A “Religious Society under Heaven”: John Wesley and the Identity of Methodism

1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Dual Role ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Interests ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Town

Methodism figures as a kind of puzzle in the history of eighteenth-century England. Even writers who are not unsympathetic to John Wesley sometimes find his thought incoherent and confused. “The truth should be faced,” writes Frank Baker, “that Wesley (like most of us) was a bundle of contradictions.” Albert Outler celebrates Wesley's merits not as a thinker but as a popularizer of other men's doctrines. His Wesley was “by talent and intent, afolk-theologian: an eclectic who had mastered the secret of plastic synthesis, simple profundity, the common touch.” One man's eclecticism, however, is another man's humbug. The very qualities that Outler admires are those that E. P. Thompson condemns inThe Making of the English Working Class. Here Methodist theology is dismissed as “opportunist, anti-intellectual, and otiose.” Wesley “appears to have dispensed with the best and selected unhesitatingly the worst elements of Puritanism.” In doctrinal terms Methodism was not a plastic synthesis but “a mule.” What offends Thompson is not so much Wesley's incoherence as the social ambivalence of the movement that he had created. In class terms Methodism was, Thompson says, “hermaphroditic.” It attracted both masters and men. It catered to hostile social interests. It served a “dual role, as the religion of both the exploiters and the exploited.” The belief that Methodism is socially incomprehensible and perhaps in some sense socially illegitimate is not original with Thompson. Early statements of this assumption can be found in Richard Niebuhr'sThe Social Sources of Denominationalismand in John and Barbara Hammond's The Town Labourer.

Social Conflicts in Międzybóz in the Generation of the Besht

1996 ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Moshe J. Rosman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
Common People ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Town

This chapter evaluates the social conflicts in Międzybóż in the generation of the Besht. It characterizes the alignment of various social groups in the town, and suggests implications that these may have had for the Besht's status in the town and for the development of early hasidism. Discussions of social conflict in the Jewish communities of eighteenth-century Poland generally tend to consider the phenomenon in terms of the élite class versus the ‘common people’. According to the usual construction, rich, politically powerful individuals, particularly those with close ties to Polish magnates, monopolized control over the institutional resources of the Jewish community in order to benefit themselves and exploit or oppress the poor and powerless. There is evidence that, to some extent, this paradigm fits the circumstances of the Jews in Międzybóż during the time of the Besht's residence there.

Philosophcal review of h. white̕s tropological theory in the context of the new philosophy of history

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (152) ◽  
pp. 92-99
Author(s):  
S. M. Geiko ◽  
◽  
O. D. Lauta
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Text Organization ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Actual Material ◽  
The Common ◽  
Historical Nature ◽  
Selection Of

The article provides a philosophical analysis of the tropological theory of the history of H. White. The researcher claims that history is a specific kind of literature, and the historical works is the connection of a certain set of research and narrative operations. The first type of operation answers the question of why the event happened this way and not the other. The second operation is the social description, the narrative of events, the intellectual act of organizing the actual material. According to H. White, this is where the set of ideas and preferences of the researcher begin to work, mainly of a literary and historical nature. Explanations are the main mechanism that becomes the common thread of the narrative. The are implemented through using plot (romantic, satire, comic and tragic) and trope systems – the main stylistic forms of text organization (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony). The latter decisively influenced for result of the work historians. Historiographical style follows the tropological model, the selection of which is determined by the historian’s individual language practice. When the choice is made, the imagination is ready to create a narrative. Therefore, the historical understanding, according to H. White, can only be tropological. H. White proposes a new methodology for historical research. During the discourse, adequate speech is created to analyze historical phenomena, which the philosopher defines as prefigurative tropological movement. This is how history is revealed through the art of anthropology. Thus, H. White’s tropical history theory offers modern science f meaningful and metatheoretically significant. The structure of concepts on which the classification of historiographical styles can be based and the predictive function of philosophy regarding historical knowledge can be refined.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literate Society

