Discursive (re)construction of “witchcraft” as a community and “witch” as an identity in the eighteenth-century Hungarian witchcraft trial records

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-234
Author(s):  
Márton Petykó
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
General Context ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Mental Constructs ◽  
Witchcraft Trials

Abstract This paper provides a qualitative historical (socio)pragmatic analysis of records of three eighteenth-century Hungarian witchcraft trials using a socio-cognitive model of discursive community and identity construction. I aim to describe how the general social and legal context of witchcraft became situated and interpreted in the actual witchcraft trial records from the delegated officials’ perspective. I argue that in the analysed records, the officials did not simply apply a codified definition of “witchcraft”, but they discursively (re)constructed “witchcraft” as a community and “witch” as the defendants’ identity. Thus, from the officials’ perspective, discursive community and identity construction established a relationship between the general context of witchcraft and the actual witchcraft trials. In order to reconstruct this process, I investigate the linguistic constructs by which the delegated officials actively created “witchcraft” and the defendants’ “witch” identity as mental constructs.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

¿Quién soy yo? Reflexiones teórico sistémicas acerca de la indentidad individual

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Francisco Xavier Morales
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Moral Communication ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

The problem of identity is an issue of contemporary society that is not only expressed in daily life concerns but also in discourses of politics and social movements. Nevertheless, the I and the needs of self-fulfillment usually are taken for granted. This paper offers thoughts regarding individual identity based on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. From this perspective, identity is not observed as a thing or as a subject, but rather as a “selfillusion” of a system of consciousness, which differentiates itself from the world, event after event, in a contingent way. As concerns the definition  of contents of self-identity, the structures of social systems define who is a person, how he or she should act, and how much esteem he or she should receive. These structures are adopted by consciousness as its own identity structures; however, some social contexts are more relevant for self-identity construction than others. Moral communication increases the probability that structure appropriation takes place, since the emotional element of identity is linked to the esteem/misesteem received by the individual from the interactions in which he or she participates.

‹ Rococo › : du jargon à la catégorie de style

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 474-487
Author(s):  
Marie-Pauline Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Louis Xv ◽  
Objective Existence

Abstract Today there is a consensus on the definition of the term ‘rococo’: it designates a style both particular and homogeneous, artistically related to the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. But we must not forget that in its primitive formulations, the rococo has no objective existence. As a witty, sneering, and impertinent word, it can adapt itself to the most varied discourses and needs, far beyond references to the eighteenth century. Its malleability guarantees its sparkling success in different languages, but also its highly contradictory uses. By tracing the genealogy of the word ‘rococo’, this article will show that the association of the term with the century of Louis XV is a form of historical discrimination that still prevails widely in the history of the art of the Enlightenment.

DELIGHTFUL COXCOMBS TO INDUSTRIOUS MEN: FASHIONABLE POLITICS IN CECIL AND PENDENNIS

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Nicolay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class A ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Trade Office

THOMAS CARLYLE’S CONTEMPTUOUS DESCRIPTION of the dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes” (313) has survived as the best-known definition of dandyism, which is generally equated with the foppery of eighteenth-century beaux and late nineteenth-century aesthetes. Actually, however, George Brummell (1778–1840), the primary architect of dandyism, developed not only a style of dress, but also a mode of behavior and style of wit that opposed ostentation. Brummell insisted that he was completely self-made, and his audacious self-transformation served as an example for both parvenus and dissatisfied nobles: the bourgeois might achieve upward mobility by distinguishing himself from his peers, and the noble could bolster his faltering status while retaining illusions of exclusivity. Aristocrats like Byron, Bulwer, and Wellington might effortlessly cultivate themselves and indulge their taste for luxury, while at the same time ambitious social climbers like Brummell, Disraeli, and Dickens might employ the codes of dandyism in order to establish places for themselves in the urban world. Thus, dandyism served as a nexus for the declining aristocratic elite and the rising middle class, a site where each was transformed by the dialectic interplay of aristocratic and individualistic ideals.

An Oxford College, Two Parishes and a Tithe-Farmer: The Modernisation of Tithe Collection

Rural History ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
A. W. Purdue
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Agricultural Economy ◽  
The North ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The One

The agricultural economy of eighteenth-century England exhibited many paradoxes, being in part progressive and even entrepreneurial, yet existing in a legal context which preserved many ancient customs, rights, duties and taxes. Within the one county of Northumberland we find the Culley brothers with their business-like attitudes and innovative and scientific farming methods and, in contrast, antique manorial regimes with courts, fines and heriots, such as prevailed in the manors of Hartleyburn and Bellister. We also find, as throughout England, the ‘contentious tithe’ and what must have been one of the most lucrative examples of tithe-farming, by which one of the North East's leading merchants and its first banker made a considerable part of his fortune out of a lease on this venerable tax from the appropriators, Merton College, Oxford.

scholarly journals Rational Creatures and Free Citizens: The Language of Politics in the Eighteenth‑Century Debate on Women

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Susan E. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Unifying Principles ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Condition Of Women ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract This paper examines the intersection between the debate on women and the wider political debates of late eighteenth-century England. During this period the meaning of concepts such as liberty, equality, and rights was contested not only with regard to political relationships among men, but also as they applied to civil and domestic relationships between men and women. The language of politics encouraged the definition of women's oppression in terms of the unrepresentative nature of authority exercised by men. The values of rationality, equality, and independence espoused by radicals in the debate on women were part of a larger conception of virtue, which carried with it political as well as moral implications. These political implications came to the fore in the conservative response. Conservatives' ideas on women were part of a larger vision of social and political order in which duty, obedience, and dependence operated as the unifying principles. Within this framework, radical proposals for a more egalitarian family structure were viewed as a potential threat to political order. At the heart of this debate lay not only a dispute regarding the condition of women, but also a struggle between two conflicting visions of the ideal society.

