Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the scholarly literature in which magic is defined as faulty or inchoate science. The chapter begins by examining early theoretical constructions of the “primitive”; irrational ...
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This chapter examines the scholarly literature in which magic is defined as faulty or inchoate science. The chapter begins by examining early theoretical constructions of the “primitive”; irrational (or pre-rational) magical thought was seen by numerous early anthropologists and sociologists as a definitive index of the superstitious primitive mind. While the notion of the “primitive” has become intellectually untenable, magic nonetheless retains a central role in subsequent discussions of the nature and limits of modern rationality (often standing as shorthand for non-modern mental and social processes). Finally, the chapter moves to explore recent disputes among historians over the role of medieval natural magic in the emergence of early modern science. Positioned at (or beyond) the boundary of rationality, magic serves both as the foil against which distinctive forms of Western science are defined and as the decisive test of scientific rationality's ability to explain the irrational.Less
This chapter examines the scholarly literature in which magic is defined as faulty or inchoate science. The chapter begins by examining early theoretical constructions of the “primitive”; irrational (or pre-rational) magical thought was seen by numerous early anthropologists and sociologists as a definitive index of the superstitious primitive mind. While the notion of the “primitive” has become intellectually untenable, magic nonetheless retains a central role in subsequent discussions of the nature and limits of modern rationality (often standing as shorthand for non-modern mental and social processes). Finally, the chapter moves to explore recent disputes among historians over the role of medieval natural magic in the emergence of early modern science. Positioned at (or beyond) the boundary of rationality, magic serves both as the foil against which distinctive forms of Western science are defined and as the decisive test of scientific rationality's ability to explain the irrational.
Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The chapter begins by exploring various psychological theories in which magic is seen as a product of inchoate or inordinate desire. Whether asserting that magic is socially reactionary and ...
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The chapter begins by exploring various psychological theories in which magic is seen as a product of inchoate or inordinate desire. Whether asserting that magic is socially reactionary and authoritarian or fundamentally anti-social and anarchical, theorists have regularly seen magic as a threat to a productive social order. The dominant scholarly construction of magic has legitimated two distinct channels through which human needs are to be constructed and resolved: a spiritualized religious realm (to shape certain aspects of human identity and assuage internal tensions) and a rationalized scientific realm (to govern appropriate manipulation of the material world). With magic deployed as the stigmatized mediator between religion and science, the secularizing separation between these two channels is reinforced, and capitalism and Western science are relegated broad instrumental control of the material world. Even recent scholarly efforts to reverse the negative valence of magic maintain important elements of the traditional distinctions among religion, magic, and science and reinforce the paradigm in which rationalized religion and science are aligned with capitalist social relations.Less
The chapter begins by exploring various psychological theories in which magic is seen as a product of inchoate or inordinate desire. Whether asserting that magic is socially reactionary and authoritarian or fundamentally anti-social and anarchical, theorists have regularly seen magic as a threat to a productive social order. The dominant scholarly construction of magic has legitimated two distinct channels through which human needs are to be constructed and resolved: a spiritualized religious realm (to shape certain aspects of human identity and assuage internal tensions) and a rationalized scientific realm (to govern appropriate manipulation of the material world). With magic deployed as the stigmatized mediator between religion and science, the secularizing separation between these two channels is reinforced, and capitalism and Western science are relegated broad instrumental control of the material world. Even recent scholarly efforts to reverse the negative valence of magic maintain important elements of the traditional distinctions among religion, magic, and science and reinforce the paradigm in which rationalized religion and science are aligned with capitalist social relations.
Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter offers an account of the social and intellectual contexts within which definitions of magic emerged in the modern West, beginning with various early modern philosophical responses to the ...
