The inventor of interiors: old professions in search of a name

Author(s):  
Anca I. Lasc

The focus here is on the visual and written records of three professional groups – upholsterers, cabinet-makers, and architects – that each made claims to the art and business of interior decorating. After a brief history of these groups in the pre-revolutionary era, the chapter examines their new status quo and quest for legitimacy in the nineteenth century and in the aftermath of the abolition of guilds and trades. To secure clients, they emphasized artistic skill over practical requirements or commercial interests. Dramatically different images and writings about the professions developed as a result. If the trade literature was filled with practical advice specific to each profession - including educational opportunities, union requirements, and claims to the status of rightful interior decorators over other professional groups - the more widely-circulating pattern books or illustrations in popular journals included a portfolio of images with minimal information. The latter favored creativity over practical considerations, blurring boundaries between professions and proposing unified, themed interiors where every element occupied a unique and pre-established position within a larger whole. Going beyond the requirements and expectations of their own trade organizations, together, upholsterers, cabinet-makers, and architects helped define the new profession of the proto-interior designer.

Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.


1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 831-851 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Quinault

1848 has gone down in history – or rather in history books – as the year when England was different. In that year a wave of revolution on the Continent overthrew constitutions, premiers and even a dynasty but in England, by contrast, the middle classes rallied round the government and helped it preserve the status quo. This interpretation of 1848 has long been the established orthodoxy amongst historians. Asa Briggs took this view thirty years ago and it has lately been endorsed by F. B. Smith and Henry Weisser. Most recently, John Saville, in his book on 1848, has concluded that events in England ‘demonstrated beyond question and doubt, the complete and solid support of the middling strata to the defence of existing institutions’. He claims that ‘the outstanding feature of 1848 was the mass response to the call for special constables to assist the professional forces of state security’ which reflected a closing of ranks among all property owners. Although some historians, notably David Goodway, have recently stressed the vitality of Chartism in 1848 they have not challenged the traditional view that the movement failed to win concessions from the establishment and soon declined. Thus 1848 in England is generally regarded as a terminal date: the last chapter in the history of Chartism as a major movement. Thereafter Britain experienced a period of conservatism – described by one historian as ‘the mid-Victorian calm’–which lasted until the death of Palmerston in 1865.


2021 ◽  
pp. 223386592110183
Author(s):  
Yuliya Brel-Fournier ◽  
Minion K.C. Morrison

Belarusian citizens elected their first president in 1994. More than 20 years later, in October 2015, the same person triumphantly won the fifth consecutive presidential election. In August 2020, President Lukashenko’s attempt to get re-elected for the sixth time ended in months’ long mass protests against the electoral fraud, unspeakable violence used by the riot police against peaceful protesters and the deepest political crisis in the modern history of Belarus. This article analyzes how and why the first democratically elected Belarusian president attained this long-serving status. It suggests that his political longevity was conditioned by a specific social contract with the society that was sustained for many years. In light of the recent events, it is obvious that the contract is breached with the regime no longer living up to the bargain with the Belarusian people. As a result, the citizens seem unwilling to maintain their obligation for loyalty. We analyze the escalating daily price for maintaining the status quo and conclude considering the possible implications of this broken pact for the future of Belarus.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Samson Ondigi ◽  
Henry Ayot ◽  
Kiio Mueni ◽  
Mary Nasibi

Abstract The essence of education is to prepare an individual for lifelong experiences after schooling. Education as offered in schools today is expected to give the teacher a chance to impart knowledge and skills in the learner, and for the learner to be informed and be able to put into practice what has been gained in the course of time. The Kenyan curriculum and goals of education are clearly stipulated if followed to the latter. Basically, the classroom practice by both the teachers and the learners exhibit an academic rather than a dual system that is expected to meet the needs of both the individual and those of the communities which form subsets of the society at large. It is upon this premise that education of a given country must prepare its individuals in schools so as to meet the goals of education at any one given time of a country’s history. This paper looks at the perspective of vocationalization of education in Kenyan at this century. The history of education ever since independence in 1963 by focusing on the Ominde commission through the Koech report of 1999 have been emphatic that education must meet the national goals of education as stipulated in the curriculum. But what is edging the practice that has not revolutionalized the socio-economic, cultural and political development of Kenya? Differentiated Instruction is a teaching theory based on the premise that instructional approaches should vary and be adapted in relation to individual and diverse students in classroom aimed at achieving diversified learning and common practices in the career. The challenges herein are: where have we gone wrong as a nation, what is the practice in the classroom, when can the nation be out of this dilemma, who is to blame for the status quo and finally what is the way forward? By addressing these questions, the education system will be responsive to the changes in time and Kenya will be on the path to successful recovery.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Jan Adriaan Schlebusch

