Turns to the Present

Why History? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 246-303
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Marxist Philosophy ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Social Scientific

Varieties of social History comprised the most successful initial challenge to political History, especially from the middle of the twentieth century. From the 1980s social History was gradually supplanted in prominence by a cluster of related historiographical developments concerned with language and culture. In the last fifteen years or so newer fashions have waxed, and to those too this chapter will attend, but, in terms of justifications for History, social History and the linguistic and cultural ‘turns’ remain especially important. Social-scientific social historians were more apt to assert History’s predictive value or at least its pragmatic contemporary importance at a time of industrialization beyond the north Atlantic—this was an update of History as Practical Lesson. Other social historians were to be found revising prevailing conceptions of the past with a view to altering politics in the present—disturbing ‘whiggish’ narratives, or inserting the marginalized into the historical record to fortify their voices now. This was History as Identity fused with History as Emancipation. ‘New cultural historians’ specialized in a version of History as Travel as they invoked exotic worlds past. They, like historians under the influence of Michel Foucault, who addressed culture through the prism of power, might adapt the Travel rationale, contrasting past ways of doing things with present ways in order to unmask the conventional, made and remade, character of social relations and of human-being, and thus the possibility of changing them. This was a Marxist agenda of History as Emancipation adapted for a post-Marxist philosophy.

THE NATURE OF POWER: CAPE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY, THE HISTORY OF IDEAS AND NEOLIBERAL HISTORIOGRAPHY The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock and the Environment, 1770–1950. By WILLIAM BEINART. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xxiii+402. £65 (ISBN 0-19-926151-2). Social History and African Environments. Edited by WILLIAM BEINART and JOANN MCGREGOR. Oxford: James Currey; Athens: Ohio University Press; Cape Town: David Philip, 2003. Pp. xii+275. £45 (ISBN 0-85255-951-8); £18.95, paperback (ISBN 0-85255-950-X). Environment, Power and Injustice: A South African History. By NANCY J. JACOBS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xxi+300. £45; $65 (ISBN 0-521-81191-0); £16.95; $24, paperback (ISBN 0-521-01070-5).

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
LANCE VAN SITTERT
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
South African ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The North ◽  
Atlantic Rim ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

For a region purportedly a backwater of South African environmental history at the close of the twentieth century,1 the Cape has moved rapidly toward centre stage at the start of the new millennium. It now boasts a wealth of literature in international journals and last year saw the publication of the first book-length environmental histories of the region, with the promise of still more to come, not least from a strong crop of recently or nearly completed doctoral dissertations in academies round the north Atlantic rim.2 The Cape owes this distinction to being the oldest region of British missionary and imperial endeavour in the subcontinent, guaranteeing extensive archives in the northern hemisphere and explaining both the bias in the current scholarship towards the pre-1910 period and lack of a comparable scholarship on any other part of southern Africa.3 This anomalous florescence can also be read for likely future trends in a national historiography otherwise unanimously deemed moribund if not actually in decline for the past decade.4 What it reveals are two contending trajectories: the first a shift away from political economy to the history of ideas and the other a fidelity to the late twentieth-century radical social history tradition and its core theme of the social relations of production.

Madhouse

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-363
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tilley ◽  
Paul Christian ◽  
Susan Ledger ◽  
Jan Walmsley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Learning Disability ◽  
Social History ◽  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immersive Theatre ◽  
Disability Research ◽  
History Of Institutions

Until the very end of the twentieth century the history of learning difficulties was subsumed into other histories, of psychiatry, of special education and, indeed, of disability. Initiatives to enable people with learning difficulties and their families to record their own histories and contribute to the historical record are both recent and powerful. Much of this work has been led or supported by The Open University’s Social History of Learning Disability Research (SHLD) group and its commitment to developing “inclusive history.” The article tells the story of the Madhouse Project in which actors with learning difficulties, stimulated by the story of historian activist Mabel Cooper and supported by the SHLD group, learned about and then offered their own interpretations of that history, including its present-day resonances. Through a museum exhibition they curated, and through an immersive theatre performance, the actors used the history of institutions to alert a wider public to the abuses of the past, and the continuing marginalization and exclusion of people with learning difficulties. This is an outstanding example of history’s potential to stimulate activism.

