Contemporary Observers Research Articles

Ongoing History Writing in History Textbooks

Abstract This article addresses the ways in which Swedish history textbooks for upper secondary schools published between 1994 and 2011 deal with the most recent past. The textbooks are chronologically organized and follow history into the textbook authors’ time, and each new edition of the textbooks includes the latest developments. The article inquires as to whether this gradual addition of events is to be regarded as historiography at all, or what the possible difference is between contemporary commentary and historiography. It examines which events and developments are selected, how they are presented, and how they can be interpreted with regard to periodization and the use of history.

Why ‘Reception History’ Is Not Just Another Exegetical Method: The Case Of Mark's Ending

AbstractThe history of reception is suffering from a fundamental misunderstanding. Since the publication of Truth and Method, everyone has had the impression that reception history is just another exegetical technique. However, the heart of Gadamer's argument is not the history of the effects of the text, but the historicity of understanding: a text is seized only within the limits of the historical situation of its interpreter. To demonstrate this point, this paper takes the example of the Markan ending. Surprisingly, a 16th-century Thomistic theologian, Cajetan, and a contemporary commentary are so close that one might think they are defending the same view of the text. Both intend to maintain the canonicity of verses 9–20, but both point out that it may be adventurous to build any doctrine or practice on these verses alone. But the context is different, obviously. The first one tries to justify a conception of faith that does not depend directly on miracles; the second one affirms a hermeneutic centred on the interpreter's response, being wary of its ecclesiological drifts. This confirms that theological considerations rather than philological ones have prevailed in challenging Mark's ending.

Fashion of Global Warming: Between counterculture and trend, discursive translations in post-consumerism

The article reflects on the translation mechanisms operated by fashion and the transformation of countercultural discourses and practices into their mainstream versions. By exploring the recent boom of products, advertisements, and lifestyles utilising the communication of sustainability as a strategy, the work utilises Landowski’s socio-semiotic theory to analyse the absorption of post-consumerism by commodity capitalism, understanding the process of commodification as a transformation in the regimes governing interactions between subjects. Supporting the discussion with literature debating the countercultural critique—in politics, economics, and fashion—and the contemporary commentary about post-consumerism and the environmental crisis, the work concludes that fashion operates a narrative simplification of countercultural discourses, transforming its regime of risk and sense production, causing a transition from intricate webs of relations between subjects to a set of values that can be exchanged.

Between Freedom of Religion and Apostasy in Islam: Analysis of Surah Al-Baqarah Verse 256

This article aims to explain the concept of religious freedom in Islam. This concept is revealed in the Qur'an surah al-Baqarah verse 256, which states that religion has no compulsion. This verse is an affirmation that Islam upholds the values of tolerance and humanity, as well as an answer to the accusation that Islam is spread by the sword (violence). However, in practice, some people interpret this verse differently, that Islam allows its adherents to apostate. With the argument that apostasy is part of religious freedom. Based on that reason, this article analyzes sura al-Baqarah verse 256 based on the interpretations of classical and contemporary commentators, as well as analyzes the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad concerning apostasy and religious freedom. This article is qualitative in nature used library research for data collection from books, journals, and other documents related to the topic of discussion. The collected data were then analyzed using the critical-analysis method. The study found that religious freedom in Islam is related to the relationship between the servant and God. Muslims are not free to do something because they are bound by their obligations as servants. That is, Islam does not allow its adherents to apostatize because it violates God's teachings and also Islam does not force other people to embrace this religion.