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This chapter offers an account of the social and intellectual contexts within which definitions of magic emerged in the modern West, beginning with various early modern philosophical responses to the European witchcraft persecutions. Following the Reformation and the Enlightenment, intellectualized and privatized notions of religion gained prominence, particularly in Protestant anti-Catholic polemics. Coupled with this development was the proliferation of capitalism and Western science, both of which assert distinctive forms of mechanistic and rational manipulation of nature. Finally, with the European conquest of much of the non-Western world, the discourse on “primitive” culture came to play a significant role in legitimating colonial conquests and exploitation. In this context, magic came to serve as a particularly pliable tool in efforts to prescribe norms for liberal religious piety, modern scientific rationality, and capitalist social relations.Less
This chapter offers an account of the social and intellectual contexts within which definitions of magic emerged in the modern West, beginning with various early modern philosophical responses to the European witchcraft persecutions. Following the Reformation and the Enlightenment, intellectualized and privatized notions of religion gained prominence, particularly in Protestant anti-Catholic polemics. Coupled with this development was the proliferation of capitalism and Western science, both of which assert distinctive forms of mechanistic and rational manipulation of nature. Finally, with the European conquest of much of the non-Western world, the discourse on “primitive” culture came to play a significant role in legitimating colonial conquests and exploitation. In this context, magic came to serve as a particularly pliable tool in efforts to prescribe norms for liberal religious piety, modern scientific rationality, and capitalist social relations.
Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The introduction opens with an exploration of the prominence of magic in the scholarly literature of numerous modern academic disciplines and then offers a broad outline of the distinctive roles ...
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The introduction opens with an exploration of the prominence of magic in the scholarly literature of numerous modern academic disciplines and then offers a broad outline of the distinctive roles magic plays in this literature. Modern debates over magic turn on competing views of the nature of human subjectivity and the relation of the individual to society and to the material world. Scholars have used these debates as a site at which to articulate--and to challenge--norms for life in modernity.Less
The introduction opens with an exploration of the prominence of magic in the scholarly literature of numerous modern academic disciplines and then offers a broad outline of the distinctive roles magic plays in this literature. Modern debates over magic turn on competing views of the nature of human subjectivity and the relation of the individual to society and to the material world. Scholars have used these debates as a site at which to articulate--and to challenge--norms for life in modernity.
Christopher Hood
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198297659
- eISBN:
- 9780191599484
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198297653.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be ...
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Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be applied to government? Why do we find contradictory recipes for the improvement of public services, and are the forces of modernity set to produce worldwide convergence in ways of organizing government? This study aims to explore such questions, which are central to debates over public management. It combines contemporary and historical experience, and employs grid/group cultural theory as an organizing frame and method of exploration. Using examples from different places and eras, the study seeks to identify the recurring variety of ideas about how to organize public services—and contrary to widespread claims that modernization will bring a new global uniformity, it argues that variety is unlikely to disappear from doctrine and practice in public management. The book has three parts. Part I, Introductory, has three chapters that discuss various aspects of public management. Part II, Classic and Recurring Ideas in Public Management, has four chapters that discuss various ways of doing public management. Part III, Rhetoric, Modernity, and Science in Public Management, has three chapters that discuss the rhetoric, and culture of public management, contemporary public management, and the state of the art of the state.Less
Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be applied to government? Why do we find contradictory recipes for the improvement of public services, and are the forces of modernity set to produce worldwide convergence in ways of organizing government? This study aims to explore such questions, which are central to debates over public management. It combines contemporary and historical experience, and employs grid/group cultural theory as an organizing frame and method of exploration. Using examples from different places and eras, the study seeks to identify the recurring variety of ideas about how to organize public services—and contrary to widespread claims that modernization will bring a new global uniformity, it argues that variety is unlikely to disappear from doctrine and practice in public management. The book has three parts. Part I, Introductory, has three chapters that discuss various aspects of public management. Part II, Classic and Recurring Ideas in Public Management, has four chapters that discuss various ways of doing public management. Part III, Rhetoric, Modernity, and Science in Public Management, has three chapters that discuss the rhetoric, and culture of public management, contemporary public management, and the state of the art of the state.
