Cultural Reform Research Articles

Resister’s logic: the anti-vaccination arguments of Alfred Russel Wallace and their role in the debates over compulsory vaccination in England, 1870–1907

In the 1880s, Alfred Russel Wallace, the celebrated co-discoverer of natural selection, launched himself into the centre of a politicised and polarised debate over the unpopular compulsory vaccination laws in England. Wallace never wavered in his belief that smallpox vaccination was useless and likely dangerous. Six years before his death, the anti-vaccinationists successfully secured a conscience clause that effectively dismantled the compulsory vaccination laws. Several other important Victorian scientists joined Wallace in the fight to repeal compulsory vaccination arguing that widely held views on the effectiveness of vaccination and evidence for immunity were inconclusive in the light of (then) contemporary standards of evidence. This article situates Wallace’s anti-vaccination logic within the broader matrix of sociopolitical and cultural reform movements of the late Victorian era. Additionally it provides the first detailed analysis of his critique of vaccination science, in particular the role statistics played in his arguments. In this period, both pro-vaccinationists and anti-vaccinationists invested great efforts in collating and analysing statistical data sets that either supported or refuted the claims of vaccination’s effectiveness. While each side presented ‘controlled’ case studies to support their assertions, without an unambiguous test to measure or demonstrate vaccination’s effectiveness, the anti-vaccinationists continued to mount credible statistical critiques of vaccination science.

The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England by Dror Wahrman Becoming Historical: Cultural Reformation and Public Memory in Early Nineteenth-Century Berlin by John Edward Toews (review)

268 Max Weber Studies than declarations, legislation, and constitutions. The latter have indeterminate pur chase, and might even constitute ruses to mislead external agencies form the more pedestrian and opaque realities of state power. Each of the case studies is of high quality and refreshingly theoretically engaged (as opposed to empirical and comparative in approach). I will finish with a few criti cal comments, none of which should be taken as a reason not to read the book, which is an important antidote to the swathes of privatization literature, especially that which has resulted from consultancies for development organizations. For all the complexity, subtle continuities, and historical context, it is clear that something novel has been taking place over the past twenty years. This novelty remains underspecified in the book, although there is clearly some assumption about the global consolidation of capitalism. After all, all of the case studies derive from 'transition economies', which have been powerfully hit by neoliberal agendas. And, in many ways, the kinds of processes described in the chapters are not historically alien of capitalist development understood generally or abstractly. Many aspects of the forging of capitalism in Europe—as Adam Smith observed and critiqued—relied on favour, force and criminality, themes that Max Weber was certainly also aware of. The book would have benefited from greater depth in terms of understanding the nature of moments of significant and unstable capitalist consolidation rather than making the less ambitious contradistinction with the highly ideological representa tions of the neoliberals. And, why not include some Western case studies? I would have thought that the United States or the UK post-1989 would have fitted rather nicely into any of the three sections. Graham Harrison University of Sheffield Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modem Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Cen tury England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. xvii + 414. ISBN 0-300-10251-8. £25.00 (hbk). John Edward Toews, Becoming Historical: Cultural Reformation and Public Memory in Early Nineteenth-Century Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. xxiv + 466. ISBN 0-521-83648-4. £55.00 (hbk). These two densely written, ambitiously presented, provocatively argued and deeply learned books present cutting edge cultural and intellectual histories of the modern self in both eighteenth-century England, and nineteenth-century Prussia and Berlin. Both are concerned with the way in which one can understand the rise of modern 'selfhood' as both idea and historical reality in the modern period, and both are equally concerned with the interrelationship between the idea of the self and history on the other. Put another way, understanding the development of the modern self historically, and the understanding of the self as a self in history are themes that unite these books that range, nevertheless, over different geographical and chronological time periods, but this unity is what justifies their interest to readers of such a journal as Max Weber Studies. Not only was Weber profoundly interested in the develop ment of the idea of the self as a category, and of the idea of the development of the self as a creature of personality. He was also profoundly influenced, of course, by© Max Weber Studies 2008. Book Reviews 269 developments in English and German history, and these two studies throw impor tant light on both chapters, and provide telling glimpses into those areas that were of such interest to Weber. Where Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self (1990) focused on providing an histori cal philosophy of selfhood, Wahrman sees his project as an historical 'epistemology' of selfhood, and wishes to pursue the argument that in the final decades of the eigh teenth century, a revolution in the concept of selfhood occurred. Ranging widely over the sentimentalist novels and manuals of moral instruction, to comparison with animal psychology and racism, social anthropology, court cases and art historical illustration, alongside the prodigiously important ideas of language acquisition and its impact, Wahrman offers a complex and theoretically sophisticated social history of selfhood and its development in his period. He is keen to show too, as others have, the multiple languages of selfhood apparent in his study, illustrating that not all stadial theorists...

