Suchergebnisse

(Originally published in John A. Hall & Ian C. Jarvie's [Eds], Transition to Modernity, 1992 [see abstract 93c01707].) Ernest Gellner's specification of the uniqueness of modern industrial-capitalist civilization (1975, 1988) is criticized for relying too heavily on a rigid philosophy of history. Gellner identifies the ascendancy of rationality as the first marker of modernity; the second is the artificial separation of the institutions of kinship, politics, religion, & economics. An explanation of the origin of these particular features of modern society eludes Gellner, who describes the transition to modernity as a series of near-miraculous accidents. Gellner's model of human history, based on the three stages of human development (hunting-gathering, agrarian, & industrial), fails to account for the differences between societies that fall within the same stage. Once this model is abandoned, the wholly contrived or accidental separation of institutions emerges as the crucial element of modernity. 6 References. H. von Rautenfeld

THE RECENT TREND TOWARD ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM CHALLENGES POLITICAL SCIENCE: FIRST, IN DEMANDING AN EXPLANATION AS TO THE CAUSES AND CHARACTER OF ITS DISSEMINATION AND, SECONDLY, IN REQUIRING A RESPONSE TO SEEMINGLY UNFORESEEN DEVELOPMENTS THAT CHALLENGE CONVENTIONAL EXPECTATIONS ON MODERNITY, PROGRESS, INCREASING SECULARIZATION, AND POLITICAL CONVERGENCE. IT MAY BE THAT THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE PAST DECADES ON HOW SOCIETIES ARE CHANGING WILL PROVE TO BE WRONG -- THAT THE WORLD IS NEITHER AS GLOBALIZED OR AS DISENCHANTED AS WAS EXPECTED; BUT IT MAY ALSO BE THAT, BENEATH THE APPEARANCE OF RUPTURE AND A RETURN TO THE PAST, OTHER, MORE CONTEMPORARY AND RECOGNIZABLE, PROCESSES ARE AT WORK. IF THE RISE OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM CAN SEEN AS A CHALLENGE TO THE CONCEPTION OF MODERNITY, IT CAN ALSO BE ARGUED THAT THE CONSTRAINTS OF CONTEMPORARY INDUSTRIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE HAVE SHAPED AND WILL ULTIMATELY DETERMINE THIS PHENOMENON.

From the perspective of the French regulation school in geography, it is argued that Fordist & post-Fordist models of development obscure the role of class in theorizing capitalist societies & neglect the contradictions inherent in both Fordist & post-Fordist forms of economic & social organization. The argument focuses on the political consequences of regulation theory & the inclination to associate Marxism with Fordism, & these, in turn, with modernism. Because they fail to problematize class by underscoring development rather than exploitation, theories of Fordism & post-Fordism contribute more to the supersession of Marxism than to the surmounting of capitalism. It is concluded that Fordism & post-Fordism may have opened up the discursive space for a nonessentialist Marxist narrative of capitalist development that theorizes class & contradiction from an explicitly subjective site. 28 References. W. Howard

Disraeli: the chosen of history uniting the old Jerusalem and the new (1952) -- On Franz Rosenzweig (1955) -- Preface to the second edition of Freud: the Mind of the Moralist (1961) -- The religion of the fathers (1959) -- Toward a theory of culture (1966) -- Selections from Fellow Teachers (1972) -- The impossible culture: Wilde as a modern prophet (1982) -- Is not the truth the truth? (ca. 1994)

An introduction to this compilation of papers (see related abstracts in IRPS No. 83) explains that the book is constructed around two major themes. The first organizing theme is social theory. The extent to which the rise of the globalization problematique represents the spatialization of social theory is explored throughout the book. This is in line with postmodern theory, which has privileged the spatial over the temporal mode of analysis. In this context, globalization represents an important shift in transmuting this temporality into a spatial framework. The second organizing theme is the concern with social change. Here, the question revolves around the sociocultural processes & forms of life that are emerging as the global begins to replace the nation-state as the decisive framework for social life. It is important to become attuned to the nuances of the process of globalization & to develop theories sensitive to the different power potentials of the different players participating in global struggles. 27 References. V. Rios

"Exploring the history of the gas mask in Germany from 1915 to the eve of World War II, Peter Thompson traces how chemical weapons and protective technologies such as the gas mask produced new relationships to danger, risk, management, and mastery in the modern age of mass destruction. Recounting the apocalyptic visions of chemical death that circulated in interwar Germany, he argues that while everyday encounters with the gas mask tended to exacerbate fears, the mask also came to symbolize debates about the development of military and chemical technologies in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. He underscores how the gas mask was tied into the creation of an exclusionary national community under the Nazis and the altered perception of environmental danger in the second half of the twentieth century. As this innovative new history shows, chemical warfare and protection technologies came to represent poignant visions of the German future"--

"This volume, the first major study in its field, offers an invaluable stepping-stone to a more informed understanding of the fundamental social changes taking place in Asia--defined as 'a reconstruction of the intimate and public spheres'. Such changes are being observed worldwide, but previous studies relating to this phenomenon are largely based on Western experiences dating back to the 1970s. Developments in Asia, however, are manifesting both similarities and differences between the two regions. The book's strongest appeal, therefore, lies in its theoretical orientation, seeking to define frameworks that are most relevant to the Asian reality. These frameworks include compressed and semi-compressed modernity, familialism, familialization policy, unsustainable society, second demographic dividend, care diamond, and transnational public sphere. Such concepts are seen as essential in any discussion concerning the intimate and public spheres of contemporary Asia ... The book comprises an in-depth introduction and ten chapters contributed by scholars from Japan, Korea, Thailand and Canada covering topics ranging from low fertility, changing life course, increasing non-regular employment, care provision, migrant workers, social policies, family law, to the activities of transnational NGOs, with a special focus on distinctive features in Asian experiences"--