David L. McMahan
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195183276
- eISBN:
- 9780199870882
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183276.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism ...
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This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.Less
This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.
Antoinette Burton
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195144253
- eISBN:
- 9780199871919
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195144253.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial ...
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This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial modernity. Janaki Majumdar was the daughter of the first president of the Indian National Congress. Her unpublished “Family History” (1935) stages the story of her parents' transnational marriage as a series of homes the family inhabited in Britain and India — thereby providing a heretofore unavailable narrative of the domestic face of 19th century Indian nationalism. Cornelia Sorabji was one of the first Indian women to qualify for the bar. Her memoirs (1934 and 1936) demonstrate her determination to rescue the zenana (women's quarters) and purdahnashin (secluded women) from the recesses of the orthodox home in order to counter the emancipationist claims of Gandhian nationalism. Last but not least, Attia Hosain's 1961 novel, Sunlight on Broken Column, represents the violence and trauma of partition through the biography of a young heroine called Laila and her family home. Taken together, their writings raise questions about what counts as an archive, offering insights into the relationship of women to memory and history, gender to fact and fiction, and feminism to nationalism and postcolonialism.Less
This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial modernity. Janaki Majumdar was the daughter of the first president of the Indian National Congress. Her unpublished “Family History” (1935) stages the story of her parents' transnational marriage as a series of homes the family inhabited in Britain and India — thereby providing a heretofore unavailable narrative of the domestic face of 19th century Indian nationalism. Cornelia Sorabji was one of the first Indian women to qualify for the bar. Her memoirs (1934 and 1936) demonstrate her determination to rescue the zenana (women's quarters) and purdahnashin (secluded women) from the recesses of the orthodox home in order to counter the emancipationist claims of Gandhian nationalism. Last but not least, Attia Hosain's 1961 novel, Sunlight on Broken Column, represents the violence and trauma of partition through the biography of a young heroine called Laila and her family home. Taken together, their writings raise questions about what counts as an archive, offering insights into the relationship of women to memory and history, gender to fact and fiction, and feminism to nationalism and postcolonialism.
Veit Erlmann
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195123678
- eISBN:
- 9780199868797
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195123678.003.00017
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
The story of the African Choir, Zulu Choir, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a story about the disjunctures and ambiguities of racial, national, and personal identities. As such, this story highlights ...
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The story of the African Choir, Zulu Choir, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a story about the disjunctures and ambiguities of racial, national, and personal identities. As such, this story highlights the specific black forms of modernity emerging from the diasporic connections between Africa and the West.Less
The story of the African Choir, Zulu Choir, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a story about the disjunctures and ambiguities of racial, national, and personal identities. As such, this story highlights the specific black forms of modernity emerging from the diasporic connections between Africa and the West.
Theodore Ziolkowski
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195336917
- eISBN:
- 9780199868353
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336917.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The conclusion summarizes the manners in which the economic, aesthetic, psychological, and anthropological re-visions enabled precisely these three myths to be taken up as a mirror of the modern ...
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The conclusion summarizes the manners in which the economic, aesthetic, psychological, and anthropological re-visions enabled precisely these three myths to be taken up as a mirror of the modern consciousness and suggests the essential modernity of myth as a vehicle for such ideas as sexual liberation, alienation, totalitarianism, technology, and personal liberation. It reviews the many forms and genres assumed from case to case by the three Cretan myths and concludes that their permeation of so many defining works of 20th-century literature, art, and musical drama convincingly demonstrates the remarkable resilience and modernity of ancient myth.Less
The conclusion summarizes the manners in which the economic, aesthetic, psychological, and anthropological re-visions enabled precisely these three myths to be taken up as a mirror of the modern consciousness and suggests the essential modernity of myth as a vehicle for such ideas as sexual liberation, alienation, totalitarianism, technology, and personal liberation. It reviews the many forms and genres assumed from case to case by the three Cretan myths and concludes that their permeation of so many defining works of 20th-century literature, art, and musical drama convincingly demonstrates the remarkable resilience and modernity of ancient myth.
