Re-Viewing Western U.S. Rephotography in the Anthropocene

KronoScope ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-187
Author(s):  
William R. Handley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Human History ◽  
Western Expansion

AbstractIn this paper, documentary and artistic pairings of nineteenth-century survey photographs with rephotographs from the 1970s-2000s of identical views of western U.S. sites are read within divergent temporal and historiographical paradigms about historical and geological change. Viewed and interpreted within the legacy of American technocratic “progress” and of debates about the “old” and “new” western histories, this juxtaposed work across a century speaks to shifts in historians’ paradigms about the meaning of western expansion, from optimism to tragedy, and to whether geologic and human history are continuous or discontinuous. The ecological rupture of the Anthropocene returns us to nineteenth-century debates, which in part motivated survey photographs, about whether changes in geological and life forms are gradual or catastrophic—or some uneasy combination of the two. What haunts these photographs today is both a lost ideological past and a precarious, humanly viable future that the Anthropocene exposes.

Marine Bizarrerie: The Imaginative Biology of the Underwater Frontier

2018 ◽  
pp. 169-185
Author(s):  
Margaret Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Gustave Flaubert ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Victor Hugo ◽  
Aquatic Life ◽  
Psychological Experience ◽  
Narrative Prose ◽  
Jules Michelet

The great variety and radical metamorphoses of aquatic life forms attracted huge fascination during the nineteenth century, in part because they defied familiar paradigms of development and progress. In this chapter, Cohen explores how writers were inspired by such marine life-cycles to try out experiments in narrative prose, focusing in particular on the influence of marine variety on the depiction of psychological experience. Starting with Charles Kingsley’s Glaucus (1855), Cohen argues that Kingsley uses the life forms of the underwater kingdom to re-energise the poetic figure of metamorphosis, which, in his treatment, depends more upon natural science than myth. Cohen then shows how Kingsley translates marine metamorphosis into narrative experiment in The Water-Babies (1862), and creates an account of psychological experience that is more hallucinatory and phantasmagorical than developmental. Cohen finally suggests that marine metamorphosis has a similar impact on other authors, including Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo and Jules Michelet, all of whom stress the disturbing and disruptive possibilities of a psychological prose inspired by aquatic biology.

“Big History” Old and New: Presuppositions, Limits, Alternatives

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Megill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Innovative Approach ◽  
Human History ◽  
Comparative History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Big History

In recent years David Christian and others have promoted “Big History” as an innovative approach to the study of the past. The present paper juxtaposes to Big History an old Big History, namely, the tradition of “universal history” that flourished in Europe from the mid-sixteenth century until well into the nineteenth century. The claim to universality of works in that tradition depended on the assumed truth of Christianity, a fact that was fully acknowledged by the tradition’s adherents. The claim of the new Big History to universality likewise depends on prior assumptions. Simply stated, in its various manifestations the “new” Big History is rooted either in a continuing theology, or in a form of materialism that is assumed to be determinative of human history, or in a somewhat contradictory amalgam of the two. The present paper suggests that “largest-scale history” as exemplified in the old and new Big Histories is less a contribution to historical knowledge than it is a narrativization of one or another worldview. Distinguishing between largest-scale history and history that is “merely” large-scale, the paper also suggests that a better approach to meeting the desire for large scale in historical writing is through more modest endeavors, such as large-scale comparative history, network and exchange history, thematic history, and history of modernization.

Visualizing Race

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Coward
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Status ◽  
Western Expansion

This chapter looks at racial imagery in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in the final years of the nineteenth century, comparing the illustrations of Indians and African Americans as a way of explaining the shifting nature of race and representation as Western expansion ran its course. Native Americans were usually portrayed more sympathetically than African Americans. Indians were also depicted as more progressive than blacks. Moreover, Indians in the early 1890s were seen predominately as nonthreatening, both militarily and culturally. African Americans, by contrast, were closer and more familiar to whites and often perceived as less interesting to illustrators and more threatening to the status quo. Unlike Indians, whose apparent strangeness could be presented as exotic, black strangeness was ridiculed.

The Politics of Anthropology

1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Gellner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human History ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Cumulative Change ◽  
Great Chain Of Being ◽  
Jacob's Ladder

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY ORIGINALLY FOUND THEIR more immediate inspiration in an evolutionary or Jacob's Ladder vision of human societies, the idea of Progress. Social forms were seen as located along some great Chain of Being, which eventually leads to this-worldly salvation by this-worldly means. But there the resemblance ends. Sociology was rooted in a primarily historical evolutionism, in the perception, by the generation of Condorcet and Hegel, that human history is a story of cumulative change, and in the hope that the pattern of this change was the key to the meaning of life. History was to reveal the inner potential and destiny of human society. By contrast, the evolutionism which somewhat later, around the middle of the nineteenth century, gave birth to anthropology, was markedly biological, and came to be much influenced by Darwin.

scholarly journals Solidarity: The Social History of an Idea in Nineteenth Century France

1959 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. S. Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Grand Nombre ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of

