Reconsidering Theory: Power, the Learning Body, and Cultural Change during Early American Colonization

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-214
Author(s):  
James O'Neil Spady
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early America ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Early American ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Power And Agency ◽  
Relations Of Power

AbstractThis essay participates in recent calls for more direct engagement with theory in research and teaching within History and Early American Studies. Over the last decade voices have gathered for a reconsideration of fundamental theoretical concepts in the historiography of culture. This essay reconsiders theory on semiotics, learning, and the body to reopen a conceptual problem in early American cultural historiography: the relationships between organized power and individual agency. I suggest an approach to power and agency specifically tuned to the conditions of early America colonization, which was more intimate and diverse while possessing fewer institutions and less communications-saturation than a focus on myth, ideology, or discursive formations might assume. Reconsidering semiotics as embodied allows a conception of the body as a learning entity creatively mediating discourses and social constructions and thereby generating new historical identities and relations of power. The argument draws on studies on gender/sexuality, Native Americans, and the enslaved and takes cues from the work of Gyatri Spivak, Ann Laura Stoler, Michel Foucault, Lev Vygotsky, and Charles Sanders Peirce.

Early American Slave Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Hadden
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Early America ◽  
Oral Transmission ◽  
Early American ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
English Colonies

Slave law in early America may be found in the formal written laws created in metropolitan places such as Paris or Madrid as well as locally within English colonies such as Barbados or South Carolina. These written laws constitute only one portion of the known law governing slave behavior, for individual masters created their own rules to restrict enslaved persons. These master-made rules of conduct almost never appear in print and were conveyed most often through oral transmission. Such vernacular laws provide another element of the limitations all enslaved people experienced in the colonial period. Those without literacy, including Native Americans or illiterate settlers, nonetheless had rules to limit slave behavior, even if they remained unwritten. Customary law, Bible precepts, and Islamic law all provided bases for understanding the rules that bound unfree persons. Most colonial law mandated barbaric punishments for slave crime, though these were sometimes commuted to banishment. Spanish and French codes and local ordinances did not always agree on how slaves should be treated. The numerous laws found in English colonies, sometimes wrongly denominated as codes, spread widely as individuals migrated; the number and variety of such laws makes comprehensive transimperial comparisons challenging. Laws might occasionally ban keeping slaves or trading in them, but most such laws were ignored. Slave courts typically operated in arbitrary, capricious ways that assumed slave guilt and accepted weak evidence to prove it. Runaways might, if they joined strong maroon communities (bands of runaways living together), end up enforcing the laws against slave flight, much as slave catchers and slave patrols did. Laws to prevent manumission by a master frequently required the posting of bonds to prevent those freed from becoming a financial burden on their communities. Later manumission laws often mandated the physical departure of those freed, creating emotional turmoil for the newly emancipated.

The Paradox of the Female Slave Body in the Islamic Legal System: The Cases of Morocco and Sudan

Hawwa ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 215-233
Author(s):  
Ahmad A. Sikainga
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
The American South ◽  
Female Slave ◽  
Female Slaves ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
And Control

AbstractThis chapter is concerned with the way in which Muslim jurisprudence dealt with the body of female slaves in two Muslim societies: Morocco and the Sudan. While the depiction and the representation of the slave body have generated a great deal of debate among scholars working on slavery in the New World, this subject has received little attention amongst both Islamicists and Africanists. The literature on slavery in the American South and in the Caribbean has shown that the depiction of the slave body reveals a great deal about the reality of slavery, the relations of power and control, and the cultural codes that existed within the slave societies. The slave physical appearance and gestures were used to distinguish between the slaves and free and to justify slavery. Throughout the Americas slaves were routinely branded as a form of identification right up to the eighteenth century. Although the body of the slaves from both sexes was subjected to the same depiction, the treatment of female slaves deserves further exploration. As many scholars have argued, slave women suffer the double jeopardy of being both a slave and a woman. Moreover, the body of the female slave in Muslim societies is of particular significance as many of them were used for sexual purposes, as mistresses and concubines. The chapter shows that the reproductive role of female slaves became a major justice issue, particularly in their struggle for freedom.

