Serge Lifar as a Dance Historian and the Myth of Russian Dance in Zarubezhnaia Rossiia (Russia Abroad) 1930–1940

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizia Veroli
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Social Connections ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Constant Tension ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
New Evidence

Serge Lifar built his career during the 1930s, a decade crucial to understanding his ‘années noires’ – or ‘black years’, as the French historian Henry Rousso called the period of the German occupation of Paris (1940–1944). Lifar's powerful and respected position at the Paris Opéra, the social connections he had built and maintained and the psychological impact of exile: all these elements help clarify Lifar's accommodating attitude towards the German occupants of his adopted city. 1 During the 1930s Lifar came to be accepted in French intellectual society as the ‘heir’ of Serge Diaghilev. Through his publications he made a powerful contribution to the process by which Diaghilev's Ballets Russes assumed its paramount position in the development of modern ballet, a process set in motion by the impresario himself. 2 Lifar played this role chiefly in France. In the English-speaking world, where relatively few of his books appeared in translation, other writers served to canonise the Diaghilev endeavour, albeit for somewhat different ends. 3 A list of Lifar's publications in Russian and other languages (French above all) displays the growing influence of his actions and authority, the power of his connections (inherited primarily from Diaghilev), and his relentless will to overcome the problems of emigration as he secured not only success as a dancer and choreographer but also a public reputation as an intellectual. 4 The recent discovery of new evidence has led to the identification of the respected Pushkin authority Modeste Hofmann 5 as the writer whose unacknowledged work enabled Lifar to establish himself as an historian. This evidence, provided by Hofmann's grandsons André and Vladimir Hofmann, raises serious questions about the authority of Lifar's books. An interplay of subjective relationships is woven into the texture of these narratives in which survival and ambition, a paternal attitude and filial respect, exist in constant tension. Neither the making of these books nor the myth of Russian dance which they espouse can be understood without placing their authors in the milieu they shared in Paris as Russian émigrés.

scholarly journals Wish You Were Here; A Short History of New Zealand Muslims and Integration

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-370
Author(s):  
Abdullah Drury
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Short History ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

The recent court case of the Australian terrorist responsible for murdering 51 worshippers inside two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has focused attention on this South Pacific nation. Nation-building, with its inherent practices of inclusion and exclusion into the social hierarchy, began here in the nineteenth century and accelerated throughout the twentieth century. History of Muslims in New Zealand, or New Zealand Islam, is a rich narrative illustrative of tendencies and biases that are both common to, as well as divergent from, patterns elsewhere in the English speaking world and Western societies in general. The integration of Muslim immigrants and refugees, and converts to Islam, into this complex social bricolage, however, has been challenging and at times convoluted. This essay will support us to consider why and how this is the case.

scholarly journals Introduction: Travelling from West to East: Think Tank Model Adaptation to Central and Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 088832542094683
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jezierska ◽  
Serena Giusti
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
The Social ◽  
Short Period ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

This article is part of the special section “Think Tanks in Central and Eastern Europe” guest-edited by Katarzyna Jezierska and Serena Giusti. This is an introduction to the Special Section on Think Tanks in Central and Eastern Europe. Apart from this introduction, the Section includes four articles, which explore the nature and conditions of think tanks operating in Belarus, Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Poland. Think tanks are usually understood as institutions claiming autonomy whose main aim is to influence policy making based on the social analysis they produce. The most apparent blind spot in extant think tank research is its predominant focus on the English-speaking world. We argue that by focusing on think tanks in non-Western contexts, we can better understand think tanks. When studying the diffusion of the organizational form of think tanks to new contexts, it is not enough to maintain the “sender” perspective (the formulation of the institutional characteristics of think tanks in the contexts in which they first emerged). We need to complement or even modify that perspective by also taking into account the “receiver” perspective. In other words, internationally circulated ideas and institutional patterns are always interpreted and translated in local “receiving” contexts, which coproduce, reformulate, and readjust the blueprint. Our focus in this Section is therefore on the translation and local adaptation of the think tank institution in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, a region that has undergone deep changes in a relatively short period.

Theories of Imperialism

1952 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Knorr
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
English Speaking World

Although the term “imperialism” is gaining currency at present, social scientists in the English-speaking world continue to treat with slight interest the phenomena which the term seeks to identify. The authors of the two books under review are of continental European origin. This is hardly an unusual coincidence; the paucity of Anglo-American literature on imperialism contrasts oddly with the prolific stream of writings which has appeared in continental Europe during the last seventy years. One reason for this striking difference lies no doubt in the traditional reluctance of Anglo-American social scientists to generalize about the causation of historical events—and, without such generalization, no theory of imperialism is possible. There is a good deal to be said both for this unwillingness to generalize readily, and against the irrepressible enthusiasm with which European savants construct their sweeping theories. Yet neither can it be denied that the European tradition has produced theories of outstanding and abiding value for the understanding of social and political events. Both Marx and Freud, and many lesser lights, were of this tradition and one need not be Marxist or Freudian to appreciate how immensely their brilliant theories have enriched the social sciences in the Englishspeaking countries.

scholarly journals Babel

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 52-76
Author(s):  
Nina Gładziuk ◽  
Paweł Janowski
Keyword(s):  
17Th Century ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Public Order ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

What interests us here is the fact that Babel as a figure of confusion became almost the self-named epithet of 17th-century England. All the participants of the debate that took place during the revolution or the postbellum associated Babel with the conceptual chaos of the civil war. The lively “pamphlet war” then brought a pluralistic forum for public opinion in which all the confused languages of politics were equal. When all could read the Bible, everyone could read the story of Babel in their own way. But nothing could reconcile those who read the divine right of kings in it with those who read the divine right of the people in it. In the 17th century, Babel was seen as a figure of discursive confusion, as the confusion was experienced in the form of fanatical languages of arguing sects. Liberalism, if the English-speaking world is acknowledged to be its cradle, constitutes an attempt to escape the impasse of the discursive Babel via the legalistic means of the state of law. According to Hobbes, the irreversible multitude of languages makes one ask what public order can reconcile nominalism in the sphere of political opinion with the social Diaspora of individuals released from the bonds of status or corporation. How to build a state while one Christian faith is disintegrating into many sects fighting each other? How to build a state in the chronic pluralism of the social world and multifaceted dissociation of the traditional community? This is why Babel as a figure of confusion provides the primary conceptual capacity for the liberal organization of the world.