Gender Relations on Quranic Interpretation in Indonesia (Interpretation Analysis on Turjuman Al-Mustafid's Tafsir, Al-Azhar's Tafsir, and Al-Misbah's Tafsir)

This paper attempts to picture the shift in discourse on gender relations in interpretive thinking in Indonesia by bringing together the interpretations of 'Abd al-Rauf Singkel, Hamka and M. Quraish Shihab. The selection of the three commentators was motivated by the difference in the period of writing the interpretations of the three. From this analysis, it is known that the interpretations of these three commentators on gender verses have points of similarities and differences. The interpretation of 'Abd al-Rauf Singkel in general follows the flow of traditional interpretations but his views are more moderate and tolerant, as seen in the issue of the origin of events and women's leadership. The shift in gender relations discourse is more visible in the interpretations of Hamka and M. Quraish Shihab. It seems to have its own interpretation, which does not fully follow the currents of traditional or contemporary commentators' views. This research is explored by comparative interpretation using critical discourse analysis method. From this research, it is found that modern and contemporary interpretations in Indonesia are more assertive in carrying out the discourse on Gender Equality Relations

‘Lately Gone into Germany’: Thomas Tillam and his Treatises on Marriage, Divorce and Polygamy

ABSTRACT Thomas Tillam lived in the middle of the seventeenth century and stands out as one of the most intriguing figures among the religious dissenters of the time. Having had short-term success establishing Baptist churches at Hexham and Colchester, he encouraged 100–200 families to emigrate to Southern Germany and set up a Judaeo-Christian community. In 1660–1665 his publications entitled Temple of Lively Stones and The Unequal Yoke Unloosed, reveal his attitude to marriage and divorce. He seems to have moved from his declaration that ‘I know not any door of divorce (opened in the Gospel) except adultery’ to defending the divorce of ‘unacceptable wives’ and supporting polygamy by Old Testament precedents. The reason for this change of belief is considered in the light of rumours and accusations from contemporary commentators and the marital situation of his benefactor, Karl I Ludwig.

“Anybody may look smart!”: the smart aesthetic and women film stars in 1930s Hollywood

ABSTRACT As Maria DiBattista has shown (2003, 332), the ascendance of figures like Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn during Hollywood’s depression decade (1930–1939) marked the rise of a new breed of woman film star: the “smart girl.” These stars were smart in two senses. Yes, they were quick-witted and quick-tongued—proto-feminist fodder for the newly egalitarian vision of (re-)marriage peddled in 1930s screwball comedy. Yet they were also smart in a new, aesthetic sense, embodying a “smart aesthetic” that marked a shift away from the formal, affective, informational and gendered logics of glamour. For contemporary commentators on 1930s Hollywood, these stars’ smart mouths and their equally smart dresses were in clear accord—and, in part as a result of this apparent accord, the smart aesthetic earned a reputation as a progressive aesthetic formation that both expressed and reinforced the feminist potential of the new strain of “smart girls” on screen. This essay, however, complicates this view by at once elaborating and unpicking the links between these two registers of smartness. Through an analysis of the smart aesthetic as it emerged across coverage in 1930s fan periodicals, it contends that the smart aesthetic’s progressive promise may have been more apparent than actual.

Piers Norris Turner and Gerald Gaus (eds.), Public Reason in Political Philosophy: Classic Sources and Contemporary Commentaries

Piers Norris Turner and Gerald Gaus (eds.), Public Reason in Political Philosophy: Classic Sources and Contemporary Commentaries

Noblesse commerçante contre noblesse militaire: une querelle des Lumières (1756–1759). Édition de Cheminade Christian

