his long periods away from home. As a result, identity and deceit take center stage in this narrative along with other recurring topics in Marías’s fiction. Case in point are the trials and tribulations of love and marriage and, more importantly, the hidden secrets each individual carries during his or her lifetime. At the same time, Berta Isla is a subtle reflection on the nature of fiction and the novel’s ability to serve as a tool to explore the many nuances of human nature. Marías’s intense, sentimentally charged narrative seems to underscore that only the art of the novel is capable of making visible facets of the human condition that seem invisible to the common eye. Moreover, literature is the only tool available for unveiling what lies dormant in our most hidden emotions and our many masks and desires. An ambitious work filled with mysterious and sublime moments, Berta Isla is a rich and complex novel and can be regarded as some of Javier Marías’s best storytelling to date. César Ferreira University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Kamel Daoud Zabor ou Les psaumes Arles, France. Actes Sud. 2017. 328 pages. “Writing is the only effective ruse against death. People have tried prayer, drugs, magic, endelessly repeated verses, or immobility, but I believe I am the only one who found an answer: writing.” Thus begins Kamel Daoud’s second novel, Zabor ou Les psaumes, in which a social outcast in an isolated village finds his purpose in life by staving off other people’s deaths through his writing. After years of being shunned by his father and his half-brothers, Zabor finds himself at the center of a family drama when his father is sick and dying. Should he try to save the father who long ago repudiated his mother and banished Zabor to an isolated house? Should he use his skill as a writer to help those who despise him and the texts he produces? This allegorical novel draws on several sources, including One Thousand and One Nights, with storytelling as both a framing device and a temporary respite from decay and death. Throughout the narrative, numerous flashbacks allow Zabor, the pathetic and strangely misshapen son, who brought only shame to his father, to tell both his story and that of his family: his father the prosperous butcher, with his flocks of sheep; his repudiated (and now dead) mother; the unmarried aunt who shares his status as an outcast; and his half-brothers, who long to take over the dying father’s business. Zabor mostly spends his days sleeping and his nights roaming the village. Occasionally, he is called upon by neighbors who normally avoid him to write a story that will delay the death of a family member. Useless as a worker, unable to marry and have children, Zabor’s only interests seem to be collecting books and writing texts that are incomprehensible to most of the villagers. Normally, they only treat Zabor with pity or disgust, unless of course they need his seemingly magical writing skills, which have prolonged the lives of many. Kamel Daoud’s debut novel, Meursault, contre-enquête (Actes Sud, 2014), has a...

STALINOWSKIE REPRESJE WOBEC EDWARDA KULI, NAUCZYCIELA HISTORII, W ŚWIETLE DOKUMENTÓW WOJSKOWEGO SĄDU REJONOWEGO W ZIELONEJ GÓRZE

The life of Edward Kula, a History and head teacher, deserves describing not only because he became a victim of Stalinist terror, directed at its ideological opponents, as he had been named by the communist authorities, but also because he was made a second-class citizen who, having served a prison sentence, was made to live a life of a social outcast. His life was exceptional. A son of a smallholder, he progressed through all the levels of education in interwar Poland, obtaining a degree in History at Jagiellonian University. In the autumn of 1945 he arrived in Zielona Gora to begin his career as a History teacher, later becoming the head teacher of a school of industry. He became of interest to the secret police for his connections with national armed forces during World War II. After a few years of work, Edward Kula earned a strong position as well as students’ and teacher’s high regard. This, as well as the fact that he was not a member of Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), upset the authorities. A decision was taken to eliminate an inconvenient head teacher, using testimony of nine students, who testified that “he did not teach the right history of Poland, as what he said differed from what was written in the papers and said on the radio”. Although students who defended their head teacher before a judge of a military court also appeared during his trial in January 1951, saying that they had “never heard him deliver his lectures badly or say anything inappropriate against People’s Poland”, the judge chose to believe the accusing students and sentenced Kula to four years of prison. Having served the sentence, he never recovered his lost social position. It was not until 1991 that the provincial court of Zielona Gora annulled the sentence, stating that while „giving his lectures in history” he fought for Poland’s independence. Years later, thanks to his two surviving students – Walerian Piotrowski and Wilhelm Skibinski – a rebellious teacher has been commemorated. In 2016 I heard his story. while studying files of Military District Court in Zielona Gora, I found a file “Criminal case against Edward Kula”.

Inter-caste lovers' suicide pact - Case report from Nepal.

Discrimination on cultural and ethnic grounds is a crime in Nepal. [Caste Based Discrimination and Untouchability (Offence and Punishment) Act, 2068 (2011) * * There are two different dates which reflect the Bikram Sambat which is the official Hindu calendar in Nepal. This calendar is 57 years ahead of Gregorian calendar. For example, 19 August 2017 AD is 03 Bhadra 2074 Bikram Sambat. Thus, the date 2068 is in Bikram Sambat, 2011 is per Gregorian calendar which is unofficial so kept in parenthesis. This text is available online from: http://www.ilo.org/aids/legislation/WCMS_190732/lang-en/index.htm . ]. However, cases of caste-based discrimination continue and have been reported in the newspapers. They occur because most families refuse to accept inter-caste marriages in Nepal as they fear they will become social outcasts. We present a tragic case where a young couple in their 20s made a pact to end their lives by jumping from Nepal's highest suspension bridge. Preliminary police investigation suggested their inter-caste relationship was the reason.

