‘Mere Inventions of the Imagination’: A Survey of Recent Literature on Adam Smith

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivienne Brown
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Full Range ◽  
The Political ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

As late twentieth-century discourses of modernity and postmodernity invoke their Enlightenment heritage in a search for the origins of their present achievements and predicaments, Adam Smith's works are still seen as a canonic representative of that heritage. Smith has long been evoked as the ‘father’ of economics and the original proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, but the political changes in recent decades have reconstituted his iconic status. With the full range of Smith's published and unpublished writings and lectures now widely available, there has been a huge growth in the scholarly literature on Smith which has subjected this traditional view to searching questions. The overwhelming conclusion to emerge is that Smith's works display a subtlety and complexity that is at odds with the received image of Smith as the spokesman of modernity, but the diversity of interpretation raises some difficult methodological issues.

The Anglosphere as a Principle of Progress

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Michael Gardiner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
First Empire ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Language Area ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The Anglosphere is not only a linguistic entity, it is more fundamentally based in a binding of linguistic improvement, commerce, and historical advance, and it can be read in linguistic aspirations specifically set against the improving background of the Scottish Enlightenment. Enlightenment rhetoric guides answered the imperative of adjustment to British union and a desire to level the ground for individual public advance, and they define the language area in terms of a teleology, pointing inevitably towards commercial society. For literati like Adam Smith, linguistic improvement was the raw material of exchange, exchange was a clear historiographical good, and this good can moreover be demonstrated more or less empirically. The Anglosphere should be understood as a space that is simultaneously linguistic, economic, and historiographic, remaining readable in Victorian statecraft, and in Greater Britain’s ‘linguistic ethnicity’, and in the lost colonies of Britain’s ‘first empire’. It is doubtful, however, whether the Anglosphere in this understanding has retained its direction after the attenuations of the late twentieth century, the new pressures on property creation, and the undoing of the original ethical knot of language, economy, and historiography.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Paul M. Renfro
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
News Media ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
The Political ◽  
Child Safety ◽  
Bereaved Parents ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The introduction sketches the contours of the book. It details the construction of a moral panic concerning the abduction of children by strangers in the late twentieth century and lays out the political and cultural ramifications of this panic. As the introduction indicates and the rest of the book demonstrates, this panic—precipitated by the bereaved parents of missing and slain children, the news media, and politicians—led to the consolidation of a “child safety regime” and the expansion of the American carceral state. The introduction situates this argument within the existing historiography of late twentieth-century United States politics and culture, as well as the growing literature on carceral studies.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alys Moody
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This book has traced a history of modernism’s decline and of its doubters. In post-Vichy France, the US circa 1968, and late apartheid South Africa, modernism’s fate was precarious, its reputation tarnished, and its politics reviled. The inescapability of the political in these contexts compromised the structural conditions of the autonomous literary field on which modernism had been built. In turn, it threw into crisis the philosophical defense of autonomy and the literary legacies of modernism, which grew out of and were guaranteed by this autonomous literary field. The stories we tell about late twentieth-century literary history reflect this dilemma. According to received wisdom, the period between 1945 and 1990 saw postmodernism replace modernism in both literature and scholarship, and new waves of postcolonial literature and theory discredited the Eurocentric specter of modernism. ...

Response to Eric Arnesen

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 57-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Foner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
White American ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
Racial Context ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Eric Arnesen's essay highlights some real weaknesses in the burgeoning literature of whiteness and raises serious questions about the use of whiteness as a category of historical analysis. It effectively highlights the ambiguity of the concept and the way it tends to homogenize individuals who differ among themselves on numerous issues, including the definition of race. Moreover, the notion that European immigrants had to “become” white ignores a longstanding legal structure, dating back to the time of the Constitution, that incorporated these immigrants within the category of white American. Nonetheless, Arnesen fails to take account of some of the positive contributions of this literature, or to locate its popularity in the political and racial context of the late twentieth century. Rather than being abandoned, the concept of whiteness must be refined and historicized.