This is a welcome critical edition of the Abbé Coyer’s La Noblesse commerçante, the Chevalier d’Arcq’s La Noblesse militaire (both published in 1756), and Coyer’s last word, the Développement et défense du système de la noblesse commerçante (1757). Although the debate between Coyer and Arcq unleashed much commentary, historians have dismissed it as amusing but inconsequential. Most contemporary commentators sided with the traditionalist argument of Arcq, while Coyer’s reputation as a literary provocateur facilitated readings of the debate as a strange anomaly. Christian Cheminade’s contextualizing Introduction demonstrates the broad importance of the debate. He begins by showing the legal vicissitudes of the concept of dérogeance — the loss of noble status through commercial activity — since the thirteenth century. He shows that nobles, in both the medieval and modern periods, regularly sold the goods produced on their estates, and they sought to retain their tax exemptions despite profiting from trade. Only in the sixteenth century did the crown begin to discourage noble participation in commerce by threatening to remove those tax exemptions. It did so not because of bias against merchants or attachment to noble values. Kings instead protected merchants from unfair competition from tax-exempt nobles. Although Coyer later blamed ‘ces temps barbares du gouvernement féodal’ for having nurtured the nobility’s disdain for merchants (p. 11), the nobility’s insistence on cultural separation from the merchant class was in fact a late-seventeenth-century invention. It reflected the reactionary politics of influential figures such as Henri de Boulainvilliers and François de La Mothe-Fénelon, who sought to reassert noble pre-eminence after a time of alarming social mobility under Louis XIV. Meanwhile, because of imperial competition with the British, by the time Coyer had begun to write in 1755 the crown had reversed its policy of discouraging commercial activity among certain classes. Led by the Intendant de Commerce, Jacques Vincent de Gournay, many agents of the crown pushed for the liberalization of the French economy and urged the widest possible engagement in trade. Cheminade shows that Coyer belonged to Gournay’s circle and worked to advance his agenda. There are reasons to assume that Coyer’s strategy of attacking dérogeance served to disguise the real target of the Gournay group: the privileged corps et communautés that granted the right of commercial exchange in French cities only to their members. Coyer’s aggressive valorization of commercial activity, claiming as he did that commerce was honourable and that merchants were as patriotic as any noble, provided a robust rationale for a state policy encouraging all to engage in commerce. Cheminade reasonably connects Coyer’s trial balloon of commercial nobility with the efforts of reformers in the 1760s to create laissez-passer economic policies. Those efforts failed, in part because of the continued allure of the tripartite social order for which Montesquieu had provided an elegant theory, one that Arcq effectively redeployed. The Coyer–Arcq debate, embedded in Montesquieu’s typologies and reflecting the most advanced economic thinking of the age, was more than a blip on the cultural radar. Its relevance to the economic and fiscal troubles that finally prompted revolution reminds us that failed ideas, too, can reveal much about the promise and limitations that frame moments of cultural ferment.

‘The Zeal with which Christ was Inflamed’: The Irascible Power and Clerical Authority in the Writing of Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216)

Abstract The writing of Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) contains multiple references to the irascible power of the human soul, the purpose of which was to repel evil. In Si dormiatis, Innocent’s sermon on the ideal priesthood, the violent emotional behaviour produced by the irascible power is proof that the priest was carrying out his office correctly. Analysis of the sermon in the context of Innocent’s own corpus, contemporary commentaries on ‘angry emotions’, and the intense period of ecclesiastical reform in which Innocent was writing reveals that Innocent intended this aggressive response to instantiate correct order, shore up clerical and papal authority over the spiritual, and protect this authority as the exclusive preserve of men.

“They Have No Property to Lose”: The Impasse of Free Labour in Lombard Silk Manufactures (1760–1810)

AbstractWith the abolition of the guild system and the rise of a new legal regime based on free contract, a central dilemma emerged in Europe: how to enforce labour control in this new era of individual economic freedom. This article examines how this issue was addressed in the State of Milan, where ideas about freedom of contract championed by state reformers such as Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria were met with continued requests from merchant-manufacturers to apply corporal punishment and threat of imprisonment to ensure workers’ attendance. Analysing the new regulations, the ideological credos of the new regime, and the effectiveness of the reforms as they played out on the ground in the silk industry, this article shows that the chance that labour relations could be managed within a civil law regime appeared to be in direct contrast with the dominant conception of workers’ conditions, in particular their lack of propriety and good faith. As credit-debt bonds and limitations to weavers’ mobility stood as the most effective means to ensure labour coercion, a closer look at the daily interactions in the workshop allows us to shed new light on the rationality of workers’ practices like Saint Monday, cast by contemporary commentators in merely moralistic terms.

