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Processes of Othering, Distinction and Shared Understanding
 
 

“Processes of Othering, Distinction and Shared Understanding: Power–Tools in UK and Estonian Social and Cultural Spaces”
by Dr. Sonja Strode (published 2017)

About the book...

“Processes of Othering, Distinction and Shared Understanding: Power–Tools in UK and Estonian Social and Cultural Spaces” (2017) emanates from Dr. Sonja Strode’s sociological and ethnomusicological doctoral research which was carried out in a predominantly working–class area in the UK in the 1990s. That research remains highly relevant today; it also informs her more recent research relating to Estonia which forms the second part of this book. Both parts of the book are threaded together by her original theoretical framework, linked to the development of globalisation and other academic theory regarding culture, structure, and human agency.

In Part One of this book social and cultural spaces, like a music recording studio, a DIY radio station and other venues, come under the author’s PODs lens – PODs being an abbreviated form of the ‘power’ packed theme of Dr. Sonja Strode’s book, namely “Processes of Othering, Distinction and Shared Understanding...” The ethnographically researched ‘voices’ of young people, revealed in the aforementioned spaces, manifest ‘race’, gender, and class divisions, as well as cultural ‘distinctions’. Some ‘voices’ also reveal their struggle to be heard and find a successful niche in ‘new times’. As in some of the author’s previous books, ethnomusicology and music–making play a major role in this her latest book.

The themes signalled above also permeate Part Two of this book where the author’s focus is on Estonia and Estonians. Critical attention is given to the Estonian diaspora of Displaced Persons who accepted a benevolent invitation by the British government in the late 1940s to live and work in the UK. Such DPs had been living in refugee/DP camps, having fled the Soviet Occupation of Estonia, and the likelihood of either their imminent death or forced labour in horrendous conditions in the Siberian Gulag.

In Part Two the author again uses her PODs lens to examine: (a) the plight of Estonian DPs; (b) the preceding historical trajectory of upheaval in Estonia in the 1940s; (c) aspects of UK government policy; (d) patriarchy, nationalism, immigration, and identity; and last but not least, (e) the role of music in the individual and collective lives and sense of being and becoming of Estonians.



 
See also by
Dr. Sonja Strode...
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Processes of Othering, Distinction, and Shared Understanding: Power-Tools in UK and Estonian
Social and Cultural Spaces by Dr Sonja Strode
Doctor Sonja Strode
Publisher: tuesdaybooks.co.uk

ISBN: 978–2–9540755–6–3
Paperback: £12.99

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