Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584.00006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This introduction offers a rich overview of the scholarship on the histories of the body, emotions, and material culture as they relate to gender. It explains how Manliness in Britain develops this ...
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This introduction offers a rich overview of the scholarship on the histories of the body, emotions, and material culture as they relate to gender. It explains how Manliness in Britain develops this work to understand how bodies, emotions, and materiality helped construct masculinities in the long nineteenth century. It shows that a queer history approach, combined with theories of emotional bodies and emotional objects, offers a new way to think about manliness and unmanliness. The introduction is divided into three sections. It summarises histories relating to ‘being’ a man, focusing on the embodied qualities of manliness and on self-control, the primary means by which men were supposed to achieve idealised manly behaviour. It then assesses the scholarship relating to three domains in which manliness was understood to be performed and tested: war, home, and work. (135 words)Less
This introduction offers a rich overview of the scholarship on the histories of the body, emotions, and material culture as they relate to gender. It explains how Manliness in Britain develops this work to understand how bodies, emotions, and materiality helped construct masculinities in the long nineteenth century. It shows that a queer history approach, combined with theories of emotional bodies and emotional objects, offers a new way to think about manliness and unmanliness. The introduction is divided into three sections. It summarises histories relating to ‘being’ a man, focusing on the embodied qualities of manliness and on self-control, the primary means by which men were supposed to achieve idealised manly behaviour. It then assesses the scholarship relating to three domains in which manliness was understood to be performed and tested: war, home, and work. (135 words)
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. ...
More
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)Less
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584.00009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised ...
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This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised bodies, with material culture often acting as the point of entry for the cultural work they performed in producing and disseminating manliness. Drawing on the concept of emotional objects, three types of material culture are examined, which inspired feelings that reinforced ideas about idealised manliness. The first group are the artefacts of war and the military, including uniforms, weaponry, battle-field-objects, medals, ships, and regimental colours. The second are the objects encountered at the domestic level including toys, ceramics, and textiles, which depicted martial manliness or had intimate connections with soldiers and sailors. They appealed to all age groups, genders, and social classes, and had a domestic function or ornamental appeal. The third type considered consists of the material culture that celebrity military heroes generated, from consumable products that deployed their names and images, to the monuments that memorialised them, to the very stuff of their bodies. This irresistible nexus of emotionalised bodies and objects prompted affective responses, which disseminated, reinforced, and maintained civilian masculinities. (192 words)Less
This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised bodies, with material culture often acting as the point of entry for the cultural work they performed in producing and disseminating manliness. Drawing on the concept of emotional objects, three types of material culture are examined, which inspired feelings that reinforced ideas about idealised manliness. The first group are the artefacts of war and the military, including uniforms, weaponry, battle-field-objects, medals, ships, and regimental colours. The second are the objects encountered at the domestic level including toys, ceramics, and textiles, which depicted martial manliness or had intimate connections with soldiers and sailors. They appealed to all age groups, genders, and social classes, and had a domestic function or ornamental appeal. The third type considered consists of the material culture that celebrity military heroes generated, from consumable products that deployed their names and images, to the monuments that memorialised them, to the very stuff of their bodies. This irresistible nexus of emotionalised bodies and objects prompted affective responses, which disseminated, reinforced, and maintained civilian masculinities. (192 words)
Justin Thomas McDaniel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824865986
- eISBN:
- 9780824873738
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824865986.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
Buddhism, usually described as an austere religion which condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the monastic and contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture. Creative ...
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Buddhism, usually described as an austere religion which condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the monastic and contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists across Asia have worked to build a leisure culture both within and outside of monasteries. The author looks at the growth of Buddhist leisure culture through a study of architects who helped design tourist sites, memorial gardens, monuments, museums, and even amusement parks in Nepal, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. In conversation with theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, this book argues that these sites show the importance of public, leisure and spectacle culture from a Buddhist cultural perspective. They show that the “secular” and “religious” and the “public” and “private” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, many of these sites reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism being built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons, institutional campaigns, and sectarian developments. These sites present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise—a gathering not a movement. Finally, despite the creativity of lay and ordained visionaries, the building of these sites often faces problems along the way. Parks, monuments, temples, and museums are complex adaptive systems changed and influenced by visitors, budgets, materials, local and global economic conditions. No matter what the architect intends, buildings develop lives of their own.Less
Buddhism, usually described as an austere religion which condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the monastic and contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists across Asia have worked to build a leisure culture both within and outside of monasteries. The author looks at the growth of Buddhist leisure culture through a study of architects who helped design tourist sites, memorial gardens, monuments, museums, and even amusement parks in Nepal, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. In conversation with theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, this book argues that these sites show the importance of public, leisure and spectacle culture from a Buddhist cultural perspective. They show that the “secular” and “religious” and the “public” and “private” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, many of these sites reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism being built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons, institutional campaigns, and sectarian developments. These sites present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise—a gathering not a movement. Finally, despite the creativity of lay and ordained visionaries, the building of these sites often faces problems along the way. Parks, monuments, temples, and museums are complex adaptive systems changed and influenced by visitors, budgets, materials, local and global economic conditions. No matter what the architect intends, buildings develop lives of their own.
