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Chapter XIV

Mushirul Hasan

in Exploring the West: Three Travel Narratives

On the morning of 14 May, at seven o'clock, the author and his companions landed near the Custom House, whence their baggage passed without the difficulty and loss of time customary in India. They ... More

On the morning of 14 May, at seven o'clock, the author and his companions landed near the Custom House, whence their baggage passed without the difficulty and loss of time customary in India. They put up in a very nice inn, called the Union Hotel, which commanded a view of both the sea and the town. Their party, it appeared, was looked upon by the curious natives as one of the seven wonders of the world. In this final chapter, the author talks about his arrival at Southampton, London, a certain Mr Latham and Mr Pulsford, the sights of London, the opera, and his return to India.Less

The Right of Women to Graduate in Medicine – Scottish Judicial Attitudes in the Nineteenth Century☼

William M Gordon

in Roman Law, Scots Law and Legal History: Selected Essays

This article traces the course of the attempts of Sophia Jex-Blake and other women to be allowed to attend classes in medicine in Edinburgh University and graduate, with a view to registration under ... More

This article traces the course of the attempts of Sophia Jex-Blake and other women to be allowed to attend classes in medicine in Edinburgh University and graduate, with a view to registration under the Medical Act of 1858. The action brought against the University, Jex-Blake v Senatus Academicus of the University of Edinburgh, which was laid before the Whole Court, failed but only by seven votes to five. Even among the minority, however, there was not unqualified support for the women's case. Ultimately it was necessary to rely on Parliament to grant the necessary powers to Scottish universities under the Universities (Scotland) Act 1889. The reported arguments in the case are usefully supplemented by the relevant Session Papers which offer a valuable source for legal history.Less

Common Usages of Society

Edward William Lane and Jason Thompson

in An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians

This chapter about social interaction and manners starts by pointing to the separation of the sexes but the intermingling of different classes for both men and women. It then turns to specific modes ... More

This chapter about social interaction and manners starts by pointing to the separation of the sexes but the intermingling of different classes for both men and women. It then turns to specific modes of expression and language—different forms of address, salutation, and greeting—and how and when they are used and by whom. This covers questions of class, religion, politeness, and custom.Less

“Eyes Filled with Splendor”: On Italy and the Saturated Gaze in

Sharon Kim

in Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism

During a sunset in Italy, Ralph Marvell’s aesthetic pleasure in the landscape crosses into a visionary experience, one distinguished by the unusual perceptual means by which he sees it. His vision ... More

During a sunset in Italy, Ralph Marvell’s aesthetic pleasure in the landscape crosses into a visionary experience, one distinguished by the unusual perceptual means by which he sees it. His vision resembles the “saturated phenomenon” theorized by Jean-Luc Marion, in which the presence of being becomes so concentrated in a physical manifestation that it results in a bedazzlement of vision. Because such perception does not operate in Cartesian or Subject-centered terms, it does not reduce or objectify what is seen. The saturated gaze thus presents a rare alternative to the predatory modes of vision seen in The Custom of the Country (1913) and criticized in contemporary theory. It also forms the basis of an equally rare form of cosmopolitanism, one that is not a disguised version of narcissism, provincialism, or imperialism. Ralph’s vision, however, is short-lived, disintegrating in the destructive ways of seeing that empower his wife Undine.Less

The Salience of Chiefs in Postapartheid South Africa: Reflections on the Nhlapo Commission

Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Dineo Skosana

John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff (eds)

in The Politics of Custom: Chiefship, Capital, and the State in Contemporary Africa

In chapter four, Buthelezi and Skosana suggest that neoliberalization has masked critical continuities in the manner in which African states have dealt with chiefship and customary law, giving ... More

In chapter four, Buthelezi and Skosana suggest that neoliberalization has masked critical continuities in the manner in which African states have dealt with chiefship and customary law, giving indigenous rulers authority over land to a degree that, if anything, exceeds the colonial past. Focusing on South Africa, and in particular the recent Nhlapo Commission of inquiry into traditional leadership, the authors explore the ways in which the government of the post-apartheid state has struggled to accommodate the politics of tradition in a liberal democratic social order, efforts that have lacked a clear vision, and had the unwitting effect of replicating aspects the apartheid past – and of violating some of the key provisions of the constitution for those (predominantly rural) citizens of the country ruled by the Kingdom of Custom.Less

Civilization, Custom, and Controversy: CATHOLIC CONVERSION AND FRENCH RULE IN SENEGAL

Elizabeth A. Foster

in Faith in Empire: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Rule in French Senegal, 1880-1940

Providing a contrast to the image of harmony developed around the cathedral’s consecration, Chapter 6 returns to rural Senegal to assess the administration’s religious policies in the wake of the ... More

Providing a contrast to the image of harmony developed around the cathedral’s consecration, Chapter 6 returns to rural Senegal to assess the administration’s religious policies in the wake of the First World War. It commences with a history of the legal status of African Christian converts in Senegal, a key theme in the long-standing civilizing debate between missionaries and administrators, before examining how the issue becameLess

/ Between France and India in 1790: Custom and Arithmetic Reason in a Country of Conquest

Sunil M. Agnani

in Hating Empire Properly: The Two Indies and the Limits of Enlightenment Anticolonialism

