Politics, Power, and Problems: Perspectives on Writing Policy History

1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Andrew Achenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Policy History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Grant Support ◽  
The Future ◽  
Aesthetic Style ◽  
Relative Standing

Twenty-five years ago H. Stuart Hughes observed that “the study of history is entering a period of rapid change and advance such as characterized the science of physics in the first three decades of the twentieth century.” Amid such ferment, he believed, professional historians could become more “scientific” in stating their assumptions and executing their analysis without sacrificing an “aesthetic” style of discourse. Professor Hughes correctly predicted the professional excitement and intellectual controversy unleashed since the mid-1960s, but he underestimated the extent to which historians’ relative standing in the academy would be adversely affected by external and internal developments. Other social sciences attracted more students, tenure lines, and grant support; they had more success in formalizing their investigations. Many humanistic endeavors (including historical inquiries), critics charge, have concurrently become inscrutable. Historians themselves have expressed serious concern about the future of their discipline. With the Balkanization of knowledge, with a growing number of subfields and specialized journals, historical synthesis seems more and more to be an elusive goal. The current debate over how to “(re)present the past” goes far beyond disputes over approach, style, or ideology.

Collective Memory: Between Values and Historical Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.

Catholicism and Cosmopolitanism: the Confluence of Three Catholic Scholars and the Cosmopolitan Democrats on State Sovereignty and the Future of Global Governance

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Matthew Bagot
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cosmopolitan Democracy ◽  
Catholic Tradition

One of the central questions in international relations today is how we should conceive of state sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty—’supreme authority within a territory’, as Daniel Philpott defines it—emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 as a result of which the late medieval crisis of pluralism was settled. But recent changes in the international order, such as technological advances that have spurred globalization and the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, have cast the notion of sovereignty into an unclear light. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate regarding sovereignty by exploring two schools of thought on the matter: first, three Catholic scholars from the past century—Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray, S.J.—taken as representative of Catholic tradition; second, a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. The paper argues that there is a confluence between the Catholic thinkers and the cosmopolitan democrats regarding their understanding of state sovereignty and that, taken together, the two schools have much to contribute not only to our current understanding of sovereignty, but also to the future of global governance.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Heritage Industry ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter introduces the concept of the “archaeomodern” and its connection to the aging of the quintessential modern medium of film. It sketches the historical and cultural background of the archaeomodern turn in the late twentieth century, including the development of an obsession with the past in the heritage industry and the rise of postmodernism. It then discusses two phenomena from the 1980s and 1990s—a mannerist or baroque revival, and the development of media archaeology—that complicate the habitual association between tradition and the past or modernity and the future. The introduction suggests that archaeomodern cinema was characterized by the return to failed or abandoned modern experiments and other relics from the modern past.

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

scholarly journals EXPECTATION AND FEAR: PHILOSOPHICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRESAGES OF RUSSIAN TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanjana S. Zlotnikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Face ◽  
Coming Crisis ◽  
Existential Issues

The article raises the question of foreseeing moral and intellectual, aesthetic and political collisions that could occur after the expected changes at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. The philosophical and anthropological paradigm of the pre-revolutionary era is defined through metaphors and concepts that attracted the attention of Russian philosophers, representatives of the sphere of artistic creativity: «expectation» (of changes, new people and phenomena) and «fear» (of changes, the unknown). For the analysis, we selected the judgments of prominent philosophers who discovered existential issues and related existential problems of the transition era for their contemporaries: V. Solovyov, V. Rozanov and N. Berdyaev. In V. Solovyov, the problem of waiting is related to the loneliness of a person in the face of global discord. Attention is drawn to the concept of «symptom of the end», to the concepts of crisis and disaster. Loneliness is experienced by the intellectual in anticipation of changes, possibly destructive, so the expectation as a context of loneliness turns into horror. V. Rozanov emphasized the tendency to distance himself from the world, Europe, contemporaries and classics in Russia. In Rozanov's philosophical and journalistic works, the future is not discussed at all because it is impossible to construct it; the past, which might have been the refuge of ideas about the harmony and dignity of life, causes the philosopher's attitude is sometimes even more negative than the present. On the example of the great creators – A. Chekhov, V. Meyerhold, V. Komissarzhevskaya and other contemporaries of N. Berdyaev, the psychoemotional tension from the coming crisis, the horror in anticipation of the coming future is shown. Berdyaev organically raises the question of the border between longing and other conditions (boredom, horror, a sense of emptiness), and the border is existential.

