scholarly journals Proletarian Politics Today: On the Perils and Possibilities of Historical Analogy

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Urban Populations ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Analogy

AbstractWhen contemporary dispossessed urban classes are figured as a “proletariat,” a potent historical analogy is activated in which the well-documented experience of the burgeoning industrial working classes of nineteenth-century Europe provides an implicit template for interpreting events and processes far removed in time and space. Yet Karl Marx's own deployment of the figure of the proletariat, which often provides the inspiration and model for such analogic moves, was itself in its own time already a complex historical analogy, invoking the social hierarchies of ancient Rome. Rethinking this doubly analogical intellectual history provides an occasion both for considering the uses and abuses of historical analogy, and for using a reflection on the original (Roman) proletarians as a conceptual lever for prying apart some outdated assumptions about the contemporary politics of certain propertyless urban populations, in southern Africa and beyond.

Invisible Bodies

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 33-68
Author(s):  
Lan A. Li
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
English Language ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Material Characteristics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Close Study ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis essay explores the ways in which Lu Gwei-djen (1904–91) served as a gatekeeper for interpreting medicine in China in the second half of the twentieth century. After retiring from science in 1956, Lu set out to write one of the first comprehensive English-language histories of medicine in China. Through a close study of Lu’s work notes and marginalia from later in her life, this essay examines how she carefully articulated the material characteristics of a “Chinese” medicine that gave rise to jingluo, or therapeutic paths often known as “meridians.” I argue that at the heart of this uneasy comparison was the difficult process of translating across multiple expressions of physiology. By placing Lu Gwei-djen at the center of a feminist intellectual history of medicine, this essay further shows how Lu’s translations were influenced by the social hierarchies in which she was embedded, including cultural, gender, and temporal dualities.

The Social Division of Welfare

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Richard M. Titmuss
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Social Betterment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Effective Operation ◽  
Interpretation Of Change ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter looks at how some students of social policy see the development of ‘The Welfare State’ in historical perspective as part of a broad, ascending road of social betterment provided for the working classes since the nineteenth century and achieving its goal in the present time. This interpretation of change as a process of unilinear progression in collective benevolence for these classes led to the belief that in the year 1948 ‘The Welfare State’ was established. Since then, successive governments, Conservative and Labour, have busied themselves with the more effective operation of the various services. Both parties have also claimed the maintenance of ‘The Welfare State’ as an article of faith.

From Old World to New Shores

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Simonett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old World ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter presents a brief history of the accordion, from its experimental beginning in the early nineteenth century to its phenomenal rise as a truly global commodity, emphasizing the social predicament that relegated this instrument to a marginal position within the (educated) musical world. While the accordion at first was an expensive and hence exclusive instrument in upper-class drawing rooms, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century it had spread to the middle and working classes. The accordion of the nineteenth century was a symbol of progress and modernity as well as of mass culture and industrialization. This dichotomy is one of the reasons for the elite's ambivalence towards and uneasiness with the accordion.

Hume's Sceptical Enlightenment

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryu Susato
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Positive Assessment

David Hume (1711–1776) remains one of the most equivocal thinkers in eighteenth-century Europe. Some emphasise his conservatism because of his criticism of rationalism in morals and of the social contract theory in politics, while others deem him one of the most important liberal thinkers. He can also be characterised as a forerunner of utilitarianism or even postmodernism. How can these images be integrated? To address this issue, Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment demonstrates the uniqueness and complexity of Hume as an Enlightenment thinker through an investigation of the ‘historical’ Hume. Based on a sceptical adaptation of Epicureanism, he delineates the variable and vulnerable nature of the workings of our imagination and opinions, and emphasises the essential instability of civilisation. In addition, he retains a positive assessment of such modern values as liberty, politeness and refinement, and carries the banner for secularisation. His ‘spirit of scepticism’, which permeates even his non-epistemological writings, enables these seemingly paradoxical positions. This book is not only for Hume specialists, but is also a contribution to the flourishing fields of the Enlightenment study. This intellectual history connects Hume’s early eighteenth-century Continental and British predecessors not only to Hume, but also to British philosophers writing up until the nineteenth century.

The Lineaments of Antebellum Southern Romanticism

1986 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-188
Author(s):  
Michael O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Old South ◽  
Ernst Cassirer ◽  
Second Look ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Work

It is a curiosity of modern scholarship that the only general work on antebellum Southern Romanticism is Rollin G. Osterweis'Romanticism and Nationalism in the Old South, which has been in print since 1949, is still read, and still –if only for want of a competitor –used. Yet much has changed in understanding of the social and intellectual history of the Old South, and even more of the phenomenon of Romanticism. These changes, natural enough over the span of two intellectual generations, have made many of that book's presumptions questionable; so a second look at the problem seems worthwhile, to clear the ground and to indicate fresh directions. For Osterweis wrote within the assumptions of the 1940s about the nature and shortcomings of Romanticism. He was guided by Irving Babbitt, who scorned Romanticism as a puling and exaggerated passion instigated by Rousseau, a disaster for rational men: at best silly, as with the jousts of antebellum Virginia; at worst dangerous, as with the secession convention of South Carolina. But Osterweis was Babbitt with a difference. While Babbitt and, more weightily, Ernst Cassirer had thought that Romanticism had led the world astray and it was still astray, with Hitler the avatar of Hegel as chilling evidence, Osterweis cheerily regarded Romanticism as a movement that had expired with the nineteenth century, a fossil safe to mock. To this perspective, largely adopted from Jacques Barzun'sRomanticism and the Modern Ego(1943), Osterweis added the view of Arthur Lovejoy, who had insisted that Romanticism, while possessing a core notion of diversity and flux, should most safely be regarded as multiple: there were Romanticisms, not a Romanticism.

