Looking Backward 2000-1887

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Ideal Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Utopian Fiction ◽  
Socialist Utopia ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
The Ideal

‘No person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity.’ Julian West, a feckless aristocrat living in fin-de-siècle Boston, plunges into a deep hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. America has been turned into a rigorously centralized democratic society in which everything is controlled by a humane and efficient state. In little more than a hundred years the horrors of nineteenth-century capitalism have been all but forgotten. The squalid slums of Boston have been replaced by broad streets, and technological inventions have transformed people’s everyday lives. Exiled from the past, West excitedly settles into the ideal society of the future, while still fearing that he has dreamt up his experiences as a time traveller. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) is a thunderous indictment of industrial capitalism and a resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia. Matthew Beaumont’s lively edition explores the political and psychological peculiarities of this celebrated utopian fiction.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

Frozen Negotiations: The Peace Process in Chiapas

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raúúl Beníítez Manaut ◽  
Andrew Selee ◽  
Cynthia J. Arnson
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government ◽  
Better Than

Mexico's democratic transition has helped reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of renewed armed conflict in Chiapas. However, absent more active measures from the government and the Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) to seek a permanent peace agreement and come to terms with the legacies of the past, the conflict will linger on in an unstable déétente, which we term ““armed peace.”” While this situation is far better than the open hostilities of the past, it also belies the promise of a fully democratic society in which all citizens are equally included in the political process. La transicióón democráática en Mééxico ha contribuido a reducir, si no eliminar, la posibilidad de que el conflicto armado en Chiapas se reanude. Sin embargo, sin esfuerzos mas activos por parte del gobierno y del Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) para buscar un acuerdo de paz permanente y saldar cuentas con el pasado, el conflicto permaneceráá en un estado inestable que llamamos ““paz armada””. Aunque esta situacióón es mucho mejor que las tensiones y agresiones del pasado, no cumple los requisitos de una sociedad plenamente democráática en que todos los ciudadanos participan en condiciones de igualdad en el proceso políítico.

Red Parents, Blue Parents: The Politics of Modern Parenthood

The Forum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel Elder ◽  
Steven Greene
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
American Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractOver the past several decades the major parties in the US have not only politicized parenthood, but have come to offer increasingly polarized views of the ideal American family. This study builds on recent scholarship exploring the political impact of parenthood (e.g. Elder, Laurel, and Steven Greene. 2012a.

Distinction

2019 ◽  
pp. 96-112
Author(s):  
Timothy Alborn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Conduct Manuals ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Ideal

“Distinction” identifies the often-tortured efforts by Britons to have their gold and wear it too. Mayors, liverymen, admirals, peers, and royals conspicuously brandished gold well into the nineteenth century, while belittling foreigners and status-hungry nouveau riches for wearing wealth. The ideal and reality did start to converge after 1820, when doctors started to trade in their gold-headed canes for stethoscopes, watches lost their gold chains, and gold-laced hats gave way to felt derbies. Increasingly, wearing gold appeared in conduct manuals and novels as resoundingly atavistic; and once it had been consigned to the past it could be safely enjoyed in historical settings, as when Victoria and Albert presided over costume balls bedecked in Elizabethan embroidery. More generally, Britons carefully carved out exceptions—including servants, military officers, and members of the royal family—that proved a general rule against wearing gold.

Socialism as the Extension of Democracy

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-171
Author(s):  
Richard J. Arneson
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
Personal Preference ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Total Lack ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Friedrich Hayek

Are socialists best regarded as those who are most truly and consistently committed to democracy, under modern industrial conditions? Is the underlying issue that divides liberals from socialists the degree of their wholeheartedness in affirming the ideal of a democratic society? On the liberal side, Friedrich Hayek has remarked: “It is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible that a democracy governs with a total lack of liberalism. My personal preference is for a liberal dictator and not for a democratic government lacking in liberalism.” No doubt many socialists would wish to quibble with Hayek's free-market oriented conception of liberalism. But I am wondering whether the conceptual map implicit in Hayek's remark is apt. Hayek appears to assume that there are two independent lines of division, one marking greater and lesser commitment to liberal values, the other marking greater and lesser commitment to democratic procedures. According to the conception of socialism as democracy that I wish to examine, a better picture of the political landscape would show one line of division with gradations indicating greater and lesser commitment to democracy. On this continuum, socialists are located at the extreme pro-democratic end, those who favor autocracy at the other end, and liberals somewhere in the middle. The analyst who finds this latter conceptual picture the more illuminating of the two will say that Hayek reveals his rejection of socialism by being less than wholehearted in his support of democracy.

