Journal articles on the topic '"Great Labour Unrest"'

This article provides the first systematic historical study of volunteer strike-breaking across a relatively broad time frame, focusing specifically on the period between 1911 and 1926. These years bore witness to the largest industrial conflict in British history, encompassing the Great Labour Unrest of 1911-14, the post-war strike wave of 1919-23, and the General Strike of 1926. The sheer size and scale of these strikes, which involved millions of workers and engulfed entire cities, towns, and communities, instigated a shift away from traditional strikebreaking agencies and actors and towards civilian volunteers. This article challenges prevailing interpretations of the General Strike, interwar political culture, and the implications of voluntary activism in early twentieth-century Britain. It sheds light on the hitherto unexplored role of volunteers during the Great Labour Unrest and highlights how this activity often provoked considerable violence on the part of strikers. Contrary to dominant interpretations centred on the General Strike, which often highlight the good spirits of the volunteers, this article pays more attention to the hostility, arrogance, and sense of social hierarchy that underpinned the volunteer world view.

Strike action has played a pivotal role in advancing and securing the socio-economic interests of workers in South Africa, first for white workers, then for black. Rights were won only in the aftermath of serious and sustained labour unrest, for white workers in the twenties, for black workers fifty years later. None of the legislative attempts at modulation ever quite went to plan, and the degree of deviation has arguably increased across the decades. The Industrial Conciliation Act 11 of 1924 set out to institutionalise conflict in respect of the favoured class of workers while ignoring the majority. But eventually demographics, international pressure and a groundswell of political and industrial resistance obliged the minority government from the late seventies and into the eighties to open an adjusted but unstable labour relations system to all. The Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (LRA) heralded a modern regime of great promise. That potential has not been realised under the weight of accumulated historical disadvantage and grievance, and the inability of the new constitutional and political order to repel corruption, violence and incompetence. It is difficult to see how the objects of the 1995 Act can be realised if — among other weighty challenges — the social parties cannot find a way to grow more co-operative, productive and competitive workplaces. Ironically, the voluntary suspension of the hard-fought right to strike might need to feature as part of any workplace culture reset.

Costa Rica has won praise for its democratic traditions and social stability. Social scientists have attributed this to many factors: the country's benign colonial past, its small and relatively homogeneous population, the existence of a land owning peasantry, and the development, beginning in the 1930s, of a social welfare state. As it did elsewhere, the Great Depression marked a crossroads in Costa Rica's development. In response to the collapse of its international markets and the ensuing labour unrest, the state jettisoned its economic liberalism, and assumed an interventionist role in the management of the economy and labour–capital relations. This fundamentally reformist role developed through the 1930s and culminated in 1943 with the passage of a package of Christian-based social reforms including a comprehensive labour code under the administration of Rafael Calderón Guardia (1940–4).

This article studies the different expressions of political mobilization and social unrest that occurred in rural Portugal during the early twentieth century. To do so, it offers an investigation at local level, using as an example the municipality of Montemor-o-Novo, part of the Alentejo region, in the southern half of the country, and covers the years of unrest marked by the fall of the monarchy and the early years of the Republic (1908–1918). This research focuses on the analysis of three aspects: the acts of political mobilization associated with the republican movement; the expansion of associations and conflict associated with the workers’ movement; and the protests associated with the absence of basic foodstuffs resulting from the Great War. In doing so, the article aims to show how the rural Portuguese population in the early twentieth century played an active and dynamic role in the political and social life of the country by means of very different forms of collective mobilization (such as meetings, demonstrations, strikes and riots), resulting from a wide variety of political, economic, or labour-related circumstances.

Born in Liverpool in 1874, Big Jim Larkin always insisted that he was Irish. No historian has ever challenged him on the claim, or seen him as anything other than a uniquely Irish figure. And yet there was a British dimension to Larkin’s outlook. Liverpool gave him a love of soccer and travel, and shaped his interest in socialism and literature. He first went to Ireland in 1907 as an agent of a British trade union and remained keenly engaged with British Labour up to his departure for America in 1914. During the Dublin lockout in 1913, Larkin demanded aid from British workers with a sense of entitlement that no other Irish Labour leader would have entertained. His ‘Fiery Cross’ campaign made the lockout a part of British labour history. Larkinism too should be lifted out of a purely Irish context. It was not only a subset of the ‘Great Labour Unrest’ that shook British industrial relations between 1911 and 1914, but a reflex of international trends in industrial conflict and growing support for syndicalism between 1890 and 1914. Larkin was a changed man after the lockout and never again had the same level of engagement with British trade unionism.

Anti-alienism has frequently been the dark underside of organized patriotic movements in twentieth-century Britain. Love of nation has all too frequently been accompanied by an abstract fear of foreigners or a concrete dislike of alien immigrants residing in Britain. Numerous patriotic leagues have used xenophobia and the supposed threat posed by aliens to define themselves and their Conservative creed. Aliens symbolized “the other,” which held values antithetical to members of the patriotic leagues. These currents have usually become even more pronounced in times of tension and crisis. From the end of the First World War through the 1920s, Britain suffered an enormous economic, social, and political crisis. British unemployment never fell below one million as traditional industries such as coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding, and textiles declined. Electoral reform in 1918 and 1928 quadrupled the size of the electorate, and the British party system fractured with the Liberals divided and Labour becoming the alternative party of government. Industrial unrest was rampant, culminating in the General Strike of 1926. The example of the Russian Revolution inspired many on the Left and appalled their opponents on the Right, while many British Conservatives felt that fundamental aspects of the existing system of capitalism and parliamentary democracy were under challenge.

The Great Labour Unrest that shook British society between 1910 and 1914 was remarkable insofar as it developed not in any cities, but mainly in ports. This gave it an international dimension which has too often been reduced to the importation of syndicalist ideas from the USA and France over to Britain by Tom Mann. But whatever influence syndicalism managed to exert in the British Isles was in fact the result of collective efforts to create international networks. The study of Madame Sorgue s visit to Hull in May 1911 provides an interesting case in point. The French activists stay in the city was at the time quite an event, and while many contemporary observers blamed her for poisoning the healthy minds of Hull workers with “outlandish ‘ISMS’”, this article argues that no political contamination would have been possible if the working population of the city had not been ready to adopt the virus in the first place.

The endemic industrial conflicts in Nigeria have been a great concern not only to the employers or employees but to the society because of their economic dislocation and effects on national productivity. The study relies on Marxist (conflict) theory as a theoretical fulcrum having recognized that an organization consists of people with conflicting interests and constant competition for limited resources. Thus, this study aims at assessing the socio-economic implications of industrial conflicts in Nigeria using qualitative research methodology. Secondary data were collated from relevant literature, journals, publications, government documents and internet materials, supported by in-depth interviews of seventy-seven (77) randomly selected informants comprising trade unionists and federal government officials. The findings of the study revealed that incessant industrial unrest by Nigerian workers are caused by unpaid or poor emolument and unconducive working conditions of workers, obnoxious policies of the government, ineffective communication and breach of collective agreements reached by feuding parties during bargaining among others. The findings also revealed that industrial actions lead to low productivity as a result of loss of manpower, administrative paralysis, loss of revenue, discouragement of direct foreign investment, economic hardship and social stigma. It is, therefore, concluded that disharmony between the government and the labour will continue unless the government implements good salary structure and better welfare package for its workforce, engages the labour unions in decision making and honours the previous collective agreements among industrial actors.

In the midsummer of 1763 six of the nine counties of Ulster temporarily passed out of the control of the landed élite and into that of the Hearts of Oak. People gathered in their thousands across most of Ulster, with the exclusion of Counties Antrim, Donegal and most of Down, to protest at the levels of the taxes levied by the grand juries, the collection of small dues by the clergy of the established church and the compulsory six days’ labour on the roads. At the time one Dublin newspaper expressed its horror at this outbreak among the ‘loyal Protestants of the North of Ireland’ and warned that ‘our neighbours [might] be glad to make a handle out of this to our great prejudice and scandal, as they did about the Whiteboys last year’. Among many observers the belief was that these embarrassing disturbances by Ulster’s Protestants, particularly by the Presbyterians — who had long been seen as a difficult element — should quickly be put down and the insurrection regarded as an aberration. The scale of subsequent events in late eighteenth-century Ulster made it easier to forget the Oakboy disturbances. They were neither as long-lasting as the Steelboy outrages, nor as violent as the later clashes between the Peep o’ Day Boys and Defenders. In the early nineteenth century the narrators of rural unrest, Richard Musgrave and George Cornewall Lewis, believed the Hearts of Oak disturbances to be of little importance, while historians like Lecky saw all agrarian rioters as largely cut from the same apolitical cloth. This was to remain the perception until the late 1970s and 1980s and a series of groundbreaking articles, several of them resulting from the research of James S. Donnelly. These showed a fresh insight into eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Irish agrarian troubles, accompanied by a willingness to use theoretical models of unrest in pre-industrial societies and the responses of their legal systems.

During the interwar period, California’s labor-intensive agriculture transitioned from reliance on diverse immigrants to preference for Mexicans. Political movements to restrict immigration, the Great Depression, and labor unrest compelled farm employers to search for labor that could be used flexibly and deported easily. To achieve this objective, the growers needed a central organization that could foster unity and articulate their collective interest. The formation of the California Farm Bureau Federation and the American Farm Bureau Federation in 1919 and 1920 provided such a political platform. When lawmakers sought to apply the quota provision of the Immigration Act of 1924 to Mexico, the growers’ strong presence at congressional hearings demonstrated their rising influence in policy making. Moreover, the clear difference between Filipinos and Mexicans with respect to deportability during the Depression affirmed the flexibility of Mexican labor. Finally, at the height of labor unrest in the 1930s, the American Farm Bureau leadership called for agricultural class consciousness to strengthen unity and maintain dominance over the striking workers. The development of grower organizations in this era set the stage for California agriculture’s almost exclusive dependence on flexible Mexican labor in the ensuing decades.

Social movement scholars suggest that coalitions comprise a significant and growing portion of all protest mobilizations. Such organizational collaboration is of great practical importance to the labor movement in particular, as unions struggle to succeed on their own in a difficult economic and political environment. Yet surprisingly little is known about the factors underlying the development and success of coalitions. In this article we advance literature on labor and social movement coalitions, bringing a comparative historical approach to bear on the problem and examining two influential and far-reaching labor campaigns that occurred in the U. S. South. Our argument and findings demonstrate the importance of the relative fit among coalition members, the vulnerabilities of collective action targets, and their interplay for coalition outcomes. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for labor and social movement challenges more generally.

The neoliberal reforms implemented during Reagan’s administration, while once revitalizing the U.S. economy, also sowed great potential problems for society. The trend of increasing income inequality, accelerating de-industrialization and capital concentration in the financial sector has caused the continuous decline of the “Rust Belt” region, and the gradual marginalization of blue-collar workers in the social status, and the prolonged accumulation of these social contradictions has finally erupted into violent political energy, which has brought about far-reaching impacts on the American society. This paper explains the socio-economic mechanism of the “Rust Belt” dilemma: under the neo-liberal-dominated global division of labor system, the region has lost its comparative advantage in heavy industry, and many industries have migrated to new industrial regions with lower labor costs. At the same time, the weakening of government regulation and the influence of labor unions has led to a prolonged failure to protect the claims of local workers. Economic hardship and unfair income distribution have caused residents to accumulate a great deal of dissatisfaction with the existing system. The Rust Belt’s support for Trump in the 2016 election was a strong rebellion against the neoliberal economic model and the establishment parties. Trump’s victory reflects the dissatisfaction of the region’s residents with the imbalance of economic development and signals a new round of social unrest.

AbstractThis article focuses on the Domestic Workers’ Union of Great Britain and Ireland (est. 1909–1910), a small, grassroots union organized by young female domestic servants in the years leading up to the First World War. This union emerged against a backdrop of labor unrest as well as an increasingly militant women's movement. The article looks at how the Domestic Workers’ Union drew inspiration from the latter but also encountered hostility from some feminists unhappy with the idea of their own servants becoming organized. I argue that the uneven and ambivalent response of the women's movement toward the question of domestic worker organizing is significant not simply as an expression of the social divisions that undoubtedly characterized this movement, but also as reflecting a wider debate within early twentieth-century British feminism over what constituted useful and valuable work for women. Attitudes toward domestic worker organizing were therefore predicated upon feminists’ interrogation of the very nature of domestic labor. Was it inherently inferior to masculine and/or professional forms of work? Was it intrinsically different from factory work, or could it be reorganized and rationalized to fit within the industrial paradigm? Under what conditions should domestic labor be performed, and, perhaps most importantly, who should do it?