Norman Wirzba
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195157161
- eISBN:
- 9780199835270
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195157168.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of ...
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Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of contemporary environmental concerns. They do so by showing how our identities as creatures lead to vocations that promote the care, peace, and celebration of creation. This account is developed through a sustained conversation with contemporary ecological science and agrarian thought. This book develops why the idea of creation has fallen upon hard times in modernity, and how something like a culture of creation might be envisioned that would pair ecologically informed theology with a variety of cultural concerns like education, economics, work, food, design, and built environments. This new interpretation of creation offers the possibility for a culture of justice and peace for humans and non-humans alike.Less
Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of contemporary environmental concerns. They do so by showing how our identities as creatures lead to vocations that promote the care, peace, and celebration of creation. This account is developed through a sustained conversation with contemporary ecological science and agrarian thought. This book develops why the idea of creation has fallen upon hard times in modernity, and how something like a culture of creation might be envisioned that would pair ecologically informed theology with a variety of cultural concerns like education, economics, work, food, design, and built environments. This new interpretation of creation offers the possibility for a culture of justice and peace for humans and non-humans alike.
Stuart Carroll
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199290451
- eISBN:
- 9780191710490
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290451.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
The French nobility was acculturated to violence that coexisted with courtliness. Feuding is indelibly associated with the Middle Ages, with a culture that is opposed to modernity. But, in fact, ...
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The French nobility was acculturated to violence that coexisted with courtliness. Feuding is indelibly associated with the Middle Ages, with a culture that is opposed to modernity. But, in fact, evidence for feuding in France before 1559 is fragmentary. Among the aristocracy at least private violence was increasingly under control during the late Middle Ages: revenge killing as a feature of high politics had been eradicated by the beginning of the 16th century. Factors often identified with modernity did much to create the conditions for a recrudescence of vindicatory violence: social mobility, Protestantism, and duelling. Vindicatory violence increased in France because of, not in spite of, the social and economic dynamism associated with the Renaissance, as the traditional elite was challenged by the enterprising and socially mobile.Less
The French nobility was acculturated to violence that coexisted with courtliness. Feuding is indelibly associated with the Middle Ages, with a culture that is opposed to modernity. But, in fact, evidence for feuding in France before 1559 is fragmentary. Among the aristocracy at least private violence was increasingly under control during the late Middle Ages: revenge killing as a feature of high politics had been eradicated by the beginning of the 16th century. Factors often identified with modernity did much to create the conditions for a recrudescence of vindicatory violence: social mobility, Protestantism, and duelling. Vindicatory violence increased in France because of, not in spite of, the social and economic dynamism associated with the Renaissance, as the traditional elite was challenged by the enterprising and socially mobile.
Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines in the late nineteenth century, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in ...
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Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines in the late nineteenth century, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating religion's relation to science. Many of the most important scholars in these disciplines have debated the relation of magic to religion and science, yet traditional efforts to formulate distinctions among these categories have proved notoriously unstable, the subject of repeated critique and deconstruction. The notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous. This book seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. The book argues that the persistence of scholarly debates over magic can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity--norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.Less
Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines in the late nineteenth century, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating religion's relation to science. Many of the most important scholars in these disciplines have debated the relation of magic to religion and science, yet traditional efforts to formulate distinctions among these categories have proved notoriously unstable, the subject of repeated critique and deconstruction. The notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous. This book seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. The book argues that the persistence of scholarly debates over magic can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity--norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.
A Raghuramaraju (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198070122
- eISBN:
- 9780199080014
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198070122.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory
Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by ...
