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Theatre Studies
Theatre Studies / Films, Cinema
Dafydd Sills-Jones • Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones (eds.)
Martin Goodman
Documentary in Wales
Bastards at Work
Cultures and Practices
Universal Lessons on Bullying from Contemporary French Storytelling
Oxford, 2021. XIV, 314 pp., 20 fig. col., 4 fig. b/w, 12 tables. Documentary Film Cultures. Vol. 1
Oxford, 2021. XX, 342 pp., 9 b/w ill., 1 colour ill., 6 b/w tables.
hb. • ISBN 978-1-78874-533-8 CHF 85.– / €D 72.95 / €A 74.70 / € 67.90 / £ 55.– / US-$ 82.95
pb. • ISBN 978-1-80079-474-0 CHF 70.– / €D 59.95 / €A 61.20 / € 55.60 / £ 45.– / US-$ 67.95
eBook (SUL) • ISBN 978-1-78874-536-9 CHF 85.– / € 67.90 / €A 71.30 / €D 71.95 / £ 55.– / US-$ 82.95
eBook (SUL) • ISBN 978-1-80079-475-7 CHF 70.– / €D 59.95 / €A 61.20 / € 55.60 / £ 45.– / US-$ 67.95
Documentary, in a small, bilingual nation such as Wales, experiences many of the same challenges that it faces across the world. As the costs of professional documentary production lessen, and the potentialities of internet distribution loosen the grip of its traditional tele-cinematic gatekeepers, documentary production communities face both the potential of new distribution avenues and severe professional precarity. In Wales, the dynamics of this transformation unfolds according to a specific historical, political and cultural situation. With funding, regulatory frameworks, audience taste, viewing figures, and contractual territories all mostly emanating or controlled from across the border in England, at times it is difficult to identify texts that can and can’t be claimed as «Welsh». But then again, contingency and struggle have always been fundamental aspects of Welsh cultural identity. What emerges is not so much the documentary culture of a small nation, but a documentary culture that is still struggling to come to terms with itself, giving Welsh documentary a character defined by a specific set of features: the political and cultural interplay of two languages, a continuation of older British public service broadcasting traditions, the acceptance of the marginal, the close interconnectedness of key players and the often paralysing effect of underfunding.
Bullying is a social phenomenon that defines the contemporary workplace with much of the emphasis on psychosocial rather than physical suffering. In France, workplace bullying has emerged as a subject of intense interest and controversy among scholars, policy makers and cultural producers – notably novelists, playwrights and film directors. It has a high public profile as reflected in specific legislation, a wealth of critical literature on workplace suffering, and an extensive range of novels, plays and films. This study contextualises and analyses this wave of fictional storytelling that has emerged in France since the year 2000. It critically analyses more than a dozen such stories with a view to determining how they reflect the lived experiences of workers. Each story is considered from the perspectives of critical commentaries and research from France and elsewhere, focusing on the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, medicine, anthropology, sociology, literary analysis, economics, law and business management. This study also examines how fiction reflects changes in the nature of the French economy, organisations and work itself since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s.
