The Puritan Work Ethic Revisited

1980 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Seaver
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Work Ethic ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
The Impact

Whether Puritanism gave rise to a “work ethic,” and, if so, what the nature of that ethic was, has been a source of controversy since Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism more than seventy years ago. Experienced polemicists have waged international wars of words over its terms, and tyros have won their spurs in the battle. With repect to England, there is at present no agreement either about the reality of a peculiarly Puritan work ethic or about the impact, if any, that such an ethic might have had on the attitudes and behavior of the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie, if such a species indeed existed as a distinctive social class or group in the early modern period. In fact, since perfectly sane and competent historians have questioned on the one hand, whether “Puritanism” is more than a neo-idealist reification of a nonentity, and on the other, whether the early modern middle class is more than a myth, it might be the better part of wisdom to inter the remains of these vexed questions as quietly as possible. What follows is not a perverse attempt to flog a dead horse, if it is dead and a horse, but rather on the basis of a different perspective and different evidence to resurrect a part of what Timothy Breen has called “the non-existent controversy.”

Temporary Housing and Unsettled Population: Drivers of Urban Change in Early Modern Marseille and Rome

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 118-140
Author(s):  
Eleonora Canepari
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Mobile Population ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper argues that unsettled people, far from being “marginal” individuals, played a key role in shaping early modern cities. It does so by going beyond the traditional binary between rooted and unstable people. Specifically, the paper takes the temporary places of residence of this “unsettled” population – notably inns (garnis in France, osterie in Italy) – as a vantage point to observe social change in early modern cities. The case studies are two cities which shared a growing and highly mobile population in the early modern period: Rome and Marseille. In the first section, the paper focuses on two semi-rural neighborhoods. This is to assess the impact of mobility in shaping demographic, urbanistic, and economic patterns in these areas. Moving from the neighborhood as a whole to the individual buildings which composed it, the second section outlines the biographies of two inns: Rome’s osteria d’Acquataccio and Marseille’s hôtel des Deux mondes. In turn, this is to evaluate changes and continuities over a longer period of time.

The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth. By Liah Greenfeld, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. 541p. $45.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-804
Author(s):  
Mark N. Hagopian
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Peculiar Form ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Prime Movers ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
Precise Argument ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior

In this book Liah Greenfeld tackles the problem that preoccupied Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930). Like many others, she disputes Weber's claim that modern capitalism emerged uniquely in Northwest Europe because of the attitudes and behavior promoted by Protestant Christianity, especially in its Calvinist variety: The “worldly asceticism” and peculiar form of economic rationality involved spawned an economic system that eventually helped change the world. Critical of this precise argument, Greenfeld is in the Weberian camp in centering the problem where he did and in stressing the differences between modern capitalism and age-old commercial profit making found virtually in all civilizations. Similarly sound is Weber's methodological posture that sees culture, that is, ideas, ideals, and values dramatically influencing the emergence, growth, and durability of economic systems. Those who, like the whole Marxist tradition, maintain that underlying “structural” factors such as technology and environment are the prime movers of history have succumbed to untenable deterministic philosophies. History and social structures, unlike the works of simple nature, are constructed by human agency, which itself is often provided by outstanding thinkers and doers.

5. Family histories and the autobiography of childhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Family Histories ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The years of childhood have become increasingly central to autobiographical writing. Historians have linked this development to the new ideas about life-stages that emerged in the early modern period. Philippe Ariès (1914–84) made a key contribution in 1960 with a book on the child and family life in the ancien régime, known in English as Centuries of Childhood. ‘Family histories and the autobiography of childhood’ considers how genealogy (the tracing of family history) and the shaping of family relations by cultural and social forces have been central concerns for many modern autobiographers. It also looks closely at the relationship between child and parent and at the impact of mixed cultures.

scholarly journals Balkan or border warfare? Glimpses from the early modern period

Balcanica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Lothar Höbelt
Keyword(s):  
Head Start ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Impact

At the beginning of the early modern period, the concept of Europe did not yet exist. Religion, not politics or geography, was the defining criterion. It was Christendom that people referred to - not Europe - when they wanted to introduce the concept of burdensharing. In military terms, differences between Oriental and Occidental empires were less obvious; if anything, the Ottomans seemed to have a head-start in terms of centralization and professionalism. It was not the impact of Ottoman rule as such that created the conditions for ?Balkan warfare?. It was the unsettled character of the borders between ?East? and ?West? that gave rise to a form of low-intensity conflict that might be said to provide a foretaste of what came to be known as Balkan warfare.

scholarly journals Back from Shingly: Revisiting the premodern history of Jews in Kerala

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophira Gamliel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Jewish history in Kerala is based on sources mainly from the colonial period onward and mostly in European languages, failing to account for the premodern history of Jews in Kerala. These early modern sources are based on oral traditions of Paradeśi Jews in Cochin, who view the majority of Kerala Jews as inferior. Consequently, the premodern history of Kerala Jews remains untold, despite the existence of premodern sources that undermine unsupported notions about the premodern history of Kerala Jews—a Jewish ‘ur-settlement’ called Shingly in Kodungallur and a centuries-old isolation from world Jewry. This article reconstructs Jewish history in premodern Kerala solely based on premodern travelogues and literature on the one hand and on historical documents in Old Malayalam, Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic on the other hand. Sources of the early modern period are then examined for tracing the origins of the Shingly myth, arguing that the incorporation of the Shingly legend into the historiography of Kerala Jews was affected by contacts with European Jews in the Age of Discoveries rather than being a reflection of historical events.

