‘Modernity’ and the Making of Social Order in Twentieth-Century Europe

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
DENNIS SWEENEY
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Structuralist Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

It is hard not to be struck by the continuing interest in the concept of ‘modernity’ or ‘the modern’ for making sense of the economic, cultural and political transformations of twentieth-century Europe. Seemingly laid to rest by the early 1980s for its association with modernisation theory, modernity as a concept was revived during the late 1980s and 1990s largely by European historians working on countries, especially Germany and Russia, with nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories that modernisation theorists deemed models of developmental backwardness or case studies in the failure to modernise and its consequences. But, like its striking re-appearance in scholarship on those areas of the world – especially Asia and Africa – written off as the most irredeemably un-modern or ‘traditional’ by modernisation theorists, this renewed interest in modernity derives from very different interventions in post-structuralist theory and cultural and postcolonial studies, which have generated new definitions, and critiques ‘modernity’ and its ‘dark side’ from the vantage point of ‘postmodernity’.

Dementia, Selves, and Stories

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars-Christer Hydén
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Physical World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Over Time

This chapter provides information on the social and cultural background of dementia from the early twentieth century into the early twenty-first century. The chapter presents an overview of the discussions about dementia, self, and identity, with a particular emphasis on research on narrative and dementia. The ideas around identity in dementia, from Kitwood to Sabat and Kontos, are discussed, together with research on storytelling in dementia. A general conclusion from this chapter is that although persons with dementia over time will become increasingly challenged as storytellers, they are still active meaning-makers. They are obviously still engaged in the never-ending activity of making sense of their social as well as physical world—events in the world, as well as what people are saying and doing. Telling stories is central to this endeavor, which entails “world-making” as well as “self-making” through constructing, presenting, and negotiating a sense of self and identity.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Ken Hirschkop
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Division ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

Chapter 1 focuses on the distinctiveness of the ‘linguistic turns’ of early twentieth-century Europe, differentiating them from nineteenth-century work on language and insisting on the need to think of these multiple turns as a whole, as a constellation across Europe. That there is such a constellation, demanding our attention, is the first of the book’s three organizing claims. The second is that language draws such a crowd because crowds have become a problem: in the linguistic turns of the early twentieth century, language is a metonym for problems of social order and social division, democracy and consent, nationality and difference. Hence the third claim: that the distinguishing feature of these linguistic turns is a commitment to some version of ‘language as such’, a force or structure within language that can provide the vitality, the order, the lucidity, or some combination of these, necessary to cure language of its present ills.

Free Church Traditions in Twentieth-Century Europe

2019 ◽  
pp. 261-291
Author(s):  
Toivo Pilli ◽  
Ian M. Randall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Social Ministry ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Global Mission ◽  
The World ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

This chapter focuses on the Free Church traditions, the heirs of earlier dissenting movements, in Europe in the twentieth century. This century posed major challenges to Free Church believers. The chapter explores five main areas: evangelistic witness, church and state relations, theology and spirituality, issues of identity, and social and global involvements. The chapter shows that while some Free Church denominations saw numerical decline, others—particularly Pentecostals—grew. It explores how some Free Churches have been reluctant to get involved in wider political issues, while others have been deeply engaged; how in theology and spirituality European Free Church scholars have made a contribution; how Free Churches have related in different ways to ecumenical endeavour; and how they have been involved in social ministry. Finally, although Europe has become a missionary-receiving part of the world, this chapter suggests that global mission has remained an essential part of European Free Church identity.

The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Constitutive Relationships ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Social ◽  
Heuristic Device

This chapter provides a detailed introduction to the thought of Carl Schmitt that incorporates insights from law, the social sciences, and the humanities. It is also an intervention in its own right, seeking to decenter the study of this most hyped thinker of the twentieth century by advancing two interconnected arguments. First, we argue that the motif of order is a powerful yet insufficiently utilized heuristic device for making sense of Schmitt’s thought. By placing the motif of order at its heart, we contradict the popular belief that no unifying thread runs through the jurist’s oeuvre. Second, we argue that a trinity of thought is discernable in Schmitt’s writings comprising his political, legal, and cultural thought. We establish intellectual connections across these three bodies of thought and trace the mutually constitutive relationships that exist among them. Schmitt’s thought, we find, amounted to a network of ideas about the sources of social order, the cement of society.