Yan Lianke's novel 『四書』 is set in the context of the anti-right struggle, the Great Leap Forward movement, and the Great Famine. State violence is dealt with through intellectuals who were subject to labor reform in the Wishin District along the Yellow River. On the other hand, we considered the human dignity of not being dominated by animal instincts for survival in extreme situations where violence is rampant. In the novel, the general causal relationship is collapsed, and reality and unreal appear in a mixture. This collapse and mixture is a novel device. The search for a mixture of the unreal and reality of this novel can be said to be the starting point of this article. First, in 『天的孩子』, the novel device of religion was analyzed, focusing on the character 'The Child’. Second, in 『故道』, the mixture of unreal and reality was examined through the narrative of wheat grains that grew like corn grains after eating blood centered on the character 'writer’. Third, in 『新西绪弗神话』, the 'The Myth of Sisyphus’ was analyzed focusing on the character 'the scholar’. Through fables, the Chinese people who were placed in the bond of repetition from the past to the present were considered.

Abstract Growth rates in many African countries for over a decade, between 2002 and 2014 were relatively good and greatly applauded; however, high unemployment remains a persistent challenge of macroeconomic management. This situation now popularly called jobless growth, remains an important issue for policy makers, because it is linked with poverty and social unrests. The study therefore examines employment and sectoral output growth in Nigeria with a view to identifying sectors with high employment intensity. The Structural Vector Auto-Regressive (SVAR) framework was employed in the estimation strategy. Background analysis and stylized facts confirm the existence of jobless growth in Nigeria. Findings from the model estimation demonstrate that the agriculture sector has great potential for job creation. This underscores the need to focus on developing the sector and focussing on agriculture led economy that is able to diversify into other sectors that are by nature labour intensive, thus, making growth more inclusive.

The article is devoted to the study of the sports life of provincial cities of the Byzantine Empire in the IV-VI centuries. Based on written and material sources it is proved that the sports life of the empire in the early Byzantine period was not limited to the Great Hippodrome of Constantinople. It is shown that hippodromes operated in all major cities of the empire, where competitions were held in the most popular sport - chariot racing. This sport was also an important “social elevator”, a way of labor migration from the province to the capital for talented charioteers and dancers. Sports games according to the Olympic program, the decline of which was previously associated with the end of the IV - beginning of the V century, in fact, continued to be held in Antioch until the beginning of the VI century, which makes this city the last keeper of the traditions of Olympism in the early Middle Ages. The great historical role of provincial “branches” of circus parties, both as powerful political and economic institutions and instigators of social unrest on a pan-imperial scale is noted. The unique precedent of the use of sports competitions in provincial Apamea by the Persian Shah Khosrow I as a military-political tool to assert an advantage over Justinian I has been studied. It is concluded that sports in provincial cities fell into decline at the beginning of the VII century due to the difficult military and economic situation of the empire. During the Macedonian Renaissance spectator sports in the provinces did not recover.

The development of the mining industry is necessary for the national GDP growth. The gold mining operation provides great support to local people in the construction of roads, hospitals and schools. However the damage caused due to the illegal gold mining in Ivory Coast has become increasingly worrying. Thousands of miners unlawfully exploit gold in many parts of the national territory. The local people, especially the children see artisanal gold mining as a faster way to get out of the growing poverty. According to the investigation with local people, MDA, mining companies, the rebellion in 2002 and the post-election crisis in 2010 were a key issue. As result of the political unrest many children have left school to move into the mining activities. This paper focuses on some existing problems relating to the minors in artisanal gold mine as well as how the illegal gold mining activities should increasingly concern the state’s authorities who have to display their determination to stop this recurring phenomenon. In this paper, some suggestions will be proposed and we also support some initiatives and actions of the current government in order to reduce the rate of children or if possible to withdraw all the children from mining sites. The World Bank, financial institutions, NGOs are appealing too to play a major support role to eradicate child labor and to protect children in Ivory Coast and over the world.

The Constitution of Kenya specifically recognizes the freedom of association to form and belong to trade unions. However, despite the adoption of the Labour Relations Act, union practice is still hampered by excessive restrictions. The EPZ companies are labor intensive requiring a large amount of labor to produce its goods or service and thus, the welfare of the employees play a key role in their functions. This study sought to determine the effect of trade union practices on employees’ welfare at export processing zones industries in Athi River, Kenya. The specific objectives sought to determine the effect of collective bargaining agreements, industrial action, dispute resolution and trade union representation on employees’ welfare at export processing zones industries in Athi River, Kenya. The study employed a descriptive research design. Primary data was collected by means of a structured questionnaire. The target population of the study was employees in EPZ companies in Athi River, Kenya with large employees enrolled in active trade unions. The unit of observation was the employees in the trade unions. The findings indicated that collective bargaining agreements had a positive and significant coefficient with employees’ welfare at the EPZ industries. Industrial action had a positive but non-significant effect with employees’ welfare at Export Processing Zones industries. Dispute resolution had a positive and significant coefficient with employees’ welfare at the EPZ industries. Trade union representation had a positive and significant coefficient with employees’ welfare at the EPZ industries. The study recommended that trade union should avoid the path of confrontation but continue dialogue through the collective bargaining process and demands should be realistic in nature with what is obtainable in the related industry. An existence of a formal two way communication between management and trade unions will ensure that right message is properly understood and on time too. Keywords: Collective Bargaining Agreements, Industrial Action, Dispute Resolution, Trade Union Representation, Employees Welfare & Export Processing Zones

The article analyses one of the most grievous chapters in the history of Ukrainian nation – the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–1933. It is referred to the massive famine that was deliberately organized by the Soviet authorities, which led to many millions hu-man losses in the rural area in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and Kuban. Planned confiscation of grain crops and other food products from villagers by the representatives of the Soviet authorities led to a multimillion hunger massacre of people in rural area. At the same time, the Soviet government had significant reserves of grain in warehouses and exported it abroad, since without collectivization and Ukrainian bread it was impossible to launch the industrialization that demanded Ukrainian grain to be contributed to foreigners in return for their assistance. Ukrainian grain turned into currency. The authorities of that time refused to accept foreign assistance for starving people and simultaneously banned and blocked their leaving outside the Ukrainian SSR. The so-called “barrier troops” were organized in order to prevent hungry people from flee to the freedom and not let anyone enter the starving area. The situation is characterized by the fact that the idea and practice of barrier troops tested on Ukrainians were lately used on the battlefields of the World War II. Among three Holodomors, the government did not conceal only the first one (1921–1922), as it could be blamed on the tsarist regime that brought the villagers to the poverty, and post-war devastation. The famine of 1946–1947 was silenced, but the population generally perceived it as a clear consequence of two horrendous misfortunes – the World War II and dreadful drought. Especially rigid was position of the government regarding the very fact of genocide in 1933–1933 not only its scale. The author emphasizes that the Great Famine is refused to be admitted not because it was unreal but to avoid the assessment of its special direction against Ukraine and Ukrainian nation, saying instead that it affected the fate of all nations. The article describes the renovation of internal passports system and the obligatory registration at a certain address that took place in the USSR in 1932. Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR stipulated the fact that people living in rural areas should not obtain passports. Therefore, collective farmers of the Ukrainian SSR actually did not obtain passports. The villagers were forbidden to leave collective farms without signed agreement with the employer, that deprived them of the right to free movement. Even after the introduction of labour books the collective farmers did not obtain them either. The author describes the destruction of the collective farms system that his parents dedicated their entire labour life to. Instead of preserving productive forces, material and technical base and introducing new forms of agrarian sector management and the whole society to the development path, this system has been thoughtlessly destroying and plundering. Keywords: Holodomor, Ukrainian villagers, collectivization, genocide, confiscation, barrier troops.

