THE INDIGENOUS REDEMPTION OF LIBERAL UNIVERSALISM

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 579-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
TIM ROWSE
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Global History ◽  
Charles Eastman ◽  
Intellectual Heritage ◽  
Cultural Determinants ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

Accounts of liberalism as an ideology of European imperialism have argued that when liberals discovered that colonized people were, in various ways, intractable, they questioned and then abandoned the postulated universal human capacity for improvement; the racial and cultural determinants of native “backwardness” seemed stronger than any universal susceptibility to the civilizing projects of liberal imperialism. While the intellectual trajectory of some canonical liberals illustrates this decline in liberal universalism, some colonized intellectuals—while acknowledging distinctions of race and people-hood—adhered to the universalist optimism of liberalism. In pursuit of a global history of liberalism, this essay examines writings by Peter Jones, Charles Eastman, Zitkala-Sa, Apirana Ngata and William Cooper to illustrate a robust indigenous universalism. Drawing on the intellectual heritage of Christianity and universal (or “stadial”) philosophy of history, these intellectuals affirmed emphatically that their people were demonstrating the capacities to be subjects of liberal civilization.

scholarly journals Islam in Global History

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-134
Author(s):  
Niaz Erfan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Last Two Millennia ◽  
First World

Islam in Global History, written in two volumes covering the period fromthe death of the Holy Prophet to the First World War, has the distinction ofbeing a book on history and the philosophy of history. This is because, as thereader discovers, it is not merely a chronicle of events of the Muslim worldfrom the advent of Islam to the end of the World War I; it is a book whichprovides insights into the causes of the victories and defeats of dynasties aswell as successes and failures of movements in Islamic history, and laysdown the laws for the rise and fall of civilizations.Certainly, he is not the first in the field of the philosophy of history. Thetwo stalwarts who made original and remarkable contributions in this fieldduring the last two millennia are Ibn Khaldun and Arnold Toynbee. Thebooks in which they propounded their theories of the interpretation of historyare not books on history as such. Historical data were, no doubt, usedand analyzed to substantiate their theses. lbn Khaldun proved his conceptof asabiyah (social group cohesion) in the context of the history of theArabs and the Berbers, which he was to write subsequently. Toynbee usedthe data from world history to prove his idea of "Challenge and Response"to be the detennining factor in the strength and decay of civilizations andsocieties. It is to the author's credit that such a comprehensive and coherentwork on Islamic history has been produced. At each critical stage hediagnosed the causes of the major events that went into making watershedsand turning points in Muslim history worldwide.Dr. Ahmed is an eclectic writer who has partially benefited from theconcepts of the interpretation of history expounded by lbn Khaldun andToynbee. For example, he agrees with lbn Khaldun when he says:The origins of the Ottoman Empire are to be found in a combination ofTurkish 'asabiyah, a term used by lbn Kha Idun to denote tribal cohesion,the force that holds together tribes through bonds of blood, a characteristicfound in abundance among peoples of the desert and the nomads offthe steppes.He concurs with Toynbee when he writes:Great civilizations measure up to their challenges and grow more resili entwith each crisis, turning adversity into opportunjty. Critical moments in ...

Indian Sex Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Durba Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Global History ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indentured Servitude ◽  
History Of

During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. This book shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society. The book reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women's performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. The book demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women's sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world. Reframing the prostitute as a concept, the book overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.

Fellow Worker

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Barry Pateman
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Global History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fellow Worker

Review of Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer, Wobblies of the World. A new edited collection on the global history of the Industrial Workers of the World.  

Towards a Global History of Culture1

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Yūji Nawata
Keyword(s):  
Global History ◽  
Short History ◽  
Physical Time ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Cosmic Space ◽  
Parallel Universes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shared Context

Abstract Contemporary physics often speaks of “multiverses” or “parallel universes,” seriously debating whether our cosmic space is only one of many2. However many such spaces there may be, for now let us limit ourselves to the space in which we find ourselves; let us focus furthermore on the planet we are on, and further still on humanity upon this planet. Let us attempt to write a short history of the culture produced by humanity on this globe. We humans possessed and indeed possess a shared space, the globe, where a physical time common to us all passes. Let us survey the history of the world’s culture within this shared context.

Between History and Nature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Hermeneutic Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitment and especially to the way in which his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically significant notions of force, organism, and life. As such, Herder’s contribution is taken to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship, Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy—as it grows out of his engagement with poetry, drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects—has received less attention. Taking as its point of departure Herder’s early work, this chapter proposes that, in his work on literature, Herder formulates an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that has still not received the attention it deserves.

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