Emotional Arenas

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
History Of ◽  
Murder Trial ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Expression Of Emotions ◽  
Italian Unification ◽  
Cultural Rules

Based on the records of a murder trial that transfixed the nation, this book is a social history of 1870s Italy that develops a new paradigm for the history of emotions - the ‘emotional arena’. The decade following Italian unification formed a context of notable cultural variety and fluidity, and the experience and expression of emotions could be as variable as the regions making up the new nation. Through a close examination of a range of specific spaces in which lives, loves, and deaths unfolded – such as marital homes, places of socializing and entertainment, funerals, and a Roman courtroom – the book argues that social ‘arenas’ are crucial to the historical development of emotional cultural rules and styles. The narrative is driven by the failed marriage of a decorated but allegedly impotent Risorgimento soldier, his wife’s affair with a circus artiste (who had a string of previous lovers), and the illicit new couple’s murder of the husband. Hundreds of witnesses – from local professionals to servants and even circus clowns – interviewed across the length and breadth of the peninsula, left their personal views on marriage, love, sexuality, and infidelity. These provide a series of peepholes into little-known corners of the new nation’s social fabric. A careful yet imaginative reading of the prosecution records and contemporary newspaper coverage allows exploration of the highly emotional experiences generated by this story. The result is a classic Italian micro-history with surprising relevance for today’s emotionally volatile times.

French urban elites

Urban History ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-106
Author(s):  
ALAN FORREST
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Class Division ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Urban Structures ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
History Of

In France, as in the Anglo-Saxon world, social history has undergone a sea change in recent years with the growth of interest in issues of culture and representation, with the result that historians have come to ask rather different questions about cities and their social fabric. The change was not, of course, achieved overnight: since the 1930s the Annalistes have been opening up new approaches to the analysis of power and status, while in the development of micro-history Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou occupies an honoured place. In this the lingering influence of a Marxist model has played an important part. For decades Marxist theory provided the key which opened up issues of social power and class division, the methodology which led to a widespread study of urban structures and social dominance. And though in some hands it might be criticized for leading to an over-arching concern with the urban economy and the growth of the industrial city, the same Marxist perspective also encouraged studies of such questions as the identity of urban elites, the extent of social mobility within cities and the development of suburbs. More recently French historians have been among the most innovative in exploring the culture of urban life in a variety of different contexts, whether – and here I shall simply cite representative examples – by the study of individual professions (Christophe Charle), of dress and public appearance (Daniel Roche), or of the appropriation of urban space (Bernard Lepetit). The three books under review here all, in their different ways, contribute to our understanding of that urban culture and of the changes which it has undergone. Yannec Le Marec takes up Charle's arguments through a micro-history of the professional development of lawyers and doctors in the south Breton city of Nantes during the nineteenth century. Natacha Coquery, looking at the eighteenth century, explains the representation of social power implicit in the transfer of sumptuous Paris hôtels from private use to that of government ministries and their fast-multiplying staff. And Claude Petitfrère presents an edited collection of papers, emanating from a conference organized by the highly influential Centre d'histoire de la ville moderne et contemporaine in his own university at Tours, which illuminates across time and place the ways in which an urban patriciate was first constructed, then reproduced and represented to contemporaries. Taken together the three volumes go far to illustrate current developments in historiography and offer an overview of the present state of urban social history in France.

scholarly journals The Perfect Pair: Bloch, Febvre, and the History of Science and Technology

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-93
Author(s):  
Maria Paula Diogo
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Specific Time ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Time Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Historical Moment

AbstractLaunched in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, the Annales gave rise to a groundbreaking approach to history known as the École des Annales. Based on the study of social history over a long-term period or longue durée, the new paradigm emphasized the collective nature of the mentalités and the importance of a multilayered analysis of society. The Annales reclaim the history of science and the history of technology as part of history as a whole and inextricably linked to the intellectual context of a specific time period. In this article, based on the Annales and UNESCO’s History of Mankind, I will focus on Bloch’s and Febvre’s stands on history and their relevance to the history of science and technology, particularly by championing the relevance of material and mental tools to understand each historical moment and by critically exploring the concepts of mentalités, histoire-problème, histoire totale and historical temporality.