Paternalism to Partnership: The Administration of Indian Affairs, 1786–2021

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Dejong
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Biographical Sketch ◽  
Early American ◽  
Indian Affairs ◽  
Secretary Of War

Paternalism to Partnership provides a biographical sketch of each head of Indian affairs between 1786 and 2021 in context with each commissioner’s political philosophy. These administrators have been responsible for enforcing an Indian policy as directed by the president and/or the Congress but also influenced by their own political and social philosophy. From 1786-1848, authority was delegated to a superintendent of Indian affairs, a superintendent of the Indian trading houses, a superintendent of the Office of Indian Trade, a chief clerk, and a commissioner of Indian affairs, all of whom reported to the secretary of War. Since 1849, the commissioner of Indian affairs, and after 1977, the assistant secretary for Indian affairs have reported to the secretary of the Interior.   Today, the BIA is administered by the assistant secretary for Indian affairs—all of whom have been Native Americans. Previous studies focused on the commissioners, completely overlooking the superintendents that preceded them and the colonial and early American antecedents. David DeJong’s documentary edition is the first to provide an understanding of the political philosophy of each head of the Indian bureau through the emphasis of policy.

Professional identity in the global sports entertainment industry

2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kelly ◽  
Christopher Hickey
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The Body ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Body Contact ◽  
Australian Football League ◽  
Australian Football ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Professional Footballer

In this article we discuss the ways in which the professional identity of Australian Football League (AFL) footballers — in a physical, high body contact sport — is shaped by concerns to develop different aspects of the body, mind and soul of the young men who want to become AFL footballers. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s later work on the care of the self we argue that narratives of identity necessarily involve a struggle for the body, mind and soul of these young men. Foucault’s work enables us to identify and analyse how relations of power, forms of regulation and arts of governing interact in ongoing attempts to develop the professional footballer. The article explores these issues via an analysis of the rationalities and techniques that inform talent identification and player management practices; and risk management in relation to these practices and processes in the AFL.

Cities, States, and Citizens in the Atlantic World: Towards a New Narrative

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 179-246
Author(s):  
Emma Hart ◽  
Robert J. Allison ◽  
Paul P. Musselwhite ◽  
Daniel K. Richter ◽  
Mark Peterson
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Early America ◽  
Us History ◽  
Early American ◽  
Mark Peterson ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
Interpretative Framework

Abstract In his book Mark Peterson presents an innovative perspective on the development of Boston and its New England hinterland as an early modern city-state. His purpose was to tell the story of Boston in its own right, shedding US national history as the dominant interpretative framework. The four reviewers pick up various strands, focusing, among others, on the validity of the city-state concept, especially as Boston did not become an incorporated city until 1822, criticize what one of them sees as an attempt to return New England to the center of early American historiography, and assess whether the city-state model can be applied elsewhere in early America and in the Atlantic World. In his response, Peterson argues that his aim was not to propose a city-state paradigm for comparative purposes, but rather to employ the city-state concept as the best way to explain Boston’s historical trajectory over two centuries, and to highlight the contingency of US history.

The Book of Mormon

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Perry Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
William Apess ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
Early American ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Future

This chapter examines the Book of Mormon's racial theology of “white universalism.” It explores the supposed pre-Columbian history that the Book of Mormon contains, notably the origins of Native Americans as a remnant of Israelites called the “Lamanites.” It also explores the future that the Book of Mormon prophesies in which the Lamanites unify with believing “Gentiles” to become one “white and a delightsome” people and together build a New Jerusalem in America before Christ’s return. The chapter also includes an examination of the Book of Mormon prophet, “Samuel, the Lamanite.” Samuel’s case, along with other marginalized early American religious leaders like William Apess and Jerana Lee, shows that non-white Americans have a “privileged sight” onto America and America’s religious communities that fail to live up to their own ideals of inclusion and equality. The views of marginalized figures are thus essential for an accurate accounting of America’s past.

Making and Remaking: The Practice Research of Place

Placemaking ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 123-149
Author(s):  
Tara Page
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
The Body ◽  
Innovative Approach ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Practice Methods ◽  
Relations Of Power

To understand and question these everyday and artistic practices of life that are sometimes invisible or hidden - and most of the time taken for granted - because they are sensed, felt, of the body, and not easily verbalised, an embodied, affective, relational research approach is needed. The innovative approach of practice research, underpinned by new materialism, that can enable these understandings are discussed in Chapter Five. Additionally, inventive artistic practice methods and a remaking of traditional empirical methods are examined that enable the exploration of the agency of matter and advance vitalist frameworks. By moving beyond the problem-focused approach this chapter works the intra-actions of theory with practice, practice with theory, to develop new approaches to new materialist-place practice research. The practice research approach also politically positions research practices, emphasising the complex materiality of bodies immersed in social relations of power.

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