Democratic practice and curriculum objectives: Paul Hirst’s visit to Summerhill

Abstract This paper revisits the battle between Summerhill School and the Department for Education and Employment following the damning Ofsted inspection in 1999 that demanded changes to the school’s practice. The focus of the discussion is Paul Hirst’s involvement in the subsequent inspection of Summerhill following the school’s victory against Ofsted in their 2000 appeal at the Independent Schools Tribunal. Drawing on contemporary commentaries on the Ofsted inspection and the court case, alongside Hirst’s work on curriculum and early criticisms of this work, I explore what is meant by ‘a broad and balanced curriculum’—a phrase that lay at the heart of Ofsted’s case against Summerhill. The discussion will question some of the commonly posited oppositions between ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ education, and will suggest that such a framing of the issues is an unhelpful way to understand the radical challenge posed by democratic schools such as Summerhill. In focusing on the daily life and ethos of Summerhill as part of an attempt to build and nurture a democratic community, I explore the possibility that Summerhill’s broad conception of learning and curriculum, reflected in the school’s organization and ethos, lends itself to a less narrow and more socially oriented conception of curriculum that is in line with Hirst’s later work on social practices.

‘Take Her Out and Air Her’: Irish Dances as Arranged by Stanford and Grainger

Irish-born composer Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) has received both acclaim and criticism for his integration of Irish folk melodies in his compositions and for his role in publishing collections of Irish folk melodies. Throughout his career, the music of Ireland provided the inspiration for a number of compositions including orchestral works, songs, opera and chamber music. This article critically examines his Irish Dances op. 89, later published and referred to as Four Irish Dances, the source material for the work and versions created for piano by both Stanford and the Australian composer Percy Grainger (1882–1961). The article also addresses gaps in scholarship related to the performance and reception of the work(s). It also highlights inaccuracies in contemporary commentary, and returns the authorship of the works to Stanford. This examination parallels other studies and enhances an understanding not only of Stanford’s compositional practice but the social, cultural and economic contexts of music at the turn of the twentieth century and their reception amongst audiences and critics.

``See You in Your Next Life'': Creativity, the Zhuangzi, and Grief

Drawing from cross-cultural work on creativity undertaken within philosophical psychology, as well as contemporary commentaries on the philosophy of the Zhuangzi, this article motivates a conception of creativity that emphasizes spontaneity and adaptivity—rather than novelty or originality—engendered by embracing you 遊 (“wandering”). It argues that this approach to creativity can enable us to understand certain forms of religious experiences, especially those related to grief and bereavement, as creative in a sense that is compatible with both: i) views that emphasize the capacity of religious experiences to connect us with something supernatural, immaterial, or non-physical and, ii) views that emphasize the capacity of religious experiences to connect us with something natural, material, or physical. Additionally, it elaborates how these reflections might pave the way for further cross-cultural inquiries—empirical and otherwise—into the nature and value of religious experience

The Progress of a Plague Species, A Theory of History

This article examines overpopulation as a basis for historical interpretation. Drawing on the ideas of T.R. Malthus, Elizabeth Kolbert, John Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, and Edward O. Wilson, I make the case that the only concept of ‘progress’ that accurately describes the human enterprise is the uncontrolled growth of population. I explain why a Malthusian/Gaia interpretation is not a historicist or eschatological narrative, like Hegelian idealism, Marxism, fundamentalist religion, or ‘end of history’ neoliberalism. My article also includes a discussion of the ideas and prescriptions of contemporary commentators like physicist, Adam Frank, and the philosophers, John Gray, and Roy Scranton. What makes my article distinctive is bringing together ideas of population theory through a lens of sociobiology and post-humanist philosophy. Through this interpretive synthesis, I form a basis for recasting history as the record of the growing imbalance of our species in light of the unprecedented crises of the environment that are its byproduct. I conclude with the idea that regardless of whether the world is dying or simply going through a fundamental chaotic transformation, the role of the critical-rational historian remains the same: to tell the truth as best as she or he can know it.

