Jeffrey C. Alexander
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195160840
- eISBN:
- 9780199944156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195160840.003.0012
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter explores the social creation of a cultural fact and evaluates the effects of this cultural fact on social and moral life. It analyses the creation of moral universals, focusing on the ...
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This chapter explores the social creation of a cultural fact and evaluates the effects of this cultural fact on social and moral life. It analyses the creation of moral universals, focusing on the Holocaust and the associated war crime and trauma. It attempts to explain how a historical event, an event marked by ethnic and racial hatred, violence, and war, became transformed into a generalized symbol of human suffering and moral evil and a universalized symbol whose very existence has created historically unprecedented opportunities for ethnic, racial, and religious justice, for mutual recognition, and for global conflicts to become regulated in a more civil way.Less
This chapter explores the social creation of a cultural fact and evaluates the effects of this cultural fact on social and moral life. It analyses the creation of moral universals, focusing on the Holocaust and the associated war crime and trauma. It attempts to explain how a historical event, an event marked by ethnic and racial hatred, violence, and war, became transformed into a generalized symbol of human suffering and moral evil and a universalized symbol whose very existence has created historically unprecedented opportunities for ethnic, racial, and religious justice, for mutual recognition, and for global conflicts to become regulated in a more civil way.
Jeffrey C. Alexander
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195326222
- eISBN:
- 9780199944064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326222.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
How did the Holocaust, an event marked by ethnic and racial hatred, violence, and war, become transformed into a generalized symbol of human suffering and moral evil, a universalized symbol whose ...
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How did the Holocaust, an event marked by ethnic and racial hatred, violence, and war, become transformed into a generalized symbol of human suffering and moral evil, a universalized symbol whose very existence has created historically unprecedented opportunities for ethnic, racial, and religious justice? This cultural transformation has been achieved because the originating historical event, traumatic in the extreme for a delimited particular group—the Jews, has come over the last fifty years to be redefined as a traumatic event for all of humankind. This chapter explores the social creation of a cultural fact and the effects of this cultural fact on social and moral life. In the case of the Nazis' mass murder of the Jews, the decided increase in moral and social justice may eventually be the unintended result.Less
How did the Holocaust, an event marked by ethnic and racial hatred, violence, and war, become transformed into a generalized symbol of human suffering and moral evil, a universalized symbol whose very existence has created historically unprecedented opportunities for ethnic, racial, and religious justice? This cultural transformation has been achieved because the originating historical event, traumatic in the extreme for a delimited particular group—the Jews, has come over the last fifty years to be redefined as a traumatic event for all of humankind. This chapter explores the social creation of a cultural fact and the effects of this cultural fact on social and moral life. In the case of the Nazis' mass murder of the Jews, the decided increase in moral and social justice may eventually be the unintended result.
Thomas Trautmann
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520205468
- eISBN:
- 9780520917927
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520205468.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
“Aryan,” a word that today evokes images of racial hatred and atrocity, was first used by Europeans to suggest bonds of kinship, as this book shows in its far-reaching history of British Orientalism ...
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“Aryan,” a word that today evokes images of racial hatred and atrocity, was first used by Europeans to suggest bonds of kinship, as this book shows in its far-reaching history of British Orientalism and the ethnology of India. When the historical relationship uniting Sanskrit with the languages of Europe was discovered, it seemed clear that Indians and Britons belonged to the same family. Thus the Indo-European or Aryan idea, based on the principle of linguistic kinship, dominated British ethnological inquiry. In the nineteenth century, however, an emergent biological “race science” attacked the authority of the Orientalists. The spectacle of a dark-skinned people who were evidently civilized challenged Victorian ideas, and race science responded to the enigma of India by redefining the Aryan concept in narrowly “white” racial terms. By the end of the nineteenth century, race science and Orientalism reached a deep and lasting consensus in regard to India that the book calls “the racial theory of Indian civilization,” and which it undermines with its analysis of colonial ethnology in India.Less
“Aryan,” a word that today evokes images of racial hatred and atrocity, was first used by Europeans to suggest bonds of kinship, as this book shows in its far-reaching history of British Orientalism and the ethnology of India. When the historical relationship uniting Sanskrit with the languages of Europe was discovered, it seemed clear that Indians and Britons belonged to the same family. Thus the Indo-European or Aryan idea, based on the principle of linguistic kinship, dominated British ethnological inquiry. In the nineteenth century, however, an emergent biological “race science” attacked the authority of the Orientalists. The spectacle of a dark-skinned people who were evidently civilized challenged Victorian ideas, and race science responded to the enigma of India by redefining the Aryan concept in narrowly “white” racial terms. By the end of the nineteenth century, race science and Orientalism reached a deep and lasting consensus in regard to India that the book calls “the racial theory of Indian civilization,” and which it undermines with its analysis of colonial ethnology in India.
