Home  About us  Contact
 

Historical Circumstances (historical + circumstance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences66%
Law and Criminology25%

Selected Abstracts

The Camera's Positioning: Brides, Grooms, and Their Photographers in Taipei's Bridal Industry

ETHOS, Issue 2 2004
Bonnie Adrian
This article analyzes the intense orchestration of the bride's appearance,both her physical beauty and her ability to appear to captivate her groom,in Taiwanese bridal salons. Historical circumstance, competitive consumption, and family politics combine to render young women willing if not always eager subjects. Photographers, in turn, attempt to provoke specific subjective states in their clients so as to produce atractive, naturalistic poses and facial expressions. Through attention to positioning processes, the subtleties of the relationships among subjective experience, social performance, and cultural belief are examined. [source]

Synthesis and separation in the history of "nature" and "nurture"

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOBIOLOGY, Issue 8 2007
Cheryl A. Logan
Abstract For much of the 20th century scientific psychology treated the relative contributions of nature and nurture to the development of phenotypes as the result of two quite separate sources of influence. One, nature, was linked to biological perspectives, often manifest as "instinct", while the other, nurture, was taken to reflect psychological influences. We argue that this separation was contingent on historical circumstance. Prior to about 1920, several perspectives in biology and psychology promoted the synthesis of nature and nurture. But between 1930 and 1980 that synthetic consensus was lost in America as numerous influences converged to promote a view that identified psychological and biological aspects of mind and behavior as inherently separate. Around 1960, during the hegemony of behaviorism, Daniel Lehrman, Gilbert Gottlieb, and other pioneers of developmental psychobiology developed probabilistic epigenesis to reject predeterminist notions of instinct and restore a synthesis. We describe the earlier and later periods of synthesis and discuss several influences that led to the separation of nature and nurture in the middle of the 20th century. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 49: 758,769, 2007. [source]

,Model Tribes' and Iconic Conservationists?

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2008
The Makuleke Restitution Case in Kruger National Park
ABSTRACT This article investigates how the Makuleke community in Limpopo Province achieved iconic status in relation to land reform and community-based conservation discourses in South Africa and beyond. It argues that the situation may be more complex than it first appears, and the ways in which the Makuleke story has been deployed by NGOs, activists, academics, conservationists, the state and business may be too simplistic. The authors discuss historical representations of the Makuleke ,tribe' against the backdrop of their experiences of living in the borderland Pafuri region of the Kruger National Park prior to their forced removal. After investigating the ways in which the chieftaincy, and its relation to communal land, has been strengthened by local mobilizations against threats from the neighbouring Mhinga Tribal Authority, the authors suggest that a central tension in the Makuleke area is the conflict between democratic principles governing the legal entity in control of the land (i.e., the Communal Property Association), and traditionalist patriarchal principles of the Tribal Authority. The article shows how these restitution-linked processes became implicated in the establishment in 2002 of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. The authors also argue that the image of the Makuleke as a ,model tribe' is both a product of changing historical circumstances and a contributor to contemporary discourses on land restitution and conservation. [source]

The Origins of the ,Nonmarket Economy': Ideas, Pluralism & Power in EC Anti-dumping Law about China

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001
Francis Snyder
,Market' and ,market economy' exercise a powerful, even magnetic grip on our collective imagination. But what do we mean by ,market economy'? Does it make sense to speak of a ,nonmarket economy', and if so, what does it mean? How are the ideas of ,market economy' and ,nonmarket economy' related? Focusing on EC anti-dumping law, this article seeks to answer these questions. It argues that the legal concept of ,nonmarket economy' in EC anti-dumping law has been socially constructed, by means of relations among a plurality of institutional and normative sites, as part of a changing configuration of legal ideas in specific historical circumstances, and in contexts of political, economic, social, and symbolic power. This argument is articulated in three parts. First, the concept of ,nonmarket economy' in EC anti-dumping law, though drawing on earlier elements, had its main roots in the early Cold War. Second, starting in the 1960s, the GATT multilateral negotiating rounds began to define more specific international rules of the game, but a variety of more localised processes played essential roles as forces of change. Of special importance were, first, the tension between legislative rules and administrative discretion in the United States, and, second, the Europeanisation of foreign trade law in the course of European integration. Third, the EC law concept of ,nonmarket economy' was born in the late 1970s. The main reasons were changes in the international anti-dumping law repertoire, specific ideas in Europe about comparative economic systems, and the perceived emergence of new economic threats, including exports from China. [source]

,The unforgettable forgotten': The Traces of Trauma in Herta Müller's Reisende auf einem Bein

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 3 2002
Brigid Haines
Trauma can be read as a metaphor of the (post)modern condition, particularly in a German context. This is because it is associated with aporias in memory and understanding which are nevertheless meaningful because they arise from and speak of specific historical circumstances. This article places Herta Müller's 1989 Berlin novel Reisende auf einem Bein within the context of twentieth-century trauma literature. I read the protagonist, Irene, as a traumatised individual, whose experience (in Ceau,escu's Romania, then as an ethnic German immigrant in West Berlin) is locatable, but the causes of whose trauma elude representation because they are not synthesisable into frameworks of understanding. Irene comes to accommodate her trauma by inhabiting her surroundings and renouncing control , while reasserting agency. Thus the structure of trauma provides a way out of the perceived paralysis of postmodern constructions of subjectivity. Finally the novel bears witness to ,the unforgettable forgotten'. ,Das Überleben ist kein Leben mehr und dennoch das einzig mögliche Leben.' (Alexander García Düttmann) ,Whenever one represents, one inscribes in memory, and this might seem a good defense against forgetting. It is, I believe, just the opposite.' (Jean-François Lyotard) ,Nicht Sprache ist Heimat, sondern das, was gesprochen wird.' (Jorge Semprun) [source]