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Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by historical events such as colonialism, which incidentally brought modernity to India. Western modernity is mainly normative, and its norms include the concept of autonomous individual, freedom, and instrumental rationality. This normative project is sought to be ruthlessly implemented through modern programmes of secularism, nationalism, urbanization, and industrialization where the pre-modern is sought to be disinherited. This book explores the limitations surrounding Indian social theorists' views on Indian society. It discusses Partha Chatterjee's perspectives on Indian nationalism, Javeed Alam's interpretation of Indian secularism and the use of plural character of Indian society by some Indian social scientists, and Gopal Guru's proposal to move Dalits' lived experience from literature into social theory. The book also examines the limitations surrounding the reading of contemporary texts and activities of thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, B.R. Ambedkar, and Aurobindo Ghosh.Less
Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by historical events such as colonialism, which incidentally brought modernity to India. Western modernity is mainly normative, and its norms include the concept of autonomous individual, freedom, and instrumental rationality. This normative project is sought to be ruthlessly implemented through modern programmes of secularism, nationalism, urbanization, and industrialization where the pre-modern is sought to be disinherited. This book explores the limitations surrounding Indian social theorists' views on Indian society. It discusses Partha Chatterjee's perspectives on Indian nationalism, Javeed Alam's interpretation of Indian secularism and the use of plural character of Indian society by some Indian social scientists, and Gopal Guru's proposal to move Dalits' lived experience from literature into social theory. The book also examines the limitations surrounding the reading of contemporary texts and activities of thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, B.R. Ambedkar, and Aurobindo Ghosh.
Erik N. Jensen
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195395648
- eISBN:
- 9780199866564
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395648.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, European Modern History
Body by Weimar argues that male and female athletes fundamentally recast gender roles during Germany's turbulent post‐World War I years and established the basis for a modern body and ...
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Body by Weimar argues that male and female athletes fundamentally recast gender roles during Germany's turbulent post‐World War I years and established the basis for a modern body and modern sensibility that remain with us to this day. Athletes in the 1920s took the same techniques that were streamlining factories and offices and applied them to maximizing the efficiency of their own flesh and bones. Sportswomen and men embodied modernity — quite literally — in all of its competitive, time‐oriented excess and thereby helped to popularize, and even to naturalize, the sometimes threatening process of economic rationalization by linking it to their own personal success stories. Enthroned by the media as the new cultural icons, athletes radiated sexual empowerment, social mobility, and self‐determination. Champions in tennis, boxing, and track and field showed their fans how to be “modern,” and, in the process, sparked heated debates over the limits of the physical body, the obligations of citizens to the state, and the relationship between the sexes. If the images and debates in this book strike readers as familiar, it might well be because the ideal body of today — sleek, efficient, and equally available to men and women — received its first articulation in the fertile tumult of Germany's roaring twenties. After more than eighty years, we still want the Weimar body.Less
Body by Weimar argues that male and female athletes fundamentally recast gender roles during Germany's turbulent post‐World War I years and established the basis for a modern body and modern sensibility that remain with us to this day. Athletes in the 1920s took the same techniques that were streamlining factories and offices and applied them to maximizing the efficiency of their own flesh and bones. Sportswomen and men embodied modernity — quite literally — in all of its competitive, time‐oriented excess and thereby helped to popularize, and even to naturalize, the sometimes threatening process of economic rationalization by linking it to their own personal success stories. Enthroned by the media as the new cultural icons, athletes radiated sexual empowerment, social mobility, and self‐determination. Champions in tennis, boxing, and track and field showed their fans how to be “modern,” and, in the process, sparked heated debates over the limits of the physical body, the obligations of citizens to the state, and the relationship between the sexes. If the images and debates in this book strike readers as familiar, it might well be because the ideal body of today — sleek, efficient, and equally available to men and women — received its first articulation in the fertile tumult of Germany's roaring twenties. After more than eighty years, we still want the Weimar body.
Patrick Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199587957
- eISBN:
- 9780191723292
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587957.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long ...