Vibeke Blaker Strand
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198722731
- eISBN:
- 9780191789496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722731.003.0012
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law, Human Rights and Immigration
The chapter demonstrates that principles of equality and non-discrimination are fundamental components of international human rights law. The primary goal of legal instruments that aim for ...
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The chapter demonstrates that principles of equality and non-discrimination are fundamental components of international human rights law. The primary goal of legal instruments that aim for non-discrimination and equality is substantive equality—equality in practice—for every human being. Substantive equality can be connected to the terms ‘positive peace’ and ‘negative peace’. The chapter focuses on inequality and discrimination regarding race and gender. The ways in which non-discrimination and equality, as embedded in the CEDAW and the CERD conventions, contribute to peace is studied, and four approaches identified: peace beginning in the home; racial hatred speech and violence; direct and indirect discrimination; steps to transforming society. The chapter looks at how civil society plays a crucial role in the struggle for equality and non-discrimination. It is emphasized that civil society and the legal sphere must pull together as both are essential to the foundation of peace.Less
The chapter demonstrates that principles of equality and non-discrimination are fundamental components of international human rights law. The primary goal of legal instruments that aim for non-discrimination and equality is substantive equality—equality in practice—for every human being. Substantive equality can be connected to the terms ‘positive peace’ and ‘negative peace’. The chapter focuses on inequality and discrimination regarding race and gender. The ways in which non-discrimination and equality, as embedded in the CEDAW and the CERD conventions, contribute to peace is studied, and four approaches identified: peace beginning in the home; racial hatred speech and violence; direct and indirect discrimination; steps to transforming society. The chapter looks at how civil society plays a crucial role in the struggle for equality and non-discrimination. It is emphasized that civil society and the legal sphere must pull together as both are essential to the foundation of peace.
Belsey Catherine
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633012
- eISBN:
- 9780748652235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633012.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter approaches Othello experimentally from a formal perspective to assess the part played by Iago's mode of address in this tragedy of racial hatred. Most evidently, his dry, low-key style ...
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This chapter approaches Othello experimentally from a formal perspective to assess the part played by Iago's mode of address in this tragedy of racial hatred. Most evidently, his dry, low-key style stands in direct contrast to the passionate poetry that defines the hero. Othello defines his passion in the poetry that characterises all Shakespeare's tragic heroes and seems to invite the sympathy of the audience, whatever the measure of the protagonist's failures of insight or of ethics. Iago aligns himself with the manner of the essayists: terse, prosaic, forthright. His adoption of the dispassionate manner of the essayists is more than a charade, a pose designed to fool the people he plans to destroy. Shakespeare's tragedy of love and nihilism shows a contention of genres, as well as passions, in the poetic hero's contest with an essayist who cloaks racial hatred in casual indifference.Less
This chapter approaches Othello experimentally from a formal perspective to assess the part played by Iago's mode of address in this tragedy of racial hatred. Most evidently, his dry, low-key style stands in direct contrast to the passionate poetry that defines the hero. Othello defines his passion in the poetry that characterises all Shakespeare's tragic heroes and seems to invite the sympathy of the audience, whatever the measure of the protagonist's failures of insight or of ethics. Iago aligns himself with the manner of the essayists: terse, prosaic, forthright. His adoption of the dispassionate manner of the essayists is more than a charade, a pose designed to fool the people he plans to destroy. Shakespeare's tragedy of love and nihilism shows a contention of genres, as well as passions, in the poetic hero's contest with an essayist who cloaks racial hatred in casual indifference.
