The Social Architect and the Myopic Mason: The Spatial Politics of the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle in Nineteenth-Century Paris

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Young Lee
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Comparative Anatomy ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
The Social

ArgumentDuring the first half of the nineteenth century, the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle was both workplace and home to functionalist Georges Cuvier and morphologist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, whose doctrinal differences became enmeshed with political dialogues regarding social reform. Surprisingly, the public not only viewed the arrangement of the collections in terms of the social platforms they were understood to be supporting, but critiqued the Muséum's buildings as expressions of their anatomical dispute. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 pushed these critiques forward, suggesting to some observers that true reform of the natural sciences would begin by reforming the Muséum's architectural program, thereby placing the goals of Comparative Anatomy in correct relationship to human progress.

The Languages of Petitioning in Early Colonial India

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Jaffe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Levels

With relatively few exceptions, personal petitions from individuals have received much less attention from historians than those from groups in the public political sphere. In one sense, personal petitions adopted many of the same rhetorical strategies as those delivered by a group. However, they also offer unique insights into the quotidian relationship between the people and their rulers. This article examines surviving personal petitions to various administrators at different levels of government in western India during the decades surrounding the East India Company’s conquests. The analysis of these petitions helps to refine our understanding of the place of the new judicial system in the social world of early-nineteenth-century India, especially by illuminating the discourse of justice that petitioners brought to the presentation of their cases to their new governors. The conclusion of this article seeks to place the rhetoric of personal petitioning within the larger context of mass political petitioning in India during the early nineteenth century.

scholarly journals The Public Sphere in the Field of Power

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Calhoun
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Public Sphere

In this article I ask (1) whether the ways in which the early bourgeois public sphere was structured—precisely by exclusion—are instructive for considering its later development, (2) how a consideration of the social foundations of public life calls into question abstract formulations of it as an escape from social determination into a realm of discursive reason, (3) to what extent “counterpublics” may offer useful accommodations to failures of larger public spheres without necessarily becoming completely attractive alternatives, and (4) to what extent considering the organization of the public sphere as a field might prove helpful in analyzing differentiated publics, rather than thinking of them simply as parallel but each based on discrete conditions. These considerations are informed by an account of the way that the public sphere developed as a concrete ideal and an object of struggle in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gendered Spatializations: A Study of Cityscapes in Manu Joseph’s Novels

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
City Image ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.

From the Sacred to the Secular: Ethnic Identity and Monetary Value embodied in Jewish Ceremonial Textiles according to the Pinkassim of Amsterdam

Images ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Julie-Marthe Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Market Value ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Monetary Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Written Sources

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Jewish intelligentsia developed a historical and scholarly interest in material objects of Jewish culture. In new exhibitions they organized, ritual objects that had been associated exclusively with religious observance, were moved to the public domain and divested of their purely religious ritual function. In a secular setting, Judaica became an expression of Jewish ethnic identity defined by its surrounding and religion, and evoked a new appreciation as objets d’art that implicitly assumed a monetary market value. This article examines whether this expression of ethnic identity and aesthetic and monetary appreciation developed first in the context of nineteenth-century secularism. By presenting three case studies based on written sources, I argue that ethnic and monetary value were already manifest in prior centuries and underline the value of written sources for an understanding of the social and cultural historical context of Jewish ceremonial objects.

The Origin and Enactment of the Indian Age of Consent Bill, 1891

1962 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Heimsath
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Specific Knowledge ◽  
National Organization ◽  
Age Of Consent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Support

The Indian social reform movement in the nineteenth century, like the political reform movement, remained unorganized on an all-India basis until the 1880's. Local groups functioned throughout the country in many cases along similar lines, but without regular and specific knowledge of each other. Virtually the only effort for social reform well publicized throughout the country had been Vidyasagar's Widow Remarriage movement, which however was never nationally organized and which found local support only when a reformer felt inclined to press for it; the founder himself lost interest in the cause long before his death in 1891. Unlike the political reformers, the social reformers gave no evidence, so far as the present writer knows, of concern about the absence of a national organization to direct and stimulate their activities. If it had any strength, such an organization would, in fact, embarrass them into a unity of principles and methods for which, before 1880, they were quite unprepared.

