Contagiousness as a Problem in Social Epistemology

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Tropical Medicine ◽  
Panama Canal ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Von Liebig ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Positive Knowledge

The theory of infection, although it arose in parallel with the advance of positive knowledge, has never embodied only the logic of the laboratory, in which a “clean” experiment can be devised in order to expose the true causes or symptoms of a disease. To the contrary, both the advent of laboratories and the way they work have come about as the result of a clash between the old paradigm for infection (miasma) and the new one (particular forms of life). The structure of an infection is primarily a structure of social relations, in which the history of an infection and the factors that contributed to its spread are reconstructed. The uncertainty about how an epidemic spreads led to the vindication of the autonomous knowledge which arrived at original ways of representing itself and could prove the soundness of its approach. Any discursive accuracy was regarded as questionable and unable to result in a treatment that would be superior to letting the infection run its course. The efforts of such leading epidemiologists in the modern era as Justus von Liebig, Carlos Juan Finlay, Patrick Manson, and the staff of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg brought about a reconstruction by professionalizing the stages in handling epidemics. It is argued that laboratories asserted their autonomy from universities not because of anything distinctive in their nature, but more because of a general understanding of cause and effect relationships in matters of need and famine. That counted for much more than any shortcomings in the previously established logistics and expansion of production. In addition, the development of forms of colonial, industrial and scientific expansion coupled with new types of enterprise, such as the Panama Canal or Germany’s trade with its colonies, fostered a new vision of epidemics not as natural disasters, but as a complex situations that can be managed and neutralized.

The Maritime Landscape of the Isthmus of Panamá

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Delgado ◽  
Frederick Hanselmann ◽  
Tomas Mendizabal ◽  
Dominque Rissolo
Keyword(s):  
Panama Canal ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Isthmus Of Panama ◽  
Maritime Culture ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
Land Mass ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Over Time

The Maritime Landscape of the Isthmus of Panamá provides a detailed overview of Panamá’s unique role as a land mass dominated by its relationship to the sea and how that relationship has defined the culture and history of Panamá for thousands of years. Ranging from prehistory to the modern era, with the well-known Panamá Canal as but one element in this story, the book discusses indigenous maritime culture over time, including the modern era, colonial and post-colonial maritime endeavors, the industrial age, and the creation of the canal.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

The Fall of Tripoli in 1289 in the Perception of Christian Communities of the Middle East

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
К.А. Панченко
Keyword(s):  
Educational Level ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Religious Polemics

Abstract The article examines the conquest of the County of Tripoli by the Mamelukes in 1289, and the reaction of various Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groups to this event. Along with the Monophysite perspective (the Syriac chronicle of Bar Hebraeus’ Continuator and the work of the Coptic historian Mufaddal ibn Abi-l-Fadail), and the propagandist texts of Muslim Arabic panegyric poets, we will pay special attention to the historical memory of the Orthodox (Melkite) and Maronite communities of northern Lebanon. The contemporary of these events — the Orthodox author Suleiman al-Ashluhi, a native of one of the villages of the Akkar Plateau — laments the fall of Tripoli in his rhymed eulogy. It is noteworthy that this author belongs to the rural Melkite subculture, which — in spite of its conservative character — was capable of producing original literature. Suleiman al-Ashluhi’s work was forsaken by the following generations of Melkites; his poem was only preserved in Maronite manuscripts. Maronite historical memory is just as fragmented. The father of the Modern Era Maronite historiography — Gabriel ibn al-Qilaʿî († 1516) only had fragmentary information on the history of his people in the 13th century: local chronicles and the heroic epos that glorified the Maronite struggle against the Muslim lords that tried to conquer Mount Lebanon. Gabriel’s depiction of the past is not only biased and subject to aims of religious polemics, but also factually inaccurate. Nevertheless, the texts of Suleiman al-Ashluhi and Gabriel ibn al-Qilaʿî give us the opportunity to draw conclusions on the worldview, educational level, political orientation and peculiar traits of the historical memory of various Christian communities of Mount Lebanon.

Perfection Makes Practice

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 98-100
Author(s):  
Muhamad Ali
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Psychological Dimension ◽  
South Sulawesi ◽  
Complex Dimensions ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of