The introduction shows the convergence and intertwining of the Industrial Revolution and the provincial Enlightenment. At the centre of this industrial universe lay Birmingham; and at its centre was Hutton. England’s second city is described in the mid-eighteenth century, and Hutton is used as a lens to explore the book’s themes: the importance of a literate society shared by non-elites; the social category of ‘rough diamonds’; how individuals responded to economic change; political participation in industrial towns; shifts in the modes of authorship; and an analysis of social change. The strategy of using microhistory, biography, and the history of the book is discussed, and exciting new sources are introduced. The discovery that self-education allowed unschooled people to participate in literate society renders visible people who were assumed to be illiterate. This suggests that eighteenth-century literacy was greater than statistics based on formal schooling indicate.

Characters Before Copyright

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Birkhold
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Unique Type ◽  
Collaborative Authorship ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Consumer Habits ◽  
Archival Work

How did authors control the literary fates of fictional characters before the existence of copyright? Could a second author do anything with another author’s character? Situated between the decline of the privilege system and the rise of copyright, literary borrowing in eighteenth-century Germany has long been considered unregulated. This book tells a different story. Characters before Copyright documents the surprisingly widespread eighteenth-century practice of writing fan fiction—literary works written by readers who appropriate preexisting characters invented by other authors—and reconstructs the contemporaneous debate about the literary phenomenon. Like fan fiction today, these texts took the form of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. Analyzing the evolving reading, writing, and consumer habits of late-eighteenth-century Germany, Characters before Copyright identifies the social, economic, and aesthetic changes that fostered the rapid rise of fan fiction after 1750. Based on archival work and an ethnographic approach borrowed from legal anthropology, this book then uncovers the unwritten customary norms that governed the production of these works. Characters before Copyright thus reinterprets the eighteenth-century “literary commons,” arguing that what may appear to have been the free circulation of characters was actually circumscribed by an exacting set of rules and conditions. These norms translated into a unique type of literature that gave rise to remarkable forms of collaborative authorship and originality. Characters before Copyright provides a new perspective on the eighteenth-century book trade and the rise of intellectual property, reevaluating the concept of literary property, the history of moral rights, and the tradition of free culture.

The Struggle of My Life

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Student Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
Intractable Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Freedom Movement

The present work, The Struggle of My Life: An Autobiography of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, is an English translation of Sahajanand’s autobiography, written in Hindi, Mera Jeevan Sangarsh. It carries an introduction by the translator which briefly deals with the Swami’s life and legacy. It needs to be emphasized that this is not an autobiography in the common run. Its primary focus is not on Swami’s persona; its central theme is the cause of the freedom movement in general and in particular, of the peasant movement under his leadership. It tells of the life and legacy of one of the most uncompromising and fearless freedom fighters and peasant leaders. It covers the social and political history of one of the most crucial periods of our national life, 1920–47. Today, when the Indian peasantry is faced with a number of intractable problems, it reminds them of the struggles of the peasants of yesteryears and the kind of trials and tribulations they went through. It is also remarkable that despite his vast learning and command over Sanskrit, Swami chose to write in simple, colloquial Hindi. That only speaks for his total identification with the masses. Both the teaching and student community as well as general readers would find this book useful, interesting and intellectually stimulating.

scholarly journals On Memory of Plates and Dishes

Fluminensia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Krystyna Pieniążek-Marković
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Western World ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

The aim of the article is to discuss how elements of food narratives meals and kitchen tools used for cooking are used in order to consolidate and shape the Croatian cultural memory, especially in the context of its Mediterranean heritage.For this reason, the texts by Veljko Barbieri, collected in the four volumes under the common and significant title Kuharski kanconijer. Gurmanska sjećanja Mediterana, are analysed. His circum-culinary narratives are a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge, references to historical and literary sources, personal memories and literary fiction. They can be easily inscribed in the Croatian (collective and individual) identity discourse since they are able to strengthen the collective (either national and supranational, or geo-regional) identity, and to construct the cultural memory. They also show Croatia's affiliation to the Western world along with its cultural-civilization rooting in antiquity, the Mediterranean region and Christianity, thus forming a part of the founding memory that develops a narrative about the very beginnings of Croatian presence on this land. The gastronomic narratives serve to create the cultural memory and this version of history which is to stabilize the social identity described by Pierre Nora and Andreas Huyssen. Through his stories, Barbieri shapes memory based on the representation of the past. In the analysed narratives, the memory carriers are dishes and plates which find reference to the oldest history of Croatia rendered by myths and other narratives. Associated with dishes, the pots enable the narrator to recall the past and the identity coded in individual dishes. They also participate in the processes of repeating, storage and remembering which generate a symbiotic relationship between man and thing. The memory carriers that is, food and plates depicted in Barbieri's culinary narratives do not convey their content in a neutral way, but construct their marked images.