История движения ударников в контексте ряда исторических процессов периода первой пятилетки принадлежит к одному из наиболее таинственных сюжетов советской истории - стремительное появление этого движения в 1929 г., позиционирование его в качестве «высшего выражения социалистического соревнования» - и фактическое исчезновение в начале 1930-х гг. Предлагаемая статья показывает спектр надежд лидеров СССР на ударничество: в обстановке нарастания кризисных явлений в городе и массовых волнений крестьян в деревне правящей партии нужна была верная социальная опора, способная стать примером для рабочих. Для Сталина и его ближайшего окружения идея «социалистического соревнования» и его наиболее концентрированного выражения в 1929-1931 гг. - ударничества - становилась частью «Великого перелома», с масштабным использованием штурмовых методов работы и доминированием моральных стимулов. Сделан аргументированный вывод о том, что осознание неэффективности ударничества пришло к руководству СССР на XVI съезде партии. The history of the movement of shock workers (udarniks) in the context of a number of historical processes during the First Five-Year Plan period belongs to one of the most mysterious plots of Soviet history: the rapid emergence of the movement in 1929, its positioning as the “highest expression of socialist competition”, and its actual disappearance in the early 1930s. The article shows the range of hopes of the USSR leaders for shock work: in the context of growing crisis phenomena in the city and mass unrest of peasants in the village, the ruling party needed a faithful social support that could become an example for the working class society, the personnel reserve of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and a tool for influencing “old specialists.” However, the study of the influence from above on the workers’ society represents only one plane of the historical process, which includes both the progress of the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan and the workers’ own understanding of their interests. For Stalin and his inner circle, the idea of “socialist competition” and its most concentrated expression in 1929-1931, which was shock work movement, became part of the “Great Turning Point.” That is why the call for widespread and total entry into shock brigades coexisted with the slogan of “mass workers’ control over the state apparatus” in the format of “nominating the best shock workers to economic, Soviet and trade union work” and exposing “saboteurs” among “some of the specialists who betrayed the interests of the working class.” The article analyzes the implementation of plans to turn shock brigades into a “locomotive of the socialist economy”. The author has noted a number of voluntaristic decisions in the areas of financing, compliance with labor protection standards, and the motivation system, which alienated the majority of workers from shock work. It appears that an explanation of these plots is possible as a result of a systematic study of the history of shock work movement in the context of a number of historical processes: the internal party struggle in 1928-1929; discussions on the fate of the First Five-Year Plan; system analysis of crisis phenomena in the USSR economy in 1929-1931; determining the attitude of the working masses themselves to shock work; identifying the economic consequences of the movement of shock brigades. Outside the consideration of these processes, the history of shock work movement turns into a schematic and ideologized overview of events, devoid of historical specifics.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar on 2nd October 1869 and died in Delhi on 30th January 1948. He is commonly regarded as one of the greatest men of the 20th century. An advocate of nonviolence, he nevertheless led India's struggle against the greatest and most powerful empire in human history. That is why; he has been called the Father of the Nation and given the title "Mahatma" or great soul. No retailing of his life can be as effective as reading it in his own words in his autobiography "<i>The story of My Experiments with Truth"</i>.No doubt the word experiment in Gandhi's autobiography need not be seen as with scientific precision. But its drift is similar. In other words, Gandhiji's life was lived according to certain assumptions and in order to demonstrate certain results. It is up to us to find out how strictly conducted this experiment was and how successful its results.Gandhiji's life is a story. It is not a record of data. It is full of richly subjective detailing and narration. Gandhi is not superhuman per say, but superbly human. He rises higher and higher through endless striving and discipline. He is not born superior to us. In fact, He has the same feelings and weaknesses as that of the rest of us but it is his struggle against these weaknesses that makes him shine as beacon of hope and the leader of millions.After his early schooling in Rajkot, and marriage to Kasturba in 1883, Gandhi left for England in 1888 to study law. After qualifying for the Bar in 1891, he came back to India but found no satisfactory work. He, therefore, set sail to South Africa in 1893 to take up his practice as a lawyer. South Africa, then though, a part of British Empire, suffered from several racial discrimination. Gandhi, soon became involved in a struggle for justice for the entire Indian population. However, the turning point was his being thrown out of the first-class compartment of a train in 1893 even though he possessed a valid ticket. The incident opened his eyes to the extent of the injustice prevalent in South Africa.During the South African years, Gandhi experimented with all the major qualities of his philosophy. The South African years were literally the years of the making of the Mahatma, years of self-formation. It was during this period that Gandhi discovered his personal and political philosophy and hardly deviated from it for the rest of his life. And it was during this period that <i>Hindu Swaraj</i> came to be written.<i>Hindi Swaraj</i> is one of the most important books that Gandhi wrote. It was originally written in Gujarati and published in <i>Indian Opinion</i> a journal that Gandhi used to edit in South Africa. The manuscript was written in 1909 on the deck of S. s. Kildare, the ship which was bringing Gandhi back to South Africa from London. It was written just in 10 days. The manuscript was later translated into English for the benefit of Gandhiji's English friends. It was published as a booklet in Gujarati, but immediately banned by the government of the Bombay presidency. Its English translation was published in book form in 1910.The message of <i>Hindi Swaraj,</i> Gandhi says "It teaches the gospel of love in place of that of hate. It replaces violence with self-sacrifice. It pits soul force against the brute force. Gandhiji's contact with Vinayak Savarkar provoked him to write this book with so much passion. While in London, Gandhi met in his own words, every known anarchist. Among these was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the leading person of the extremist group and later of the Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar was a brave and patriotic man who wished to overthrow British rule through violent revolution. His study of world history had convinced Savarkar that no country had won its freedom without an armed insurrection. Saverkar was therefore, working to train a band of Indian terrorists in England. With the help of Shyamji Krishna Varma, Savarkar had instituted a scholarship for Indian students in Britain but his object was to prepare the leaders for violent revolt.It was in one such meeting in London that Gandhi made Saverkar. Gandhi and Savarkar had detailed discussion over the means and the aims of the struggle for India's freedom but could not come on an agreement. Gandhi, unlike Savarkar, was convinced that it was India's unique genius and destiny not to imitate the other nations of the world and that India indeed would win its freedom through moral and spiritual force, which was superior to material force or the force of arms. Gandhi wrote <i>Hindi Swaraj</i> to explain his point of view.<i>Hindi Swaraj</i> is written as a dialogue between an editor and a reader. The editor is none other than Gandhi himself, while the reader is a prototype of the kind of angry young man that Gandhi met in London and wished to change. Gandhi adopts the dialogic mode because he wanted to write a book which can be put into the hands of a child. Indeed, this studied simplicity went on to be the hallmark of Gandhiji style, not just in his writing, but in all that he did in life.Gandhi, though a ceaseless innovator, was also a traditionalist. The dialogue form reminds us at once of the <i>Upanishadic</i> and Socratic tradition. Gandhi thus, uses a tried and tested form to convey his thoughts. <i>Hindi Swaraj</i> is made-up of 20 little chapters where Gandhi explains his concept of Swaraj.In the first chapter, "The Congress and its officials", Gandhi says that all people should respect the Congressman like Hume, Wedderburn, Naoroji and Gokhale for laying the foundation of Indian home rule or Swaraj. He argues against hating every Englishman just because they rule India. He expects, we who seek justice will have to do justice to others.In the chapter, "Partition of Bengal", the editor says that the real awakening of India took place with the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon. The partition taught Indians that petitions must be backed up by force and that they must be capable of suffering. The partition also divided the Congress into two factions: the moderates and the extremists.In Chapter three, "Discontent and Unrest", Gandhiji analyses how reforms take place. According to him, every reform must be preceded by discontent. Gandhi tries to define his idea of Swaraj in this chapter. He makes it clear that Swaraj is not merely independence, but a different form of government altogether. Swaraj is not just the withdrawal of the British rule. It is actually English rule without the Englishman.In Chapter five, "The Condition of England", Gandhi argues that the condition of Europe is not worth copying. The mother of Parliament is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. If India copies England, she will be ruined. The pitiable condition of England is due to modern civilization under which the nations of Europe are becoming degraded and ruined day by day.In chapter six, "Civilization", Gandhiji says that just material well-being is not the mark of civilization. He clarifies modern civilization is not just purely material; it is also immoral and irreligious. Modern civilization enslaves people with the luxuries that money can offer.In Chapter seven, "Why was India lost?" Gandhi says that the English have not taken India; we have given it to them. We must not blame others, but scrutinize and correct our own weaknesses. The English wish to convert the whole world into a vast market for their goods.The chapters from eight to twelve are all titled as "The Conditions of India". Here, Gandhiji has described the different aspects regarding the situation of India in chapter eight. He opines "India is ground down, not under the English heel, but under that of modern civilization." He says, we are turning away from God. India's suffering is due to our turning away from a religious life and accepting modern civilization. In Chapter nine, he speaks about railways. According to him, the railways, lawyers and doctors have impoverished the country. Railways help to spread all sorts of evil, because while good requires a long time to travel, evil has wings. It was the British who perpetuated the myth of divided India. Before their advent, India was one culturally. In chapter ten, titled "The Hindu and Mohammedan", Gandhi remarks that we are not divided previously. India is one nation because it has the faculty of assimilation. Hindus and Muslims are blood brothers and must learn to co-exist. In Chapter eleven, he speaks about the profession of lawyer. According to him, lawyers are often immoral because their profession thrives on quarrels and disputes. The British also use law courts to strengthen their illegal, illegitimate rule. In chapter twelve, he speaks about the profession of doctor. He states that the medical profession has aided imperialism. Most diseases are caused by lack of discipline and by indulgence, which is encouraged through medication. Modern medicine is cruel because it vivisections animals. Doctors use their profession not to help people, but to make money.Chapter thirteen is "What is True Civilization?" According to Gandhi, civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. In this sense, India has nothing to learn from anyone else. The tendency of the Indian civilization is to elevate the moral being that of the Western civilization is to propagate immorality.In chapter fourteen, Gandhi speaks about how India can become free. He views "It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves." Only by freeing ourselves first can we dream of freeing others. India strength is unique. Instead of Europeanization ourselves, we can Indianize the British.In chapter fifteen, he speaks about Italy and India. He says, unlike Italy, India cannot easily rise up in armed rebellion. Moreover, to arm India on a large scale is to Europeanize it. If assassination, terrorism and violence is used to free India, we will make this holy land unholy.&nbsp;In chapter sixteen, he speaks about 'brute force.' The reader here argues in favour of brute force, of obtaining the right end through whatever means. The editor replies that there is the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. We reap exactly as we sow. The force of love and pity is infinitely greater than the force of arms. The petition, which is not backed by force, is admittedly useless, but instead of being baked by brute force, it should be baked by law, force, soul, force, or more popularly but less accurately, passive resistance.Gandhiji clarifies the concept of 'passive resistance' in chapter seventeen. Here, the reader asks what historical evidence there is to prove that passive resistance works. The editor replies by defining history not as a record of wars and that of reigns of kings, but as the story of humanity. The fact that the world lives on in spite of wars proves that the force of love is greater than the force of hatred and violence. Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering. According to Gandhiji, passive resistance is not the weapon of the weak, but actually it requires more courage than the use of brute force. He asks, "Is it harder to kill others or smilingly to die for one's beliefs?" Passive resistance is for everyone, men and women, those weak in the body and those who are strong, singly or jointly. Passive resistance blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used. Passive resistance is an Indian speciality because the common people of India have always used it down the ages. We cease to cooperate with our rulers when they displease us. This does not mean that we neglect our duties. It is our duty to make bodies strong too. Passive resistance can be perfected only through the practice of chastity, truth and fearlessness.In chapter eighteen, "Education", Gandhiji opines that education is not merely the acquisition of letters, but the building of character. English education has enslaved the nation. Though valuable English books may be translated into our languages, religious or ethical education should take first place. Hindus should learn Sanskrit, Muslim, Persian or Arabic and vice versa too. Northerners and Westerners should learn Tamil. The national language should be Hindi. Religious education should not be left in the hands of the hypocritical clergy alone, but should be an instrument of driving out Western civilization.In the chapter "Machinery" For Gandhi the use of machinery, or rather the use by Indians of machine-made goods, has enslaved us. Capitalism is aligned to imperialism. Both oppress the common man. Though machine-made products cannot be given up all at once, we must make a beginning without waiting for the world to change. Gandhi further says, "Machinery is bad. We must keep this in mind even when we use it against itself."In the last chapter "Conclusion", Gandhiji opines that moderates and extremists must join hands to work for Swaraj. The English must be asked to stop exploiting India. They cannot rule us against our will. Indians, i n order to be free, most reform and discipline themselves. We must avoid the English language. Lawyers and doctors must use their knowledge for the benefits of others. European civilization must be resisted at every step, even at the cost of personal sacrifice and suffering. All must start the use of the handloom. Real home-rule is self-rule or self-control. The way to achieve it is passive resistance, that is, soul-force or love-force. In order to exert this force, Swadeshi in every sense is necessary. At last Gandhi says, "I bear no enmity towards the English, but I do toward their civilization."<i>Hindi Swaraj</i> is a seminal text for all those who wish to understand Gandhi. Today, we are rather under the impact of modernity and westernization. The various means of mass-media have entangled us into self-destructive lifestyles of consumerism. To change this, we require the kind of jolt or shock that <i>Hindi swaraj</i> offers. Apparently, the text seems to give a political message. But if some delves into the core of the text, it is noticed that it extends much beyond its immediate political message, which concerns the achievement of Swaraj and the best means thereof. Gandhi clearly says that Swaraj obtained by violence will be no Swaraj at all, but will demean us to the level of our former colonizers. Gandhiji's concern are not merely political. In Gandhian thought, what helps us attain political independence should also help us develop spiritually.Gandhiji's thought springs from a deep perspective. He identifies India as a spiritual and religious civilization whose culture is superior to that of modern Western civilization. Here, Gandhi makes a crucial point that Western civilization today is merely modern civilization. At one time, before the onset of modernity, Europe was not much different from India. And it is not in favour of modern civilization. He condemns it not only because it is materialistic, but because it is essentially immoral. It encourages vice and makes us forget the purpose of life, which is the cultivation of virtue. Modern life regards the human being as essentially a physical entity, the aim of whose life is to accumulate comforts. In order to give us the comforts,modern civilization adopts deconstructive approach to nature. All the progress and development,that is achieved,&nbsp; is at the cost of enormous damage to our environment. The whole world today speaks of protecting the environment. That is because the Earth is, as an ecosystem has reached, a crisis of survival. Gandhi was a visionary who could foresee this crisis very clearly. He warns all of us against it. He calls on us to change our attitude and our lifestyles. It is up to us how much we can understand him and follow his examples.Modern civilization is characterized with exploitation and colonialism. The other way in which much of what we call modern development happens is through the exploitation of human beings. Slavery, colonialism, indentured labour, and other forced or ill-paid system have been evolved so that the majority of the poor toil for the comforts of the rich few. Greed for money, lust for power, urge to demonstrate over the others are the characteristic features that we find in modernity. If all of us succumbed to the craze for modernity, the whole species would be dehumanized. Gandhi recognizes this and therefore criticizes the West, which is the custodian of modernity.He wants Indians to regain their lost pride in themselves and their culture, which he believes is superior to that of the modern West. That is because traditional Indian culture, at its best, was designated to ensure the moral and spiritual evaluation of each of its members. Gandhi wants modern Indians to get rid of the colonial mentality which makes up worship everything that comes from the West. The so-called backwardness of traditional India, according to Gandhi, was no backwardness at all, but the proof of its higher culture.Gandhi considers the craze for machinery to be inappropriate to India as it creates the problem of unemployment in the country like India where we have a surplus of labour. It will dehumanize and enslave those who are bound to machines in lifeless routines. It will concentrate the wealth in the hands of those few who own machines. Instead of so much centralization of power and wealth, Gandhi advocates decentralization. Each one must attempt to attain self-sufficiency. We should become both producers and consumers.Self-sufficiency, self-respect, self-realization are thus, the main principles of Gandhiji's idea of Swaraj. Swaraj itself is a concept which is deeper and wider than independence. Swaraj is a Vedic word which means more than just self-rule. It suggests not just individual autonomy but a very high level of moral and spiritual development. Such as Swaraj is a lifelong project and includes every aspect of our lives, it embraces all of humankind, both the oppressed and oppressor. Political independence is merely the beginning. Swaraj will be impossible before the whole world learns to coexist in peace and prosperity. It will be a world without the inequalities, poverty, disease and warfare of today.<i>Hindi Swaraj</i> is an impractical text when it is observed from a limited perspective. When seen from a broader perspective, what it advocates seems to be the only possible way to survive.

2011 witnessed the beginning of the commemoration of the Great Labour Unrest that shook the United Kingdom one hundred years ago. The Unrest was a big event in British history and British historiography. It is common knowledge among labour historians that before, during and after World War I the struggle between labour and capital was intense in many countries. The British Unrest was part of that era but what about the Netherlands? Across the North Sea strike activity also rose in 1911-1914. But as a result of Dutch peculiarities it was much higher during the first years of the century. In line with international developments strike activity in the Netherlands rose to unprecendented heights immediately after the war. After describing the Dutch strike movement of 1900-1920 I conclude that there was no Great Labour Unrest in the Netherlands during the years coined such in the United Kingdom.

