Darwin’s Anachronisms

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Mexal
Keyword(s):  
Jack London ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Imagination ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Landscape ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Liberal Individualism

There is nothing wrong with having a conflicted or idiosyncratic political philosophy, of course. Jack London is large; he is allowed to contain multitudes. But by reading London’s letters in conjunction with the world he conjured in The Son of the Wolf, a more complete picture of his political imagination in the years leading up to 1900 can be grasped. The liberal individualism he denied can, in this light, be understood as emerging from the temporal dimension of his Darwinism (Reesman, Jack London’s, 11, 63). In other words, despite its setting’s apparent isolation from the modernity of late nineteenth-century America, The Son of the Wolf remains in thrall to the social landscape of the Southland.

The Oxford Handbook of Jack London

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
Jack London ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Consumption ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman define modernism and modernity this way: “Modernity is a social condition. Modernism was a response to that condition.” Modernity “is an urban condition” “reached in certain parts of the world in the late nineteenth century … a mass phenomenon” characterized by the rise of technology, print culture, and material consumption. Jack London, who is routinely categorized as a naturalist and realist, can also be called a modernist. The word modern appears often in the pages of this handbook, and though it is not new to call London a modernist, the breadth of scholarship in this present volume gives the categorization new meaning. This isn’t to deny London’s status as a realist/naturalist but only a way to recognize he was much more than that. London called his era the Machine Age and created his role of political artist to respond to it. Thus the other emphasis in the handbook is on the intersection of his politics and his art. London was concerned with instigation and shock. He wasn’t a propagandist, he was a troublemaker. In both fiction and nonfiction—a binary he did not recognize—he exposed the fallacies of capitalist society. As both a nationally recognized public figure and a citizen of the world, he chose to instruct his audience in novels, short stories, essays, speeches, and newspaper reports. This handbook ultimately emphasizes the artist Jack London bringing change to the world.

scholarly journals Traditional Japanese pottery and its influence on the American mid 20th century ceramic art

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
Johannis Tsoumas
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Order ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ceramic Art ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Post War ◽  
Aesthetic Values

The Japanese ceramic tradition that was to emerge along with other forms of traditional crafts through the Mingei Movement during the interwar period, as a form of reaction to the barbaric and expansive industrialization that swept Japan from the late nineteenth century, brought to light the traditional, moral, philosophical, functional, technical and aesthetic values that had begun to eliminate. Great Japanese artists, art critics and ceramists, such as Soetsu Yanagi and Shōji Hamada, as well as the emblematic personality of the English potter Bernard Leach, after caring for the revival of Japanese pottery, believed that they should disseminate the philosophy of traditional Japanese pottery around the world and especially in the post-war U.S.A. where it found a significant response from great American potters and clay artists, but also from the educational system of the country.  This article aims to focus precisely on the significant influence that postwar American ceramic art received from traditional Japanese pottery ideals. The author in order to document the reasons for this new order of things, will study and analyze the work of important American potters and ceramic artists of the time, and will highlight the social, philosophical and cultural context of the time in which the whole endeavor took place. 

The Fin-de-Siècle Detective: ‘But My Job Don’t End There’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Reitz
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Professional Knowledge ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
And Control

This chapter re-examines late nineteenth-century detective fiction. It challenges views of the genre as a conservative phenomenon that reassures its readers by exposing and then vanquishing threats to the social order. Through analysing a range of detective fiction, involving male and female detectives, it highlights the frailties of the specialist knowledge the detective processes, and how it is more often the case that the genre testifies to the inadequacy of professional knowledge to apprehend and control the world, pointing a persisting and threatening sense of violence and social chaos that eludes the detective’s grasp.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Williams
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
Jack London ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Consumption ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman define modernism and modernity this way: “Modernity is a social condition. Modernism was a response to that condition.” Modernity “is an urban condition” “reached in certain parts of the world in the late nineteenth century … a mass phenomenon” characterized by the rise of technology, print culture, and material consumption. Jack London, who is routinely categorized as a naturalist and realist, can also be called a modernist. The word modern appears often in the pages of this handbook, and though it is not new to call London a modernist, the breadth of scholarship in this present volume gives the categorization new meaning. Moving beyond categorization and periodization, the handbook emphasizes the intersection of London’s politics and his art. Ultimately, all the contributors are concerned with the artist Jack London living in the modern world.

scholarly journals The international congress as scientific and diplomatic technology: global intellectual exchange in the International Prison Congress, 1860–90

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nir Shafir
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Communication ◽  
International Congress ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Social Scientific

AbstractIn the 1870s, the American prison reformer E. C. Wines attempted to bring together representatives from every country and colony in the world to discuss the administration and reform of the prison, under the auspices of the International Prison Congress. This article tackles the challenge by exploring how the international congress operated as both a social scientific technology and a diplomatic forum that emerged from this short-lived world of amateur social science and diplomacy. It argues that the exigencies of the international congress as a social scientific space forced it to take on diplomatic and political functions that both imprinted a logic of comparability onto the burgeoning international diplomatic system and also caused the eventual exclusion of non-European polities from the congresses. It engages with recent scholarship in history of science specifically to understand the international congress as a technology that mediated intellectual exchange and scientific communication. By examining the challenges posed by the inclusion of non-Western polities in such communication, it attempts to reveal the multiple global histories of the social sciences in the late nineteenth century.

The Failed Campaign Against Prostitution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. C. Kemeny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Red Light ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cult Of Domesticity ◽  
The Family ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Reform Organizations

Protestants criticized prostitution because it threatened the family and ultimately civil society, and the Watch and Ward Society devised a campaign to shut down Boston’s red-light districts. These Protestant elites espoused traditional gender roles and Victorian sexual mores and endorsed the “cult of domesticity.” In the late nineteenth century, a number of reform organizations turned their attention to the “social evil,” as it was popularly called. The Watch and Ward Society’s quest to reduce prostitution placed it squarely within the larger international anti-prostitution movement. Moral reformers resisted all forms of policy that officially sanctioned or tacitly tolerated prostitution, instead arguing for its abolition. Their attempt to suppress commercialized sex eventually collapsed because of the lack of public support.

Sufis and the Sufi Lodges in Istanbul in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Socio-Spatial Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422110252
Author(s):  
Ahmet Yusuf Yüksek
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Social Profiles

This study investigates the socio-spatial history of Sufism in Istanbul during 1880s. Drawing on a unique population registry, it reconstructs the locations of Sufi lodges and the social profiles of Sufis to question how visible Sufism was in the Ottoman capital, and what this visibility demonstrates the historical realities of Sufism. It claims that Sufism was an integral part of the Ottoman life since Sufi lodges were space of religion and spirituality, art, housing, and health. Despite their large presence in Istanbul, Sufi lodges were extensively missing in two main areas: the districts of Unkapanı-Bayezid and Galata-Pera. While the lack of lodgess in the latter area can be explained by the Western encroachment in the Ottoman capital, the explanation for the absence of Sufis in Unkapanı-Bayezid is more complex: natural disasters, two opposing views about Sufi sociability, and the locations of the central lodges.

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