Chapter 3 considers links between Burke's writings and anticolonial thought (and Raynal), arguing that Burke's writings on India and France are related and even deeply intertwined concerns, rather ... More

Chapter 3 considers links between Burke's writings and anticolonial thought (and Raynal), arguing that Burke's writings on India and France are related and even deeply intertwined concerns, rather than merely chronologically contemporary. Burke's underlying disquiet had to do with the question of societies undergoing a complete transformation and whether this was an upheaval to be desired or dreaded. It argues that in both the Indian and the French cases, Burke's response was one of fear: fear of the emergence of class mobility, unfettered by the regulating social customs of Europe and enabled by the space of the colonies. Burke views France and India as having suffered from a “conquest”: he views the Jacobins as treating France as a country of conquest virtually indistinguishable from a colonial occupation. Conceptually, there is a surprising link between Burke's critique of French Enlightenment thought, expressed in such terms as “arithmetic reason” (used disparagingly), and his image of the colony. Modernity involves estrangement, and relates to Burke's argument against defining the notion of the citizen in the abstract. Burke argues against an emerging colonial modernity in India being created by the East India Company and the estranged, placeless modernity the Jacobins were establishing in France.Less

Habit and Convention at the Foundation of Custom

James Bernard Murphy

in The Philosophy of Customary Law

Custom cannot be understood unless it is analyzed into two more logically basic concepts: habit and convention. Aristotle uses two Greek terms for custom: ethos (habit) and nomos (convention or law). ... More

Custom cannot be understood unless it is analyzed into two more logically basic concepts: habit and convention. Aristotle uses two Greek terms for custom: ethos (habit) and nomos (convention or law). I show how Aristotle uses ethos to capture the habitual dimension of custom and nomos to capture the conventional dimension.Less

Moby-Dick and the Shadows of “The Poet”

Peter Riley

in Whitman, Melville, Crane, and the Labors of American Poetry: Against Vocation

Reading the “Sub-Sub librarian” and “consumptive usher” in Moby-Dick as experiments in “virtual biography,” this chapter initially examines how the author-narrator uses these contingent figures to ... More

Reading the “Sub-Sub librarian” and “consumptive usher” in Moby-Dick as experiments in “virtual biography,” this chapter initially examines how the author-narrator uses these contingent figures to explore the various possibilities that may have otherwise defined his working life. “The Grand Armada” is read as the dramatization of existential retreat from industrial violence towards the security of a “lyric center”. Skepticism towards vocational thinking can be seen in the juxtaposed reactions of Ishmael and Ahab in relation to this lyric security. The chapter then shifts focus to consider Melville’s decision to become an epic poet while holding down a 6-day-a-week job as a deputy customs inspector on the New York docks. While this later phase of Melville’s career has been typically characterized as one of retreat and creative decline, it is argued that Clarel’s form embodies a sustained engagement with the contingencies of his new working context rather than an attempt to escape them.Less

Billy Budd and Melville’s Retirement

Peter Riley

in Whitman, Melville, Crane, and the Labors of American Poetry: Against Vocation

This chapter reassesses biographical and critical accounts of Melville’s exit from the workforce in 1885, examining the vocational vacillations that produced Billy Budd. Melville’s final writings did ... More

This chapter reassesses biographical and critical accounts of Melville’s exit from the workforce in 1885, examining the vocational vacillations that produced Billy Budd. Melville’s final writings did not signal a release from the quotidian world of work into one last affirmative creative garret, but another opportunity to practice his ongoing commitment to “becoming-other”: “Billy in the Darbies” consciously sets up and then undermines the Romantic trope of an isolated solitary singer, finally “set free.” “Late Melville” approached literary composition and revision as an extension of other forms of work and his diverse writings consistently display a preoccupation with challenging preconceptions concerning the writer’s calling. Though seen as the archetype of frustrated vocation in American Letters, Melville remained intensely self-conscious and skeptical of vocational thinking throughout his career.Less

Custom: Rituals of Memory

Alessio Fiore

in The Seigneurial Transformation: Power Structures and Political Communication in the Countryside of Central and Northern Italy, 1080-1130

References to ‘bonus usus’ and other terms denoting ‘good custom’ are more common in a rural than an urban context from 1100 onwards. Much attention is devoted to oaths and oath swearers ... More

References to ‘bonus usus’ and other terms denoting ‘good custom’ are more common in a rural than an urban context from 1100 onwards. Much attention is devoted to oaths and oath swearers (sacramentales), who appear to have been mainly chosen by signori rather than by local communities, and their role in dispute settlement. Socially oath swearers appear to be members of the upper-middle stratum of village society, the same group that later supplied the consuls of the thirteenth-century rural commune. Collective memory appears to stretch back 40–70 years at which time-frame customs acquired sufficient antiquity to be considered immutable. The act of recalling customs in a public assembly (placitum) served to reinforce community identity and delineate the parameters of seigneurial intervention in local society (rights, privileges, dues). Discussion moves on to the inter-relationship between written and oral custom and the meaning of the term malus usus which together with its antonym bonus usus is seen as key to unlocking the content of political discourse in the countryside. The sense of malus usus is of novelty, lack of precedent, absence of consensus. Interestingly the author shows that what was once perceived as bonus usus could at a later date and in different circumstances be seen as malus usus.Less