Spirit of Place: The European Fashioning of Toowoomba

1996 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Lee

No other town in Queensland is so well favoured by nature for combining these rare advantages. We have the healthiness of climate, the coolness of a fine English summer, the pure and rarefied air of a moderate elevation, which dwellers along the hot and humid coast so much desire. We have beauty of scenery in picturesque variety, with a panorama of rolling Downs and far-reaching plain … ours is the first town on the elevated Downs after rising from the close and exhausting atmosphere of the ‘littoral’ country.So rhapsodised the editorial in the Toowoomba Chronicle on 14 June, 1890. From the nineteenth century the drop in temperature which greeted the traveller's ascent to the elevated tablelands of the Darling Downs was greeted as a sign of a more vitalising and health-giving climate than the sub-tropical humidity of the Brisbane coastal plain. Katie Hume in 1866 felt Toowoomba's air 'cool and English like … after the heat of Brisbane’, while the consumptive Walter Coote argued in 1887 that the Downs possessed ‘a climate as healthful and even invigorating as that of any place in the World’ (Hume 160, Coote 201). The Social-Darwinist connection between the moral character of a people and the temperature of their climate was a frequent theme of nineteenth century culture. The imperial triumphs of European civilisation were often explained by Europe's temperate climate, for the cooler the climate the more ‘civil’ the people are deemed to be (Spurr); and Europe's temperate climate was also an acknowledged cause of the reasoned moral restraint of the civilised colonial settler. Thus the celebration of Toowoomba's ‘European’ climate served to familiarise an alien Australian space as a place which would support European settlement.

Author(s):  
Leo Tolstoy

Resurrection (1899) is the last of Tolstoy's major novels. It tells the story of a nobleman's attempt to redeem the suffering his youthful philandering inflicted on a peasant girl who ends up a prisoner in Siberia. Tolstoy's vision of redemption achieved through loving forgiveness, and his condemnation of violence, dominate the novel. An intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger, and forgiveness, Resurrection is at the same time a panoramic description of social life in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, reflecting its author's outrage at the social injustices of the world in which he lived. This edition, which updates a classic translation, has explanatory notes and a substantial introduction based on the most recent scholarship in the field.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Jaffe

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-167
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Sokół

The subject of this essay is Andrzej Waśkiewicz’s book Ludzie – rzeczy – ludzie. O porządkach społecznych, gdzie rzeczy łączą, nie dzielą (People–Things–People: On Social Orders Where Things Connect Rather Than Divide People). The book is the work of a historian of ideas and concerns contemporary searches for alternatives to capitalism: the review presents the book’s overview of visions of society in which the market, property, inequality, or profit do not play significant roles. Such visions reach back to Western utopian social and political thought, from Plato to the nineteenth century. In comparing these ideas with contemporary visions of the world of post-capitalism, the author of the book proposes a general typology of such images. Ultimately, in reference to Simmel, he takes a critical stance toward the proposals, recognizing the exchange of goods to be a fundamental and indispensable element of social life. The author of the review raises two issues that came to mind while reading the book. First, the juxtaposition of texts of a very different nature within the uniform category of “utopia” causes us to question the role and status of reflections regarding the future and of speculative theory in contemporary social thought; second, such a juxtaposition suggests that reflecting on the social “optimal good” requires a much more precise and complex conception of a “thing,” for instance, as is proposed by new materialism or anthropological studies of objects and value as such.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo T Perez-Rivera ◽  
Christopher Torres Lugo ◽  
Alexis R Santos-Lozada

Between July 13-24, 2019 the people of Puerto Rico took the streets after a series of corruption scandals shocked the political establishment. The social uprising resulted in the ousting of the Governor of Puerto Rico (Dr. Ricardo Rosselló, Ricky), the resignation of the majority of his staff something unprecedented in the history of Puerto Rico; this period has been called El Verano del 19 (Summer of 19). Social media played a crucial role in both the organization and dissemination of the protests, marches, and other activities that occurred within this period. Puerto Ricans in the island and around the world engaged in this social movement through the digital revolution mainly under the hashtag #RickyRenuncia (Ricky Resign), with a small counter movement under the hashtag #RickySeQueda (Ricky will stay). The purpose of this study is to illustrate the magnitude and grass roots nature of the political movement’s social media presence, as well as their characteristics of the population of both movements and their structures. We found that #RickyRenuncia was used approximately one million times in the period of analysis while #RickySeQueda barely reached 6,000 tweets. Particularly, the pervasiveness of cliques in the #RickySeQueda show concentrations of authority dedicated to its propagation, whilst the #RickyRenuncia propagation was much more distributed and decentralized with little to no interaction between significant nodes of authority. Noteworthy was the role of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States of America and around the world, contributing close to 40% of all geo-located tweets. Finally, we found that the Twitter followers of the former governor had indicators of being composed of two distinct populations: 1) those active in social media and 2) those who follow the account but who are not active participants of the social network. We discuss the implications of these findings on the interpretation of emergence, structure and dissemination of social activism and countermovement to these activities in the context of Puerto Rico.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-508
Author(s):  
Silvia Fernanda de Mendonça Figueirôa