Why Generalisability is not Generalisable

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 4 2006
LYNN FENDLER
In the United States there is an increasing tendency to view the only educational research worthy of federal funding as that which is designed as an experiment using randomised controls. One of the foundational assumptions underlying this research design is that the results of such research are meant to be generalisable beyond any particular research study. The purpose of this paper is to historicise the assumption of generalisability by explaining the ways in which it is a particularly modern research project. By historicising generalisability, I show the ways in which the current research standards are products of culturally specific historical circumstances. In other words, generalisability is a local phenomenon and not generalisable to other times and places. [source]

The Miscegenation/Same-Sex Marriage Analogy: What Can We Learn from Legal History?

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2008
Julie Novkov
It has become commonplace among historically inclined legal scholars to look to the history of the United States' elimination of bans on mixed-race sexual relationships for guidance about the recent controversy over same-sex marriage. This article argues that, while the analogy is helpful, it is not perfect because of the particular historical circumstances of the battle over antimiscegenation laws. Because regulations against interracial marriage were at the heart of defining and perpetuating the political and institutional system of white supremacy, they served a different purpose than the bans on same-sex marriage. The analogy can be pursued, however, to promote a critical consideration of the history of marriage as a heteronormative institution, generating a broader agenda for empowering change. Such a use of history takes the experience of the struggle against the antimiscegenation regime as a cautionary tale rather than a guidepost. [source]

Backing into the Future

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2001
Charles Leslie
The professionalization of anthropology was grounded in a naturalistic tradition of field research. The empirical particularism of fieldwork wedded aesthetic and humanistic concerns with those of science in a discipline that assumed a species-wide and long-time perspective while focusing on the description and comparisons of local variations. Scientific progress has occurred in anthropology over the past century despite the distortions of colonialism, the Cold War, and other historical circumstances. Controversies about good and bad scientific work and about the humanistic character of anthropology have been an ongoing aspect of our discipline. The historical development of medical anthropology and important recent publications in this specialty illustrate the nature of the encompassing discipline and provide the ground on which 21st-century scholars will carry the science forward, [anthropological tradition, scientific progress, humanistic science] [source]

Language, history and the nation: an historical approach to evaluating language and cultural claims

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 2008
VICKI SPENCER
ABSTRACT. In contrast to the abstract commitment to individual rights found in liberal critics of Bill 101 and the equally ahistorical approach of multicultural theorists like Bhikhu Parekh, this paper proposes that the particular historical circumstances surrounding the current minority status of different groups is crucial in evaluating the legitimacy of one cultural group to promote its cultural needs over another group within existing states. When the culture of a group residing within a particular state is secure in a neighbouring jurisdiction, the issue at stake is not necessarily the survival of a unique culture but the cultural needs of particular individuals. It does not follow that they have no legitimate claims against the state. However, in examining the language policies in Quebec and the newly independent Baltic states, it is argued that they are different in kind to the rights due to long-standing communities struggling for linguistic survival. [source]

The Anthropology in American Historical Archaeology

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2001
Charles E. Orser Jr.
Since its infancy, American historical archaeology has maintained a relationship, albeit often a tenuous one, with its anthropological parentage. Given both the history of the field and its practitioners' often-tortured efforts to define their intentions, goals, and perspectives, it is not surprising, perhaps, that many anthropologists may not recognize the important contributions historical archaeology can make to the anthropological project. A multifaceted and wide-ranging examination of the post-Columbian world gives historical archaeology a special ability to investigate modern history and to provide insights into the historical circumstances of today's world, [historical archaeology, post-Columbian archaeology, history of American archaeology] [source]

Democratic Deficits of a Dualist Deliberative Constitutionalism: Bruce Ackerman and Jürgen Habermas

RATIO JURIS, Issue 3 2005
MARIELA VARGOVA
It argues that Ackerman's version of democratic dualism sets strict normative distinctions between constitutional and ordinary political deliberations. As a result, it ignores everyday political processes and citizens' ordinary public deliberations and is unresponsive to ongoing social changes in a liberal pluralist society. On the other hand, Habermas's discursive constitution defends a dynamic relationship between constitutional and ordinary politics. It provides a better model of a continuous constitutional development that is more open to new social and historical circumstances. [source]

Inca, Sailor, Soldier, King: Gregor MacGregor and the Early Nineteenth-Century Caribbean

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 1 2005
Matthew Brown
This article examines the recruiting practices, political propositions and changing identities of the Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor in the early nineteenth-century Caribbean. Based on original archival research and revision of the existing secondary literature, it seeks to understand why he has consistently been judged as a failure, and why neither Scotland nor any of the countries MacGregor worked in have wanted to claim him as their own hero. After an introduction providing biographical details and some historical context for the Caribbean in the period 1811,1830, the article looks in detail at what have been seen to be his successes and failures in the Caribbean region. It asks to what extent questions of ethnicity or masculinity have affected the way contemporaries and historians viewed MacGregor and his actions. In conclusion, it suggests that although he was a soldier and a sailor, and he was declared both an Inca and a King, his career was deemed a failure by both contemporaries and historians in Scotland, South America and the Caribbean. The main explanation for this negative assessment is that his ambitions continually fell foul of the interests of various Caribbean elites and of the distinctive historical circumstances of the region.1 [source]