The Origins of Infant Baptism — Child Believers' Baptism?

1987 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
David F. Wright
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Historical Question ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Almost All ◽  
New Evidence

Baptism has been placed firmly on the agenda of ecumenical theology by the Lima Report, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. It makes no attempt to resolve the question of baptismal origins, but judiciously summarizes the state of the debate: ‘While the possibility that infant baptism was practised in the apostolic age cannot be excluded, baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents’. The paucity of recent discussion of the beginnings of infant baptism may suggest that they are deemed insoluble, short of the discovery of new evidence. Theology, at any rate, may neither be able nor need to wait until historians of primitive Christianity reach a consensus. The possibility that infant baptism was practised relatively early, perhaps even in the New Testament Churches themselves, was no deterrent to Karl Barth's regarding it as theologically indefensible. Nevertheless, he could not ignore what he called ‘the brute fact of a baptismal practice which has become the rule in churches in all countries and in almost all confessions’, and he ventured his own explanation of the triumph of infant baptism and of the New Testament passages to which its advocates customarily appeal. His sharp critique of the tradition provoked a greater stir on the continent of Europe than in the English-speaking world. A fresh look at the historical question is certainly overdue, although its starting-point is bound to be the celebrated exchange between Joachim Jeremias and Kurt Aland of two decades ago. Ecumenical discussion, and in some Churches, ecumenical reality, call on both paedobaptists and credobaptists to examine the others' Practice with a new seriousness. In such a context the beginnings of the dominant tradition cannot healthily be left unscrutinised or treated as inscrutable.

Max Weber and the Contemporary Political Crisis

1942 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talcott Parsons
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Western World ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Political Scene

We are living in a time when men most urgently feel the need of intellectual clarification of the social and political situation in which they stand. By no means all the great masters of social thought who have made important potential contributions to such clarification are sufficiently well known, even among social and political scientists. One of these is Max Weber who, in the English-speaking world, is known more as a sociologist of religion and a methodologist of social science than as an interpreter of the political scene. Weber's scope of interest in institutional problems, with specific reference to the modern Western world, was, however, exceedingly broad, and a substantial part of his work was centered o nthe field of political institutions, particularly in their relations to the economic order and to other aspects of the social structure.

scholarly journals Representations of Social Categories in an EFL Textbook Used at a Private Colombian University

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina Patricia Delgado
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Research Report ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Written Text ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Discourse Historical Approach

Nowadays textbooks are the focal materials used in language classes. Therefore, following the methods of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this research report analyzes the ideological discourse present in an EFL textbook used at the languages center of a private Colombian university in order to determine how it portrays the members of the English speaking world, according to the social categories they belong to. The findings reveal that the ideological positions regarding the English speaking world displayed in the textbook divide the social categories into insiders and outsiders of this world. This division that is textually supported through the use of certain discursive strategies, might go beyond the written text itself and permeate wider Colombian societal practices that include discrimination at different levels and in consequence, could have a possible negative impact on the identity construction of Colombian EFL learners and teachers. Key words: Discourse historical approach, identity, investment, social categories, textbooks.

scholarly journals CANONS AND COLONIES: THE GLOBAL TRAJECTORY OF SOCIOLOGY

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (67) ◽  
pp. 349-367
Author(s):  
Raewyn Connell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Collective Production ◽  
Origin Myth ◽  
Global Trajectory

Abstract The history of sociology as a field of knowledge, especially in the English-speaking world, has been obscured by the discipline’s own origin myth in the form of a canon of “classical theory” concerned with European modernity. Sociology was involved in the world of empire from the start. Making the canon more inclusive, in gender, race, and even global terms, is not an adequate correction. Important types of social knowledge, including movement-based and indigenous knowledges, resist canonization. The turn towards decolonial and Southern perspectives, now happening across the social sciences, opens up new perspectives on the history of knowledge. These can be linked with a more sophisticated view of the collective production of knowledge by the workforces that are increasingly, though unequally, interacting. Potentials for a more effectively engaged sociology emerge.

scholarly journals Phrenology, heredity and progress in George Combe'sConstitution of Man

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
BILL JENKINS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The Mind

AbstractTheConstitution of Manby George Combe (1828) was probably the most influential phrenological work of the nineteenth century. It not only offered an exposition of the phrenological theory of the mind, but also presented Combe's vision of universal human progress through the inheritance of acquired mental attributes. In the decades before the publication of Darwin'sOrigin of Species, theConstitutionwas probably the single most important vehicle for the dissemination of naturalistic progressivism in the English-speaking world. Although there is a significant literature on the social and cultural context of phrenology, the role of heredity in Combe's thought has been less thoroughly explored, although both John van Wyhe and Victor L. Hilts have linked Combe's views on heredity with the transformist theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In this paper I examine the origin, nature and significance of his ideas and argue that Combe's hereditarianism was not directly related to Lamarckian transformism but formed part of a wider discourse on heredity in the early nineteenth century.

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