The Judicial Bookshelf

The Judicial Bookshelf Donald Grier Stephenson Jr. (bio) Introduction: Supreme Court History as a Parade of Themes Of the hundreds of books about the Supreme Court published in the twentieth century, surely few have been more widely read and referenced than The American Supreme Court by Robert G. McCloskey, professor of government at Harvard University from 1946 until his death in 1969. First published in 1960 by the University of Chicago Press, this compact and elegantly written one-volume interpretive history of the Court has been updated now through six editions by McCloskey's student, Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas.1 The paragraph that concluded the Epilogue in the initial edition combined a historical overview with what appeared to be an admonition for the Warren Court, ironically just as it was on the eve of an even more activist phase. From 1789 to the Civil War, the Court labored to establish a reasoned argument for the cause of union. From the war to 1937 it performed a similar function on behalf of laissez faire. Toward the end of each of those periods, the judges overstepped the practical boundaries of judicial power and endangered the place they had earned in the American governmental system. Since 1937, the Court has striven to evolve a civil rights doctrine that will realize the promise of the American libertarian tradition, yet accord with the imperatives of political reality. Even when criticisms are duly acknowledged, the fact remains that the Court has contributed more to an understanding of this issue than any other agency in American life. It would be a pity if the judges, having done so much, should now once again forget the limits that their own history so compellingly prescribes.2 McCloskey's paragraph illustrates a common goal of many who write about the Court: Highlighting one or more themes that capture the essence of a period of judicial history. [End Page 113] Indeed, in fewer than 150 words, McCloskey pointed to at least four such themes, the last of which was hardly a surprise. As William Lasser observed some three decades later in the context of warnings against an overreach of judicial power, the theme of "weakness and vulnerability pervades the literature on the Supreme Court."3 This theme perhaps echoed the same "forbearance in the use of power" to which Paul Freund referred as he eulogized Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1965.4 The word forbearance itself is a reminder that the Court's work of deciding cases occurs in at least three dimensions as it may choose to allow, to direct, as well as to forbid. Yet in the context of deciding cases contemporary observers as well as someone decades hence might well choose to associate the words political or partisan as both a related and even an identifying theme for the Court of this part of the twenty-first century. That characterization, however, is hardly novel or even distinctive in that the label could also easily be applied to much of the Court's history. Indeed, scholars have long regarded the Court as political in numerous ways. Perhaps most obviously, the Court is political because its decisions shape public policy by deciding what government—national, state, or local—may or may not do. At least since the 1960s, for example, the Court has overseen operation of the criminal justice system to a degree never before experienced, from police-citizen encounters through punishment. Second, decisions clarify the boundaries of political authority, focusing less on what may be done than on who may do it or how it may be done. The Steel Seizure Case5 turned not on whether government could cope with labor disruptions but on whether President Truman in the executive order had exceeded his authority and intruded into Congress's law-making domain. The Legislative Veto case6 did not question government's authority to deport a particular individual but instead challenged the device by which Congress had mandated deportation. Third, the Court itself may become an issue in presidential elections, as has happened at least a dozen times since 1800 because of unpopular decisions. Quadrennial campaigns in the past four decades, for example, would have...

THE TERM AL-HADID IN CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATION (COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE QUR'AN & ITS TAFSEER AND TAFSIR MAFATIH AL GHAIB)

This prompted the author to put forward how the interpretation of verses related to Al-Hadid in the Koran according to the book of the Koran and its Tafsir by the Ministry of Religion of the Republic of Indonesia as a book of contemporary commentaries and Mafatih al-Ghaib by ar-Razi as a classical commentator. The goal is how to analyze the similarities and differences in the interpretation of the Koran and its Tafsir and Mafatih al-Ghaib. The type of research that the author uses is (Library Research) which is qualitative in nature which originates from the Koran, commentary books and books related to the studies that the author examines. The results of this study indicate that the similarities between the Qur'an and its Tafsir and Mafatih al-Ghaib in interpreting Qs al-Isra verse 50, Qs al-Kahf verse 96, Qs al-Hajj verse 21, Qs Saba verse 10 and Qs al-Hadid verse 25 are both explain the utilization of iron. Meanwhile, the difference is found in Qs al-Hadid verse 25, Qs al-Kahf verse 96 and Qs Saba verse 10. According to the Qur'an and its interpretation, iron is one of the elements that functions to transport acids from the lungs to all body tissues, known as iron. Meanwhile, ar-Razi interprets Qs al-Hadid verse 25 that iron is a weapon that can uphold justice and become a sanction for those who violate Islamic law. Then ar-Razi interprets Qs al-Kahf verse 96 that it is a miracle given by Allah to Zulkarnain and finally in Qs Saba verse 10 ar-Razi explains that the iron has been heated with a very hot hell fire.

