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The chapter discusses how adolescents are moving beyond the dichotomy of biological and linguistic socialization, forming interpretive meanings at home through the reading of literature in their mother tongue, Bengali. Involving cultural relevance and non-vulnerability, the chapter conceptualizes “leisure activities” and “leisure pursuits” of reading practice of the IXth and Xth graders from both Bengali and English medium schools in Kolkata. The discussion from the theoretical construction mentions the further conceptualization of reading habits and language choice. This is where adolescents derive their agency. Adolescents from the Indian and especially from the Bengali perspective have a path of colonial discourse. From historical standpoint, the change in Bengali language and its grammar structure has influenced the acceptance of Bengali literature among adolescents in varying degrees through generations. Using mixed methods and content analysis, the chapter focuses on young teenagers’ narration on the way they maneuver curriculum and literature in their respective homes. Authors, for example, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, form the Bengali identity construction in the present time. Rabindranath Tagore’s, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s works are always prevalent in the Bengali language syllabus. These are considered the foundational modern literary figures of pre-independent India. These are taught from a nationalist and gender discourse perspective. The adolescents in this chapter also read those at a minimum level at home and attempt to juggle the difficult vocabulary involved. The simple language of post-independent literature is much sought after by teenagers compared to pre-independent literature. Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Kakababu series, Satyajit Ray’s Feluda and Professor Shanku series, and Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s Chander Pahar stand out among the adolescents from both English and Bengali medium unanimously in this chapter.

The term “everyday” can be found in almost every qualitative sociological study done today, though its usage, meaning, and importance are often taken for granted. The everyday world has not always had such a prominent place, however. This paper examines the development of “the everyday” an as area of study through everyday life sociologies and cultural studies, using quilting to compare sociological usage to the development of the everyday as a topic in the arts in the 1960s. As a focal point for discussions of art hierarchies, as cultural resistance, and as a form of women's cultural production, quilting's role in everyday life illuminates the new way of seeing that everyday life sociologies developed.

This paper adds to the literature on societal grand challenges by shifting the focus away from business firms and other formal organizations as key actors in addressing such challenges toward the inherent organizing capacity that lies in the use of language itself. More specifically, we focus on the organizing capacities of metaphor-based communication, seeking to ascertain which qualities of metaphors enable them to co-orient collective action toward tackling grand challenges. In addressing this question, we develop an analytical framework based on two qualities of metaphorical communication that can provide such co-orientation: a metaphor’s (a) vividness and (b) responsible actionability. We illustrate the usefulness of this framework by assessing selected metaphors used in the public discourse to make sense of and organize collective responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the flu metaphor/analogy, the war metaphor, and the combined metaphor of “the hammer and the dance.” Our paper contributes to extant research by providing a means to assess the co-orienting potential of metaphors in bridging varied interpretations. In so doing, our framework can pave the way toward more responsible use of metaphorical communication in tackling society’s grand challenges.

The position of these Irish agitators is illogical and untenable; the remedy they propose is no remedy at all – nevertheless they are talking about the tenure of land and the right to land; and thus a question of worldwide importance is coming to the front.³

In June 2016, a clear majority of English voters chose to unilaterally take the United Kingdom out of the European Union (EU). According to many of the post-Brexit vote analyses, the single strongest motivating factor driving this vote was “immigration” in Britain, an issue which had long been the central mobilizing force of the United Kingdom Independence Party. The chapter focuses on how – following the bitter demise of multiculturalism – these Brexit related developments may now signal the end of Britain's postcolonial settlement on migration and race, the other parts of a progressive philosophy which had long been marked out as a proud British distinction from its neighbors. In successfully racializing, lumping together, and relabeling as “immigrants” three anomalous non-“immigrant” groups – asylum seekers, EU nationals, and British Muslims – UKIP leader Nigel Farage made explicit an insidious recasting of ideas of “immigration” and “integration,” emergent since the year 2000, which exhumed the ideas of Enoch Powell and threatened the status of even the most settled British minority ethnic populations – as has been seen in the Windrush scandal. Central to this has been the rejection of the postnational principle of non-discrimination by nationality, which had seen its fullest European expression in Britain during the 1990s and 2000s. The referendum on Brexit enabled an extraordinary democratic vote on the notion of “national” population and membership, in which “the People” might openly roll back the various diasporic, multinational, cosmopolitan, or human rights–based conceptions of global society which had taken root during those decades. This chapter unpacks the toxic cocktail that lays behind the forces propelling Boris Johnson to power. It also raises the question of whether Britain will provide a negative examplar to the rest of Europe on issues concerning the future of multiethnic societies.