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The ways in which a bureaucratic model of oversight could be turned into a vehicle of individualizing religious practices in late eighteenth-century Sweden is the central concern of this chapter. The chapter focuses on how bureaucratic measures could be used to implement enlightened reform, thereby offering a different perspective on ‘pastoral Enlightenment’ in the rural European North. By examining how Olof Wallquist, a late eighteenth-century Swedish bishop, used his position as an ecclesiastical superior to promote change, a novel perspective on the blending of individualism and confessional culture is offered. This testifies to a process of gradual, microscopic dislocations in which key elements of a previous social order were overtaken, step by step, by different standards of behaviour.
-colonial conflict. These are regional and governmental diversity, age, nationality, officials’ different working priorities, and the conflict between individualism and the need for a social life. We will first examine regional and governmental diversity. However much an annual cricket match may have briefly united a small portion of a service in pursuit of collective victory over another service, it was unable to
This article examines blood transfusion in vampire texts and its connections to vampirism in order to establish the different ways the body and identity of the vampire, and its victim, are constituted and affected by the dangerous circulation of blood. Vampire texts manifest anxieties about identity that arise through the symbolic value of blood, but also through its increasing medicalisation. Nineteenth-century vampire texts focus on blood‘s symbolisms while twentieth-century texts define blood as a neutral medium to be analysed and explained. In the late twentieth century however, blood becomes the locus of biomedical interventions which affirm respect for tradition, selfish individualism and responsibility.
Liberty, a term dear to the Enlightenments emancipatory project, has long been a key concept in the Gothic. No branch of the Gothic more powerfully or creatively examines the complexities of the liberty question than the Gothic pharmography – a narrative chronicling drug/alcohol seduction and addiction. Drawing on three novelistic sub-genres – the Oriental tale, the imperial Gothic, and the Urban Gothic – the Gothic pharmography coalesces several distinct nineteenth-century debates – the nature of the will and liberal individualism; social oppression and conformity; urban and national degeneration; and British imperialist expansion, which involved the perceived anxiety-inducing sense of Britains growing economic dependence on the non-Western world. This essay offers an overview of the Gothic pharmography from the late eighteenth century through to the fin de siècle in Marie Corelli‘s Wormwood.
This essay is about the figure of the double in Romantic and post-modern Gothic literature and film. Most criticism of the double interprets this figure from the perspective of psychoanalysis. In contrast, this essay embeds the double in cultural history. In discussions of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century discourses of ‘possessive individualism’, nationalism, and sexuality, this essay contends that the eighteenth century and the Romantic Period became dissatisfied with sympathy: with its inability to unify the social order without dissolving the crucial differences that distinguish one person from another. In response, Gothic literature invented the double to represent an extreme moment when two characters think, act, and feel so much alike that they can no longer be distinguished from each other. The essay offers two examples: Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein and Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner.
Arab liberal thought in the modern age provides in-depth analysis of Arab liberalism, which, although lacking public appeal and a compelling political underpinning, sustained viability over time and remains a constant part of the Arab landscape. The study focuses on the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, a period that witnessed continuity as well as change in liberal thinking. Post-1967 liberals, like their predecessors, confronted old dilemmas, socioeconomic upheavals, political instability, and cultural disorientation, but also demonstrated ideological rejuvenation and provided liberal thought with new emphases and visions. Arab liberals contributed to public debate on cultural, social, and political issues, and triggered debates against their adversaries. Displaying such attributes as skepticism, ecumenism, and confidence in Arab advancement, they burst onto the public scene in questioning the Arab status quo and advocating alternative visions for their countries. Their struggle for freedom of religion, secularism, individualism, democracy, and human rights meant more than a rethinking of Islamic tradition and Arab political culture. It aimed rather at formulating a full-fledged liberal project to seek an Arab Enlightenment. This book fills a major gap in the research literature, which has tended to overlook Middle Eastern liberalism in favor of more powerful and assertive forces embodied by authoritarian regimes and Islamic movements. The book is essential reading for scholars and students in the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, intellectual history, political ideologies, comparative religion, and cultural studies.
