The Evolution of Virginity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora E. Jaffary
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Empirical Means

This chapter traces change and continuity in the discourse and practice of virginity through colonial and nineteenth-century Mexico by studying religious tracts, medical texts, and criminal trials. Particular attention is paid to the testimony that Mexican midwives supplied about virginity to criminal courts. Colonial Mexicans primarily associated virginity with Catholic symbolism and expressed uncertainty about the confirmation of biological virginity. In this era, the cessation of menstruation might indicate pregnancy, but might also indicate various other medical conditions which could be alleviated through the ingestion of socially sanctioned menstrual regulators. The late nineteenth century marked the emergence of a scientific discourse that posited an impartial and empirical means to establish “biological virginity,” particularly in the research of physician Francisco Flores’ study of the Mexican hymen. Evidence from criminal trials and secondary literature also reveals a change across time whereby by the late nineteenth century, increasing numbers of lower class Mexican women purportedly adopted the imperative of preserving virginity prior to marriage than had done so in the colonial era.

The Pre-History of Religious Exclusionism in Contemporary Pakistan:Khatam-e-Nubuwwat1889–1953

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1840-1874 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAHIR KAMRAN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Initial Part ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Principal Objective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Religious Polemic

AbstractDuring the late nineteenth-century colonial era in India, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwat(Finality of the Prophethood) assumed remarkable salience as a theme for religious debate among Muslim sects. The controversies around the establishment of the Ahmadiya sect in 1889 brought the issue ofKhatam-e-Nubuwwatto the centre stage of religious polemic ormunazara.Tense relations continued between Ahmadiya and Sunnis, in particular, though the tension remained confined to the domain of religious polemic. However, immediately after Pakistan's creation, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwatsqueezed itself out of the epistemic confines of the ‘theological’ and entered the realm of the ‘political’.Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat(the Association for the Safety of the Finality of the Prophethood) grew out of the almost-defunctMajlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islamon 13 January 1949, with the principal objective of excluding the Ahmadiya sect from the Islamic fold.1This article seeks to reveal how theKhatam-e-Nubuwwathas impinged upon the course of Pakistani politics from 1949 onwards as an instrument of religious exclusion, peaking in 1953. The pre-history of religious exclusion, which had 1889 as a watershed—the year when the Ahmadiya sect took a definitive shape—thus forms the initial part of the article.

The Rise of the Algerian Elite, 1900–14

1967 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belkacem Saadallah
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Third World ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
The Third ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Third World

The present leaders in the Third World are mainly drawn from élites who, in one way or another, were the product of the colonial era. Algeria, of course, is no exception. Although she was always part of the Arab world, French rule, to which she was subjected for more than a century, left a strong impact. One of the results of the colonial era in Algeria was the rise, in the late nineteenth century, of a French-educated elite who tried, despite their limited number, to find a formula by which the native and colonial societies could live together harmoniously. The purpose of this short study is to trace the origins of these Algerians who, without doubt, were among the pioneers of these élites in Africa.

Reconceiving Motherhood

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora E. Jaffary
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
The Public

Colonial authorities prosecuted surprisingly few women for the crimes of abortion and infanticide in viceregal Mexico. Although criminal courts tried hundreds of such cases in the nineteenth century, only a handful of trials survive from Mexico’s colonial era. This article examines criminal and inquisition records, jurisprudence, and medical texts to try to explain this discrepancy. The available evidence suggests that women in colonial Mexico did commit infanticide and abortion much more frequently than the surviving documentary record implies but that neither their peers nor courts viewed the crimes as harshly as they would in later periods. Women successfully concealed the crimes, the public declined to view these acts as criminal, and criminal courts treated them with leniency. Justices, members of the public, and mothers themselves privileged other factors, particularly fiscal concerns and the maintenance of codes of female honor, above a concern with the crimes of infanticide and abortion.

From state uniform to fashion: Japanese adoption of western clothing since the late nineteenth century

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Ami Kobayashi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Adoption Process ◽  
Rural Space ◽  
School Uniform ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Since the late nineteenth century, yōfuku (a vague Japanese concept referring to all clothing originating from western countries) has spread predominantly from the upper to the lower class and from urban to rural space in Japan. In this process, the symbolic meaning attached to it has been transformed. Once a symbol of male elites, yōfuku has become ‘Japanese fashion’ and is now an expression of current Japanese (pop) culture. This article investigates the adoption process of yōfuku – especially the school uniform, which has reflected the contrasts between elite and non-elite, modernity and tradition, masculinity and femininity, and public duty and private life. Drawing on the case study of Japan, this article also sheds light on the complexity and variety that exist in modernization processes.

