BiblioVault - Books about Society

Reading Clocks, Alla Turca

Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire

Avner Wishnitzer

University of Chicago Press, 2015

Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the way Ottomans used their clocks conformed to the inner logic of their own temporal culture. However, this began to change rather dramatically during the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly assimilated into the European-dominated global economy and the project of modern state building began to gather momentum. In Reading Clocks, Alla Turca, Avner Wishnitzer unravels the complexity of Ottoman temporal culture and for the first time tells the story of its transformation. He explains that in their attempt to attain better surveillance capabilities and higher levels of regularity and efficiency, various organs of the reforming Ottoman state developed elaborate temporal constructs in which clocks played an increasingly important role. As the reform movement spread beyond the government apparatus, emerging groups of officers, bureaucrats, and urban professionals incorporated novel time-related ideas, values, and behaviors into their self-consciously “modern” outlook and lifestyle. Acculturated in the highly regimented environment of schools and barracks, they came to identify efficiency and temporal regularity with progress and the former temporal patterns with the old political order.

Drawing on a wealth of archival and literary sources, Wishnitzer’s original and highly important work presents the shifting culture of time as an arena in which Ottoman social groups competed for legitimacy and a medium through which the very concept of modernity was defined. Reading Clocks, Alla Turca breaks new ground in the study of the Middle East and presents us with a new understanding of the relationship between time and modernity.

[more]

Reassessing Communism

Concepts, Culture, and Society in Poland 1944–1989

Katarzyna Chmielewska

Central European University Press, 2021

The thirteen authors of this collective work undertook to articulate matter-of-fact critiques of the dominant narrative about communism in Poland while offering new analyses of the concept, and also examining the manifestations of anticommunism. Approaching communist ideas and practices, programs and their implementations, as an inseparable whole, they examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon.

The authors refuse to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism, absolute evil and Soviet colonization, and similarly refuse to equate communism and fascism. Nor do they adopt the neoliberal view of communism as a project doomed to failure. While wholly exempt from nostalgia, these essays show that beyond oppression and bad governance, communism was also a regime in which people pursued a variety of goals and sincerely attempted to build a better world for themselves.

The book is interdisciplinary and applies the tools of social history, intellectual history, political philosophy, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies to provide a nuanced view of the communist regimes in east-central Europe.

[more]

Re-enchanting Modernity

Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China

Mayfair Yang

Duke University Press, 2020

In Re-enchanting Modernity Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity.

[more]

Reflections of a Civil War Historian

Essays on Leadership, Society, and the Art of War

Herman Hattaway & Foreword by Frank E. Vandiver

University of Missouri Press, 2003

Born in New Orleans, Herman Hattaway grew up in the Deep South. While it might not seem such a stretch for him to have become one of the foremost authorities on the Civil War and Southern history, Hattaway was actually at a loss for a career choice when he stumbled into the class of Professor T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University. Williams’s lectures and writings were so inspiring to Hattaway that he became a regular in his classes, receiving his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. all under the professor’s tutelage.

This collection of essays is a compendium of Hattaway’s writings from throughout his more-than-forty-year career. He is the author or coauthor of five books that were selections of the History Book Club—Jefferson Davis: Confederate President; Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War; Why the South Lost the Civil War; How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War; and General Stephen D. Lee. He is also the author of the text for Gettysburg to Vicksburg: The Five Original Civil War Battlefield Parks.

Hattaway is a captivating historian who always seeks to engage others in the study of history. He has made many important scholarly contributions to our understanding of the Civil War, including new information on the military use of balloons, the relevance of religion in warfare, and the nature of good (and bad) military leadership. This book will appeal to the many historians and others who have been influenced by Hattaway over the years. It demonstrates how he has evolved as a historian and brings to light many essays that were never before published or published only in specialized journals.

[more]

Reforming Philosophy

A Victorian Debate on Science and Society

Laura J. Snyder

University of Chicago Press, 2006

The Victorian period in Britain was an “age of reform.” It is therefore not surprising that two of the era’s most eminent intellects described themselves as reformers. Both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill believed that by reforming philosophy—including the philosophy of science—they could effect social and political change. But their divergent visions of this societal transformation led to a sustained and spirited controversy that covered morality, politics, science, and economics. Situating their debate within the larger context of Victorian society and its concerns, Reforming Philosophy shows how two very different men captured the intellectual spirit of the day and engaged the attention of other scientists and philosophers, including the young Charles Darwin.

