Search Results

Savage Peoples and Civilizing Powers

Colin G. Calloway

in White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal People and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America

A core component of colonial projects in both the Highlands and Indian North America was to convert the tribal inhabitants, who were assumed to exist at an inferior stage of development. This chapter ... More

A core component of colonial projects in both the Highlands and Indian North America was to convert the tribal inhabitants, who were assumed to exist at an inferior stage of development. This chapter surveys depictions of tribal life in the Highlands and Indian country to illustrate how contemporaries described tribal peoples on both sides of the Atlantic in almost identical terms. It examines the attitudes and philosophies of the colonizers, their missionary and educational efforts, and the responses of Highland and Indian peoples to such conversion attempts. The Lowland-based Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge was active in mission work in both the Highlands and in Indian country. Scottish Enlightenment theories about human development exerted an important influence on emerging American Indian policy and the thinking of Thomas Jefferson.Less

Intellectual Property and Development as Freedom

Madhavi Sunder

in The Development Agenda: Global Intellectual Property and Developing Countries

Since 1990, the United Nations has understood development in the broad terms of expanding human capabilities, thanks in part to Amartya Sen. Sen's vision of “development as freedom” is pluralist, ... More

Since 1990, the United Nations has understood development in the broad terms of expanding human capabilities, thanks in part to Amartya Sen. Sen's vision of “development as freedom” is pluralist, measuring development on the capacity for many freedoms. These freedoms range from basic needs, such as the right to life and health, to more expansive freedoms of movement, creative work, and participation in social, economic, and cultural institutions. Intellectual property (IP) law is essential to all of these freedoms and regulates our capacity to participate in cultural and scientific creation. A broader understanding of IP and development as freedom recognizes the importance of participating in the process of knowledge creation. The poor must be recognized as both receivers and producers of knowledge. In the Knowledge Age, wealth lies not simply in access to other people's knowledge, but also in the ability to produce new knowledge and to benefit from this creation, culturally and economically.Less

Assuring successful lifelong learning: can neuroscience provide the key?

Christiane Spiel, Barbara Schober, Petra Wagner, and Monika Finsterwald

in Neuroscience in Education: The good, the bad, and the ugly

The use of the term ‘neuro’ in scientific contexts has become more and more popular. Many politicians and practitioners, especially in the field of education, seem to believe that scientific work ... More

The use of the term ‘neuro’ in scientific contexts has become more and more popular. Many politicians and practitioners, especially in the field of education, seem to believe that scientific work gets a specific aura if it is neuroscientifically based. This chapter questions whether, and if so, how neuroscience can contribute to explaining or promoting complex learning processes. To illustrate complex learning processes and the requirements associated with their enhancement, it focuses on lifelong learning (LLL). The needs of the ‘knowledge society’ have placed LLL at the centre of an intensive ongoing political debate. Essential constituents of LLL are a persistent motivation to learn and the skills to realize this motivation. Researchers in the field of education agree that schools provide the basis for LLL and therefore teachers play a decisive role for imparting relevant competences. Consequently, LLL trainings should also target teachers. As a concrete example, a training programme for teachers to enhance LLL is presented. Based on this example, the chapter discusses how bridges can be built between neuroscience and education to cooperate in explaining and promoting complex learning processes.Less

Intellectual Artillery

Song-Chuan Chen

in Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War

This chapter observes that the Warlike party launched an informational war to penetrate the soft borders that constrained information flow and interaction. Their efforts concentrated on the Society ... More

This chapter observes that the Warlike party launched an informational war to penetrate the soft borders that constrained information flow and interaction. Their efforts concentrated on the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, with the objective of spreading knowledge about the European world to the Chinese. They prepared, as they termed it, ‘intellectual artillery’ in the form of Chinese-language publications, especially material related to world geography, to distribute among the Chinese to inform them of the truth about the British in the hope that it would lead China to ‘open up’ from the inside. In establishing the society, the Warlike party conceived the metaphor of a war of information, which contributed to the developing conceptualisation of a literal war against China in the years before actual military action.Less

The Church in an Age of Projects

Brent S. Sirota

in The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680-1730

This chapter considers the imperatives of Anglican reform in the ensuing settlement of the established church. It describes how the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) emerged from a ... More

This chapter considers the imperatives of Anglican reform in the ensuing settlement of the established church. It describes how the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) emerged from a climate characterized by both the persistence of Anglican revivalism and the vogue for organizational experimentation and innovation that affected the established church no less than Protestant Nonconformity.Less

Knowledge Societies

in The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy and Capitalism in the Knowledge Age

This chapter examines the social democratic vision of the knowledge society and its interpretation of the social organization of knowledge as equality or meritocracy. It discusses the differences ... More

