Liturgical Time in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

doi:10.3167/cs.2021.340104

Liturgical Time in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Critical Survey ◽

10.3167/cs.2021.340104 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 45-55

Keyword(s):

Social Control ◽

Canterbury Tales ◽

Social Institution ◽

Social Hierarchy ◽

Ethical Life ◽

Medieval Church ◽

Unify Time

Liturgies are communal in nature, and in the context of the medieval Christian economy of time they are developed and utilised to quantify, consecrate, control, utilise and unify time for the comprehensive end of the welfare of the society, both in the Here and in the Here-after. The liturgy was a social institution, and functioned for anniversaries, holy days, holidays and rituals that were the means of medieval social integrity. In the economy of socio-political and ethical life, the medieval Church linked the sacred to the secular by means of the liturgy. They were used for meditation, as well as a measurement of time, and arguably they were manipulated to parody or satirise the strictly hierarchal estates of the medieval society. Though one of the least liturgical books of his time, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is framed by the liturgical institution of the pilgrimage. Actually a pilgrim travelogue, it depicts the secularisation of liturgy and its appropriation for social control, and paradoxically, a carnivalesque celebration of the reversal of social hierarchy.

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Litigation as Ethnography in Sixteenth-Century Peru: Polo de Ondegardo and the Mitimaes

Hispanic American Historical Review ◽

10.1215/00182168-2007-077 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 88 (1) ◽

pp. 5-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 28

Author(s):

Jeremy Ravi Mumford

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Sixteenth Century ◽

Social Control ◽

Social Institution ◽

Social Category ◽

Colonial State ◽

Indigenous Institutions ◽

Invented Tradition ◽

Andean Highlands

Abstract Scholars of colonialism have drawn attention to the link between litigation and ethnography. In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Asia and Africa, European colonizers frequently tried to adjudicate local disputes according to conquered people’s own laws, which they therefore investigated and codified (creating much invented tradition in the process). This paper explores that link in sixteenth-century Spanish Peru, where, to a remarkable extent, recently conquered Andean people took their disputes to colonial courts. Spanish judges were supposed to decide intra-Andean disputes according to existing laws and customs but seldom actually tried to find out what those customs were. However, in cases where colonial elites were already interested in understanding specific indigenous institutions, litigation between rival Andean groups provided the context in which Spanish officials explored those institutions most profoundly. As a case study, this paper examines the Spanish official Polo de Ondegardo and the Andean social category of mitmaqkuna or mitimaes, which were settlement enclaves created by the pre-Hispanic Inca state. Mitima networks undermined colonial policies of spatial clarity and social control but were legitimized by the prestige that the Incas’ memory carried in Andean society. They also appeared to be a basis for community prosperity in the bleak Andean highlands, a subject in which the Spanish conquerors, who depended on tribute from Andean communities, had a material stake. Through a series of lawsuits between indigenous parties, Spanish jurists—especially Ondegardo—developed explanations for this apparently alien social institution and integrated it into the colonial state.

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The National Uniform

Changing Qatar ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479889075.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 124-157

Author(s):

Geoff Harkness

Keyword(s):

Social Control ◽

Social Issues ◽

Muslim Women ◽

Power Structure ◽

Social Hierarchy ◽

Control Measures ◽

Personal Style ◽

The Social ◽

Cultural Erosion ◽

A Site

Virtually all Qataris wear the national uniform in their day-to-day lives: white robes and head scarves for men, and black cloaks and head scarves for women. These signifiers of nationality are “passports” in a nation where citizens are positioned atop the social hierarchy. Exploring these issues vis-à-vis the hijab, this chapter traces the garments’ history in the Gulf, including their transformation from functional to fashionable attire. These and other changes generate persistent grumbles—and social control measures—from other Qataris. Thus, the hijab serves as a site of resistance, conformity, and negotiation of social issues, including responses to modernity. To assuage concerns about cultural erosion and maintain a sense of personal style, Qatari women modify, adjust, reimagine, and remove their hijabs to suit changing circumstances. These hijab micropractices are at times so infinitesimal that they are easy to overlook. Yet they are significant because they enable women to align the elements of modern traditionalism into a socially acceptable identity that maximizes autonomy. Though the hijab is typically viewed through a lens of constraint, this chapter demonstrates the hijab’s flexibility and the agency with which Muslim women engage in adornment practices. Hijab micropractices, however, may inadvertently uphold a dynastic power structure that does little to advance women.

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