scholarly journals The Almanac “Woman and Russia” and the Soviet Feminist Movement at the end of the 1970s

Author(s):  
Nadina Milewska-Pindor

This article presents a short history of the origin and creation of the Almanac “Women and Russia,” which began as a samizdat underground publication devoted to the problem of women and childrearing in the USSR. The idea for creating such an Almanac originated in the mid 1970s in the Leningrad circle of ‘unofficial culture’, at the initiative of the artist Tatyana Mamonova, religious philosopher Tatyana Goricheva, and the women author Natasha Malachovska. The women writers featured in the first edition of the Almanac addressed not only questions about the social conditions prevailing in the USSR, but above all exposed the consequences for women living and functioning ina patriarchal social order, and ironically one where all the questions concerning ‘women’s rights’ were deemed to have been resolved in a progressive fashion much earlier. Not only is the substance of the Almanac important, but the circumstances surrounding its publication and the subsequent consequences related to its publishing also reveal the state of the ‘women’s movement’ in the USSR of that time. These include the reactions of the representatives of the dissident culture, the interventions of the security apparatus and the attendant repression of the women activists and its effect on their lives, and the support of feminist organizations from abroad. Each of the afore-mentioned reactions and consequences became an element of and shaped the everyday lives of the activists involved in the creation of the Almanac. The events related in this work confirm the opinion of those researchers who consider that the publication of the Almanac marked the beginning of the resurrection of the feminist movement in Russia.

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-76
Author(s):  
Bill Bell

Drawing on personal diaries, correspondence, and printed sources, this chapter offers a history of reading on seaborne journeys to emigrant destinations in the nineteenth century. It explores the distinction between official sources, such as church and emigrant recruitment agencies, and the everyday experiences of emigrants themselves, as well as the cultural and educational differences that helped define them. Examining the different conditions between classes on board emigrant ships, it offers several personal accounts of the difficulties faced by reading at sea. The publication of shipboard newspapers, in both manuscript and print, provided a means of entertainment but also assisted social order on board many voyages. The deprivations of many, contrasted with the social advantages of the few, indicate that distinctions on land could be even more marked on the high seas. Nevertheless, the use of print and manuscript by representatives of almost all classes in the nineteenth century allowed for the imagination of cultural connection and the exercise of cultural memory far from home.


Author(s):  
ROY PORTER

The physician George Hoggart Toulmin (1754–1817) propounded his theory of the Earth in a number of works beginning with The antiquity and duration of the world (1780) and ending with his The eternity of the universe (1789). It bore many resemblances to James Hutton's "Theory of the Earth" (1788) in stressing the uniformity of Nature, the gradual destruction and recreation of the continents and the unfathomable age of the Earth. In Toulmin's view, the progress of the proper theory of the Earth and of political advancement were inseparable from each other. For he analysed the commonly accepted geological ideas of his day (which postulated that the Earth had been created at no great distance of time by God; that God had intervened in Earth history on occasions like the Deluge to punish man; and that all Nature had been fabricated by God to serve man) and argued they were symptomatic of a society trapped in ignorance and superstition, and held down by priestcraft and political tyranny. In this respect he shared the outlook of the more radical figures of the French Enlightenment such as Helvétius and the Baron d'Holbach. He believed that the advance of freedom and knowledge would bring about improved understanding of the history and nature of the Earth, as a consequence of which Man would better understand the terms of his own existence, and learn to live in peace, harmony and civilization. Yet Toulmin's hopes were tempered by his naturalistic view of the history of the Earth and of Man. For Time destroyed everything — continents and civilizations. The fundamental law of things was cyclicality not progress. This latent political conservatism and pessimism became explicit in Toulmin's volume of verse, Illustration of affection, published posthumously in 1819. In those poems he signalled his disapproval of the French Revolution and of Napoleonic imperialism. He now argued that all was for the best in the social order, and he abandoned his own earlier atheistic religious radicalism, now subscribing to a more Christian view of God. Toulmin's earlier geological views had run into considerable opposition from orthodox religious elements. They were largely ignored by the geological community in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain, but were revived and reprinted by lower class radicals such as Richard Carlile. This paper is to be published in the American journal, The Journal for the History of Ideas in 1978 (in press).


Author(s):  
Georgia Lindsay

After over a decade of reports, designs, and public outreach, the United Nations Plaza in San Francisco was dedicated in 1976. Using historical documents such as government reports, design guidelines, letters, meeting minutes, and newspaper articles from archives, I argue that while the construction of the UN Plaza has failed to completely transform the social and economic life of the area, it succeeds in creating a genuinely public space. The history of the UN Plaza can serve both as a cautionary tale for those interested in changing property values purely through changing design, and as a standard of success in making a space used by a true cross-section of urban society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-370
Author(s):  
Abdullah Drury

The recent court case of the Australian terrorist responsible for murdering 51 worshippers inside two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has focused attention on this South Pacific nation. Nation-building, with its inherent practices of inclusion and exclusion into the social hierarchy, began here in the nineteenth century and accelerated throughout the twentieth century. History of Muslims in New Zealand, or New Zealand Islam, is a rich narrative illustrative of tendencies and biases that are both common to, as well as divergent from, patterns elsewhere in the English speaking world and Western societies in general. The integration of Muslim immigrants and refugees, and converts to Islam, into this complex social bricolage, however, has been challenging and at times convoluted. This essay will support us to consider why and how this is the case.