The role of online social networks for divorced Saudi women in the face of social, psychological, economic, and legal challenges

This research examines the supporting role social networks provide to divorced Saudi women in the face of social, economic, psychological, and legal challenges. An online survey with open and closed ended questions was created to address the following research question: What support do online social networks provide to divorced Saudi women in contemporary Saudi Arabian society in the face of social, economic, psychological, and legal challenges?” The survey was completed online by 248 divorced Saudi women. Quantitative analysis of closed-ended survey responses was applied to the dataset followed by a qualitative thematic analysis of respondents' responses to open-ended questions. Survey findings identified the following areas of medium to high social network support experienced by divorced Saudi women: social outcast avoidance, relationship management with former husband, income assistance, emotional support, confidence building, and depression management. Findings also revealed areas where social networks provided only low levels of support with respect to social, economic, psychological, and legal challenges. The research contributes new insights into the supporting role of social networks for divorced Saudi women and their potential to leverage personal life and identity development in the face of social stigmatization and societal marginalization. This work advances research relevant to media studies, woman's studies, and cultural studies.

Segregation and Exclusion: A Politics of Fear in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God

ABSTRACTIn Child of God, Cormac McCarthy describes a fear politics that features social-spatial segregation and social exclusion in the modernized American South. By examining the motive of Lester Ballard, a social outcast, to hunt females and to live with their corpses underground in the everyday context, McCarthy traces the origin of fear back to the social transformation of the agrarian South caused by the aggression of capitalism, commodity economy, and consumerism. The acquisitive ideology and inequality in material possession breed fear politics and allow the citizens’ alarmed perception of insecurity to affect social justice. Residential differentiation, invalidation of public space, stigmatization, and physical violence are the specific representations. However, as fear politics leaves the root of danger and crime untouched, its effectiveness seems doubtable. McCarthy implies that instead of eliminating fear, such a political culture encourages the spreading of fear and may mislead individuals toward wrong values and illegal deeds.

JOB’S WIFE

Internal textual evidence, as well as external evidence drawn from behavioural patterns in the ancient Near East, shows that the book of Job contains not only a theological conflict between man and God, but also one between man and the society to which he belongs. Job’s physical affliction (שחין רע ) made him into a social outcast because of fear of contagion. The role of Job’s wife has to be understood within this context. In particular, this paper is focused on the speech of Job’s wife in the Prologue (2:9), allusions to her in 19:17, 30:12–13, 17–18, 31:1, 10, and her absence from the Epilogue. These sources suggest an image of Job’s wife that is at variance with the negative character usually ascribed to her.

Glee-talia: adapting Glee for an Italian audience

ABSTRACTGlee was an American television program that emphasized differences in high school students’ social status by juxtaposing popular teens with underdogs. This theme, consistently reinforced in promotional materials in the US, got lost in translation when Glee was exported to Italy. Through an examination of cultural symbols and editing practices that affect both visual and auditory elements, this study brings critical attention to one element of the transnational television adaptation industry. Although the Italian alteration of American promos disrupts the encoding of Glee’s central narrative—the exclusion of marginalized identities by those with privilege—I conclude that viewers’ increased familiarity with American symbols ultimately reinforces the social binary that separates popular characters from social outcasts; furthermore, the development of Italian promos for Glee’s second season demonstrates the learning curve inherent in promotional materials’ cross-cultural adaptation.

Self-stigma of Patients with Type 1 Diabetes and Their Coping Strategies

The purpose of this study was to examine the stigma and coping strategies of patients with type 1 diabetes. Data were collected from 24 adult patients with type 1 diabetes via in-depth semi-structured interviews that took place in clinic waiting rooms. Qualitative and descriptive data analysis was conducted to identify stigma and coping strategies of patients with type 1 diabetes. Stigma of patients with type 1 diabetes consisted of four categories: (i) "hatred of insulin" due to a treatment-oriented lifestyle after the onset of the disease, (ii) "imperfect body" due to systemic changes caused by the disease, (iii) "social outcast" as a diabetes patient who used to be healthy, and (iv) "poor me," a negative self-image due to the responses and attitudes of others. Regarding the coping strategies for reducing stigma, the following four categories were derived from the analysis: (i) In a stable disease stage, patients coped with stigma by "hiding their disease" or (ii) "pretending to be healthy" by avoiding self-care behaviors in public. When they told others about their disease, they (iii) "gradually spoke out to those around them about their illnesses." (iv) When they could not do either (i) or (ii), they resorted to "limiting their social life" or limiting interactions with others. Patients with type 1 diabetes changed their coping strategies for reducing stigma as the disease progressed because stigma was tied to their disease. Physical, psychological, social, and spiritual coping strategies are required to reduce stigma, and the strategies are interrelated. It is important for nurses to assess patients from various viewpoints, including the viewpoint of stigma.

From Party Leaders to Social Outcasts

From Party Leaders to Social Outcasts