The Self in the History of Distributed Cognition: A View from the History of Reading

Author(s):  
Elspeth Jajdelska

This chapter looks at relationships between reading and writing, decorous speech and self-formation in the eighteenth century. The process of self-formation is understood by psychologists today to be a fluid and dynamic one, with the potential to vary across environments. The chapter considers how increasingly novelised forms of diary writing produced a swift oscillation for eighteenth-century diarists between addressing the reader and being the reader. New conceptions of the relationship between writing and print, meanwhile, produced a split between the face to face encounters of lower class readers, and their self-conception as silent readers of political and other topics. These developments meant that self-formation could be distributed between human subjects and the books and documents which they read and wrote.

This volume charts the development of protestant Dissent between the passing of the Toleration Act (1689) and the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828). The long eighteenth century was a period in which Dissenters slowly moved from a position of being a persecuted minority to achieving a degree of acceptance and, eventually, full political rights. The first part of the volume considers the history of various Dissenting traditions inside England. There are separate chapters devoted to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers—the denominations that traced their history before this period—and also to Methodists, who emerged as one of the denominations of ‘New Dissent’ during the eighteenth century. The second part explores the ways in which these traditions developed outside England. It considers the complexities of being a Dissenter in Wales and Ireland, where the state church was Episcopalian, as well as in Scotland, where it was Presbyterian. It also looks at the development of Dissent across the Atlantic, where the relationship between Church and state was rather more loose. The third part is devoted to revivalist movements and their impact, with a particular emphasis on the importance of missionary societies for spreading protestant Christianity from the late eighteenth century onwards. The fourth part looks at Dissenters’ relationship to the British state and their involvement in campaigns to abolish the slave trade. The final part discusses how Dissenters lived: the theology they developed and their attitudes towards Scripture; the importance of both sermons and singing; their involvement in education and print culture; and the ways in which they expressed their faith materially through their buildings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wally Boston ◽  
Sebastián R. Díaz ◽  
Angela M. Gibson ◽  
Phil Ice ◽  
Jennifer Richardson ◽  
...  

As the growth of online programs continues to rapidly accelerate, concern over retention is increasing. Models for understanding student persistence in the face-to-face environment are well established, however, the many of the variables in these constructs are not present in the online environment or they manifest in significantly different ways. With attrition rates significantly higher than in face-to-face programs, the development of models to explain online retention is considered imperative. This study moves in that direction by exploring the relationship between indicators of the Community of Inquiry Framework and student persistence. Analysis of over 28,000 student records and survey data demonstrates a significant amount of variance in re-enrollment can be accounted for by indicators of Social Presence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Pulido-Martos ◽  
Daniel Cortés-Denia ◽  
Esther Lopez-Zafra

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many employees to introduce different degrees of teleworking, leading to a transformation of the psychosocial work environment. In this study, we analyzed whether the relationship between a labor resource, social support, and a personal resource, vigor at work, is affected by the work modality (face-to-face, hybrid that includes face-to-face work and telework time, and telework caused by the current pandemic situation). Five hundred and forty-three employees answered an online questionnaire about their perceptions of the levels of social support, vigor experienced in the last month, and work modality. Seniority in the organization and the gender of the employees were controlled for. The model fit was significant [F(7, 535) = 20.816, p < 0.001], accounting for 21% of the variation in vigor (R2 = 0.21). The interaction was also significant [F(2, 535) = 4.13, p < 0.05], with an increase of 1% in the explanation of the variance in vigor at work (ΔR2 = 0.01). Differences were found in the positive relationship between levels of social support and vigor at work, among the face-to-face and telework modalities (hybrid and telework), but not between teleworking modalities. As a result, we posit that the different forms of telework moderate (buffer) the relationship experienced between labor resources (social support) and personal resources (vigor at work). This implies that, for the design of teleworking conditions, it is necessary to provide work resources similar to those in face-to-face settings, such as social support.


Author(s):  
Belinda Jack

Censorship, book burnings, and secret reading highlight the relationship between reading and power, and hence the relationship between limiting access to reading and political control. But from the very beginning there have been dissidents who refused to give up the intellectual freedom provided by their reading in the face of despotic regimes. ‘Forbidden reading’ considers the history of book burnings undertaken by repressive political regimes, religious authorities, and maverick leaders. It also discusses the Inquisitions and indexes of banned books first led by the Roman Catholic Church, but then later by other religions. Finally, it looks at different forms of censorship, including press censorship during times of war, censorship of ‘undesirable’ content, and self-censorship.


