scholarly journals Revisiting a Moral Panic: Ascetic Protestantism, Attitudes to Alcohol and the Implementation of the Licensing Act 2003

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Yeomans
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
British Society ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Temperance Movements

This paper examines the popular reaction to the implementation of licensing reforms in England and Wales in 2005. It characterises these events as an episode of moral panic and seeks an ideological explanation for this alarmist response. Utilising historical perspectives, the paper draws particular attention to the formative importance of the Nineteenth Century in terms of constructing contemporary public attitudes towards alcohol. This paper draws on existing sociology and social history to highlight an international and chronological pattern which suggests a connection between Victorian temperance movements and ascetic brands of Protestantism. Through a consideration of Max Weber, E.P. Thompson and a variety of primary sources, an interpretive explanation for this pattern is provided. Legal evidence, showing the growth of alcohol regulation and the partial enforcement of temperance codes of behaviour, is then used to illustrate the survival and secularisation of temperance views from the Nineteenth Century onwards. An interpretive analysis of public discourse surrounding licensing reform in 2005 provides empirical support for this argument. Attitudes to alcohol exhibited during this episode were found to bear qualitative similarities to Calvinist-inspired temperance beliefs. The paper argues that ascetic Protestant attitudes to alcohol have achieved a wide currency and now occupy a hegemonic position within secular British society. The public reaction to the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003 is thus reinterpreted as a moral panic largely constructed by ascetic Protestant beliefs.

IV. Women Preachers in Mid-Victorian Britain: Some Reflexions on Feminism, Popular Religion and Social Change

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olive Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
British Society ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
National Society ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Women Preachers

Of the making of books on the women's rights movement there is no end, but detailed study of the ways in which the role of women changed in the second half of the nineteenth century has by comparison hardly begun. Yet it is clearly such investigations alone which can show how far the conventional stress upon feminism has been well judged. The religious activities of nineteenth-century British society are admittedly very far from being the area in which the greatest changes occurred in this connexion. Nevertheless for two reasons their investigation seems well worth while. In the first place, when ‘the woman question’ first attracted widespread attention among the British middle classes, the churches were still the great arbiters of public attitudes towards social issues, and the social influence of religious beliefs, practices and institutions was undoubtedly far more extensive than, for example, that of John Stuart Mill or the National Society for Women's Suffrage.

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Literary Techniques

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

23. Heroism and Heartache: Representations of Horatio Nelson in 19th Century Popular British Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
British Society ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
British Music ◽  
The Public Sphere

This research project seeks to establish a print culture context for popular British music during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. More specifically, this project investigates representations of Horatio Nelson, the Battle of the Nile (1798), and the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) to understand representations of heroism and the nature of public and private spheres during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. By studying these representations in popular song, this research better understands the jingoistic tropes of British early 19th century Britain as well as attitudes towards heroism and the Napoleonic Wars. Songs used in this project are: “Nelson’s Tomb,” “The Battle of the Nile,” “The Death of Nelson,” “The Disbanded Soldier” “The Mouth of the Nile,” and “The Orphan Boy’s Tale.” The conflicting perspectives found in these songs provide a greater understanding of British culture during the Napoleonic Wars. Songs which exclusively represent Nelson as the quintessential heroic sailor in the public sphere and Britain’s military acts as divinely sanctioned, choose to ignore Nelson’s relationship in the private sphere, and contrast songs which reject unqualified celebration in the wake of war, and focus on mourning as a result of the war. This disparity reflects the complexity and internal tension of 19th century British society, specifically oppositional attitudes of jingoism and mourning, as well as the celebration of renowned heroes versus the disregard of unknown soldiers and the dead. By considering such historical perspectives on war, we might better understand the voices that speak of war in our own time.

Paying Attention to Foreign Affairs: How Public Opinion Affects Presidential Decision Making by Thomas Knecht

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-146
Author(s):  
Terrence L. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Government Behavior ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

Despite increased attention to the linkages between domestic politics and international relations in political science literature over the last 20 years, considerable debate remains about how well equipped citizens are to act as informed constraints on governments or how attentive and responsive government actors are to public opinion. Debates about citizens' ability to act as a check on government behavior are not new, of course, and have a long tradition in political philosophy and in public discourse. Yet the proliferation of theories of domestic–international linkages in contemporary IR scholarship has unfortunately been accompanied by incomplete dialogue between public opinion and IR scholars and often by claims of unidirectional or unconditional causality regarding domestic constraints, elite framing and opinion leadership, citizens' informational capacities, and the role of the media. The relationship among these factors in shaping foreign policy is quite complex, however, and fortunately Thomas Knecht acknowledges this complexity and advances a conditional argument about the relationship between public attitudes and presidential decision making.

Liverpool Merchants in 19th-Century Niger Delta

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 310-340
Author(s):  
Nimi Wariboko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
The Impact

Abstract How does religion or worldview affect business practices and ethics? This tradition of inquiry goes back, at least, to Max Weber who, in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, explored the impact of theological suppositions on capitalist economic development. But the connection can also go the other way. So the focus of inquiry can become: How does business ethics or practices affect ethics in a given nation or corporation? This paper inquires into how the political and economic conditions created and sustained by nineteenth-century trading community in the Niger Delta influenced religious practices or ethics of Christian missionaries. This approach to mission study is necessary not only because we want to further understand the work of Christian missions and also to tease out the effect of business ethics on religious ethics, but also because Christian missionaries came to the Niger Delta in the nineteenth century behind foreign merchants.

scholarly journals Robert Burns and the Re-making of National Memory in Contemporary Scotland

Authorship ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Dougal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
First Century ◽  
National Memory ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Selling Point ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Iconic Figure

Robert Burns, the eighteenth-century Scottish poet and song writer, continues to maintain a substantial cultural ‘afterlife’ in the twenty first century, both within Scotland and beyond. Achieving cult status in the nineteenth century, the power of Burns as a popular cultural icon remains undiminished. Where the appropriation of Burns as national icon in the nineteenth century was made manifest in statuary, commemorative objects, and painted portraits, the twenty-first century has been marked by the proliferation of the image of Burns in new forms and  technologies, with Burns as product and brand logo, museum and heritage attraction, and tourism industry selling point. This recent flourishing of interest and engagement raises questions about why and how an eighteenth-century poet continues to be the object of such extensive cultural elaboration at this time. In approaching this question, some fruitful lines of enquiry are being suggested in recent discussions that have looked at the nineteenth-century Burns as a ‘mobilizing agent in collective memory production’ (Rigney 2011, 81). One such appraisal points to how the construction of Burns in the nineteenth century as an iconic figure of Scottish cultural memory has the potential to ‘be resignified as necessary in subsequent chronological and geographical sites’ (Davis 2010, 14). It is this potential for the resignification of Burns as a symbolic site for the nation’s memory that this paper explores. In pointing to Burns’ representation in a variety of popular forms and in public discourse, the paper examines how a writer comes to be invested and reinvested as the voice and persona of the nation.

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