More Arran geology

1987 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. B. Harland

The Geologists& Association has done a valuable service for British geology and for English-speaking geologists outside the British Isles by organizing field excursions and, for or from them, publishing guides. The first GA contribution was a report of a field meeting led by Gregory & Tyrrell (1924). In the 1960s there was a GA series of at least 41 guides covering most field areas in Britain and of these the one by S. I. Tomkeieff (1961) treated Arran. Tomkeieff's guide was brief and was not up to the standard expected of a work concerning this much frequented island. That work may be out of print and this guide appears to be a replacement. McKerrow & Atkins is good value and gives much to think about. Without hesitation, then, the reviewer's advice is that anyone going to Arran should buy it.

Author(s):  
Alasdair Pettinger

A minimal definition of travel writing might be any account of a journey or description of a place that is based on firsthand experience. As such, it may be found in many different kinds of text: diaries, letters, postcards, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, essays, official reports, promotional brochures, and ethnographies, as well as travel books. Travel writing is often distinguished from guidebooks on the one hand and imaginative fiction, drama, and poetry on the other, but the term may sometimes include them, especially when discussing writings from before the 19th century, when such distinctions would have carried less weight with authors and readers. While it has long served as a vital source material by historians and biographers, travel writing rarely, even in those cultural histories documenting the “images” of or “attitudes” toward “other” races or nationalities that proliferated in the 1960s and 1970s, attracted the kind of close critical attention commonly given to literary fiction until the 1980s, coinciding with several related developments. First, there was an increasingly politicized self-questioning within literary studies and anthropology, combined with an interdisciplinary theoretical sophistication. Second, beyond the academy, there was a surge in popularity of literary travel writing, associated with authors such as Bruce Chatwin, Jonathan Raban, Paul Theroux, Colin Thubron, and others, promoted especially in the English-speaking world by Granta magazine. Within two decades, travel-writing studies could claim to be an academic discipline in its own right, with dedicated journals, textbooks, research centers, and conferences. If most of the influential early studies were dominated by anglophone critics studying anglophone texts, the field has since broadened significantly. Nevertheless, many studies of travel writing, without announcing it in their titles, continue to be largely concerned with English-speaking authors, often British. The reasons for restricting their scope in this way are rarely explicitly addressed; it is as if this is a default position for the scholars concerned rather than because “British and Irish travel writing” is a coherent object of study as such. As in many other fields, “British” is often used when “English” would be more accurate, and “English” sometimes silently includes texts that might be better described as Scottish, Welsh, or Irish.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C. Shreffler

As exemplified in writings by Carl Dahlhaus and Georg Knepler, a debate about music historiography took place in East and West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. A comparison between two books, Dahlhaus's Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Foundations of Music History) and Knepler's Geschichte als Weg zum Musikverstäändnis (History as a Means of Understanding Music), both published in 1977, is instructive as a measure of the two poles of the Methodenstreit: the one centered around music as autonomous work, the other around music as a human activity. The central questions raised prove uncannily current. The two scholars, who knew each other and respected each other's work, were both based in Berlin; but with Dahlhaus in the West and Knepler in the East, they represented the two different political systems that existed in the divided city between 1945 and 1989. In their work, and especially in these two books, Dahlhaus and Knepler defended their own positions and sought to point out weaknesses in the other side. While Dahlhaus's work is well known in English-speaking musicology, Knepler's is not. His contribution to music history and historiography was comparable to Dahlhaus's in importance, however, and his ideas anticipate many tenets of the "new musicology."


Author(s):  
Andy Sumner

This chapter reviews currents in theory with a focus on modernization and neoclassical statements of comparative advantage on the one hand, and structuralism, dependency, and other theories of underdevelopment on the other. The latter theories of underdevelopment hit their zenith in the policies of the import-substitution industrialization of the 1960s and 1970s. They were largely dismissed in the 1980s as the limits of import-substitution industrialization became apparent and as East Asia industrialized, undermining any argument that structural transformation was problematic in the periphery. This chapter theorizes that neither orthodox nor heterodox theories of structural transformation adequately explain the development of late developers because of the heterogeneity of contemporary capitalism. That said, heterodox theories, which coalesce around the nature of incorporation of developing countries into the global economy, do retain conceptual usefulness in their focal point, ‘developmentalism’, by which we mean the deliberate attempts at national development led by the state.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 488-495
Author(s):  
Cláudia Martins ◽  
Sérgio Ferreira