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‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long tradition of the novel, from Beckett, Kafka, and Dostoevsky to Richardson, Defoe, and Cervantes, this book argues that Coetzee's significance lies in the acuity with which he has explored the resources of that tradition as part of a sustained attempt to rethink the relationship between writing and politics. For Coetzee questions about the future of the novel are closely related to what it means to write after Beckett, and this book describes and evaluates the ways in which his fiction draws upon aspects of modernist writing to address the major questions posed by late twentieth‐century politics. The unsettling comic energy of Beckett's prose, especially its insistent complication of tone and register, was, as Coetzee put it, nothing less than ‘a secret…that I wanted to make my own’, and Patrick Hayes brings to the fore the little‐discussed comedic dimension of Coetzee's writing. Opening up a range of new approaches to this major contemporary author, J. M. Coetzee and the Novel argues that it is only by paying especially close attention to the experience of reading Coetzee's complex and nuanced fiction that its important impact on longstanding questions about identity, community, and the nature of political modernity can be appreciated.Less
‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long tradition of the novel, from Beckett, Kafka, and Dostoevsky to Richardson, Defoe, and Cervantes, this book argues that Coetzee's significance lies in the acuity with which he has explored the resources of that tradition as part of a sustained attempt to rethink the relationship between writing and politics. For Coetzee questions about the future of the novel are closely related to what it means to write after Beckett, and this book describes and evaluates the ways in which his fiction draws upon aspects of modernist writing to address the major questions posed by late twentieth‐century politics. The unsettling comic energy of Beckett's prose, especially its insistent complication of tone and register, was, as Coetzee put it, nothing less than ‘a secret…that I wanted to make my own’, and Patrick Hayes brings to the fore the little‐discussed comedic dimension of Coetzee's writing. Opening up a range of new approaches to this major contemporary author, J. M. Coetzee and the Novel argues that it is only by paying especially close attention to the experience of reading Coetzee's complex and nuanced fiction that its important impact on longstanding questions about identity, community, and the nature of political modernity can be appreciated.
A. Raghuramaraju
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198070122
- eISBN:
- 9780199080014
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198070122.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory
Some social theorists in India, including Partha Chatterjee, Javeed Alam, and Gopal Guru, have failed to recognize the core project of modernity and its social consequences. Instead, they were ...
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Some social theorists in India, including Partha Chatterjee, Javeed Alam, and Gopal Guru, have failed to recognize the core project of modernity and its social consequences. Instead, they were preoccupied with the themes of modernity including reason or the ‘cunning of reason’, ‘individualism’ or ‘individuation’, nationalism, secularism, and universalism. This prevented them from recognizing the internal project of modernity. This also prevented others from seeing some important and unique issues including internal criticism that is evident in the writings of contemporary Indian thinkers like Swami Vivekananda, and prevented them from identifying a third kind of action in Mahatma Gandhi, namely, inaction. This book argues that, unlike the West, social theory in India was unable to grasp the philosophical foundations of modernity that lies in its method.Less
Some social theorists in India, including Partha Chatterjee, Javeed Alam, and Gopal Guru, have failed to recognize the core project of modernity and its social consequences. Instead, they were preoccupied with the themes of modernity including reason or the ‘cunning of reason’, ‘individualism’ or ‘individuation’, nationalism, secularism, and universalism. This prevented them from recognizing the internal project of modernity. This also prevented others from seeing some important and unique issues including internal criticism that is evident in the writings of contemporary Indian thinkers like Swami Vivekananda, and prevented them from identifying a third kind of action in Mahatma Gandhi, namely, inaction. This book argues that, unlike the West, social theory in India was unable to grasp the philosophical foundations of modernity that lies in its method.
Naghmeh Sohrabi
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199829705
- eISBN:
- 9780199933341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199829705.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel ...
