The Social Order Yields to Functional Analysis

The physician George Hoggart Toulmin (1754–1817) propounded his theory of the Earth in a number of works beginning with The antiquity and duration of the world (1780) and ending with his The eternity of the universe (1789). It bore many resemblances to James Hutton's "Theory of the Earth" (1788) in stressing the uniformity of Nature, the gradual destruction and recreation of the continents and the unfathomable age of the Earth. In Toulmin's view, the progress of the proper theory of the Earth and of political advancement were inseparable from each other. For he analysed the commonly accepted geological ideas of his day (which postulated that the Earth had been created at no great distance of time by God; that God had intervened in Earth history on occasions like the Deluge to punish man; and that all Nature had been fabricated by God to serve man) and argued they were symptomatic of a society trapped in ignorance and superstition, and held down by priestcraft and political tyranny. In this respect he shared the outlook of the more radical figures of the French Enlightenment such as Helvétius and the Baron d'Holbach. He believed that the advance of freedom and knowledge would bring about improved understanding of the history and nature of the Earth, as a consequence of which Man would better understand the terms of his own existence, and learn to live in peace, harmony and civilization. Yet Toulmin's hopes were tempered by his naturalistic view of the history of the Earth and of Man. For Time destroyed everything — continents and civilizations. The fundamental law of things was cyclicality not progress. This latent political conservatism and pessimism became explicit in Toulmin's volume of verse, Illustration of affection, published posthumously in 1819. In those poems he signalled his disapproval of the French Revolution and of Napoleonic imperialism. He now argued that all was for the best in the social order, and he abandoned his own earlier atheistic religious radicalism, now subscribing to a more Christian view of God. Toulmin's earlier geological views had run into considerable opposition from orthodox religious elements. They were largely ignored by the geological community in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain, but were revived and reprinted by lower class radicals such as Richard Carlile. This paper is to be published in the American journal, The Journal for the History of Ideas in 1978 (in press).

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Issues of non-standard employment: social and hygienic aspects

Russian Journal of Occupational Health and Industrial Ecology ◽

10.31089/1026-9428-2020-60-6-392-398 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 392-398

Author(s):

S. A. Druzhilov

Keyword(s):

Social Order ◽

Labor Relations ◽

Well Being ◽

Labor Rights ◽

Precarious Employment ◽

Employment Conditions ◽

The Social ◽

Two Factors ◽

Labor Safety ◽

Typical Model

Drastic transformations of the social and labor sphere have led to the emergence of new health risks and sanitary and hygienic problems associated with unreliability of employment. A new socio-economic and psychological phenomenon “precarity” has emerged, which has aff ected the employment conditions of employees, so the description of the phenomenon “precarity” needs to be clarifi ed.The forms of labor employment that diff er from the typical model and worsen the employee’s situation are considered. The criteria based on which non-standard employment is considered unstable are given.Generalized types of unstable employment are identifi ed, the specifi city of which is determined by a combination of two factors: working time and the term of the contract. Unstable working conditions are possible not only in informal employment, but also in legal labor relations. Unreliability and instability of labor has an objective character and is a natural manifestation of the emerging economic and social order. The phenomenon of “precarity of employment” appears as a new determinant of the health of employees. The main feature when referring employment and labor relations to the phenomenon of “precarity” is their unreliability.Specifies the terms used: “precariat”; “precarious work”; precompact; the precariat. An essential characteristic of precarious employment is the violation of social and labor rights and lack of job security. A significant indicator of precarity is underemployment. Precarity induces the potential danger of dismissal of the employee and the resulting stress, psychosomatic disorders and pathological processes in the psyche.Precarious employment and related labor relations have become widespread. Many employees are deprived of social guarantees, including those related to labor safety, payment for holidays and temporary disability, and provision of preventive measures. Th is leads to a violation of the state of well-being, as well as the deterioration of individual and public health.

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Richard Mackenney, Venice as the Polity of Mercy: Guilds, Confraternities, and the Social Order, c. 1250–c. 1650. Toronto Italian Studies. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2019, xiii, 471.