The Exploration of Natural Gas and its Export Potential in Bangladesh

There is a puzzling uncertainty about the real size of gas reserves in Bangladesh. Different institutions and companies provide widely differing estimates. No authority is able to verify the actual reserves. Nevertheless, most evidence shows that the country has vast natural gas reserves, exceeding the present domestic demand. This raises a question: should Bangladesh export some of its gas? Obviously, the export of natural gas will generate revenues for the country to balance its trade, and for investment in many other sectors. It will enable the government to implement social and cultural reforms and development programmes in primary education, poverty reduction, health and infrastructure. However, exporting natural gas in a developing country like Bangladesh is not an easy matter. The public is divided into two camps: those who are in favour and those who are against it. Following a brief history of Bangladeshi gas exploration, this article looks at its natural gas export potential and geology education associated with natural gas exploration. It discusses gas exploration by several national and international companies, and how they became a conduct for the transfer of technology and innovations. It also looks at the idea and plans for a pipeline to India to carry Bangladeshi gas. Finally, it concludes that there is an urgent for radical reforms in the Bangladeshi gas industry and institutions from exploration to marketing.

IT, culture, context

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the implementation of a service improvement in the UK National Health Service, relevant to the National Programme for IT in the NHS.Design/methodology/approachCase study and semi‐structured interviews, relating users' interaction with information systems to other aspects of a service improvement programme.FindingsInformation technology is a major plank of public sector service reform in general. Its impact will rely on the completeness of cultural reform and the transformation of a reactive information audience into one more proactive in seeking and making opportunities for beneficial change.Research limitations/implicationsThe research reported was conducted in a single setting, preliminary to an action research project. The project's aim will be to engage NHS users in a critical appreciation of their information needs, and to contribute this appreciation to the evaluation and refinement of the National Programme for IT and its products. The advantage of a situated study stems from concrete perspective and the capture of detail. These elements are readily understood by the reader, who can then assess the level of relevance to his own situation.Practical implicationsThe intervention of a major information project ought to be synchronised in the host community with organisational development and the critical review of information needs.Originality/valueInasmuch as the NHS can be said to epitomise the social complexity of other major public sector organisations, the paper will interest readers from outside and inside the NHS. The contribution of a recipient perspective will counterbalance the tendency to “technology push” detectable in the National Programme.

Indonesian short films after Reformasi 1998

It has been seven years since the cultural and political reformation of Indonesia. With freedom comes chaos, and with chaos, a rebirth. Short filmmaking has re‐organized, re‐shuffled and re‐vitalized itself since 1998, and today Indonesian short filmmaking has emerged from the chaos with forward‐thinking foundations and a passionate drive to keep it alive.

Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai

Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai

Police Education and the University Sector: Contrasting Models from the Australian Experience

University education for police officers continues to be heralded as a major component in the reform of police organizations and police culture. Interestingly, the extensive research literature from the United States over the past 30 years remains ambivalent about the extent to which education achieves these objectives. Individual officers doubtless gain personal and professional benefits, but the relationship between higher education and police effectiveness, professionalism and accountability remains unclear. Nevertheless, the Australian experience since the late 1980s is that concerted efforts to provide university programs for police almost invariably arise from periods of crisis in police organizations and the recommendations of official inquiries into those organizations. Two educational “reform” models have resulted, one based on liberal education and the other on a paradigm labeled “professional policing.” These now constitute the main (contrasting) paradigms for police education and training across different states. The case study concludes that the relationship between university education and preparation for policing is likely to remain problematic.