Bobs and the “Character of Our Citizenship”

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-63
Author(s):  
Leah Payne
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Public Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Twenty First Century

Many view the twenty-first-century white Pentecostal-charismatic rejection of feminism, and enthusiasm for self-professed harasser of women, Donald J. Trump, as a departure from the movement’s late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century origins wherein many Pentecostal-charismatic women were welcomed into the public office of the ministry. Early Pentecostal writings, however, demonstrate that twenty-first-century white Pentecostal orientations toward women in public life are based in the movement’s early theological notions that women must uphold the American home, “rightly” ordered according to traditionally conservative, white, middle-class norms. An America wherein women work and minister primarily in the domicile, according to early white Pentecostals, would be a powerful instrument of God in the world. Thus, no matter how transgressive they may have appeared when it came to women speaking from the pulpit, for the most part, white Pentecostals sought to conserve the traditional social order of the home.

scholarly journals Pattern and pedagogy in print: Art and Craft Education in the mid twentieth-century classroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-263
Author(s):  
Desdemona McCannon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
Multiple Strategies ◽  
Art Instruction ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World ◽  
Craft Education ◽  
Teaching Pattern ◽  
Children’S Work

Abstract In this article I compare a set of early and mid-twentieth-century print publications supportive of the 'new' art teaching in schools. The educator Marion Richardson's reflections on her use of pattern in the classroom in Art and the Child (1948) is considered alongside publications by artist-teachers such as Robin Tanner's Children's Work in Block Printing (1936) and Gwen White's A World of Pattern (1957). The monthly publication Art and Craft Education first published in 1936 was a magazine for teachers of art which showcased the work being done in schools around Britain that were involved in the 'new' art instruction. Pattern-making in schools in these publications is positioned as a modular and constructivist form of learning encouraging multisensory and exploratory ways of looking at and making sense of the world. Ackerman (2004) outlining theories of constructivist models for learning stresses the need for children to be 'builders of their own cognitive tools', and I argue that the exploration of pattern offers multiple strategies for the children to explore their phenomenological experience of the world. Pattern-making is also presented as a democratic form of creativity and a means of introducing the concept of art into everyday life, inculcating an appreciation of well-made things in daily life. I argue that through the lens of this pedagogic print culture with this emphasis on the benefits of teaching pattern-making in schools a nostalgic and pastoral English arts and crafts sensibility can be seen meeting a modernist cultural agenda via psychological theories of child development, creating a distinctively egalitarian, child-centred and craft-led model for learning. Revisiting this moment in childrens' education in Britain offers a timely insight into alternatives to the current educational landscape, with its emphasis on measuring pupil's achievement and downgrading of creative subjects in the school curriculum.

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.

scholarly journals Epilogue and Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 170-182
Author(s):  
David Brydan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Cooperation ◽  
International System ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
International Networks ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
New Generation

Integrating the history of Franco’s Spain into the history of twentieth-century internationalism sheds new light on both subjects. The importance of international cooperation, international organizations, and international networks for Francoist elites reflects the extent to which Spanish nationalism during the early Franco era was framed and shaped by the history of internationalism. And examining the perspective of experts from an authoritarian nationalist regime serves to broaden and deepen our understanding of the fascist, right-wing, and conservative ‘dark side’ of internationalism. The Epilogue explores how the international activities of Spanish social experts developed after 1959. A new generation increasingly accepted the immutability of the post-war international system, seeking to adapt Spain to the world rather than adapting the world to Spain. They were even more internationally active than the previous generation, but were no longer necessarily ‘Franco’s internationalists’.

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.

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