A Promising Liaison? Social History and Anthropology in South-Eastern Europe. Opportunities and Pitfalls

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 161-184
Author(s):  
Ulf Brunnbauer
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Historical Anthropology ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fixed Set ◽  
History Of ◽  
South Eastern Europe

This article argues that historical anthropology provides approaches for the exploration of previously neglected problems of the history of Southeastern Europe. Historical anthropology is not seen as a fixed set of methodologies and theories but rather as a perspective which directs attention to the questions of how societies have worked in the past and “ordinary” people made sense of their lives. Furthermore, historical anthropology tends to be comparative. In the past, Southeastern European historians concentrated on political history and ethnographers on the “traditional” culture of their nation, with little interaction between the two disciplines. After the fall of the communist system in 1989/1991, however, historians and ethnologists borrowed approaches from each other. The potential of historical anthropology is shown in particular with respect to the study of the social fabric of socialism—a topic until now shunned by historians while anthropologists have provided exemplary studies on this issue. The article ends with a discussion of the limits oPf historical anthropology and warns not to leave the state and economic structures out of historical analysis.

Early Cinema in Scotland

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Audience

This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.

The perils and dangers of these knights (and undead peasants): Interpreting English and Scottish Extent Rolls of 1297–1305

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Donnelly
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Compte Rendu ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Sources

Medieval Scottish economic and social history has held little interest for a unionist establishment but, just when a recovery of historic independence begins to seem possible, this paper tackles a (perhaps the) key pre-1424 source. It is compared with a Rutland text, in a context of foreign history, both English and continental. The Berwickshire text is not, as was suggested in 2014, a ‘compte rendu’ but rather an ‘extent’, intended to cross-check such accounts. Read alongside the Rutland roll, it is not even a single ‘compte’ but rather a palimpsest of different sources and times: a possibility beyond earlier editorial imaginings. With content falling (largely) within the time-frame of the PoMS project (although not actually included), when the economic history of Scotland in Europe is properly explored, the sources discussed here will be key and will offer an interesting challenge to interpretation. And some surprises about their nature and date.

Out of War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariane C. Ferme
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Sensory History ◽  
History Of

Out of War is an ethnographic engagement with the nature of intercommunal violence and the material returns of history during and after the 1991–2002 Sierra Leone civil war. The questions raised concern the nature and reckoning of time and reality, fact and fiction; the experience of violence and trauma; the reversibility of perpetrator and victim, friend and enemy; and past, present, and future in the colony and postcolony. The book is a reflection on West African epistemologies and ontologies that contribute to questions in counterpoint with those of international humanitarianism, struggling with the possibilities of truth and quandaries of justice. In the context of massive population displacements and humanitarian interventions, the ethnography traces strategies of psychological, political, and cultural survival and material dwelling in liminal spaces in the midst of the destruction of the social fabric engendered by war. It also examines the juridical creation of new figures of crimes against humanity at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone scene, in the aftermath of war, is visualized as a landscape of chronotopes, neologisms that summon the uncertainty of war: the sobel (“soldier by day, rebel by night”), pointing to the instability of distinctions between enemy and friend, or of opposing parties in the war (the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front [RUF] and soldiers in the national army), and the rebel cross, pointing to the possibility that the purported neutrality of the Red Cross masked partisan interests alongside the RUF. Chronotopes also testify to the difficulty of discerning between facts and rumors in war, and they freeze in time collective anxieties about wartime events. Finally, beyond the traumas of war, the book explores the returns of material traces in counterpoint to the more “monumental” presence of Chinese investments in Africa today, and it explores the forgotten sensory history of another China (Taiwan versus the People’s Republic of China) and another Africa inscribed in ordinary agrarian practices on rural landscapes, and in the fabric of domestic life, particularly since the non-aligned movement emerged from the Bandung conference in 1955.

Editor's Notes

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-7
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

In this opening issue of volume 31 we are presented with both nuanced and bold entry into several long enduring issues and topics stitching together the interdisciplinary fabric comprising ethnic studies. The authors of these articles bring to our attention social, cultural and economic issues shaping lively discourse in ethnic studies. They also bring to our attention interpretations of the meaning and significance of ethnic cultural contributions to the social history of this nation - past and present.

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