Illness, Threat and Systems of Authority in Dunhuang

Inner Asia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-46
Author(s):  
Lewis Mayo
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Organisational Form ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Face ◽  
Administrative Structures ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Administrative Problem

AbstractThis paper analyses the relationships between illness and structures of authority in the oasis of Dunhuang in the late 20th century and during the time of the Guiyijun regime which ruled the area as an independent warlord state from the middle of the 9th to the beginning of the 11th century. Both the medieval and the modern systems for dealing with illness in Dunhuang are analysed here as part of a larger problem of threat as an inherent element in any order of authority. In this paper, illness is taken as a political and administrative problem, both in the sense that political forces are mobilised around it and in the sense that political and administrative structures give illness an organisational form. Guiyijun systems of storage and structures of governance in the political and familial realms are understood as the reference point for the strategies deployed in the face of illness ‘events’ and as explanatory frameworks closely linked to accounts of dysfunction in the internal order of the body. The late 20th century order of disease management in Dunhuang forms a counterpart to these medieval structures, despite the major differences in the forms for responding to and attacking illness in the oasis in the public health regimes of the modern era and in the medical and ceremonial practices used a millennium before.

Sex Machines and Statistical Persons

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-122
Author(s):  
James Sey
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Scientific System ◽  
Modern Era

In this article I attempt to trace the genealogy of the body-technology relation in the 20th century as it emerges at two specific historical junctures: (i) The Taylorist/Fordist ergonomic society of the early part of the 20th century. To this end it outlines a double trajectory: firstly the shift in the epistemology of monstrosity from pre-enlightenment singularity to enlightenment replicability, and thus the possibility of containment and ‘technological monstrosity’ in the modern era; and secondly the emergence of Fordism as a social and scientific system which is premised on the body-as-machine but is underpinned by the fascination presented by the possibility of ‘machine pathology’, (ii) The emergence of the ‘statistical person’ in the late 20th century; a species of more or less psychopathological identity related to the predominance of information processing in contemporary urban epistemology. I argue that the late 20th century relation to technology, the cybernetic or statistical, is the inverse of that of the Fordist worker at the assembly line in the early part of the century, the era of the ‘sexualized machine’.

From Circles to Parties. Genesis of Party System in Russia in the Beginning of 20th Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 464-470
Author(s):  
Kirill A. Solovyov
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Party System ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
In The Beginning

The article is devoted to the general patterns of political parties formation in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. They were preceded by proto-party organizations that were far from being ideologically monolithic. Under the conditions of rapid differentiation of political forces, the existing alliances were often accidental and situational. They hung on to the legacy of the pre-revolutionary era, when the public was just “learning” to talk about politics, and the boundaries between different ideological structures were quite rather relative.

Epidemic Response: How to evaluate and respond to evolving and conflicting risk information with a focus on education and clinical environments

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 1732-1735
Author(s):  
Alison G. Vredenburgh ◽  
Rodrigo J. Daly Guris ◽  
Kevin G. Welner ◽  
Sreekanth R. Cheruku
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Public ◽  
Conflicting Information ◽  
The Face ◽  
Clinical Environments ◽  
Face To Face Instruction ◽  
Epidemic Response ◽  
Collaborative Implementation ◽  
Modern Era

By October, we will have learned a great deal about responding to an epidemic or pandemic that has proved to have a level of transmission unprecedented in the modern era. The possible and likely responses include many unknowns. Coordinated and collaborative implementation has been complicated by conflicting information from multiple governments and organizations in several languages. What will we learn about how the United States can improve its ability to respond? How do we develop consistent and accurate warnings and messaging to the public in order to increase compliance regarding a new, and not well understood, epidemic? What factors increase or decrease compliance? How are US education policymakers deciding about face-to-face instruction? How have physicians and hospitals adapted their workflows in the face of uncertainty and supply chain inconsistencies? This panel will include a warnings expert, an expert on education law and policy, and two physicians.

The Body in Theory

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Investigations ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.

Continental Philosophy and Theology

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-105
Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Theological Turn ◽  
The Face ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Comparative Nature

AbstractContinental philosophy underwent a ‘return to religion’ or a ‘theological turn’ in the late 20th Century. And yet any conversation between continental philosophy and theology must begin by addressing the perceived distance between them: that one is concerned with destroying all normative, metaphysical order (continental philosophy’s task) and the other with preserving religious identity and community in the face of an increasingly secular society (theology’s task). Colby Dickinson argues inContinental Philosophy and Theologyrather that perhaps such a tension is constitutive of the nature of order, thinking and representation which typically take dualistic forms and which might be rethought, though not necessarily abolished. Such a shift in perspective even allows one to contemplate this distance as not opting for one side over the other or by striking a middle ground, but as calling for a nondualistic theology that measures the complexity and inherently comparative nature of theological inquiry in order to realign theology’s relationship to continental philosophy entirely.

