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individual human life and for that person’s own interests and projects, the appeals of humanitarians become mere arguments, opinions, preferences, not obligations anchored in fundamental and shared moral rules. Those who challenge legitimate authority can now be painted as anti-social elements who fragment society and threaten political stability, who undermine moral probity and who are a danger to the community, which has an overwhelming collective interest in stopping them. And they can be stopped even with the use of lethal violence (Presidents
As the British and French empires expanded, constructing new imperial dimensions through growing commerce and the relationships of industrialisation, the bases of Spanish power were being undermined. Nationalism, revolt, the pursuit of forms of decolonisation (often aided by Spain's rivals) became the prime characteristic of Central and South American politics. This book examines the study of natural history in the Spanish empire in the years 1750-1850, explaining how the Spanish authorities collected specimens for the
English radicalism has been a deep-rooted but minority tradition in the political culture since at least the seventeenth century. The central aim of this book is to examine, in historical and political context, a range of key events and individuals that exemplify English radicalism in the twentieth century. This analysis is preceded by defining precisely what has constituted this tradition; and by the main outline of the development of the tradition from the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. Three of the main currents of English radicalism in the twentieth century have been the labour movement, the women’s movement and the peace movement. These are discussed in some detail, as a framework for the detailed consideration of ten key representative figures of the tradition in the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Sylvia Pankhurst, Ellen Wilkinson, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson, Michael Foot, Joan Maynard, Stuart Hall, Tony Benn and Nicolas Walter. The question of ‘agency’ – of how to bring about radical change in a predominantly conservative society and culture – has been a fundamental issue for English radicals. It is argued that, in the twentieth century, many of the important achievements in progressive politics have taken place in and through extra-parliamentary movements, as well as through formal political parties and organisations – the Labour Party and other socialist organisations – and on occasion, through libertarian and anarchist politics. The final chapter considers the continuing relevance of this political tradition in the early twenty-first century, and reviews its challenges and prospects.
enhance their social standing and their scientific credibility. I consider the role of precision instruments, physical suffering and moral probity in the construction of the naturalist’s professional identity, and I also assesses how indigenous people, women and creoles measured up to these demanding criteria. I am concerned, throughout the book, with what qualified a person as a trustworthy purveyor of
rectifying this situation. Ordaining as priests married men of moral probity will pave the way to female priests, both now possibilities worth exploring. This seems to be the only future solution to facts which are hard to ignore: ‘the Church is simply unable to recruit and retain enough male celibate priests to meet the sacramental needs of faithful Catholics’ (Schoenherr 2002 : xxviii). Within this secular culture, it seems that there is little favourable space to discuss theological questions. However, it also cannot be denied that a resurgence in biblical films and TV
, vigorous, active, keen, and daring’, while her body was ‘feeble, nervous, suffering under exertion’ (quoted in Wilkes, 2010: 104). Gaskell’s presentation of Brontë as a tiny, frail woman, a domestic and dutiful daughter who was also strong in moral probity and a boldly free spirit associated with the moors, helped readers to negotiate these apparent contradictions after her death. One literary pilgrim, who signed himself ‘W.P.P.’, visiting Haworth in 1856, summed up these oppositions when he wrote: ‘Those tiny fingers, those small hands, were to wield a sceptre more
Henry’s eyes. Her moral quandary moves out of the simple circle of self versus tyrannical parent, into the more complex circling of capricious pleasure versus moral probity where one is held to account, not for one’s desires, but for the imaginative excesses they prompt, for the mismatch between what one imagines, and what is; and not just for the harm it does to oneself, but to others
respectability, cleanliness and moral probity and the unwashed and disreputable. For many poor Londoners having a bathroom and not having to resort to the public bath or the tin bath were signs of postwar progress and social improvement. So, in a way the baths are crucially implicated in the history of postwar culture, both a site of nostalgia and something to be happy about not having to use anymore. Then there is also the sense of the body as part of the care of the self, maintaining personal dignity even when the social
me by degrees / The keys of all my doors, which I will mould / In wax, and take their fair impression, / To have by them new keys’ (214–16). The single set of keys symbolised the married couple’s joint domestic purpose, and this second set succinctly expresses divided goals and loyalties. As was the case in the denouement of Arden , the different aspects of spatial control which organised the depositions’ discussions of authority are set against one another: the functional operation of locks and keys, the patriarchal licence of rule and the moral probity on which
Minnelli’s film. Whether or not it can decisively inflect our understanding of the work is another matter. Is the film really a beacon of religious and moral probity? Minnelli’s film can be criticized for excising the radical ambiguities of Flaubert’s novel, for Adultery and adulteration in film versions of Madame Bovary 45 making Charles a much more attractive character and less deserving of his treatment by Emma and thereby for endorsing an oppressive patriarchal frame, for creating an Emma who is ‘more neurotic than sexy’,21 and as a result of all these factors