Conservative Liberalism as a Disciplinary Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Kenneth Dyson
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Time Consistency ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Exclusive Property ◽  
Franz Böhm ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Internal Fragmentation ◽  
Porous Boundaries

This chapter examines economic and monetary discipline. It notes that conservative liberals accorded great importance to law as the source of discipline, as exemplified by Franz Böhm, Louis Brandeis, and Maurice Hauriou. The chapter considers discipline in the history of liberalism, noting that it is not the exclusive property of conservative liberalism—though it is its predominant characteristic. It considers the social, economic, and political functions of rules, notably the work of Friedrich Hayek; the Currency and Banking Schools; the difficulties that arise in the choice, design, and use of rules; the reinforcement provided by credibility and time-consistency literature since the 1970s; the legitimacy and accountability problems of unelected power; the question of when discipline becomes the enemy of democracy and liberty; and the respective roles of the state and the market as sources of destabilizing shocks. The chapter stresses the rich and revealing use of metaphor by conservative liberals: their rejection of engineering metaphors for those of gardening, architecture, health and medicine, and religion. Ordo-liberalism is characterized as an open-ended tradition, with internal fragmentation and porous boundaries, its membership including migrants as well as natives. The notion of a mainstream is defined by a social process of selecting key texts as essential references and citations.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Winter
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Oppression ◽  
The Rich ◽  
To Come

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has shown that the multiplicity of lived ʻAlawi experiences cannot be reduced to the sole question of religion or framed within a monolithic narrative of persecution; that the very attempt to outline a single coherent history of “the ʻAlawis” may indeed be misguided. The sources on which this study has drawn are considerably more accessible, and the social and administrative realities they reflect consistently more mundane and disjointed, than the discourse of the ʻAlawis' supposed exceptionalism would lead one to believe. Therefore, the challenge for historians of ʻAlawi society in Syria and elsewhere is not to use the specific events and structures these sources detail to merely add to the already existing metanarratives of religious oppression, Ottoman misrule, and national resistance but rather to come to a newer and more intricate understanding of that community, and its place in wider Middle Eastern society, by investigating the lives of individual ʻAlawi (and other) actors within the rich diversity of local contexts these sources reveal.

Las Yslas de Esperar en Dios: The Jesuit Mission in Moro 1546–1571

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-606
Author(s):  
John Villiers
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Mission Field

The numerous and voluminous reports and letters which the Jesuits wrote on the Moro mission, as on all their missions in Asia, are perhaps of less interest to us now for what they reveal of the methods adopted by the Society of Jesus in this remote corner of their mission field or the details they contain about the successes and failures of individual missionaries, than for the wealth of information they provide on the islands where the Jesuits lived and the indigenous societies with which they came into contact through their work of evangelization. In other words, it is not theprimary purpose of this essay to analyse the Jesuit documents with a view to reconstructing the history of the Moro mission in narrative form but rather to glean from them some of the informationthey contain about the social and political conditions in Moro during the forty years or so in the sixteenth century when both the Jesuit missionaries and the Portuguese were active in the regio Because the Jesuits were often in close touch with local rulers and notables, whether or not they succeeded in converting them to Christianity, and because they lived among their subjects for long periods, depending upon them for the necessities of life and sharing their hardships, their letters and reports often show a deeper understanding of the social, economic and political conditions of the indigenous societies and, one suspects, give a more accurate and measured account of events and personalities than do the official chroniclers and historians of the time, most of whom never ventured further east than Malacca and who in any case were chiefly concerned to glorify the deeds of the Portuguese and justify their actions to the world.

scholarly journals Dreams of the Russian Revolution in the Utopias of Alexander Chayanov and Andrei Platonov

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-290
Author(s):  
Alexander Nikulin
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

The Russian Revolution is the central theme of both A. Chayanov’s novel The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia and A. Platonov’s novel Chevengur. The author of this article compares the chronicles and images of the Revolution in the biographies of Chayanov and Platonov as well as the main characters, genres, plots, and structures of the two utopian novels, and questions the very understanding of the history of the Russian Revolution and the possible alternatives of its development. The article focuses not only on the social-economic structure of utopian Moscow and Chevengur but also on the ethical-aesthetic foundations of both utopias. The author argues that the two utopias reconstruct, describe, and criticize the Revolution from different perspectives and positions. In general, Chayanov adheres to a relativistic and pluralistic perception of the Revolution and history, while Platonov, on the contrary, absolutizes the end of humankind history with the eschatological advent of Communism. In Chayanov‘s utopia, the Russian Revolution is presented as a viable alternative to the humanistic-progressive ideals of the metropolitan elites with the moderate populist-socialist ideas of the February Revolution. In Platonov’s utopia, the Revolution is presented as an alternative to the eschatological-ecological transformation of the world by provincial rebels inspired by the October Revolution. Thus, Chayanov’s liberal-cooperative utopia and Platonov’s anarchist-communist utopia contain both an apologia and a criticism of the Russian Revolution in the insights of its past and future victories and defeats, and opens new horizons for alternative interpretations of the Russian Revolution.

The Modern City

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shifting Balance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City ◽  
Rich History

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.