Murray Pittock
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474428569
- eISBN:
- 9781474465007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474428569.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines Henry Hunt's signature white hat in the context of the use of the tradition of using colours and material objects to signify oppositional opinion while evading prosecution for ...
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This chapter examines Henry Hunt's signature white hat in the context of the use of the tradition of using colours and material objects to signify oppositional opinion while evading prosecution for sedition. It traces the performativity of mute sedition from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, while focusing on the French Revolutionary period and the widely understood nature of Hunt's headgear for his followers and admirers.Less
This chapter examines Henry Hunt's signature white hat in the context of the use of the tradition of using colours and material objects to signify oppositional opinion while evading prosecution for sedition. It traces the performativity of mute sedition from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, while focusing on the French Revolutionary period and the widely understood nature of Hunt's headgear for his followers and admirers.
Bronwen Everill
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097898
- eISBN:
- 9781526104403
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097898.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
By the mid-nineteenth century, trading networks between London and Freetown, Sierra Leone, were well-established. White and black businessmen and women were beginning to profit from the shift from ...
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By the mid-nineteenth century, trading networks between London and Freetown, Sierra Leone, were well-established. White and black businessmen and women were beginning to profit from the shift from the slave trade to “legitimate” commerce. Sierra Leone’s emerging, property-owning middle class lived in comfortable two-story stone houses. These homes were decorated with articles of material comfort and markers, in the imperial cultural complex, of accumulating wealth: mahogany chairs, tables, sofas, and four-post bedsteads, pier glasses, and floor cloths. Sierra Leoneans consumed the products of Empire, dressing as British subjects, building houses with British brick, and buying British luxury goods. But how did different groups of Sierra Leoneans adopt and adapt British material culture? Did trading connections foster a sense of British identity, or were these products used in particularly “West African” ways? How did the growth of the project of “legitimate trade” contribute to a sense of the British imperial project amongst Sierra Leoneans? This chapter will explore the ways that material culture and commodities shaped the lives of settlers in this colony and their interactions with both the metropole and the rest of West Africa.Less
By the mid-nineteenth century, trading networks between London and Freetown, Sierra Leone, were well-established. White and black businessmen and women were beginning to profit from the shift from the slave trade to “legitimate” commerce. Sierra Leone’s emerging, property-owning middle class lived in comfortable two-story stone houses. These homes were decorated with articles of material comfort and markers, in the imperial cultural complex, of accumulating wealth: mahogany chairs, tables, sofas, and four-post bedsteads, pier glasses, and floor cloths. Sierra Leoneans consumed the products of Empire, dressing as British subjects, building houses with British brick, and buying British luxury goods. But how did different groups of Sierra Leoneans adopt and adapt British material culture? Did trading connections foster a sense of British identity, or were these products used in particularly “West African” ways? How did the growth of the project of “legitimate trade” contribute to a sense of the British imperial project amongst Sierra Leoneans? This chapter will explore the ways that material culture and commodities shaped the lives of settlers in this colony and their interactions with both the metropole and the rest of West Africa.
Ruth Craggs and Claire Wintle (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719096525
- eISBN:
- 9781526104335
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096525.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
What were the distinctive cultures of decolonisation that emerged in the years between 1945 and 1970, and what can they uncover about the complexities of the ‘end of empire’ as a process? Cultures of ...