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This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel (particularly in cases where the destination, such as Europe, signifies larger meanings such as modernity) and that historicizes the travelogue itself as a rhetorical text in the service of its origin’s concerns and developments. Within this framework, this book demonstrates the ways in which travel writings from Iran to Europe were used to position Qajar Iran (1794–1925) within a global context—that is, narration of travel to Europe was also narrating the power of the Qajar court even when political events were tipped against it—and relatedly, how both travel to Europe and also translations of travel narratives into Persian should be included in our understanding of the importance of geography and mapping to the Qajars, especially during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this process, it also reexamines the notion that Iranian modernity was the chief outcome of Iranians traveling in and writing about Europe.Less
This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel (particularly in cases where the destination, such as Europe, signifies larger meanings such as modernity) and that historicizes the travelogue itself as a rhetorical text in the service of its origin’s concerns and developments. Within this framework, this book demonstrates the ways in which travel writings from Iran to Europe were used to position Qajar Iran (1794–1925) within a global context—that is, narration of travel to Europe was also narrating the power of the Qajar court even when political events were tipped against it—and relatedly, how both travel to Europe and also translations of travel narratives into Persian should be included in our understanding of the importance of geography and mapping to the Qajars, especially during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this process, it also reexamines the notion that Iranian modernity was the chief outcome of Iranians traveling in and writing about Europe.
Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117858
- eISBN:
- 9780191671081
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117858.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
A study which relates Conrad’s work to the crisis of modernity in the late 19th century, this book discusses ‘faultlines’ — ambiguities and apparent aesthetic ruptures — in nine of the major novels ...
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A study which relates Conrad’s work to the crisis of modernity in the late 19th century, this book discusses ‘faultlines’ — ambiguities and apparent aesthetic ruptures — in nine of the major novels and novellas. These faultlines are diagnosed as the symptoms of an unresolved tension between Conrad’s temperamental affinity with the Nietzschean outlook and his fierce ideological rejection of its ultimate implications. Presenting Conrad as ‘a modernist at war with modernity’, the book studies the perpetual tug-of-war between the artistic will to meaning and the writer’s susceptibility to the modern temper, both as a theme and as a structuring principle in his work. The modes of this struggle are defined as the ‘failure of myth’, the ‘failure of metaphysics’, and the ‘failure of textuality’. The inquiry draws on the work of Nietzsche, Vaihinger, Bakhtin, Heller, and MacIntyre, amongst others, to present the ethical and epistemological issues which are interwoven with Conrad’s aesthetics.Less
A study which relates Conrad’s work to the crisis of modernity in the late 19th century, this book discusses ‘faultlines’ — ambiguities and apparent aesthetic ruptures — in nine of the major novels and novellas. These faultlines are diagnosed as the symptoms of an unresolved tension between Conrad’s temperamental affinity with the Nietzschean outlook and his fierce ideological rejection of its ultimate implications. Presenting Conrad as ‘a modernist at war with modernity’, the book studies the perpetual tug-of-war between the artistic will to meaning and the writer’s susceptibility to the modern temper, both as a theme and as a structuring principle in his work. The modes of this struggle are defined as the ‘failure of myth’, the ‘failure of metaphysics’, and the ‘failure of textuality’. The inquiry draws on the work of Nietzsche, Vaihinger, Bakhtin, Heller, and MacIntyre, amongst others, to present the ethical and epistemological issues which are interwoven with Conrad’s aesthetics.
Peter van der Veer
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691128146
- eISBN:
- 9781400848553
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691128146.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and ...
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This book challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. The book begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. The book traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled. The book moves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang.Less
This book challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. The book begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. The book traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled. The book moves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang.
Stephen J. Collier
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691148304
- eISBN:
- 9781400840427
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691148304.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across ...
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The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism, these institutions were profoundly shaken—casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. This book examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. It turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, the book uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding—that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity—lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.Less
The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism, these institutions were profoundly shaken—casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. This book examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. It turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, the book uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding—that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity—lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.
