scholarly journals Nature, the past and the English town: a counter-cultural history

Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER BORSAY

ABSTRACTIn investigating urban culture, historians have understandably tended to focus on the man-made and the modern, and have paid less attention to the role of nature and the past, which seem the opposite of what the town stands for. This survey, which takes as its case-study England, argues that nature and the past have always been part of urban life, but as urbanization gathered pace, particularly from the eighteenth century, they became if anything an even more important element in city and town culture.

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-321
Author(s):  
Dimitrios K. Lamprakis

The Ottoman eighteenth century is a period of decentralisation dominated by the emergence of peripheral semi-autonomous lords. This period is also marked by the spread of tax farming (iltizam), especially lifelong malikane contracts. This article is a case study of these two phenomena, through examination of the activities of minor/secondary notables in a remote corner of Ottoman Macedonia, namely the town of Serfice (today Servia, in Greek Macedonia), their relationship with the Giray dynasty ruling over the Tatar khanate of Crimea, who were in their own right the traditional patrimonial beneficiaries of the hasses of Serfice, and the role of the Ottoman administration operating as an efficient power broker. It also examines the role of the Giray dynasty in bestowals of timar grants on beneficiaries, in an era in which the timar system is described in the available bibliography as either moribund or completely defunct.


2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.


Author(s):  
Mark Sanders

When this book's author began studying Zulu, he was often questioned why he was learning it. This book places the author's endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for issues of property, possession, and deprivation. The book combines elements of analysis and memoir to explore a complex cultural history. Perceiving that colonial learners of Zulu saw themselves as repairing harm done to Africans by Europeans, the book reveals deeper motives at work in the development of Zulu-language learning—from the emergence of the pidgin Fanagalo among missionaries and traders in the nineteenth century to widespread efforts, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to teach a correct form of Zulu. The book looks at the white appropriation of Zulu language, music, and dance in South African culture, and at the association of Zulu with a martial masculinity. In exploring how Zulu has come to represent what is most properly and powerfully African, the book examines differences in English- and Zulu-language press coverage of an important trial, as well as the role of linguistic purism in xenophobic violence in South Africa. Through one person's efforts to learn the Zulu language, the book explores how a language's history and politics influence all individuals in a multilingual society.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 724
Author(s):  
Alicja K. Zawadzka

The paper presents the results of a study on the attractiveness to tourists and natives of the cultural qualities of coastal towns on The Pomeranian Way of St. James that are members of the Cittaslow network. Attention to the quality of urban life is inscribed in the development policies of towns applying to join the Cittaslow movement. In order to join the network (apart from the size criterion), towns need to meet a minimum of 50% plus one of the 72 criteria grouped into seven categories. One of the category is Quality of Urban Life Policy, so the towns applying to join Cittaslow commit themselves to actions aimed at improving the quality of urban life. The study on the attractiveness of cultural qualities of towns to tourists and natives was conducted using the author’s BRB method, whose added value is its universality and the possibility to study small towns regardless of their membership in the Cittaslow network. BRB is an acronym that stands for BUILDINGS, RELATIONSHIPS, BALANCE, and comprises three scopes of activities: BUILDINGS (iconic building and important sites where the inhabitants and the tourists are present); RELATIONSHIPS (the visual effects of the relations between the inhabitants and the town) and BALANCE (solutions that implement modern technologies). This method enables identification of places that are important to the inhabitants, where urban life takes place and which are often created with the involvement of the inhabitants. These are often the same spaces as those that attract tourists and perhaps stimulate them the desire to visit the town again (BRB—be right back). The aim of the BRB method is shown the attractiveness of small towns. The study has shown that the characteristic feature of Polish Cittaslow towns is their diversity: the architectural attractiveness of three towns is high both to tourists and natives. On the other hand, the urban attractiveness of the examined towns is an insufficient.


1978 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. N. Chaudhuri

There can be few aspects of Indian studies more neglected than that of historical geography. Within this larger area of neglect, urban history occupies a special place. The indifference with which Indian historians have approached the urban heritage of the subcontinent is all the more difficult to understand because to contemporary European visitors, the merchants and other travellers, the towns and cities of Mughal India held a profound fascination. From the time of Tomé Pires and his highly perceptive Suma Oriental down to the end of the eighteenth century, stories of Indian travels and the accompanying descriptions of Mughal urban life continually entertained the popular literary audience. Not all of them understood or reported accurately what they saw. As the Scottish sea captain and country trader, Alexander Hamilton, who had an unrivalled knowledge of the sea ports and the coastal towns of India, pointed out with some candour, one great misfortune which attended the western travellers in India was their ignorance of the local languages. But the manifest contrast between the physical appearance of the European cities and those of Asia provoked some considerable and sensitive analysis of the nature of the urban processes in the two continents. Perhaps the most able and penetrating comments on the Mughal political, economic, and civic order came from the pen of the Dutch merchant, Francisco Pelsaert, and the French physician, François Bernier.