Studies of Islam in Southeast Asia have sought to better understand its multifacetedand complex dimensions, although one may make a generalizedcategorization of Muslim beliefs and practices based on a fundamental differencein ideologies and strategies, such as cultural and political Islam.Anna M. Gade’s Perfection Makes Practice stresses the cultural aspect ofIndonesian Muslim practices by analyzing the practices of reciting andmemorizing the Qur’an, as well as the annual competition.Muslim engagement with the Qur’an has tended to emphasize the cognitiveover the psychological dimension. Perfection Makes Practice analyzesthe role of emotion in these undertakings through a combination ofapproaches, particularly the history of religions, ethnography, psychology,and anthropology. By investigating Qur’anic practitioners in Makassar,South Sulawesi, during the 1990s, Gade argues that the perfection of theQur’an as a perceived, learned, and performed text has made and remade thepractitioners, as well as other members of the Muslim community, to renewor increase their engagement with the holy text. In this process, she suggests,moods and motivation are crucial to preserving the recited Qur’an and revitalizingthe Muslim community.In chapter 1, Gade begins with a theoretical consideration for her casestudy. Drawing from concepts that emphasize the importance of feeling andemotion in ritual and religious experience, she develops a conceptualizationof this engagement. In chapter 2, Gade explains memorization within thecontext of the self and social relations. She argues that Qur’anic memorizershave a special relationship with its style and structure, as well as with thesocial milieu. Although Qur’anic memorization is a normal practice for mostMuslims, its practitioners have learned how to memorize and recite beautifullysome or all of the Qur’an’s verses, a process that requires emotion ...

The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-99
Author(s):  
Frederick S. Colby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Despite the central importance of festival and devotional piety to premodernMuslims, book-length studies in this field have been relatively rare.Katz’s work, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, represents a tour-deforceof critical scholarship that advances the field significantly both throughits engagement with textual sources from the formative period to the presentand through its judicious use of theoretical tools to analyze this material. Asits title suggests, the work strives to explore how Muslims have alternativelypromoted and contested the commemoration of the Prophet’s birth atdifferent points in history, with a particular emphasis on how the devotionalistapproach, which was prominent in the pre-modern era, fell out of favoramong Middle Eastern Sunnis in the late twentieth century. Aimed primarilyat specialists in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, especially scholarsof history, law, and religion, this work is recommended to anyone interestedin the history of Muslim ritual, the history of devotion to the Prophet, andthe interplay between normative and non-normative forms ofMuslim beliefand practice ...

THE ROOTS OF MODERN CAPITALISM: A MARXIST ACCOUNTING HISTORY OF THE ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF CAPITALIST LANDLORDS IN ENGLAND

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Bryer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Accounting History ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Industrial Revolutions

A major debate neglected by accounting historians is the importance of landlords in the English agricultural revolution. The paper uses accounting evidence from the historical literature to test Marx's theory that, from around 1750, England's landlords played a pivotal role by adopting and then spreading the capitalist mentality and social relations by enclosures and changes in the management of their estates and tenants. It gives an accounting interpretation of Marx's theory of rent and argues that the available evidence supports his view that the conversion of English landlords to capitalism underlay the later stages of the agricultural revolution. The conclusion explains the linkages in Marx's theory between the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and calls on accounting historians to conduct archival research into the agricultural roots of modern capitalism.

The Politics of Humanism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph O. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
Secular Humanism ◽  
History Of

While the varieties of humanist expression vary across cultural and historical contexts, all forms of humanism are necessarily related to politics by virtue of outlining ethical positions on matters of social relations. Tracing the history of humanism broadly, as well as secular humanism specifically, this chapter identifies recurring continua of conflict about the politics of humanism. There is a general, inherent tension between individualist and collectivist dimensions of humanism, which is manifest in specific disputes about orientations toward society (philosophical vs. applied humanism), religion (exclusivist vs. ecumenical humanism), ethics (scientistic vs. humanitarian humanism), and politics (libertarian vs. socialist humanism). There are also disputes within humanism that arise around the preferred strategy for managing the stigma of secularity between those who favor separatist subcultures and those who favor normalization through social reform. Ultimately a broad-based conception of humanism offers the greatest possibilities for political efficacy. In conclusion, the article outlines some of the important aspects of humanism and politics in need of further research.

Sufis and the Sufi Lodges in Istanbul in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Socio-Spatial Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422110252
Author(s):  
Ahmet Yusuf Yüksek
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Social Profiles

This study investigates the socio-spatial history of Sufism in Istanbul during 1880s. Drawing on a unique population registry, it reconstructs the locations of Sufi lodges and the social profiles of Sufis to question how visible Sufism was in the Ottoman capital, and what this visibility demonstrates the historical realities of Sufism. It claims that Sufism was an integral part of the Ottoman life since Sufi lodges were space of religion and spirituality, art, housing, and health. Despite their large presence in Istanbul, Sufi lodges were extensively missing in two main areas: the districts of Unkapanı-Bayezid and Galata-Pera. While the lack of lodgess in the latter area can be explained by the Western encroachment in the Ottoman capital, the explanation for the absence of Sufis in Unkapanı-Bayezid is more complex: natural disasters, two opposing views about Sufi sociability, and the locations of the central lodges.

The History of Yellow Fever: An Essay on the Birth of Tropical Medicine

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 499
Author(s):  
John Duffy ◽  
Francois Delaporte
Keyword(s):  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Tropical Medicine ◽  
History Of
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