Mill—philosopher, political economist, and Parliamentarian—remains a canonical author of Anglo-American philosophy, while Whewell—Anglican cleric, scientist, and educator—is now often overlooked, though in his day he was renowned as an authority on science. Placing their teachings in their proper intellectual, cultural, and argumentative spheres, Laura Snyder revises the standard views of these two important Victorian figures, showing that both men’s concerns remain relevant today.

A philosophically and historically sensitive account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy, Reforming Philosophy is the first book-length examination of the dispute between Mill and Whewell in its entirety. A rich and nuanced understanding of the intellectual spirit of Victorian Britain, it will be welcomed by philosophers and historians of science, scholars of Victorian studies, and students of the history of philosophy and political economy.

[more]

Reimagining Livelihoods

Life beyond Economy, Society, and Environment

Ethan Miller

University of Minnesota Press, 2019

A provocative reassessment of the concepts underlying the struggle for sustainable development

Much of the debate over sustainable development revolves around how to balance the competing demands of economic development, social well-being, and environmental protection. “Jobs vs. environment” is only one of the many forms that such struggles take. But what if the very terms of this debate are part of the problem? Reimagining Livelihoods argues that the “hegemonic trio” of economy, society, and environment not only fails to describe the actual world around us but poses a tremendous obstacle to enacting a truly sustainable future.

In a rich blend of ethnography and theory, Reimagining Livelihoods engages with questions of development in the state of Maine to trace the dangerous effects of contemporary stories that simplify and domesticate conflict. As in so many other places around the world, the trio of economy, society, and environment in Maine produces a particular space of “common sense” within which struggles over life and livelihood unfold. Yet the terms of engagement embodied by this trio are neither innocent nor inevitable. It is a contingent, historically produced configuration, born from the throes of capitalist industrialism and colonialism. Drawing in part on his own participation in the struggle over the Plum Creek Corporation’s “concept plan” for a major resort development on the shores of Moosehead Lake in northern Maine, Ethan Miller articulates a rich framework for engaging with the ethical and political challenges of building ecological livelihoods among diverse human and nonhuman communities.

In seeking a pathway for transformative thought that is both critical and affirmative, Reimagining Livelihoods provides new frames of reference for living together on an increasingly volatile Earth.

[more]

Religion, Society, and Utopia in Nineteenth Century America

Mandelker Ira L.

University of Massachusetts Press

Ressentiment

Reflections on Mimetic Desire and Society

Stefano Tomelleri

Michigan State University Press, 2015

This book is a response to Friedrich Nietzsche’s provocative question: How much and how does ressentiment condition our daily life? During the twentieth century we witnessed veritable eruptions of this insidious emotion, and we are still witnesses of its proliferation at various levels of society. This book aims to explore, according to René Girard’s mimetic theory, the anthropological and social assumptions that make up ressentiment and to investigate its genesis. The analysis of ressentiment shows that this emotion evolves from mimetic desire: it is an affective experience that people have when a rival denies them opportunities or valuable resources (including status) that they consider to be socially accessible. It is a specific figure of mimetic desire that is typical of contemporary society, where the equality that is proclaimed at the level of values contrasts with striking inequalities of power and access to material resources. This dichotomy generates increasing tension between highly competitive and egalitarian mimetic desires and growing social inequalities. The ressentiment is ambiguous, and its ambiguity is that of mimetic desire itself, which we cannot dismiss from our lives. In that it provides occasions of conflict and baseness, ressentiment can fuel violence, discord, and injustice, but it also can open opportunities for growth and justice, and for inventing institutions that are better adapted to the transformations of our contemporary society.

[more]

Restaging the Past

Historical Pageants, Culture and Society in Modern Britain

Edited by Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, and Alexander Hutton

University College London, 2020

Restaging the Past is the first collection devoted to the study of pageants in Britain, ranging from their Edwardian origins to the present day. In the twentieth century, people all across Britain succumbed to “pageant fever.” Thousands of people dressed up in historical costumes and performed scenes from local history, and hundreds of thousands more watched them. These pageants were one of the most significant aspects of popular engagement with the past between 1900 and the 1970s: they took place in large cities, small towns, and tiny villages, and engaged a wide range of organizations and social groups, from Women’s Institutes to political parties, schools to churches, and even youth organizations.