This chapter examines the social democratic vision of the knowledge society and its interpretation of the social organization of knowledge as equality or meritocracy. It discusses the differences between New Labour's meritocratic notion of community and the Social Democratic Party's more egalitarian notion of society as samhälle. The chapter also explains that in contemporary social democracy, meritocracy is considered a vision of society as organized around individual talent informed by the human capital argument where differentiation of people according to talent is motivated by the economic desire to make the most of the “best brains.”Less

The Church: Anglicanism and the Nationalization of Maritime Space

Brent S. Sirota

in Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire

Religious outreach to the maritime world in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries constituted a movement to overcome the moral hazard of the ocean and to inscribe the sea and seafaring ... More

Religious outreach to the maritime world in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries constituted a movement to overcome the moral hazard of the ocean and to inscribe the sea and seafaring peoples within the Protestant moral order that was increasingly becoming constitutive of English national identity in this period. An analysis of the networks of largely Anglican religious and charitable associations engaged in Christianization efforts throughout the maritime empire opens up the analysis of mercantilism to a plurality of actors that constituted civil society and political authority in the early modern world; as such, it offers a new narrative by which one can understand the multiple processes by which the oceanic space of the Atlantic came to be controlled, patrolled, and nationalized in the eighteenth century.Less

Religious Societies for Distributing Books

Isabel Rivers

in Vanity Fair and the Celestial City: Dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical Literary Culture in England 1720-1800

This chapter traces the beginning and development of tract publication and distribution from the later seventeenth through to the early nineteenth centuries, with accounts in chronological order of ... More

This chapter traces the beginning and development of tract publication and distribution from the later seventeenth through to the early nineteenth centuries, with accounts in chronological order of the aims, methods, membership, and publications of six societies: the Welsh Trust, an early example of nonconformists and conformists cooperating; the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, a Church of England society, the largest and most long-lasting of those analysed; the interdenominational and evangelical Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge among the Poor; John Wesley’s Society for Distributing Religious Tracts among the Poor; the Unitarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; and the Religious Tract Society.Less

Anglican Religious Societies, Organizations, and Missions

David Manning

in The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume II: Establishment and Empire, 1662 -1829

This chapter provides the first critical survey of those societies that worked under the rubric of the Church of England over the course of its ‘long eighteenth century’. Transcending a scholarly ... More

This chapter provides the first critical survey of those societies that worked under the rubric of the Church of England over the course of its ‘long eighteenth century’. Transcending a scholarly focus on the voluntary quality of such groups and challenging more general assumptions about the supposedly areligious nature of ‘enlightened’ sociability and learning, it shows how the Church of England revitalized its authority by utilizing extra-parochial societies to reconstitute its relationship with its national and international communion. As a reference work, the chapter seeks to inform the general reader whilst guiding specialists towards new lines of enquiry. But its insights into societies such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge underscore the extent to which ‘Anglican religious societies’ actively shaped the wider history of the English-speaking world.Less

Creating the Knowledge Individual

in The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy and Capitalism in the Knowledge Age

This chapter explores the idea of the knowledge citizen, the constantly learning and relearning individual who supposedly inhabits the knowledge society. It suggests that social democracy is still ... More

This chapter explores the idea of the knowledge citizen, the constantly learning and relearning individual who supposedly inhabits the knowledge society. It suggests that social democracy is still preoccupied with the idea of the knowledge man and that many of the Third Way's means of governance are designed to actively create this utopic citizen. The chapter also argues that New Labour's idea of change as a competitive race and the Swedish rejection of change as exactly such a race are indicative of different notions of modernization and of the role of the individual in the process of change.Less

Max Boisot and the Dynamic Evolution of Knowledge

Martin Ihrig and John Child

in Knowledge, Organization, and Management: Building on the Work of Max Boisot

The introductory chapter outlines Max Boisot’s Information-Space (I-Space), a conceptual framework that facilitates the study of knowledge flows in diverse populations of ‘agents’. As one of Boisot’s ... More

The introductory chapter outlines Max Boisot’s Information-Space (I-Space), a conceptual framework that facilitates the study of knowledge flows in diverse populations of ‘agents’. As one of Boisot’s most fundamental innovations, it enabled him and other researchers to study and advance understanding of the emerging knowledge-based society and the implications of the information revolution. The chapter also reviews Max Boisot’s life and achievements and reflects on how his career path and the international collaborations he formed helped to shape the development of his work. Boisot’s mode of knowledge creation that made him an extraordinary organization scholar and management visionary is described. Finally, the chapter reviews the five core sections into which the book is structured and which cover the main areas in which Boisot forged new understanding, among them Analyses of the Chinese System, Organizational Complexity, The Strategic Management of Knowledge, Knowledge in Big Science, Innovations in Education.Less

The Upper Paleolithic as History

John F. Hoffecker

in Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought

This chapter begins by illustrating V. Gordon Childe's role in shifting the subject of archaeology from artifacts to people. In his book Society and Knowledge, Childe presents a theory of progress ... More