The survival of a concept is generally only secured at the price of an intellectual odyssey in the course of which it is transformed out of all recognition. The nineteenth century fortunes of the idea of solidarity exemplify this axiom only too strictly. It became the victim of a multiplicity of ingenious puns and metaphors as well as outright malicious distortions that rendered a simple, technical word, drawn from the sphere of jurisprudence, at once emotive and obscure, influential and diffuse. As the eminent and caustic critic of the twentieth century, Julien Benda, formulated this vital problem of the fate of concepts, “pour l'historien des idées des hommes, la réalité ce n'est point ce qu'ont été les idées dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont inventées, mais ce qu'elles ont été dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont trahies… car il est clair qu'une doctrine se propage d'autant plus largement qu'elle est apte à satisfaire un plus grand nombre de sentiments divers.” This pessimistic view has been all too frequently verified in human history.

scholarly journals The Creation of Adam and the Biblical Origins of Race in The Slave’s Friend (1836–1838)

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 860
Author(s):  
Kerry M. Sonia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human History ◽  
Red Clay ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Racial Theory ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

The creation of Adam out of dust is a familiar tradition from the Book of Genesis. In abolitionist literature of the nineteenth century, this biblical narrative became the basis for a theory about the origins of race, arguing that because Adam was formed from red clay, neither he nor his descendants were white. This interpretation of Genesis underscored the value of non-white ancestors both in the biblical narrative and in human history and undermined popular theological arguments that upheld color-based racial hierarchies that privileged whiteness in the United States. This article examines the creation of Adam in Genesis 2 and its use in racial theory and abolitionist rhetoric, focusing on the children’s anti-slavery periodical The Slave’s Friend, published from 1836 to 1838.

Aviation and International Law

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manley O. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Society ◽  
Human Action ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Human History ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
National Organization ◽  
The World ◽  
Made In

The first thirty years of the nineteenth century saw the beginnings of a great revolution in transportation and communication. Improvements were introduced which in time greatly changed the daily lives of people throughout the world, and made it possible for their efforts to reach out as never before in human history. The change was nowhere more significant than in its effect on international society. A century ago, the railroad, the steamship and the telegraph so extended the range of human action that national organization ceased to correspond with the activities of many peoples, and the state system upon which the nineteenth century dawned was greatly modified by the progress made in international organization before the century had passed. Certainly no period up to that time had produced such changes as those which began in the decades between 1800 and 1830.

Kosciuszko Alpine Flora

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
AB Costin ◽  
M Gray ◽  
CJ Totterdell ◽  
DJ Wimbush
Keyword(s):  
Plant Communities ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Flowering Plants ◽  
Human History ◽  
Alpine Ecosystems ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Educational Publishing ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reference Section

Around Australia’s highest mountain lies a rare ecosystem, an alpine area of outstanding beauty and diversity, strikingly different from other alpine ecosystems of the world but with common features. Kosciuszko Alpine Flora describes and illustrates the area’s 212 flowering plants and ferns, of which 21 are endemic. It discusses the geological and human history of the area, the life-forms and habitats of the plants, and explores the various plant communities and their environmental relationships. The book contains identification keys, detailed descriptions, and distribution and habitat notes for each species. Superb colour photographs show details of flowers, fruit, foliage, and ecology. Finalist Scholarly Reference section - The Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing 2001

BETWEEN SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS – DIGNITY AS THE HIGHEST VALUE OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Anna Laputko
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Practical Implementation ◽  
Human History ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
The Individual

It is analyzed that the secular assertion of human dignity, rights and freedoms in its practical plane in certain periods of human history has been and is a great challenge for Christian churches. It is studied that the Christian understanding of human dignity, balancing on the border of its theoretical proclamation and its practical implementation, served to promote the ideas of humanism, its ability to resist destructive, degrading manifestations of social life forms, in the dialectic of social and religious forms of life. It is shown that the dignity of the individual is inseparable from the understanding of his rights and freedoms, and therefore, the struggle for dignity and human rights is an integral part of the preaching of the truths of Christianity.

The Silvertown Strike: A Partisan History

2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (8) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
John Tully
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Index Volume ◽  
Punctuated Equilibrium ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Flood Tide ◽  
Sharp Change ◽  
Human History ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The Status

There is a concept in biology called "punctuated equilibrium": organisms can display little discernible change over long periods of time before sudden, sharp, and profound changes. Without wishing to give credence to teleological or determinist views, it does seem that human history is profoundly dialectical. Sharp change that bewilders an apologist for the status quo can inspire and give hope to those of us who believe that a better world is possible. We live in interesting but depressing times today. Neoliberal ideas are hegemonic. The old collectivist values of the labor movement have been submerged in a tide of market fundamentalism, summed up in Margaret Thatcher's claim that "there is no such thing as society; there are only individuals and families." When I began researching for my <em>Silvertown</em> book, it became apparent to me that a similar flood tide of liberalism had washed over much of nineteenth-century Britain. This portrayed the status quo as normal, natural, and inevitable, but the equilibrium was punctuated in the last decades of the century.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-8" title="Vol. 67, No. 8: January 2016" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

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