231 books match the query 'Society' and 6 start with e

cover of Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668-1703

Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668-1703

Carl A. Hanson

University of Minnesota Press, 1981

Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668–1703 was first published in 1981. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The late seventeenth century in Portugal was a period of apparent calm, and few historians have given it much attention. Portugal's Golden Age of worldwide expansion had made sixteenth-century Lisbon a great commercial center, but other European nations with more advanced economies surpassed Portugal's achievement, and during the seventeenth century agricultural, economic, and political problems all contributed to Portugal's decline. In 1668, at the conclusion of a long war with Spain to restore Portuguese sovereignty, Pedro II began a reign of 38 years, first as regent for a feckless brother ad after 1683 as king. The history of Portugal during his reign is the subject of this book.

Carl A. Hanson looks at this relatively unexamined era and finds, behind the facade of baroque calm, subtle but dramatic shifts in the socio-economic foundations of the age. In an effort to cope with economic depression Pedro's government hearkened to enthusiastic reports of Colbert's mercantile policies in France, and tried to encourage the expansion of domestic manufacturing. Linked to these efforts were attempts to curb the inquisitorial persecution of New Christian merchants. Hanson explores the motives of anti-Semitism, greed and class warfare that underlay the persecution and describes the efforts of an eloquent Jesuit, Father Antonio Vieira, to protect the New Christians from the worst excesses of the Inquisition.

The triumph of the Inquisition, and thus of the established social order, and the failure of Portugal's experiment in mercantilism coincided with a new wave of commodity-borne prosperity. After 1690, increased exports of Brazilian gold, tobacco, hides, and sugar, and of Port wine changed Portugal's economic status. With the signing of the Anglo- Portuguese treaty of Methuen in 1703, Portugal entered a gilded—if not golden—age. Yet, as Hanson makes clear, the new prosperity was deceptive, for Portugal was to slip into increasingly dependent relationships with the more advanced economies — especially England's—which absorbed great quantities of Luso-Atlantic commodities in exchange for its own manufactures. And, at home, the victorious social order, no longer threatened by a mercantile class, was to find security under an increasingly absolutist government. The reign of Pedro II is significant, then, as a period of transition when, for the first time, the foundations of the old order were threatened. The baroque facade survived but the edifice itself had begun to crumble.

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cover of Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society

Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society

Emile Durkheim

University of Chicago Press, 1975

Emile Durkheim is best known in this country as a great sociologist and methodologist. Yet it was Durkheim's reflections on morality and society that spoke most deeply of his vital concerns. In his informative introduction to this work, Robert N. Bellah describes Durkheim as moralist, philosopher, theologian, and prophet, as well as sociologist, and the selections in this volume are representative of these aspects of Durkheim's many-faceted scholarship.

The first two selections of the volume set the context for the development of Durkheim's sociology of morality. Section I, "The French Tradition of Social Thought," gives Durkheim's picture of how his sociology is to be situated relative to the general French tradition. Section II, "Sociology and Social Action," shows Durkheim grappling with moral and political issues in his society and indicates the immediate social context of his thinking.

The remaining selections indicate some of the major substantive areas of Durkheim's sociology of morality. Section III, taken from The Division of Labor in Society, demonstrates his basically evolutionary approach to the development of moral norms in society. Section IV, "The Learning of Morality," gives examples of Durkheim's work on socialization. Section V, "Social Creativity," deals with the important question of how new moral norms arise in society.
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cover of Engaging the Atom: The History of Nuclear Energy and Society in Europe from the 1950s to the Present

Engaging the Atom

The History of Nuclear Energy and Society in Europe from the 1950s to the Present

Arne Kaijser

West Virginia University Press, 2021

Transnational perspectives on the relationship between nuclear energy and society.

With the aim of overcoming the disciplinary and national fragmentation that characterizes much research on nuclear energy, Engaging the Atom brings together specialists from a variety of fields to analyze comparative case studies across Europe and the United States. It explores evolving relationships between society and the nuclear sector from the origins of civilian nuclear power until the present, asking why nuclear energy has been more contentious in some countries than in others and why some countries have never gone nuclear, or have decided to phase out nuclear, while their neighbors have committed to the so-called nuclear renaissance. Contributors examine the challenges facing the nuclear sector in the context of aging reactor fleets, pressing climate urgency, and increasing competition from renewable energy sources.

Written by leading academics in their respective disciplines, the nine chapters of Engaging the Atom place the evolution of nuclear energy within a broader set of national and international configurations, including its role within policies and markets.
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cover of Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands: From Prehistory to the Present

Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands

From Prehistory to the Present

Bruce L. Batten

Oregon State University Press, 2015

Over the long course of Japan’s history, its people profited from their rich natural environment while simultaneously facing significant environmental challenges. Over time, they have altered their natural environment in numerous ways, from landscape modification to industrial pollution. How has the human-nature relationship changed over time in Japan? How does Japan’s environmental history compare with that of other countries, or that of the world as a whole?

Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands attempts to answer these questions through a series of case studies by leading Japanese and Western historians, geographers, archaeologists, and climatologists. These essays, on diverse topics from all periods of Japanese history and prehistory, are unified by their focus on the key concepts of “resilience” and “risk mitigation.” Taken as a whole, they place Japan’s experience in global context and call into question the commonly presumed division between pre-modern and modern environmental history.

Primarily intended for scholars and students in fields related to Japan or environmental history, these accessibly-written essays will be valuable to anyone wishing to learn about the historical roots of today’s environmental issues or the complex relationship between human society and the natural environment.
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cover of Everyday Modernism: Architecture and Society in Singapore

Everyday Modernism

Architecture and Society in Singapore

Jiat-Hwee Chang and Justin Zhuang

National University of Singapore Press, 2022

A richly illustrated account of the development of Singapore’s modern built environment.
 
Everyday Modernism is the first comprehensive documentation of Singapore’s modern built environment. Through a lens of social, cultural, and architectural histories, the book uncovers the many untold stories of the Southeast Asian city-state’s modernization, from the rise of heroic skyscrapers, such as the Pearl Bank Apartments, to the spread of typical utilitarian buildings like the multistory parking garage. It investigates how modernism, through both form and function, radically transformed Singapore and made its inhabitants into modern citizens. The most intensive period of such change, the author shows, happened in the 1960s and 1970s under the rise of a developmental state that sought to safeguard its new-found independence. The book also looks both earlier and later, however, ranging from the 1930s to the 1980s to cover a wider range of histories, building types, and architectural styles, expanding from the International Style and Brutalism into Art Deco and even a touch of Postmodernism. The book’s essays are richly illustrated with hundreds of archival images and illustrations, as well as contemporary photos by architectural photographer Darren Soh. By examining the evolution of the once exceptional into the typical and by learning how abstract spaces become lived places, the book traces how modernism has become part of everyday life in Singapore.
 

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cover of Evolutionary Systems and Society: A General Theory

Evolutionary Systems and Society

A General Theory

Vilmos Csányi

Duke University Press, 1988

This work is a bold new effort to embrace all aspects of life—molecular, cellular, behavioral, and cultural—within the formulation of a general theory of evolution that extends classical Darwinian theory to include human society.
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