This chapter begins by illustrating V. Gordon Childe's role in shifting the subject of archaeology from artifacts to people. In his book Society and Knowledge, Childe presents a theory of progress based on the observation that human societies increase their mastery of the environment by creating new technologies. The book's central theme is human creativity, which Childe used as framework for interpreting archaeological records as a historical narrative. The archaeological record of the first 40,000 years of the modern mind is referred to as the Upper Paleolithic. The chapter reviews how Upper Paleolithic history recognizes the accumulation of knowledge as the essence of the historical process. By the later stages of the period, humans came to understand more about biology, chemistry, and physics, while artifacts have progressed over time—all of which provide a record of how knowledge was developed during the Upper Paleolithic.Less

Dessiou's Claim

in Tides of History: Ocean Science and Her Majesty's Navy

This chapter analyzes sustained efforts to predict the tides on Britain's coasts, following the study of the tides from the less glamorous position of calculation. It focuses on the legal claim made ... More

This chapter analyzes sustained efforts to predict the tides on Britain's coasts, following the study of the tides from the less glamorous position of calculation. It focuses on the legal claim made by Joseph Foss Dessiou, the first state-funded tide calculator in Britain, against the proprietors of the Nautical Almanac, who used his tidal reductions without proper compensation. It also highlights the significance of associate laborers to physical astronomy during the Victorian period. British industrialization rapidly made London the largest port in the world, and publishing London tide tables became a competitive and lucrative business. Charles Knight, a prolific publisher and writer, suggested to Henry Brougham, founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, that the Society include an almanac among its inexpensive publications. After mariners questioned the accuracy of these initial tide tables, John William Lubbock, a Cambridge graduate and successful London banker, stepped in to calculate the major tidal constants for the port. From the beginning, the study of the tides was a collaborative and hierarchical affair begun by associate laborers themselves.Less

Our Mission is to Organize the World’s Information

Barbara Cassin

in Google Me: One-Click Democracy

The first of two chapters that analyse in philological and philosophical detail each term of the claims made by Google with its two dominant mottos: “Our mission is to organize the world’s ... More

The first of two chapters that analyse in philological and philosophical detail each term of the claims made by Google with its two dominant mottos: “Our mission is to organize the world’s information” and “Don’t be evil.” This is seen as America’s “second mission,” in the context of George Bush’s post 9/11 declaration of “war on terror”, justified by the morality of America’s “first mission,” namely the fight of good against evil on a global scale. Less

Maps for the Masses?

Daniel Foliard

in Dislocating the Orient: British Maps and the Making of the Middle East, 1854-1921

This chapter examines the reception of the cartographies and geographies of the Orient by the wider British public in the 1850s and 1860s.It first considers commercial mapmaking and the contrasted ... More

This chapter examines the reception of the cartographies and geographies of the Orient by the wider British public in the 1850s and 1860s.It first considers commercial mapmaking and the contrasted history of its gradual modernization and inherent conservatism. It demonstrates that British mapmakers’ pretensions of to modernity were often contradicted by cost-related restraints and lack of updated data. It provides a detailed examination of how maps became integrated into increasingly widespread social practices. It explores the less-scholarly less scholarly forms of maps with a view to demonstrating how the exhibition of the world’s outlines became one of the facets of 19th-century leisure. Another focal point of this chapter is the issue of geographical literacy and the educational uses of maps of the East.Less

Knowledge and Education

Deepak Kumar

in The Trishanku Nation: Memory, Self, and Society in Contemporary India

It has become very fashionable to talk of knowledge society and economy these days; this chapter discusses this issue in a historical context. Knowledge and education have always been a contested ... More

It has become very fashionable to talk of knowledge society and economy these days; this chapter discusses this issue in a historical context. Knowledge and education have always been a contested terrain; so many commissions and reports have worked on it, yet the conditions remain dismal. Only service sector cannot make India a knowledge society. The chapter explores what more is required from both the state and the society in this context.Less

Missionary Societies

Brian Stanley

in The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume II: The Long Eighteenth Century c. 1689-c. 1828

While some of the global reach of Dissenting traditions is due to the vagaries of migration from Britain in the early modern period, much of it is also the result of the deliberate propagation of the ... More

While some of the global reach of Dissenting traditions is due to the vagaries of migration from Britain in the early modern period, much of it is also the result of the deliberate propagation of the faith in which the Missionary Societies, formed between the French Revolution and the early nineteenth century, were key. Older scholarship tended to celebrate evangelical Dissent as being central to this movement. More recent exploration has shown that unlike earlier Pietist and Anglican missionary activity, the Baptist Missionary Society (1792) and London Missionary Society (1795) had a global reach, rather than being limited to strong national/colonial networks. Given the independence from state control of these new societies, they were also entirely reliant on philanthropic giving to finance their activities.Less