Culture, the Arts, and Inequality

American Artists and Social Justice
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-44139-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 162 Seiten, Format (B × H): 235 mm x 154 mm, Gewicht: 262 g

Examining how writers and musicians respond to attempts to define and categorize inequality in moral terms, Culture, the Arts and Inequality: American Artists and Social Justice analyzes the writers and artists who challenge the moral categories through which inequality has been maintained and mobilized.

Beginning with the work of Langston Hughes, whose fears for the African American community echo fifty years later in Stevie Wonder’s urban chronicles, and including key American voices such as Nelson Algren, Thomas McGrath, Ann Petry, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as “Godfather of Rap” Gil Scott-Heron, this book tackles the mechanisms that compelled writers and musicians to reassert the worth and value of those they wrote about, opposing the fixing in place of moral classifications applied to cultures and people deemed of little worth. Without adequate analysis of those classifications, and particularly the role of moral attribution in identifying and categorizing those deemed unworthy, we struggle to understand inequality’s impact on society and individuals—leading to a partial conceptualization of how it is understood and experienced.

Recognizing that new ways of thinking about class, dominated by moral questions but with real material effects, and its impact on writers, musicians, and society are at stake, this interdisciplinary project redefines discourses on inequality in the United States today.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Peddie, Ian

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Populärkultur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Gruppen & Klassen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gewalt und Diskriminierung: Soziale Aspekte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Introduction
1. Langston Hughes and “Negro Neighborhoods”: From the Ghetto to the Hyperghetto
2. Exclusionary Discourses, Articulated Disadvantages: Nelson Algren and
The Politics of Inequality in Mid-Century America.
3. Thomas McGrath: The Moral Obligation to Those Who Suffer
4. Ann Petry: The Spatiality of Injustice
5. The Privacy of Pain: Gwendolyn Brooks and the Privations of Property
6. Village Ghetto Land: Stevie Wonder and the Arrival of the Hyperghetto
7. Gil Scott Heron: Revolution of the Mind
Epilogue

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Ian Peddie is Professor of English at Sul Ross State University, USA. He is the author and editor of numerous works on literature and culture, including Music and Protest (2012), Popular Music and Human Rights, Volumes I and II (2011), and The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest (2006).