Inside the World of the Eunuch

Author(s):  
Melissa S. Dale

This book tells the story of how Chinese palace eunuchs, a complicated and much-maligned group of people, struggled to insert a degree of agency into their lives. During the Qing dynasty, the imperial court was determined to limit the influence of eunuchs by imposing a management style based upon strict rules, corporal punishment, and collective responsibility. Emasculation and employment placed eunuchs at the center of the empire, yet also subjected them to servile status and marginalization by society. Seeking more control over their lives, eunuchs repeatedly tested the boundaries of subservience to the emperor and the imperial court. This portrait of eunuch society reveals that Qing eunuchs operated within two parallel realms, one revolving around the emperor and the court by day and another among the eunuchs themselves by night where they recreated the social bonds (through drinking, gambling, and opium smoking) denied them by their palace service. Emasculation did not produce the ideal servants; rather, eunuchs proved to be a constant source of anxiety and labor challenges for the Qing imperial court. The history of Qing palace eunuchs is defined by a tension between the role eunuchs were meant to play and the life they intended to live.

Author(s):  
Melissa S. Dale

Palace eunuchs, seeking agency in their restricted lives, tested the boundaries of subservience to the emperor and the imperial eunuch system. Behind the palace walls, eunuchs operated within two parallel realms, one revolving around the emperor and his imperial court and another in which they challenged the restrictions placed on them by the imperial eunuch system. This chapter focuses on the world of the eunuch, where eunuchs recreated the social bonds that emasculation was intended to deny them. An examination of legal cases and directives on eunuch conduct provides insight into this second, more hidden, realm, one in which opium dens and gambling flourished, eunuchs became drunk and got into fights with one another, and forbidden bonds of intimacy defeated one of the main purposes of emasculation.


1997 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Borys Lobovyk

An important problem of religious studies, the history of religion as a branch of knowledge is the periodization process of the development of religious phenomenon. It is precisely here, as in focus, that the question of the essence and meaning of the religious development of the human being of the world, the origin of beliefs and cult, the reasons for the changes in them, the place and role of religion in the social and spiritual process, etc., are converging.


GIS Business ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-206
Author(s):  
SAJITHA M

Food is one of the main requirements of human being. It is flattering for the preservation of wellbeing and nourishment of the body.  The food of a society exposes its custom, prosperity, status, habits as well as it help to develop a culture. Food is one of the most important social indicators of a society. History of food carries a dynamic character in the socio- economic, political, and cultural realm of a society. The food is one of the obligatory components in our daily life. It occupied an obvious atmosphere for the augmentation of healthy life and anticipation against the diseases.  The food also shows a significant character in establishing cultural distinctiveness, and it reflects who we are. Food also reflected as the symbol of individuality, generosity, social status and religious believes etc in a civilized society. Food is not a discriminating aspect. It is the part of a culture, habits, addiction, and identity of a civilization.Food plays a symbolic role in the social activities the world over. It’s a universal sign of hospitality.[1]


Author(s):  
Hallie M. Franks

In the Greek Classical period, the symposium—the social gathering at which male citizens gathered to drink wine and engage in conversation—was held in a room called the andron. From couches set up around the perimeter of the andron, symposiasts looked inward to the room’s center, which often was decorated with a pebble mosaic floor. These mosaics provided visual treats for the guests, presenting them with images of mythological scenes, exotic flora, dangerous beasts, hunting parties, or the specter of Dionysos, the god of wine, riding in his chariot or on the back of a panther. This book takes as its subject these mosaics and the context of their viewing. Relying on discourses in the sociology and anthropology of space, it argues that the andron’s mosaic imagery actively contributed to a complex, metaphorical experience of the symposium. In combination with the ritualized circling of the wine cup from couch to couch around the room and the physiological reaction to wine, the images of mosaic floors called to mind other images, spaces, or experiences, and, in doing so, prompted drinkers to reimagine the symposium as another kind of event—a nautical voyage, a journey to a foreign land, the circling heavens or a choral dance, or the luxury of an abundant past. Such spatial metaphors helped to forge the intimate bonds of friendship that are the ideal result of the symposium and that make up the political and social fabric of the Greek polis.


1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-606
Author(s):  
John Villiers

The numerous and voluminous reports and letters which the Jesuits wrote on the Moro mission, as on all their missions in Asia, are perhaps of less interest to us now for what they reveal of the methods adopted by the Society of Jesus in this remote corner of their mission field or the details they contain about the successes and failures of individual missionaries, than for the wealth of information they provide on the islands where the Jesuits lived and the indigenous societies with which they came into contact through their work of evangelization. In other words, it is not theprimary purpose of this essay to analyse the Jesuit documents with a view to reconstructing the history of the Moro mission in narrative form but rather to glean from them some of the informationthey contain about the social and political conditions in Moro during the forty years or so in the sixteenth century when both the Jesuit missionaries and the Portuguese were active in the regio Because the Jesuits were often in close touch with local rulers and notables, whether or not they succeeded in converting them to Christianity, and because they lived among their subjects for long periods, depending upon them for the necessities of life and sharing their hardships, their letters and reports often show a deeper understanding of the social, economic and political conditions of the indigenous societies and, one suspects, give a more accurate and measured account of events and personalities than do the official chroniclers and historians of the time, most of whom never ventured further east than Malacca and who in any case were chiefly concerned to glorify the deeds of the Portuguese and justify their actions to the world.