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What were the distinctive cultures of decolonisation that emerged in the years between 1945 and 1970, and what can they uncover about the complexities of the ‘end of empire’ as a process? Cultures of Decolonisation brings together visual, literary and material cultures within one volume in order to explore this question. The volume reveals the diverse ways in which cultures were active in wider political, economic and social change, working as crucial gauges, microcosms, and agents of decolonisation. Individual chapters focus on architecture, theatre, museums, heritage sites, fine art, and interior design alongside institutions such as artists’ groups, language agencies and the Royal Mint in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe. Drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives, these contributions offer revealing case studies for those researching decolonisation at all levels across the humanities and social sciences. The collection demonstrates the transnational character of cultures of decolonisation (and of decolonisation itself), and illustrates the value of comparison – between different sorts of cultural forms and different places – in understanding the nature of this dramatic and wide-reaching geopolitical change. Cultures of Decolonisation illustrates the value of engaging with the complexities of decolonisation as enacted and experienced by a broad range of actors beyond ‘flag independence’ and the realm of high politics. In the process it makes an important contribution to the theoretical, methodological and empirical diversification of the historiography of the end of empire.Less
What were the distinctive cultures of decolonisation that emerged in the years between 1945 and 1970, and what can they uncover about the complexities of the ‘end of empire’ as a process? Cultures of Decolonisation brings together visual, literary and material cultures within one volume in order to explore this question. The volume reveals the diverse ways in which cultures were active in wider political, economic and social change, working as crucial gauges, microcosms, and agents of decolonisation. Individual chapters focus on architecture, theatre, museums, heritage sites, fine art, and interior design alongside institutions such as artists’ groups, language agencies and the Royal Mint in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe. Drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives, these contributions offer revealing case studies for those researching decolonisation at all levels across the humanities and social sciences. The collection demonstrates the transnational character of cultures of decolonisation (and of decolonisation itself), and illustrates the value of comparison – between different sorts of cultural forms and different places – in understanding the nature of this dramatic and wide-reaching geopolitical change. Cultures of Decolonisation illustrates the value of engaging with the complexities of decolonisation as enacted and experienced by a broad range of actors beyond ‘flag independence’ and the realm of high politics. In the process it makes an important contribution to the theoretical, methodological and empirical diversification of the historiography of the end of empire.
Sreedeep Bhattacharya
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190125561
- eISBN:
- 9780190991333
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190125561.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Psychology and Interaction, Culture
Economic liberalization and globalization in India in the early 1990s resulted in a whirlwind of consumerist activities. New material and visual temptations swept markets, infiltrated consumer minds ...
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Economic liberalization and globalization in India in the early 1990s resulted in a whirlwind of consumerist activities. New material and visual temptations swept markets, infiltrated consumer minds through media, and aroused inhibited desires. This has engendered a fast-paced and relentless relationship with things and images that permeate our everyday lives. Consumerist Encounters elucidates how our all-consuming relationship with objects and their representations have transformed rapidly over the last few decades in contemporary urban India. It argues that ephemerality, frivolousness, and multiplicity of choice regulate our flirtatious encounters with commodities and their images as we restlessly use, exhaust, dispose, and move on. Such a trend is illustrated by examining a plethora of commodity-centric phenomena such as exclusion through apparel, eroticization of body images, population of the T-shirt surface with graphics and text, rise of business process outsourcing, instantaneous seeing and sharing of images, and rejection of material goods in junkyards and ruins. These explorations collectively shed light on the constant negotiation of our identities, statuses, and mobilities in the image-saturated commodity landscape.Less
Economic liberalization and globalization in India in the early 1990s resulted in a whirlwind of consumerist activities. New material and visual temptations swept markets, infiltrated consumer minds through media, and aroused inhibited desires. This has engendered a fast-paced and relentless relationship with things and images that permeate our everyday lives. Consumerist Encounters elucidates how our all-consuming relationship with objects and their representations have transformed rapidly over the last few decades in contemporary urban India. It argues that ephemerality, frivolousness, and multiplicity of choice regulate our flirtatious encounters with commodities and their images as we restlessly use, exhaust, dispose, and move on. Such a trend is illustrated by examining a plethora of commodity-centric phenomena such as exclusion through apparel, eroticization of body images, population of the T-shirt surface with graphics and text, rise of business process outsourcing, instantaneous seeing and sharing of images, and rejection of material goods in junkyards and ruins. These explorations collectively shed light on the constant negotiation of our identities, statuses, and mobilities in the image-saturated commodity landscape.
Raymond Malewitz
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804791960
- eISBN:
- 9780804792998
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791960.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The Practice of Misuse examines the oppositional emergence and eventual ideological containment of “rugged consumers” in late twentieth-century American literature, who creatively misuse, reuse, and ...