"Australian photographer and film maker Frank Hurley became an international celebrity through his reporting of the Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, the First and Second World Wars, the England-Australia air race of 1919, and his own expeditions to Papua in the 1920s. This book is an account of his stage and screen practice in the context of early twentieth-century mass media. 'Photography, Early Cinema and Colonial Modernity' is not a biography of Frank Hurley the man; it is instead an examination of the social life of the many marvellous and meaningful things he made as a professional photographer and film maker in the early twentieth century: the negatives, photographic prints, lantern slides, stereographs, films, diaries and newspaper articles. His stage and screen practices offer an insight into Australia's engagement with the romance and wonder of international modernity in the early years of the twentieth century. The level of description at which this volume works is not that of personality or the originary events of Hurley's life - the Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, and the First and Second World Wars - but the media events he worked so hard and so professionally to create.

Youth, memory, and guilt in early postwar Germany -- Hitler's youth? The Nazi "revolution" as youth uprising -- The Jugendproblem (youth problem): youth and reeducation in the early postwar public sphere -- Germany's youthful "catastrophe": guilt and modernity in the early postwar period -- Modernity's better others: youth in Jaspers's postwar university and Wiechert's reconstructive agenda -- Children of the rubble: youth, pedagogy, and politics in early DEFA films -- Reconstructing film in the western zones: stars of youthful sexuality -- Conclusion: Mobilizing youth for the Cold War

"The book asks how far the model of the European City can be applied to the cities of Eastern Europe which massively expanded from the second half of the 19th century on but often lacked some of the fundamentals of the European urbanity in the Weberian sense. The authors employ a broad focus and look at metropolitan cities between Helsinki and Athens, Warsaw and Moscow. The period under investigation begins with the 1890s when East European societies entered an 'age of great acceleration' and stops with the outbreak of World War II which not only destroyed but also socially and ethnically altered many metropolitan cities of Eastern Europe. While before the First World War most of Eastern Europe was subsumed in the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires, new (nation-) states and socialist ideologies shaped post-1918 urban development. For the majority of the new capitals created by the post-war order the state remained the main proponent of change. Both, historical preconditions--the economic situation, the legacy of the empires--and the experience of the upheaval of 1917/18 contributed to this particularity of the region. On the other hand Western Europe and her urban experts continued to be and became even stronger points of reference. The volume discusses the peculiar relationship between state, city and the challenges of modernity in the Eastern Europe with a focus on urban planning in the wider sense of the word. In particular, the different chapters of the book ask how far--given the omnipresent, albeit often idealized example of Western metropolitan cities--a 'reflective modernization' may be identified as a common marker of cities in the region under observation"--Provided by publisher

"In Caesarism and Bonapartism in Gramsci, Francesca Antonini offers a fresh insight into Antonio Gramsci's thought. Capitalising on the achievements of recent Gramscian scholarship, she investigates his usage of the concepts of Bonapartism and Caesarism, both in his pre-prison writings and in the Prison Notebooks . The Caesarist-Bonapartist paradigm relates crucially to Gramsci's reflections on hegemony and on its transformations across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. While this model is essential to Gramsci's understanding of the interwar period and of the Fascist regime in Italy, it sheds a meaningful light also on other past and present scenarios, from the French Second Empire to contemporary USSR. Finally, yet importantly, such an analysis illuminates Gramsci's approach towards the Marxian legacy"--

Reconstructing modernity' assesses the character of approaches to rebuilding British cities during the decades after the Second World War. It explores the strategies of spatial governance that sought to restructure society and looks at the cast of characters who shaped these processes. It challenges traditional views of urban modernism and sheds new light on the importance of the immediate post-war for the trajectory of planned urban renewal in twentieth century.0It examines plans and policies designed to produce and govern lived spaces- shopping centers, housing estates, parks, schools and homes - and shows how and why they succeeded or failed. It demonstrates how the material space of the city and how people used and experienced it was crucial in understanding historical change in urban contexts. The book is aimed at those interested in urban modernism, the use of space in town planning, the urban histories of post-war Britain and of social housing

Part of a symposium on Melvin Richter's The History of Political & Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction (1995) argues that it is possible to practice Begriffsgechichte (conceptual history) without accepting it as a social-scientific method for generating knowledge that cannot otherwise be produced. Practicing conceptual history involves being receptive to specific concepts & words identifying them, without granting them importance, or employing the approach exclusively. It is maintained that a "method" can be a set of procedures followed to derive truths that cannot be arrived at in other ways, or it can involve arranging data/perceptions in a convincing way. Conceptual history is the second, more rhetorical, type of method. The trend toward more quantitative approaches has led many historians & political scientists to abandon or attempt to modernize the history of ideas. The potential value of a quantitative analysis of ideas (or words as ideas) is illustrated via case example on "societe," "social," & "sociabilite" drawn from Gordon's Citizens without Sovereignty (1994). A critical examination of works of conceptual history discussed by Richter (1995) maintains that the method diverts attention away from assumptions that direct substantive interpretations. 1 Reference. J. Lindroth

Ethnographic fiction and autobiographical 'truth' -- Orientalist vision and the carnivalesque of 'revelations' -- Foreground to background : from locality to 'nation' -- 'The winner takes it all' : the coming of second modernity -- The original theft (and other treacherous religiosities) -- Leviathan revealed