“TO HELP THE NATION TO SAVE ITS SOUL”: MUSEUM PURPOSES IN JAMES'S THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-254
Author(s):  
John Pedro Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
Explicit Statement ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
A Site

In a 1927 lecture the Director of the British Museum Sir Frederic Kenyon countered the futurist leader F. T. Marinetti's calls for the destruction of museums by arguing that “in times of upheaval . . . salvation is to be found in adherence to tradition” rather than in “break[ing] loose from” it. Kenyon explained the museum's role in promoting this salvation: A visit to a museum will not by itself quench a revolution. It would have been useless to invite the pétroleuses of the Commune to an official lecture in the Egyptian Gallery at the Louvre; but if they had been brought up to respect the past, there might have been a revolution without pétroleuses. Every form of instruction or experience which teaches men to link their lives with the past makes for stability and ordered progress. Hence the value of history and hence also the value of those institutions which teach history informally and without tears. (24–25) This is perhaps the most explicit statement of the British Museum's ideological function in early twentieth-century museum discourse. The museum acts as an ideological state apparatus that calls out to museum-goers to identify with, rather than agitate against, the social order symbolized in the “examples of great men” and the “monuments of the past” (23–24). Though not without critics, much of the new museology since the 1980s draws on this historical record and poststructuralist theory to argue that the modern museum operates as a site for the reflection or reinforcement of existing power relations. Critics have associated the museum, for example, with racism and sexism (Haraway), with classism (Bourdieu and Darbel), with imperialism and colonialism (Barringer and Flynn), with mechanisms of social control (Sherman and Rogoff), and with the consecration of state authority (Duncan and Wallach). Whereas Kenyon's defense of the museum suggests a reactionary position, the cultural destruction he combats amounts to a revolutionary act, whether accomplished by the “gay incendiaries with charred fingers” exhorted by Marinetti in his movement-founding manifesto of 1909 or the communardes accused of torching the French capital during the semaine sanglante in 1871 (43). For cultural destruction is inescapably political, as Antonio Gramsci argued in “Marinetti the Revolutionary” (1916). The Italian theorist and political activist identified the futurist discourse against the museum and the aesthetic tradition it perpetuates with the Marxist task of destroying “spiritual hierarchies, prejudices, idols and ossified traditions” to make way for the creation of a new, proletarian civilization (Gramsci 215).

Consumption as an Althusserian Ideological Apparatus

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-145
Author(s):  
Omer Ersin Kahraman
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
Francis Fukuyama ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Raymond Aron ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Labour Power

The end of ideology has been declared for several times by different writers like Raymond Aron, Daniel Bell and Francis Fukuyama. However, ideology still has an important role in the social order even though its structure has been adapted to the contemporaneous material conditions. Consumption, the consumptive production of labour power, has turned into a new language of socio-symbolic meanings in the twentieth century. In this way, consumption overshadowed its material basis, the needs, and obtained a new duty in the ruling ideology as an ideological State apparatus, keeping the masses in line. This article aims to investigate this aspect of the modern consumption practice in accordance with ideology approach of Louis Althusser.

The Constitutional Crisis in Austria

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-157
Author(s):  
Malbone W. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Stress And Strain ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parliamentary Supremacy ◽  
The Government

Constitutionalism, in Austria, is not a new slogan. It was a phrase to conjure with during the entire lifetime of Francis Joseph, though in practice the whole history of the country down to the revolution of 1918 was its virtual negation. Only in the latter days of the monarchy, when the scepter passed from the hands of Francis Joseph to the inexperienced young emperor Karl, was a modicum of popular expression allowed to supplant the personal autocracy of the sovereign. The old Austria passed out of existence in 1918 without the successful implantation of a régime of liberal legality in any of its parts.The young Austrian Republic, coming into existence in the hour of the Empire's dissolution, thus inherited a legacy of unconstitutional government, and only the solidity of socialist and clerical party organization, bred of the stress and strain of clashing conceptions of the social order, gave support to the government in the days when social revolution swept almost to the doors of Vienna. It was under such circumstances that Austria entered, in 1918, upon the way of constitutionalism and sought, through her provisional instruments of government, to avoid the autocratic excesses of the past and avert the impending perils of a proletarian dictatorship.In a series of revolutionary pronouncements and decisions of her provisional assembly, she discarded, under socialist leadership, the arbitrary régime attendant on the monarchy, and, establishing a unitary democratic republic with far-reaching local self-government as a stepping-stone toward union with Germany, inaugurated a régime of unquestioned parliamentary supremacy, strict ministerial responsibility, virtual executive impotence, and extensive socialization.