The article examines the modern prerequisites of foreign labor migration, analyzes the main factors and the impact on donor countries and recipient countries. Economic, social and political prerequisites are proposed among the main aspects that are considered, which encourage Ukrainians to go abroad with pension provision. The directions of the choice of recipient countries by Ukrainian labor migrants before the Great War and during the period of military aggression were analyzed. The article examines the influence of global economic trends on migration flows, considering the level of wages in Ukraine and the country of migration of Ukrainian labor migrants, the main economic indicators that affect external labor migration, among them are the high level of unemployment and inflation, and the low level of wages. The social prerequisites contributing to the growth of labor migration activity have been identified. Social prerequisites interact with economic, political and other aspects, forming the motive for external labor migration. All the prerequisites created in the study positively and negatively affect the economic and social condition of the donor country and the recipient country. The political situation in Ukraine, in particular conflicts and unrest, is also considered as one of the important factors influencing the decision of citizens to emigrate. The modern prerequisites of the international migration of Ukrainians are a relevant topic in the conditions of globalization and changes in the political, economic and socio-cultural environment. The research is aimed at analyzing the factors affecting the mass migration of Ukrainians abroad. Considering these factors, it is important to develop comprehensive strategies and policies aimed at improving the economic situation in Ukraine, maintaining stability and developing society. Attention should also be focused on the conditions created for the integration and adaptation of migrants to ensure mutually beneficial and harmonious relations in the international community. The article is relevant and important in the context of the modern world, where external labor migration is an extremely large challenge and opportunity for the country.Keywords. external labour migration, prerequisites for migration, labour migrants, remuneration, employment, economic instability, National Bank of Ukraine.

The presented sociological research analyses the ways in which the integration of the electronics manufacturing industry in global supply chains has intensified labour conflicts and class antagonism. The Taiwanese transnational corporation Foxconn Technology Group holds more than 50 percent of market share in global electronics manufacturing. Its 1.4 million employees in China far exceed its combined workforce in 28 other countries that comprise its global empire. I assess the conditions of a new generation of Chinese workers on the basis of the intertwined policies and practices of Foxconn, international brands (notably Apple), and the local government, as well as the diverse forms of collective actions workers deploy to defend their rights and interests. Within the tight delivery deadlines, some Foxconn workers leveraged their power to disrupt production to demand higher pay and better conditions. While all of these labour struggles were short-lived and limited in scope to a single factory, protestors exposed the injustice of “iSlavery,” garnering wide media attention and civil society support. Contradictions of state-labour-capital relations, however, remain sharp. In the authoritarian regime, notwithstanding the resilience of the Chinese state in the face of sustained popular unrest over the last two decades, my ethnographic study highlights the unstable nature of precarious labour in its hundreds of millions.The published audio is a recording of a talk in the University of Westminster's CAMRI Research Seminar on October 1, 2014, see also http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/ and http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/research-seminarsAn article related to this talk has been published open access in the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Pun-Ngai/3981Biography:Jenny Chan was Chief Coordinator of SACOM (Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior) between 2006 and 2009. Educated at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong, she went on to pursue her doctorate in sociology and labour studies as a Reid Research Scholar at University of London. She was awarded the Great Britain-China Educational Trust for dissertation writing (PhD diss. 2014). In September 2014 she joined the University of Oxford as Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies, the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies. Her recent articles have appeared in Current Sociology, Modern China, The Asia-Pacific Journal, The South Atlantic Quarterly, Global Labour Journal, New Labor Forum, Labor Notes, New Internationalist and New Technology, Work and Employment.http://www.area-studies.ox.ac.uk/dr-jenny-chan

Abstract In light of the current Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, this article investigates the emergence of Islamophobia in colonial Burma. Focusing on the under-examined Islamophobic riots that broke out countrywide in 1938, my research reveals that a nascent fascist movement used Muslims as a scapegoat for political and economic crisis. The colonial agribusiness economy had collapsed during the Great Depression, while the vast contract labour system of the Indian Ocean had brought millions of low-wage Indian migrants to Burma, causing a glut in the labour market. Burmese socialism provided a popular response to these issues. To compete, Burmese fascism emerged to appeal to a rising sense of nationalism, racially scapegoating Indians and the religion of Islam as the exploiters, colonizers, and invaders behind Burma's problems. Using the racialized term kala to conflate the ideas of colonizer, Indian, and Muslim, Burmese fascists inflamed hatred against Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, and even indigenous Muslims, such as the Rohingya. By revealing the origins of this racialization, this article both deconstructs the lasting Burmese perception of the Rohingya as ‘Bengali immigrants’ and provides a generalizable case study into how races and racisms develop from specific historical factors and political movements. It also argues that the British amplified fascist ideas in Burma by focusing repression on movements that directly challenged their material control, such as socialism and communism. Therefore, it highlights how ruling classes often prefer nationalistic movements because they redirect popular unrest from the project of overthrowing structural factors to that of eliminating scapegoated minorities.

The abolition of serfdom was one of the most important of the great reforms of the Russian Empire carried out in the second half of the nineteenth century that sought to modernise its social and economic system. Its implementation was complicated due to social, cultural, and mental differences in different parts of the empire, although the reformers tried to take those differences into account by issuing local regulations.&#x0D; The proclamation of the Manifesto of 19 February 1861 provoked a strong reaction of the liberated serfs, but the government was expecting that and preparing for the unrest. The military, police, and bureaucratic cross-communication was strengthened in all the governorates where landlords had serfs (in 43 governorates out of 51), and institutions for administering the peasants were established. After the proclamation of the Manifesto and other acts regulating the reform, issues related to the linguistic variety of the peasantry were urgently addressed (at the Governorates of Vilnius, Kaunas, and Hrodna, the legislative acts were translated into Lithuanian and Polish). Serfs of the private manors took the reform as a deceit because it went against their own vision of freedom. Transferring them to the status of temporary tenants was the main reason that provoked the unrest almost throughout the entire empire. Peasants of larger manors resisted the corvée and other labour duties inherited from the old order. The next wave of rebellion, which was weaker, came during the establishment of self-government institutions: the peasants feared the ‘new order’, which meant that their taxes increased and they were forced to submit to the village and rural district (volost) authorities that they themselves maintained.&#x0D; Flashpoints of peasantry mutinies occurred in large manors and spread to the neighbouring ones. The protests spread most widely in the manors of the Kaunas Governorate, especially in the ones located near the Prussian border (Raseiniai County) and Courland; as for the Hrodna Governorate, the same happened along the border with the Kingdom of Poland. The longest munity took place at the Biržai Manor. The peasantry carried out collective actions mostly within their manors; the only exception was the town of Iwye (Ashmyany County, Vilnius Governorate) where a thousand-strong crowd gathered from several manors. When protesting against the provisions of the reform, peasants pursued the imperative of moral justice. Leaders – the authorities called them instigators – emerged, but the reasoning behind their rise often remains ambiguous. A noticeable part was played by literate peasants, and the role of former sergeants and soldiers from that stratum can also be clearly seen.&#x0D; The actions of the government during the first years of the abolition of serfdom were characterised by a moderate use of force. The governorate authorities were instructed to avoid confrontation and restrict their actions to the use of explanatory measures. Government officials employed the army when words failed to work, but these military interferences were non-violent: so far, no information on the cases of using arms in the process of supressing mutinies of the former serfs in the governorates of Vilnius, Kaunas and Hrodna has been discovered. The peasants were supposed to be scared by the so-called military execution meaning that the household was to be subjected to the obligation of providing material provision to the army. The government believed that isolation (arrest, detention and sometimes temporary deportation) of the most active mutineers or application of disciplinary measures (public whipping) were sufficient to restore order in the countryside.&#x0D; The position of the landowners during the first years after the abolition of serfdom remained ambiguous until the uprising of 1863–1864. They could not force the peasants to work for their manors without the help of the authorities. Leaders of the nobility and peace mediators elected from among the landowners participated in the events as officials responsible for the implementation of the reforms, and manor owners relied on the government.