Karakalpak Family Ritualism: The Bes Kiyim Custom in the Transformation of Traditional Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 124-133
Author(s):  
Z. I. Kurbanova
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Married Women ◽  
The Body ◽  
Status Change ◽  
Patchy Distribution ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Traditional Family ◽  
The Republic

This study describes the bridal and funerary rite of exchanging clothes (Bes Kiyim – ‘Five Costumes’) in the context of the traditions and innovations in the Karakalpak culture. On the basis of fi eld data collected in 2014–2019 and earlier in places with a continuous or patchy distribution of the Karakalpak population (Chimbaysky, Karauzyaksky, Kegeyliysky, Nukussky, Khodzheyliysky, and the Takhiatashsky districts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, Republic of Uzbekistan) and of earlier sources, changes in ritualism are analyzed. Bridal rites include exchanges of gifts, such as items of clothing. The comparison of sources shows that the Bes Kiyim rite originated in the mid-20th century in the context of socio-cultural changes. It has remained rather stable up to the present time, being an integral part of Karakalpak bridal ritualism. This indicates its importance in the normative culture of that ethnic group. In one district of Karakalpakstan, the term Bes Kiyim was transferred from the bridal to the funerary rituals. The origin of the rite relates to the transformation of the Iyis custom—the distribution of the deceased person’s clothing among those participating in the ablution of the body. In the late 20th century, specially purchased items of clothing began to be used for that purpose. Apparently, the fi ve items distributed among those participating in the rite symbolize the deceased person’s transition to the ancestors’ world. By the same token, the bride’s fi ve outfi ts allude to her passage to the category of married women and the beginning of her marital life. Therefore, the ritual innovations of the Karakalpaks, caused by socio-cultural and economic changes, mirror the logic and content of traditional family festivals whose complex symbolism relates to status change.

scholarly journals Visual Identity and the Queer Aesthetics of Passing

Barnboken ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lance Weldy
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Cultural Artifacts ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Visual Identity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Hiv Aids

The theatricality of passing as heterosexual in the face of legislative, medicalized, and stigmatized homophobia serves as the primary lens through which I analyse three European, gay coming-out films from the 1990s. In all three films – the Swedish-Norwegian film Sebastian (När alla vet, 1995), and two British films Beautiful Thing (1996) and Get Real (1998) – the physical bodies of the white protagonists complicate normative binaries and stereotypical queer aesthetics ascribed to homosexuals in the late 20th century. Specifically, these three films serve as cultural artifacts about the time period, lending insight into how late 20th-century governmentsfrom the two regions treated the homosexual experience through the implementation of legislative, medicalized measures, specifically regarding HIV/AIDS.

scholarly journals Hospital cases

1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 765-766
Author(s):  
Jeremy Musson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Benefit ◽  
Lunatic Asylums ◽  
Good Number

It could be said that one of the chief architectural legacies of the late 20th century, when it comes to be considered retrospectively, will be the wanton destruction and dispersal of buildings constructed in the previous century for the public benefit. Churches, schools and hospitals have been systematically sold off, and a good number of them, if not totally demolished, have lapsed into a pathetic state of limbo, particularly in this time of economic recession. Some of the worst cases of this known to the Victorian Society are hospitals of great architectural quality, constructed for the treatment of the mentally ill, then known as lunatic asylums.

Algerian Women and the Invention of Literary Mourning

2020 ◽  
pp. 118-135
Author(s):  
David Fieni
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Public ◽  
Female Grotesque ◽  
Institutional Expectations ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories ◽  
Mourning And Melancholia

This chapter revisits the gendering of loss in discourses of decadence through an exploration of four texts by Algerian authors. Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Dhakirat al-Jasad (Memory of the Body), Yamina Méchakra’s La Grotte éclatée (The Blasted Cave), Assia Djebar’s Le Blanc de l’Algérie (Algerian White), and Hélène Cixous’s Si près (So Close) each produce spontaneous, singular forms of female solidarity in the face of institutional expectations relating to language, religion, and the state that overdetermine the value of women’s social work of remembering and forgetting. The chapter explores these four texts in light of psychoanalytic theories of mourning and melancholia and also a certain injunction of postcolonial theory that would impose permanent melancholia on postcolonial writing and thought. These texts experiment with inventive modes of literary mourning, from the “female grotesque” (Mary Russo) to a range of syntactic elaborations, which propose a different cure for postcolonial melancholia and open the possibility of a “melancholia of the public sphere” (Judith Butler).

Public Space in North American Cities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Ellen Sewell
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range

From 1800 to 2000, cities grew enormously, and saw an expansion of public spaces to serve the varied needs of a diverse population living in ever more cramped and urban circumstances. While a wide range of commercial semipublic spaces became common in the late 19th century, parks and streets were the best examples of truly public spaces with full freedom of access. Changes in the design and management of streets, sidewalks, squares, parks, and plazas during this period reflect changing ideas about the purpose of public space and how it should be used. Streets shifted from being used for a wide range of activities, including vending, playing games, and storing goods, to becoming increasingly specialized spaces of movement, designed and managed by the early twentieth century for automobile traffic. Sidewalks, which in the early nineteenth century were paid for and liberally used by adjacent businesses, were similarly specialized as spaces of pedestrian movement. However, the tradition of using streets and sidewalks as a space of public celebration and public speech remained strong throughout the period. During parades and protests, streets and sidewalks were temporarily remade as spaces of the performance of the public, and the daily activities of circulation and commerce were set aside. In 1800, the main open public spaces in cities were public squares or commons, often used for militia training and public celebration. In the second half of the 19th century, these were augmented by large picturesque parks. Designed as an antidote to urbanity, these parks served the public as a place for leisure, redefining public space as a polite leisure amenity, rather than a place for people to congregate as a public. The addition of playgrounds, recreational spaces, and public plazas in the 20th century served both the physical and mental health of the public. In the late 20th century, responding to neoliberal ideas and urban fiscal crises, the ownership and management of public parks and plazas was increasingly privatized, further challenging public accessibility.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document