Book Reviews: Studies in Sociology, Race Mixture, Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe, Interpretations, 1931–1932, Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion, Genetic Principles in Medicine and Social Science, The Reorganisation of Education in China, Social Decay and Eugenical Reform, The Social and Political Ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the Revolutionary Era, L. T. Hobhouse, His Life and Work, Corner of England, World Agriculture—An International Study, Small-Town Stuff, Methods of Social Study, Does History Repeat Itself? The New Morality, Culture and Progress, Language and Languages: An Introduction to Linguistics, The Theory of Wages, The Santa Clara Valley, California, Social Psychology, A History of Fire and Flame, Sin and New Psychology, Sociology and Education, Mental Subnormality and the Local Community: Am Outline or a Practical Program, Tyneside Council op Social Service, Reconstruction and Education in Rural India, The Contribution of the English Le Play School to Rural Sociology, Kagami Kenkyu Hokoku, President's, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Birth Control and Public Health, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Ourselves and the World: The Making of an American Citizen, The Emergence of the Social Sciences from Moral Philosophy, The Comparable Interests of the Old Moral Philosophy and the Modern Social Sciences, The World in Agony, Sheffield Social Survey Committee, Housing Problems in Liverpool, Council for the Preservation of Rural England, Forest Land Use in Wisconsin, The Growth Cycle of the Farm Family, The Farmer's Guide to Agricultural Research in 1931, A History of the Public Library Movement in Great Britain and Ireland, The Retirement of National Debts, Public and Private Operation of Railways in Brazil, The Indian Minorities Problem, The Meaning of the Manchurian Crisis, The Drama of the Kingdom, Social Psychology, Competition in the American Tobacco Industry, New York School Centers and Their Community Policy, Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, Plans for City Police Jails and Village Lockups

1933 ◽  
Vol a25 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-109
Author(s):  
R. R. Marbtt ◽  
E. E. Evans-Pritchard ◽  
E. O. Jambs ◽  
Florence Ayscough ◽  
C. H. Desch ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-93
Author(s):  
N. G. Surayeva ◽  

Court painting in China has evolved over the millennia. With the advent of each new dynasty, the artistic institution at the emperor's court changed its location and name, and so did the status of artists. Fine art and its genre content depended entirely on the emperors' preferences. This article attempts to present a holistic picture of the reformation of the artistic structure at the imperial court at different historical stages, from the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC) to the reign of the Qing dynasty (1616–1911). The work presents the artistic structure of China and identifies its leading representatives at each stage of development. The first information about the Imperial Academy of Painting dates back to the period of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC – 25 AD), when the Shangfang Department was mentioned. During the last Qing dynasty, the court structure of painting was a complex mechanism, with artists working in the Art Department (Huayuanchu), the Ruiguan and Qixiangong workshops.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-124
Author(s):  
Ronald S. Stade

Political correctness has become a fighting word used to dismiss and discredit political opponents. The article traces the conceptual history of this fighting word. In anthropological terms, it describes the social life of the concept of political correctness and its negation, political incorrectness. It does so by adopting a concept-in-motion methodology, which involves tracking the concept through various cultural and political regimes. It represents an attempt to synthesize well-established historiographic and anthropological approaches. A Swedish case is introduced that reveals the kind of large-scale historical movements and deep-seated political conflicts that provide the contemporary context for political correctness and its negation. Thereupon follows an account of the conceptual history of political correctness from the eighteenth century up to the present. Instead of a conventional conclusion, the article ends with a political analysis of the current rise of fascism around the world and how the denunciation of political correctness is both indicative of and instrumental in this process.


Author(s):  
Noah Benezra Strote

This concluding chapter argues that Germans themselves imagined the framework for a more stable political structure before the arrival of American troops. The reconstruction of post-Nazi Germany relied so much on the reconciliation of previously conflicting groups that “partnership” became its foundational ideology. The Germans who rebuilt the educational system in the Federal Republic, West Germany's intelligentsia, were the lions and lambs of the Weimar Republic in their youth. They lived through and participated in the social, economic, political, and cultural conflicts that tore apart German society before Hitler's rise. They also witnessed the Nazi attempt to overcome those conflicts, and some supported Hitler publicly before opposing him as he led Europe and the world into a catastrophic war. When this generation of Germans designed courses of education for the rising post-Nazi generations, they celebrated the ideal of partnership precisely to avoid the earlier conflicts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-100
Author(s):  
Svetlana V. Riazanova

The point of the author’s research interest is mechanisms for the formation of a private religious community on the example of the Intersession brotherhood. A group of believers was emerged as part of the revival of the Orthodox life of the Kama region, but transformed into specific organization with features of popular religion, new religious movements and so-called “historical sects.” Author reconstructs the history of the community involving elements of the biographical method. The study is based on interviews and correspondence with former members of the community, close people of the residents of the commune, as well as analysis of the materials of the closed group on the social network, some audio of the groups’ seminars, photocopies of the working notebooks of the group and a series of photographs made by the believers. The investigation is based on the theoretical constructions of E. Goffman and the concept of total community. Intersession brotherhood appears as a community with the features of totality – territorial and communication closure of the residents, their employment in internal jobs, perception of the group as a family. Lack of privacy is combined with the presence of “mother-child” connection to the leader. The practice of naming for adults, the creation of new marriages, participation in gender-oriented councils create a special micro-environment with the unification of the world view. The system of privileges for advanced residents is supplemented by a developed system of fines. It makes possible to speak about special tools that lead to a change of values, a narrowing of the set of social roles and a reduction of critical thinking.


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