Introduction In November 2020, upon learning that the company’s Covid-19 vaccine trial had been successful, the head of Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Development, Kathrin Jansen, celebrated with champagne – “some really good stuff” (Cohen). Bubbles seem to go naturally with celebration, and champagne is fundamentally associated with bubbles. Yet, until the late-seventeenth century, champagne was a still wine, and it only reached the familiar levels of bubbliness in the late-nineteenth century (Harding). During this period and on into the early twentieth century, “champagne” was in many ways created, defined, and defended. A “champagne bubble” was created, within which the “nature” of champagne was contested and constructed. Champagne today is the result of hundreds of years of labour by many sorts of bubble-makers: those who make the bubbly drink, and those who construct, maintain, and defend the champagne bubble. In this article, I explore some elements of the champagne bubble, in order to understand both its fragility and rigidity over the years and today. Creating the Champagne Bubble – the Labour of Centuries It is difficult to separate the physical from the mythical as regards champagne. Therefore the categorisations below are always overlapping, and embedded in legal, political, economic, and socio-cultural factors. Just as assemblage – the mixing of wine from different grapes – is an essential element of champagne wine, the champagne bubble may be called heterogeneous assemblage. Indeed, the champagne bubble, as we will see below, is a myriad of different sorts of bubbles, such as terroir, appellation, myth and brand. And just as any assemblage, its heterogeneous elements exist and operate in relation to each other. Therefore the “champagne bubble” discussed here is both one and many, all of its elements fundamentally interconnected, constituting that “one” known as “champagne”. It is not my intention to be comprehensive of all the elements, historical and contemporary. Indeed, that would not be possible within such a short article. Instead, I seek to demonstrate some of the complexity of the champagne bubble, noting the elaborate labour that has gone into its creation. The Physical Champagne and Champagne – from Soil to Bubbles Champagne means both a legally protected geographical area (Champagne), and the wine (here: champagne) produced in this area from grapes defined as acceptable: most importantly pinot noir, pinot meunier (“black” grapes), and chardonnay (“white” grape). The method of production, too, is regulated and legally protected: méthode champenoise. Although the same method is used in numerous locations, these must be called something different: metodo classico (Italy), método tradicional (Spain), Methode Cap Classique (South Africa). The geographical area of Champagne was first legally defined in 1908, when it only included the areas of Marne and Aisne, leaving out, most importantly, the area of Aube. This decision led to severe unrest and riots, as the Aube vignerons revolted in 1911, forcing the inclusion of “zone 2”: Aube, Haute-Marne, and Seine-et-Marne (Guy). Behind these regulations was a surge in fraudulent production in the early twentieth century, as well as falling wine prices resulting from increasing supply of cheap wines (Colman 18). These first appellations d’origine had many consequences – they proved financially beneficial for the “zone 1”, but less so for the “zone 2”. When both these areas were brought under the same appellation in 1927, the financial benefits were more limited – but this may have been due to the Great Depression triggered in 1929 (Haeck et al.). It is a long-standing belief that the soil and climate of Champagne are key contributors to the quality of champagne wines, said to be due to “conditions … most suitable for making this type of wine” (Simon 11). Already in the end of the nineteenth century, the editor of Vigneron champenois attributed champagne’s quality to “a fortunate combination of … chalky soil … [and] unrivalled exposure [to the sun]” (Guy 119) among other things. Factors such as soil and climate, commonly included in and expressed through the idea of terroir, undoubtedly influence grapes and wines made thereof, but the extent remains unproven. Indeed, terroir itself is a very contested concept (Teil; Inglis and Almila). It is also the case that climate change has had, and will continue to have, devastating effects on wine production in many areas, while benefiting others. The highly successful English sparkling wine production, drawing upon know-how from the Champagne area, has been enabled by the warming climate (Inglis), while Champagne itself is at risk of becoming too hot (Robinson). Champagne is made through a process more complicated than most wines. I present here the bare bones of it, to illustrate the many challenges that had to be overcome to enable its production in the scale we see today. Freshly picked grapes are first pressed and the juice is fermented. Grape juice contains natural yeasts and therefore will ferment spontaneously, but fermentation can also be started with artificial yeasts. In fermentation, alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2) are formed, but the latter usually escapes the liquid. The secret of champagne is its second fermentation, which happens in bottles, after wines from different grapes and/or vineyards have been blended for desired characteristics (assemblage). For the second fermentation, yeast and sugar are added. As the fermentation happens inside a bottle, the CO2 that is created does not escape, but dissolves into the wine. The average pressure inside a champagne bottle in serving temperature is around 5 bar – 5 times the pressure outside the bottle (Liger-Belair et al.). The obvious challenge this method poses has to do with managing the pressure. Exploding bottles used to be a common problem, and the manner of sealing bottles was not very developed, either. Seventeenth-century developments in bottle-making, and using corks to seal bottles, enabled sparkling wines to be produced in the first place (Leszczyńska; Phillips 137). Still today, champagne comes in heavy-bottomed bottles, sealed with characteristically shaped cork, which is secured with a wire cage known as muselet. Scientific innovations, such as calculating the ideal amount of sugar for the second fermentation in 1836, also helped to control the amount of gas formed during the second fermentation, thus making the behaviour of the wine more predictable (Leszczyńska 265). Champagne is characteristically a “manufactured” wine, as it involves several steps of interference, from assemblage to dosage – sugar added for flavour to most champagnes after the second fermentation (although there are also zero dosage champagnes). This lends champagne particularly suitable for branding, as it is possible to make the wine taste the same year after year, harvest after harvest, and thus create a distinctive and recognisable house style. It is also possible to make champagnes for different tastes. During the nineteenth century, champagnes of different dosage were made for different markets – the driest for the British, the sweetest for the Russians (Harding). Bubbles are probably the most striking characteristic of champagne, and they are enabled by the complicated factors described above. But they are also formed when the champagne is poured in a glass. Natural impurities on the surface of the glass provide channels through which the gas pockets trapped in the wine can release themselves, forming strains of rising bubbles (Liger-Belair et al.). Champagne glasses have for centuries differed from other wine glasses, often for aesthetic reasons (Harding). The bubbles seem to do more than give people aesthetic pleasure and sensory experiences. It is often claimed that champagne makes you drunk faster than other drinks would, and there is, indeed, some (limited) research showing that this may well be the case (Roberts and Robinson; Ridout et al.). The Mythical Champagne – from Dom Pérignon to Modern Wonders Just as the bubbles in a champagne glass are influenced by numerous forces, so the metaphorical champagne bubble is subject to complex influences. Myth-creation is one of the most significant of these. The origin of champagne as sparkling wine is embedded in the myth of Dom Pérignon of Hautvillers monastery (1638–1715), who according to the legend would have accidentally developed the bubbles, and then enthusiastically exclaimed “I am drinking the stars!” (Phillips 138). In reality, bubbles are a natural phenomenon provoked by winter temperatures deactivating the fermenting yeasts, and spring again reactivating them. The myth of Dom Pérignon was first established in the nineteenth century and quickly embraced by the champagne industry. In 1937, Moët et Chandon launched a premium champagne called Dom Pérignon, which enjoys high reputation until this day (Phillips). The champagne industry has been active in managing associations connected with champagne since the nineteenth century. Sparkling champagnes had already enjoyed fashionability in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century, both in the French Court, and amongst the British higher classes. In the second half of the nineteenth century, champagne found ever increasing markets abroad, and the clientele was not aristocratic anymore. Before the 1860s, champagne’s association was with high status celebration, as well as sexual activity and seduction (Harding; Rokka). As the century went on, and champagne sales radically increased, associations with “modernity” were added: “hot-air balloons, towering steamships, transcontinental trains, cars, sports, and other ‘modern’ wonders were often featured in quickly proliferating champagne advertising” (Rokka 280). During this time, champagne grew both drier and more sparkling, following consumer tastes (Harding). Champagne’s most important markets in later nineteenth century included the UK, where the growing middle classes consumed champagne for both celebration and hospitality (Harding), the US, where (upper) middle-class women were served champagne in new kinds of consumer environments (Smith; Remus), and Russia, where the upper classes enjoyed sweeter champagne – until the Revolution (Phillips 296). The champagne industry quickly embraced the new middle classes in possession of increasing wealth, as well as new methods of advertising and marketing. What is remarkable is that they managed to integrate enormously varied cultural thematics and still retain associations with aristocracy and luxury, while producing and selling wine in industrial scale (Harding; Rokka). This is still true today: champagne retains a reputation of prestige, despite large-scale branding, production, and marketing. Maintaining and Defending the Bubble: Formulas, Rappers, and the Absolutely Fabulous Tipplers The falling wine prices and increasing counterfeit wines coincided with Europe’s phylloxera crisis – the pest accidentally brought over from North America that almost wiped out all Europe’s vineyards. The pest moved through Champagne in the 1890s, killing vines and devastating vignerons (Campbell). The Syndicat du Commerce des vins de Champagne had already been formed in 1882 (Rokka 280). Now unions were formed to fight phylloxera, such as the Association Viticole Champenoise in 1898. The 1904 Fédération Syndicale des Vignerons was formed to lobby the government to protect the name of Champagne (Leszczyńska 266) – successfully, as we have seen above. The financial benefits from appellations were certainly welcome, but short-lived. World War I treated Champagne harshly, with battle lines stuck through the area for years (Guy 187). The battle went on also in the lobbying front. In 1935, a new appellation regime was brought into law, which came to be the basis for all European systems, and the Comité National des appellations d'origine (CNAO) was founded (Colman 1922). Champagne’s protection became increasingly international, and continues to be so today under EU law and trade deals (European Commission). The post-war recovery of champagne relied on strategies used already in the “golden years” – marketing and lobbying. Advertising continued to embrace “luxury, celebration, transport (extending from air travel to the increasingly popular automobile), modernity, sports” (Guy 188). Such advertisement must have responded accurately to the mood of post-war, pre-depression Europe. Even in the prohibition US it was known that the “frivolous” French women might go as far as bathe in champagne, like the popular actress Mistinguett (Young 63). Curiously, in the 1930s Soviet Russia, “champagne” (not produced in Champagne) was declared a sign of good living, symbolising the standard of living that any Soviet worker had access to (at least in theory) (Gronow). Today, the reputation of champagne is fiercely defended in legal terms. This is not only in terms of protection against other sparkling wine making areas, but also in terms of exploitation of champagne’s reputation by actors in other commercial fields, and even against mass market products containing genuine champagne (Mahy and d’Ath; Schneider and Nam). At the same time, champagne has been widely “democratised” by mass production, enabled partly by increasing mechanisation and scientification of champagne production from the 1950s onwards (Leszczyńska 266). Yet champagne retains its association with prestige, luxury, and even royalty. This has required some serious adaptation and flexibility. In what follows, I look into three cultural phenomena that illuminate processes of such adaptation: Formula One (F1) champagne spraying, the 1990s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the Cristal racism scandal in 2006. The first champagne bottle is said to have been presented to F1 grand prix winner in Champagne in 1950 (Wheels24). Such a gesture would have been fully in line with champagne’s association with cars, sport, and modernity. But what about the spraying? Surely that is not in line with the prestige of the wine? The first spraying is attributed to Jo Siffert in 1966 and Dan Gurney in 1967, the former described as accidental, the latter as a spontaneous gesture of celebration (Wheels24; Dobie). Moët had become the official supplier of F1 champagnes in 1966, and there are no signs that the new custom would have been problematic for them, as their sponsorship continued until 1999, after which Mumm sponsored the sport for 15 years. Today, the champagne to be popped and sprayed is Chanson, in special bottles “coated in the same carbon fibre that F1 cars are made of” (Wheels24). Such an iconic status has the spraying gained that it features in practically all TV broadcasts concerning F1, although non-alcoholic substitute is used in countries where sale of alcohol is banned (Barker et al., “Quantifying”; Barker et al., “Alcohol”). As disturbing as the champagne spraying might look for a wine snob, it is perfectly in line with champagne’s marketing history and entrepreneurial spirit shown since the nineteenth century. Nor is it unheard of to let champagne spray. The “art” of sabrage, opening champagne bottle with a sable, associated with glamour, spectacle, and myth – its origin is attributed to Napoleon and his officers – is perfectly acceptable even for the snob. Sparkling champagne was always bound up with joy and celebration, not a solemn drink, and the champagne bubble was able to accommodate middle classes as well as aristocrats. This brings us to our second example, the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. The show, first released in 1992, featured two women, “Eddy” (Jennifer Saunders) and “Patsy” (Joanna Lumley), who spent their time happily smoking, taking drugs, and drinking large quantities of “Bolly” (among other things). Bollinger champagne may have initially experienced “a bit of a shock” for being thus addressed, but soon came to see the benefits of fame (French). In 2005, they hired PR support to make better use of the brand’s “Ab Fab” recognisability, and to improve its prestige reputation in order to justify their higher price range (Cann). Saunders and Lumley were warmly welcomed by the Bollinger house when filming for their champagne tour Absolutely Champers (2017). It is befitting indeed that such controversial fame came from the UK, the first country to discover sparkling champagne outside France (Simon 48), and where the aspirational middle classes were keen to consume it already in the nineteenth century (Harding). More controversial still is the case of Cristal (made by Louis Roederer) and the US rap world. Enthusiastically embraced by the “bling-bling” world of (black) rappers, champagne seems to fit their ethos well. Cristal was long favoured as both a drink and a word in rap lyrics. But in 2006, the newly appointed managing director at the family owned Roederer, Frédéric Rouzaud, made