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The Practice of Misuse examines the oppositional emergence and eventual ideological containment of “rugged consumers” in late twentieth-century American literature, who creatively misuse, reuse, and repurpose the objects within their environments to suit their idiosyncratic needs and desires. The book shows how authors such as Sam Shepard, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Chuck Pahlaniuk, Cormac McCarthy, and Margaret Atwood position their rugged consumers within the intertwined American myths of primal nature and rugged individualism, creating left- and right-libertarian maker communities that are skeptical of both traditional political institutions and (in its pre-neoliberal state) globalized corporate capitalism. Through their unorthodox encounters with the material world, rugged consumers can temporarily suspend the various networks of power that dictate the proper use of a given commodity and reveal those networks to be contingent strategies that must be perpetually renewed and reinforced rather than naturalized processes that persist untroubled through time and space. At the same time, this Utopian ideal is rarely met: most examples of rugged consumerism conceal rather than foreground the ideological problems to which they respond and thus support or ignore rather than challenge the conditions of late capitalist consumerism. By analyzing both the rare convergences and common divergences between individual material practices and collectivist politics, this study shows how rugged consumerism both recodes and reflects the dynamic social history of objects in American material and literary cultures from the 1960s to the present.Less
The Practice of Misuse examines the oppositional emergence and eventual ideological containment of “rugged consumers” in late twentieth-century American literature, who creatively misuse, reuse, and repurpose the objects within their environments to suit their idiosyncratic needs and desires. The book shows how authors such as Sam Shepard, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Chuck Pahlaniuk, Cormac McCarthy, and Margaret Atwood position their rugged consumers within the intertwined American myths of primal nature and rugged individualism, creating left- and right-libertarian maker communities that are skeptical of both traditional political institutions and (in its pre-neoliberal state) globalized corporate capitalism. Through their unorthodox encounters with the material world, rugged consumers can temporarily suspend the various networks of power that dictate the proper use of a given commodity and reveal those networks to be contingent strategies that must be perpetually renewed and reinforced rather than naturalized processes that persist untroubled through time and space. At the same time, this Utopian ideal is rarely met: most examples of rugged consumerism conceal rather than foreground the ideological problems to which they respond and thus support or ignore rather than challenge the conditions of late capitalist consumerism. By analyzing both the rare convergences and common divergences between individual material practices and collectivist politics, this study shows how rugged consumerism both recodes and reflects the dynamic social history of objects in American material and literary cultures from the 1960s to the present.
Jesse Cromwell
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469636887
- eISBN:
- 9781469636948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469636887.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
The chapter analyzes the cultural value of smuggled goods in Spanish America and Europe as a means to understand the acculturation to illicit activity that early modern Venezuelans experienced. For ...
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The chapter analyzes the cultural value of smuggled goods in Spanish America and Europe as a means to understand the acculturation to illicit activity that early modern Venezuelans experienced. For their cacao, Venezuelans received, not the exotic items typically associated with illicit trade, but rather mundane wares and foodstuffs such as flour, coarse cloth, liquor, and firearms. Inventories of contraband confiscated from homes and businesses suggest both the tremendous inability of the Spanish Empire to supply its more marginal colonies with simple trade and the ways that Venezuelans creatively used smuggling to deal with this dearth of subsistence goods. Furthermore, court cases of smuggling highlight the importance of women as retail distributors of contraband on land. All of these circumstances revealed the colonists’ viewpoint on illegality: the cultural superiority manifested in consuming even simple European items merited the complications of illicit trade including bloodshed, commercial policing, and property confiscation. Black-market commerce at even the pettiest levels initiated coastal residents into a criminal world where they developed justifications and subterfuges for their everyday actions. In essence, residents had been socialized into smuggling.Less
The chapter analyzes the cultural value of smuggled goods in Spanish America and Europe as a means to understand the acculturation to illicit activity that early modern Venezuelans experienced. For their cacao, Venezuelans received, not the exotic items typically associated with illicit trade, but rather mundane wares and foodstuffs such as flour, coarse cloth, liquor, and firearms. Inventories of contraband confiscated from homes and businesses suggest both the tremendous inability of the Spanish Empire to supply its more marginal colonies with simple trade and the ways that Venezuelans creatively used smuggling to deal with this dearth of subsistence goods. Furthermore, court cases of smuggling highlight the importance of women as retail distributors of contraband on land. All of these circumstances revealed the colonists’ viewpoint on illegality: the cultural superiority manifested in consuming even simple European items merited the complications of illicit trade including bloodshed, commercial policing, and property confiscation. Black-market commerce at even the pettiest levels initiated coastal residents into a criminal world where they developed justifications and subterfuges for their everyday actions. In essence, residents had been socialized into smuggling.
