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This book is about people willing to do the sorts of things that most others couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't. While there are all sorts of reasons why people consume substances, the author notes that there are those who treat drug-taking like an Olympic sport, exploring their capacity to really push their bodies, and frankly, wanting to be the best at it. Extreme athletes, death-defiers and those who perform incredible stunts of endurance have been celebrated throughout history. The most successful athletes can compartmentalise, storing away worry and pain in a part of their brain so it does not interfere with their performance. The brain releases testosterone, for a boost of strength and confidence. In bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM) play, the endogenous opioid system responds to the pain, releasing opioid peptides. It seems some of us are more wired than others to activate those ancient biological systems, be it through being caned in a dungeon during a lunchbreak or climbing a sheer rock wall at the weekend. Back in 1990, sociologist Stephen Lyng coined the term 'edgework', now frequently used in BDSM circles, as 'voluntary pursuit of activities that involve a high potential for death, physical injury, or spiritual harm'.
have readily applied the framework of the ‘civilising process’. The term, ‘civilising process’, was first coined by sociologist Norbert Elias to describe changing patterns in human behaviour from the late medieval to the modern period. Elias found that in Western societies, as people increasingly sought to suppress so-called ‘animal characteristics’, manners and attitudes towards bodily functions shifted while aggressiveness and the potential for violence in everyday life declined.1 For historians, the ‘civilising process’ became a convenient term, a short-hand by
, film is now, to a greater extent than before, associated with the body; it engages the viewer at the somatic level, immersing the spectator in experiences and impressions that, like memories, seem to be burned in. I will begin by summarising an important argument that has been made by Alison Landsberg, who has coined the striking term ‘prosthetic memory’ to describe the way mass cultural
’.6 Conflicting perspectives abound in the evidence and highlight both the salience and complexity of the debate on hunger at this juncture. Modern historians have rightly pointed out that the notion of the ‘Hungry Forties’ was a retrospective invention, coined in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by supporters of free trade who used it as part of their historical case against tariff reform.7 However, this should neither obscure the fact that a great many working people suffered the gnawing pain in the gut, especially during the early years of this
Talyllyn and Festiniog railways could coin money from train services in a short summer season. No longer. Some interesting quirks aside,40 as holiday patterns have shifted to short breaks spread more widely in time and much more widely in space (Florida, anyone?), major preserved lines are obliged to run services throughout the year.41 Today, Santa Specials run only behind tot-focused Thomas the Tank Engine weekends as money-spinning events crucial for maintaining lines’ solvency.42 This dramatically increased time-spread loads ever more pressure on railway equipment, on
simply mindless destruction by an illiterate peasantry, but betrayed an element of premeditation and purpose in its challenge to seignorial jurisdiction. 23 The pivotal position of the king in relation to ‘popular’ concepts and activities is equally noteworthy and suggests an acceptance of the quasi-divine royal characteristics that were displayed on coins, seals and other royal
account for the alleged discovery of Viking age axes, swords, runic carvings, skeletons, coins, mooring holes, and even a stone tower in Newport – discoveries, I hasten to add, that have been made not simply along the Atlantic shore but as far inland as Iowa, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. 31 Or perhaps the discoveries owe to whimsy coupled with ethnic identification among the millions of Scandinavians who emigrated to North America beginning in the late nineteenth century. Between 1870 and 1914 alone, fifteen to twenty thousand Icelanders, amounting to a quarter of the
loss, to petty-minded score settling and pretentious experiments with phonetics. What is clear from Ross’s writings is that he viewed science and poetry (or ‘Science’ and ‘Thought’) as two sides of the same coin, and that for him one could simply not exist without the other. In both his scientific and his literary writings he was influenced and supported by others, either through the teachings of Manson or his reading of Goethe and Byron, although he was often reluctant to acknowledge these influences. Throughout his career Ross used poetry as a means through which
the upkeep of civilisation, both the concept of civilisation and the notion of international politics it constructs should be carefully analysed. Civilisation and civil society Adam Ferguson coined the term ‘civil society’ in An Essay on the History of Civil Society (first published in 1767). In today’s idiom, Ferguson described how modern society, with its elaborate
accommodation, carriage hire and carriers’ bills. And yet, as with the country house itself, the magnificent and mundane were two sides of the same coin; they were mutually inter- dependent. A coach was useless without well-fed horses to pull it and would have lost much of its cultural impact were it to appear in public in a dilapidated condition. Moreover, coach ownership implied journeys, the cost of which – as Sir Roger Newdigate’s accounts make clear – could easily exceed those of the vehicle and equipage. Whyman has suggested that the coach was both useful and symbolic