scholarly journals And did those hooves: Pan and the Edwardians

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Eleanor Toland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
World War One ◽  
Peter Pan ◽  
Major Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

<p>A surprisingly high number of the novels, short stories and plays produced in Britain during the Edwardian era (defined in the terms of this thesis as the period of time between 1900 and the beginning of World War One) use the Grecian deity Pan, god of shepherds, as a literary motif. Writers as diverse as Somerset Maugham, E.M. Forster, Frances Hodgson Burnett and G.K. Chesterton made Pan a fictional character or alluded to the god of shepherds in more subtle ways. The mystery of why the Edwardians used an ancient Greek god as a symbol requires a profound interrogation of the early twentieth century British soul. The Edwardian era was a narrow corridor of time between the Victorian age and the birth of modernism with the First World War, a period characterised by vast social and political transition, as a generation began to comprehend change they equally feared and desired. Pan was an equivocal figure: easily portrayed as satanic due to his horns and goatish nature, but as the kindly god of shepherds, also a Christ-like figure. Such ambiguity made Pan an ideal symbol for an age unsure of itself and its future. Writers like Maugham and Machen, afraid of social and sexual revolution, portrayed Pan as diabolical, a tempter and a rapist. E.M. Forster, a homosexual man hopeful about the possibility of change, made Pan a terrifying but ultimately liberating figure for those ready to accept the freedom he represented. Kenneth Grahame, desiring the return of a Luddite, Arcadian past that had never truly existed, wrote of Pan as Jesus on the riverbank, sheltering the lost and giving mystic visions to the worthy. Pan represented a simultaneous craving in the Edwardians to flee to the past and to embrace the future, an idealism of the primitive coupled with hope for the future. What he also symbolized was anxiety about the future and the desire to not return to the horrors of the past, fears of the primitive suggested in the nightmarish atavism of Saki’s “The Music on the Hill” and the fears of what society might become expressed in Forster’s “The Machine Stops”. The Edwardian Pan eventually reached its culmination in J.M. Barrie’s twentieth-century fairy tale Peter Pan, in which the eponymous character, seeming at first so different from the ancient Greek mythological figure, became an embodiment of everything the Edwardian Pan phenomenon represented. With the nightmarish yet fascinating figure of Peter Pan, the Edwardians had created a new Pan, reborn for their age. With the beginning of World War One, the Pan figure would begin to fade into insignificance, with only one major work later published which could justifiably be called part of the phenomenon; Lord Dunsany’s The Blessing of Pan, a fitting elegy for the Edwardian Age.</p>

scholarly journals Implicações da noção de consciência histórica nas ciências humanas e sociais: um modo de projeção para o futuro e de posição em relação ao passado

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (68) ◽  
pp. 817-843
Author(s):  
Fábio César Junges ◽  
Tiago Anderson Brutti ◽  
Adair Adams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human And Social Sciences ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Siglo Xx