10 The Subject of Freedom at the End of History: Socialism Beyond Humanism

Abstract. The postmodernist turn in theory left the status of humanism in some doubt. This chapter argues that a recuperation of a specifically socialist humanism is both possible and desirable, but only by overcoming the anthropocentrism of radical humanism. Renaissance and Enlightenment conceptions of the subject were rooted in an untenable dichotomy between the human and the animal, in ways that vitiated the idea and ideal of universal freedom. By conflating subjectivity as such with human subjectivity, humanism created a diremption in the world that placed the knower (human consciousness) on one side, and the merely known (objectified Nature) on the other. Marxism and socialist humanism reproduced this error in ways that have undermined the socialist vision of universal emancipation, misconstrued the nature of the subject, and overlooked the significance of human domination of other animals. The author advocates a new approach, what he calls metahumanism, to affirm a “two‐sided” freedom in which the liberation of other animals from human oppression, and the emancipation of ourselves as animals—that is, the restoration of the sensual dimension of existence, free sexual expression, and valorization of the labor and love of the body—would become central features of a new movement for civil and cultural reform.

Loyal Patriot? Traitorous Collaborator? The Yun Ch'iho Diaries and the Question of National Loyalty

Loyal Patriot? Traitorous Collaborator?The Yun Chiho Diaries and the Question of National Loyalty Mark E. Caprio In August 2004 Republic of Korea (South Korea) President Roh Moo Hyun called for the creation of a parliamentary commission to identify Koreans who had collaborated with Japan during its thirty-six years of colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula. The crimes of these collaborators, Roh explained, constituted “[a]cts of betrayal in support of imperialist Japan and colonial rule at the time our patriotic forefathers were staking their lives in the fight for the nation [and remain] hidden in the shade of history.”1 Critics accused Roh of attempting to rectify the past “through a political initiative” and warned that his inquiry “would have an explosive and inflammatory effect on the country that might well be hard to control.”2 Disregarding this warning, one year later the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities compiled a list of 3,090 collaborators, and promised to add more names in the near future.3 The term “collaborator,” as used pejoratively to describe someone whose actions or attitudes in support of a foreign occupation can be considered treasonous,4 is controversial primarily because it judges suspect individuals based on a context politically different from that which they committed their alleged crimes. It fails to consider the fact that the accused held a different sense of state and nation than that held by their accusers. It also attempts to render a judgment based on the activities of the accused, and fails to consider the pressures, reasoning, or circumstances that influenced the decisions they made. Timothy Brook notes, “those who appear to have chosen the reality of collaboration may have been engaging in a calculus of options and risks different from the simplicities that hindsight, and the nationalist narrative that thrives on it, hands to us.”5 In the case of Korea, few of the people listed as traitors remain alive to explain their case. A fairer assessment of their alleged betrayal requires a more comprehensive inquiry into the cognitive reasoning and ambitions behind these activities. The case of Yun Ch’iho (1864–1945) offers an appropriate example to test the justice of a collaboration charge precisely because of the complications and ambiguities it presents. Yun’s extensive contacts with Japanese nationals, and the support and assistance he offered to the Japanese colonial government during Japan’s participation in World War II, led to placing his name on various lists of collaborators. But there was an earlier phase in Yun’s life, when previous to Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910 he encouraged political, social, and cultural reform in Korea that established his qualifications as a Korean patriot. A review of his extensive eleven-volume diary that he maintained primarily in English throughout the pre- and post-annexation phases of his life provides a unique insight into his actions and the motivations that influenced them. Collaboration Examined Efforts by Koreans to identify collaborators predate President Roh’s recent campaign. The first post-war attempt to identify pro-Japanese collaborators was brought to a halt in 1949 by the first South Korean President, Syngman Rhee (1948–1960). Over the next four decades, which included the long period of autocratic rule by Park Chung Hee (1961–1979), investigations into collaboration became taboo. The democratization of South Korea starting in the late 1980s, however, helped to revitalize efforts to address collaboration. A three-volume set of biographies of ninety-nine members of the “pro-Japanese faction” (ch’inil p’a) that appeared in 1993 constituted a fresh effort to finally address this issue. Published on the 74th anniversary of Korean people’s most ambitious effort to drive the Japanese from their homeland—the March First (1919) Independence Movement—this project identified the most notorious Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese colonial administration.6 The root of the problem, however, is found in the days that surrounded Japan’s surrender and after the United States and the Soviet Union divided the Korean peninsula. Kim Pong’u, in his introduction to the ch’inilp’a volumes, blames the U.S. administration for Korea’s present plight: In addition to dividing...