AbstractThe linguistic rights of Mirandese were enshrined in Portugal in 1999, though its “discovery” dates back to the very end of the 19th century at the hands of Leite de Vasconcellos. For centuries, it was the first or only language spoken by people living in the northeast of Portugal, particularly the district of Miranda do Douro. As a minority language, it has always moved among three dimensions. On the one hand, the need to assert and defend this language and have it acknowledged by the country, which proudly believe(d) in their monolingual history. Unavoidably, this has ensued the action of translation, especially active from the mid of the 20th century onwards, with an emphasis on the translation of the Bible and Portuguese canonical literature, as well as other renowned literary forms (e.g. The Adventures of Asterix). Finally, the third axis lies in migration, either within Portugal or abroad. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, Mirandese people were forced to leave Miranda do Douro and villages in the outskirts in the thousands. They fled not only due to the deeply entrenched poverty, but also the almost complete absence of future prospects, enhanced by the fact that they were regarded as not speaking “good” Portuguese, but rather a “charra” language, and as ignorant backward people. This period coincided with the building of dams on the river Douro and the cultural and linguistic shock that stemmed from this forceful contact, which exacerbated their sense of not belonging and of social shame. Bearing all this in mind, we seek to approach the role that migration played not only in the assertion of Mirandese as a language in its own right, but also in the empowerment of new generations of Mirandese people, highly qualified and politically engaged in the defence of this minority language, some of whom were former migrants. Thus, we aim to depict Mirandese’s political situation before and after the endorsement of the Portuguese Law no. 7/99.


1967 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. Hudson

Relations between Australia and Indonesia became strained within months of Indonesia's attainment of independence, deteriorating as conflict developed first on the question of West Irian and then as a result of Indonesia's hostility towards Malaysia. For many years, it seemed ironical that Australia should have played a major part in the emergence of a neighbour whose external policies and internal trends endangered rather than safeguarded Australian interests. But there is more involved here than historical irony in the context of Australian-Indonesian relations. Sufficient time has now elapsed for Australian policy on the Indonesian independence question to be seen in the wider context of the whole postwar phenomenon of decolonisation. For it is not merely of interest that Australia should have assisted neighbouring Asian rebels against a European colonial Power (remembering that Australia herself was, and is, a European colonial Power) and should then have been embarrassed by the activities of the rebels coming to office. It is of greater interest that, of the immense number of colonial issues anxiously engaging the attention of international society in the 1940s and 1950s, the years which saw the virtual demise of western colonialism, this was the one issue on which Australia took up the rebel cause. Throughout this period and irrespective of the complexion of the parties in power in Canberra, Australia persistently jeopardised her regional objective of friendly relations with anti-colonial Asia by opposing strongly and, at times, bitterly the anti-colonial cause in the United Nations. If nothing else, the United Nations has provided a forum in which each year Australia and other members have been forced to declare themselves on colonial questions. And, until the 1960s when Australia switched policy, Australia fought against all the anti-colonial Powers' largely successful attempts to have developed a system of international control over colonies under the authority of Chapter XI (“Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories”) of the United Nations charter, to tighten the trusteeship system of supervision erected under Chapters XII and XIII of the charter, and to involve the United Nations in particular disputes so as to meet alleged threats to peace — all of them being attempts, however indirectly, to hasten the attainment of independence by dependent territories. Thus, Australia supported South Africa on South-West Africa, the Netherlands on West New Guinea, the British on Southern Rhodesia and Oman, the Portuguese on their African territories, the French on Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. But Australia opposed the Netherlands on the Indonesian question.


1877 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 273-277
Author(s):  
T. G. Bonney

In the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (vol. xxxiii. p. 142) is an important paper by Mr. Helland, on Fjords, Lakes, and Cirques in Norway and Greenland. In this he notices a theory of mine on the formation of cirques which was published in the same journal (vol. xxvii. p. 312). As I mentioned in a note attached to his paper, he somewhat misunderstands me, supposing apparently that I describe only cirques of a small size,—the fact being, that, so far as I know, the Alpine cirques are quite commensurate with those of Norway. This, however, is of slight importance. My present purpose is to give reasons why, after further observations in the Alps and Pyrenees, and even in the British Isles, I still prefer the explanation then advanced, that the cirques are mainly produced by the combined erosive action of streamlets, to the one given by Mr. Helland, that a cirque is a result of glacial action.


2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ema Hrešanová

This paper explores the history of the ‘psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth’ in socialist Czechoslovakia, in particular, in the Czech and Moravian regions of the country, showing that it substantially differs from the course that the method took in other countries. This non-pharmacological method of pain relief originated in the USSR and became well known as the Lamaze method in western English-speaking countries. Use of the method in Czechoslovakia, however, followed a very different path from both the West, where its use was refined mainly outside the biomedical frame, and the USSR, where it ceased to be pursued as a scientific method in the 1950s after Stalin’s death. The method was imported to Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s and it was politically promoted as Soviet science’s gift to women. In the 1960s the method became widespread in practice but research on it diminished and, in the 1970s, its use declined too. However, in the 1980s, in the last decade of the Communist regime, the method resurfaced in the pages of Czechoslovak medical journals and underwent an exciting renaissance, having been reintroduced by a few enthusiastic individuals, most of them women. This article explores the background to the renewed interest in the method while providing insight into the wider social and political context that shaped socialist maternity and birth care in different periods.


