The Cultural Framing of Addiction

Janus Head ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-234
Author(s):  
Robin Room ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Good Person ◽  
Nineteenth Century America

The concept of addiction is historically and culturally specific, becoming a common way of understanding experience first in early nineteenth-century America, This paper considers the relation to the concept of elements in current professional definitions of addiction (as dependence). Addiction concepts have become a commonplace in storytelling, offering a secular equivalent for possession as an explanation of how a good person can behave badly, and as an inner demon over which a hero can triumph.

The Problem of Christian Unity in Early Nineteenth-Century America

1963 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lefferts A. Loetscher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Social Challenge ◽  
Atlantic Community ◽  
Christian Unity ◽  
Aggressive Attack

American Protestants in the early nineteenth century faced intellectual and social challenge which made conspicuous the weakness of their own divided condition. The American Revolution—which was part of a larger upheaval in the Atlantic Community—had spread Enlightenment ideas, with their aggressive attack on orthodoxy. Quite typical was the lament of a convention of Massachusetts Congregational ministers in 1799 over “the present decay of Christian morals and piety, and the awful prevalence of speculative and practical infidelity.” Well before the middle eighteen-thirties the tide of deism had ebbed, but some, like the editors of the new Christian Review, were still building sea walls against it.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
William L. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
Oral Composition

The introduction situates Joseph Smith's oral composition of the Book of Mormon within the religious and rhetorical culture of early nineteenth-century America. In an extended oral performance, Smith gazed into a seer stone and dictated the Book of Mormon to his scribes. The study focuses on orality, oral performance, and the oral composition techniques that Smith used to dictate the work. The introduction also includes a brief summary of the Book of Mormon narratives, along with a discussion on the academic framework for understanding seer stones in the context of Western esotericism and folk magic.

Evangelical Religion and Popular Romanticism in Early Nineteenth-Century America

1950 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph H. Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
Starting Point

Arnold Toynbee has described our western civilization in the twentieth century as a rationalistic and secular culture. In the sense that an awareness of the importance of science is the starting point of the thinking of our day the generalization seems true. We prize the realism of the objective, analytical approach of science. In a turbulent and swiftly moving age we have substituted relativism for older values once confidently assumed to have universal validity. We have seen scepticism, born of twentieth-century events, erode an old and dynamic belief in progress. We observe Protestantism, its old orthodoxy shaken, striving to make the Christian tradition meaningful and significant for a materialistic generation. We watch the protagonists of democracy striving to hold fast to essential human values and to protect basic freedoms in an age of fear and power.

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