Notes toward a Postsecular History of Modern British Secularization

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-333
Author(s):  
Sam Brewitt-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Conceptual Revolution ◽  
Ideological Assumptions

AbstractThis article argues that British historiography's secularization debate is largely misconceived, being enmeshed in secular ideological assumptions inherited from the West's secular revolution of the 1960s. It therefore introduces an alternative, postsecular paradigm for understanding British secularization, which conceptualizes secularity as an ideological culture in its own right, religion as secularity's othering category, and secularization as the positive dissemination and enactment of secularity. British Christianity declined gradually from around 1900, but widespread secularization in this positive sense could only happen once British public discussion had embraced secularity's ideological framework, which it did in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Before the mid-1950s, British discussion had routinely adhered to a “Christian civilization” metanarrative, which insisted that “religion” is essential to long-term social stability, such that “secularization” is a regrettable step backward in human development. Yet in the late 1950s and early 1960s British discussion abruptly embraced secularity's rival metanarrative, which states that “religion” is a primordial condition unnecessary in “advanced” societies, such that “secularization” is an irreversible step forward in human development. This conceptual revolution was contingent, culturally specific, and importantly influenced by radical rereadings of Christian eschatology. Nonetheless, it created both the secular revolution of the 1960s, and the ideological framework within which the British secularization debate continues to be conducted today.

How the Desert got a Past: A History of Quaternary Research in Australia’s Deserts

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Smith
Keyword(s):  
Climate Changes ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

This paper examines how the past of desert landscapes has been interpreted since European explorers and scientists first encountered them. It charts the research that created the conceptual space within which archaeologists and Quaternarists now work. Studies from the 1840s–1960s created the notion of a ‘Great Australian Arid Period'. The 1960s studies of Lake Mungo and the Willandra Lakes by Jim Bowler revealed the cyclical nature of palaeolakes, that changed with climate changes in the Pleistocene, and the complexity of desert pasts. SLEADS and other researchers in the 1980s used thermoluminescence techniques that showed further complexities in desert lands beyond the Willandra particularly through new studies in the Strzelecki and Simpson Dunefields, Lake Eyre, Lake Woods and Lake Gregory. Australian deserts are varied and have very different histories. Far from ‘timeless lands', they have carried detailed information about long-term climate changes on continental scales.

Cities and Urban Patriciates

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Cowan
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas ◽  
The 1960S

Urban centers had an influence on the development of Renaissance Europe disproportionate to their overall demographic importance. Most of the population continued to live and work in the countryside, but towns and cities functioned as key centers of production, consumption and exchange, political control, ecclesiastical organization, and cultural influence. Historians still debate the relative roles of urban and rural areas in facilitating the development of capitalism in the long term. Writing on urban history has a very long pedigree dating back to the 16th century, but as an academic discipline it began to flourish in the late 19th century. Since the 1960s, the range of approaches to the field has widened considerably from concerns with political and economic organization to take in issues of governance, social structure, and, most recently, overlapping urban cultures. The role of religious belief, particularly in the context of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, runs as a thread throughout the history of the urban experience.

scholarly journals An Introduction to Nicos Hadjinicolaou's “Art Centers and Peripheral Art” (1982)

ARTMargins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
Terry Smith
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Book Art ◽  
Hard Edge ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time

Change in the history of art has many causes, but one often overlooked by art historical institutions is the complex, unequal set of relationships that subsist between art centers and peripheries. These take many forms, from powerful penetration of peripheral art by the subjects, styles and modes of the relevant center, through accommodation to this penetration to various degrees and kinds of resistance to it. Mapping these relationships should be a major task for art historians, especially those committed to tracing the reception of works of art and the dissemination of ideas about art. This lecture, delivered by Nicos Hadjinicolaou in 1982, outlines a “political art geography” approach to these challenges, and demonstrates it by exploring four settings: the commissioning of paintings commemorating key battles during the Greek War of Independence; the changes in Diego Rivera's style on his return to Mexico from Paris in the 1920s; the impact on certain Mexican artists in the 1960s of “hard edge” painting from the United States; and the differences between Socialist Realism in Moscow and in the Soviet Republics of Asia during the mid-twentieth century. The lecture is here translated into English for the first time and is introduced by Terry Smith, who relates it to its author's long-term art historical quest, as previously pursued in his book Art History and Class Struggle (1973).