Free trade, feudal remnants and international equilibrium in Gaetano Filangieri's Science of Legislation

In his main work, The Science of Legislation (1780–1783), the Neapolitan Gaetano Filangieri proposed a set of extensive political and cultural reforms. These reforms were necessary to free eighteenth-century societies from the remnants of feudal institutions that obstructed international peace and economic growth. Filangieri's ideas were shaped by the international political climate between the seven Years’ War and the eve of the French Revolution. Reinterpreting Montesquieu and Genovesi through the influences of French radical and Enlightenment thought (Helvétius, Raynal, l’ Encyclopédie), as well as the economics of Hume, Verri and the Physiocrats, he concluded that European modernity was inherently contradictory. From this perspective Filangieri set out to force a clean break between the technical horizons of mercantilism and enlightened absolutism and a society based on civil rights, a fair distribution of wealth and resources, and free trade. Proper ‘scientific’ knowledge of the rules and principles of legislation would allow governments to balance out the natural and cultural factors that characterise individual states, and to identify the appropriate model for social and economic development. If all states acted on their proper interest, international free trade and peaceful competition between states would emerge and the potential for general economic growth be materialised. Thus, the natural equilibrium and ‘universal consensus’ among nations could be restored.

The Yapunyah project: Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in the nursing curriculum

The Yapunyah Project is an initiative of the Faculty of Health at Queensland University of Technology. It was instigated to further improve the development of cultural competence in health graduates with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. The project was informed by the cultural competence in healthcare delivery models of Campinha-Bacote (1998a) and Cross, Bazron, Dennis and Isaacs (1989) and by the cultural safety reforms to nursing curricula in New Zealand. The Yapunyah Project involved extensive consultation and collaboration with Indigenous staff and health experts in the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. A core curriculum, and associated graduate transcultural competencies, were informed by these discussions and earlier reforms in health curricula by the Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. Although the overall project involved four separate schools within the faculty, this paper details the experience of embedding Indigenous perspectives within the undergraduate nursing curriculum. The experience has been a challenging and positive one, and the reforms have been supported by a sustainable framework. This paper outlines how one university faculty is endeavouring to prepare nursing students educationally to practice with evidence-based transcultural nursing knowledge based on culture care values, beliefs, and traditional lifeways of Indigenous people of Australia. As such, the project aims to contribute to the improvement and promotion of the health and well-being of Indigenous Australians in culturally and ethnohistorically meaningful ways.