Texts Don't have Ideologies

1995 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Fowl
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Ideological Criticism ◽  
Competing Interests ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Accepted Practice ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past fifteen years "ideological criticism" of the Bible has grown to become an accepted practice within the academy. It has provided a site where feminists, Marxists, liberation theologians and other interested parties have been able to engage in discussion aimed largely at displaying the wide variety of competing interests operating in both the production and interpretation of the Bible. Unfortunately, it is common among ideological critics of the Bible to speak of biblical texts as having ideologies. The thrust of this article is to claim that this way of thinking confuses a wide range of issues concerning the relationships between texts and the social practices which both generated those texts and are sustained by interpretations of particular texts. This position is defended by an examination of the various ways in which the Abraham story was read from Genesis through Philo, Paul, and Justin Martyr.

Revisiting Cognitive Mapping

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-40
Author(s):  
Özgün Eylül İşcen
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Cognitive Mapping ◽  
Media Arts ◽  
Global Capital ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
State Capital ◽  
The Aesthetic

The increasingly complex, algorithmically mediated operations of global capital have only deepened the gap between the social order as a whole and its lived experience. Yet, Fredric Jameson’s notion of cognitive mapping, attentive to the conflicting tendencies of capitalist operations, is still helpful for addressing the local instantiations of capital’s expanding frontiers of extraction. I am interested in tracing the historicity of those operations as well as the totality they are actively part of in the present from the vantage point of the Middle East, especially along with the entangled trajectories of oil, finance, and militarism. To this end, I examine countervisual practices in the realm of media arts that contest the aesthetic regime through which the state-capital nexus attempts to legitimize its imperial logic and violence. My reconfiguration of cognitive mapping as countervisuality in Nicholas Mirzoeff’s terms demonstrates that there is no privileged position or method of cognitive mapping, which ultimately corresponds to an active negotiation of urban space across the Global North/ South divide.

Tomb cult and the ‘Greek renaissance’: the past in the present in the 8th century BC

Antiquity ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 62 (237) ◽  
pp. 750-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Morris
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Greek City ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Complexity ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
City State

Greek society was changing rapidly in the 8th century BC. The archaeological record reveals population growth, increasing political complexity, artistic experiments and a strong interest in the past. Because these processes resemble those at work in early modern Italy, the period has often been referred to as the ‘Greek renaissance’ (e.g. Ure 1922; Hägg 1983a; cf. Burke 1986). This paper is about the glorification of the past in the 8th century, and its relationship to the rise of the polis, the Greek city state. I concentrate on one particular phenomenon, the spread of cults at tombs dating to the Mycenaean period (c. 1600-1200 BC). I argue that the common renaissance analogy has limited value, and that the 8thcentury Greeks created a past narrowly focussed on the persons of powerful ancient beings, from whom they could draw authority in the social upheavals which came about as the loose, aristocratic societies of the ‘Dark Age’ (c. 1200-750 BC) were challenged. Tomb cults go back at least to 950 BC, but after 750 they were redefined and used as a source of power in new ways. I have adapted my subtitle from Maurice Bloch’s well-known paper ‘The past and the present in the present’ (1977), where he argues that rituals bring the past into the present to form a system of cognition mystifying nature and preserving the social order. The argument here is slightly different. I stress the variety of the cults and the range of meanings they must have had, making their recipients highly ambiguous figures. The same cults could simultaneously evoke the new, relatively egalitarian ideology of the polis and the older ideals of heroic aristocrats who protected the grateful and defenceless lower orders, while standing far above them. Bloch's paper borrowed Malinowski’s idea of culture as a ‘long conversation’; developing the analogy, I look at the multiple meanings which any statement in such a conversation may have for the different actors.

scholarly journals Indigenous African Education for Socio- Economic Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-316
Author(s):  
Moses Wandera
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
World View ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
The Social ◽  
Vision 2030 ◽  
Available Information

Education in Africa has been in existence since time immemorial. This study sought to examine the activities of Lantana in Benin on their specialised training, Dogon of Mali in their world view, Futo Toro of Senegal in their various trades, Poro of Sierra Leone in the training of the youth, Takensi of Ghana in their social order and the Akan of Ghana. Also examined are the activities of the Chamba and Yoruba of Nigeria in their adult centred training and forecasting of the future respectively. The Chagga of Tanzania and the Abakwayaare were also examined on their initiative plays and economic activities. The paper also studied the Ndembu of Zambia on the past analysis and the activities of the Mijikenda of Kenya among other Kenyan tribes. The study used the theoretical framework of Emile Durkheim on the social and moral order, while the design of the study was on content analysis of available information and expectations. The study recommends positive approaches in the indigenouseducation that can be adapted, mainly for Kenya in its desire to achieve Vision 2030. However, further research should be done on specific values, foods, attitudes and the rule of law, how achieve social, political and economic progress in African nations and especially how the current economic integration blocks have followed the same pattern of the communities and their values.

