‘[M]anly beauty and muscular strength’: sculpture, sport and the nation at the Crystal Palace, 1854–1918

Author(s):  
Kate Nichols

This essay recovers episodes in the wide and varied sporting history of the Crystal Palace in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, and situates it in the context of ideas about the body, nation and empire that were manifest in the 1850s Fine Arts Courts, showing how the Greek and Roman courts in particular were received in changing ways across Victorian and Edwardian culture. The Sydenham Palace brought together ‘Fine Arts’, consumer, and sporting cultures, and allows an examination of the ways in which these three seemingly disparate areas of study were closely intertwined. The essay emphasises the national, racial and gender politics implicit in the relationship between these three categories. Discussing Sandow’s Institute, the 1911 Inter-Empire Games, and the occupation of the Palace by the Royal Navy during the First World War, it relates the Palace’s apparently more formal Fine Arts Courts and Natural History Department to its grassy grounds, its static exhibits to its moving, breathing visitors, art historical education to bodily reformation.

2021 ◽  
pp. 097168582110159
Author(s):  
Sital Mohanty ◽  
Subhasis Sahoo ◽  
Pranay Kumar Swain

Science, technology and human values have been the subject of enquiry in the last few years for social scientists and eventually the relationship between science and gender is the subject of an ongoing debate. This is due to the event of globalization which led to the exponential growth of new technologies like assisted reproductive technology (ART). ART, one of the most iconic technological innovations of the twentieth century, has become increasingly a normal social fact of life. Since ART invades multiple human discourses—thereby transforming culture, society and politics—it is important what is sociological about ART as well as what is biological. This article argues in commendation of sociology of technology, which is alert to its democratic potential but does not concurrently conceal the historical and continuing role of technology in legitimizing gender discrimination. The article draws the empirical insights from local articulations (i.e., Odisha state in eastern India) for the understandings of motherhood, freedom and choice, reproductive right and rights over the body to which ART has contributed. Sociologically, the article has been supplemented within the broader perspectives of determinism, compatibilism alongside feminism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-374
Author(s):  
David Kennerley

AbstractMusic has been steadily rising up the historical agenda, a product of the emergence of sound studies, the history of the senses, and a mood of interdisciplinary curiosity. This introductory article offers a critical review of how the relationship between music and politics has featured in extant historical writing, from classic works of political history to the most recent scholarship. It begins by evaluating different approaches that historians have taken to music, summarizes the important shifts in method that have recently taken place, and advocates for a performance-centered, contextualized framework that is attentive to the distinctive features of music as a medium. The second half examines avenues for future research into the historical connections between music and politics, focusing on four thematic areas—the body, emotions, space, and memory—and closes with some overarching reflections on music's use as a tool of power, as well as a challenge to it. Although for reasons of cohesion, this short article focuses primarily on scholarship on Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its discussion of theory and methods is intended to be applicable to the study of music and political culture across a broad range of periods and geographies.


2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILY CALLACI

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between understandings of youth sexuality and mobility, and racial nationalism in late colonial Tanganyika through a history of dansi: a dance mode first popularized by Tanganyikan youth in the 1930s. Dansi's heterosocial choreography and cosmopolitan connotations provoked widespread anxieties among rural elders and urban elites over the mobility, economic autonomy, and sexual agency of youth. In urban commercial dancehalls in the 1950s, dansi staged emerging cultural solidarities among migrant youth, while also making visible social divisions based on class and gender. At the same time, nationalist intellectuals attempted to reform dansi according to an emerging political rhetoric of racial respectability.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Babette Hellemans

This pioneering textbook explores the theoretical background of cultural variety, both in past and present. How is it possible to study 'culture' when the topic covers the arts, literature, movies, history, sociology, anthropology and gender studies? Understanding Culture examines the evolution of a concept with varying meanings depending on changing norms. Offering a long-duration analysis of the relationship between culture and nature, this book looks at the origins of studying culture from an international perspective. Using examples from the several scholarly traditions in the practice of studying culture, Understanding Culture is a key introduction to the area. It identifies the history of interpreting culture as a meeting point between the long-standing historical investigation of 'humanism' and 'postmodernism' and is a comprehensive resource for those who wish to further their engagement with culture as both a historical and contemporary phenomenon.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mansoureh Refaei ◽  
Soodabeh Aghababaei ◽  
Mansoureh Yazdkhasti ◽  
Farideh Kazemi ◽  
Fatemeh Farahmandpour