A National Educational Cultural Reform Model: Professionalizing the Principalship to Reform a Nation's Educational System

A National Educational Cultural Reform Model: Professionalizing the Principalship to Reform a Nation's Educational System

Jane Addams, pragmatism and cultural policy

This article examines the American social reformer Jane Addams (1860–1935), not so much as an intellectual in her own right, but rather as somebody who embodied certain contradictions regarding the cultural idealism of the intellectual class in the late nineteenth century. Addams’ principal achievement was to co‐found a “settlement house” in Chicago in 1889. Settlement houses were residential communities established by universities among the urban poor, where idealistic young graduates would engage their neighbours in improving cultural and educational activities. Like other nineteenth‐century institutions such as museums and libraries, settlement houses represented a middle‐class attempt at cultural outreach and democratization. Addams analyzed the motives for establishing such an institution and the cultural contradictions it embodied. Her habitual self‐doubt steered her towards a pragmatic multiculturalism at odds with her contemporaries, and eventually towards an emphasis on art and education as catalysts for cultural diversity. Addams was responsible for transforming the settlement house from an instrument of cultural reform into a prototype community offering a public sphere based on tolerance and diversity. Her autobiography reveals the guilt, self‐disgust and doubt which lie behind nineteenth‐century cultural idealism and twentieth‐century cultural democratization.

Tourism Higher Education in Turkey

SUMMARY This paper discusses and evaluates tourism higher education in Turkey. Turkish universities have been offering associate, bachelor, and postgraduate degree programs in tourism since the early 1990s. However, there have been major problems and challenges in this endeavor, including the lack of qualified academic staff, improperly designed curriculums, limited practical training opportunities for students, and difficulties in keeping qualified graduates in the industry. So far, it is hard to claim that Turkey has developed contemporary tourism higher education policies and plans. If Turkey is to gain more from tourism in the long term, it is essential for the country to improve the standards of tourism higher education. However, to achieve this, some radical cultural and structural reforms are needed, not only in tourism higher education, but also in the country's overall higher education system.

When Zarathustra spoke: the reformation of neolithic culture and religion

When Zarathustra spoke: the reformation of neolithic culture and religion

THE BIRTH OF MODERN MEMORY

John Edward Toews, Becoming Historical: Cultural Reformation and Public Memory in Early Nineteenth-Century Berlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. pp. xxiv + 466.George S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. pp. xiv + 428.Peter Fritzsche, Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. pp. 268.Each generation chooses its own objects of historical inquiry. Over the past decade or two, many historians have moved away from perennial topics in social and political history, turning their gaze on more ethereal questions in the realm of “memory studies.” The three splendid books under review here examine elusive phenomena in nineteenth-century Europe: the transformation of historical consciousness, the invention of national myths, and the emergence of nostalgia as a prominent element of European culture after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic age. Taken together, these works vividly illustrate both the value and the challenges of scholarship on the modern historical imagination.

The customer concept in welfare administration: front‐line views in Jobcentre Plus

PurposeAims to analyse the reactions of front‐line staff to the use of the “customer” label in Jobcentre Plus, the new agency charged with structural and cultural reform of benefit administration in the UK and to highlight some key challenges and possibilities faced by “new public management” reformers in attempts to re‐present recipients of public services as customers.Design/methodology/approachData are drawn from semi‐structured interviews with 39 front‐line workers in 14 public offices, conducted as part of the second phase of a study on staff perceptions of the Jobcentre Plus reform.FindingsThe majority of those interviewed reported awareness of and agreement with the customer label. More substantive views point to the ambiguous and shifting meanings applied by public sector workers to the customer roleper se, and to its complex and multifaceted application to the Jobcentre Plus context.Research limitations/implicationsProvides a systematic account of front‐line workers' attitudinal reactions to the incursion of the customer concept. However, the impact on users of the system is a question for further research.Practical implicationsIdentifies a set of possibilities and challenges inherent in attempts to manage relevant cultural change amongst the front‐line of public service provision.Originality/valueProvides a systematic account of the views of front‐line workers to the customerisation of public service provision, an issue of interest both to researchers and to practitioners.

Luis Antonio Verney and the Portuguese cultural reforms: a pedagogical issue

The cultural and political process observed during the 18th century presents specific characteristics which do not allow a generalized analysis. In Portugal, reforms which took place as from the Pombaline ministry met the centralized wishes of the marquis. From this perspective, this article analyses the influence the pedagogy of the Jesuit priest Luis Antônio Verney had over that period in Portugal as well as the impact it had within the intellectual and traditional circle of the Society of Jesus, which Verney left to develop his theories on teaching.