philosophy, early modern reception of

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Corrias
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Impact

The early modern period saw a tremendous revival in interest in ancient philosophy. New Platonic texts became available. New ways of analyzing Aristotle were explored. Stoic and Epicurean philosophy began to exert an influence on key thinkers. The impact of ancient philosophy was felt in a number of key areas, these included natural history, theology, and epistemology.

Path Dependence in Ports: The Persistence of Cooperative Forms

2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 681-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo van Driel ◽  
Greta Devos
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Organizational Forms ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Impact

The concept of path dependence is used to compare the evolution of the organizational forms of two groups of transportation and warehousing firms, the Dutchvemenand the Antwerpnaties, that operated in seaports between c.1500 and 1900 and beyond. Their adoption of cooperative forms reflected the corporative guild creed that prevailed in early modern European cities. After 1815, when their businesses were no longer regulated by local governments, the vemen and naties remained locked into the cooperative form of governance that had prevailed for so long. This organizational form gradually adapted to changing circumstances, but its egalitarian structure remained intact until the late nineteenth century (vemen), and even into the twentieth century (naties). The two groups of firms’ organizational forms evolved differently under the impact of the legacy of the early modern period and the weight of their own later distinctive experiences.

scholarly journals THE URBAN AND THE GLOBAL IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Almanack ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Dantas ◽  
Emma Hart
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Urban Dynamics ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Abstract: This dossier argues that the historical phenomena of the urban and the global have interacted in a dialogical fashion: urban dynamics sustained the creation of a modern and globally connected world while the global movement of people, goods, ideas, and practices helped to define urban realities and ideals. The perspective that emphasizes the interconnection between the city and globalization-the global city-is prevalent in urban studies that focus on the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Applying the same analytical perspective to the early modern period using an implicit comparison between different urban centers and communities elucidates the role cities like Rio de Janeiro played in that era of globalization, as well as the impact that historical moment had on the city.

scholarly journals The Athos Bulgarian history writing of the 18th century between the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Polyvyannyy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Writing ◽  
National History ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bulgarian Population ◽  
The One

The article is dedicated to three Bulgarian historical works created at Athos in the second half of the 18th c. – "Slavo-Bulgarian History" by Saint Paisius of Hilendar, anonymous "Zograf History" and "Brief History of the Bulgarian Slav People" by monk-priest Spyridon of Gabrovo. By the author’s opinion, these works, on the one hand, were born in the atmosphere of rivalry between the monasteries of Athos and their Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian clergy, and on the other, were actualised by the strengthening contacts of Hilandar and Zograf with Bulgarian lands. If the first affected the contents of the mentioned works, the second lead to sufficient enlargement of their audience, which, in its turn, became a precondition of the growing interest to the national history among the Bulgarian population of Rumelia in the first half of the 19th c.

scholarly journals Reconstructing “Religion” from the Bottom Up

Numen ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 576-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Original Function ◽  
First Line ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The One ◽  
Tertium Comparationis

This article claims to uncover the core problematics that have made the debate on defining and conceptualizing “religion” so difficult and argues that this makes it possible to move beyond radical deconstruction towardsreconstructing the concept for scholarly purposes. The argument has four main steps. Step 1 consists of establishing the nature of the entity “religion” as areified imaginative formation. Step 2 consists of identifyingthe basic dilemmawith which scholars have been struggling: the fact that, on the one hand, definitions and conceptualizations do not seem to work unless they stay sufficiently close to commonly held prototypes, while yet, on the other hand, those prototypes are grounded in monotheistic, more specifically Christian, even more specifically Protestant, theological biases about “true” religion. The first line of argument leads to crypto-theological definitions and conceptualizations, the second to a radical deconstruction of the very concept of “religion.” Step 3 resolves the dilemma by identifying anunexamined assumption, orproblematic“blind spot,” that the two lines of argument have in common: they both think that “religion” stands against “the secular.” However, the historical record shows that these two defined themselves not just against one another but, simultaneously, against athirddomain (referred to by such terms as “magic” or “superstition”). The structure is therefore not dualistic but triadic. Step 4 consists of replacing common assumptions about how “religion” emerged in the early modern period by an interpretation that explains not just its emergence but its logicalnecessity, at that time, for dealing with the crisis of comparison caused by colonialist expansion. “Religion” emerged as thetertium comparationis— or, in technically more precise language, the “pre-comparativetertium” — that enabled comparison between familiar (monotheist, Christian, Protestant) forms of belief and modes of worship and unfamiliar ones (associated with “pagan” superstition or magic). If we restore the term to its original function, this allows us to reconstruct “religion” as a scholarly concept that not just avoids butpreventsany slippage back to Christian theology or ethnocentric bias.

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