The Closet ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 114-147
Author(s):  
Danielle Bobker

This chapter points out, according to Anthony Hamilton and Jonathan Swift, how closets can still represent the highly circumscribed sociability associated with the face-to-face exchange of handwritten manuscripts. It talks about the hundreds of books that are designated as closets or cabinets that had been published in Britain by the end of the eighteenth century. As the authors and editors of these printed closets and cabinets nervously underscored their own close connections to courtly closets, prayer closets, and elite cabinets of curiosity, they implicitly positioned their readers as illegitimate intruders or spies. The chapter also reviews the complex dynamics of partial inclusion that are directly addressed in a particularly self-reflexive instance. It emphasizes that the one-way mode of visual intimacy channeled the excitement and social disorientation that accompanied the increasing accessibility of knowledge in the eighteenth century.


1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-771 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Vandereycken ◽  
Ron Van Deth

SynopsisIt is common knowledge that puberty is characterized, among other phenomena, by a striking growth spurt. An exploration of the medical literature from previous centuries shows, however, that this feature of adolescence has attracted surprisingly little attention. Although the pubertal growth spurt was known to eighteenth-century physicians, it was neglected for about a century. The influential Belgian scientist Quetelet demonstrated a remarkable scotoma towards the phenomenon. It was only after his death in 1874 that the relationship between puberty and growth spurt became a scientifically established and recognized fact.


1965 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Dow

In this study the relationship between social class membership and reaction to physical disability was examined. It was hypothesized that this reaction would be conditioned by the relative emphasis attached to physique, and that this emphasis varied inversely with social class level, that is, the lower class would be expected to react more severely to physical impairment than would the middle class. Information was obtained on the families' definition of the problem, their intellectual optimism or pessimism, their actual behavior under these circumstances, and the relative emphasis which they attached to physique. The results showed that the majority of parents and children were well informed and generally quite optimistic about the problem. On the behavioral level, however, some families were able to cope more effectively than others; larger families managing a more balanced adjustment than smaller families. Lastly, most parents attached little significance to physique, and this seemed to facilitate their optimism in the face of disability. Over-all, there was no significant class bias in any of the above positions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Safrillah - Safrillah

Balia is a traditional ritual which is potentially disappeared due to the development of modern health care and the influence of Islam. In fact, balia still exists in this ever changing world. Balia even attracts public attention when it was performed in the main stage of Festival Nomoni in 2016. Balia has become ‘the bridge’ between the history of Kaili and Bugis through Sawerigading. Balia is a symbolic expression of the relationship between human beings and their spiritual nature that was originated from belief system towards god (dewa) and spirit (roh) which control the object of nature. Balia can survive because of its efficacy to cure diseases even though it is economically quite expensive. The efficacy of balia seems to confirm the view that disease is a 'spiritual game', which is identified with idolatry (kemusyrikan). In the face of conflict with the teachings of Islam, Kaili residents use the strategy of 'cultural dialogue' by integrating elements and symbols of Islam in the implementation of the tradition of balia.


Author(s):  
Codrina Laura Ionita

The relationship between art and religion, evident throughout the entire history of art, can be deciphered at two levels – that of the essence of art, and that of the actual theme the artist approaches. The mystical view on the essence of art, encountered from Orphic and Pythagorean thinkers to Heidegger and Gadamer, believes that art is a divine gift and the artist – a messenger of heavenly thoughts. But the issue of religious themes' presence in art arises especially since modern times, after the eighteenth century, when religion starts to be constantly and vehemently attacked (from the Enlightenment and the French or the Bolshevik Revolution to the “political correctness” nowadays). Art is no longer just the material transposition of a religious content; instead, religion itself becomes a theme in art, which allows artists to relate to it in different ways – from veneration to disapproval and blasphemy. However, there have always been artists to see art in its genuine meaning, in close connection with the religious sentiment. An case in point is the work of Bill Viola. In Romanian art, a good example is the art group Prolog, but also individual artists like Onisim Colta or Marin Gherasim, who understand art in its true spiritual sense of openness to the absolute.


Author(s):  
Gerard Carruthers

The interwar period marked a major turning point in the history of Scottish literature. The story of Scots before MacDiarmid’s recasting of it as synthetic Lallans was happily enmeshed in the experience of Britishness and of Britain’s imperial expansion overseas. As far back as the eighteenth century, Scots and English were viewed by Scots philologists as Saxon–British cognates. The emergence of an antithetical relationship of Scots and English was largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. Indeed, MacDiarmid entirely reconceptualized the relationship of Scottish literature to the post-1707 British state. A partner nation of enthusiastic imperialists was reimagined as an oppressed colony. Scottish literature, both its practitioners and its critics, embarked on a process of forgetting Scotland’s complicity in Britishness and Empire.


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