Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
James Pickett

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Islamic scholars of Bukhara during the long nineteenth century. Islamic scholars were among the most influential individuals in their society, and that power rested on their mastery of diverse forms of knowledge rather than birthright. Instead of imagining those varied competencies and practices as embodied by separate professions, this book conceptualizes them as distinct practices and disciplines mastered by a single milieu. Instead of imagining stratified castes of “ulama” as against “sufis” as against “poets,” there is a unified social group of multitalented polymaths selectively performing sharia, asceticism, and poetry as circumstances dictated. These polymaths of Islam were the custodians of the only form of institutionalized high culture on offer in Central Asia. Their authoritative command over many different forms of knowledge — from medicine to law to epistolography and beyond — allowed them to accumulate substantial power and to establish enduring family dynasties. The Turkic military elite relied on these scholars to administer the state, but the ulama possessed an independent source of authority rooted in learning, which created tension between these two elite groups with profound ramifications for the region's history.

Author(s):  
Erin R. Hochman

This introductory chapter illustrates that there were multiple understandings of Germanness during the Weimar era, hence emphasizing how the triumph of Nazi ideology after 1918 was far from certain and pointing out how historical understandings of Nazism has overlooked the vital historical relationship between Germany and Austria. It examines the state of Germany in both the nineteenth century and the immediate postwar situation, from which the more contemporary contests that emerged between republicans and their opponents over the nature of German nationalism and politics that this book studies had emerged. The chapter contextualizes the shifting boundaries of Germanness against this backdrop, at the same time highlighting the long-neglected connections between Germany and Austria and the importance of exploring the exchange of people and ideas across the Austro-German boundary.


1982 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Selleck

The state schools established in each Australian colony in the nineteenth century were often justified on the grounds that they offered an education which would enrich and enlighten cultural life. A study of the curriculum and methods they used and the manner in which they were organized and their teachers trained and paid suggests that the state schools, far from offering an introduction to culture (in the sense of ‘high’ culture), actually provided an alternative to it. In the early twentieth century, efforts were made to reform the elementary school so that it would provide at least a limited access to culture. These efforts, bitterly criticized at the time on the ground that they distracted attention from basic subjects such as the three Rs, continued to be resisted throughout the twentieth century. At the same time as the elementary school was being changed, the state endeavoured to broaden educational opportunity and access to the high culture by establishing secondary schools. Political, economic, and administrative considerations led the state to establish a structure of schooling which, at the secondary level, provided an alternative to the cultural activities being developed in the elementary/primary school. This paper warns against a ‘back to basics’ movement which would take the culturally impoverished nineteenth-century elementary school as a model, and suggests that, despite structural limitations, the establishment of state secondary schools has led to some widening of cultural opportunities.


2020 ◽  
pp. 218-242
Author(s):  
James Pickett

This chapter assesses the ulama's relationship with state power. By the long nineteenth century, the ulama stood as a pillar of the state, limited though that state was. Islamic scholars systematically deployed their diverse Persianate skill set and leveraged Islamic knowledge on behalf of the Turkic nobility. Nevertheless, the ulama still envisioned the state as an Islamic state, and they carefully guarded their moral prerogative to speak for the religion both groups agreed had a total monopoly on politics and social life. Although in certain instances evidence exists of this most important of prerogatives — the authority to legitimately speak for religion — shifting in favor of the Turkic military elite, the ulama cultivated a spirit of moral independence and superiority to the state.


2000 ◽  
pp. 20-25
Author(s):  
O. O. Romanovsky

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the nature of the national policy of Russia is significantly changing. After the events of 1863 in Poland (the Second Polish uprising), the government of Alexander II gradually abandoned the dominant idea of ​​anathematizing, whose essence is expressed in the domination of the principle of serving the state, the greatness of the empire. The tsar-reformer deliberately changes the policy of etatamism into the policy of state ethnocentrism. The manifestation of such a change is a ban on teaching in Polish (1869) and the temporary closure of the University of Warsaw. At the end of the 60s, the state's policy towards a five million Russian Jewry was radically revised. The process of abolition of restrictions on travel, education, place of residence initiated by Nicholas I, was provided reverse.


Author(s):  
Pål Kolstø ◽  
Helge Blakkisrud

Russian societal nationalism comes in various guises, both ethnic and imperialist. Also Putin’s rhetoric is marked by the tensions between ethnic and state-focused, imperialist thinking. Noting the complex interplay of state nationalism and societal nationalism, this introductory chapter examines the mental framework within which Russian politicians were acting prior to the decision to annex Crimea. The chapter develops a typology of Russian nationalisms, surveys recent developments, and presents the three-part structure of this book: official nationalism, radical and other societal nationalisms, and identities/otherings. It concludes that after the annexation of Crimea, when the state took over the agenda of both ethnic and imperialist nationalists in Russia, societal nationalism finds itself at low ebb.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 180-190
Author(s):  
Rajkumar Bind

This paper examines the development of modern vaccination programme of Cooch Behar state, a district of West Bengal of India during the nineteenth century. The study has critically analysed the modern vaccination system, which was the only preventive method against various diseases like small pox, cholera but due to neglect, superstation and religious obstacles the people of Cooch Behar state were not interested about modern vaccination. It also examines the sex wise and castes wise vaccinators of the state during the study period. The study will help us to growing conciseness about modern vaccination among the peoples of Cooch Behar district.   


Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann

Chapter 1 analyzes Schmitt’s assessment of democratic movements in Weimar and the gravity of their effects on the state and constitution. It emphasizes that the focus of Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar was mass democracy rather than liberalism. Schmitt warned that the combination of mass democracy, the interpenetration of state and society, and the emergence of total movements opposed to liberal democracy, namely the Nazis and the Communists, were destabilizing the Weimar state and constitution. Weimar, Schmitt argued, had been designed according to nineteenth century principles of legitimacy and understandings of the people. Under the pressure of mass democracy, the state was buckling and cannibalizing itself and its constitution. Despite this, Schmitt argued, Weimar jurists’ theoretical commitments left them largely unable to recognize the scope of what was occurring. Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar democracy was intended to raise awareness of how parliamentary democracy could be turned against the state and constitution.


Author(s):  
Chris Jones

This introductory chapter contextualizes the philological study of language during the nineteenth century as a branch of the evolutionary sciences. It sketches in outline the two phases of poetic Anglo-Saxonism for which the rest of the book will subsequently argue in more detail. Moreover, the relationship between Anglo-Saxonism and nineteenth-century medievalism more generally is articulated, and historical analogies are drawn between nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism and more recent political events in the Anglophone world. Finally, the scholarly contribution of Fossil Poetry itself is contextualized within English Studies; it is argued that ‘reception’ is one of the primary objects of Anglo-Saxon or Old English studies, and not merely a secondary object of that field’s study.


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