Reforming the State and Constructing Commercial Opera in Sichuan, 1902–1920s: An Entangled History of Performing Arts and Administrative Reforms

Modern China ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-90
Author(s):  
Igor Iwo Chabrowski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Company Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
New Policies

This article analyzes the thorough reformulation of opera in Sichuan in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It argues that theater developed in Sichuan during the eighteenth century as a part of the social and religious life of market towns and cities and that it was indivisibly connected with the political and administrative structure of the country. As such, it was fragmented along musical, dialectic, and geographic lines. The introduction of the New Policies in 1905, which most affected the largest urban centers such as Chengdu and Chongqing, was the main cause of organizational reconstruction of theatrical performances. They changed both opera’s place in social life and the way it was produced and staged. Within the new legal framework, opera was placed under the Company Law and therefore moved from the sphere of festivity to that of business, while playhouses’ prosperity was bound with the police departments that taxed and protected them. The mutual dependence of law enforcement and entertainment persisted during the early Republic and was revived in the 1930s, making theaters among the most stable and important institutions of early twentieth-century Sichuan cities. The Sichuan opera we know now is a product of this historical process. The study of the institutional development of opera shows the aims, scope, and limitations of the political reforms that reshaped China in the late Qing and Republican periods.

China Unincorporated: Company Law and Business Enterprise in Twentieth-Century China

1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Kirby
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Company Law ◽  
Business Enterprise ◽  
Government Functions ◽  
Commercial Code ◽  
Qing Government ◽  
New Policies ◽  
The Many

On April 22, 1903, the qing court ordered zai-zhen, a Manchu prince; Yuan Shikai, the most powerful Chinese Governor-General of the realm; and Dr. Wu Tingfang, the former Chinese minister to the United States, to compile a commercial code. The edict charging them with this responsibility noted that “of the many government functions, the most important is to facilitate commerce and help industries” (Li 1974a:210). On January 21, 1904, the newly created Ministry of Commerce (Shangbu) issued China's first Company Law (Gongsilü)The Company Law was the first modern law drafted by the Imperial Law Codification Commission, whose work was part of the Qing government's reformist “new policies” in the wake of China's recent humiliations at the hands of Japan and the Western powers. In giving highest priority to enacting a law governing the organization of commercial companies, the Qing government had several interlocking objectives.

scholarly journals Political and social situation of Germans in the South of Kazakhstan during the First World War

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Apendiyev
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
First World

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Kazakhstan region, namely Aulieata and Shymkent (Chernyaev) districts, was one of the main German settlements. These areas, which belong to the Syrdarya region of the Turkestan region, have been inhabited by Germans since the last quarter of the 19th century and are considered to be one of the main European ethnic groups. The Germans interacted with the local population and contributed to the development of ethno-demographic processes in the region. However, the development of such processes and the political and social life of the Germans had a negative impact on the First World War. At the beginning of the twentieth century, this war, which was a major international factor, created a great war between the empires, and it also divided the peoples. From the first days of the First World War, 1914-1918, relations between the Russian Empire and Germany were at war. This situation changed the political life of the Germans and the German community living in the Russian Empire. Such changes took place especially in the lives of German settlers in the European part of the empire. His main examples were the military persecution of Germans, the stigmatization of Germans in society, the establishment of chauvinistic attitudes among ethnic groups, and similar factors. In Russia, local Germans have been labeled "internal enemies." The fate of German communities in all regions of the Russian Empire was closely monitored in 1914-1918, and in general, since 1914, the fate of the Germans has been very constructive. At the same time, there is a legitimate question as to whether the situation in the Turkestan region is the same as in other regions of the Russian Empire. Similarly, the article raises questions about the situation of Germans in Shymkent and Aulieata districts of the Syrdarya region, and seeks answers in this regard. The article examines the political situation and social life of Germans in the South Kazakhstan region during the First World War. The main task of the article is to show the life of local Germans and their place in society. In addition, the political and social history of other peoples in the region will be considered.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Lombardo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
American Society ◽  
American Cities

This book examines the emergence and continuation of traditional organized crime in Chicago from a sociological perspective. It uses the term “organized crime” to define the political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in large American cities from the second half of the nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. The book challenges the alien conspiracy theory's interpretation that organized crime evolved in a linear fashion beginning with the Sicilian Mafia in Sicily, emerging in the form of the Black Hand in America's immigrant colonies, and culminating in the development of the Cosa Nostra in America's urban centers. The book instead argues that Italians continued to dominate organized crime after rising out of poverty because of the presence of “racket subcultures” within American society. It thus highlights the importance of social structural conditions for the emergence and continuation of traditional organized crime in American society. This introduction provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

scholarly journals Pluralismo territorial y constitución

2016 ◽  
pp. 249
Author(s):  
Luciano Parejo Alfonso
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Level ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Complex State ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
Constitutional Order