Author(s):  
Mario Federico David Cabrera

El presente artículo señala puntos de convergencia metodológica y reflexión teórica entre los estudios del discurso y la propuesta de una Historia de las ideas latinoamericanas de Arturo Roig. En consecuencia, se caracteriza a la Historia de las Ideas como un campo disciplinar que se interroga sobre un amplio sistema de relaciones socio-históricas que hacen a la configuración geo-política de lo Latinoamericano y a las formas de objetivación que se han construido en torno él. El problema que da forma a este trabajo se focaliza en la búsqueda de herramientas que permitan visibilizar la materialización de lo ideológico en el discurso. Es por ello que se focaliza en la noción de “ampliaciones metodológicas” de las indagaciones filosóficas por influencia de la Semiótica y el Análisis del Discurso. Se asume, además, una concepción metodológica del Análisis del Discurso como un campo interdisciplinar que propende a la comprensión de las actividades comunicativas en interacción permanente con las condiciones sociales en las que se producen. ABSTRACT This article presents some methodological and theoretical reflections on the links between discourse studies and Arturo Roig’s proposal for a History of Latin American Ideas. This discipline is defined as a disciplinary field that questions a broad system of socio-historical relationships that make up the geo-political configuration of Latin America. The problem that this work organizes focuses on the ideological dimension of the discourse. That is why it focuses on the notion of “methodological extensions” of philosophical inquiries under the influence of Semiotics and Speech Analysis. Furthermore, a methodological conception of Discourse Analysis is assumed as an interdisciplinary field that tends to understand communicative activities in permanent interaction with the social conditions in which they occur.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-208
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Kubacka

The aim of this article is to show the home as an emotional place. The sphere of social conditions, which has been neglected until recently, can help explain emotion as a social construct. Many researchers have pointed to the emotional dimension of the experience of the home and living practices. A home is a complex place, a conglomerate of three aspects: material, symbolic, and relational. The experience of domesticity can be considered to have multiple aspects and to be variable. Taking emotions into account enables a fuller understanding of the duality of household practices, in connection with both their “function” and their role in creating, recreating, and changing the rules of the social order. In this sense, a home is located between the private and public sphere, emotional authenticity and emotional work, freedom and control, socialization and de-socialization, everyday life and celebration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Tatiana Melnichenko ◽  

This article is devoted to one of the most tragic topics in the history of this party and the history of the Spanish Republic as a whole, namely, the trial of the leaders of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification. The following unpublished documents stored in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History were used for the analysis (F. 495. Op. 183): letters, personal files, protocols of interrogations after May Days, lists and reports on the “connection” between Trotskyi and the POUM, reports on the preparation and course of the trial of the POUM. Members of the POUM were accused of participating in a “rebellion”, moving to change the social order of the Republic. The accusation of the POUM connections with Franco did not seem convincing, either in Spain or abroad. The international public’s attention was focused on the trial of the POUM. Despite the fact that Spain failed to organize a show trial in the style of the “Moscow trials” and the “conspiracy between Trotskyi and Fascists” was not confirmed, the verdict had a negative impact on the POUM reputation. Thus, the trial of the POUM remained in history as one of the “black spots” in the interaction between the Spanish Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. However, the prisoners of the POUM resisted pressure, they were supported morally by participants of the campaign of solidarity in Spain and abroad. The struggle for a kind of rehabilitation of the party continued in emigration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-279
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Tortti ◽  

This paper aims at outlining the main processes that, in Argentina’s recent past, may enable us to understand the emergence, development and eventual defeat of the social protest movement and the political radicalization of the period 1960-70s.Here, as in previous papers, we resort to the concept of new left toname the movement that, though heterogeneous and lacking a unified direction, became a major unit in deeds, for multiple actors coming the most diverse angles coincided in opposing the vicious political regime and the social order it supported. Consequently, we shall try to reinstate the presence of such wide range of actors: their projects, objectives and speeches. Some critical circumstances shall be detailed and processes through which protests gradually amalgamated will be shown. Such extended politicization provided the frame for quite radical moves ranging from contracultural initiatives and the classism in the workers’ movement to the actual action of guerrilla groups. Through the dynamics of the events themselves we shall locate the peak moments as well as those which paved the way for their closure and eventual defeat in 1976.


Author(s):  
T. M. Luhrmann

The introduction lays out what we know about the social context of schizophrenia from the epidemiological literature: that risk of schizophrenia is particularly high for immigrants from predominantly dark-skinned countries to Europe; that risk increases with lower socioeconomic status at birth and even at parent’s birth; that risk increases with urban dwelling and seems to increase the longer time is spent in cities; that risk increases as ethnic density in the neighborhood declines. The chapter presents a history of the way schizophrenia has been understood in the United States, and the diagnostic complexities of serious psychotic disorder. It then discusses what ethnographers have observed so far about the social conditions which may shape the experience of psychosis: the local cultural interpretation of mental illness; the role and presence of the family; the structure of work; and the basic social environment. This becomes the ground for our case studies.


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