Racism in recent Greek migrant jokes

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Argiris Archakis ◽  
Villy Tsakona
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Order ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
The Past ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
The Social ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Methodological Guidelines ◽  
Of Greece

Abstract One of Davies’ significant contributions to the sociology of humor involves the exploration of the relation between jokes and the social order. He particularly argues that jokes seem to work like a “thermometer” conveying truths for the sociopolitical system. In our study, we aim to analyze jokes related to the migration crisis and circulated online since 2014 following Davies’ methodological guidelines. During the past few years, the number of migrants arriving at Greek shores has significantly increased. The prospect of Greece becoming a permanent base for these people has evoked diverse reactions. Migrant jokes seem to be part of Greek majority’s response to the migration ‘threat’ against national sovereignty and linguocultural homogeneity. They (re)produce and perpetuate xenophobia and racism by portraying migrants as ‘dangerous invaders’ in the Greek territory and as ‘culturally inferior’ people. Hence, such jokes align with dominant values and standpoints circulating in the Greek public sphere via underscoring the inequality between the Greek majority and migrants and via naturalizing the latter’s assimilation to majority norms and values.

Post-Postracial America

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Landsberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
White House ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
A Site

A seismic shift in the racial landscape of the United States occurred in 2016. The prevailing discourse about a “postracial America,” though always, in the words of Catherine Squires a “mystique,” was firmly and finally extinguished with the election of Donald J. Trump. Race, in the form of racial prejudice, erupted in Trump’s political rhetoric and in the rhetoric of his supporters. At the same time, the continued significance and consequences of racial division in America were also being asserted for politically progressive ends by the increasingly prominent #blacklivesmatter movement and by the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, DC, not far from the White House. This article tracks the resurgence of race in the US cultural landscape against the racially depoliticized myth of the “postracial” by focusing first on the HBO television series Westworld, which epitomizes that logic. The museum, which opened its doors against the backdrop of the presidential campaign, lodges a scathing critique of the very notion of the postracial; in fact, it signals the return of race as an urgent topic of national discussion. Part of the work of the museum is to materialize race, to move race and white supremacy to the center of the American national narrative. This article points to the way the museum creates what Jacques Rancière calls “dissensus,” and thus becomes a site of possibility for politics. The museum, in its very presence on the Mall, its provocative display strategies, and its narrative that highlights profound contradictions in the very meaning of America, intervenes in what Rancière calls “the distribution of the sensible” and thus creates the conditions for reconfiguring the social order. In part, it achieves this by racializing white visitors, forcing them to feel their own race in uncomfortable ways. The article suggests that this museum, and the broader emerging discourse about race in both film and television, offers new ways to think about the political work of culture.

scholarly journals Understanding the revival and survival of grass-roots associations in China: the perspective of four categories of legitimacy

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (27) ◽  
pp. 49-68
Author(s):  
Gao Bingzhong
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Social Legitimacy ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Legitimacy ◽  
Social Associations ◽  
Administrative Legitimacy

Chinese grass-roots social groups have had a complicated relation with the social order during the past thirty years. This paper aims at using a series of practical concepts about legitimacy, from Weber and Habermas, to analyze the revival and present functioning of these groups, especially associations based on folk religion. As I see it, the fact that social groups are able to exist "normally" and to operate, even though they are not in conformity with the law, should be understood with the help of three categories: political legitimacy, administrative legitimacy and social legitimacy. At the end of the paper, I discuss the promulgation of the "Regulations for the Administration of Social Associations" which sets legal legitimacy as a core process integrating the three other kinds of legitimacy, and I examine the effort of government to require all social groups to possess full legitimacy.

Norms: An Integrated Framework

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 467-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Horne ◽  
Stefanie Mollborn
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Integrated Framework ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Do So

Norms are a foundational concept in sociology. Following a period of skepticism about norms as overly deterministic and as paying too little attention to social conflict, inequalities, and agency, the past 20 years have seen a proliferation of norms research across the social sciences. Here we focus on the burgeoning research in sociology to answer questions about where norms come from, why people enforce them, and how they are applied. To do so, we rely on three key theoretical approaches in the literature—consequentialist, relational, and agentic. As we apply these approaches, we explore their implications for what are arguably the two most fundamental issues in sociology—social order and inequality. We conclude by synthesizing and building on existing norms research to produce an integrated theoretical framework that can shed light on aspects of norms that are currently not well understood—in particular, their change and erosion.

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