Las llamadas cuestiones vasca y catalana (hoy, la segunda, en fase aguda) reclaman una actualización del orden constitucional en punto a la adecuación de la organización del Estado a la estructura plural de España, que ha de hacerse teniendo en cuenta las radicales transformaciones derivadas de la integración en la Unión Europea y la inserción en una comunidad internacional cada día más interdependiente y desde una doble reflexión. En el trabajo se apuntan —en sus líneas maestras— los aspectos más sobresalientes de la reforma o, en su caso, revisión constitucional que el autor considera más viable sobre la base del análisis tanto de la situación presente y mirando al futuro, como de la experiencia suministrada por la transición política, el consenso constitucional y el proceso de construcción del llamado Estado autonómico. Pero recordando que el éxito de tal empeño en el plano jurídico-constitucional depende de algo que está fuera de la potencia configuradora del Derecho —la regeneración de la vida política y social y de las instituciones y tiene una decisiva trascendencia para el funcionamiento de un Estado complejo como el español y, por tanto, la vitalidad y autenticidad del pluralismo territorial sin merma de la verdadera, por sustantiva (no formal), unidad constitucional.The basque and catalan conflict —the second nowadays at his peak— demand a revamp of Spain’s constitutional order to adapt the organization of the state to the diverse structure of the country. Such reform should be addressed taking into account the radical transformations resulting from its integration into the European Union project and from an increasingly interdependent comunity at the international level. This article points out the most important aspects of the reform or (where relevant) of the constitutional review that the author considers more feasible. This appraisal will be carried out based on the analysis of the current situation and looking to the future, as well as on the experience gained with the political transition, the constitutional consensus and the so called Authonomic State-making process. However, the sucess of this commitment within the constitutional and legal framework depends on something that is out of the shaping capacity of the law —the political and social life renewal, as well as of the institutions— and has a crucial importance for the functioning of a complex state such as the spanish and, therefore, for the vitality and authenticity of the territorial pluralism without affecting (in a substantive —not formal— way) the constitutional unity.

SOCIO-POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE CATEGORY OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Farida Begbutaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scientific Article ◽  
Effective Protection ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Policy Model ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Interpretation

This scientific article examines the origin, research and role in the socio-political processes of the category of persons with disabilities. It is now recognized that ensuring the active participation of people with disabilities in the political and social life of society leads to more effective protection of their rights and the strengthening of legaland political mechanisms that better meet the needs of all members of society.Key words:persons with disabilities, limitation of opportunities, legal framework, state policy, social policy, model

IX. The Indonesian Muslim Middle Class in Search of Identity, 1900–1950

Itinerario ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-196
Author(s):  
Kuntowidjojo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
New Era ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The Social

The dawn of the twentieth century witnessed a significant development in Indonesian social history in that urban centers replaced the role of rural communities as the loci of change. As much as the colonial demand of land and labour in the nineteenth century had changed the structure of the countryside, the development of commerce and industry inthe twentieth century resulted in the reconstruction of the social life in the centers of those activities Urban population, especially in the large cities of over 100,000, increased rapidly. Basing himself on the 1930 census data, Wertheim noted that in 1930 8 51 percent of the population of Java and Madura lived in 102 urban centers. In the course of a decade from 1920 to 1930 urban population percentage to the total population had increased 1 percent Only in East Java was the development less impressive. There the cities of 25,000 to 50,000 were stagnating, and there was sharp relative and absolute regression in the cities with a 10,000 to 25,000 population. What is more important, according to Wertheim, is the ‘mental climate’ of the urban centers that signified a new era in history

From Regulation to Censorship: Film and Political Culture in New York in the Early Twentieth Century

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Rosenbloom
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
York City ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
Moving Pictures

The struggle over censorship stood at the core of the relationship between the political culture of progressivism and early moving pictures. Called by contemporaries and historians alike a democratic art, the moving pictures invited audiences to participate in the new mass culture of the early twentieth-century. As some early film makers began to use the medium to tell stories, those sitting in small theaters in towns and cities across America saw before them a make-believe world that was nonetheless plausible commentary on the past, the present, and the future. What remained unresolved was how those who championed political reforms, ostensibly in the language of progressive and democratic politics, might harness the power of the medium in redefining American political and social life. How much power the moving pictures and its mass audience might assume energized men and women, particularly progressives in New York City, who sought a more democratic culture, politics, and social life. How much power the moving pictures and its mass audience might assume energized men and women, particularly progressives in New York City, who sought a more democratic culture, politics, and social life. They regarded the political potential of the moving pictures as essential to the empowerment of the masses in an age when social boundaries were in flux. At the same time, they tried and ultimately failed to extend to moving pictures the protection of the First Amendment. They did this because they believed in the political and artistic possibilities of the medium for a democratic culture. In creating a plan to elevate the moving pictures and their places of exhibition, they became locked in a confrontation with other reformers who feared the awesome power of the screen to hasten modernity and all that it implied.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

Being Numerous

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Izenberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
Aesthetic Politics ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Common ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Practical Question ◽  
Language Poets

This book offers a new way to understand the divisions that organize twentieth-century poetry. It argues that the most important conflict is not between styles or aesthetic politics, but between poets who seek to preserve or produce the incommensurable particularity of experience by making powerful objects, and poets whose radical commitment to abstract personhood seems altogether incompatible with experience—and with poems. Reading across the apparent gulf that separates traditional and avant-garde poets, the book reveals the common philosophical urgency that lies behind diverse forms of poetic difficulty—from William Butler Yeats's esoteric symbolism and George Oppen's minimalism and silence to Frank O'Hara's joyful slightness and the Language poets' rejection of traditional aesthetic satisfactions. For these poets, what begins as a practical question about the conduct of literary life—what distinguishes a poet or group of poets?—ends up as an ontological inquiry about social life: What is a person and how is a community possible? In the face of the violence and dislocation of the twentieth century, these poets resist their will to mastery, shy away from the sensual richness of their strongest work, and undermine the particularity of their imaginative and moral visions—all in an effort to allow personhood itself to emerge as an undeniable fact making an unrefusable claim.

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