‘A Source of Enjoyment': The Social Dimension of the Melbourne Liedertafels in the Late Nineteenth Century

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-105
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The City

The city Liedertafels of Melbourne in the late colonial era were extraordinarily active, essentially amateur societies, with burgeoning memberships through to the early 1890s and a busy and varied calendar of men-only and mixed concerts and social events. This article examines aspects of the Melbourne (previously Melbourner Deutsche) Liedertafel (est. 1879) and the Metropolitan (later Royal Metropolitan) Liedertafel (est. 1870) as they functioned within late nineteenth-century Melbourne society, particularly the 1880s to Federation (1901). Opening with preliminary discussion of the social class of the participants and the role of women in the societies, it focuses on the balance in these choirs between the amateur and professional and the social and musical. The article begins with a consideration of the participants’ status as amateur or professional. It looks at any tensions between the two and charts the ways in which the balance between amateur and professional elements changed over the period and gives reasons for those changes. A second section outlines some of the varied and often picturesque types of semi-social, social and ceremonial functions in which the societies involved themselves, but places these briefly in the context of their avowed priorities and aims.

DRESSING UP: HARDY’S TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES AND OLIPHANT’S PHOEBE JUNIOR

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsie B. Michie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Clothing Industry ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Middle Region ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
Late Nineteenth

THE ANXIETY ABOUT BEING ill- or well-dressed that Margaret Oliphant evokes so vividly in this passage was particularly acute in the last half of the nineteenth century when changes in the clothes people wore reflected increasing class mobility. With the growth of a ready-to-wear clothing industry that made it more and more difficult to distinguish the bourgeoisie from the lower echelons of society, “dress became,” as Charles Blanc argued in 1872, “an image of the rapid movement that carries away the world” (qtd. in Benjamin 74). Alongside and as a result of this democratization of dress, a backlash occurred in which subtleties of dress became a means of reinforcing the very class distinctions that seemed to be vanishing in the late nineteenth century. As Rudolph von Jhering argued in 1869, “Fashion is the barrier — continually raised anew because continually torn down — by which the fashionable world seeks to segregate itself from the middle region of society” (qtd. in Benjamin 74). In Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Phoebe Junior, Thomas Hardy and Oliphant use fashion to explore the freedoms and limitations of late nineteenth- century class mobility by telling the story of heroines who are able, in part through education, to separate themselves from their lower-class roots, a separation that is marked in each case by a change in attire.

Was Muḥammad Amīn al-Astarabādī (d. 1036/1626-7) a Mujtahid?

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 38-61
Author(s):  
Rula Jurdi Abisaab
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Rational Theology ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Law ◽  
Sociopolitical Forces

Abstract The prevalent view that Muḥammad Amīn al-Astarabādī (d. 1036/1626-7) studied with a prominent uṣūlī (rationalist) jurist, namely, Shaykh Ḥasan Ṣāḥib al-Maʿālim (d. 1011/1602), the son of al-Shahīd al-Thānī (d. 965/1558), and that he was a mujtahid for most of his life before he converted to akhbārism (traditionism) in Mecca, is largely unfounded. This view surfaced during the late nineteenth century, through Muḥammad Bāqir al-Khwānsārī’s Rawḍāt al-Jannāt, and was uncritically integrated into the major bio-bibliographical accounts on al-Astarabādī’s life and scholarship afterwards. Many modern scholars in turn adopted this view, producing inadequate conclusions about the nature of his akhbārī movement. Based on a close assessment of al-Astarabādī’s extant works and his references to his teachers and places where he studied, Shiraz rather than Mecca was decisive in shaping his early traditionist stance in Shīʿa kalām (rational theology), which resonated with his traditionist positions in jurisprudence and ḥadīth. As far as one can tell through his ijāzās (scholarly licenses), he sought to transmit ḥadīth from one mujtahid, namely, Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāḥib al-Madārik (d. 1009/1600), but did not receive training in ijtihād (rational legal inference) with him. He appears to have been well-versed in the methods used by ūṣūlī jurists to evaluate ḥadīth and derive the law, prior to that time, through his studies in Shiraz. All these findings, lead us to question the background and nature of his akhbārī thought as they were presented in much of the secondary literature, and to bring attention to a distinct set of intellectual and sociopolitical forces that shaped it.

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