scholarly journals Interdecadal Variability of the Warm Arctic and Cold Eurasia Pattern and Its North Atlantic Origin

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (15) ◽  
pp. 5793-5810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mi-Kyung Sung ◽  
Seon-Hwa Kim ◽  
Baek-Min Kim ◽  
Yong-Sang Choi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rossby Wave ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Storm Track ◽  
Stationary Wave ◽  
Interdecadal Variability ◽  
Temperature Perturbation ◽  
Mean Flow ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

This study investigates the origin of the interdecadal variability in the warm Arctic and cold Eurasia (WACE) pattern, which is defined as the second empirical orthogonal function of surface air temperature (SAT) variability over the Eurasian continent in Northern Hemisphere winter, by analyzing the Twentieth Century Reanalysis dataset. While previous studies highlight recent enhancement of the WACE pattern, ascribing it to anthropogenic warming, the authors found that the WACE pattern has experienced a seemingly periodic interdecadal variation over the twentieth century. This long-term variation in the Eurasian SAT is attributable to the altered coupling between the Siberian high (SH) and intraseasonal Rossby wave emanating from the North Atlantic, as the local wave branch interacts with the SH and consequentially enhances the continental temperature perturbation. It is further identified that these atmospheric circulation changes in Eurasia are largely controlled by the decadal amplitude modulation of the climatological stationary waves over the North Atlantic region. The altered decadal mean condition of stationary wave components brings changes in local baroclinicity and storm track activity over the North Atlantic, which jointly change the intraseasonal Rossby wave generation and propagation characteristics as well. With simple stationary wave model experiments, the authors confirm how the altered mean flow condition in the North Atlantic acts as a source for the growth of the Rossby wave that leads to the change in the downstream WACE pattern.

Global Monsoon Responses to Decadal Sea Surface Temperature Variations during the Twentieth Century: Evidence from AGCM Simulations

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (22) ◽  
pp. 7675-7695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Jiang ◽  
Tianjun Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Sea Surface Temperature ◽  
Atmospheric Circulation ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
Monsoon Precipitation ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Sst Anomalies

Abstract Multidecadal variations in the global land monsoon were observed during the twentieth century, with an overall increasing trend from 1901 to 1955 that was followed by a decreasing trend up to 1990, but the mechanisms governing the above changes remain inconclusive. Based on the outputs of two atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) forced by historical sea surface temperature (SST) covering the twentieth century, supplemented with AGCM simulations forced by idealized SST anomalies representing different conditions of the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific, evidence shows that the observed changes can be partly reproduced, particularly over the Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon (NHSM) domain, demonstrating the modulation of decadal SST changes on the long-term variations in monsoon precipitation. Moisture budget analysis is performed to understand the interdecadal changes in monsoon precipitation, and the dynamic term associated with atmospheric circulation changes is found to be prominent, while the contribution of the thermodynamic term associated with humidity changes can lead to coincident wetting over the NHSM domain. The increase (decrease) in NHSM land precipitation during 1901–55 (1956–90) is associated with the strengthening (weakening) of NHSM circulation and Walker circulation. The multidecadal scale changes in atmospheric circulation are driven by SST anomalies over the North Atlantic and the Pacific. A warmer North Atlantic together with a colder eastern tropical Pacific and a warmer western subtropical Pacific can lead to a strengthened meridional gradient in mid-to-upper-tropospheric thickness and strengthened trade winds, which transport more water vapor into monsoon regions, leading to an increase in monsoon precipitation.

scholarly journals Influence of the North Atlantic SST Variability on the Atmospheric Circulation during the Twentieth Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 1396-1416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillaume Gastineau ◽  
Claude Frankignoul
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Lower Troposphere ◽  
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation ◽  
Early Winter ◽  
Tropical Forcing ◽  
The North ◽  
Sst Variability ◽  
Sst Anomaly ◽  
The North Atlantic