This book uses a study of a north Essex village to make a contribution to our knowledge of England between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Earls Colne has been well known to historians as the parish of the seventeenth-century clerical diarist, Ralph Josselin, and was the subject of an extended research project by Alan Macfarlane in the early 1970s, which informed his study of English Individualism. Now, it is considered in the round with some surprising results. The authors test the theoretical perspectives of both Macfarlane and Robert Brenner, and reach new conclusions about the character of English rural society and the role that land played in it. The book asks fundamental questions about the ownership of land in early modern England and introduces a new methodology to examine these questions. In addition, it is also a study of a village with a resident gentry family — the Harlakendens — showing that the attempts by these new lords to re-mould the village after 1580 alienated many, leading to a series of well-documented power struggles. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that the Harlakendens failed to stamp their mark on the community, and their authority slowly ebbed away. In their place emerged an alternative power system dominated by copyholders and tenant farmers, who provide a rich gallery of village characters.
Social democracy's often diffuse societal, intellectual and cultural influences have exceeded and outlasted Labour's direct electoral success. This book focuses questions relating to the popular values, mindsets and sense of citizenship needed to further social democracy on that deeper enterprise of this book. It reflects on the 'big picture' of social democracy and progressivism, both historical and contemporary. Part I takes the historical bird's eye view, exploring social democratic and liberal dilemmas that both pervaded the twentieth century and remain very much alive today. It suggests that scholars and political analysts tend to under-play the extent to which progressivism and the voters have managed to operate in constructive harmony. Tracing new and social liberalism's, distinctive offer of a fusion between social interdependence and individualism, the volume assesses the failure of this British liberalism to become the over-arching driver of politics. The Scottish secession from the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum is also discussed. Part II takes stock of the critical scrutiny, discussing 'Western' democracies alongside the dominance and the extensive body of thought from David Marquand on citizenship, and especially Marquand's civic republican vision. Part III seeks to apply Marquand's search for the 'principled society', discusses social and psychological concept of 'neighbourliness', and examines the public good less as a fixed entity. Finally, the significance of Christopher Addison and his notions on the democratic socialism and liberal progressive traditions, and pluralism are discussed.
In 2002, the French party system seems to be demonstrating a fluidity, if not outright instability, equal to any period in the Fifth Republic's history. This book explores the extent to which this represents outright change and shifts within a stable structure. Portrayals of French political culture point to incivisme, individualism and a distrust of organizations. The book focuses on three fundamental political issues such as 'politics', 'power' and 'justice', which appear in almost all political discussions and conflicts. It identifies different 'types' of state in political theory and looks at the major challenges to practical state sovereignty in the modern world. Discussing the concept of the nation in the United Kingdom, the book identifies both cultural and political aspects of nationhood. These include nation and state; race and nation; language and the nation; religion and national identity; government and nation; common historical and cultural ties; and a sense of 'nationhood'. Liberal democracy, defensive democracy and citizen democracy/republican democracy are explained. The book also analyses John Stuart Mill's and Isaiah Berlin's views on 'negative' and 'positive' freedom. Conservatism is one of the major intellectual and political strains of thought in Western culture. Liberalism has become the dominant ideology in the third millennium. Socialism sprang from the industrial revolution and the experience of the class that was its product, the working class. Events have made 'fascism' a term of political abuse rather than one of serious ideological analysis. Environmentalism and ecologism constitute one of the most recent ideological movements.
There is a widespread view that local democracy in Britain is in deep trouble and that people face a crisis of civic engagement and political participation. This book counterweighs the many negative accounts that seek to dominate the political discourse with talks on political apathy and selfish individualism. It commences with an examination of theoretical debates as to the meaning of local democracy and related concepts. The book looks at the policy agenda around local democracy in the context of the developing nature of central/local relations since 1979. It considers the available evidence on level of political participation and civic engagement by looking at eight themes. These include the state of formal politics, forms of civic engagement, community identity and the emerging world of the internet/world wide web. The book also looks at nine key aspects of the reform of local democracy over the last fifteen years, including local democracy and the New Labour reform agenda; the constitutional position of local government; and double devolution. It focuses on the so-called 'crisis of formal democracy' at the local level. The book ascertains the recent developments beyond the realm of elections, political parties and formal political institutions. It then concentrates on local services and policy attempts to widen public participation in the shaping and delivery of such services. Finally, the book discusses the concept of sustainability and regeneration strategies to build sustainable communities, both physical and social.