Knowing a Sentient Mountain: Space, science, and the sacred in ascents of Mount Paektu/Changbai

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 716-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
RUTH ROGASKI
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Hybrid Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

AbstractMount Paektu/Changbai is a massive stratovolcano situated on the current border between North Korea and China, in a region that has historically lain at the edges of competing Eurasian polities. Formed by a past of dramatic eruptions, Mount Paektu/Changbai has long been held as a powerful, sentient entity by those living near it, but the mountain's unique geographical features and distance from political centres rendered it extremely elusive as an object of elite empirical knowledge. This article examines narratives of multiple expeditions to Mount Paektu/Changbai from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries in order to understand the role of space in the creation of knowledge about the mountain, and to probe how that knowledge intersected with political goals. Consideration of human experience of the mountain's topography and environment reveals a complex relationship between proximal and distal perceptions of nature. Even as they sought to create rational, ‘universal’ forms of knowledge about the mountain, Asian elites appropriated more localized belief in the mountain's powers, creating a hybrid knowledge that combined science and miracles. As the political context shifted in the late nineteenth century, the positioning of this hybrid knowledge shifted to become an indiginized basis for national resistance. This consideration of Mount Paektu/Changbai highlights the virtues of making space and environment central to the political and cultural history of northeast Asia.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

The Pre-History of Religious Exclusionism in Contemporary Pakistan:Khatam-e-Nubuwwat1889–1953

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1840-1874 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAHIR KAMRAN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Initial Part ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Principal Objective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Religious Polemic

AbstractDuring the late nineteenth-century colonial era in India, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwat(Finality of the Prophethood) assumed remarkable salience as a theme for religious debate among Muslim sects. The controversies around the establishment of the Ahmadiya sect in 1889 brought the issue ofKhatam-e-Nubuwwatto the centre stage of religious polemic ormunazara.Tense relations continued between Ahmadiya and Sunnis, in particular, though the tension remained confined to the domain of religious polemic. However, immediately after Pakistan's creation, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwatsqueezed itself out of the epistemic confines of the ‘theological’ and entered the realm of the ‘political’.Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat(the Association for the Safety of the Finality of the Prophethood) grew out of the almost-defunctMajlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islamon 13 January 1949, with the principal objective of excluding the Ahmadiya sect from the Islamic fold.1This article seeks to reveal how theKhatam-e-Nubuwwathas impinged upon the course of Pakistani politics from 1949 onwards as an instrument of religious exclusion, peaking in 1953. The pre-history of religious exclusion, which had 1889 as a watershed—the year when the Ahmadiya sect took a definitive shape—thus forms the initial part of the article.

John Robert Seeley and the Political Theology of Empire

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter focuses on John Robert Seeley (1834–95), the most prominent imperial thinker in late nineteenth-century Britain. It dissects Seeley's understanding of theology and religion, probes his views on the sacred character of nationality, and shows how he attempted to reconcile particularism and universalism in a so-called “cosmopolitan nationalist” vision. It argues that Seeley's most famous book, The Expansion of England (1883) should be understood as an expression of his basic political-theological commitments. The chapter also makes the case that he conceived of Greater Britain as a global federal nation-state, modeled on the United States. It concludes by discussing the role of India and Ireland in his polychronic, stratified conception of world order.

Mexican American Women’s Alternative Archive

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen R. Roybal
Keyword(s):  
Mexican American ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mexican Women ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Mexican Men ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses the ways in which the U.S. government created an alternative archive when it recorded Mexicanas/os' voices in the "official" record during land grant adjudication proceedings in the mid- to late nineteenth century. The testimonio of landowner María Cleofas Bóne de López serves as a prime focus in the chapter to emphasize the ways in which marriage to Mexican women was one way that both Anglo and Mexican men gained access to and amassed material property. Through this and other key cases, the chapter emphasizes that males' land ownership was often predicated on relationships to and with Mexican women and the ways Mexican men were effeminized within the U.S. legal system. The depositions serve as testimonials to the integral role of gender in the history of property ownership and dispossession.

Art and civic culture in Birmingham in the late nineteenth century

Urban History ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Hartnell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Consensus View ◽  
Municipal Reforms

This paper looks at Joseph Chamberlain's Birmingham and claims that George Dawson's famous ‘civic gospel’ which laid the ground for the municipal reforms was permeated by a consensus view of the moral and civic role of art. It suggests that it was this combination of philosophy in action through art which created the special Birmingham context for a vibrant civic culture which led to the political and artistic achievements of the 1870s and 1880s. For a few brief years, this combination enabled Birmingham to stand above other British cities and lay claim to the titles of ‘the best-governed city in the world’ and ‘perhaps the most artistic town in England’.