Josephine M. Guy (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474408912
- eISBN:
- 9781474445030
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408912.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The 22 newly commissioned essays in this volume re-examine some of the key concepts taken to define the British fin se siècle while also introducing hitherto overlooked cultural phenomena, such as ...
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The 22 newly commissioned essays in this volume re-examine some of the key concepts taken to define the British fin se siècle while also introducing hitherto overlooked cultural phenomena, such as humanitarianism. The impact of research into material culture is explored; specifically, how the history of the book and of performance culture is changing our understanding of this period. A wide range of activities is discussed, from participation in avant-garde theatre to interior decoration, and from the publishing of poetry to forms of political and religious activism. Attention is also given to how the meaning of the fin de siècle is impacted by place, including the significance of cultural exchanges between Britain and countries such as Russia and Italy; the distinctiveness of the Irish and Scottish fin de siècles; as well as activities within different regions of England, such as in the Midlands cities of Birmingham and Nottingham. In contrast to recent research exploring the global or transnational dimensions of the fin de siècle, this volume focuses on micro- rather than macro-cultural issues, the research underpinning these essays highlighting a diversity of practices that developed along different timelines and in different geographical locations, and which do not cohere into any simple pattern. Nor is there any obvious point of their intersection which might be said to mark a cultural turning point. A question the volume as a whole thus aims to pose is whether there is anything to be gained by distinguishing all, of any, of these practices as ‘fin-de-siècle’?Less
The 22 newly commissioned essays in this volume re-examine some of the key concepts taken to define the British fin se siècle while also introducing hitherto overlooked cultural phenomena, such as humanitarianism. The impact of research into material culture is explored; specifically, how the history of the book and of performance culture is changing our understanding of this period. A wide range of activities is discussed, from participation in avant-garde theatre to interior decoration, and from the publishing of poetry to forms of political and religious activism. Attention is also given to how the meaning of the fin de siècle is impacted by place, including the significance of cultural exchanges between Britain and countries such as Russia and Italy; the distinctiveness of the Irish and Scottish fin de siècles; as well as activities within different regions of England, such as in the Midlands cities of Birmingham and Nottingham. In contrast to recent research exploring the global or transnational dimensions of the fin de siècle, this volume focuses on micro- rather than macro-cultural issues, the research underpinning these essays highlighting a diversity of practices that developed along different timelines and in different geographical locations, and which do not cohere into any simple pattern. Nor is there any obvious point of their intersection which might be said to mark a cultural turning point. A question the volume as a whole thus aims to pose is whether there is anything to be gained by distinguishing all, of any, of these practices as ‘fin-de-siècle’?
Toni Pressley-Sanon
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813054407
- eISBN:
- 9780813053141
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813054407.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Istwa across the Water draws on the historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of tidalectics as cultural exchange that is patterned after the back and forth movement of the ocean’s waves, to ...
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Istwa across the Water draws on the historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of tidalectics as cultural exchange that is patterned after the back and forth movement of the ocean’s waves, to explore Haitian cultural production through the lenses of history and memory by way of the Vodou concept of the Marasa or twinned entities. Istwa across the Water takes on Haiti’s complementary or twinned sites of cultural production in the West African area of Dahomey/Benin Republic and the Central West African Kôngo region from which many Haitians originate. It discusses oral and visual art traditions from both sides of the Atlantic divide as a means to explore the dynamic and constantly evolving exchange of physical and spiritual energies between Haiti and its “motherlands” (sites of origin) as Spirit seeks to restore the balance that was lost during the transatlantic trade and slave era.Less
Istwa across the Water draws on the historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of tidalectics as cultural exchange that is patterned after the back and forth movement of the ocean’s waves, to explore Haitian cultural production through the lenses of history and memory by way of the Vodou concept of the Marasa or twinned entities. Istwa across the Water takes on Haiti’s complementary or twinned sites of cultural production in the West African area of Dahomey/Benin Republic and the Central West African Kôngo region from which many Haitians originate. It discusses oral and visual art traditions from both sides of the Atlantic divide as a means to explore the dynamic and constantly evolving exchange of physical and spiritual energies between Haiti and its “motherlands” (sites of origin) as Spirit seeks to restore the balance that was lost during the transatlantic trade and slave era.
