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Historical Experience (historical + experience)
Selected AbstractsKOSELLECK, ARENDT, AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCEHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2010STEFAN-LUDWIG HOFFMANN ABSTRACT This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well-known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time(s). It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them (Heidegger, Löwith, Schmitt) as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti-totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience. [source] "Reduced to a Zero-Point": Banjamin's Critique of Kantian Historical ExperiencePHILOSOPHICAL FORUM, Issue 2 2000Gordon Hull First page of article [source] Elites in Local Development in the PhilippinesDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2010Andreas Lange ABSTRACT For many Philippine provinces, decentralization and more autonomous local development planning did not lead to the desired outcomes. This article examines the experiences of the two provinces of Cebu and Leyte. While Cebu became a centre of trade and industry, Leyte is still struggling with its local economy oriented to natural resources. A main reason for the divergent development paths of the two islands can be found in the emergence of different elite structures, which resulted in different path-dependent patterns of economic specialization. Despite this different historical experience, both provinces today suffer from similar institutional infirmities in their planning system for promoting local development. Local planning capacity constraints, such as regional and local co-ordination and co-operation patterns, local finances, human capital and knowledge are analysed. The Cebuano elites used the room for manoeuvre provided by decentralization reforms more successfully than elites in Leyte. This created pockets of efficiency in Cebu leading to more development-friendly investment policies. In order to increase local and regional planning capacity, short-term interventions and policy reforms at the local, regional and national level are discussed. [source] Do No Harm: Aid, Weak Institutions and the Missing Middle in AfricaDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 5 2007Nancy Birdsall The implicit assumption of the donor community is that Africa is trapped by its poverty, and that aid is necessary if it is to escape. This article suggests an alternative view: that Africa is caught in an institutional trap, signalled and reinforced by the small share of income of its independent middle strata. Theory and historical experience elsewhere suggest that a robust middle-income group contributes critically to the creation and sustenance of healthy institutions, particularly of the state. The article argues that if external aid is to be helpful for institution-building in Africa's weak and fragile states, donors need to emphasise not providing more aid but minimising the risks more aid poses for this group. [source] Greek Monetary Economics in Retrospect: The Adventures of the DrachmaECONOMIC NOTES, Issue 3 2005Sophia Lazaretou This paper enumerates the adventures of the drachma step by step, dividing its story into seven parts. Specifically, its main purpose is to present some historical perspective on the behaviour of the monetary and fiscal policies pursued in Greece during the period from the early 1830s until the introduction of the euro. For Greece, the lessons of historical experience are very important. Since the formation of the modern Greek state, government officials have striven , sometimes making hard efforts , to keep abreast of international monetary developments. This was because they understood that the participation of a peripheral, poor and inflation-prone country with a weak currency and an underdeveloped money market, like Greece of the time, in a monetary club of powerful economies could improve her international credit standing and imply important benefits in terms of exchange rate and monetary stability, and long-term foreign borrowing. [source] The Autocracy of Love and the Legitimacy of Empire: Intimacy, Power and Scandal in Nineteenth-Century MetlakahtlahGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2004Adele Perry This paper examines the politics of intimacy, power, and scandal at Metlakahtlah, a Church of England mission village in northern British Columbia, Canada, from 1862 to 1885, in order to cast light on settler colonialism and its aftermath. It particularly examines Metlakahtlah's main missionary, William Duncan, his relationships with young female converts and missionary women, and, perhaps more importantly, the stories that were told about them. Stories of Duncan's relationships with young Tsimshian women that circulated throughout settler society reveal the central place of sexuality to both critiques and defences of imperialism, and cast new light on contemporary politics around the historical experience of Indigenous children in settler colonies like Australia and Canada. [source] KOSELLECK, ARENDT, AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCEHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2010STEFAN-LUDWIG HOFFMANN ABSTRACT This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well-known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time(s). It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them (Heidegger, Löwith, Schmitt) as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti-totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience. [source] 1. THE DEFINING CHARACTER OF CHINESE HISTORICAL THINKING1HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2007CHUN-CHIEH HUANG ABSTRACT Imbued with profound historical consciousness, the Chinese people are Homo historiens in every sense of the term. To be human in China, to a very large extent, is to be historical, which means to live up to the paradigmatic past. Therefore, historical thinking in traditional China is moral thinking. The Chinese historico-moral thinking centers around the notion of Dao, a notion that connotes both Heavenly principle and human norm. In view of its practical orientation, Chinese historical thinking is, on the one hand, concrete thinking and, on the other, analogical thinking. Thinking concretely and analogically, the Chinese people