Ideological closure in newspaper political language during the U.S. 1872 election campaign

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-291
Author(s):  
Dafnah Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Gilded Age ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Editorial Content ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The U.S

This paper studies political language in late nineteenth century partisan newspapers by (a) evaluating the degree of pragmatic force, or ideological closure in political editorial content published during the 1872 election year in three leading Iowa newspapers; and (b) linking variations in the degree of ideological closure of these texts to the institutional and social-political contexts of their production, i.e. the political role of editors and the web of relationships within which they performed their work. The degree of ideological closure is evaluated by analysing a range of rhetorical and discursive practices. The study identified variations in degree of closure both between newspapers affiliated with the same party and within a single newspaper over time. Such variations are interpreted as reflecting editors’ need to mitigate an intricate set of political interests and obligations. The analysis also brings to light the richness of partisan editorial language of this time. These finds demonstrate the complexity of the political language and discourse of Gilded Age newspapers.

Vienna

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-116
Author(s):  
Andrew Thacker
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the cultural history of Vienna as a story of modernity, space, and power, from the late nineteenth century construction of the Ringstrasse to the postwar building of Red Vienna. It traces the city’s particular version of the geographical emotions of modernism, concentrating upon how the city’s architectural spaces helped shape an ‘inward turn’ in the mood or stimmung (Heidegger) of the modernism produced here, often producing notions of spatial phobias. It also analyses the importance of coffee houses as cultural spaces, and the ‘outsider’ figure of Jewish writers and thinkers in the city. After discussion of key Viennese figures such as Sigmund Freud and Robert Musil, it then traces how Anglophone visitors such as John Lehmann, Naomi Mitchison (in her Vienna Diary), Jean Rhys, and Stephen Spender (in his neglected long poem Vienna) represented the mood of the city in the interwar years. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Carol Reed’s 1949 film The Third Man.

Pilgrims, Fieldworkers, and Secret Agents: Buryat Buddhologists and the History of an Eurasian Imaginary

Inner Asia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anya Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Siberia ◽  
Eurasian Continent ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Many ◽  
Revolutionary History

AbstractThis article looks at the pre-Revolutionary history of Buryats' engagement with greater Eurasia, drawing on the legacies of the long underappreciated Russian Buddhological school and exploring the intellectual and political context of its emergence in the late nineteenth century. Exploring the role of Russian Orientalists and political figures such as the Orientalists V.P. Vasil'ev and Prince E.E. Ukhtomskii, and taking a close look at the fieldwork of the first Russian-trained indigenous Buryat Buddhologists G.Ts. Tsybikov and B.B. Baradiin, I demonstrate that this ultimately Eurasianist school of Buddhology was borne out of conflicting sentiments towards Russia's cosmopolitanism, statehood, and imperial destiny in Asia, as well as representations of indigenous peoples of southern Siberia. As a conclusion, I map the emergent forms of what I call 'Asian Eurasianism', linking it to contemporary cultural debates in Buryatia. I suggest that the term offers us a better way to understand the many ways by which many non-Russians position themselves in relation to the vast Eurasian continent.

scholarly journals Orthodox Clubs and Associations: Cultural, Educational and Religious Networks Between Palestine and Transjordan, 1925–1950

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-62
Author(s):  
Norig Neveu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Regional Networks ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Communal Space

AbstractSince the late nineteenth century, Orthodox Arab laymen had organised themselves into associations starting in the main cities of Palestine, a dynamic which quickly spread to Transjordan, leading to the creation of local Orthodox committees in most parishes. This chapter considers the history of the Greek Orthodox associations in Transjordan from 1925 to 1950 and the influence of regional networks in the structuration of religious, social and intellectual life in Amman and more generally Transjordan. By approaching cultural diplomacy “from below”, this chapter highlights the pivotal role of Orthodox laity in promoting cultural, intellectual and political production in Transjordan. Through those activities they could negotiate local sovereignty but also political and communal space, away from the influence of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Of Revolutions and the Problem of Choice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Choice Making ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

In the cities of Western Europe and its colonies, the so-called calico-craze of the early eighteenth century helped spawn a new social practice and form of entertainment that came to be known as “going shopping.” This activity, in turn, produced a new attachment to preference determination and choice-making that several prominent historians—in an effort to reconnect the history of capitalism with that of the American and French Revolutions—have seen as fundamental to the turn to the political choice-making that they associate with the birth of modern democracy. This article argues instead for disentangling these developments. On the contrary, the article demonstrates that the individuated, privitized, and indeed commercialized form of choice-making we now typically take as an essential marker of democracy was a product of the late nineteenth century and had little connection to the conception of politics that developed in the Age of Revolutions.

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