5. Reform and democracy

Author(s):  
Robert C. Allen

The Industrial Revolution created social tensions and posed practical problems that shaped the politics of the period, affecting much of social and cultural life. Most commentators analysed society in terms of the three-class model anchored in the economics of Adam Smith. The three-class model provides insight into the politics of the Industrial Revolution. ‘Reform and democracy’ looks at key events that resulted in the evolution of a pre-industrial England, where economic life was conducted in a legal framework handed down from the medieval and Elizabethan periods, to the country at the end of the Industrial Revolution. These include the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the Reform Bill of 1832.

Author(s):  
Malcolm Crook

Voting is a familiar civic activity today, yet few participants are probably aware of its long and controversial history, which was especially marked in the case of France, the country chosen for this study of how people learn to vote. Casting a ballot does not come naturally, and it also requires the technology to accomplish it, besides the legal framework to regulate it. Democratization and the development of citizenship are lengthy processes, like the achievement of free and fair elections involving a secret ballot for all adults. A great experiment with mass voting for men was initiated in France in 1789, only for recurrent upheaval to ensure that the question of who could vote, and how they did so, was frequently re-examined and revised. The entire electoral system was a constant source of partisan conflict, popular protest, and innovation, throwing the great issues around voting into particularly sharp focus. This is the first book to explore the contested and contingent practice of the vote in a comprehensive fashion, over a time span that begins before the French Revolution and concludes with the present, while according significant space to local as well as national elections. The thematic analysis will assist an understanding of those countries where democracy remains in its infancy, while also offering insight into widespread contemporary concerns about declining electoral turnout. In so far as the global adoption of voting is reflected in the context of a specific society, it will be of interest to political scientists as well as historians.


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Altenhoener

The article reflects on the contribution of High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) project activities towards effective minority participation in economic, social and cultural life and provides, after a brief introduction into project methodology and function, examples of projects in different regions. The article emphasizes the particular role of education as tool for the promotion of participation and integration into socio-economic life, giving insight into the reasoning and challenges related to education related projects in various regions of HCNM engagement.


2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
James N. Class

Russian poets during the reign of Alexander I widely employed images and stories from Old Testament Scriptures to describe the ongoing wars with Napoleon, especially regarding the invasion of 1812. Their ideas are collected in a body of patriotic literature, which has received little attention for its literary merits but provides insight into the contemporary climate of opinion and the ways in which Russians responded to the French Revolution and Napoleon. Across Europe, other writers and intellectuals exhibited millenarian tendencies, seeking a renewed world with the old order swept away. While Russian writers exhibited similar concerns with finding a way to regenerate the decadent European world, they did so by appealing to their own experience as expiation for Europe’s sins. This study argues that the Napoleonic Wars catalyzed the development of Romantic Nationalism and the development of a messianic national myth, which arose primarily in Moscow after its destruction in 1812.


Author(s):  
Matthew Lewis

‘He was deaf to the murmurs of conscience, and resolved to satisfy his desires at any price.’ The Monk (1796) is a sensational story of temptation and depravity, a masterpiece of Gothic fiction and the first horror novel in English literature. The respected monk Ambrosio, the Abbot of a Capuchin monastery in Madrid, is overwhelmed with desire for a young girl; once having abandoned his monastic vows he begins a terrible descent into immorality and violence. His appalling fall from grace embraces blasphemy, black magic, torture, rape, and murder, and places his very soul in jeopardy. Lewis’s extraordinary tale drew on folklore, legendary ghost stories, and contemporary dread inspired by the terrors of the French Revolution. Its excesses shocked the reading public and it was condemned as obscene. The novel continues to beguile and shock readers today with its gruesome catalogue of iniquities, while at the same time giving a profound insight into the deep anxieties experienced by British citizens during one of the most turbulent periods in the nation’s history.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigino Bruni ◽  
Robert Sugden

It is a truism that a market economy cannot function without trust. We must be able to rely on other people to respect our property rights, and on our trading partners to keep their promises. The theory of economics is incomplete unless it can explain why economic agents often trust one another, and why that trust is often repaid. There is a long history of work in economics and philosophy which tries to explain the kinds of reasoning that people use when they engage in practices of trust: this work develops theories of trust. A related tradition in economics, sociology and political science investigates the kinds of social institution that reproduce whatever habits, dispositions or modes of reasoning are involved in acts of trust: this work develops theories of social capital. A recurring question in these literatures is whether a society which organizes its economic life through markets is capable of reproducing the trust on which those markets depend. In this paper, we look at these themes in relation to the writings of three eighteenth-century philosopher-economists: David Hume, Adam Smith, and Antonio Genovesi.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Alyssa M Tate ◽  
Brittany Hundman ◽  
Jonathan Heile

