This book seeks to overcome the tension between 'western' and 'non-western' categories and tools in the study of global history, showing how most western approaches to the social sciences and history have developed through transnational and colonial interactions. Offering a transnational and global history of the main tools we have to understand the word and its transformations over the last three centuries, Tensions of Social History explores the construction of archives and historical memory, the making of statistics and their use in politics, the identification of social actors, and the emergence of key social theories. Providing key insights into how to write history and develop social sciences in the global era while avoiding eurocentrism and cultural exceptionalism, this ambitious book shows how global history is made of encounters rather than confrontations between civilizations.
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume discusses the effects, models and implications of history teaching in relation to conflict transformation and reconciliation from a social-psychological perspective. Bringing together a mix of established and young researchers and academics, from the fields of psychology, education, and history, the book provides an in-depth exploration of the role of historical narratives, history teaching, history textbooks and the work of civil society organizations in post-conflict societies undergoing reconciliation processes, and reflects on the state of the art at both the international and regional level. As well as dealing with the question of the ‘perpetrator-victim’ dynamic, the book also focuses on the particular context of transition in and out of cold war in Eastern Europe and the post-conflict settings of Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine and Cyprus. It is also exploring the pedagogical classroom practices of history teaching and a critical comparison of various possible approaches taken in educational praxis. The book will make compelling reading for students and researchers of education, history, sociology, peace and conflict studies and psychology.
Since the beginning of the last century Weber argued the indissoluble link between sociology and history. His approach saw the relationship between history and sociology as based on (a) mutual and essential support, and (b) logical priority, according to which, paraphrasing sociologist Alessandro Cavalli, "sociology without history is blind, history without sociology is mute." The lesson of the «Annales» definitively confirmed the indissoluble link between history and social sciences, on the basis of a strongly and strategically interdisciplinary analysis. However, at present sociology and history continue to cooperate all too rarely in the context of interdisciplinary research. There is no question that social conflict - and social ambiguities - is a common ground of research both for sociology and history. Through the analysis of social conflict this book aims at providing argumentative issues concerning the above link, and showing meaningful convergences between the two disciplines. This in order to offer innovative spaces of discourse around the theory and methodology of research, and some areas of yesterday and today social conflicts.
In the midst of the United States' immense economic growth in the 1850s, Americans worried about whether the booming agricultural, industrial, and commercial expansion came at the price of cherished American values such as honesty, hard work, and dedication to the common good. Was the nation becoming greedy, selfish, vulgar, and cruel? Was there such a thing as too much prosperity? At the same time, the United States felt the influence of the rise of popular mass-circulation newspapers and magazines and the surge in American book publishing. Concern over living correctly as well as prosperously was commonly discussed by leading authors and journalists, who were now writing for ever-expanding regional and national audiences. Women became more important as authors and editors, giving advice and building huge markets for women readers, with the magazine Godey's Lady's Book and novels by Susan Warner, Maria Cummins, and Harriet Beecher Stowe expressing women's views about the troubled state of society. Best-selling male writers--including novelist George Lippard, historian George Bancroft, and travel writer Bayard Taylor--were among those adding their voices to concerns about prosperity and morality and about America's place in the world. Writers and publishers discovered that a high moral tone could be exceedingly good for business. The authors of this book examine how popular writers and widely read newspapers, magazines, and books expressed social tensions between prosperity and morality. This study draws on that nationwide conversation through leading mass media, including circulation-leading newspapers, the New York Herald and the New York Tribune, plus prominent newspapers from the South and West, the Richmond Enquirer and the Cincinnati Enquirer. Best-selling magazines aimed at middle-class tastes, Harper's Magazine and the Southern Literary Messenger, added their voices, as did two leading business magazines.
This book asks the reader to reassess the Cold War not just as superpower conflict and high diplomacy, but as social and cultural history. It makes cross-cultural comparisons of the socio cultural aspects of the Cold War across the East/West block divide, dealing with issues including broadcasting, public opinion, and the production and consumption of popular culture.
"Ralf Dahrendorf has written a compelling book which, no doubt, will stimulate considerable discussion. It is the brilliant contribution of a convinced liberal to the study of conflict within contemporary democratic society."--Saul Friedlander, University of California, Los Angeles "Ralf Dahrendorf has written a compelling book which, no doubt, will stimulate considerable discussion. It is the brilliant contribution of a convinced liberal to the study of conflict within contemporary democratic society."--Saul Friedlander, University of California, Los Angeles
African Realities: Body, Culture and Social Tensions is the result of research anthropology work carried out in different African countries, mainly in Equatorial Guinea, but also in Senegal, Cabo Verde, Benin and Ethiopia. All the different chapters of this volume address a diversity of subjects related to relevant issues, such as gender, age, social class, ethnicity and coloniality, which are indispensable for understanding current African realities. Furthermore, all of these chapters investigate the importance people place on the body and, more concretely, the manner in which these people present it to others as a common denominator. After a brief theoretical introduction about the key concept of the book – the social presentation of the body – the contributors analyse the results of their own fieldwork, taking as a starting point the central role that the body plays in the relationship between the individual and society. As is clearly shown in this book, the social presentation of the body matters. From a general and structural point of view it matters because of its great significance within social logics, but it also matters because of its relevant role in situational dynamics of social interaction, and because of its close relationship with the emotional registers of individuals. If the issue related to the social presentation of the body has an undoubted interest for the academic milieu, it is also true that it has great social relevance and constitutes an undeniable political concern. The policies related to the social presentation of the body serve to mark, justify, maintain or even build hierarchical relationships of social order, at the level of class, gender, ethnicity or age. Throughout the book, and from the African studies perspective, different views are offered concerning how the body, being not only medium of expression, but at the same time a site of experience and construction of the self, appears in the centre of social tensions and is an object of strategy, control or resistance.
The conflict between landlords and peasants over the appropriation of the surplus product of the peasant holding was a prime mover in the evolution of medieval society. In this collection of essays Rodney Hilton looks at the economic context within which these conflicts took place. He seeks to explain the considerable variations in the size, composition and management of landed estates and investigates the nature of medieval urbanisation, a consequence of the development of both local commodity production and long distance trade in luxury goods. By setting the broader economic context – the nature of the peasant and landlord economies and the commercialisation of peasant production – Hilton's essays enable a thorough understanding of the relationship between landlords and peasants in medieval society.