Background: Several risk factors have been identified for postpartum hemorrhage, one of which being the duration of the third stage of labour. This stage refers to the interval between the expulsion of the fetus to the expulsion of the placenta. Some bleeding occurs in this stage due to the separation of the placenta Objective: This study aimed to identify the factors associated with the length of the third stage of labour. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 300 women hospitalized for vaginal birth were selected via convenience sampling. The study data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire. Then, the data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate linear regression analyses. Results: The mean (SD) age of the participants was 26.41 (6.26) years. Investigation of the relationship between the study variables and the time of placental separation indicated that a minute increase in the length of membranes rupture caused a 0.003minute decrease in the time of placental separation. However, this time increased by 2.75, 6.68, and 2.86 minutes in the individuals without the history of abortion, those with the history of stillbirth, and those who had not received hyoscine, respectively. The results of multivariate analysis indicated that suffering from preeclampsia or hypertension, history of stillbirth, not receiving hyoscine, and not receiving misoprostol increased the length of the third stage by 4.40, 8.55, 2.38, and 6.04 minutes, respectively. Conclusion: Suffering from preeclampsia and having the history of stillbirth increased and using hyoscine and misoprostol decreased the length of the third stage of labour. However, no significant relationship was found between the length of the third stage of labour and mother’s age, gestational age, parity, mother’s body mass index, mother’s chronic disorders, history of manual placenta removal, length of the first and second stages, membranes rupture, induction, amount of oxytocin after delivery, and infant’s weight and gender.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 1113-1129
Author(s):  
Kali Murray

This essay considers what tools should be used to study the legal history of intellectual property. I identify three historiographical strategies: narration, contest, and formation. Narration identifies the diverse “narrative structures” that shape the field of intellectual property history. Contest highlights how the inherent instability of intellectual property as a legal concept prompts recurrent debates over its meaning. Formation recognizes how intellectual property historians can offer insight into broader legal history debates over how to consider the relationship between informal social practices and formalized legal mechanisms. I consider Kara W. Swanson's Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk and Sperm in Modern America (2014) in light of these historiographical strategies and conclude that Swanson's book guides us to a new conversation in the legal history of intellectual property law.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-88
Author(s):  
José Antonio Colón Fraile

ABSTRACTWe studied how the urinating action and the use of the own urine have been used as an element of artistic expression in different art throughout history disciplines. This tour was organized by subject indexes, from the simplest to the most complex images semiotically. Contemporary art deserved special attention by incorporating the use of the body and its fluids as examples of human fears and obsessions, characterized the appearance of urine by its radicalism and gender affiliation.RESUMENSe estudia cómo se ha representado la acción de orinar y el uso de la propia orina como elemento de expresión artística en las distintas disciplinas a lo largo de la historia del arte. Se estructura este recorrido por índices temáticos, desde las imágenes más simples hasta las semióticamente más complejas, comenzando por la representación de niños que orinan, utilizados en todas las épocas como imagen de lo anecdótico y motivo decorativo para fuentes y jardines. Se continúa por otras imágenes que, aun siendo protagonizadas también por niños, poseen niveles de lectura culturalmente más elevados. Se divide este estudio en dos grandes épocas antagónicas: el mito de la Edad de Oro, estado natural y privilegiado para el ser humano, y el posterior mito de la caída en el que la sexualidad connota el acto de orinar ofreciéndonos nuevas lecturas desde el erotismo, la pornografía y su uso político-propagandístico. 


Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky

This chapter addresses the position of Jews in Lithuania between the two world wars. Although the history of inter-war Lithuania reveals many political failures, it is clear that, even during the authoritarian period, civil society continued to develop. Illiteracy was largely eradicated and impressive advances were made in social and intellectual life. In addition, land reform created a prosperous farming community whose products made up the bulk of the country's exports. The first years of Lithuanian independence were marked by a far-reaching experiment in Jewish autonomy. The experiment attracted wide attention across the Jewish world and was taken as a model by some Jewish politicians in Poland. Jewish autonomy also seemed to be in the interests of Lithuanians. The bulk of the Lithuanian lands remained largely agricultural until the First World War. Relations between Jews, who were the principal intermediaries between the town and manor and the countryside, and the mainly peasant Lithuanians took the form of a hostile symbiosis. This relationship was largely peaceful, and anti-Jewish violence was rare, although, as elsewhere, the relationship was marked by mutual contempt.


Author(s):  
Brooke Holmes

Much of western philosophy, especially ancient Greek philosophy, addresses the problems posed by embodiment. This chapter argues that to grasp the early history of embodiment is to see the category of the body itself as historically emergent. Bruno Snell argued that Homer lacked a concept of the body (sōma), but it is the emergence of body in the fifth century BCE rather than the appearance of mind or soul that is most consequential for the shape of ancient dualisms. The body takes shape in Hippocratic medical writing as largely hidden and unconscious interior space governed by impersonal forces. But Plato’s corpus demonstrates that while Plato’s reputation as a somatophobe is well grounded and may arise in part from the way the body takes shape in medical and other physiological writing, the Dialogues represent a more complex position on the relationship between body and soul than Plato’s reputation suggests.


Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith

This Introduction takes a broadly focused, global, and comparative view of the concept of embodiment, focusing particularly on some of the ways it has been interpreted outside of the history of European thought. It also provides a general overview of the central concerns and questions of the volume as a whole, such as: What is the historical and conceptual relationship between the idea of embodiment and the idea of subjecthood? Am I who I am principally in virtue of the fact that I have the body I have? Relatedly, what is the relationship of embodiment to being and to individuality? Is embodiment a necessary condition of being? Of being an individual? What are the theological dimensions of embodiment? To what extent has the concept of embodiment been deployed in the history of philosophy to contrast the created world with the state of existence enjoyed by God? What are the normative dimensions of theories of embodiment? To what extent is the problem of embodiment a distinctly western preoccupation?


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