Helen Metcalfe
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526135629
- eISBN:
- 9781526150349
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526135636.00010
- Subject:
- History, Military History
This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised ...
More
This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised bodies, with material culture often acting as the point of entry for the cultural work they performed in producing and disseminating manliness. Drawing on the concept of emotional objects, three types of material culture are examined, which inspired feelings that reinforced ideas about idealised manliness. The first group are the artefacts of war and the military, including uniforms, weaponry, battle-field-objects, medals, ships, and regimental colours. The second are the objects encountered at the domestic level including toys, ceramics, and textiles, which depicted martial manliness or had intimate connections with soldiers and sailors. They appealed to all age groups, genders, and social classes, and had a domestic function or ornamental appeal. The third type considered consists of the material culture that celebrity military heroes generated, from consumable products that deployed their names and images, to the monuments that memorialised them, to the very stuff of their bodies. This irresistible nexus of emotionalised bodies and objects prompted affective responses, which disseminated, reinforced, and maintained civilian masculinities. (192 words)Less
This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised bodies, with material culture often acting as the point of entry for the cultural work they performed in producing and disseminating manliness. Drawing on the concept of emotional objects, three types of material culture are examined, which inspired feelings that reinforced ideas about idealised manliness. The first group are the artefacts of war and the military, including uniforms, weaponry, battle-field-objects, medals, ships, and regimental colours. The second are the objects encountered at the domestic level including toys, ceramics, and textiles, which depicted martial manliness or had intimate connections with soldiers and sailors. They appealed to all age groups, genders, and social classes, and had a domestic function or ornamental appeal. The third type considered consists of the material culture that celebrity military heroes generated, from consumable products that deployed their names and images, to the monuments that memorialised them, to the very stuff of their bodies. This irresistible nexus of emotionalised bodies and objects prompted affective responses, which disseminated, reinforced, and maintained civilian masculinities. (192 words)
Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780719097843
- eISBN:
- 9781526135896
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This edited collection explores how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Unlike previous publications, which are predominantly focused either on a specific historical period or ...
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This edited collection explores how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Unlike previous publications, which are predominantly focused either on a specific historical period or on precise cultural and historical events, this volume, which includes essays spanning from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is intended to eschew traditional categorisations of periodisation and disciplines and to enable the establishment of connections and cross-sections between different departments of knowledge, including the history of science (computus, prognostication), the history of art, literature, theology (homilies, prayers, hagiography, contemplative texts), music, historiography and geography. As suggested by its title, the collection does not pretend to aim at inclusiveness or comprehensiveness but is intended to highlight suggestive strands of what is a very wide topic. The chapters in this volume are grouped into four sections: I, Anthologies of Knowledge; II Transmission of Christian Traditions; III, Past and Present; and IV, Knowledge and Materiality, which are intended to provide the reader with a further thematic framework for approaching aspects of knowledge. Aspects of knowledge is mainly aimed to an academic readership, including advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and specialists of medieval literature, history of science, history of knowledge, history, geography, theology, music, philosophy, intellectual history, history of the language and material culture.Less
This edited collection explores how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Unlike previous publications, which are predominantly focused either on a specific historical period or on precise cultural and historical events, this volume, which includes essays spanning from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is intended to eschew traditional categorisations of periodisation and disciplines and to enable the establishment of connections and cross-sections between different departments of knowledge, including the history of science (computus, prognostication), the history of art, literature, theology (homilies, prayers, hagiography, contemplative texts), music, historiography and geography. As suggested by its title, the collection does not pretend to aim at inclusiveness or comprehensiveness but is intended to highlight suggestive strands of what is a very wide topic. The chapters in this volume are grouped into four sections: I, Anthologies of Knowledge; II Transmission of Christian Traditions; III, Past and Present; and IV, Knowledge and Materiality, which are intended to provide the reader with a further thematic framework for approaching aspects of knowledge. Aspects of knowledge is mainly aimed to an academic readership, including advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and specialists of medieval literature, history of science, history of knowledge, history, geography, theology, music, philosophy, intellectual history, history of the language and material culture.
Joshua Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226607160
- eISBN:
- 9780226607474
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226607474.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Making Music Indigenous focuses on indigenous chimaycha music from the Peru’s highland region. It explores the transformation of this Quechua-language song genre over the last half-century, in ...
