‘You never need an analyst with Bobby around’: The mid-20th-century human sciences in Sondheim and Furth's musical Company

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110499
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Rubel
Keyword(s):  
Musical Theater ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Lonely Crowd ◽  
Stephen Sondheim ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Promising Source ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Scientific Ideas

This article offers a case study in how historians of science can use musical theater productions to understand the cultural reception of scientific ideas. In 1970, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's musical Company opened on Broadway. The show engaged with and reflected contemporary theories and ideas from the human sciences; Company's portrayal of its 35-year-old bachelor protagonist, his married friends, and his girlfriends reflected present-day theories from psychoanalysis, sexology, and sociology. In 2018, when director Marianne Elliott revived the show with a female protagonist, Company once again amplified contemporary dilemmas around human sciences expertise—this time, the biological fertility clock. Through Company, Sondheim and Furth—and later Elliott—constructed arguments about modern society that paralleled those put forth by contemporary human scientists, including psychoanalytic models of the mind, the lonely crowd phenomenon, and shifting conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Because of their wide popularity and potential for readaptation, musicals such as Company offer a promising source base for analyzing the relationship between contemporary society and scientific expertise in specific historical contexts.

“Fractions of Men”: Engendering Amputation in Victorian Culture

1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 742-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Body ◽  
Altered State ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
After Effects ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

In 1866, theAtlantic Monthlypublished a fictional case study of an army surgeon who had lost all of his limbs during the Civil War. Written anonymously by American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, “The Case of George Dedlow” describes not only the series of wounds and infections which led to the amputation of all four of the soldier's arms and legs but also the after-effects of amputation. Reduced to what he terms “a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than anything of human shape,” Dedlow finds that in disarticulating his body, amputation articulates anatomical norms. His observation of his own uniquely altered state qualifies him to speak in universal terms about the relationship between sentience and selfhood: “I have dictated these pages,” he says, “not to shock my readers, but to possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the body” (1866:5). As such, the story explores the meaning of embodiment, finding in a fragmented anatomy the opportunity to piece together a more complete understanding of how the body functions—physically and metaphysically—as a whole.

scholarly journals Gender Aspects Referring to Social Policy in Labour Relations in a Modern Society (Case Study of Mothers)

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-125
Author(s):  
Anna Gizatullina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Family Obligations ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Material Benefits ◽  
Gender Aspects ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Status Level

The article focuses on two approaches to gender aspects of social policy in labour relations in a modern society (a case study of mothers). One of them deals with introducing gender into existing theories of social policy. The other is based on the assumption that fundamental theories are incomplete in their fundamental prerequisites and therefore new models of social policy regarding labour relations of mothers should be worded. The approaches are founded on the relationship implying "state – market – family" link. The article gives a brief description of the current social policy in Russia in regards to labour relations of mothers. It discloses general issues in management of labour relations of mothers including women's unemployment, occupational segregation, above regarding management of labour activity of mothers are integral parts of the general social problem of labour relations in modern conditions. Additionally, we highlight the relationship between mothers' working life and family obligations. The article analyzes the economic activity dynamics and women's employment rate in the period 2008–2017. The data gathered is based on age, gender, marital status, level of women's occupation in their main post. Finally, we identify some measures to be taken to improve the existing social policy in labour relations of mothers. These measures consist in the establishment of legally fixed "free time", the construction of a socially fair system of material benefits and privileges, the construction of a developed infrastructure in the form of various services.

scholarly journals Designing dolls according to Youkai stories and Shinto beliefs in Eastern culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Yanxiao Liu
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Design Methods ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Participant Engagement ◽  
True Value ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Contrary to the contemporary views on the function and complex mastery skills of an object, the Eastern world puts more emphasis on the value of the object is in its inner spirit. This view is based on Shinto beliefs, where everything is spiritual and valuable. My project undertakes a case study of the relationship between humans and things. This is done by building on the uses of Shinto beliefs to design an object that initiates a narrative. More specifically dolls. Thus, invites a relationship and engages the belief that objects have souls.  The dolls which I designed are an intersection of the spirit world and reality. By providing a process that facilitates the traditional Youkai story base on Shinto beliefs and how it has developed in modern society. In promoting participant engagement through design methods and processes, this project discovered a new vision of forming meaningful relationships between humans and objects empowers the true value of an object. This project visualizes participant experiences created an exploration of a narrative that contains the spirit.</p>

Boundary Politics in the Public Sphere: Openness, Secrecy, and Leak

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes S. Ku
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The issue of openness/secrecy has not received adequate attention in current discussion on the public sphere. Drawing on ideas in critical theory, political sociology, and cultural sociology this article explores the cultural and political dynamics involved in the public sphere in modern society vis-à-vis the practice of open/secret politics by the state. It argues that the media, due to their publicist quality, are situated at the interface between publicity and secrecy, which thereby allows for struggles over the boundary of state openness/secrecy in the public sphere. A theory of boundary politics is introduced that is contextualized in the relationship among state forms, the means of making power visible/invisible (media strategies), and symbolic as well as discursive practices in the public sphere. In explaining the dynamics of boundary politics over openness/secrecy, three ideal-types of boundary creation are conceptualized: open politics secrecy and leak. The theory is illustrated with a case study of the Patten controversy in Hong Kong.