Implicações da noção de consciência histórica nas ciências humanas e sociais: um modo de projeção para o futuro e de posição em relação ao passado Resumo: O presente texto, de caráter bibliográfico, discute o problema da consciência histórica com o objetivo de pensar o sentido dessa expressão na atualidade e as variações que esse conceito adquiriu ao longo da história das Ciências Humanas e Sociais, com ênfase no século XX. A hipótese é que a discussão a respeito da consciência histórica passou a se ocupar, na modernidade, com uma múltipla relatividade de pontos de vista, o que é destacado por Gadamer em sua análise sobre os preceitos implicados na definição do que significa “ter senso histórico”. É defendida a tese, portanto, de que a noção de consciência histórica não se limita ao conhecimento das experiências vivenciadas no passado, mas se apresenta como condição de possibilidade de projetar o futuro e se posicionar em relação ao passado, especialmente no que diz respeito às ciências humanas e sociais. A defesa desta ideia central é realizada por meio de dois gestos reflexivos, com apresentação, primeiramente, do marco teórico da consciência histórica e, posteriormente, de suas implicações na constituição das Ciências Humanas e Sociais. Palavras-chave: Ciências humanas e sociais. Senso histórico. Passado. Futuro. Implications of the notion of historical consciousness in human and social sciences: a mode of projection for the future and position in relation to the past Abstract: This bibliographic text discusses the problem of historical consciousness with the purpose of thinking about the meaning of this expression in the present time and the variations that this concept has acquired throughout the history of the Humanities and Social Sciences, with emphasis on the twentieth century. The hypothesis is that the discussion about historical consciousness has come to concern itself, in modernity, with a multiple relativity of points of view, which is highlighted by Gadamer in his analysis of the precepts involved in defining what “having a historical sense” means. Therefore, the thesis that the notion of historical consciousness is not limited to the knowledge of past experiences is defended, but is presented as a condition of possibility of projecting the future and positioning itself in relation to the past, especially with regard to humanities and social sciences. The defense of this central idea is made through two reflexive gestures, presenting, first, the theoretical framework of historical consciousness and, later, its implications in the constitution of the Human and Social Sciences. Keywords: Human and social sciences. Historical sense. Past. Future. Implicaciones de la noticia de conciencia histórica en las ciencias humanas y sociales: un modo de proyección para el futuro y de posición en relación al pasado Resumen: El presente texto, de carácter bibliográfico, discute el problema de la conciencia histórica con el propósito de pensar sobre el significado de esta expresión en la actualidad y las variaciones que este concepto ha adquirido a lo largo de la historia de las Humanidades y las Ciencias Sociales, con énfasis en el siglo XX. La hipótesis es que la discusión sobre la conciencia histórica ha llegado a ocuparse, en la modernidad, de una relatividad múltiple de puntos de vista, que Gadamer destaca en su análisis de los preceptos involucrados en la definición de lo que significa “tener un sentido histórico”. " Por lo tanto, se defiende la tesis de que la noción de conciencia histórica no se limita al conocimiento de experiencias pasadas, sino que se presenta como una condición de posibilidad de proyectar el futuro y posicionarse en relación con el pasado, especialmente con respecto a humanidades y ciencias sociales. La defensa de esta idea central se realiza a través de dos gestos reflexivos, presentando, primero, el marco teórico de la conciencia histórica y, luego, sus implicaciones en la constitución de las Ciencias Humanas y Sociales. Palabras clave: Ciencias Humanas y Sociales. Sentido histórico. Pasado. Futuro. Data de registro: 28/05/2019 Data de aceite: 24/10/2019

Introduction

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Enzo Traverso
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Financial Capitalism

The introduction analyzes the historical context in which left-wing melancholy arises as a prismatic frame for rethinking the past: “presentism,” a dilated present that absorbs in itself both the past and the future. It corresponds to a neoliberal temporality that replaces twentieth century utopias with a spasmodic acceleration retreated into the boundaries of financial capitalism, deprived of any projection into the future.

scholarly journals The Formation of a Technology-Based Fashion System, 1945–1990: The Sources of the Lost Competitiveness of Japanese Apparel Companies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
PIERRE-YVES DONZÉ ◽  
RIKA FUJIOKA
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Apparel Industry ◽  
Fast Growth ◽  
Business History ◽  
International Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Apparel Companies ◽  
Oriented Approach