scholarly journals The Problem of Bigness: From Standard Oil to Google

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi R. Lamoreaux
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Consumer Welfare ◽  
The Political ◽  
Large Firms ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This article sets recent expressions of alarm about the monopoly power of technology giants such as Google and Amazon in the long history of Americans’ response to big business. I argue that we cannot understand that history unless we realize that Americans have always been concerned about the political and economic dangers of bigness, not just the threat of high prices. The problem policymakers faced after the rise of Standard Oil was how to protect society against those dangers without punishing firms that grew large because they were innovative. The antitrust regime put in place in the early twentieth century managed this balancing act by focusing on large firms’ conduct toward competitors and banning practices that were anticompetitive or exclusionary. Maintaining this balance was difficult, however, and it gave way over time—first to a preoccupation with market power during the post–World War II period, and then to a fixation on consumer welfare in the late twentieth century. Refocusing policy on large firms’ conduct would do much to address current fears about bigness without penalizing firms whose market power comes from innovation.

Green versus Ecosocialist Economic Programmes: The Market Rules OK?

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
The Political ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ecological Problems ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall there has been a chorus sounding the death of the command economy and the triumph of liberal capitalism. It does seem to be the case that ‘capitalism is everywhere receiving the flattery of imitation’.1 It is also the case that socialist thought – both western and eastern – is undergoing a profound shake-up in response to the economic and ecological challenges of the late twentieth century. Whether a new socialism will withstand these momentous challenges and emerge as the political saviour of our time is an open question. What is clear, however, is that the growing momentum of the ecological critique of capitalism is likely to ensure that the 200-year-old debate concerning the respective merits and demerits of the market versus economic planning is not going to disappear, although the debate is likely to be considerably reformulated. This paper is concerned to review the arguments for and against the market economy versus the planned economy in the light of the social and ecological problems of the late twentieth century and to compare and evaluate the alternative economic programmes defended by ecosocialists and Green economists in response to these problems.

The Rise and Retreat of the Armed Forces

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orlando J. Pérez ◽  
Randy Pestana
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central America ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Military ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern Nation State

The armed forces of Central America predate the development of the modern nation-state. It is difficult to understand the political and social history of the region without examining the role of the military. Strong men leading local armed militias emerged out of the ashes of the Spanish Empire to rule the newly independent nations. As military institutions developed, an alliance between the armed forces and powerful economic elites sought to govern the nation-states by suppressing and exploiting popular sectors often through brutal repression. Authoritarianism and economic underdevelopment led to multiple uprisings which helped shape the nature of politics and democratic governance in contemporary Central America. In explaining this we explore the evolution of the armed forces, focusing particular attention on the political influence of the military in the development of the modern nation-state, and on the process of democratization in the late twentieth century. We then examine the role the United States has played in promoting and sustaining military rule. Finally, we analyze the consequences of late-twentieth-century peace processes on the retreat of military power and on the building of democracy.

The Giving of Hostages

1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Kenneth Smail
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Accurate Definition ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

In contrast to recent political, scholarly, and public misuse of the term, this essay articulates a more accurate definition of the hostage concept. This definition is not only consistent with a broad range of etymological sources, but is also in agreement with numerous examples from the historical and anthropological record. A possible application of the hostage idea to mid/late-twentieth-century superpower relationships, involving a distinctively different approach to nuclear deterrence, is also described. Attention is further called to the fact that the giving of hostages as confidence-building “emissaries of trust” incorporates several attributes that might be of interest to contemporary evolutionary theorists. A closer examination of the biological and behavioral underpinnings, the historical and anthropological precedents, and the political and psychological efficacy of this ancient idea might therefore prove to be a fruitful area for future empirical and theoretical research.

Nine Centuries of Man

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Police Reports ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries? Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ‘hard man’, has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of masculinity in a wider context. This interdisciplinary collection examines a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, exploring the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour. How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romances, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men – work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce – the book also illustrates the range of masculinities that affected or were internalised by men. Together, the chapters illustrate some of the ways Scotland’s gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how, more generally, masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history

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