Abstract In his strategic political positioning and engagement in the nineteenth century, Groen van Prinsterer looked towards both the past and the future. Rhetorically, he appealed to the past as a vindication of the truth and practicality of his anti-revolutionary position. He also expressed optimism for the success of his convictions and political goals in the future. This optimism was reflected in the confidence with which he engaged politically, despite experiencing numerous setbacks in his career. Relying on the phenomenological-narrative approach of David Carr, I highlight the motives and strategies behind Groen’s political activity, and reveal that the past and the future in Groen’s narrative provide the strategic framework for his rhetoric, and the basis for his activism. I accentuate how the emphasis of his narrative shifts away from the status quo and thus enables a type of political engagement that proved historically significant for the early consolidation of the Dutch constitutional democracy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (97 (153)) ◽  
pp. 161-178
Author(s):  
Anna Karmańska

This article presents an account of an interview with Zdzisław Fedak, PhD, who participated in the work on the systemic solutions in accounting in the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL), and currently is an animator of improvements in Polish accounting practice in the conditions of market economy. The basic reason for this publication is the need to fill the gap in the picture of the determinants and characteristics of accountancy in Poland in the period of non-market economy, taking advantage of the expertise and experience of people knowing the status quo in this area. This text is part of the trend to document the history of accountancy by means of a research method known as oral history.


Author(s):  
Zoltan J. Acs

This chapter describes the system of opportunity creation in the United States, which has been a series of inventions and reinventions of the means by which opportunity has been provided. It begins with a historical background on efforts to suppress opportunity—or at least keep a monopoly hold on it—particularly in Britain. It then considers how opportunity has been embedded in American-style capitalism in two fundamental ways. The first is by equipping individuals with the skills they need to participate in capitalism; the second relates to the functioning of innovation and markets, and to the ability of new industries, firms, and jobs to challenge the status quo—namely, creative destruction. It also highlights the fundamental tension between wealth creation and maintaining economic opportunity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role played by schools and education reformers in the history of opportunity and opportunity creation in America.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 842-851
Author(s):  
Tetsuya Kono

The purpose of this article is to report on the status quo in Japanese theoretical psychology and introduce some of the recent theoretical debates relating to psychology and related fields in Japan. Theoretical psychology has not been very active in Japanese psychology so far. However, despite that, very important studies on theoretical issues in psychology have been conducted in the last 20 years, such as theoretical debate concerning “new forms of psychology”; methodological arguments about qualitative approaches, narrative psychology, and clinical psychology; detailed studies on the history of Japanese modern psychology; and the creation of new interdisciplinary fields of research. At present, Japanese psychology seems to be a collection of small diverse paradigms. I conclude that more theoretical and philosophical arguments are needed in order to avoid narrowing psychologists’ view on humanity and to pursue the true and comprehensive understanding of the object.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 1934578X2094545
Author(s):  
Lucie Cahlíková ◽  
Marcela Šafratová ◽  
Anna Hošťálková ◽  
Jakub Chlebek ◽  
Daniela Hulcová ◽  
...  

The primal discipline from which pharmacy has developed can be considered as pharmacognosy. This review defines pharmacognosy while reflecting on the latest development and discourse about its justifiability in the educational system in pharmaceutical faculties and the history of development of new drugs under the influence of pharmacognosy. The article defines the status quo of the pharmacognosy area, or more precisely its parts (biology, chemistry, production, and technology) and discusses their connections. It underlines the legitimacy of application of natural drugs in therapy, which is undeniable, and proves that whether a new drug was prepared either synthetically or isolated from a natural source is not important. The overview follows the basic requirements of pharmacognosy, especially its methodology (usage of faster and more effective phyto-analytical methods, reverse pharmacology, and reverse pharmacognosy, in silico methods). Pharmacognosy is confronted by three major challenges in the 21st century that can push it significantly forward: ethnopharmacological sources evaluation, evaluation of nutraceuticals, and pharmacognosy of marine organisms. The educational system of universities should correspond to these new demands. However, in some areas the educational system is not prepared to face the challenges of the time. The basic requirement is to adopt a complex attitude to biogenic material and utilize the connections of this complexity in the teaching of modern pharmacy.


Author(s):  
John M. Coward

This chapter looks at racial imagery in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in the final years of the nineteenth century, comparing the illustrations of Indians and African Americans as a way of explaining the shifting nature of race and representation as Western expansion ran its course. Native Americans were usually portrayed more sympathetically than African Americans. Indians were also depicted as more progressive than blacks. Moreover, Indians in the early 1890s were seen predominately as nonthreatening, both militarily and culturally. African Americans, by contrast, were closer and more familiar to whites and often perceived as less interesting to illustrators and more threatening to the status quo. Unlike Indians, whose apparent strangeness could be presented as exotic, black strangeness was ridiculed.


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