A cognitive perspective on the metaphors in the Buddhist sutra “Bao Ji Jing”

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun Lan
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual System ◽  
Target Concept ◽  
Target Domain ◽  
Cognitive Perspective ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

This is a case study of the metaphorical expressions in the Buddhist sutra “宝积经” (Bao Ji Jing, Ratnakūtasūtra) from the cognitive perspective provided by conceptual metaphor theory, aiming at discovering the conceptual system behind those metaphorical expressions and investigating what kind of role conceptual metaphors play in constructing and interpreting Buddhist doctrines. Altogether 64 metaphorical expressions in “Bao Ji Jing” are analysed, which centre around three themes: singing praise to Bodhisattva’s benefactions, looking on the emptiness and illusions of the mind and concluding persuasions. The key findings are that (1) metaphorical expressions are typically used for legitimising Buddhist doctrines and, to a lesser degree, delegitimising non-Buddhist doctrines; (2) the metaphorical expressions detected are usually highly consistent in structure, with a few or even over a dozen appearing in parallel; (3) often a metaphor is composed of a major source concept and a minor source concept on the one hand, and a major target concept and a minor target concept on the other, with the relationship between the former mapped onto that of the latter; and (4) a metaphor typically activates a series of projections between its source domain and target domain, giving rise to conceptual blends in the process.

scholarly journals Designing dolls according to Youkai stories and Shinto beliefs in Eastern culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Yanxiao Liu
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Design Methods ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Participant Engagement ◽  
True Value ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Contrary to the contemporary views on the function and complex mastery skills of an object, the Eastern world puts more emphasis on the value of the object is in its inner spirit. This view is based on Shinto beliefs, where everything is spiritual and valuable. My project undertakes a case study of the relationship between humans and things. This is done by building on the uses of Shinto beliefs to design an object that initiates a narrative. More specifically dolls. Thus, invites a relationship and engages the belief that objects have souls.  The dolls which I designed are an intersection of the spirit world and reality. By providing a process that facilitates the traditional Youkai story base on Shinto beliefs and how it has developed in modern society. In promoting participant engagement through design methods and processes, this project discovered a new vision of forming meaningful relationships between humans and objects empowers the true value of an object. This project visualizes participant experiences created an exploration of a narrative that contains the spirit.</p>

Collocations in context

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaclav Brezina ◽  
Tony McEnery ◽  
Stephen Wattam
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Community ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

The idea that text in a particular field of discourse is organized into lexical patterns, which can be visualized as networks of words that collocate with each other, was originally proposed by Phillips (1983). This idea has important theoretical implications for our understanding of the relationship between the lexis and the text and (ultimately) between the text and the discourse community/the mind of the speaker. Although the approaches to date have offered different possibilities for constructing collocation networks, we argue that they have not yet successfully operationalized some of the desired features of such networks. In this study, we revisit the concept of collocation networks and introduce GraphColl, a new tool developed by the authors that builds collocation networks from user-defined corpora. In a case study using data from McEnery’s (2006a) study of the Society for the Reformation of Manners Corpus (SRMC), we demonstrate that collocation networks provide important insights into meaning relationships in language.

Schmalenbach on Standing Alone before God: A Philosophical Case-Study in Ontologico-Historical Understanding  

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-186  
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Key Points ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Relative Status ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores the clarificatory potential of a specific way of approaching philosophical problems, centered on the analysis of the ways in which philosophers treat the relationship between ontological and historical forms of commitment. Its distinctive feature is a refusal to begin from any premises that might be considered “ontologistic” or “historicistic.” Instead, the relative status of the two forms of commitment is left open, to emerge in the light of more specific inquiries themselves. In this case the topic in question is furnished by an essay from the early twentieth century German philosopher Herman Schmalenbach, entitled “Der Genealogie der Einsamkeit” (somewhat problematically translated as “On Lonesomeness”). The aim is to show how the import of Schmalenbach’s historico-philosophical treatment of certain features arguably central to the spiritual practices and religious beliefs of Christianity can be more effectively grasped when approached in these terms. The first part provides an overview of the key points of Schmalenbach’s essay, while the second presents some conceptual-analytic considerations as a basis for exploring relations between ontological and historical forms of commitment as these figure in his text. Some possible broader implications for Christianity and its relationship to modern society are then also briefly sketched.  

scholarly journals On the doctrinal principles of family law (The case study of the principle of responsibility for violation of family law norms)

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-177
Author(s):  
Anatoly J. Ryzhenkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
The Family ◽  
Legal Sanctions ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Scientific Ideas

Introduction. The article proposes supplementing the system of principles of family law with a new doctrinal principle – the principle of responsibility for violations of family law. Theoretical analysis. The article explores scientific ideas about the system of principles of family law, the features of family legal responsibility, the relationship of protection measures and liability measures in family law. Result. The article concludes that only the sanctions of the moral nature should be attributed to the family-legal sanctions. Property sanctions (compensation for non-pecuniary damage, disinheritance, recovery of losses) are of a civil nature, although they reflect the specifics of family relations. In addition to specific sanctions, the essence of family law liability lies in the special composition of the subjects of these sanctions, as well as the special procedures under which they are subject to application.

scholarly journals The Relationship between Higher Education and the Workforce in Romanian Socialist Industry Case-study of the ‘23 August’ Factory

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Vasile
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Socialist Economic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Socialist Industry

Abstract: This article presents the mechanisms used to integrate higher education graduates in socialist economic units. The case-study referring to the ‘23 August’ factory in Bucharest mainly relies on the files of Securitate, and those of the economic section of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. It also outlines the practical difficulties faced by various groups of higher education graduates – engineers, economic staff, human sciences graduates – as well as their efficiency within the communist industrial framework. The study combines the description and analysis of numerical allocation, the responsibilities and the results of the activities carried out by higher education graduates.

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