ABSTRACT Leather has been produced by a variety of methods throughout human history, providing researchers unique insight into multiple facets of social and economic life in the past. Archaeologically recovered leather is often fragile and poorly preserved, leading to the use of various conservation and restoration efforts that may include the application of fats, oils, or waxes. Such additives introduce exogenous carbon to the leather, contaminating the specimen. These contaminants, in addition to those accumulated during interment, must be removed through chemical pretreatment prior to radiocarbon (14C) dating to ensure accurate dating. DirectAMS utilizes organic solvents, acid-base-acid (ABA) and gelatinization for all leather samples. Collagen yield from leather samples is variable due to the method of production and the quality of preservation. However, evaluating the acid-soluble collagen fraction, when available, provides the most accurate 14C dates for leather samples. In instances where gelatinization does not yield sufficient material, the resulting acid-insoluble fraction may be dated. Here we examine the effectiveness of the combined organic solvent and ABA pretreatment with gelatinization for leather samples, as well as the suitability of the acid-insoluble fraction for 14C dating.


Author(s):  
Timothy Tackett

The book describes the life and the world of a small-time lawyer, Adrien-Joseph Colson, who lived in central Paris from the end of the Old Regime through the first eight years of the French Revolution. It is based on over a thousand letters written by Colson about twice a week to his best friend living in the French province of Berry. By means of this correspondence, and of a variety of other sources, the book examines what it was like for an “ordinary citizen” to live through extraordinary times, and how Colson, in his position as a “social and cultural intermediary,” can provide insight into the life of a whole neighborhood on the central Right Bank, both before and during the Revolution. It explores the day-to-day experience of the Revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, the disappointments—often all mixed together. It also throws light on some of the questions long debated by historians concerning the origins, the radicalization, the growth of violence, and the end of that Revolution.


Author(s):  
Liesbeth Plateau

This contribution presents an introductory analysis of one of the key players of the socalled“stenciled revolution” in Flanders in the nineteen sixties. Before concepts likeprovo distressed the entire societal and cultural life in the Netherlands, certain phenomenain Flanders anticipated to this. From 1963, small stenciled magazines shot up likemushrooms in the Flemish literary field. Due to their aggressive stand against the literaryestablishment, the critics quickly caught sight of them and engaged in an energeticpolemic. Because of their involvement in the literary polemics, the stenciled magazinesshortly determined the literary life to a high degree. However, partly due to their complexhistory and short life span, a systematic investigation of this phenomenon has not yet beenconducted. Nevertheless, the underground- magazines of the “stenciled revolution” are invarious ways relevant to a renewed literary history, as they explore both the literary-criticaland the creative-literary boundaries of the traditional contrast between literature andnon-literature. In this article, I focus on one of the most creative-literary oriented of theseFlemish stenciled magazines, namely daele (1966-1968), to gain an insight into the identityof the “stenciled revolution”.


2000 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
María del Mar Asensio Aróstegui

Set in the historical context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Jeanette Winterson's The Passion is an outstanding example of the kind of fiction that Elizabeth Wesseling (1991: vii) calls postmodernist historical novels, that is, "novelistic adaptations of historical material". Besides, being profoundly self-reflexive, the novel also falls under Linda Hutcheon's (1988) category of historiographic metafiction. The present paper focuses on Winterson's political choice of two representatives of historically silenced groups, a soldier and a woman, who use two apparently opposed narrative modes, the historical and the fantastic, to tell a story that both exposes history as a discursive construct and provides an alternative fantastic discourse for the representation of feminine desire.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-68
Author(s):  
Erica Pretorius ◽  
Hanna Nel

This article provides insight into a fourth-year social work module, integrating an authentic learning task. This task focused on the development of a funding proposal for a social service organization. It attempted to integrate collaborative learning by scaffolding students’ participation in the world of work, rather than just receiving a qualification. In view of the prevalent conversation around the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Covid-19 pandemic, it is essential that lecturers at higher education institutions embrace collaborative and problem-solving skills for student tasks. Recent evidence suggests that higher education graduates’ learning and their readiness for work in a professional environment require a greater focus on creative and innovative thinking to solve real-world problems. The results from this qualitative investigation revealed that students found working in teams and collaborating with their peers both challenging and rewarding. This process contributed to the holistic development of social workers ready to work in the real-world.


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