Introduction and Overview

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Prewitt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Classification Scheme ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Racial Classification ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Definition Of

This introductory chapter discusses how there was a racial classification scheme in America's first census (1790), as there was in the next twenty-two censuses, up until the present. Though the classification was altered in response to the political and intellectual fashions of the day, the underlying definition of America's racial hierarchy never escaped its origins in the eighteenth-century. Even the enormous changing of the racial landscape in the civil rights era failed to challenge a dysfunctional classification, though it did bend it to new purposes. Nor has the demographic upheaval of the present time led to much fresh thinking about how to measure America. The chapter contends that twenty-first-century statistics should not be governed by race thinking that is two and a half centuries out of date.

Managing IS Security and Privacy

2011 ◽  
pp. 2497-2503
Author(s):  
Vasilios Katos
Keyword(s):  
Policy Decision ◽  
Security And Privacy ◽  
Simple Explanation ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
Support Policy ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Optimum Solution

The concept of privacy has received attention for over a century now and its definition?let alone, understanding?has been profoundly challenging. This is primarily attributed to the “incompatible” and rich set of characteristics privacy comprises. As Brunk (2002) states very sharply, “Privacy is a matter of intellectual and philosophical thought and retains few tangible characteristics, making it resistant to simple explanation.” Perhaps the first scholarly work on privacy was that of Warren and Brandeis (1980), who introduced the highly abstractive yet popular definition of privacy as the “right to be left alone.” As privacy was recognized as a right, it primarily existed within a legal context. Legislation for protecting one’s privacy exists in many countries and in some cases at a constitutional level (see for example the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution). It was soon realized in the information revolution era that privacy and information are somewhat coupled. More precisely, emerging privacy concepts and metrics relate to the intentional or unintentional information flows. However, when it comes to studying, using, and investing in information, security appeared to have a higher priority over privacy. Security and privacy seemingly operate under different agendas; privacy is about protecting one’s actions in terms of offering anonymity, whereas security includes the notion of accountability which implies that anonymity is waived. Still, security is a vital component of an information system, as it is well needed in order to protect privacy. This contradictory relation between security and privacy has caused a considerable amount of debate, political and technical, resulting in a plethora of position and research papers. Accepting that there may be no optimum solution to the problem of striking a balance between security and privacy, this article presents a recently developed methodology that could support policy decision making on a strategic level, thus allowing planners to macro-manage security and privacy.

Martin Folkes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
New Science ◽  
Definition Of

In 1750, Martin Folkes became the only individual who was President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, and he contributed to efforts to unite both organizations. Although he failed, illness forcing him to resign both offices, this chapter outlines the book’s analysis of the ensuing disciplinary boundaries between the two organizations in the early Georgian era in the context of Folkes’s life and letters. While it is normally assumed that natural philosophy and antiquarianism are disciplines that were fast becoming disconnected in this period, this work will reconsider these assumptions. The Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries were nearly reunited for good reason. Both societies incorporated techniques and affinities from antiquarianism—natural history and landscape—and the ‘new science’—engineering principles, measurement, and empiricism. Using Folkes’s life and letters, this biography will examine the disciplinary boundaries between the humanities and sciences in early Georgian Britain and reassess the extent to which the separation of these ‘two cultures’ developed in this era. It will also consider to what extent Folkes continued the Newtonian programme in mathematics, optics, and astronomy on the Continent. In this manner, the work will refine its definition of Newtonianism and its scope in the early eighteenth century, elucidating and reclaiming the vibrant research programme that Folkes promoted in the period of English science least well understood between the age of Francis Bacon and the present.

Defining Man as Animal Religiosum in English Religious Writing ca. 1650–ca. 1700

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Rational Animal ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Subsequent Incorporation ◽  
The Continuum

This article surveys the emergence and usage of the redefinition of man not as animal rationale (rational animal) but as animal religiosum (religious animal) by numerous English theologians between 1650 and 1700. Across the continuum of English Protestant thought, human nature was being redescribed as unique due to its religious, not primarily its rational, capabilities. This article charts said appearance as a contribution to debates over man's relationship with God; then its subsequent incorporation into the discussion over the theological consequences of arguments in favor of animal rationality, as well as its uses in anti-atheist apologetics; and then the sudden disappearance of the definition of man as animal religiosum at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In doing so, the article hopes to make a useful contribution to our understanding of changing early modern understandings of human nature by reasserting the significance of theological writing in the dispute over the relationship between humans and beasts. As a consequence, it offers a more wide-ranging account of man as animal religiosum than the current focus on “Cambridge Platonism” and “Latitudinarianism” allows.

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