Mediaevistik ◽

10.3726/med.2019.01.167 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 551-552

Author(s):

Thomas Willard

Keyword(s):

Social Order ◽

Merchant Of Venice ◽

Legal Scholar ◽

University Of Toronto ◽

Italian Studies ◽

The Merchant Of Venice ◽

The Social ◽

University Town ◽

The University

Shakespeare is well known to have set two of his plays in and around Venice: The Merchant of Venice (1596) and The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603). The first is often remembered for its famous speech about “the quality of mercy,” delivered by the female lead Portia in the disguise of a legal scholar from the university town of Padua. The speech helps to spare the life of her new husband’s friend and financial backer against the claims of the Jewish moneylender Shylock. The play has raised questions for Shakespearean scholars about the choice of Venice as an open city where merchants of all nations and faiths would meet on the Rialto while the city’s Senate, composed of leading merchants, worked hard to keep it open to all and especially profitable for its merchants. Those who would like to learn more about the city’s development as a center of trade can learn much from Richard Mackenney’s new book.

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Conclusion: Rethinking Punishment

10.1093/oso/9780190888589.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Didier Fassin

Keyword(s):

Social Inequality ◽

Political Violence ◽

Social Order ◽

Social Groups ◽

The Social ◽

Ideal Language ◽

The Status ◽

The Ideal

If punishment is not what we say it is, if it is not justified by the reasons we invoke, if it facilitates repeat offenses instead of preventing them, if it punishes in excess of the seriousness of the act, if it sanctions according to the status of the offender rather than to the gravity of the offense, if it targets social groups defined beforehand as punishable, and if it contributes to producing and reproducing disparities, then does it not itself precisely undermine the social order? And must we not start to rethink punishment, not only in the ideal language of philosophy and law but also in the uncomfortable reality of social inequality and political violence?

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An Ancient Dream Manual

10.1093/oso/9780198843825.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Thonemann

Keyword(s):

Social Order ◽

Natural World ◽

Dream Interpretation ◽

Greek Literature ◽

Roman World ◽

Road Map ◽

The Social ◽

Roman Antiquity ◽

Analytical Tools ◽

Life Career

Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (‘The Interpretation of Dreams’) is the only dream-book which has been preserved from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Composed around AD 200, it is a treatise and manual on dreams, their classification, and the various analytical tools which should be applied to their interpretation. Artemidorus travelled widely through Greece, Asia, and Italy to collect people’s dreams and record their outcomes, in the process casting a vivid light on social mores and religious beliefs in the Severan age. This book aims to provide the non-specialist reader with a readable and engaging road-map to this vast and complex text. It offers a detailed analysis of Artemidorus’ theory of dreams and the social function of ancient dream-interpretation; it also aims to help the reader to understand the ways in which Artemidorus might be of interest to the cultural or social historian of the Graeco-Roman world. The book includes chapters on Artemidorus’ life, career, and worldview; his conceptions of the human body, sexuality, the natural world, and the gods; his attitudes towards Rome, the contemporary Greek polis, and the social order; and his knowledge of Greek literature, myth and history. The book is intended to serve as a companion to the new translation of The Interpretation of Dreams by Martin Hammond, published simultaneously with this volume in the Oxford World’s Classics series.

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Who Was This Man?

10.1093/oso/9780199731619.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Mitch Kachun

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

Social Order ◽

Atlantic World ◽

Life Experiences ◽

Broad Context ◽

Military Power ◽

The Social ◽

The Revolution

Chapter 1 introduces the broad context of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world in which Crispus Attucks lived, describes the events of the Boston Massacre, and assesses what we know about Attucks’s life. It also addresses some of the most widely known speculations and unsupported stories about Attucks’s life, experiences, and family. Much of what is assumed about Attucks today is drawn from a fictionalized juvenile biography from 1965, which was based largely on research in nineteenth-century sources. Attucks’s characterization as an unsavory outsider and a threat to the social order emerged during the soldiers’ trial. Subsequently, American Revolutionaries in Boston began the construction of a heroic Attucks as they used the memory of the massacre and all its victims to serve their own political agendas during the Revolution by portraying the victims as respectable, innocent citizens struck down by a tyrannical military power.

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