Marxism and Historiography: Perspectives on Roman History

Author(s):  
Andrea Giardina

Marxism has slowly declined in recent literature on the economic and social history of the ancient world. If one happens to run into the name of Marx or the term Marxism, it is generally within the context of polemical remark. In spite of recurrent attempts to resuscitate it as an ideal foil for anti-Communist polemic, Marxism made its final exit from the field of ancient historical studies in the 1960s, when new Marxist and Marxist-inspired historiography came to the fore. This chapter discusses the changing role of Marxism in Italian history-writing. It focuses on the historians who claim themselves as Marxists, and those who employ Marxist categories and draw on Marxist theory yet refuse to be defined as Marxists. The chapter examines the debates of the different groups on the historiographic phase marked by the circulation of Marxist concepts, analytical tools, and models outside the strictly Marxist milieu. One of the most striking aspects of this phase is the existence of a trend for the formation of research groups that shared not only an affinity or ideological adherence to Marxism, but also an interest in historical theory and a similar orientation in cultural politics. These interdisciplinary approaches stimulated the confluence of individual competences in group projects aimed at singling out new topics and developing investigational strategies. This historiographic phase also reflected a sense of community, a refusal of traditional academic hierarchies, a wish to keep individualism in check, and the rejection of erudite isolation. In Italy, these forms of association served as a means for ethical and political self-representation of cultural hegemony.

2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Andersson-Skog

The twentieth-century history of the Swedish welfare state and public-service sector is critical to understanding the changing role of women in Sweden, as the expansion of the country's service production, beginning in the 1960s, has been mainly the result of wel-fare-state policies. Yet women's self-employment and wage work in the service industry has been neglected as an economic factor in both traditional economic and business history accounts and in historical studies of gender. Some suggestions are made for future explorations of the Swedish service sector as it operates in the shadow of the welfare state.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Laura Carter

The introduction proposes the key argument that the twentieth century was Britain’s educational century. It discusses how the democratization of historical knowledge in Britain between 1918 and 1979 occurred as a process of negotiation between policymakers, elites, and educationists on the one hand, and ordinary people on the other. The concept of the ‘history of everyday life’ is introduced and defined. The introduction then discusses the important role of women in the making of popular social history, and its relationship to classed, gendered, racial, imperial, and national categories. The ‘history of everyday life’ is briefly discussed in relation to other ‘origin stories’ of British social history, especially the new academic social history of the 1960s and the importance of the ‘everyday’ in mid-century social science. Finally, the introduction discusses the book’s methodological approach and provides an overview of each of the chapters.


Author(s):  
Timur Gimadeev

The article deals with the history of celebrating the Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia organised by the state. Various aspects of the history of the holiday have been considered with the extensive use of audiovisual documents (materials from Czechoslovak newsreels and TV archives), which allowed for a detailed analysis of the propaganda representation of the holiday. As a result, it has been possible to identify the main stages of the historical evolution of the celebrations of Liberation Day, to discover the close interdependence between these stages and the country’s political development. The establishment of the holiday itself — its concept and the military parade as the main ritual — took place in the first post-war years, simultaneously with the consolidation of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Later, until the end of the 1960s, the celebrations gradually evolved along the political regime, acquiring new ritual forms (ceremonial meetings, and “guards of memory”). In 1968, at the same time as there was an attempt to rethink the entire socialist regime and the historical experience connected with it, an attempt was made to reconstruct Liberation Day. However, political “normalisation” led to the normalisation of the celebration itself, which played an important role in legitimising the Soviet presence in the country. At this stage, the role of ceremonial meetings and “guards of memory” increased, while inventions released in time for 9 May appeared and “May TV” was specially produced. The fall of the Communist regime in 1989 led to the fall of the concept of Liberation Day on 9 May, resulting in changes of the title, date and paradigm of the holiday, which became Victory Day and has been since celebrated on 8 May.


1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siry

Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Building in Chicago (1886-1890) is here analyzed in the context of Chicago's social history of the 1880s. Specifically, the building is seen as a capitalistic response to socialist and anarchist movements of the period. The Auditorium's principal patron, Ferdinand W. Peck, created a theater that was to give access to cultural and civic events for the city's workers, to draw them away from both politicized and nonpoliticized "low" urban entertainments. Adler and Sullivan's theater was to serve a mass audience, unlike opera houses of the period, which held multiple tiers of boxes for privileged patrons. This tradition was represented by the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City (1881-1883). Turning away from works like the Paris Opéra, Peck and his architects perhaps sought to emulate ideas of other European theaters of the period, such as Bayreuth's Festspielhaus (1872-1876). Sullivan's interior had an ornamental and iconographic program that was innovative relative to traditional opera houses. His design of the building's exterior was in a Romanesque style that recalled ancient Roman monuments. It is here compared with other Chicago buildings of its era that represented high capital's reaction to workers' culture, such as Burnham and Root's First Regiment Armory (1889-1891), Peck's own house (1887), and the Chicago Athenaeum (1890-1891). The Auditorium's story invites a view of the Chicago School that emphasizes the role of patrons' ideological agenda rather than modern structural expression.


