Economic Change and the National Question in Twentieth-Century Europe. Edited by Alice Teichova, Herbert Matis, and Jaroslav Patek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi, 433. $74.95.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-261
Author(s):  
Liah Greenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Question ◽  
The World ◽  
Intellectual Interest ◽  
Individual Essay ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

The connection between nationalism and economic development is an important subject, and the contributors to the volume before us are to be commended for tackling it. But the significance of contributions to edited volumes in humanities and the social sciences rarely extends beyond their symbolic function—of serving as memorabilia to the rites and ceremonies in which scholarly conviviality finds its chief expression. Thus they are forgotten almost as soon as they appear in print, similarly to the elegant menus of formal dinners and wedding invitations, and for all intents and purposes are lost to the world of learning. Their only chance to escape this sad fate in most cases depends on the clarity, originality, and persuasiveness of the editors' vision, which may claim and hold the reader's attention, while creating a conceptual framework within which each individual essay acquires an added meaning. The editors of Economic Change and the National Question in Twentieth-Century Europe fail to provide such a framework, and the result is a collection of historical trivia with no more intellectual interest than any limited amount of raw data awaiting an interpreter.

Decolonizing Cambridge University

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Keith Hart
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Relationship ◽  
The World ◽  
Abolition Movement

I dwell here on my own experience of working at Cambridge University for methodological reasons. Anthropologists could make more of the humanities tradition of going deeply into particular personalities, places, events and relations in search of wider truths. Ethnography exemplifies this, but the discipline’s assimilation into the social sciences and academic bureaucracy counteract this impulse. I draw selectively on my anthropological education and academic work to interrogate the political relationship between western societies and their former colonies. Cambridge University is reactionary for sure, but its decentralized organization makes room for a minority sometimes to change the world. The historical example of the abolition movement illustrates this. Anthropology ought to be a way of rethinking the world, and I conclude with how and why I introduced students to the anti-colonial intellectuals who did just that when they led the liberation (not ‘decolonization’) movements that overthrew European empires.

Inter- and Extra-textual Hauntings: Unravelling the Semantic Web of Václav Havel’s Leaving

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-251
Author(s):  
Katie Fry
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Real Life ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Semantic Complexity ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

Leaving (2007), the first play written by Václav Havel since the start of his political career in 1989, is a theatrical tour de force that categorically defies generic classification. In this article Katie Fry draws on methodologies of theatre semiotics and intertextuality to elucidate the semantic complexity of Havel’s highly unconventional play. Leaving is analyzed in terms of its engagement with intertexts, its incorporation of ‘real-life’ material from Havel’s political and artistic careers, and its subversion of theatrical conventions. Katie Fry is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto. She has worked as a translator and dramaturg for independent theatre projects in Madrid and Toronto. Her dissertation project examines the attribution of religious import to theatre, opera, and literature in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. She holds a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

scholarly journals Afterword. Tendencies of religious change in the world of the twentieth century and their implications in the Ukrainian context

2008 ◽  
pp. 314-339
Author(s):  
Viktor Ye. Yelenskyy
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

How will religion develop in the 21st century? How optimistic can her outlook be on her future? What will be the meaning of global religious change in the coming decades? Despite being very advanced in the West, the answers to these questions remain problematic. In the famous work, "Returning the Sacred: Arguments for the Future of Religion," D. Bell noted that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most thinkers expected that religion would disappear in the twentieth century. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many sociologists believed that sociologists believed that "At least since the Enlightenment, most Western intellectuals have expected the death of religion as fervently as the ancient Jews of the coming of the Messiah," reminds American religious scholars R. Stark and R. Bindbridge. and the social sciences were particularly distinguished in the prediction of the inevitable triumph of rationality over “prejudice.” The most celebrated figures in sociology, anthropology, and psychology unanimously expressed the belief that their children, or indeed grandchildren, would witness a new era in which, from Freud, the infantile illusions of religion humanity will outgrow ”

scholarly journals ANTI-AMERICANISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY EUROPE

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1125-1139 ◽  
Author(s):  
EGBERT KLAUTKE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

ABSTRACTSince the beginning of the twentieth century, European observers and commentators have frequently employed the term ‘Americanization’ to make sense of the astonishing rise of the USA to the status of a world power. More specifically, they used this term to describe the social changes brought about by industrialization and urbanization. In this context, European intellectuals have often used ‘America’ as shorthand for ‘modernity’; across the Atlantic, they believed, it was possible to learn and see the future of their own societies. Criticism of ‘the Americanization of Europe’ – or the world – easily led to outright anti-Americanism, i.e. a radical and reductionist ideology which held the USA responsible for the economic, political, or cultural ills of modern societies. The war in Iraq in 2003 and the alienation between the USA and France and Germany that followed provided a new impetus for studying the history of European perceptions of America. A large number of studies have since been published that deal with the history of the ‘Americanization of Europe’ and anti-Americanism, and several monographs, which are based on original research and promise new insights, will be the focus of this historiographical review.

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

Rhythm

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lexi Eikelboom
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Philosopher ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Theoretical Category

This book argues that, as a pervasive dimension of human existence with theological implications, rhythm ought to be considered a category of theological significance. Philosophers and theologians have drawn on rhythm—patterned movements of repetition and variation—to describe reality, however, the ways in which rhythm is used and understood differ based on a variety of metaphysical commitments with varying theological implications. This book brings those implications into the open, using resources from phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences to analyse and evaluate uses of rhythm in metaphysical and theological accounts of reality. The analysis relies on a distinction from prosody between a synchronic approach to rhythm—observing the whole at once and considering how various dimensions of a rhythm hold together harmoniously—and a diachronic approach—focusing on the ways in which time unfolds as the subject experiences it. The text engages with the twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara alongside thinkers as diverse as Augustine and the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and proposes an approach to rhythm that serves the concerns of theological conversation. It demonstrates the difference that including rhythm in theological conversation makes to how we think about questions such as “what is creation?” and “what is the nature of the God–creature relationship?” from the perspective of rhythm. As a theoretical category, capable of expressing metaphysical commitments, yet shaped by the cultural rhythms in which those expressing such commitments are embedded, rhythm is particularly significant for theology as a phenomenon through which culture and embodied experience influence doctrine.

Benson and Miller in Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Stock Of Knowledge

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.

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