Introduction

Author(s):  
G. Edward White

The previous volume of this trilogy left off by summarizing momentous changes that, cumulatively, had transformed American society from its premodern state to modernity by the second decade of the twentieth century. As employed in that volume and this one, the term modernity means the presence of a world characterized by maturing industrial capitalism, a political culture featuring increased participatory democracy, the weakening of a hierarchical, class-based social order predicated on relatively fixed status distinctions, and the emergence of secular theories of knowledge and “scientific” methods of intellectual inquiry as competitors to theories and methods based on religious beliefs. By the close of the 1920s, all of those features of American life were in place....

Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.


1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 109634802110109
Author(s):  
Stephen B. Shiring ◽  
Elizabeth J. Shiring

Evolving from the simple structure of a colonial inn to a grandiose city hotel by the 20th century, the innkeeper likewise professionally transformed into a hotel keeper. Assisting in this growth was the emerging hotel associations. Hotel associations provided collective member strength on issues, offered fellowship, and legitimized and professionalized their positions in American society.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Roumaissa Moussaoui

The sterility of twentieth century society fostered nostalgia for the values of the past and a renewed interest in classical mythology. For D. H. Lawrence (1885 –1930), myth became one of the most important elements in both his fictional and non fictional works. Taking well-known examples, he reinterpreted them as an illustration of his own personal vision. This article is limited to a study of three major fictional works: The Rainbow, Women in Love and The Virgin and The Gypsy and attempts to analyse them in the light of the Genesis myth. It hinges on the hypothesis that Lawrence, by condemning orthodox religious beliefs, formulated his own creation myth: his regenesis. He attempted to expose the false ideals of conventional society, which had for centuries destroyed man’s natural intuition, by a re-examination of the Genesis myth. By using an analytical approach, this article aims to answer several provocative questions. Firstly, how far did Lawrence succeed in undermining conventional authority? Secondly, how successful was he in formulating his philosophy of regenesis? Thirdly, to what extent can this philosophy be seen as an answer to the problems of the age?


2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOEL CABRITA

ABSTRACTTwentieth-century Natal and Zululand chiefs' conversions to the Nazaretha Church allowed them to craft new narratives of political legitimacy and perform them to their subjects. The well-established praising tradition of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Zulu political culture had been an important narrative practice for legitimating chiefs; throughout the twentieth century, the erosion of chiefly power corresponded with a decline in chiefly praise poems. During this same period, however, new narrative occasions for chiefs seeking to legitimate their power arose in Nazaretha sermon performance. Chiefs used their conversion testimonies to narrate themselves as divinely appointed to their subjects. An alliance between the Nazaretha Church and KwaZulu chiefs of the last hundred years meant that the Church could position itself as an institution of national stature, and chiefs told stories that exhorted unruly subjects to obedience as a spiritual virtue.


Author(s):  
Alexey E. Shishkin

Introduction. In this article, we investigate the reasons for the “disappearance” of man in the context of his rejection of God, history, culture, nature. We are interested in a two-fold approach to understanding death: a) all perishable and imitative activity is a signal of the dying of both consciousness and a person; b) a material, fractional and secular person cannot construct Beauty, Truth, Eternity. Methods. The interdisciplinary approach showed a kink in a person from different angles. The hermeneutic approach helped to reveal the inner content of the concept of “death”. The systems approach showed the breadth of the studied object of death, affecting all institutional structures and spheres of life. The structural-functional method helped to present the phenomenon of death in a detailed manifestation both in ontogeny and phylogeny. The value-institutional analysis helped to realize the stability of the social order through the fixation of basic values in the mind. General scientific methods of cognition were used: induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, the unity of the logical and the historical, the ascent from the concrete to the abstract. Results. If a person does not have transcendences, then the focus of understanding narrows, and the spiritual and moral parameters are replaced by consumerist ones. If a person defends only the immanence of being, then in a lonely and lonely state, his remoteness from the Primary Source means his own sentence to contentment with the ultimate “nothing”. Charles Tylor, through the concept of a “closed” or “horizontal” world, defines the nonsense of a person who is inside a transcendental structure. Discussion and Conclusion. The theme of death has shown the “cross-cutting nature” of the problem of domination/dependence on human death throughout the history of philosophy.


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