As with many other genres of storytelling, fables are as much about the socialisation of political values as they are about the amusement of children. Although their timeless appearance presents their truths as absolute, the meanings of fables change as they are reinterpreted through time by particular ideologies. Thus we find that The Ant and the Grasshopper, a children’s favourite about the need for hard work and careful saving, has recently been commandeered by conservative adults who are searching for ever more coded ways of communicating in today’s anti-racist contexts. This story is attributed to Æsop, a mythical sixth century B.C. slave and storyteller (Adrados 1999). During the renaissance, Europe’s fascination with antiquity prompted renewed interest in Æsop’s fables as vehicles of commentary on the politics of the time (Hanazaki 1993-1994 & Patterson 1991). Their popularity accelerated with the industrial revolution since some of the fables, such as The Tortoise and the Hare and The Ant and the Grasshopper, were particularly suited to the socialisation of selfrestraint and a strong work ethic. The Ant and the Grasshopper tells the story of the ant that worked hard collecting food during summer, while the carefree grasshopper did not. During winter, the ant survived while the grasshopper starved. This story conveyed to children that the threat of lean times was ever present but that hard work would stave off starvation.
Search Results
The Ant and the Grasshopper
Rationalising Exclusion and Inequality in the Post-apartheid City
Richard Ballard
Dmitry Shlapentokh
food and could endure hunger and thirst. Finally, he was quite restrictive in his sexual mores and engaged in sexual relationships only when they helped him to promote the broader geopolitical agenda. His enemies – the Oriental rulers – behaved in a
The Democracy of Everyday Life in Disaster
Holding Our Lives in Their Hands
Nancy L. Rosenblum
, neighbors are again called on to provide essentials: shopping for food and medicine or offering advice on technology to children struggling with remote schooling. Improvisation may give way to organized volunteerism by neighbors using networking and social
Jodi Dean
contact with a person beyond the immediate household could be life-threatening, people thought of basic activities like shopping for groceries as a matter of life and death. As the economic crisis deepened, the availability of food and continuity of
Shobita Parthasarathy
, delivering our packages, and farming and processing our food, not to mention working in our hospitals. The pandemic has even exposed how the public policies that seem the most objective maintain and reinforce inequalities. In this short article, I focus on
Marcos S. Scauso, Garrett FitzGerald, Arlene B. Tickner, Navnita Chadha Behera, Chengxin Pan, Chih-yu Shih, and Kosuke Shimizu
compounded through colonial encounters ( Rivera 2015 ; Méndez 2018 ). In the midst of COVID-19, gendered hierarchies often exacerbate material inequalities and create disproportionate impacts upon women around issues of employment, food security, risks of
Virile Resistance and Servile Collaboration
Interrupting the Gendered Representation of Betrayal in Resistance Movements
Maša Mrovlje
’ qualities ‘in spite of’ her particular role as a mother and housewife. Even though she had a family, six children and a husband, she ‘always had time for everything’ and ‘was never weary’: ‘She would go to the food lines earlier. She would mend the clothes
Distinguishing Injustice, Exploitation and Harm
The Impossibility Result
Elias L. Khalil
’ takes into consideration the uncertainty dimension of any decision, while wellbeing per capita denotes the level of welfare per person in terms of substantive utility arising from the consumption of food, clothes and other welfare-enhancing items. As
Louise Haagh
. OECD , Paris . Ramesh , R. 2010 . “ No Anti-Junk Food Laws, Health Secretary Promises ,” The Guardian , July 7 . www.theguardian.com/society/2010/Jul/07/no-anti-junk-food-laws Rawls , John . 1971 . A Theory Of Justice . Oxford
Milja Kurki
yet just because we are scared by the surprising fragility of our social and political order, we also cannot ignore the virus: we must learn to live with it. And this, as we are learning, changes how we metabolize the world, oil, food, social systems