Abstract The ocean–atmosphere coupling in the North Atlantic is investigated during the twentieth century using maximum covariance analysis of sea surface temperature (SST) and 500-hPa geopotential height analyses and performing regressions on dynamical diagnostics such as Eady growth rate, wave activity flux, and velocity potential. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) generates the so-called SST anomaly tripole. A rather similar SST anomaly tripole, with the subpolar anomaly displaced to the east and a more contracted subtropical anomaly, which is referred to as the North Atlantic horseshoe pattern, in turn influences the atmosphere. In the fall and early winter, the response is NAO like and primarily results from subpolar forcing centered over the Labrador Sea and off Newfoundland. In summer, the largest atmospheric response to SST resembles the east Atlantic pattern and results from a combination of subpolar and tropical forcing. To emphasize the interannual to multidecadal variability, the same analysis is repeated after low-pass filtering. The SST influence is dominated by the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO), which also has a horseshoe shape, but with larger amplitude in the subpolar basin. A warm AMO phase leads to an atmospheric warming limited to the lower troposphere in summer, while it leads to a negative phase of the NAO in winter. The winter influence of the AMO is suggested to be primarily forced by the Atlantic SSTs in the northern subtropics. Such influence of the AMO is found in winter instead of early winter because the winter SST anomalies have a larger persistence, presumably because of SST reemergence.

scholarly journals Microscopic Analysis of Metal Recovered from the Wreck of RMS Titanic

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
J.J. Hooper McCarty ◽  
T. Foecke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Microscopic Analysis ◽  
Moving Object ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, approximately 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland. Despite her double-bottom construction and series of water-tight compartments, the luxurious passenger liner, deemed ‘unsinkable’ by the popular press, sank in only two hours and 40 minutes, taking 1523 lives with her. As the largest man-made moving object of her time, the construction of the RMS Titanic was a technological feat, yet her sinking comprised one of the most famous disasters of the twentieth century. A colossal tragedy, the sinking has been shrouded in mystery ever since, and has led to unending speculation concerning the details of that fateful evening.

The Business of Transatlantic Migration between Europe and the USA, 1900–1914

2006 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 476-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
DREW KEELING
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Population Transfer ◽  
Migration Process ◽  
Demographic Shift ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The North ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The North Atlantic

The relocation of Europeans across the North Atlantic during the first decade and a half of the twentieth century was the culmination of the longest-lived and most widely documented transoceanic migration of modern times. This enormous population transfer was a great human drama, a major international demographic shift, and a massive historical experiment in cultural transformation during a period of unprecedented globalization. This migration was also a complex and powerful travel business containing both risks and rewards for its three fundamental participants: the movers, the moved, and the sovereign authorities on either side of the borders being traversed. Prior studies have not adequately explained this business nor appreciated the extent to which the various strategies for dealing with its associated risks were crucial, largely congruent, and self-reinforcing elements of the overall migration process.

The Two Faces of Debt

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Stefan Nygård
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
The North ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North

This introductory chapter surveys the notoriously ambivalent concept of debt. It connects different approaches to debt in social theory and anthropology to the book’s focus on how past debts are mobilised in political debates in the present, and how the ‘North’ has been portrayed as indebted to the ‘South’ for its development, and vice versa. Both questions are framed by the way in which understandings of debt tend to gravitate towards reciprocity or domination. In view of its fundamental ambiguity, debt thus underpins both social cohesion and fragmentation. While it has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. A tension between debt as the glue of social bonds and debt as hierarchy consequently runs through the social history of the concept. Applied to regional and global North-South relations, discussions on debt have often centred on the question of retribution, involving difficult disputes over possible ways of settling debts in the present for injustices incurred in the past.

Europe's 1948 and America's Essential Lie

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Charles Lemert
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
The North Atlantic

The crucial year 1948 is taken as a turning point in the divergent relations of Europe and America. The economic and social history of the time is discussed to establish the odd cultural differences between the North Atlantic partner-nations on the question of distortion and misrepresentation of alleged social realities. Implications for social theory are discussed.

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