Popular Science and Politics in Interwar France

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
Keyword(s):  
Popular Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
High Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Intense Activity ◽  
Science In Society

ArgumentThe interwar period in France is characterized by intense activity to disseminate science in society through various media: magazines, conferences, book series, encyclopedias, radio, exhibitions, and museums. In this context, the scientific community developed significant attempts to disseminate science in close alliance with the State. This paper presents three ambitious projects conducted in the 1930s which targeted different audiences and engaged the social sciences along with the natural sciences. The first project was a multimedia enterprise aimed at bridging what would later be named “the two cultures” – natural sciences and humanities – rather than at popularizing scientific results in the society at large. The second project, an encyclopedia namedEncyclopédie françaiseedited by the French historian Lucien Febvre, was meant to shape a cultural view of science for the general public. The third project and the most successful enterprise was thePalais de la découvertedesigned by the physicist Jean Perrin and explicitly aimed at attracting the young public. This paper explores the paradoxes that resulted from these large enterprises. Despite their social ideals, the scientists-popularizers favored an elitist concept of popular science essentially aimed at integrating science into high culture. While they strove to overcome the increased specialization of sciences, their efforts nevertheless accelerated the professionalization of scientific research and the isolation of science in an ivory tower. In their attempts to get closer to the public, they eventually contributed to spreading the cliché of the increasing gap between the scientists and the public.

The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform

1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Carroll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Temperance Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The temperance/prohibition agitation represents a fascinating chapter in the social and political history of India which has been largely ignored. If any notice is taken of this movement, it is generally dismissed (or elevated) as an example of the uniquely Indian process of ‘sanskritization’ or as an equally unique component of ‘Gandhianism’—in spite of the fact that the liquor question has not been without political importance in the history either of England or of the United States. And in spite of the fact that the temperance agitation in India in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century was intimately connected with temperance agitation in England. Indeed the temperance movement in India was organized, patronized, and instructed by English temperance agitators.

Attitudes and Responses to Vagrancy in Ireland in the Long Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Crossman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Criminal Offence ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Considerable Debate ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Special Category

This essay focuses on a special category of Irish crime: vagrancy. While vagrancy was a criminal offence in its own right, it was often its association with other forms of criminality and immorality that ensured ‘tramps’ could be viewed with fear and contempt in the Irish countryside. The relationship between crime and poverty has been a subject of considerable debate in numerous scholarly fields. This essay makes the important point that tramps were viewed with suspicion, not on account of their poverty intrinsically, but rather because they consciously rejected social norms in favour of an itinerant lifestyle. The ‘tramp problem’ occupied the attentions of the public and the administrators alike at the turn of the century: the former sometimes startled by the arrival at their door of a ‘big lazy fellow’ demanding relief, and the latter busily issuing circulars to magistrates and police imploring them to clamp down on the offenders. In the end, however, an unsatisfactory justice system predicated on punishment merely reinforced existing prejudices and did little to alleviate the social inequality that gave rise to vagrancy in the first place.

Origins of Catholic Social Reform in the United States: Ideological Aspects

1949 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-309
Author(s):  
Aaron I. Abell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anglo American

Represented by a small, pioneering religious group in the Anglo-American colonies, the Catholic faith was not transplanted in conspicuous degree to the United States until the nineteenth century. Mainly through immigration the Catholic population in the United States rose from a mere 50,000 in 1800 to more than twelve millions a century later. Though many believed that countless Catholics were lost in the transition process—the question has been endlessly debated—few denied the preeminent success of the Catholic Church in handling immigrants. Its swelling membership steadily augmented its influence on most phases of American life, including the social movements which played so large and significant a part in the nation's development during the nineteenth century.

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