Classless: On the Social Status of Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe in the Late Nineteenth Century

2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eli Lederhendler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
East European ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social

In this paper I examine the economic and political factors that undermined the social class structure in an ethnic community—the Jews of Russia and eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Compared with the documented rise and articulation of working classes in non-Jewish society in that region, Jews were caught in an opposite process, largely owing to discriminatory state policies and social pressures: Among Jews, artisans and petty merchants were increasingly reduced to a single, caste-like status. A Jewish middle class of significant size did not emerge from the petty trade sector and no significant industrial working class emerged from the crafts sector. Historians have largely overlooked the significance of these facts, in part because they have viewed this east European situation as a mere preamble to more sophisticated, modern class formation processes among immigrant Jews in Western societies, particularly in light of the long-term middle-class trajectory of their children. Those historians interested in labor history have mainly shown interest in such continuity as they could infer from the self-narratives of the Jewish labor movement, and have thus overstated the case for a long-standing Jewish “proletarian” tradition. In reassessing the historical record, I wish to put the Jewish social and economic situation in eastern Europe into better perspective by looking at the overall social and economic situation, rather than at incipient worker organizations alone. I also query whether a developing class culture, along the lines suggested by E. P. Thompson, was at all in evidence before Jewish mass emigration. This paper is thus a contribution to the history of labor—rather than organized labor—as well as a discussion of the roots of ethnic economic identity.

scholarly journals Margaret Harkness

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The Social ◽  
East End ◽  
Global Travel ◽  
Detailed Picture ◽  
Insight Into

This volume is the first to bring together research on the life and work of the author, activist, and traveller Margaret Harkness, who wrote under the pseudonym ‘John Law’. The collection contextualises Harkness’s political project of observing and recording the lives and priorities of the working classes and urban poor alongside the broader efforts of philanthropists, political campaigners, journalists, and novelists who sought to bring the plight of marginalised communities to light at the end of the nineteenth century. It argues for a recognition of Harkness’s importance in providing testimony to the social and political crises that led to the emergence of British socialism and labour politics during this period. This collection includes considerations of Harkness’s work in London’s East End at the end of the nineteenth century, but moves into the twentieth century and beyond Britain’s borders to examine the significance of her global travel for the purpose of investigating international political trends. This collection gives substance to women’s social engagement and political involvement in a period prior to their formal enfranchisement, and offers insight into the ways this effected shifts in literary style and subject. In offering a detailed picture of Harkness’s own life and illuminating the lives and work of her contemporaries, this volume enriches critical understanding of the complex and dynamic world of the long nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Namiętności, uczucia czy emocje? Trzy tradycje myślenia o afektach i trzy doktryny afektów w polityce

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Karolina Wigura
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Social World ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

The author proposes tools for the analysis of affects in politics. First she distinguishes three historical ways of thinking about affective phenomena: the tradition of passion, deriving from ancient Greece; the tradition of feelings, begun by the Greek and Roman stoics; and finally the tradition of emotions, which was fully shaped in the nineteenth century and which most closely corresponds to the contemporary understanding of affective phenomena. The author concentrates on the meeting of two fields—the history of emotions and the philosophy of politics. Each of the three traditions of thinking has its own specific doctrine for dealing with affects, that is, it indicates ways of managing the unusually difficult challenges presented by our emotions. The author describes and critiques these approaches. She believes that although they are often burdened with presentism and anachronism, taking them into account in analyses of the social world—especially in the sphere of contemporary politics—could help understand the nuances of political thought and actions.

Borderline Citizens

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Gleadle
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Feminist Theories

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of women's involvement in British political culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is based on extensive archival research, but also engages with recent feminist theories in the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology. The volume looks at both rural and urban experiences of politics. The author throws new light on women's political activities and challenges many traditional assumptions about contemporary politics. The book gives fresh insights into the Reform Act of 1832, pays attention to continuities in political practice and ideas, and brings focus to the primary significance of parish politics within the day-to-day activities of the middling and gentry classes.

scholarly journals Cooperative society libraries and newsrooms - their social, educational and cultural role in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (59) ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
Jean Everitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Educational Service ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Class Library ◽  
Cooperative Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

One of the major changes to the social structure of Britain brought about by industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the creation of the working class. Library provision for the new mass readership was not just through public libraries, but through a number of bodies committed to provide an educational service to the working classes. My research is essentially an examination of one of the institutions committed to provide such a service by the working man for the working man in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document