comments considered racist by many (Woodland). Rouzard told in an interview with The Economist that the house observed the Cristal-rap association “with curiosity and serenity”. He reportedly continued: “but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business”. It was indeed those two brands that the rapper Jay-Z replaced Cristal with, when calling for a boycott on Cristal. It would be easy to dismiss Rouzard’s comments as snobbery, or indeed as racism, but they merit some more reflection. Cristal is the premium wine of a house that otherwise does not enjoy high recognisability. While champagne’s history involves embracing new sorts of clientele, and marketing flexibly to as many consumer groups as possible (Rokka), this was the first spectacular crossing of racial boundaries. It was always the case that different houses and their different champagnes were targeted at different clienteles, and it is apparent that Cristal was not targeted at black rap artists. Whereas Bollinger was able to turn into a victory the questionable fame brought by the white middle-class association of Absolutely Fabulous, the more prestigious Cristal considered the attention of the black rapper world more threatening and acted accordingly. They sought to defend their own brand bubble, not the larger champagne bubble. Cristal’s reputation seems to have suffered little – its 2008 vintage, launched in 2018, was the most traded wine of that year (Schultz). Jay-Z’s purchase of his own champagne brand (Armand de Brignac, nicknamed Ace of Spades) has been less successful reputation-wise (Greenburg). It is difficult to break the champagne bubble, and it may be equally difficult to break into it. Conclusion In this article, I have looked into the various dilemmas the “bubble-makers” of Champagne encountered when fabricating what is today known as “champagne”. There have been moments of threat to the bubble they formed, such as in the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and eras of incomparable success, such as from the 1860s to 1880s. The discussion has demonstrated the remarkable flexibility with which the makers and defenders of champagne have responded to challenges, and dealt with material, socio-cultural, economic, and other problems. It feels appropriate to end with a note on the current challenge the champagne industry faces: Covid-19. The pandemic hit champagne sales exceptionally hard, leaving around 100 million bottles unsold (Micallef). This was not very surprising, given the closure of champagne-selling venues, banning of public and private celebrations, and a general mood not particularly prone to (or even likely to frown upon) such light-hearted matters as glamour and champagne. Champagne has survived many dramatic drops in sales during the twentieth century, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the post-financial crisis collapse in 2009. Yet they seem to be able to make astonishing recoveries. Already, there are indicators that many people consumed more champagne during the festive end-of-year season than in previous years (Smithers). For the moment, it looks like the champagne bubble, despite its seeming fragility, is practically indestructible, no matter how much its elements may suffer under various pressures and challenges. References Barker, Alexander, Magdalena Opazo-Breton, Emily Thomson, John Britton, Bruce Granti-Braham, and Rachael L. Murray. “Quantifying Alcohol Audio-Visual Content in UK Broadcasts of the 2018 Formula 1 Championship: A Content Analysis and Population Exposure.” BMJ Open 10 (2020): e037035. &lt;https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/8/e037035&gt;. Barker, Alexander B., John Britton, Bruce Grant-Braham, and Rachael L. Murray. “Alcohol Audio-Visual Content in Formula 1 Television Broadcasting.” BMC Public Health 18 (2018): 1155. &lt;https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-018-6068-3&gt;. Campbell, Christy. 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Literature—at least serious literature—is something that we work at. This is especially true within the academy. Literature departments are places where workers labour over texts carefully extracting and sharing meanings, for which they receive monetary reward. Specialised languages are developed to describe professional concerns. Over the last thirty years, the productions of mass culture, once regarded as too slight to warrant laborious explication, have been admitted to the academic workroom. Gothic studies—the specialist area that treats fearful and horrifying texts —has embraced the growing acceptability of devoting academic effort to texts that would once have fallen outside of the remit of “serious” study. In the seventies, when Gothic studies was just beginning to establish itself, there was a perception that the Gothic was “merely a literature of surfaces and sensations”, and that any Gothic of substantial literary worth had transcended the genre (Thompson 1). Early specialists in the field noted this prejudice; David Punter wrote of the genre’s “difficulty in establishing respectable credentials” (403), while Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick hoped her work would “make it easier for the reader of ‘respectable’ nineteenth-century novels to write ‘Gothic’ in the margin” (4). Gothic studies has gathered a modicum of this longed-for respectability for the texts it treats by deploying the methodologies used within literature departments. This has yielded readings that are largely congruous with readings of other sorts of literature; the Gothic text tells us things about ourselves and the world we inhabit, about power, culture and history. Yet the Gothic remains a production of popular culture as much as it is of the valorised literary field. I do not wish to argue for a reintroduction of the great divide described by Andreas Huyssen, but instead to suggest that we have missed something important about the ways in which popular Gothics—and perhaps other sorts of popular text—function. What if the popular Gothic were not a type of work, but a kind of play? How might this change the way we read these texts? Johan Huizinga noted that “play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. It is rather a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own. Every child knows perfectly well he is ‘only pretending’, or that it was ‘only for fun’” (8). If the Gothic sometimes offers playful texts, then those texts might direct readers not primarily towards the real, but away from it, at least for a limited time. This might help to account for the wicked spectacle offered by Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out, and in particular, its presentation of the black mass. The black mass is the parody of the Christian mass thought to be performed by witches and diabolists. Although it has doubtless been performed on rare occasions since the Middle Ages, the first black mass for which we have substantial documentary evidence was celebrated in Hampstead on Boxing Day 1918, by Montague Summers; it is a satisfying coincidence that Summers was one of the Gothic’s earliest scholars. We have record of Summer’s mass because it was watched by a non-participant, Anatole James, who was “bored to tears” as Summers recited tracts of Latin and practiced homosexual acts with a youth named Sullivan while James looked on (Medway 382-3). Summers claimed to be a Catholic priest, although there is some doubt as to the legitimacy of his ordination. The black mass ought to be officiated by a Catholic clergyman so the host may be transubstantiated before it is blasphemed. In doing so, the mass de-emphasises interpretive meaning and is an assault on the body of Christ rather than a mutilation of the symbol of Christ’s love and sacrifice. Thus, it is not conceived of primarily as a representational act but as actual violence. Nevertheless, Summers’ black mass seems like an elaborate form of sexual play more than spiritual warfare; by asking an acquaintance to observe the mass, Summers formulated the ritual as an erotic performance. The black mass was a favourite trope of the English Gothic of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out features an extended presentation of the mass; it was first published in 1934, but had achieved a kind of genre-specific canonicity by the nineteen-sixties, so that many Gothics produced and consumed in the sixties and seventies featured depictions of the black mass that drew from Wheatley’s original. Like Summers, Wheatley’s mass emphasised licentious sexual practice and, significantly, featured a voyeur or voyeurs watching the performance. Where James only wished Summers’ mass would end, Wheatley and his followers presented the mass as requiring interruption before it reaches a climax. This version of the mass recurs in most of Wheatley’s black magic novels, but it also appears in paperback romances, such as Susan Howatch’s 1973 The Devil on Lammas Night; it is reimagined in the literate and genuinely eerie short stories of Robert Aickman, which are just now thankfully coming back into print; it appears twice in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books. Nor was the black mass confined to the written Gothic, appearing in films of the period too; The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), The Witches (1966), Satan’s Skin, aka Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970), The Wicker Man (1973), and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974) all feature celebrations of the Sabbat, as, of course do the filmed adaptations of Wheatley’s novels, The Devil Rides Out (1967) and To the Devil a Daughter (1975). More than just a key trope, the black mass was a procedure characteristic of the English Gothic of the sixties; narratives were structured so as to lead towards its performance. All of the texts mentioned above repeat narrative and trope, but more importantly, they loosely repeat experience, both for readers and the characters depicted. While Summers’ black mass apparently made for tiresome viewing, textual representations of the black mass typically embrace the pageant and sensuality of the Catholic mass it perverts, involving music, incense and spectacle. Often animalistic sex, bestiality, infanticide or human sacrifice are staged, and are intended to fascinate rather than bore. Although far from canonical in a literary sense, by 1969 Wheatley was an institution. He had sold 27 million books worldwide and around 70 percent of those had been within the British market. All of his 55 books were in print. A new Wheatley in hardcover would typically sell 30,000 copies, and paperback sales of his back catalogue stood at more than a million books a year. While Wheatley wrote thrillers in a range of different subgenres, at the end of the sixties it was his ‘black magic’ stories that were far and away the most popular. While moderately successful when first published, they developed their most substantial audience in the sixties. When The Satanist was published in paperback in 1966, it sold more than 100,000 copies in the first ten days. By 1973, five of these eight black magic titles had sold more than a million copies. The first of these was The Devil Rides Out which, although originally published in 1934, by 1973, helped by the Hammer film of 1967, had sold more than one and a half million copies, making it the most successful of the group (“Pooter”; Hedman and Alexandersson 20, 73). Wheatley’s black magic stories provide a good example of the way that texts persist and accumulate influence in a genre field, gaining genre-specific canonicity. Wheatley’s apparent influence on Gothic texts and films that followed, coupled with the sheer number of his books sold, indicate that he occupied a central position in the field, and that his approach to the genre became, for a time, a defining one. Wheatley’s black magic stories apparently developed a new readership in the sixties. The black mass perhaps became legible as a salacious, nightmarish version of some imaginary hippy gathering. While Wheatley’s Satanists are villainous, there is a vaguely progressive air about them; they listen to unconventional music, dance in the nude, participate in unconventional sexual practice, and glut themselves on various intoxicants. This, after all, was the age of Hair, Oh! Calcutta! and Oz magazine, “an era of personal liberation, in the view of some critics, one of moral anarchy” (Morgan 149). Without suggesting that the Satanists represent hippies there is a contextual relevancy available to later readers that would have been missing in the thirties. The sexual zeitgeist would have allowed later readers to pornographically and pleasurably imagine the liberated sexuality of the era without having to approve of it. Wheatley’s work has since become deeply, embarrassingly unfashionable. The books are racist, sexist, homophobic and committed to a basically fascistic vision of an imperial England, all of which will repel most casual readers. Nor do his works provide an especially good venue for academic criticism; all surface, they do not reward the labour of careful, deep reading. The Devil Rides Out narrates the story of a group of friends locked in a battle with the wicked Satanist Mocata, “a pot-bellied, bald headed person of about sixty, with large, protuberant, fishy eyes, limp hands, and a most unattractive lisp” (11), based, apparently, on the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (Ellis 145-6). Mocata hopes to start a conflict on the scale of the Great War by performing the appropriate devilish rituals. Led by the aged yet spry Duke de Richleau and garrulous American Rex van Ryn, the friends combat Mocata in three substantial set pieces, including their attempt to disrupt the black mass as it is performed in a secluded field in Wiltshire. The Devil Rides Out is a ripping story. Wheatley’s narrative is urgent, and his simple prose suggests that the book is meant to be read quickly. Likewise, Wheatley’s protagonists do not experience in any real way the crises and collapses that so frequently trouble characters who struggle against the forces of darkness in Gothic narratives. Even when de Richlieu’s courage fails as he observes the Wiltshire Sabbat, this failure is temporary; Rex simply treats him as if he has been physically wounded, and the Duke soon rallies. The Devil Rides Out is remarkably free of trauma and its sequelæ. The morbid psychological states which often interest the twentieth century Gothic are excluded here in favour of the kind of emotional fortitude found in adventure stories. The effect is remarkable. Wheatley retains a cheerful tone even as he depicts the appalling, and potentially repellent representations become entertainments. Wheatley describes in remarkable detail the actions that his protagonists witness from their hidden vantage point. If the Gothic reader looks forward to gleeful blasphemy, then this is amply provided, in the sort of sardonic style that Lewis’ The Monk manages so well. A cross is half stomped into matchwood and inverted in the ground, the Christian host is profaned in a way too dreadful to be narrated, and the Duke informs us that the satanic priests are eating “a stillborn baby or perhaps some unfortunate child that they have stolen and murdered”. Rex is chilled by the sound of a human skull rattling around in their cauldron (117-20). The mass offers a special quality of experience, distinct from the everyday texture of life represented in the text. Ostensibly waiting for their chance to liberate their friend Simon from the action, the Duke and Rex are voyeurs, and readers participate in this voyeurism too. The narrative focus shifts from Rex and de Richlieu’s observation of the mass, to the wayward medium Tanith’s independent, bespelled arrival at the ritual site, before returning to the two men. This arrangement allows Wheatley to extend his description of the gathering, reiterating the same events from different characters’ perspectives. This would be unusual if the text were simply a thriller, and relied on the ongoing release of new information to maintain narrative interest. Instead, readers have the opportunity to “view” the salacious activity of the Satanists a second time. This repetition delays the climactic action of the scene, where the Duke and Rex rescue Simon by driving a car into the midst of the ritual. Moreover, the repetition suggests that the “thrill” on offer is not necessarily related to plot —it offers us nothing new —but instead to simply seeing the rite performed. Tanith, although conveyed to the mass by some dark power, is delayed and she too becomes a part of the mass’ audience. She saw the Satanists… tumbling upon each other in the disgusting nudity of their ritual dance. Old Madame D’Urfé, huge-buttocked and swollen, prancing by some satanic power with all the vigour of a young girl who had only just reached maturity; the Babu, dark-skinned, fleshy, hideous; the