Tabarruj Perspektif Wahbah Az-Zuhaili dalam Tafsir Al-Munir

Tabarruj is the behavior of a woman who always looks luxurious and shows her jewelry and beauty to others, which in general these jewelry will not be shown by a good woman, or even wear something that is not natural to wear. This study discusses the meaning of tabarruj in the Qur'an according to contemporary commentators, namely Wahbah Az-Zuhaili in his commentary book Tafsir al-Muni>r. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the interpretation of the verses about tabarruj and what are the forms of tabarruj according to Wahbah Az-Zuh}aili> in Tafsir al-Muni>r. This study uses a literature review with a qualitative approach technique. descriptive analysis. The results of this study indicate that: (1) Wahbah Az-Zuh}aili agrees in interpreting the verses of tabarruj, which is an act of women who display their jewelry to attract the attention of other people who are not their relatives. (2) Wahbah Az-Zuh}aili in his commentary explains several forms of tabarruj actions, including a woman stomping her feet when walking, using excessive perfume, make-up, and jewelry when leaving the house, and wearing tight or revealing clothes.

Problems of Distance, Communications, and Authority: How Charles V and Philip II Ruled the Global Spanish Empire

This essay explains how the Spanish (or Castilian) crown during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries managed its worldwide empire. It emphasizes the contribution of, and the tension between, the crown’s two main strategies: political decentralization – or delegation – and imperial centralization. To begin, it contextualizes the issue by exploring the situation at the time and explains how the problems of distance and communication were closely linked. Secondly, drawing on the comments of both contemporary observers and modern historians, this paper examines the approaches used by the Spanish kings in ensuring the optimum reliability of their intelligence networks within Europe and with America. Thirdly, the issue of decentralization is approached. The essay (1) outlines the context for Spanish imperial delegation and how Charles V and Philip II differed in this regard and (2) gives several representative examples of the use of delegation in Europe and abroad. Using the American colonies as a case study, it (3) explores the centralized, peninsula-based forms of administrative delegation (i.e. councils and juntas) and (4) addresses the decentralized, colonial types of delegated government; specifically, viceroys and audiencias. Lastly, the paper explores the imperial strategy of centralization by which the kings of Spain unified their global empire. It argues that, ultimately, these monarchs used a combination of various means to ensure that they received a steady flow of reliable information. They also utilized centralized authority and decentralized administration to ensure that their provinces worldwide were governed efficiently.

Convicts and the Cultural Significance of Tattooing in Nineteenth-Century Britain

AbstractThis article is based on a unique dataset of 75,448 written descriptions of tattoos on British criminal convicts who were either transported or imprisoned during the period from 1791 to 1925. Combining both quantitative evidence (provided as visualizations) and qualitative evidence, it shows that, rather than expressing criminal identities as criminologists and sociologists argued, convicts’ tattoos expressed a broad range of subjects, affinities, and interests from wider popular and even mainstream culture. The diverse occupations held by convicts, the contexts in which tattoos were created, and incidental references to tattooing in other parts of society all point to a growing phenomenon that was embedded in Victorian culture rather than constituting an expression of deviance or resistance. Indeed, in the late nineteenth century, tattooing became fashionable within elite society. These findings not only shed light on the significance of tattooing as a form of cultural expression but also undermine the myth that nineteenth-century criminality was the product of, as contemporary commentators termed it, a distinct “criminal class.”