Reading the Historical Novel: Reworking the Past and the Relation of Blackfeet History in James Welch's Fools Crow

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
SARAH MARTIN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
The Novel ◽  
James Welch ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Impact

The article considers the political impact of the historical novel by examining an example of the genre by Native American novelist James Welch. It discusses how the novel Fools Crow represents nineteenth-century Blackfeet experience, emphasizing how (retelling) the past can act in the present. To do this it engages with psychoanalytic readings of historical novels and the work of Foucault and Benjamin on memory and history. The article concludes by using Bhabha's notion of the “projective past” to understand the political strength of the novel's retelling of the story of a massacre of Native Americans.

Counting citizens: the transfer and translation of census categories from the international statistical congresses to the principality of Bulgaria (1872–1888)

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 556-574
Author(s):  
Gayle Lonergan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Full Membership ◽  
Implicit Representation ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Information ◽  
The Ideal

This paper examines the nineteenth-century census as an early information technology and a medium for the transnational exchange of ideas in the nineteenth century. In particular, it considers how the ideas discussed by the International Statistical Congresses were directly applied in the newly established kingdom of Bulgaria in the first censuses from 1881 to 1888. It then examines how the legacy of Ottoman rule and the categories of the nineteenth-century Ottoman censuses unconsciously influenced the first census of Bulgaria, despite the desire of the new rulers to mark a significant break with the past. It also demonstrates how the nationalist feeling in the multiethnic former territory of the Ottoman Empire influenced the seemingly neutral categories of the first census. These categories then began to produce an implicit representation of the ideal Bulgarian citizen and so started the process of exclusion of the Turkish-speaking or Muslim population from full membership of the new body politic.

Landscapes of power in nineteenth century Ireland

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angèle Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
The Political ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Systematic Survey ◽  
The Past ◽  
Irish Identity

The British Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland in the nineteenth-century was an official systematic survey which created a picture document of the landscape and the past. While the maps influenced the institutionalization of archaeology, the documenting of an archaeological record on the maps shaped their look and language. Within a setting of the political contest between British colonialism and Irish nationalism, both the Ordnance Survey maps and the archaeological past they recorded became powerful tools that helped to construct Irish identity and a sense of place and heritage.

scholarly journals Allal Al-Fassi’s Utopia: Liberalism and Democracy within the Revivalist System of Thought

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-215
Author(s):  
Hamza Salih
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Political Works ◽  
Political Economic

This paper examines the political writings of the Moroccan nationalist Allal Al-Fassi (1910-1974). It argues that there exists a considerable political tendency in these writings with excessive utilisation of jargon related to liberalism and political theory. In his intellectual and political project, Al-Fassi theorises about the possibility of creating a modern state on solid democratic and liberal foundations. Yet, however legitimate and seemingly liberal his theorisation might seem, the paper argues that the formation of a liberal state and a democratic society appears to be a mere dream given the fact that Al-Fassi grounds his conceptions within the Salafist and revivalist intellectual systems. Reading between the lines of his political works, nevertheless, reveals the dominance of Salafist intellections which deem the past and Islam as restorative in attaining a modern renaissance, at the political, economic, and cultural levels.  This work, thus, problematizes three central points: the political tendency of Al-Fassi’s project, his religious and Salafist remnants and conceptions, and finally the possible ideological implications and interests that Al-Fassi seems to defend.  

Rimsky-Korsakov, Snegurochka, and Populism

2018 ◽  
pp. 63-96
Author(s):  
Emily Frey
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Site ◽  
Village Life ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter looks at Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) in the political context of the era, namely within a particular branch of 1870s populism that extolled “harmonious communal ritual, agrarian prehistory, and the development of individual feeling.” Together, the Snegurochkas of Alexander Ostrovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov offer perhaps the clearest representations in art of the populist notion of the ideal past, depicting the prehistoric village as a site of social cooperation and humane politics. Indeed, in his adaptation of Snegurochka, Rimsky-Korsakov united an idealized vision of the past with the progress of private, inner feeling. Meanwhile, Russia's thick journals of the seventies brimmed with articles by populist thinkers like Nikolai Mikhailovsky and stories about village life by writers such as Gleb Uspensky and Nikolai Zlatovratsky.

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