Egyptian International Labor Migration and Social Processes: Toward Regional Integration

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph R. Sell
Keyword(s):  
Regional Integration ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
International Labor ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Labor Migration

This article reviews evidence that contemporary Egyptian international labor migration to oil-rich Arab countries has followed a classic social process which starts with a homo economicus phase, advances into a goal reorientation phase, and ends with the establishment of diaspora communities in destination societies. The history of Egyptian migration, current estimates of migration, the role of Egyptians in selected Arab countries, and emergent processes all were found to support the predictions of the social process model. Particularly important support comes from the finding that all social classes participated in this migration. Conclusions suggest the likelihood that Egyptian migration processes will promote economic and perhaps social integration in the region.

Lucian as Social Satirist

1961 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 199-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Dio Chrysostom ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Actual Participation

This paper owes its inspiration to a remark made by Professor M. Rostovtzeff; in a note in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire on the widespread social unrest of the first two centuries A.D., having cited other literary authorities such as Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, etc., he writes: ‘The social problem as such, the cleavage between the poor and the rich, occupies a prominent place in the dialogues of Lucian; he was fully aware of the importance of the problem.’ No one, as far as I know, has attempted to collect and discuss the main passages in Lucian on this topic, and the latest writer on this aspect of Lucian reaches a conclusion quite opposed to Rostovtzeff and one which I believe to be wholly misleading. The aim of this paper is to collect and discuss the main references in Lucian to the social problem interpreting them in the light of Lucian's life and background, and the social and economic conditions of his age. In particular I shall stress the importance of the Cynic tradition as it bears on Lucian's attitude, but shall endeavour to show that this tradition is firmly rooted in practical politics and actual participation in social revolutionary movements and goes far beyond the repetition of mere ethical cliches generally ascribed to it.

Greek History

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94
Author(s):  
Kostas Vlassopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Secondary Importance ◽  
Corporate Groups ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Class And Status ◽  
Material Evidence

Pride of place in this review goes undoubtedly to Sally Humphreys’ monumental study of kinship in ancient Athens. A work in progress for four decades, it is finally published in two volumes of almost 1,500 pages. The book's coverage is vast: the first volume focuses on interactions among kinsfolk (legal, social, economic, and ritual), while the second volume explores the various Athenian corporate groups which employed kinship as their organizing principle (phratries, gene, tribes, and trittyes) and provides an exhaustive discussion of kinship networks attested across all Athenian demes. As a result of its size and encyclopaedic coverage, I suspect that most readers will approach this work in a piecemeal fashion, looking for a particular phenomenon or searching for a particular kinship network; the lack of a detailed introduction or conclusions – features that would have been essential in a work of this size and ambition – does not help in this respect. But this work needs to be assessed as a whole, for three main reasons. The first is that households were the main organizing units of Athenian society, while most Athenian groups were organized on a kinship principle. Their roles were crucial, and they need to complement the social models of Athenian society we employ, alongside class and status. The second reason is that Humphreys makes a very good job of exploring the various contradictory tendencies at work in how Athenian kinship operated: the interests of male heads; of wives, children, and relatives; of wider kinship networks; and of the political community. The third is the combination of literary, epigraphic, and material evidence of Athenian kinship, which reveals in often impressive ways the contradictions and gaps of our various sources: not only will this work be essential reading for those working on Athenian oratory, archaeology, or economy, but its accumulated detail offers the basis for writing a novel history of Athenian society. Of course, a work gestated for forty years will also show the unavoidable flaws of its piecemeal construction; but these are largely of secondary importance, compared to the value of the end product.

Perceptions of a New Era? Historical Writing in Early Ottoman Damascus

Arabica ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Social Uses ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThe year 922/1516-7 is usually treated as an important turning point in the history of Bilād al-Šām. The Ottoman conquest initiated change in various fields which has been the focus of much scholarly attention. However, it is still difficult to understand in what ways the new Ottoman subjects perceived these changes, especially in terms of allegiance to the ruling dynasties. To trace the attitudes of different persons and groups, scholars have often turned to the rich body of contemporary historical writing and used it as a source of information. In this article, which is centred on Ottoman Damascus, I argue that chronicles and biographical collections themselves are important witnesses of change and worth to be studied in their own right. As a step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the social uses of knowledge, I suggest that we need to enquire further into the significance of melancholy and solitude in Ottoman historical writing.

College Communities Abroad

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

In the early modern period, Catholic communities in Protestant jurisdictions were impelled to establish colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories. The Irish, English and Scots Colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and elsewhere are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders and the German lands. Similarly colleges were established in Rome for various national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example. The first colleges were founded in the mid-sixteenth century and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their closure in late eighteenth century. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century. Historians have long argued that these exile colleges played a prominent role in maintaining Catholic structures by supplying educated clergy equipped to deal with the challenges of their domestic churches. This has ensured that the Irish, English and Scots colleges in particular have a rich historiography laid out in the pages of Archivium Hibernicum, the Records of the Scots Colleges or the volumes published under the aegis of the Catholic Record Society in England. Until recently, however, their histories were considered in isolating confessional and national frameworks, with surprisingly little attempt to examine commonalities or connections. Recent research has begun to open up the topic by investigating the social, economic, cultural and material histories of the colleges. Meanwhile renewed interest in the history of early modern migration has encouraged historians to place the colleges within the vibrant migrant communities of Irish, English, Scots and others on the continent. The Introduction begins with a survey of the colleges. It assesses their historiographies, paying particular attention to the research of the last three decades. The introduction argues that an obvious next step is to examine the colleges in transnational and comparative perspectives. Finally, it introduces the volume's essays on Irish, English, Scots, Dutch, German and Maronite colleges, which provide up-to-date research by leading historians in the field and point to the possibilities for future research on this exciting topic.

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