Twentieth-Century School Music Literature in China: A Departure from Tradition

Introduction The development of music and music education in modern China through the entire twentieth century was predominantly governed by the development of the nation in that same period. The political, social, and psychological changes that occurred in Chinese society at large within that particular period deeply influenced the development of music and music education. The Chinese musical heritage, a profound human cultural legacy, encompasses a variety of genres, a wealth of repertoire, and a style that is all its own. For thousands of years Chinese folk songs, operas, narrative music, and instrumental music--with their pentatonic tonal expressions--revealed and expressed the suffering, joy, and human nature of a people. This musical expression includes, among other things, tales about the Kunlun Mountain, the Yellow River, spectacular ancient wars, and the peaceful and quiet farming lives of the people. It tells stories or describes nameless sentiments through its own tone, its own mood, and its own attitude. It provides an aesthetic experience that is different from that of the music of other cultures in the world. Chinese music is unique because of its particular way of putting together musical sound patterns in compositions. Its musical foundations, elements, idioms, structural processes, and stylistic devices together form the compositional common practices that have been consistently recognized and understood by Chinese listeners throughout history. The knowledge of and ability to comprehendthese compositional common practices in traditional Chinese music is the Chinese music literacy. This music literacy is based upon a type of pentatonicism that is unique to Chinese music. The advent of the twentieth century brought not only the threat of European colonialism to China, but also saw an influx of Western culture that led to the development of a Westernized system of music education in China. The diatonic music of Europe has permeated and dominated the classrooms of modern China since that time. For the past one hundred years, music and music education in China have, in other words, been colonized by Western music. The Westernization of Music and Music Education in Twentieth-Century China The mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century was a critical and difficult time for China, as the Qing dynasty tried to protect its heritage from the growing influence of Western missionaries, stave off European and Japanese colonization, and put down increasingly violent citizen revolts. Growing internal economic pressure, the Opium War (1839-1842), and the Boxer Rebellion (1900) all contributed to the downfall of the Qing Empire and establishment of the new Republic of China in 1911. It was a time of change between two centuries, two societal systems, and two cultures with very different values and tremendous misunderstandings. (1) When the Opium War ended in 1842, the British with their modern weapons had not only won the war, but also had blown open the closed doors of the Qing Empire. China now had to face the reality of dealing with the scientifically advanced cultures of Japan and the West. The Treaty of Nanjing (1842), in which China ceded the island of Hong Kong and granted unprecedented trade advantages to the British, was the first of a series of inequitable treaties the Qing government signed with Western nations. (2) The Boxer Rebellion, an officially sanctioned peasant uprising that attempted to drive out all foreigners, ended in 1900 with imperial leaders agreeing to more trade concessions and granting more control to Western powers who sought to carve up China into many colonies. (3) The Movement of Westernization and Educational Reform (1860-1911) The fear of being colonized led Chinese intellectuals and government officials to pursue self-strengthening through a movement of political and cultural reformation. These leaders agreed that China should learn from the West in order to fight against the West. …

PATTERNS OF ATTENTION: FROM SHOP WINDOWS TO GALLERY ROOMS IN EARLY TWENTIETH‐CENTURY BERLIN

In the aesthetic programmes promoted by the various German cultural reform movements that flourished in the years before the 1914–18 war patterns took on unprecedented significance. This article investigates the importance of abstract pattern‐making in the display strategies adopted in the museum and in the market place. Philosophical and experimental psychology was a common background in both cases. Among the questions that the article addresses are the following: Why were abstract colours and forms and their rhythmic arrangement assigned such a prominent place in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century? Why were they favoured above the more traditional illusionistic designs? Did gendered assumptions about consumption determine design choices? The article ends with an account of a new kind of display strategy that emerged in the late 1920s in antithesis to pre‐war efforts to engage patterns of attention. This abandoned the attempt to make a psycho‐physical impact on the perceiving subject in favour of a discursive strategy that posits subjects as part of rational collectives.