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Making Music Indigenous focuses on indigenous chimaycha music from the Peru’s highland region. It explores the transformation of this Quechua-language song genre over the last half-century, in relation to three central themes: nature, mass mediation, and social politics. The first part of the book explores an era past, when chimaycha was linked to seasonal cycles of animal husbandry and climactic variation, on one hand, and on the other to the human life cycle, particularly via its role in youthful courtship. In this period the genre was an aesthetic means of mediating relations between human actors and their ecological circumstances, and the book shows how such relations became embedded in such musical elements as song lyrics and timbral preferences. The second part explores the genre’s conversion into a self-conscious symbol of cultural identity, first under the influence of development organizations and educators between the 1970s and 1990s, and then under the direction of popular cultural entrepreneurs after 2000. It focuses especially on activities of folkloric promotion associated with the local state university, and the later interventions of indigenous radio broadcasters, whose work was made possible by those folkloric activities. The final part of the book explores the genre from the perspective of an instrument maker and performer whose expertise has been central to its development since the late 1980s. It focuses especially on the relationship between natural knowledge, the manual skills germane to the maker’s trade, and the objects that makers produce, which shape contemporary performers’ relation to the sonorous past.Less
Making Music Indigenous focuses on indigenous chimaycha music from the Peru’s highland region. It explores the transformation of this Quechua-language song genre over the last half-century, in relation to three central themes: nature, mass mediation, and social politics. The first part of the book explores an era past, when chimaycha was linked to seasonal cycles of animal husbandry and climactic variation, on one hand, and on the other to the human life cycle, particularly via its role in youthful courtship. In this period the genre was an aesthetic means of mediating relations between human actors and their ecological circumstances, and the book shows how such relations became embedded in such musical elements as song lyrics and timbral preferences. The second part explores the genre’s conversion into a self-conscious symbol of cultural identity, first under the influence of development organizations and educators between the 1970s and 1990s, and then under the direction of popular cultural entrepreneurs after 2000. It focuses especially on activities of folkloric promotion associated with the local state university, and the later interventions of indigenous radio broadcasters, whose work was made possible by those folkloric activities. The final part of the book explores the genre from the perspective of an instrument maker and performer whose expertise has been central to its development since the late 1980s. It focuses especially on the relationship between natural knowledge, the manual skills germane to the maker’s trade, and the objects that makers produce, which shape contemporary performers’ relation to the sonorous past.
Melissa Dickson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474443647
- eISBN:
- 9781474477055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474443647.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Opening with an examination of the rhetoric of nineteenth-century modernity, the introduction argues that, faced with profound structural shifts, commentators of the period frequently deployed the ...
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Opening with an examination of the rhetoric of nineteenth-century modernity, the introduction argues that, faced with profound structural shifts, commentators of the period frequently deployed the language of magic and the Arabian Nights in order to communicate and make sense of their new, urban, industrial environments. Outlining the history of the arrival of the Arabian Nights in Europe and its remarkable propensity to proliferate, it establishes the temporal and structural openness of this story collection, which invites diverse application in multiple locations. In the case of nineteenth-century Britain, it argues, the tales were used to reflect and refract new materials and ideas, offering different ways for British readers to interpret and to frame their experiences. While engaging with questions of imperialism and Orientalism, the introduction draws recent scholarship on thing theory into the history of reading practices, in order to register the potentially transformative powers of reading in the context of the emotional, psychological and material relationships forged with the Arabian Nights in nineteenth-century Britain. Alongside the more familiar narrative of its prevalence as material with which to manage the Orient, it points to moments of exchange, immersion and receptivity to the realm of the other, and to narratives shared and adapted across cultures.Less
Opening with an examination of the rhetoric of nineteenth-century modernity, the introduction argues that, faced with profound structural shifts, commentators of the period frequently deployed the language of magic and the Arabian Nights in order to communicate and make sense of their new, urban, industrial environments. Outlining the history of the arrival of the Arabian Nights in Europe and its remarkable propensity to proliferate, it establishes the temporal and structural openness of this story collection, which invites diverse application in multiple locations. In the case of nineteenth-century Britain, it argues, the tales were used to reflect and refract new materials and ideas, offering different ways for British readers to interpret and to frame their experiences. While engaging with questions of imperialism and Orientalism, the introduction draws recent scholarship on thing theory into the history of reading practices, in order to register the potentially transformative powers of reading in the context of the emotional, psychological and material relationships forged with the Arabian Nights in nineteenth-century Britain. Alongside the more familiar narrative of its prevalence as material with which to manage the Orient, it points to moments of exchange, immersion and receptivity to the realm of the other, and to narratives shared and adapted across cultures.
