CP20 | Representations of Poverty in Early Twentieth-Century Literature and Sociology

Summary
The early twentieth century saw a major shift towards an interest in representing the experiences of the poor within British culture. This project develops an account of how this trend might be defined in relation to earlier nineteenth-century patterns, developing and scrutinising the hypothesis (founded upon Michel Foucault's analysis of neoliberalism) that heightened levels of attentiveness masked a continued commitment to productivist values, deemed by Kohei Saito, Jason Hickel, and others to be socially and environmentally harmful.
Using a mixed methods approach, combining computational criticism, archival research, and theoretical analysis, this project explores evolutions in early twentieth-century representations of poverty in Britain within the domains of literature and sociology. In the first instance, a digital corpus of representations of poverty is built and analysed to quantitatively analyse this trend. In the second, archival case studies of four authors (Elizabeth Gaskell, Bronislaw Malinowski, Charles Booth, and Storm Jameson) enable a more nuanced appraisal of these findings through close reading of neglected texts. In the third, a theory is developed concerning the relationship between poverty representation and productivism in the early twentieth century, indicating that popular literature and sociology played a key but under-acknowledged role in enabling the advancement of productivist ideology. Through an extensive range of dissemination, exploitation, and communication activities - including workshops, video content, and interaction with campaign groups - an effort is made to ensure that these findings broaden the scope of current inquiries into productivism and its associated harms.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101149822
Start date: 01-01-2025
End date: 31-12-2026
Total budget - Public funding: - 210 911,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

The early twentieth century saw a major shift towards an interest in representing the experiences of the poor within British culture. This project develops an account of how this trend might be defined in relation to earlier nineteenth-century patterns, developing and scrutinising the hypothesis (founded upon Michel Foucault's analysis of neoliberalism) that heightened levels of attentiveness masked a continued commitment to productivist values, deemed by Kohei Saito, Jason Hickel, and others to be socially and environmentally harmful.
Using a mixed methods approach, combining computational criticism, archival research, and theoretical analysis, this project explores evolutions in early twentieth-century representations of poverty in Britain within the domains of literature and sociology. In the first instance, a digital corpus of representations of poverty is built and analysed to quantitatively analyse this trend. In the second, archival case studies of four authors (Elizabeth Gaskell, Bronislaw Malinowski, Charles Booth, and Storm Jameson) enable a more nuanced appraisal of these findings through close reading of neglected texts. In the third, a theory is developed concerning the relationship between poverty representation and productivism in the early twentieth century, indicating that popular literature and sociology played a key but under-acknowledged role in enabling the advancement of productivist ideology. Through an extensive range of dissemination, exploitation, and communication activities - including workshops, video content, and interaction with campaign groups - an effort is made to ensure that these findings broaden the scope of current inquiries into productivism and its associated harms.

Status

SIGNED

Call topic

HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-01

Update Date

22-11-2024
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Horizon Europe
HORIZON.1 Excellent Science
HORIZON.1.2 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
HORIZON.1.2.0 Cross-cutting call topics
HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01
HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-01 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023