1882 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 312-343
Author(s):  
Isaac N. Arnold

The noblest inheritance we Americans derive from our British ancestors is the memory and example of the great and good men who adorn your history. They are as much appreciated and honoured on our side of the Atlantic as on this. In giving to the English-speaking world Washington and Lincoln we think we repay, in large part, our obligation. Their pre-eminence in American history is recognised, and the republic, which the one founded and the other preserved, has already crowned them as models for her children.


Author(s):  
Valerii P. Trykov ◽  

The article examines the conceptual foundations and scientific, sociocultural and philosophical prerequisites of imagology, the field of interdisciplinary research in humanitaristics, the subject of which is the image of the “Other” (foreign country, people, culture, etc.). It is shown that the imagology appeared as a response to the crisis of comparatives of the mid-20th century, with a special role in the formation of its methodology played by the German comparatist scientist H. Dyserinck and his Aachen School. The article analyzes the influence on the formation of the imagology of post-structuralist and constructivist ideological-thematic complex (auto-reference of language, discursive history, construction of social reality, etc.), linguistic and cultural turn in the West in the 1960s. Shown is that, extrapolated to national issues, this set of ideas and approaches has led to a transition from the essentialist concept of the nation to the concept of a nation as an “imaginary community” or an intellectual construct. A fundamental difference in approaches to the study of an image of the “Other” in traditional comparativism and imagology, which arises from a different understanding of the nation, has been distinguished. It is concluded that the imagology studies the image of the “Other” primarily in its manipulative, socio-ideological function, i.e., as an important tool for the formation and transformation of national and cultural identity. The article identifies ideological, socio-political factors that prepared the birth of the imagology and ensured its development in western Humanities (fear of possible recurrences of extreme nationalism and fascism in post-war Europe, the EU project, which set the task of forming a pan-European identity). It is concluded that the imagology, on the one hand, has actualized an important field of scientific research — the study of the image of the “Other”, but, on the other hand, in the broader cultural and historical perspective, marked a departure not only from the traditions of comparativism and historical poetics, but also from the humanist tradition of the European culture, becoming part of a manipulative dominant strategy in the West. To the culture of “incorporation” into a “foreign word” in order to understand it, preserve it and to ensure a genuine dialogue of cultures, the imagology has contrasted the social engineering and the technology of active “designing” a new identity.


Author(s):  
Ori Soltes

Religious and cultural syncretism, particularly in visual art in the Jewish and Christian traditions since the 19th century, has expressed itself in diverse ways and reflects a broad and layered series of contexts. These are at once chronological—arising out of developments that may be charted over several centuries before arriving into the 19th and 20th centuries—and political, spiritual, and cultural, as well as often extending beyond the Jewish–Christian matrix. The specific directions taken by syncretism in art is also varied: it may be limited to the interweave of two religious traditions—most often Jewish and Christian—in which most often it is the minority artist seeking ways to create along lines consistent with what is created by the majority. It may also interweave three or more traditions. It may be a matter of religion alone, or it may be a matter of other issues, such as culture or gender, which may or may not be obviously intertwined with religion. The term “syncretism” has, in certain specifically anthropological and theological circles, acquired a negative connotation. This has grown out of the increasing consciousness, since the 1960s, of the political implications of that term in the course of Western history, in which hegemonic European Christianity has addressed non-Christian religious perspectives. This process intensified in the Colonial era when the West expanded its dominance over much of the globe. An obvious and particularly negative instance of this is the history of the Inquisition as it first affected Jews in late-15th-century Spain and later encompassed indigenous peoples in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. While this issue is noted—after all, art has always been interwoven with politics—it is not the focus of this article. Instead “syncretism” will not be treated as a concept that needs to be distinguished from “hybridization” or “hybridity,” although different modes of syncretism will be distinguished. Syncretistic preludes to visual artists in the 19th and 20th centuries, suggesting some of the breadth of possibility, include Pico della Mirandola, Kabir, and Baruch/Benedict Spinoza. Specific religious developments and crises in Europe from the 16th century to the 18th century brought on the emancipation of the Jews in some places on the one hand, and a contradictory continuation of anti-Jewish prejudice on the other, the latter shifting from a religious to a racial basis. This, together with evident paradoxes regarding secular and spiritual perspectives in the work of key figures in the visual arts, led to a particularly rich array of efforts from Jewish artists who revision Jesus as a subject, applying a new, Jewishly humanistic perspective to transform this most traditional of Christian subjects. Such a direction continued to spread more broadly across the 20th century. The Holocaust not only raised new visual questions and possibilities for Jewish artists, but also did so from the opposite direction for the occasional Christian—particularly German—artist. Cultural syncretism sometimes interweaves religious syncretism—which can connect and has connected Christianity or Judaism to Eastern religions—and a profusion of women artists in the last quarter of the century has added gender issues to the matrix. The discussion culminates with Siona Benjamin: a Jewish female artist who grew up in Hindu and Muslim India, attended Catholic and Zoroastrian schools, and has lived in America for many decades—all these aspects of her life resonate in her often very syncretistic paintings.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document