FROM LONG-TERM PATTERNS OF SEASONAL HUNGER TO CHANGING EXPERIENCES OF EVERYDAY POVERTY: NORTHEASTERN GHANA C. 1930–2000

2006 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
JÉRÔME DESTOMBES
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
West African ◽  
Anthropometric Data ◽  
Poor Diet ◽  
John Hunter ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Way

This article is a West African case-study of the nutritional history of everyday poverty. It draws on unusually rich statistical evidence collected in northeastern Ghana. In the 1930s, pioneer colonial surveys revealed that seasonal poor diet was pervasive, by contrast with undernourishment. They pave the way for constructing a new set of anthropometric data in Nangodi, a savanna polity where John Hunter completed a classic study of seasonal hunger in the 1960s. A re-survey of the same sections and lineages c. 2000, during a full agricultural cycle, shows a significant improvement in nutritional statuses, notably for women.

scholarly journals The Politics of Heroes’ Body: Ethnographying the Training of Foreign Astronauts in Russia

Corpus Mundi ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-36
Author(s):  
Julie Patarin-Jossec
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Human Spaceflight ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
Astronaut Training ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
The 1960S

If the literature in the history of the Soviet space program is extremely prolific since the 1960s, including regarding cosmonaut embodiment, a lack remains regarding the contemporary reality of human spaceflight in Russia. As this article discusses, based on interviews and a long-term ethnography of the Russian training of astronauts from Western Europe, North America, and Japan, becoming an astronaut is to develop a legitimate body fitting dominant cultural and gendered models. Three mechanisms serve the manufacture of “heroes” and masculine bodies through the astronaut training: the historical narrative of human spaceflight; the values and virility attributes embed as part of the training; and the instruments used in the daily activity of astronauts (such as spacesuits). This manufacture of a legitimate body, characterized by masculinity and discipline inherited from the past, is a heuristic field for corporality and studies of global politics as it underlines how an interweaving of gender, Soviet heritage, and cultural fantasies frames the bodies of a professional elite.

scholarly journals The transformation of Caribbean coral communities since humans

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Cramer ◽  
Mary Donovan ◽  
Jeremy Jackson ◽  
Benjamin Greenstein ◽  
Chelsea Korpanty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Coral Species ◽  
Reef Coral ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Human Disturbances ◽  
Coral Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Term Data

The mass die-off of Caribbean corals has transformed many of this region’s reefs to macroalgal-dominated habitats since systematic monitoring began in the 1970s. Although attributed to a combination of local and global human stressors, the lack of long-term data on Caribbean reef coral communities has prevented a clear understanding of the causes and consequences of coral declines. We integrated paleoecological, historical, and modern survey data to track the prevalence of major coral species and life history groups throughout the Caribbean from the pre-human period to present. The regional loss of Acropora corals beginning by the 1960s from local human disturbances resulted in increases in the prevalence of formerly subdominant stress-tolerant and weedy scleractinian corals and the competitive hydrozoan Millepora beginning in the 1970s and 1980s. These transformations have resulted in the homogenization of coral communities within individual countries. However, increases in stress-tolerant and weedy corals have slowed or reversed since the 1980s and 1990s in tandem with intensified coral bleaching. These patterns reveal the long history of increasingly stressful environmental conditions on Caribbean reefs that began with widespread local human disturbances and have recently culminated in the combined effects of local and global change.

