Custom

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-225
Author(s):  
Alessio Fiore
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Village Society

References to ‘bonus usus’ and other terms denoting ‘good custom’ are more common in a rural than an urban context from 1100 onwards. Much attention is devoted to oaths and oath swearers (sacramentales), who appear to have been mainly chosen by signori rather than by local communities, and their role in dispute settlement. Socially oath swearers appear to be members of the upper-middle stratum of village society, the same group that later supplied the consuls of the thirteenth-century rural commune. Collective memory appears to stretch back 40–70 years at which time-frame customs acquired sufficient antiquity to be considered immutable. The act of recalling customs in a public assembly (placitum) served to reinforce community identity and delineate the parameters of seigneurial intervention in local society (rights, privileges, dues). Discussion moves on to the inter-relationship between written and oral custom and the meaning of the term malus usus which together with its antonym bonus usus is seen as key to unlocking the content of political discourse in the countryside. The sense of malus usus is of novelty, lack of precedent, absence of consensus. Interestingly the author shows that what was once perceived as bonus usus could at a later date and in different circumstances be seen as malus usus.

Sermons to the Upper Bourgeoisie by a Thirteenth Century Franciscan

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 187-199
Author(s):  
D. L. D’Avray
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Distinctive Features

‘Implantation urbaine des orders mendiants a-t-elle eu une influence sur le type de piété et de spiritualité qu’ils proposaient?’ This was one of the questions posed in the Annales programme of research on the friars and the towns, and the recent study of mendicant spirituality by Rosenwein and Little is an answer to more or less the same question. They conclude that within the period when the original ideal remained more or less intact, the preaching of the mendicants was one of a number of related responses to urban money-making. This is an excellent and stimulating study, and one of the lines of research it should stimulate is the analysis of the mendicant sermons themselves, which have survived in great numbers. A number of years spent with these sources has left me with the impression that the urban context can provide a non–trivial explanation for certain aspects only of the ‘spirituality’ of mendicant preaching, and that many of its distinctive features will have to be accounted for in other terms. Provided that we do not mistake the part for the whole, however, those elements of mendicant preaching which can be directly related to their urban environment—both economic and political—are worthy of attention in their own right, and it is with them that I am concerned here. The sermons which I will discuss illustrate the church’s effort to adapt itself to the re-emergence of a bourgeoisie, after the long centuries during which its social context was predominantly rural.

KA'KAW POTS AND COMMON CONTAINERS: CREATING HISTORIES AND COLLECTIVE MEMORIES AMONG THE CLASSIC MAYA OF XUNANTUNICH, BELIZE

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa J. LeCount
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Classic Maya ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
Domestic Consumption ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Public Offerings ◽  
Natural Cycles ◽  
Lowland Maya

AbstractReconstruction of foodways at the Lowland Maya center of Xunantunich, Belize, illustrates how commensality is fundamental to the construction of multilayered identities. Collective memory and linear histories form the foundation of identities because they are the mental frameworks people use to construct shared pasts. At Xunantunich, community identity was expressed though pottery and practices associated with the preparation of foods for domestic consumption and public offerings. In a world of natural cycles centered on family reproduction, horticultural activities, and yearly ceremonies, these symbols and rituals structured the lives of all people and embodied within them a collective memory of community. Linear histories were recorded in images and texts on drinking paraphernalia that were likely used for toasting honored individuals, ancestors, or gods during commemorative rites. These inscriptions and bodily practices marked individuals and their houses as people and places of prominence with separate identities.

Self-government and 1911 in China: Revolution or Continuity in the Political Participation in Sichuan Province?

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 165-189
Author(s):  
Monica de Togni
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Sichuan Province ◽  
The Political ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Role Taking ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Western Sichuan ◽  
The Creation

The process that led to the creation of self-government organs, and their activities in the first years of their existence, shows a consistent continuity between the imperial and the republican institutions, but also some changes in the institutional behaviour of the representatives of the local communities before and after the 1911’s revolution. The different meaning attributed to the institutional reforms as they appear to have been interpreted by the Qing Court, from the interpretations by the local society - a tools to control the political activism of the local notables vs a means to play a more active role in the local policy -, did not interfere with the creation of the organs of self-government, a part of the new structure to be built for the constitutional monarchy scheduled through imperial edicts on 27th August, 1908. The local activism and activities, as they are illustrated for Sichuan province through provincial and county archive documents, local gazetteers and reviews, show contradictory tendencies even as relates to some officials, and part of local communities anticipating sometimes the dispositions by the central government for the implementations of self-government, and some resistance by the people who had the right to vote in the participation to the preparatory process for the poll. However, the flourishing of self-government councils of the lower level and the fields of their interventions as representatives of the local communities show a very positive attitude on part of the local communities that continued until Yuan Shikai closed them down in 1914. This study will be concentrating on this aspect and will include, among other things, the case-study of Xuanhan county in north-western Sichuan, where a powerful local lineage played a very relevant role, taking advantage of the disruption of the provincial institutional order.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-184
Author(s):  
He Bian
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Modern China ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Local Society ◽  
The Government ◽  
Shed Light