are able to communicate with the past and to extrapolate meanings from history. In this way, historical experience in China becomes a library in which modern readers may engage in creative dialogues with the past. [source] CHARTING THE "TRANSITIONAL PERIOD": THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN TIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURYHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2006GÖRAN BLIX ABSTRACT This paper seeks to chart a concept of historical experience that French Romantic writers first developed to describe their own relationship to historical time: the notion of the "transitional period." At first, the term related strictly to the evolving periodic conception of history, one that required breaks, spaces, or zones of indeterminacy to bracket off periods imagined as organic wholes. These transitions, necessary devices in the new grammar of history, also began to attract interest on their own, conceived either as chaotic but creative times of transformation, or, more often, as slack periods of decadence that possessed no proper style but exhibited hybrid traits. Their real interest, however, lies in their reflexive application to the nineteenth century itself, by writers and historians such as Alfred de Musset, Chateaubriand, Michelet, and Renan, who in their effort to define their own period envisioned the "transitional period" as a passage between more coherent and stable historical formations. This prospective self-definition of the "age of history" from a future standpoint is very revealing; it shows not just the tension between its organic way of apprehending the past and its own self-perception, but it also opens a window on a new and paradoxical experience of time, one in which change is ceaseless and an end in itself. The paper also presents a critique of the way the term "modernity" has functioned, from Baudelaire's initial use to the present, to occlude the experience of transition that the Romantics highlighted. By imposing on the nineteenth-century sense of the transitory a heroic period designation, the term "modernity" denies precisely the reality it describes, and sublimates a widespread temporal malaise into its contrary. The paper concludes that the peculiarly "modern" mania for naming one's period is a function of transitional time, and that the concept coined by the Romantics still governs our contemporary experience. [source] 9.,Human Rights: Historical Learning in the Shadow of ViolenceAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Article first published online: 18 FEB 200, Richard T. Peterson This paper emphasizes the historical dimension of human rights understood as a social ethic. Rather than timeless principles, human rights and the universality proper to them emerge in a process of suffering, conflict, political assertion, and institutional change. We can understand them as historical yet also universal by seeing that human rights arise in processes of social learning that take place in an increasingly globalized world. Such learning often has advanced in the face of dramatic violence, for example, the bombing of Hiroshima. But the demands on a global social ethic today are not only a matter of responding to threats and acts of dramatic violence in isolation. Attention to the example of Hiroshima suggests that the problem of violence is bound up with other questions about the regulation of emerging technical powers in a context of inequality and social conflict. To what extent can an ethic centered on human rights provide an ethics that can inform effective responses to these problems? To consider the promise of human rights, we look more closely at the kind of social learning they involve and explore in particular the role of social movements in forging new identities and reciprocities along with normative claims proper to a global public sphere (the anti-apartheid movement provides an example). We go on to see that these political experiences can inform interpretations of historical experience that can inform a widened sense of historical possibilities, both those missed in the past and those that confront us today. While this argument may thicken our sense of the promise of a human rights ethic, it remains speculative, not least because of the limited effectiveness of these norms in practice today. We close with the suggestion that nonetheless a coherent ethical response is possible, one that in the wealthy parts of the globe might take the form of an ethic of democratic responsibility. This would both represent a distinctive kind of learning and perhaps contribute to a wider advance of human rights. [source] Structuring Europe: Powersharing Institutions and British Preferences on European IntegrationPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2000Mark Aspinwall Scholars examining British-European relations typically ascribe UK governmental positions firstly to a combination of distinct and incompatible values, attitudes, and beliefs stemming from historical experience; secondly to a distinct and incompatible set of functional imperatives , namely less interaction with European partners than is the case for other EU member states; and third a distinct and incompatible set of domestic interests. This article challenges these views. It presents evidence to suggest that British governments have failed to assimilate social demands, and that the reason is an under-recognized and untheorized intervening variable , namely the structure of decisionmaking institutions in Parliament. It models the influence of this variable, and suggests that historical institutionalist theory captures key elements of the variable in a manner superior to extant approaches. [source] New Estimates of Australian GDP, 1861,1948/49AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2001Bryan Haig This article uses recently available historical data to compile new estimates of gross domestic product by sector for Australia as an alternative to the estimates by Colin Clark and Noel Butlin. These data are then compared with Clark's and Butlin's series, and with historical experience, as set out by Coghlan in Labour and Industry in Australia (1918). We caution against accepting Butlin's results, and question whether his data, even when reliable, can form the basis for a new interpretation of economic history. [source] Saints and