Veblen Redivivus: Leisure and Excessin Europe

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Wakeman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Status ◽  
New World ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
World War ◽  
Thorstein Veblen ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
European Economic ◽  
Leisure Class

Mass consumption and leisure are among the most fascinating and thought-provoking challenges for twentieth-century historians. It was precisely the initial phases of mass consumerism that prompted Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen to warn of the consequences of ‘conspicuous consumption’ and misguided materialism in his 1899 The Theory of the Leisure Class. In Veblen's estimation, new-money leisure classes could dress up their pretensions and social status with a wasteful display of commodities. It was television more than any other factor that introduced people to the new world of things. Sports claimed a prominent place on television and in leisure life throughout Europe in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Tourism emerged from the ashes of World War II as one of the best prospects for European economic recovery and for providing relief for restive, war-weary Europeans only too happy for a few days of holiday respite. The second half of the twentieth century gives scholars every reason for pause in assessing the intertwining of citizen and consumer.

The Monroe Doctrine and World War II

1942 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis O. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
New World ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
World War ◽  
Monroe Doctrine ◽  
Pan American

Only a decade or two ago, the Monroe Doctrine was in disfavor. The vitriolic pens of its critics denounced it as an “indisputable evidence of our overweening national conceit.” They condemned it as an “obsolete shibboleth,” “hoary with age”—a doctrine which the twentieth century would surely relegate to the dusty archives of diplomatic history. As late as 1937, no less a person than the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations remarked in the course of an interview that the Monroe Doctrine was dead.Time and circumstance, however, often bring remarkable changes. Since the beginning of World War II, the red blood corpuscles of Pan-American unity have instilled new life and vitality into the Doctrine. Curiously enough, after 120 years, the very threats which confronted President Monroe in 1823 have risen again to becloud the security of the Western Hemisphere. Historians may have argued (before the fall of France) that the Holy Alliance, with its determination “to put an end to the system of representative government,” constituted a greater danger to the New World than the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. It is clear, however, that the fascist concepts of the master race and of world domination are far more menacing to democracy than the avowed aims of the Holy Alliance ever were. The tremendous striking power which the Axis has so amply demonstrated in a world shrivelled by technology, coupled with the demoralizing effects of up-to-date fifth column techniques, makes the case even clearer.

scholarly journals Radical Résistance in France: François Hollande’s German Crisis

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
Henry Glitz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
European Economic ◽  
The Face

Friendship between France and Germany, which was one of the primary factors behind the European recovery after World War II, has begun, ever so slightly, to change in the face of a stagnant and far less impressive economic recovery from the most recent global financial crisis. The new strain on Franco- German relations, and the new threat to European economic stability, is becoming particularly apparent under the presidency of François Hollande, France’s current Socialist executive. As a result of German interests in implementing Europe-wide austerity policies, and the weak and seemingly ineffective centrist leadership under Hollande, significant changes seem almost inevitable. 

The Formation of a Budding Man Alone: The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
World War ◽  
Value System ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
The Family

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.

A war hero or a Hitler soldier?

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Committee ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.

scholarly journals Using KOCOA Military Terrain Analysis for the Assessment of Twentieth Century Battlefield Landscapes

Heritage ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-781
Author(s):  
Dirk HR Spennemann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Aleutian Islands ◽  
Terrain Analysis ◽  
World War ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
Aerial Warfare

Military terrain analysis serves as a tool to examine a battle commander’s view of a battlefield and permits to hindcast some of the rationale for actions taken. This can be augmented by physical evidence of the remains of the battle that still exist in the cultural landscape. In the case of World War II-era battlefields, such terrain analysis has to take into account the influence of aerial warfare—the interrelationship between attacking aircraft and the siting of anti-aircraft guns. This paper examines these issues using the case example of the Japanese WWII-era base on Kiska in the Aleutian Islands (Alaska).