American woman, scraggy, lean-flanked and hag-like with empty, hanging breasts; the Eurasian, waving the severed stump of his arm in the air as he gavotted beside the unwieldy figure of the Irish bard, whose paunch stood out like the grotesque belly of a Chinese god. (132) The reader will remember that Madame D’Urfé is French, and that the cultists are dancing before the Goat of Mendes, who masquerades as Malagasy, earlier described by de Richlieu as “a ‘bad black’ if ever I saw one” (11). The human body is obsessively and grotesquely racialized; Wheatley is simultaneously at his most politically vile and aesthetically Goya-like. The physically grotesque meshes with the crudely sexual and racist. The Irishman is typed as a “bard” and somehow acquires a second racial classification, the Indian is horrible seemingly because of his race, and Madame D’Urfé is repulsive because her sexuality is framed as inappropriate to her age. The dancing crone is defined in terms of a younger, presumably sexually appealing, woman; even as she is denigrated, the reader is presented with a contrary image. As the sexuality of the Satanists is excoriated, titillation is offered. Readers may take whatever pleasure they like from the representations while simultaneously condemning them, or even affecting revulsion. A binary opposition is set up between de Richlieu’s company, who are cultured and moneyed, and the Satanists, who might masquerade as civilised, but reveal their savagery at the Sabbat. Their race becomes a further symptom of their lack of civilised qualities. The Duke complains to Rex that “there is little difference between this modern Satanism and Voodoo… We might almost be witnessing some heathen ceremony in an African jungle!” (115). The Satanists become “a trampling mass of bestial animal figures” dancing to music where, “Instead of melody, it was a harsh, discordant jumble of notes and broken chords which beat into the head with a horrible nerve-racking intensity and set the teeth continually on edge” (121). Music and melody are cultural constructions as much as they are mathematical ones. The breakdown of music suggests a breakdown of culture, more specifically, of Western cultural norms. The Satanists feast, with no “knives, forks, spoons or glasses”, but instead drink straight from bottles and eat using their hands (118). This is hardly transgression on the scale of devouring an infant, but emphasises that Satanism is understood to represent the antithesis of civilization, specifically, of a conservative Englishness. Bad table manners are always a sign of wickedness. This sort of reading is useful in that it describes the prejudices and politics of the text. It allows us to see the black mass as meaningful and places it within a wider discursive tradition making sense of a grotesque dance that combines a variety of almost arbitrary transgressive actions, staged in a Wiltshire field. This style of reading seems to confirm the approach to genre text that Fredric Jameson has espoused (117-9), which understands the text as reinforcing a hegemonic worldview within its readership. This is the kind of reading the academy often works to produce; it recognises the mass as standing for something more than the simple fact of its performance, and develops a coherent account of what the mass represents. The labour of reading discerns the work the text does out in the world. Yet despite the good sense and political necessity of this approach, my suggestion is that these observations are secondary to the primary function of the text because they cannot account for the reading experience offered by the Sabbat and the rest of the text. Regardless of text’s prejudices, The Devil Rides Out is not a book about race. It is a book about Satanists. As Jo Walton has observed, competent genre readers effortlessly grasp this kind of distinction, prioritising certain readings and elements of the text over others (33-5). Failing to account for the reading strategy presumed by author and audience risks overemphasising what is less significant in a text while missing more important elements. Crucially, a reading that emphasises the political implications of the Sabbat attributes meaning to the ritual; yet the ritual’s ability to hold meaning is not what is most important about it. By attributing meaning to the Sabbat, we miss the fact of the Sabbat itself; it has become a metaphor rather than a thing unto itself, a demonstration of racist politics rather than one of the central necessities of a black magic story. Seligman, Weller, Puett and Simon claim that ritual is usually read as having a social purpose or a cultural meaning, but that these readings presume that ritual is interested in presenting the world truthfully, as it is. Seligman and his co-authors take exception to this, arguing that ritual does not represent society or culture as they are and that ritual is “a subjunctive—the creation of an order as if it were truly the case” (20). Rather than simply reflecting history, society and culture, ritual responds to the disappointment of the real; the farmer performs a rite to “ensure” the bounty of the harvest not because the rite symbolises the true order of things, but as a consolation because sometimes the harvest fails. Interestingly, the Duke’s analysis of the Satanists’ motivations closely accords with Seligman et al.’s understanding of the need for ritual to console our anxieties and disappointments. For the cultists, the mass is “a release of all their pent-up emotions, and suppressed complexes, engendered by brooding over imagined injustice, lust for power, bitter hatred of rivals in love or some other type of success or good fortune” (121). The Satanists perform the mass as a response to the disappointment of the participant’s lives; they are ugly, uncivil outsiders and according to the Duke, “probably epileptics… nearly all… abnormal” (121). The mass allows them to feel, at least for a limited time, as if they are genuinely powerful, people who ought to be feared rather than despised, able to command the interest and favour of their infernal lord, to receive sexual attention despite their uncomeliness. Seligman et al. go on to argue ritual “must be understood as inherently nondiscursive—semantic content is far secondary to subjunctive creation.” Ritual “cannot be analysed as a coherent system of beliefs” (26). If this is so, we cannot expect the black mass to necessarily say anything coherent about Satanism, let alone racism. In fact, The Devil Rides Out tends not to focus on the meaning of the black mass, but on its performance. The perceivable facts of the mass are given, often in instructional detail, but any sense of what they might stand for remains unexplicated in the text. Indeed, taken individually, it is hard to make sense or meaning out of each of the Sabbat’s components. Why must a skull rattle around a cauldron? Why must a child be killed and eaten? If communion forms the most significant part of the Christian mass, we could presume that the desecration of the host might be the most meaningful part of the rite, but given the extensive description accorded the mass as a whole, the parody of communion is dealt with surprisingly quickly, receiving only three sentences. The Duke describes the act as “the most appalling sacrilege”, but it is left at that as the celebrants stomp the host into the ground (120). The action itself is emphasised over anything it might mean. Most of Wheatley’s readers will, I think, be untroubled by this. As Pierre Bourdieu noted, “the regularities inherent in an arbitrary condition… tend to appear as necessary, even natural, since they are the basis of the schemes of perception and appreciation through which they are apprehended” (53-4). Rather than stretching towards an interpretation of the Sabbat, readers simply accept it a necessary condition of a “black magic story”. While the genre and its tropes are constructed, they tend to appear as “natural” to readers. The Satanists perform the black mass because that is what Satanists do. The representation does not even have to be compelling in literary terms; it simply has to be a “proper” black mass. Richard Schechner argues that, when we are concerned with ritual, “Propriety”, that is, seeing the ritual properly executed, “is more important than artistry in the Euro-American sense” (178). Rather than describing the meaning of the ritual, Wheatley prefers to linger over the Satanist’s actions, their gluttonous feasting and dancing, their nudity. Again, these are actions that hold sensual qualities for their performers that exceed the simply discursive. Through their ritual behaviour they enter into atavistic and ecstatic states beyond everyday human consciousness. They are “hardly human… Their brains are diseased and their mentality is that of the hags and the warlocks of the middle ages…” and are “governed apparently by a desire to throw themselves back into a state of bestiality…” (117-8). They finally reach a state of “maniacal exaltation” and participate in an “intoxicated nightmare” (135). While the mass is being celebrated, the Satanists become an undifferentiated mass, their everyday identities and individuality subsumed into the subjunctive world created by the ritual. Simon, a willing participant, becomes lost amongst them, his individual identity given over to the collective, subjunctive state created by the group. Rex and the Duke are outside of this subjunctive world, expressing revulsion, but voyeuristically looking on; they retain their individual identities. Tanith is caught between the role played by Simon, and the one played by the Duke and Rex, as she risks shifting from observer to participant, her journey to the Sabbat being driven on by “evil powers” (135). These three relationships to the Sabbat suggest some of the strategies available to its readers. Like Rex and the Duke, we seem to observe the black mass as voyeurs, and still have the option of disapproving of it, but like Simon, the act of continuing to read means that we are participating in the representation of this perversity. Having committed to reading a “black magic story”, the reader’s procession towards the black mass is inevitable, as with Tanith’s procession towards it. Yet, just as Tanith is compelled towards it, readers are allowed to experience the Sabbat without necessarily having to see themselves as wanting to experience it. This facilitates a ludic, undiscursive reading experience; readers are not encouraged to seriously reflect on what the Sabbat means or why it might be a source of vicarious pleasure. They do not have to take responsibility for it. As much as the Satanists create a subjunctive world for their own ends, readers are creating a similar world for themselves to participate in. The mass—an incoherent jumble of sex and violence—becomes an imaginative refuge from the everyday world which is too regulated, chaste and well-behaved. Despite having substantial precedent in folklore and Gothic literature (see Medway), the black mass as it is represented in The Devil Rides Out is largely an invention. The rituals performed by occultists like Crowley were never understood by their participants as being black masses, and it was not until the foundation of the Church of Satan in San Francisco in the later nineteen-sixties that it seems the black mass was performed with the regularity or uniformity characteristic of ritual. Instead, its celebration was limited to eccentrics and dabblers like Summers. Thus, as an imaginary ritual, the black mass can be whatever its writers and readers need it to be, providing the opportunity to stage those actions and experiences required by the kind of text in which it appears. Because it is the product of the requirements of the text, it becomes a venue in which those things crucial to the text are staged; forbidden sexual congress, macabre ceremony, violence, the appearance of intoxicating and noisome scents, weird violet lights, blue candle flames and the goat itself. As we observe the Sabbat, the subjunctive of the ritual aligns with the subjunctive of the text itself; the same ‘as if’ is experienced by both the represented worshippers and the readers. The black mass offers an analogue for the black magic story, providing, almost in digest form, the images and experiences associated with the genre at the time. Seligman et al. distinguish between modes that they term the sincere and the ritualistic. Sincerity describes an approach to reading the world that emphasises the individual subject, authenticity, and the need to get at “real” thought and feeling. Ritual, on the other hand, prefers community, convention and performance. The “sincere mode of behavior seeks to replace the ‘mere convention’ of ritual with a genuine and thoughtful state of internal conviction” (103). Where the sincere is meaningful, the ritualistic is practically oriented. In The Devil Rides Out, the black mass, a largely unreal practice, must be regarded as insincere. More important than any “meaning” we might extract from the rite is the simple fact of participation. The individuality and agency of the participants is apparently diminished in the mass, and their regular sense of themselves is recovered only as the Duke and Rex desperately drive the Duke’s Hispano into the ritual so as to halt it. The car’s lights dispel the subjunctive darkness and reduce the unified group to a gathering of confused individuals, breaking the spell of naughtily enabling darkness. Just as the meaningful aspect of the mass is de-emphasised for ritual participants, for readers, self and discursive ability are de-emphasised in favour of an immersive, involving reading experience; we keep reading the mass without pausing to really consider the mass itself. It would reduce our pleasure in and engagement with the text to do so; the mass would be revealed as obnoxious, unpleasant and nonsensical. When we read the black mass we tend to put our day-to-day values, both moral and aesthetic, to one side, bracketing our sincere individuality in favour of participation in the text. If there is little point in trying to interpret Wheatley’s black mass due to its weakly discursive nature, then this raises questions of how to approach the text. Simply, the “work” of interpretation seems unnecessary; Wheatley’s black mass asks to be regarded as a form of play. Simply, The Devil Rides Out is a venue for a particular kind of readerly play, apart from the more substantial, sincere concerns that occupy most literary criticism. As Huizinga argued that, “Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’ life both as to locality and duration… [A significant] characteristic of play [is] its secludedness, its limitedness” (9). Likewise, by seeing the mass as a kind of play, we can understand why, despite the provocative and transgressive acts it represents, it is not especially harrowing as a reading experience. Play “lies outside the antithesis of wisdom and folly, and equally outside those of truth and falsehood, good and evil…. The valuations of vice and virtue do not apply...” (Huizinga 6). The mass might well offer barbarism and infanticide, but it does not offer these to its readers “seriously”. The subjunctive created by the black mass for its participants on the page is approximately equivalent to the subjunctive Wheatley’s text proposes to his readers. The Sabbat offers a tawdry, intoxicated vision, full of strange performances, weird lights, queer music and druggy incenses, a darkened carnival apart from the real that is, despite its apparent transgressive qualities and wretchedness, “only playing”. References Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Ellis, Bill. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 2000. Hedman, Iwan, and Jan Alexandersson. Four Decades with Dennis Wheatley. DAST Dossier 1. Köping 1973. Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1986. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 1989. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. International Library of Sociology. London: Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul, 1949. Medway, Gareth J. The Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism. New York: New York UP, 2001. “Pooter.” The Times 19 August 1969: 19. Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day. London: Longman, 1980. Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. Revised and Expanded ed. New York: Routledge, 1988. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. 1980. New York: Methuen, 1986. Seligman, Adam B, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett and Bennett Simon. Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Thompson, G.R. Introduction. “Romanticism and the Gothic Imagination.” The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism. Ed. G.R. Thompson. Pullman: Washington State UP, 1974. 1-10. Wheatley, Dennis. The Devil Rides Out. 1934. London: Mandarin, 1996.

