scholarly journals Purity Politics? Moral Sensibilities and the Commodity Form

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tad Skotnicki
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Aesthetic Quality ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Comparative Historical Sociology ◽  
Labor Conditions ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Commodity Form

This paper provides a comparative historical sociology of a contemporary phenomenon: the tendency to equate “ethical” goods with aesthetic quality. Studies of moral markets suggest that this equation of ethics and quality would reveal a process whereby moral sensibilities saturate market forms and processes. Yet this paper argues that we should also examine how these forms and processes can condition moral sensibilities, not just absorb them. Drawing on primary source archival materials from late eighteenth century abolitionists and turn-of-the-twentieth-century consumer activists, the author demonstrates that these activists participated in a recurring purity politics of consumption conditioned by the commodity form. This manifests in activists’ equation of: 1) the treatment of the laborers and 2) the quality of the labor with 3) the quality of the goods. To claim that goods were pure, in many instances, was also to claim that the laborers and the labor conditions behind those goods were as well. This purity politics, further, entails both public and private ways of arguing for the equation of ethics and quality, as well as distinct civic visions of ethical labor. It also opens up ways to explore certain racialized dimensions of the commodity form.

The Idea of the Aesthetic

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Michael Bell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Sentiment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

Lawrence spoke readily of art and its relation to life but was suspicious of the word ‘aesthetic’, which had been inflected by the aestheticism of the preceding generation. It is nonetheless a necessary term which his thought and practice help to clarify. The idea of the aesthetic has been controversial since its emergence in the late eighteenth century partly in response to the movement of moral sentiment and the fashion of sensibility. Rather than simply reject the excesses of sensibility, the aesthetic condition sought to transmute the quality of the emotion, turning feeling into impersonal understanding. But the cultural war over the value of feeling continued into the modernist generation who sometimes identified as ‘classical’ or ‘romantic’ in their view of emotion. Lawrence mocked such ‘classiosity’ as fear of feeling. This chapter compares him with his major contemporaries and suggests his significance within a broader history of thinking on the aesthetic.

scholarly journals Berlin Furniture Drawings by Carl Wilhelm Marckwort (1798-1875)

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-145
Author(s):  
Achim Stiegel
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
High Level ◽  
Second World ◽  
Made In

The Rijksmuseum recently acquired eight furniture designs, drawn by the cabinet-maker from Braunschweig, Carl Wilhelm Marckwort (1798-1875), while working as a journeyman in Berlin, in the years 1820-23. Apart from another group by Marckwort, no similar drawings made in Berlin during the first half of the nineteenth century survive, although they must once have been common. They were not regarded as works of art, and those that may have been retained in Berlin were lost during the Second World War. Marckwort took his drawings with him when he returned to Braunschweig in 1824, where they have until recently been kept by a succession of local cabinet-makers. Marckwort’s drawings present much information on current Berlin furniture types, and they document the high level of draughtsmanship attained by a talented craftsman working there. In Berlin, as in Vienna and indeed also in Braunschweig, much attention was given from the late eighteenth century onwards to providing drawing lessons for apprentices and journeymen. This was seen as an important step in an effort to improve the quality of manufactured goods. Marckwort’s manner of drawing, linear rather than free, exemplifies the workings of the new educational system. Sadly, no documentation concerning his training has been found.

A note on the correspondence of Martin Folkes, P. R. S

1954 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-109 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Public And Private

The continual loss of public and private papers through neglect or even destruction because their historical value is not appreciated justifies this note on the vicissitudes of the correspondence and other papers of Martin Folkes, who held the office of President of the Royal Society from 1741 to 1752. He was born in 1690, and was educated at Saumur and Cambridge, where he laid the foundations of his extensive knowledge in mathematics and other subjects. Though he contributed a number of papers on astronomy and metrology to the Philosophical Transactions, he is chiefly remembered for his work on numismatics (he was a great connoisseur of ancient and modern coins), as well as for his knowledge of antiquities. Under his presidency the Royal Society meetings developed a literary rather than a scientific character, and it must be admitted that there was a decline from the former standards. This lapse, noticeable also in the quality of some of the memoirs printed in the 'Transactions, was apparent even to some of his contemporaries, who expressed their disapproval in pamphlets written with characteristic eighteenth century vigour.

SOLOIST PARTICIPATION DURING THE TUTTIS OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WOODWIND CONCERTOS

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
CAREY CAMPBELL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTAlthough the common way to perform late eighteenth-century flute or oboe concertos today is for the soloist to rest during tutti passages, this is probably not what most composers had in mind. Recent research has shown that keyboard and violin soloists played an important role as orchestral members during the ritornellos of their concertos, the former providing a continuo part and the latter doubling the orchestral first violins. But what about concertos for flute or oboe? Were these soloists also to play during the tuttis, and if so, what? Primary source evidence (supported by statements in contemporary treatises) reveals that many eighteenth-century composers expected woodwind soloists to participate during all or some orchestral ritornellos. Printed and manuscript parts of the period reveal several types of soloist participation, suggesting that the practice was widespread yet also flexible. Reinstatement of the soloist in the tuttis, performing all of the music that eighteenth-century composers asked them to perform, would alter the way these concertos sound, in turn forcing a change in how they are perceived.

Barrington Moore and the Dialectics of Revolution: An Essay Review

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Rothman
Keyword(s):  
Essay Review ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Comparative Historical Sociology ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Humpty Dumpty ◽  
Looking Glass

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be the master—that's all.”Through the Looking GlassIt is not hard to find reasons why Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship has had such widespread influence. Its approach, that of comparative, historical sociology, seeks clues to the present in the past, and Moore demonstrates mastery of a wide range of historical materials. Yet I feel that the book is ultimately unsatisfactory, for it is marred by a lack of respect for its own sources of information and by contradictions and non-sequiturs at critical points in the argument.In this critique I shall first examine the general thesis of the book and then turn to the case studies which Moore uses to support his arguments. I shall also attempt to account for the sharp contrasts in the quality of scholarship which characterize the study, and will attribute them to Moore's preconceived ideological assumptions about the nature of the good society.

Democratizing Abolitionism: Anti-slavery Discourses and Sentiments in August von Kotzebue's Die Negersklaven (1796)

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-45
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Denis Diderot ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
German States ◽  
Political Sources ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Peripheral Position ◽  
Histoire Des Deux Indes ◽  
Political Leverage

Despite their peripheral position in the Atlantic slave trade, authors of the late eighteenth-century German states composed a number of dramas that addressed imperialism and slavery. As Sigrid G. Köhler has argued (2018), these authors aimed to exert political leverage by grounding their plays in the international abolitionist debate. This article explores how a body of intellectual texts resonated in August von Kotzebue's bourgeois melodrama Die Negersklaven (1796). In a sentimental preface, he mentions diverse philosophical, historical and political sources that contributed to the dramatic plot and guaranteed his veracity. Looking specifically at the famous Histoire des deux Indes (1770) by Denis Diderot and Guillaume-Thomas F. Raynal, I will examine the ways in which Kotzebue adapted highbrow abolitionist discourses to the stage in order to convery an anti-slavery ideology to the white European middle classes. Kotzebue seems to ground abolitionism in the bourgeois realm by moulding political texts into specific generic templates such as an elaborate mise-en-scène, the separation and reunion of lost lovers, a fraternal conflict, and the representation of suffering victims and a compassionate white hero.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document