Foundations for a New World Order: Uniting Protestant Worship during the World War II Japanese American Incarceration

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-316
Author(s):  
Anne M. Blankenship
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
New World Order ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

During the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, visions of a peaceful new world order led mainline Protestants to manipulate the worship practices of incarcerated Japanese Americans ( Nikkei) to strengthen unity of the church and nation. Ecumenical leaders saw possibilities within the chaos of incarceration and war to improve themselves, their church, and the world through these experiments based on ideals of Protestant ecumenism and desires for racial equality and integration. This essay explores why agendas that restricted the autonomy of racial minorities were doomed to fail and how Protestants can learn from this experience to expand their definition of unity to include pluralist representations of Christianity and America as imagined by different sects and ethnic groups.

scholarly journals “Reminisces of a Dead World”: Neoclassical Impulses in Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Faulkenberry
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Technical Innovation ◽  
World War ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Karlheinz Stockhausen ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Musical Traditions

In the years following World War II, integral serialist composers declared their intent to defy all previous musical conventions and eradicate all “rem-inisces of a dead world” from their music. Karlheinz Stockhausen was no exception, asserting his desire “to avoid everything which is familiar, generally known or reminiscent of music already composed.” However, Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge, de-spite its reputation for technical innovation, bears a strong connection to prior musical traditions. In this regard, Stockhausen resembled the neoclassical school of composers that sought to accommodate antiquated musical materials within a modern con-text.To demonstrate these similarities, I apply to Gesang a model of neoclassicism developed by Martha M. Hyde, a scholar on twentieth-century mu-sic. Hyde identifies two modes by which a neoclassi-cal piece “accommodates antiquity”: metamorphic anachronism and allegory. I argue both are present in Gesang. First, Stockhausen adopts elements of the sacred vocal tradition—including a child’s voice and antiphonal writing—and morphs them into something modern. Second, Stockhausen uses the Biblical story on which Gesang is based as an alle-gory for his own conflicted relationship with the mu-sical past. This analysis reframes Gesang’s signifi-cance and connects Stockhausen’s work to seem-ingly unrelated trends in twentieth-century musical thought.

scholarly journals Genre, Computation, and the Varieties of Twentieth-Century U.S. Fiction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wilkens
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
World War ◽  
Detective Story ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Textual Content

Is "literary fiction" a useful genre label in the post-World War II United States? In some sense, the answer is obviously yes; there are sections marked "literary fiction" on Amazon, in bookstores, and on Goodreads, all of which contain many postwar and contemporary titles. Much of what is taught in contemporary fiction classes also falls under the heading of literary fiction, even if that label isn't always used explicitly. On the other hand, literary fiction, if it hangs together at all, may be defined as much by its (or its consumers') resistance to genre as by its positive textual content. That is, where conventional genres like the detective story or the erotic romance are recognizable by the presence of certain character types, plot events, and narrative styles, it is difficult to find any broadly agreeable set of such features by which literary fiction might be consistently identified.

scholarly journals The poet speaks to god: Christian religiosity in modern Serbian poetry

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
Predrag Petrovic
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
World War ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Christian Religion

During the twentieth century Serbian poetry was in intensive dialogue with Christian religion, motives and symbols. In the first half of the century, the inspiration to the Christian religion is evident in the poetry of Jovan Ducic and Momcilo Nastasijevic. In the poetry of Momcilo Nastasijevic there are frequent motives from The Book of Revelation and the reference to Christian ethics. Jovan Ducic in the book Lirika (1943) gives a tragic and sublime vision of life, taking on numerous Christian motives. The renewal of the prayer tone in poetry after World War II will appear in Desanka Maksimovic?s collection Trazim pomilovanje (1964). The culmination of Christian religiosity in Serbian literature of the last century is found in the book Cetiri kanona (1996) by Ivan V. Lalic, in which the figure of the Virgin Mary is especially emphasized.

Trusteeship Council

2008 ◽  
pp. 148-159
Author(s):  
Ralph Wilde
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
The Caribbean

This article examines the Trusteeship Council, a principal organ whose work was essential to the settlement arising from World War II. It involved establishing procedures for the independence of the defeated powers' colonies. This article details the pioneering efforts of the UN at facilitating the decolonization of trust territories. This is part of the world organization's contribution to the processes of self-determination for peoples in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. It also reveals that the work of the Trusteeship Council was linked to what may have been the most important political change of the twentieth century.

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