1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 182-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shabtai Rosenne

En s'efforçant, au lendemain de la guerre [1914 – 1918], de poser les bases d'une société de peuples régie par le droit, les fondateurs de cette communauté internationale nouvelle se rendaient pleinement compte qu'il ne saurait y avoir une société organisée sans un pouvoir judiciaire chargé de veiller, en dehors de toute préoccupation de politique et de force, à la stricte observation du droit. C'est dans cette conviction qu'ils ont prévu, dès l'origine, la création de la Cour permanente de Justice internationale.Feinberg in 1931Reviewing the history of the Permanent Court of International Justice and of the International Court of Justice from 1922—the World Court, a convenient but possibly misleading expression which embraces both the Permanent Court from 1922 to 1945 and the present International Court of Justice established as an integral part of the United Nations since—four clearly separated periods can be discerned. They run from 1922 to 1931, 1932 to 1940, 1946 to 1966, and from 1967 onwards.The establishment of the League of Nations and the Permanent Court after a cataclysmic war in Europe and the awe-inspiring Russian Revolution released a wave of euphoria upon the exhausted and war-weary peoples of what is now known as Western Europe, and they placed great hopes in the new League and Court.


2004 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Reedy

Nearly 50 years after it was thought to be conquered, retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) continues to cause vision disturbances and blindness among prematurely born infants. During the 1940s and early 1950s, researchers and caregivers first identified and struggled to eliminate this problem, which seemed to come from nowhere and was concentrated among the most advanced premature nurseries in the U.S. Research studies initially identified many potential causes, none of which could be proved conclusively. By the mid-1950s, oxygen was identified as the culprit, and its use was immediately restricted. The rate of blindness among premature infants decreased significantly. ROP was not cured, however. By the 1960s, it had reappeared. The history of ROP serves to remind us that, despite our best intentions, the care and treatment of premature newborns will always carry with it the possibility of iatrogenic disease. This caution is worth remembering as we work to expand the quality and quantity of clinical research.


Itinerario ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Warren

A new found interest in social history, recent developments in historical thought and methodology and a fresh awareness of the importance of gender-specific experience have led historians to question an ‘ordinary woman's place’ in Singa- pore's past. In the historiography of Singapore, there is a need to foreground the critical importance of the ah ku and karayuki-san in the sex,politics and society of the city, stressing not only alterations in their life and circumstance, but also variations in the role of the colonial government, and changes in the ideology of sex and social policy.


Author(s):  
Grace Huxford

This introduction first gives an overview of Korean War historiography alongside a summary of the war itself, before exploring the position of the Korean War and the Cold War in British history-writing. It highlights how selfhood and citizenship have emerged as growing categories of analysis in Cold War studies and argues why it is important to consider them in the context of post-1945 Britain. It closes by exploring the challenges and possibilities of writing the social history of warfare and bringing domestic and military ‘spheres’ together in a meaningful way.


Author(s):  
Patricia Emison

The span of this book is roughly that of directors who had started out in silent pictures reaching the end of their careers, including their transitions to color. The introduction of sound recording and color both transformed filmmaking, not least its cost. Misgivings were voiced early on about the moral effect of the new art, even as censorship was deplored. Mannerism as an art-historical concept was being developed to supplement that of Renaissance naturalism even as filmmakers were trying to reconcile the realism to which photography might seem suited with the artificiality it also enabled. Although studying the history of film inevitably dredges up evidence of racism, sexism, and other prejudices, the history of film, like the history of art, is too complex and has long been too deeply engrained in our cultural lives for historians to choose to be ignorant of once admired works we may now in part or thoroughly deplore, as well as minor yet elucidating works that may likewise be problematic, at least in part. The supposition that respect is the default response to any work of art underestimates the changing role of laughter and other forms of active disregard, particularly during the last century.


2019 ◽  
pp. 61-87
Author(s):  
Kate Bedford

Using legislation, case law, and official records (including Hansard), Chapter 2 outlines the early history of state intervention into bingo in England and Wales. The chapter traces the gradual liberalization of restrictions on small-scale gambling, and the subsequent backlash against bingo in the 1960s. It also tells a new story about gambling regulation and political economy. In particular, it excavates the key role of mutual aid to elite debates about the proper place of gambling in national life. Although many authors have argued that disavowal of gambling helped legitimize the forms of collective insurance developed by early friendly societies and similar associations, the chapter shows that gambling played a key role—as entertainment and mutual aid—within working men’s clubs, and that it was promoted by the state. This mutual aid dimension of gambling was heavily conflicted in gendered terms. Lawmakers were lobbied by bingo-organizing men, with women’s interests at least one step removed from Hansard. Unequal gender roles were hereby woven into dominant understandings of small-scale gambling.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document