This concluding chapter turns to developments in the bencao tradition after the fall of Qing China and considers the broader implications of this study on modern China. It asserts that while the making of the bencao pharmacopeia had long faded from the government-sponsored cultural stage, the power of pharmaceutical objecthood endured in less centralized expressions. The popularization of pharmaceutical culture mirrored the efforts of local communities’ efforts to reclaim moral agency in the wake of the traumatic Taiping Wars (1852–1864) and the Arrow War (1856–1860). Pharmacists joined forces with resident gentry, clergy, and a growing contingent of Confucian activists to rebuild local society and reshape national politics. The struggle for authority over the nature of drugs thus continues to shed light on the complex interplay among knowledge, power, and ethics in modern China; pharmacy remains a good vantage point from which to observe the perennial search for consensus over the political administration of human nature.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Simon Wendt
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Conceptual Distinction

The introduction discusses the historiography of the DAR and summarizes the study’s findings. It also explains how theories on nationalism, gender, and memory enhance our understanding of the organization’s ideology and activism. Many of the organization’s commemorative rituals would not have been possible without the cooperation of local communities, suggesting that the Daughters confirmed and strengthened existing ideas about gender, race, and the nation among many white citizens. Most importantly, it introduces Egyptologist Jan Assmann’s conceptual distinction between “communicative memory” and “cultural memory,” arguing that it can help historians better understand the tensions and intricate connections between elite and vernacular memories of the nation. These two modes of memory, persevered by many political and historical groups such as the DAR, are inextricably entangled because the memories of families, towns, regions, and the nation tend to be connected with and are fused into what is presented as the coherent collective memory of one single imagined community.

Reconceptualizing Judicial Effectiveness at the WTO

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-49
Author(s):  
Sivan Shlomo Agon
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Effectiveness ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Organizational Goals ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

Drawing on the rich social science literature on organizational effectiveness, this chapter puts forth the theoretical and methodological foundations of the WTO Dispute Settlement System (DSS) goal-based effectiveness framework. After discussing the main approaches developed in the social sciences to defining organizational effectiveness, the chapter explains the reasons for selecting the goal-based approach to serve as the basis for the study into the effectiveness of the WTO DSS. The chapter then reviews the central concepts associated with this approach and their application to the world of WTO adjudication, while focusing on organizational goals, goal multiplicity, goal conflict, and goal shifting. Finally, the chapter discusses several methodological determinations that should be made before applying the proposed WTO DSS goal-based effectiveness framework. These include the selection of the goal setters to inform the DSS’s effectiveness analysis, the choice of performance indicators, and the determination of the time frame in which effectiveness is to be measured.

Law as Text

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-102
Author(s):  
Thomas J. McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
The Law

Roman and canon law were fields of knowledge based on the interpretation of authoritative texts. In their study of Roman and canon law, the authors of Bracton would have begun to think about the practice of law as a textual practice. This was not an obvious way to think about law in the thirteenth century. In England’s county and manor courts, much of the law was contained in the collective memory of the suitors of the court, not in authoritative texts. Thus, the fact that Bracton’s authors studied Roman and canon law would have led them to think about law in a different manner from many of their colleagues in the central royal courts.

Sirte’s Tribes Under the Islamic State

2018 ◽  
pp. 153-180
Author(s):  
Virginie Collombier
Keyword(s):  
Regime Change ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Coastal City ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, a former stronghold of Mu’ammar Qaddafi and his regime, and analyses the circumstances under which it fell under the control of the Islamic State (IS) between 2015 and 2017. It argues that the tribal character of the local society combined with the influence of the Salafist current within the tribes and their search for a channel to regain political influence and military power after the regime change are not sufficient to explain why IS could develop and take root in Sirte. Rather, it underlines the dramatic impact of the 2011 war on relations of power and authority within the local communities, as well as the incapacity of Libya’s transitional authorities to provide security in the city as key factors that contributed to Sirte becoming a Jihadist platform in Libya and North Africa.

‘La mineraria lavori o lasci lavorare’: myth and memory of a labour struggle in Tuscany

Modern Italy ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianluca Fantoni
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
A Company

This article is an analysis of a long union dispute between the workers and the management of the Società Mineraria del Valdarno (S.M.V.), a company which had mining rights in the lignite basin of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni, in the municipality of Cavriglia. Cavriglia is in a ‘red zone’ in the province of Arezzo, in central Tuscany and the dispute raged on from the end of 1947 to the first half of the 1950s. The article focuses primarily on two aspects: (1) how the union dispute of the miners of Valdarno fits into the broader political strategy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI); (2) how this struggle was perceived and elaborated by workers and incorporated into the collective memory of local communities.

scholarly journals Monuments, civil war and local communities : Archaeological Heritage in the Duhok Region (Kurdistan Region of Iraq). Part 3

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Eszter Spät
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Kurdistan Region ◽  
Indelible Mark ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Archaeological Heritage ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Historical Monuments ◽  
The Social

This third and final part in a series of articles on the archaeological heritage of the Duhok Region of Iraqi Kurdistan will look at the heritage and its role in the life of local society from the aspect of destruction left by the Saddam regime. The decades of Saddam’s rule left an indelible mark on the social and cultural map of Northern Iraq, especially on the Kurdistan Region. His attempts at collectivization, sometimes in the name of modernization, sometimes as a punitive military measure against the local population, redrew the settlement pattern of the region, changed the traditional economic and social structure and destroyed much of the built heritage. Some of this were historical monuments like the medieval monastery of Seje described below. Others, like village mosques, churches, local shrines, graves of saints, even houses where generations grew up, were of importance “only” for the local communities. These buildings were not discussed by scholarly studies, and they mainly remained unrecognized by academic research. However, their annihilation represented a rupture in the cultural fabric of the region, a loss keenly felt to this day. This is the case of the old Yezidi village of Khanke and the shrine of Bayazid.

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