Abstract Oscar Nerval de Gouvêa was a scientist and teacher in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, whose work spanned engineering, medicine, the social sciences, and law. This paper presents and discusses a manuscript entitled “Table of mineral classification,” which he appended to his dissertation Da receptividade mórbida , presented to the Faculty of Medicine in 1889. The foundations and features of the table provide a focus for understanding nineteenth-century mineralogy and its connections in Brazil at that time through this scientist. This text was Gouvêa’s contribution to the various mineral classification systems which have emerged from different parts of the world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-61
Author(s):  
Ibraheem Alani AbdulKareem ◽  
Mohd Sadad bin Mahmud ◽  
Moses Elaigwu ◽  
Abdul Fattah Abdul Ganiyy

As at the end year of 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak had caused an unparalleled human crisis around the world. The disease is causing not just a health problem but also economic crisis. Numerous countries fell into meltdown and more people fell into poverty. The government may not be sufficiently able to take the economy back to its track. The concentration has now moved from the spread of the virus to the economic consequences it will bring to the community. The lack of production will lead to the deficiency of supply and therefore will end as loss of employment and jobs for a large number of people around the globe. The most significant sections of our society are SMEs and daily wage will bear the major burn of the crisis. Therefore, Islamic social finance, incorporating zakat and waqf, has to be adopted to address the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Zakat and waqf are commonly practised in Muslims countries majority. Zakat and waqf function show the possibility and economic advantages of zakat and waqf properties for people’s prosperity. Moreover, zakat and waqf can be utilized to fill financial gaps and can likewise be utilized to create social wellbeing. This study explores the application and potential of zakat and waqf institutions for the social wellbeing of the people and economic development during and after Covid-19 pandemic. The study reviewed past studies on the potential of zakat and waqf as an alternative way for social development and economic growth. The study, therefore, observed that zakat and waqf institutions can improve economic activity through zakat and waqf properties use for various purposes such as health services, infrastructure, SMEs, poverty eradication and education. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-92
Author(s):  
Jonasmer Simatupang

The Republic of Indonesia unitary state ia a legal state based on the constitution. In a country that adheres to democracy, the law become the supreme commander in a effort to eradicate criminal cases and included acts of corruption corruption crime in Indonesia is a social issues that has never been exhausted to be discussed, in the world of law, this has been included in  the category of extradionary crime because is not only harms the state, but the practice also violates the social and economic rights of the community a large so that eradication action must also be carried out with extradionary legal force. A pattern or phenomena of bulk corruption is recently revealed by the people’s deputy officials. Almost the world room of the representative of the people of good people at the local people until the center was ever searched and representative of the people were brought to committing corruption in a way of like a budget, received a bribe and so forth. The practice has occured in the area of North Sumatera and city Malang. Various of these cases made the reputation of the people’s institutions deterioting among the people. Through this writing by analizing and investigating more deeply technical and systematic practice of the board members in the distorting the budget.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuobi Luo

The dissimilation of the social functions of commercial banks is a phenomenon that the function of commercial banks deviates from the economic development and the people's livelihood. Such phenomenon, which can be seen all over the world, impedes the socio-economic development and affects the well-being of the people to some degree. After investigating and analyzing the dissimilation of the social functions of Chinese commercial banks, it was found that their social functions play a significant role, and the booming development of these banks has made great contribution to the economic growth and improved people's livelihood in China. China should also have special experience in preventing and handling this dissimilation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-407
Author(s):  
Abosede Priscilla Ipadeola

Politics is regarded in many parts of the world, especially in Africa, as a space meant exclusively for men. Therefore, women venturing into politics are made to believe that they are misfits, and the idea is anathematized and strangulated from the outset by those who are supposed to encourage the women. It is popularly believed that it is natural for men to rule over women, while it is considered abnormal and unnatural for women to rule over men. Although different societies have at one time or the other in history been ruled by queens and female warriors, at least, that is not usually seen as bizarre in societies that practice monarchical or imperial rule. In a democracy, however, a lot of people vehemently oppose the idea of a woman vying for a political office. In the case of Africa, two factors are responsible for this: the African people’s colonial experience and the bifurcation of the social sphere into public and private spaces. This has entrenched gender roles into the scheme of social reality held by the people. The people hold that certain roles must be performed by women while certain roles are exclusively for men. This culture has made it increasingly difficult to achieve parity and egalitarianism in gender relations in contemporary Africa and to achieve meaningful development in Africa. This article suggests ideological decolonization as a way out of the current predicament of the African women as the subaltern in the patriarchal and hostile political space of contemporary Africa.


Author(s):  
James Revell Carr

This chapter addresses Hawaiians' roles in the multicultural environment aboard European and American sailing ships during the nineteenth century, focusing particularly on the expressive culture of American whalers. Whaling ships began regularly calling at Hawaiian ports in 1820, and over the next six decades thousands of Hawaiian men shipped out as whalemen, joining one of the most cosmopolitan workforces in the world. The chapter begins by describing the social conditions aboard American ships that enabled a variety of performing arts to flourish and encouraged intercultural bonding. It then explicates the different styles and contexts of shipboard music starting with the work song tradition known as the sea chantey (or shanty). It describes the recreational music-making activities of sailors, distinct from the work song tradition, providing accounts of Hawaiian singing and dancing aboard ships at sea and in various global ports, and the responses of Euro-American sailors to that music and dance.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document