Introduction Mentors play a role in real life, just as they do in fiction. They also feature in reality television, which sits somewhere between the two. In fiction, mentors contribute to the narrative arc by providing guidance and assistance (Vogler 12) to a mentee in his or her life or professional pursuits. These exchanges are usually characterized by reciprocity, the need for mutual recognition (Gadamer 353) and involve some kind of moral question. They dramatise the possibilities of mentoring in reality, to provide us with a greater understanding of the world, and our human interaction within it. Reality television offers a different perspective. Like drama it uses the plot device of a mentor character to heighten the story arc, but instead of focusing on knowledge-based portrayals (Gadamer 112) of the mentor and mentee, the emphasis is instead on the mentee’s quest for ascension. In attempting to transcend their unknownness (Boorstin) contestants aim to penetrate an exclusive creative class (Florida). Populated by celebrity chefs, businessmen, entertainers, fashionistas, models, socialites and talent judges (to name a few), this class seemingly adds authenticity to ‘competitions’ and other formats. While the mentor’s role, on the surface, is to provide divine knowledge and facilitate the journey, a different agenda is evident in the ways carefully scripted (Booth) dialogue heightens the drama through effusive praise (New York Daily News) and “tactless” (Woodward), humiliating (Hirschorn; Winant 69; Woodward) and cruel sentiments. From a screen narrative point of view, this takes reality television as ‘storytelling’ (Aggarwal; Day; Hirschorn; “Reality Writer”; Rupel; Stradal) into very different territory. The contrived and later edited (Crouch; Papacharissi and Mendelson 367) communication between mentor and mentee not only renders the relationship disingenuous, it compounds the primary ethical concerns of associated Schadenfreude (Balasubramanian, Forstie and van den Scott 434; Cartwright), and the severe financial inequality (Andrejevic) underpinning a multi-billion dollar industry (Hamilton). As upward mobility and instability continue to be ubiquitously portrayed in 21st century reality entertainment under neoliberalism (Sender 4; Winant 67), it is with increasing frequency that we are seeing the systematic reinvention of the once significant cultural and historical role of the mentor. Mentor as Fictional Archetype and Communicator of ThemesDepictions of mentors can be found across the Western art canon. From the mythological characters of Telemachus’ Athena and Achilles’ Chiron, to King Arthur’s Merlin, Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Jim Hawkins’ Long John Silver, Frodo’s Gandalf, Batman’s Alfred and Marty McFly’s Doc Emmett Brown (among many more), the dramatic energy of the teacher, expert or supernatural aid (Vogler 39) has been timelessly powerful. Heroes, typically, engage with a mentor as part of their journey. Mentor types range extensively, from those who provide motivation, inspiration, training or gifts (Vogler), to those who may be dark or malevolent, or have fallen from grace (such as Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko in Wall Street 1987, or the ex-tribute Haymitch in The Hunger Games, 2012). A good drama usually complicates the relationship in some way, exploring initial reluctance from either party, or instances of tragedy (Vogler 11, 44) which may prevent the relationship achieving its potential. The intriguing twist of a fallen or malevolent mentor additionally invites the audience to morally analyze the ways the hero responds to what the mentor provides, and to question what our teachers or superiors tell us. In television particularly, long running series such as Mad Men have shown how a mentoring relationship can change over time, where “non-rational” characters (Buzzanell and D’Enbeau 707) do not necessarily maintain reciprocity or equality (703) but become subject to intimate, ambivalent and erotic aspects.As the mentor in fiction has deep cultural roots for audiences today, it is no wonder they are used, in a variety of archetypal capacities, in reality television. The dark Simon Cowell (of Pop Idol, American Idol, Britain’s Got Talent, America’s Got Talent and The X-Factor series) and the ‘villainous’ (Byrnes) Michelin-starred Marco Pierre White (Hell’s Kitchen, The Chopping Block, Marco Pierre White’s Kitchen Wars, MasterChef Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) provide reality writers with much needed antagonism (Rupel, Stradal). Those who have fallen from grace, or allowed their personal lives to play out in tabloid sagas such as Britney Spears (Marikar), or Caitlyn Jenner (Bissinger) provide different sources of conflict and intrigue. They are then counterbalanced with or repackaged as the good mentor. Examples of the nurturer who shows "compassion and empathy" include American Idol’s Paula Abdul (Marche), or the supportive Jennifer Hawkins in Next Top Model (Thompson). These distinctive characters help audiences to understand the ‘reality’ as a story (Crouch; Rupel; Stradal). But when we consider the great mentors of screen fiction, it becomes clear how reality television has changed the nature of story. The Karate Kid I (1984) and Good Will Hunting (1998) are two examples where mentoring is almost the exclusive focus, and where the experience of the characters differs greatly. In both films an initially reluctant mentor becomes deeply involved in the mentee’s project. They act as a special companion to the hero in the face of isolation, and, significantly, reveal a tragedy of their own, providing a nexus through which the mentee can access a deeper kind of truth. Not only are they flawed and ordinary people (they are not celebrities within the imagined worlds of the stories) who the mentee must challenge and learn to truly respect, they are “effecting and important” (Maslin) in reminding audiences of those hidden idiosyncrasies that open the barriers to friendship. Mentors in these stories, and many others, communicate themes of class, culture, talent, jealousy, love and loss which inform ideas about the ethical treatment of the ‘other’ (Gadamer). They ultimately prove pivotal to self worth, human confidence and growth. Very little of this thematic substance survives in reality television (see comparison of plots and contrasting modes of human engagement in the example of The Office and Dirty Jobs, Winant 70). Archetypally identifiable as they may be, mean judges and empathetic supermodels as characters are concerned mostly with the embodiment of perfection. They are flawless, untouchable and indeed most powerful when human welfare is at stake, and when the mentee before them faces isolation (see promise to a future ‘Rihanna’, X-Factor USA, Season 2, Episode 1 and Tyra Banks’ Next Top Model tirade at a contestant who had not lived up to her potential, West). If connecting with a mentor in fiction has long signified the importance of understanding of the past, of handing down tradition (Gadamer 354), and of our fascination with the elder, wiser other, then we can see a fundamental shift in narrative representation of mentors in reality television stories. In the past, as we have opened our hearts to such characters, as a facilitator to or companion of the hero, we have rehearsed a sacred respect for the knowledge and fulfillment mentors can provide. In reality television the ‘drama’ may evoke a fleeting rush of excitement at the hero’s success or failure, but the reality belies a pronounced distancing between mentor and mentee. The Creative Class: An Aspirational ParadigmThemes of ascension and potential fulfillment are also central to modern creativity discourse (Runco; Runco 672; United Nations). Seen as the driving force of the 21st century, creativity is now understood as much more than art, capable of bringing economic prosperity (United Nations) and social cohesion to its acme (United Nations xxiii). At the upper end of creative practice, is what Florida called “the creative class: a fast growing, highly educated, and well-paid segment of the workforce” (on whose expertise corporate profits depend), in industries ranging “from technology to entertainment, journalism to finance, high-end manufacturing to the arts” (Florida). Their common ethos is centered on individuality, diversity, and merit; eclipsing previous systems focused on ‘shopping’ and theme park consumerism and social conservatism (Eisinger). While doubts have since been raised about the size (Eisinger) and financial practices (Krätke 838) of the creative class (particularly in America), from an entertainment perspective at least, the class can be seen in full action. Extending to rich housewives, celebrity teen mothers and even eccentric duck hunters and swamp people, the creative class has caught up to the more traditional ‘star’ actor or music artist, and is increasingly marketable within world’s most sought after and expensive media spaces. Often reality celebrities make their mark for being the most outrageous, the cruelest (Peyser), or the weirdest (Gallagher; Peyser) personalities in the spotlight. Aspiring to the creative class thus, is a very public affair in television. Willing participants scamper for positions on shows, particularly those with long running, heavyweight titles such as Big Brother, The Bachelor, Survivor and the Idol series (Hill 35). The better known formats provide high visibility, with the opportunity to perform in front of millions around the globe (Frere-Jones, Day). Tapping into the deeply ingrained upward-mobility rhetoric of America, and of Western society, shows are aided in large part by 24-hour news, social media, the proliferation of celebrity gossip and the successful correlation between pop culture and an entertainment-style democratic ideal. As some have noted, dramatized reality is closely tied to the rise of individualization, and trans-national capitalism (Darling-Wolf 127). Its creative dynamism indeed delivers multi-lateral benefits: audiences believe the road to fame and fortune is always just within reach, consumerism thrives, and, politically, themes of liberty, egalitarianism and freedom ‘provide a cushioning comfort’ (Peyser; Pinter) from the domestic and international ills that would otherwise dispel such optimism. As the trials and tests within the reality genre heighten the seriousness of, and excitement about ascending toward the creative elite, show creators reproduce the same upward-mobility themed narrative across formats all over the world. The artifice is further supported by the festival-like (Grodin 46) symbology of the live audience, mass viewership and the online voting community, which in economic terms, speaks to the creative power of the material. Whether through careful manipulation of extra media space, ‘game strategy’, or other devices, those who break through are even more idolized for the achievement of metamorphosing into a creative hero. For the creative elite however, who wins ‘doesn’t matter much’. Vertical integration is the priority, where the process of making contestants famous is as lucrative as the profits they will earn thereafter; it’s a form of “one-stop shopping” as the makers of Idol put it according to Frere-Jones. Furthermore, as Florida’s measures and indicators suggested, the geographically mobile new creative class is driven by lifestyle values, recreation, participatory culture and diversity. Reality shows are the embodiment this idea of creativity, taking us beyond stale police procedural dramas (Hirschorn) and racially typecast family sitcoms, into a world of possibility. From a social equality perspective, while there has been a notable rise in gay and transgender visibility (Gamson) and stories about lower socio-economic groups – fast food workers and machinists for example – are told in a way they never were before, the extent to which shows actually unhinge traditional power structures is, as scholars have noted (Andrejevic and Colby 197; Schroeder) open to question. As boundaries are nonetheless crossed in the age of neoliberal creativity, the aspirational paradigm of joining a new elite in real life is as potent as ever. Reality Television’s Mentors: How to Understand Their ‘Role’Reality television narratives rely heavily on the juxtaposition between celebrity glamour and comfort, and financial instability. As mentees put it ‘all on the line’, storylines about personal suffering are hyped and molded for maximum emotional impact. In the best case scenarios mentors such as Caitlyn Jenner will help a trans mentee discover their true self by directing them in a celebrity-style photo shoot (see episode featuring Caitlyn and Zeam, Logo TV 2015). In more extreme cases the focus will be on an adopted contestant’s hopes that his birth mother will hear him sing (The X Factor USA, Season 2, Episode 11 Part 1), or on a postal clerk’s fear that elimination will mean she has to go back “to selling stamps” (The X Factor US - Season 2 Episode 11 Part 2). In the entrepreneurship format, as Woodward pointed out, it is not ‘help’ that mentees are given, but condescension. “I have to tell you, my friend, that this is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. You don’t have a clue about how to set up a business or market a product,” Woodward noted as the feedback given by one elite businessman on The Shark Tank (Woodward). “This is a five million dollar contract and I have to know that you can go the distance” (The X Factor US – Season 2 Episode 11, Part 1) Britney Spears warned to a thirteen-year-old contestant before accepting her as part of her team. In each instance the fictitious premise of being either an ‘enabler’ or destroyer of dreams is replayed and slightly adapted for ongoing consumer interest. This lack of shared experience and mutual recognition in reality television also highlights the overt, yet rarely analyzed focus on the wealth of mentors as contrasted with their unstable mentees. In the respective cases of The X Factor and I Am Cait, one of the wealthiest moguls in entertainment, Cowell, reportedly contracts mentors for up to $15 million per season (Nair); Jenner’s performance in I Am Cait was also set to significantly boost the Kardashian empire (reportedly already worth $300 million, Pavia). In both series, significant screen time has been dedicated to showing the mentors in luxurious beachside houses, where mentees may visit. Despite the important social messages embedded in Caitlyn’s story (which no doubt nourishes the Kardashian family’s generally more ersatz material), the question, from a moral point of view becomes: would these mentors still interact with that particular mentee without the money? Regardless, reality participants insist they are fulfilling their dreams when they appear. Despite the preplanning, possibility of distress (Australia Network News; Bleasby) and even suicide (Schuster), as well as the ferocity of opinion surrounding shows (Marche) the parade of a type of ‘road of trials’ (Vogler 189) is enough to keep a huge fan base interested, and hungry for their turn to experience the fortune of being touched by the creative elite; or in narrative terms, a supernatural aid. ConclusionThe key differences between reality television and artistic narrative portrayals of mentors can be found in the use of archetypes for narrative conflict and resolution, in the ways themes are explored and the ways dialogue is put to use, and in the focus on and visibility of material wealth (Frere-Jones; Peyser). These differences highlight the political, cultural and social implications of exchanging stories about potential fulfillment, for stories about ascension to the creative class. Rather than being based on genuine reciprocity, and understanding of human issues, reality shows create drama around the desperation to penetrate the inner sanctum of celebrity fame and fortune. In fiction we see themes based on becoming famous, on gender transformation, and wealth acquisition, such as in the films and series Almost Famous (2000), The Bill Silvers Show (1955-1959), Filthy Rich (1982-1983), and Tootsie (1982), but these stories at least attempt to address a moral question. Critically, in an artistic - rather than commercial context – the actors (who may play mentees) are not at risk of exploitation (Australia Network News; Bleasby; Crouch). Where actors are paid and recognized creatively for their contribution to an artistic work (Rupel), the mentee in reality television has no involvement in the ways action may be set up for maximum voyeuristic enjoyment, or manipulated to enhance scandalous and salacious content which will return show and media profits (“Reality Show Fights”; Skeggs and Wood 64). The emphasis, ironically, from a reality production point of view, is wholly on making the audience believe (Papacharissi and Mendelson 367) that the content is realistic. This perhaps gives some insight as to why themes of personal suffering and instability are increasingly evident across formats.On an ethical level, unlike the knowledge transferred through complex television plots, or in coming of age films (as cited above) about the ways tradition is handed down, and the ways true mentors provide altruistic help in human experience; in reality television we take away the knowledge that life, under neoliberalism, is most remarkable when one is handpicked to undertake a televised journey featuring their desire for upward mobility. The value of the mentoring in these cases is directly proportionate to the financial objectives of the creative elite.ReferencesAggarwal, Sirpa. “WWE, A&amp;E Networks, and Simplynew Share Benefits of White-Label Social TV Solutions at the Social TV Summit.” Arktan 25 July 2012. 1 August 2014 &lt;http://arktan.com/wwe-ae-networks-and-simplynew-share-benefits-of-white-label-social-tv-solutions-at-the-social-tv-summit/&gt;. 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