The Price of Friendship

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Maria Salomon Arel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Networks Of Support

Abstract This article discusses the gift-giving behaviour of English merchants involved in the Russia trade in the Muscovite era. Drawing on a small, but growing body of historical literature relating to the role of gifts in the cultivation of mutually beneficial relations between people across the social spectrum in early modern Europe, it explores the various ways in which the English deployed the practice of giving to their advantage, both in England and in Russia. In particular, as ‘strangers’ in Russia who operated beyond the parameters of traditional kin- and community-based networks of support, English merchants (and other foreigners, such as their Dutch competitors) needed to both ‘befriend’ Russian clients on the ground in every-day trade and nurture relationships in high places to ensure smooth, profitable, and secure business. As the sources reveal, they engaged in a variety of gift-giving behaviours in building relationships with Russians advantageous to their enterprise.

Astrology in court: The Spanish Inquisition, authority, and expertise

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tayra M. C. Lanuza-Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Astrology, its legitimacy, and the limits of its acceptable practice were debated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Many of the related arguments were mediated by the work of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the responses to it. Acknowledging the complexities of the relationship between astrological ideas and Christian teachings, this paper focuses on the Catholic debates by specifically considering the decisions about astrology taken by the Spanish Inquisition. The trials of astrologers are examined with the aim of understanding the role of experts in astrology in early modern Spain. This study brings into view the specific nature of the debate on astrology in Spain, the consequences of the actions of the Inquisition and the social control it exerted. The historical events discussed comprise a particular case and also mirror the general debates about astrology taking place in early modern Europe. The experts’ opinions expressed in trials and in reports about the discipline received by the Inquisition reveal two key traits of the debate: the dispute about who had the authority to decide on the legitimacy of astrology and the disagreement about what constituted natural and judicial astrological practices. These led to different opinions about what was to be done with each defendant and about what content in their books ought to be forbidden.

The Gift and Art in Early Modernity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift

This chapter examines the centrality of gift giving to the developing commercial cultures of early modern Europe and the rise to prominence of works of art, especially paintings, in circuits of gift exchange. Contrary to common assumption, gift giving in the early modern period acquired renewed importance as a mode of negotiating professional, social, and personal ties in a rapidly changing, increasingly commercialized environment. Art also emerged as an essential gift currency for negotiating relationships of patronage and clientage, and highly selfconscious artists increasingly turned to the gift’s symbolic economy to negotiate with patrons and set their transactions apart from ordinary forms of exchange. I probe the interconnections between gifts and art in various overlapping contexts of early modernity.

"‘A Peculiar Gift of Providence": The Power-Imbalance Caused by Gift-Giving in Millenium Hall

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisia Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Power Imbalance ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The Gift

Sarah Scott's eighteenth-century novel Millenium Hall canvasses the role of gift-giving in the dynamics heteronormative-domestic, economic, and spiritual relationships. The pharmakon of the gift plays a central role in Scott's understanding of philanthropy, and the construction of her female-inhabited, female-run utopia. This article's principle occupation is to show that all instances of gift-giving in Millenium Hall create power-imbalances between the superior giver and the inferior receiver; however, Sarah Scott's female utopia constructs the most preferable type of subservience.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art

scholarly journals The Gift of Qurbani Meat: Ethnological Reflections

Illuminatio ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-209
Author(s):  
Ugo Vlaisavljević
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Close Relatives ◽  
The Sacrifice

The article considers two customs traditionally followed by Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina during Eid Al-Aḍḥā (‘Festival of Sacrifice’ or Kurban Bayram). These are, first, giving a small amount of money, so-called bayramlık, to children as a reward or gift in return for handing out Qurbani meat to neighbors, and, second, giving the meat to non-Muslims. The topic will be explored in the light of Marcel Mauss’s seminal essay on the gift, since Qurbani appears as a gift that identifies, marks and renews the social bonds not only of close relatives, but also of friends and neighbors. In this context too, we will meet what Jacques Derrida calls the aporia of the gift. The slaughtering of Qurbani animal is a true gift, precisely because it is an impossible gift. It may be considered as a giftless giving: although the sacrifice is unthinkable without the slaughtered animal, it cannot be a gift to God. However, after the human act of sacrifice is performed, it is God Who makes the gift to men - because He commands that the victim’s meat must be shared. It is then to be understood not as a returned gift, but as an act of God’s hospitality, which gives to men the very possibility of gift giving. It is argued that the two Bosnian customs draw their ultimate meaning from the divine hospitality vividly experienced in the ritual of sacrifice.

scholarly journals Not for Sale, but for Own Need”: Trade of the Volhynian Gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Second Half of the 16th — First Half of the 17th Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Ihor Huliuk
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Traded Goods ◽  
Classical Economic ◽  
Economic Nature ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
General Criticism

The article analyzes socioeconomic processes in the early modern Europe, in particular trade in its separate regions. It considers the classical economic model focused on the industry and agriculture, which Eastern and Western Europe followed in their multifaceted development. It studies legislation, namely the Second Lithuanian Statute and the Sejm Constitutions for assessing the involvement of gentry representatives in commerce. It indicates that the activity of the Volhynian gentry in the internal trade of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was due to both external changes in the market, primarily the demand for products from Eastern Europe, and the tendency observed on the continent when running a household became a business that made incomes grow. It analyzes general criticism in the intellectual circles of the trade activity of the gentry as such, which could lead to a certain deterioration of traditions. Man-knight and man-merchant intersections in the society of that time were acceptable if a nobleman traded goods from his own estates and could prove it with an oath.The article also investigates key areas of trade of the Volhynian gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the basis of documentary material of court books of the 16th–17th-century Volhynia and previously published sources of economic nature. It studies main range of goods sold and bought by the representatives of the elite, observes the participation of the Volhynian gentry in trade operations with the core centers of the Polish-Lithuanian economy, and their involvement in local fairs and tradings. It shows the role of intermediaries, first of all representatives of the Jewish community and peasants from the gentry fоlwarks, in the trade enterprise of the gentry.

Future generations: the role of community-based organisations in supporting young people

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-300
Author(s):  
Adam Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
Community Based ◽  
London Borough ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Community Dance ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Street

This chapter presents two non-statutory approaches aimed at engaging young people in the community. The Youth United Foundation (YUF) supports the development of well-established community-based organisations including the Scouts, Guides, and Boys' Brigade, joined recently by the creation of new uniformed youth organisations, including Fire and Police Cadets, to help significantly increase opportunities for young people from the most disadvantaged communities. Building on the place-based policies of the London Borough of Sutton, Sutton Community Dance (SCD) is an example of reimagining the local high street and prioritising shared places as an important context for building intergenerational bridges. Such a model of reimagination and creative agility will be critical in helping already challenged town centres to develop new possibilities for reform post the COVID-19 pandemic. This all-age inclusive development makes a significant contribution to the social determinants of health in this South London borough, through improvements in health and wellbeing and the promotion of self-actualisation.

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