Author(s):  
Michael Cuthill

The concept of engaged scholarship, as a 'new' and participatory approach to knowledge production, has received much attention over the past decade. However, the term is clouded in ambiguity. This paper presents some introductory discussion around concepts of engaged scholarship, and then focuses in detail on a methodological case study of participatory action research as an example of engaged scholarship in practice. Discussion revolves around reflections on practice, drawing largely from recent reports on participatory democracy and the role of unversities in society.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mieczysław Adamowicz ◽  
Aldona Machla

The subject of this research are small and medium enterprises (SME) in the Polish economy, the support of this sector by local government and the functioning of small and medium enterprises in the local system of the town and commune of Pułtusk. The aim of this study is to present the condition and the role of SME in the local systems in light of the selected features of this sector in the country and evaluation of support for SME given by local government of the town and the commune. The case study research methods applied were literature research, documentation review and survey-based research using questionnaire. The survey was conducted in spring, 2014, on a random sample. The research resulted in learning the profile of a local entrepreneurs and the action characteristics of SME in the examined unit. The diagnosis of the sector’s situation was made, the stimulating and limiting factors of its prosperity were identified. The SME support system of local government and the entrepreneurs’ expectations towards commune government in the field of development of local enterprises were evaluated. The results and conclusions confirm the need for development of local government activity in formulating and implementation of the development of local enterprises policy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Fernanda Neubauer ◽  
Michael J. Schaefer

We discuss the important role of the feminist critique in bringing awareness to gender, childhood, and identity research, and in giving voice to the perspectives of underrepresented groups. As a case study of ancient social lives and gender, we discuss a range of Marajoara identity markers interpreted through the study of ceramic tangas (female pubic coverings) from Marajó Island in the Brazilian Amazon (A.D. 400-1400). There, tangas were made and used by women as a material representation of social position, gender, and individual identity. We argue that identity constitutes a fundamentally important aspect of archaeological research, and that the strongest case studies in identity are those that encompass a variety of gendered inferences to understand social lives of the past.


2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 365-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark M. Hennelly

The Carnival is just over, and we have entered upon the gloom and abstinence of Lent. The first day of Lent we had coffee without milk for breakfast; vinegar and vegetables, with a very little salt fish, for dinner; and bread for supper. The Carnival was nothing but masking and mummery. M. Héger took me and one of the pupils into the town to see the masks. It was animating to see the immense crowds, and the general gaiety, but the masks were nothing.—Charlotte Brontë, letter, March 6, 1843. . . Humble as I [Pecksniff] am, I am an honest man, seeking to do my duty in this carnal universe, and setting my face against all the vice and treachery.—Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44)Women were playing [at cards and roulette]; they were masked, some of them; this licence was allowed in these wild times of carnival.—Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847–48)OVER FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, Allon White acknowledged “the small army of literary critics now regularly describing modern cultural phenomena as ‘carnivalesque’” (109). Surprisingly, though, only advance scouting parties of carnivalesque critics have infiltrated the various war games, love feasts, slanging matches, “blood” sports, food fights, drinking bouts, carnal appetites, funferalls, body cultures, ludic acts of toasting, roasting, masking, mumming, and other folk and fair festivities — besides the recurring clowns, fools, rogues, tricksters, killjoys, and spoilsports — that significantly enliven and inform Victorian literature. When such critical forays have occurred, the role of the carnivalesque has often been contested, reflecting perhaps what White’s liminal reading of cultural history calls the nineteenth-century’s initial “‘disowning’ of carnival, and the gradual reconstruction of the concept of carnival as the culture of the Other” (102). And yet Robert Browning’s Fra Lippo Lippi still speaks eloquently for various Renaissance and Victorian writers when he proclaims that he is but “one” of many who “makes up bands/To roam the town and sing out carnival” (ll.45–46). Indeed, his double-voiced, pantagruelian aesthetic is to “go a double step,/Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,/Both in their order” (ll.206–08), for


Author(s):  
Cristina Lleras

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the surge of identity politics and the diversification of heritage and the tensions that arise with the traditional role of national museums that are expected to support the model of a unitary national identity through their narratives and collections. Engaging with distinct patrimonies and transformations in museums checkmates stagnant notions of heritage, but in turn, these actions might also instigate resistance to change. A case study at the National Museum of Colombia will provide an insight into competing notions of heritage, which can be understood as the relics of a material past, but may also be seen as the meanings created about the past. This analysis instigates thoughts about the role that history and historians might play in the elaboration of narratives of identity.


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