Pageants were community events, bringing people together in a shared celebration and performance of the past; they also involved many prominent novelists, professional historians, and other writers, and as a result were featured repeatedly in popular and highbrow literature. Although the pageant tradition has largely died out, the contributors argue that it deserves to be acknowledged as a key aspect of community history during a period of great social and political change—and, they show, because of its former prominence, some lingering signs of “pageant fever” can still be seen in Britain today.

[more]

River and Society in Northern Italy

The Po Valley, 500-1000 AD

Marco Panato

Amsterdam University Press, 2024

This book considers for the first time the relationship between the river environment and the economic and political structures of northern Italy in the post-Roman period. Through the study of the relationship between river and society over time, it shows how the Carolingian conquest and other major political events in northern Italy did not seem to introduce radical changes in the daily life or broad economic systems. In fact, ecological circuits, local networks, family strategies and monastic policies seem to have been equal factors that shaped the relationship between river and society.
This monograph offers an innovative approach to the study of the early Middle Ages, integrating social sciences, historical records, archaeological and geoenvironmental data analyses to overcome the lack of written and material sources. These new integrated perspectives on the post-Roman world shed light on the relationship between humans and their environment and on the social complexity of the riverscape, topics not yet fully investigated in the historiographical debate.

[more]

Rock Eras

Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954-1984

Jim Curtis

University of Wisconsin Press, 1987

From 1954 to 1984, the media made rock n’ roll an international language. In this era of rapidly changing technology, styles and culture changed dramatically, too. In the 1950s, wild-eyed Southern boys burst into national consciousness on 45 rpm records, and then 1960s British rockers made the transition from 45s to LPs. By the 1970s, rockers were competing with television, and soon MTV made obsolete the music-only formats that had first popularized rock n’ roll.

Paper is temporarily out of stock, Cloth (0-87972-368-8) is available at the paper price until further notice.

[more]

Roman North Africa

Environment, Society and Medical Contribution

Louise Cilliers

Amsterdam University Press, 2019

This book examines the environment and society of North Africa during the late Roman period (fourth and fifth centuries CE) through the writings of Helvius Vindicianus, Theodorus Priscianus, Caelius Aurelianus, and Cassius Felix. These four medical writers, whose translation into Latin of precious Greek texts has been hailed as ‘the achievement of the millennium’ by one modern scholar, provide a unique opportunity to understand North Africa, the most prosperous region of the Roman World during Late Antiquity. Although focusing on medical knowledge and hygiene, their writings provide fresh insights on the environment, economy, population, language, and health facilities of the region. Roman North Africa: Environment, Society and Medical Contribution includes the first full discussion of the exceptional career of the physician Helvius Vindicianus, as well as a valuable reassessment of other writers whose works were read throughout the Middle Ages. It will therefore prove invaluable not only for scholars of Late Antiquity and North Africa, but also for those working on later periods.

[more]

Roman Theater and Society

E. Togo Salmon Papers I

William J. Slater, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 1996

Traditional theater in the Roman world depicted powerful emotions and political ideals that were often the norm in Roman society. Although modern historians have only a hazy perception of performances during both Republic and Empire, testimony to the greatness of the epoch's theater lies in the ruins that stretch across the expanse of the great "vanished empire."
William Slater's new volume Roman Theater and Society brings an important perspective to the much-maligned status of the Roman theater, which has only recently been reappraised and appreciated as uniquely Roman rather than criticized for not being Greek. From this point of embarkation, William Slater and the nine contributors discuss theater in Rome and the Greek east with a definition of performance incorporating not only stage performances but also dinnertime entertainment, sporting events, and political events. Contributors are T. D. Barnes, K. M. Coleman, J. C. Edmonson, E. R. Gebhard, J. R. Green, E. J. Jory, W. D. Lebek, and D. S. Potter.
Individual chapters combine literary evidence with archaeological, thereby engendering a deeper appreciation for the social and political roles of Roman theater. It becomes clear that these roles were of great influence in giving voice to the popular demands of the average Roman. In examining the roles of theater the contributors turn to the players and audience themselves for deeper understanding.
Roman Theater and Society will be of great interest to classicists, theater specialists, and anyone interested in the interplay among plays, theaters, and the people on stage and in the audience.
William J. Slater is Professor of Classics, McMaster University.

[more]