scholarly journals How “Muslim” are Central Asian Muslims? A Historical and Comparative Enquiry

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-269
Author(s):  
Galina M. Yemelianova
Keyword(s):  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Common ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
High Level ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

The article analyzes the social, political, and symbolic functions of Islam in contemporary Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Over many centuries, Central Asians developed a particular form of Islam based on a productive and fluid synergy among Islam per se, their tribal legal and customary norms, and Tengrian and Zoroastrian beliefs and practices. It is characterized by a high level of doctrinal and functional adaptability to shifting political and cultural environments, the prevalence of mystical Islam (Sufism) and oral, rather than book-based, Islamic tradition. These qualities have defined distinctive Islamic trajectories in post-Soviet Central Asia, which differ significantly from those in other Muslim-majority countries and in Muslim communities in the West. At the same time, the common Eurasian space and lengthy shared political history of Central Asians and other peoples of Muslim Eurasia are also reflected in the considerable similarities in their Islamic trajectories.

Development and Demise of Rosewood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward González-Tennant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town ◽  
Hollywood Movie

Chapter 2 presents a history of Rosewood beginning with a brief overview of previous research into the town’s past. Most of the research takes place in response to a statewide conversation in the early and mid-1990s. Growing media attention encouraged Floridians to grapple with the meaning of Rosewood’s destruction in the past and present. The attention encouraged the state legislature to compensate the survivors and descendants of the massacre; that compensation represents the primary example of reparations granted to African Americans in the United States. To better understand the events of 1923, Florida’s state legislature commissioned a group of historians to investigate and write a concise history of the town and its destruction. The resulting report, based on four months of research, remains the authoritative treatment of the 1923 riot. The report, a few articles, a popular book, and a Hollywood movie all contribute to public knowledge and representations of Rosewood. González-Tennant’s overview of Rosewood’s history adds to previous research by offering a comprehensive look at similar events in American history. González-Tennant contextualizes Rosewood within broader social trends beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing until today.

3. The history of political thought and Marxism

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Friedrich Engels

‘The history of political thought and Marxism’ focuses on Marxism, which became the most global and scientific philosophy in the twentieth century. An important figure here is Karl Marx, the outcast from Prussian Trier that famously contributed to the science of historical materialism. Marx’s The Condition of the Working Class in England justified revolution through a philosophy that emerged from reading European history. Marx, along with Friedrich Engels, accepted that the progress of commerce by the end of the eighteenth century made European states more powerful than others in history. Marx’s contemporaries believed that the study of societies in every stage of history is vital in understanding the future.

Johann Anton Krieger, Printer of Jewish Books in Nowy Dwór

1999 ◽  
pp. 198-211
Author(s):  
Emanuel Ringelblum
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
Printing Industry ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

This chapter takes a look at Johann Anton Krieger. Krieger played a central role in the history of Jewish printing in Poland in the eighteenth century. This remarkably enterprising and versatile man owned a printing press in Nowy Dwór, in the province of Mazovia, and, for a time, another in the town of Korzec, in the province of Volynia. He also established a Jewish printing business close to Warsaw and engaged in extensive publishing activities. What is more, he influenced the policies of the Polish financial authorities, compelling them to take account of the needs of the Jewish printing industry inside Poland and to protect it from foreign competition while it was still weak.

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