Increase in growth rates of southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) over four decades: 1960 to 2000

2004 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Polacheck ◽  
J Paige Eveson ◽  
Geoff M Laslett
Keyword(s):  
Stock Assessment ◽  
Temporal Trends ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Bluefin Tuna ◽  
Fish Stocks ◽  
Southern Bluefin Tuna ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Length Frequency Data

Estimates of long-term temporal trends and variability in growth are often not available for many commercially exploited fish stocks. An integrated estimation framework that combines growth information from tagging studies, direct age estimates from hard parts, and modal progression estimates from length–frequency data is applied to data on southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii, SBT) collected over four decades, from 1960 to 2000. By using an integrated approach, a comprehensive set of growth estimates can be obtained for each of these four decades even though substantive deficiencies exist in the coverage of the historical data from any single source. The results confirm previous findings that cohorts from the 1980s grew substantially faster at young ages than cohorts from the 1960s. The results also suggest that the 1970s was a period of transition and that growth of fish up to about age 4 was faster in the 1990s than in the 1980s. The changes in SBT growth over these four decades are consistent with density-dependent responses given the history of exploitation and stock assessment estimates of changes in population size.

‘Settlement patterns’ or ‘landscape studies’?

1996 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Sherratt
Keyword(s):  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
Cheap Labour ◽  
Regional Budget ◽  
Regional Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Regional Projects ◽  
Working Out

In considering the history of regional archaeological projects, I propose to use a long-term perspective. Rather than surveying relatively recent examples and inductively working out the differences between them, I should like instead to venture some historical generalisations about the mental and practical traditions in which such projects are set. I want to suggest that two contrasting attitudes and approaches have presented themselves, largely as alternatives, throughout the history of archaeology; and that these choices are still offering themselves today. While this is perhaps a rather long perspective to take, the alternative is a very short one. If we take the description ‘regional projects’ to mean the integrated investigation of sites in landscapes, then the concept is effectively post-1945 and really post-1965. The reason is very simple: money. Archaeologists at earlier periods just did not have the size of budget which now seems essential for what we call ‘regional projects’. Of course there were earlier examples of landscape studies in Europe, and excavations of two or more complementary sites; but it would be hard before the 1960s to find the degree of integrated investigation which is today the defining characteristic of a regional project. (Perhaps archaeologists in the Near East, by using very cheap labour, had the equivalent of a modern regional budget; but they had whole abandoned cities to investigate, so the regional label scarcely applies.)

scholarly journals From the Great Wall of China to Xi Jinpings Idea of Common Destiny of Mankind

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-287
Author(s):  
Vladimir Ostanin
Keyword(s):  
International Political Economy ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Main Requirement ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Destiny

The article intends to consider the issue of national idea of a state. In order to strengthen the integrity, political and social stability, the state always strives to offer society the idea of its national purpose developing it at the scientific level and in everyday life, which determines the meaning of its existence. The latter can take the form of a national idea. The importance of understanding the national idea is emphasized in the text. Without it people will stay uninspired by the meaning of their existence, that lacks their own history, while living meaningless life and being unaware of their long-term goals for the future. National and territorial expansion supported by familiarization with the idea of common destiny can be found in the world history of many states. Russia and China are no exception. The main bearer of moral standards, in particular, goodness, good for all people, attended by the implementation of Community of common destiny model of mankind, will always be the human person with his unique character. The article concludes that while forming the Community of the common destiny of mankind China cannot be higher than the international law, the laws of international political economy, the main requirement of which is to respect the principle of justice in the international community.

scholarly journals Hellish Evil, Heavenly Love: A Long-Term History of Same-Sex Sexuality and Religion in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-58
Author(s):  
David J. Bos
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Gay And Lesbian Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sexuality And Religion ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThis chapter offers an overview of changes in Dutch perceptions of, and attitudes toward, same-sex sexuality and the part religion played in them. It discusses landmark events and publications from 1730—when “sodomy” became a public issue—until the present. It describes the evolution of discourse on same-sex sexuality, with special reference to the earliest publications on “homosexuality,” alias “Uranism,” which often referred to religion. In the twentieth century, Roman Catholic and Protestant opposition to homosexual emancipation gradually gave way to sympathy, and in the 1960s some pastors were vocal advocates of acceptance. In the early 1970s, homosexuality became a doctrinal issue, a religious identity marker. Polarization was exacerbated in the late 1970s, which saw the rise of both the gay and lesbian movement and religious fundamentalism. “Discursive associations” between religion—including Judaism and Islam—and homosexuality are brought to light partly by means of quantitative content analysis of newspapers.

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