Over the past two decades, the Japanese apparel industry has lost its competitiveness after experiencing a period of fast growth from the postwar years to the early 1990s. In international literature in social sciences, most scholars offer ethnic-based explanations of fashion in Japan, stressing some specificities such as street fashion or star designers in Paris. This article, however, argues that such views are biased and cannot explain the current lack of competitiveness of the Japanese apparel industry. Using the concept of the “fashion system” and following a business history-oriented approach, we offer a new interpretation of the emergence of Western clothing and fashion in Japan during the second part of the twentieth century. This interpretation demonstrates that the characteristics of the Japanese fashion system lie in a focus on the issues of production and technology, both of which led both to an extreme segmentation of the domestic market and to weaker brands.

scholarly journals International Migration and Work: Charting an Ethical Approach to the Future

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Donald Kerwin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Global Compact ◽  
Future Of Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethical Approach ◽  
The Future

Executive Summary This research was conducted at the request of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) as part of a two-year special initiative entitled “The Future of Work, Labour After Laudato Sì.” 1 This article explores the future of work, international migration, and the intersection of the two at a time of rapid change, uncertainty, and disruption for migrants, laborers, and their families and communities. It draws on human rights principles, international law, and religious values, particularly from the Catholic tradition, to chart an ethical approach to the governance of these timeless phenomena. What does the future hold? Under one dystopian scenario, the future of work will be characterized by massive job loss due to automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Politicians and business leaders will characterize the resulting human displacement as an unavoidable “disruption” and byproduct of change. Euphemisms, however, will poorly mask the loss of livelihood, self-esteem, and a central marker of identity for countless persons, particularly the poor and vulnerable. Technological advances will decimate families, communities, and entire ways of life. For many, stable work will become a thing of the past, and technology an instrument of marginalization and discrimination. Algorithms will be used to “perpetuate gender bias” ( ILO 2019a , 35), pit workers against each other, and squeeze the maximum productivity from them for the minimum compensation. The “inappropriate use” and “weak governance” of algorithms will lead to “biases, errors and malicious acts” ( Albinson, Krishna, and Chu 2018 ). Large swaths of the world’s citizens will become (at best) the unhappy dependents of states and global elites. The future of migration seems equally daunting. Current trends suggest that the number of international migrants will continue to rise due to job displacement, violence, natural disaster, and states that cannot or will not meet their fundamental responsibilities. If the past is prologue, unscrupulous politicians and media sources will also continue to blame migrants for the economic and cultural displacement of their constituents, xenophobia will increase, and migrants will encounter hostility in host communities. Natives will criticize their governments and institutions for failing to protect their interests and needs, and migrant laborers will be caught in the middle. This article does not minimize the urgency of the challenges presented by migration and work. It documents the unacceptable living, working, and migration conditions of immense numbers of the world’s citizens. It offers, however, a more optimistic vision of the future than the dystopian view, a vision characterized by international cooperation and solidarity. It recognizes the potential of technology “to render labour superfluous, ultimately alienating workers and stunting their development,” but also its potential to “free workers from arduous labour; from dirt, drudgery, danger and deprivation” and “to reduce work-related stress and potential injuries” ( ILO 2019 , 43). It recognizes the way in which fear of displacement can lead to exclusionary nationalism and xenophobia, but also the possibility of unity based on the shared values embedded in the cultures of diverse persons. It recognizes the costs of migration, but also its immense contributions to host communities. The article argues for person-centered systems and policies that promote the freedom, rights, and dignity of workers, migrants, and migrant workers, and that strengthen migrant host communities. It begins by examining the challenges facing low-income and vulnerable migrants who struggle for decent work, are the most likely to lose their jobs, and are “the least equipped to seize new job opportunities” ( ILO 2019 , 18). 2 It then presents an ethical, person-centered vision of migration and work, rooted in human rights principles, international law, and Catholic social teaching. The article also draws on principles articulated in the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM); the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR); and the Holy See’s Twenty Action Points for the Global Compacts. It ends with a series of recommendations that seek to bring this vision to fruition.

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