CEOs: an historical experience of altruism, self-interest and compromiseBUSINESS ETHICS: A EUROPEAN REVIEW, Issue 2 2003David Molyneaux At a time when social and ethical responsibilities of companies and CEOs are being increasingly emphasised, this paper examines conduct of social business in a different age and culture to discern features of enduring relevance for ethical business practices today. The personal correspondence of three fourth-century saints gives insights into their relationships and decision-making.Community expectations were those of sharing rather than of outright giving, with ,fusion of interest' prevailing over concerns for ,con?ict of interest'. Selected incidents show two entrepreneurial bishops, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, struggling to balance tensions between 'liberality' and ,fairness'. They compromised, competed robustly for revenues and were vexed over limited budgets and resources for projects while their disapproving cousin, the academic Gregory of Nazianzus, criticised their worldliness. Their historical experiences suggest four pragmatic and possibly normative ways of blending altruism and self-interest for the overall advancement of bene?cial change. [source] Fashioned Forest Pasts, Occluded Histories?DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2000International Environmental Analysis in West African Locales This article considers how environmental problematics are produced and interpreted, using case material from West Africa's humid forest zone. Examing the experiences of several countries over the long term, it is possible to identify a deforestation discourse produced through national and international institutions. This represents forest and social history in particular ways that structure forest conservation but which obscure the experience and knowledge of resource users. Using fine-grained ethnography to explore how such discourse is experienced and interpreted in a particular locale, the article uncovers problems with ,discourse' perspectives which produce analytical dichotomies which confront state and villager, and scientific and ,local' knowledges. The authors explore the day-to-day encounters between villagers and administrators, and the social and historical experiences which condition these. Instances where the deforestation discourse becomes juxtaposed with villagers' alternative ideas about landscape history prove relatively few and insignificant, while the powerful material effects of the discourse tend to be interpreted locally within other frames. These findings present departures from the ways relations between citizen sciences and expert institutions have been conceived in recent work on the sociology of science and public policy. [source] Two Logics of Labor Organizing in the Global Apparel IndustryINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2009Mark Anner What factors account for labor strategies in global industries? While some scholars point to economic factors and others look to political opportunity structures, an examination of union actions in the Central American apparel export industry over a 14-year period suggests that activists' historical experiences and ideological orientations also strongly influence union dynamics. Left-oriented unions tend to form unions through transnational activism whereas conservative unions most often turn to plant-level cross-class collaboration. Moreover, these two union strategies are interconnected. Successful transnational activism facilitates conservative union formation through a "radical flank" mechanism; the threat of left-union organizing motivates employers to accept unionization by conservative unions to block left unions from gaining influence in the plant. To examine these arguments, this article employs pooled time-series statistical analysis, structured interviews with labor organizers, and process tracing that draws on nine months of field research in Honduras and El Salvador. [source] The Political Economy of the Ecological NativeAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2007MOLLY DOANE In Chimalapas, Mexico, nongovernmental actors attempted to integrate campesinos into the discourse and practices of the Western environmental movement. The political economy school of anthropology assumes that cultural identity and practice flow from historical experiences grounded in relevant national and institutional contexts. In this article, I argue that although the movement in Chimalapas drew from the well-developed symbolic toolkit of the environmental movement, it was not able to create a space for local concerns within a transnational agenda that was already fairly well established and inflexible. Political ecology was the hinge of this movement: a political-economic analysis that validated traditional agrarian concerns in Chimalapas but included an environmentalist discourse legible to international funders. In this way, environmentalists in Chimalapas attempted both to create new practices and to link old practices to new expressions of culture and identity. [source] Saints and CEOs: an historical experience of altruism, self-interest and compromiseBUSINESS ETHICS: A EUROPEAN REVIEW, Issue 2 2003David Molyneaux At a time when social and ethical responsibilities of companies and CEOs are being increasingly emphasised, this paper examines conduct of social business in a different age and culture to discern features of enduring relevance for ethical business practices today. The personal correspondence of three fourth-century saints gives insights into their relationships and decision-making.Community expectations were those of sharing rather than of outright giving, with ,fusion of interest' prevailing over concerns for ,con?ict of interest'. Selected incidents show two entrepreneurial bishops, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, struggling to balance tensions between 'liberality' and ,fairness'. They compromised, competed robustly for revenues and were vexed over limited budgets and resources for projects while their disapproving cousin, the academic Gregory of Nazianzus, criticised their worldliness. Their historical experiences suggest four pragmatic and possibly normative ways of blending altruism and self-interest for the overall advancement of bene?cial change. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||