The Constitutional Crisis in Austria

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-157
Author(s):  
Malbone W. Graham

Constitutionalism, in Austria, is not a new slogan. It was a phrase to conjure with during the entire lifetime of Francis Joseph, though in practice the whole history of the country down to the revolution of 1918 was its virtual negation. Only in the latter days of the monarchy, when the scepter passed from the hands of Francis Joseph to the inexperienced young emperor Karl, was a modicum of popular expression allowed to supplant the personal autocracy of the sovereign. The old Austria passed out of existence in 1918 without the successful implantation of a régime of liberal legality in any of its parts.The young Austrian Republic, coming into existence in the hour of the Empire's dissolution, thus inherited a legacy of unconstitutional government, and only the solidity of socialist and clerical party organization, bred of the stress and strain of clashing conceptions of the social order, gave support to the government in the days when social revolution swept almost to the doors of Vienna. It was under such circumstances that Austria entered, in 1918, upon the way of constitutionalism and sought, through her provisional instruments of government, to avoid the autocratic excesses of the past and avert the impending perils of a proletarian dictatorship.In a series of revolutionary pronouncements and decisions of her provisional assembly, she discarded, under socialist leadership, the arbitrary régime attendant on the monarchy, and, establishing a unitary democratic republic with far-reaching local self-government as a stepping-stone toward union with Germany, inaugurated a régime of unquestioned parliamentary supremacy, strict ministerial responsibility, virtual executive impotence, and extensive socialization.

This chapter explores the construction of the Terror as a difficult past after 9 Thermidor. It addresses a curious tension in the sources. On the one hand, there were recurring proclamations that the Terror was over, that the violence of Year II was a thing of the past. On the other hand, there was an awareness that this past could not be laid to rest so easily, that the traces of revolutionary violence were everywhere, in the landscape and in the minds of people. The chapter relates this tension in the sources to changes in the way Europeans processed and responded to catastrophic events and to the new relationship between violence and the social order, which was inaugurated by the French Revolution. Special attention is devoted to Louis-Marie Prudhomme’s history of revolutionary violence, published in 1796.


Author(s):  
ROY PORTER

The physician George Hoggart Toulmin (1754–1817) propounded his theory of the Earth in a number of works beginning with The antiquity and duration of the world (1780) and ending with his The eternity of the universe (1789). It bore many resemblances to James Hutton's "Theory of the Earth" (1788) in stressing the uniformity of Nature, the gradual destruction and recreation of the continents and the unfathomable age of the Earth. In Toulmin's view, the progress of the proper theory of the Earth and of political advancement were inseparable from each other. For he analysed the commonly accepted geological ideas of his day (which postulated that the Earth had been created at no great distance of time by God; that God had intervened in Earth history on occasions like the Deluge to punish man; and that all Nature had been fabricated by God to serve man) and argued they were symptomatic of a society trapped in ignorance and superstition, and held down by priestcraft and political tyranny. In this respect he shared the outlook of the more radical figures of the French Enlightenment such as Helvétius and the Baron d'Holbach. He believed that the advance of freedom and knowledge would bring about improved understanding of the history and nature of the Earth, as a consequence of which Man would better understand the terms of his own existence, and learn to live in peace, harmony and civilization. Yet Toulmin's hopes were tempered by his naturalistic view of the history of the Earth and of Man. For Time destroyed everything — continents and civilizations. The fundamental law of things was cyclicality not progress. This latent political conservatism and pessimism became explicit in Toulmin's volume of verse, Illustration of affection, published posthumously in 1819. In those poems he signalled his disapproval of the French Revolution and of Napoleonic imperialism. He now argued that all was for the best in the social order, and he abandoned his own earlier atheistic religious radicalism, now subscribing to a more Christian view of God. Toulmin's earlier geological views had run into considerable opposition from orthodox religious elements. They were largely ignored by the geological community in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain, but were revived and reprinted by lower class radicals such as Richard Carlile. This paper is to be published in the American journal, The Journal for the History of Ideas in 1978 (in press).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.


Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.


Britain possesses a forest area which is one of the smallest in Europe in relation to its population and land area. In the past, forests have been felled to make way for farming and to supply timber for ships, houses, fuel and metal smelting. Timber was a key to sea power, and repeatedly the availability of home timber supplies has proved crucial in time of war. The nation’s dwindling reserves of timber have been a source of anxiety since Tudor times and periodic surges of planting for timber production by private landowners took place until about 1850. Thereafter, interest faded with the advent of the iron ship, the Industrial Revolution and the availability of cheap timber imports. Govern­ ment activity was minimal until a national forest authority was formed in 1919 to create a strategic timber reserve. Since 1958 there have been frequent policy reviews to assess the changing needs of the nation for timber and the new values associated with the social and environmental benefits of forests.


1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minseok An ◽  
George H. Sage

In the past decade, to help maintain political stability and promote economic growth, South Korea has committed substantial resources to commercialized sports, including golf. A major source of support for building golf courses has come from government leaders and economic and social incentives as well. In the past 4 years the government has given permission to build 135 new golf courses. The official government discourse about the new golf courses is that they are being built in the interest of “sport for all.” But the golf courses overwhelmingly require membership, which is extremely expensive. Despite the enormous power and resources of the dominant groups in Korea, there are elements of opposition. The golf boom has been severely criticized because it removes large amounts of land from agricultural and industrial productivity, contaminates farm land, and pollutes water. It also represents the worst aspects of the social imbalance of wealth.


1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.


Arsitektura ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Nurul Widowati ◽  
Winny Astuti ◽  
Murtanti Jani Rahayu

<div><p><em>Surakarta is a city that has the potential of the river. But in the process, these rivers suffered environmental degradation as a function instead of the banks into slums and squatter, and functions of rivers that serve as places of waste disposal. Government’s city of Surakarta has done various setup area of the river. One of the targeted structuring Pepe-River is often known by the name Kali Pepe. Kali Pepe is the river which has the most strategic location because it divides the centre of city and the river has a past history of Surakarta. Kali Pepe is the witness of history where culture and trade activities in the rapidly growing city of Surakarta in the past with the ecological function and physical function as transportation trade.Setuping Kali Pepe, according to the Mayor of Surakarta, is directed to serve as recreation/tourism area. Since the Surakarta Mayor initiated the year 2015 that Kali Pepe as a tourist area. The initiated moves the government and society in order to more actively participate in developing the area into a tourist area. This research would like to know how the readiness level of the Kali Pepe area to be developed as a tourist area-based streams. The components of preparedness were seen from aspect of attractions or natural tourist attraction, artificial attractions, acessesiblity, institutional, infrastructure supporting tourism, and the behavior of the flooding of the river. This research is quantitative research in methods of scoring analysis. The result of this research has shown that Kali Pepe less readiness to be developed as a tourist area-based stream. Aspects of accessibility and infrastructure supporting tourism were an aspect which has a readiness. But for this aspect of the attraction, institutional and river flooding behavior is still in the stage of less readiness.</em></p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Keywords:</em></strong><em> readiness, tourist areas, river tours</em></p></div>


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Rika Inggit Asmawati

This research discusses about the social economic history of Yogyakarta during 1950s. The main problem is to analyze how the newly independent country of Indonesia dealt with unemployment after the revolutionary period. This research employs the historical method using primary and secondary sources, such as archives, newspapers, magazines, interviews, and reviews of relevant references. There are four conclusions in this research. First, although the period was called as the period of creating jobs, the unemployment number in early 1950s was increasing. Second, this unemployment problem was not primarily caused by the economic condition but also by demographic problems and the legacies from the Revolution Era. Third, people who were categorized as unemployed were not only labors, but also veterans. Fourth, for the government, solving this unemployment problem was the effort to create economic improvement for its society.


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