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Historical Work (historical + work)
Selected AbstractsColonial Constructions of Masculinity: Transforming Aboriginal Australian Men into ,Houseboys'GENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2009Julia Martínez In Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia, Aboriginal men made up more than half of the domestic servant population by 1938. They replaced the Chinese and Malay male servants who had worked for British colonists in the early colonial period. Much of the historical work on male domestic servants in colonial situations plots the construction of the ,houseboy' as emasculated, feminised and submissive. In contrast, colonial constructions of Aboriginal men as ,houseboys' in Darwin emphasise the masculinity of the Aboriginal hunter. Aboriginal men were characterised as requiring constant discipline and training, and this paternalistic discourse led to a corresponding denial of manhood or adulthood for Aboriginal men. While male domestic servants in other colonial settings were allowed some privileges of masculinity in relation to female workers, amongst Aboriginal domestic workers, it was so-called ,half-caste' women who, in acknowledgment of their ,white blood', received nominally higher wages and privileges for domestic work. Aboriginal men were denied what was referred to as a ,breadwinning' wage; an Australian wage awarded to white men with families. Despite this, their role as husbands was encouraged by the administration as a method of controlling sexual relations between white men and Aboriginal women. These sometimes contradictory images can be understood as manifestations of the racialised construction of gender in Australia. [source] SUBJECTIVITY AS A NON-TEXTUAL STANDARD OF INTERPRETATION IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGYHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2010JARI KAUKUA ABSTRACT Contemporary caution against anachronism in intellectual history, and the currently momentous theoretical emphasis on subjectivity in the philosophy of mind, are two prevailing conditions that set puzzling constraints for studies in the history of philosophical psychology. The former urges against assuming ideas, motives, and concepts that are alien to the historical intellectual setting under study, and combined with the latter suggests caution in relying on our intuitions regarding subjectivity due to the historically contingent characterizations it has attained in contemporary philosophy of mind. In the face of these conditions, our paper raises a question of what we call non-textual (as opposed to contextual) standards of interpretation of historical texts, and proceeds to explore subjectivity as such a standard. Non-textual standards are defined as (heuristic) postulations of features of the world or our experience of it that we must suppose to be immune to historical variation in order to understand a historical text. Although the postulation of such standards is often so obvious that the fact of our doing so is not noticed at all, we argue that the problems in certain special cases, such as that of subjectivity, force us to pay attention to the methodological questions involved. Taking into account both recent methodological discussion and the problems inherent in two de facto denials of the relevance of subjectivity for historical theories, we argue that there are good grounds for the adoption of subjectivity as a nontextual standard for historical work in philosophical psychology. [source] The Law of the Land or the Law of the Land?: History, Law and Narrative in a Settler SocietyHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2004Bain Attwood This article considers the influence of a controversial historical work on the law, politics and society of a settler nation. It argues that the impact of Henry Reynolds's 1987 The Law of the Land on legal consideration of indigenous rights to land in Australia can be attributed to the fact that it is best described as juridical history. As such, it told a lego-historical story that provided the High Court of Australia with a new way of interpreting its own traditional narrative, which had long denied Aboriginal people their rights to land, thus enabling it to make a new determination of those rights as well as resolve a crisis of legitimacy for the law and the nation. This article also contends that this history-making came to be accepted by many settler Australians because it provided the nation with a newly redemptive, liberal myth narrative. It assesses the cost of a story of this kind, asking whether such simple histories can have an enduring effect, especially where their authors are reluctant to signpost the historical or literary form of their texts. Finally, it suggests that histories truer to the complexities of the past might produce better political and social outcomes. [source] THE SOCIAL ARTICULATION OF TIME IN EUGEN ROSENSTOCK-HUESSYMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 2 2010PETER J. LEITHART Sociologists and theologians have both devoted considerable attention and energy to time, but the two rarely speak to one another. Sociologists investigate the effects of clock time, railway schedules, and calendars on culture, while theologians examine God's relation to time, usually the time of physics. The neglected German-American thinker Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy can help to bridge this gap. In his historical work, he paid particular attention to the role of rituals and calendars in shaping time, but he was also a Christian thinker who confessed that Jesus Christ brought in the "fullness of time." This article considers some aspects of Rosenstock-Huessy's rich account of time in the hopes that both theologians and sociologists, but especially theologians with sociological interests, will find his insights fruitful and mine them further for the productive possibilities. [source] William of Malmesbury on KingshipHISTORY, Issue 297 2005BJÖRN WEILER This article uses the historical works of William of Malmesbury to explore notions and concepts of kingship in Norman England. It argues, first, that his understanding of the royal office owes more to traditional, even patristic, concepts of secular power than historians have been willing to accept, and, secondly, that his concept of a ruler's duties was more concerned with issues of proper behaviour, symbolic actions and moral leadership than those aspects of Anglo-Norman kingship which modern scholars have traditionally explored. [source] Teaching Foreign Policy with MemoirsINTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 2 2002Terry L. Deibel Excerpts from the memoirs of high foreign policy officials, if carefully selected and structured, can be a valuable resource in the teaching of diplomatic history, American foreign policy, and international relations. Two decades of teaching a memoirs-only course to mid-career military officers and foreign affairs professionals in a seminar discussion format reveals many of their advantages. Memoirs are interesting reading that rarely fail to engage a reader's attention; they impart detailed knowledge of historical events; they provide a rich understanding of process and the neglected area of policy implementation; like case studies, they let students build vicarious experience in policymaking and execution; and they often provide what Alexander George called "policy-relevant generalizations." While lack of objectivity can be a serious drawback of first-person accounts, it provides its own lessons on the nature of history and can be offset by using multiple accounts of the same events and by combining memoirs with documents and historical works, or countering analytical studies. Although picking the most interesting and worthwhile excerpts, getting them in students' hands, and accommodating their length within the boundaries of a standard college course are additional challenges, professors who take them on should find that memoirs add a new level of excitement and realism to their courses. [source] | ||||||||||