Melissa Dickson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474443647
- eISBN:
- 9781474477055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474443647.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter 4 turns to the accumulation of goods at the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was frequently understood as another theatrical manifestation of the Arabian Nights, within the ‘fairy-tale’ ...
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Chapter 4 turns to the accumulation of goods at the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was frequently understood as another theatrical manifestation of the Arabian Nights, within the ‘fairy-tale’ Crystal Palace in the heart of Britain. A new and innovative architectural form, the palace and its contents challenged the viewer’s vision, judgement, and sense of scale to such an extent that recourse was made to the language of magic in an effort to represent its unfamiliar effects. The palace and the objects it contained had apparently materialised like the stuff of dreams. Within this transformative space, the magnificence of Britain’s industrial resources became truly apparent only by way of comparison, by the jostling together of old and new, of fictional and material, and of machinery and magic. Here, an anxious meta-narrative emerged about the nature of modern production and consumption. Casting those products originating from India, China and elsewhere within a framework of magic and the Arabian Nights was, this chapter argues, a part of the rhetoric of British modernity, which made the comparison between nations and their wares more palatable by insisting that supposedly ‘inferior’ nations had employed the agency of magic. Such a narrative generated wonder both for the beautiful, often hand-crafted productions that had supposedly been wrought by magic, and of the advancements of British civilisation, which had apparently gained, through science, all the powers of Aladdin’s lamp.Less
Chapter 4 turns to the accumulation of goods at the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was frequently understood as another theatrical manifestation of the Arabian Nights, within the ‘fairy-tale’ Crystal Palace in the heart of Britain. A new and innovative architectural form, the palace and its contents challenged the viewer’s vision, judgement, and sense of scale to such an extent that recourse was made to the language of magic in an effort to represent its unfamiliar effects. The palace and the objects it contained had apparently materialised like the stuff of dreams. Within this transformative space, the magnificence of Britain’s industrial resources became truly apparent only by way of comparison, by the jostling together of old and new, of fictional and material, and of machinery and magic. Here, an anxious meta-narrative emerged about the nature of modern production and consumption. Casting those products originating from India, China and elsewhere within a framework of magic and the Arabian Nights was, this chapter argues, a part of the rhetoric of British modernity, which made the comparison between nations and their wares more palatable by insisting that supposedly ‘inferior’ nations had employed the agency of magic. Such a narrative generated wonder both for the beautiful, often hand-crafted productions that had supposedly been wrought by magic, and of the advancements of British civilisation, which had apparently gained, through science, all the powers of Aladdin’s lamp.
Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry, and Joanne Begatio (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526135629
- eISBN:
- 9781526150349
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526135636
- Subject:
- History, Military History
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. ...
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Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)Less
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)
J. Allan Mitchell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816689965
- eISBN:
- 9781452949529
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816689965.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The second essay takes up both physical and literary examples of childish things. The anarchic forces of miniature matters are palpable even as such small-scale things articulate with human fantasy. ...
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The second essay takes up both physical and literary examples of childish things. The anarchic forces of miniature matters are palpable even as such small-scale things articulate with human fantasy. Mitchell also explores literary miniaturization in Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Usk.Less
The second essay takes up both physical and literary examples of childish things. The anarchic forces of miniature matters are palpable even as such small-scale things articulate with human fantasy. Mitchell also explores literary miniaturization in Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Usk.
Joshua Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226607160
- eISBN:
- 9780226607474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226607474.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
"Wood and Work" focuses on the chinlili, the small guitar-like instrument that is the mainstay of chimaycha performance, and on the most influential instrument maker who constructs them. It describes ...
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"Wood and Work" focuses on the chinlili, the small guitar-like instrument that is the mainstay of chimaycha performance, and on the most influential instrument maker who constructs them. It describes how he deploys in his instrument making a lifetime of musical training, guitar-making apprenticeship, environmental knowledge, and ideological convictions about indigenous distinctiveness, all of which make his workshop a significant node of transduction between past and future notions of indigenous identity.Less
"Wood and Work" focuses on the chinlili, the small guitar-like instrument that is the mainstay of chimaycha performance, and on the most influential instrument maker who constructs them. It describes how he deploys in his instrument making a lifetime of musical training, guitar-making apprenticeship, environmental knowledge, and ideological convictions about indigenous distinctiveness, all of which make his workshop a significant node of transduction between past and future notions of indigenous identity.