History Of Theory Research Articles

Genesis and validity: The theory and practice of intellectual history

Genesis and validity: The theory and practice of intellectual history

ЛІНГВОКУЛЬТУРНИЙ ПІДХІД ДО ВИВЧЕННЯ АНГЛОМОВНИХ НОВОУТВОРЕНЬ

Problems of formation of new words in language are relevant in linguistics since its inception, but there is still no consensus on the understanding of neologism in the linguistic sense. In domestic linguistics, neologisms are studied from the standpoint of stylistic, psycholinguistic, denotative, structural and historical theories based on the criteria of novelty of origin, denoted by denotation, novelty of word form and meaning, novelty of unit use in literary language and speech of individual languages. In foreign linguistics, the lexicographic theory of a new word prevails, in the framework of which neologisms include words that are not registered in dictionaries. However, each of these theories has shortcomings due to its relativity in relation to the individual / linguistic community or due to too narrow a focus. In modern neology, the linguistic and cultural approach is promising, from the standpoint of which neologisms are considered as units with culturally significant information. The approaches studied exist due to the definition that neologisms are the result of human activity and can have a cultural impact. The need to develop a linguo-cultural approach is dictated by the fact that the content of neologisms is formed under the influence of both linguistic and culturological factors. The scope of neologisms is another criterion for determining these linguistic phenomena. As part of the linguo-cultural approach in neology, we focus on literary language. National-cultural marking of language new word is also revealed in the analysis of the system of meanings of new words and their associations in lexical-semantic paradigms. The interaction of language and culture is manifested in the distribution of new lexical items from different conceptual areas in different languages.

The Physical and the Conceptual: Understanding ‘Space’ in the Modern State through Literary and Historical Theory

The Physical and the Conceptual: Understanding ‘Space’ in the Modern State through Literary and Historical Theory

A new place for transport in urban network theory: The urban logistic network

Transport history has developed in close association with urban network theory. However, this association has often remained implicit and not conceptualised. This article starts from an overview of the historiography on urban networks to question the limitations of historical urban network theory by highlighting the connection between an incomplete mapping of hinterlands and the prevalence of a neo-Christallerian model in the interpretation of their network shape. The concept of the “urban logistic network” is proposed as an alternative historical approach that focuses on the interaction between urban systems on the one hand, and transport and mobility on the other hand. In particular, it enables to clarify the conflated concepts of gateways and hinterlands and constructs a taxonomy that allows the examination of network patterns on a variety of geographical scales. It also identifies the variety of network shapes that are created in urban systems by different logistic connections.

Caring about and with Imaginary Characters: Early Childhood Playworlds as Sites for Social Sustainability

We investigate the concept of care in adult-child joint play through two cases that illustrate ways in which the development of care relations among researchers, pedagogues, and children—and the imaginary characters they create through their joint play—shape and sustain early childhood education and care research and practice. We focus on the ways that early childhood education and care pedagogues’ approaches to care provide insights into practices of social sustainability, specifically social inclusion. The cases we present are drawn from recent studies of early childhood play. The studies belong to a corpus of international research projects that are researcher-teacher collaborations. These studies explore a unique form of adult-child joint imaginary play known as playworlds. Playworlds are based on cultural historical theories of development and art, Gunilla Lindqvist’s studies of playworlds, and local theory and practice of early childhood education and care. Our analyses of playworlds are based, in part, on Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects. The two cases are drawn from ECEC playworlds in Finland and the US. Each exemplifies how playworlds, as forms of participatory design research, make social sustainability possible. Furthermore, these cases highlight how, by working with the boundaries between and moving between real and imagined, the participants are able to develop new ways of being that are radically inclusive. We argue that they do so by facilitating and maintaining the development of care relations among researchers, teachers, children, and, importantly, imaginary characters, in ways that create what we call transitional subjects. We conclude that social sustainability, like care, should be conceived of as an ecology of caring practices.

Toward the Problem of Reconciling Lev Vygotskii’s Cultural Historical Psychology with Aleksei Leont’ev’s Activity Theory

ABSTRACT The article considers the problem of the relationship between Lev Vygotskii’s cultural historical theory and Aleksei Leont’ev’s activity theory. Starting from the idea that one scholar is considered the successor of the other, the author analyzes the crux of the fundamental differences in the approaches of the two outstanding psychologists. The author draws on materials from scientific publications by Lev Vygotskii and Aleksei Leont’ev, including those that are not as widely known to the psychological community, as well as the facts from their academic biographies. Of central concern is the problem of how to interpret the tool and the sign, since Vygotskii and Leont’ev have offered competing explanations. This problem can be resolved if they are considered in light of the paradigm of joint activity. This is where the subject (child) learns modes of activity within a certain system of relations with other participants in the activity (adults). The main mechanism that the subject relies upon to develop is the method they learn to resolve these contradictions that arise in the course of such a joint activity and result from the changing modes of activity and the transforming system of relations. Thus, objective activity and communication, which condition each other, can be best understood in light of the solution to the problems of joint activity, which allows us to talk about opportunities for reconciling Vygotskii’s cultural-historical theory with Leont’ev’s activity theory.

On Reaching a Crime Scene Ahead of the Criminal: Dreams of Police and Technology from the 1970s to Today

AbstractThis article examines the history of technological policing in Germany from the 1970s to today. Combining perspectives from intellectual history and legal theory, it explores the ideas and practices of Horst Herold, former President of the German Federal Criminal Police Agency. Herold’s thought was both deeply influenced by cybernetics, a form of techno-utopian thought developed during World War II as well as the basis on which technological policing was first put to the test in Germany. The article illustrates Herold’s hopes for a cybernetic transformation of police, law, and society. It locates Herold’s cybernetic legal theory within a broader context of shifting legal paradigms of German public law towards the so-called preventive state in the 1970s and 80s. Crucially, an anti-legal affect is revealed to lie at the center of Herold’s ideas. His concept of cybernetics ultimately serves to supplant the rule of law. In the concluding part, the article assesses Herold’s legacy and attempts to both critique it and point towards a productive way forward by invoking modern, second-order order cybernetics. The article argues—perhaps counterintuitively—that Herold’s ultimate failure was not adapting cybernetics but rather not staying with it all the way, supplanting its weaknesses, and drawing on its strengths.

Wirtschaft—Reformation—Revolution, I: Vergleichende, soziohistorische Strukturgitteranalysen, and II: Wyclifs Sozialethik, der Aufstand von 1381 und Übergänge zur Moderne. Studien zur historischen Gesellschaftswissenschaft und zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte, by Norbert Fabian

This massive two-volume book is unusual in every way. It is the author’s 2019 Bochum University Ph.D. dissertation, and seeks nothing less than to craft a ‘pluralistically oriented, historical-theoretical approach thereby [combining] critical dialectical theory with historicised, functional-structural theory’ (author’s own English abstract, no pagination). Further, this new approach is heralded as having a deep impact on not only the writing of history but also on the general understanding of historical theory and, not least, its didactic implications. That is a huge claim indeed. As a case-study to support his claims, Fabian analyses the ‘transformational’ society or ‘mixed economy’ of late medieval England—more precisely, the beginning of the Lollard movement, the uprising of 1381 and its aftermath. The basic claim of this study concerns the regional and ‘meso-economic’ beginnings of larger transformations of societies, be that the transition from feudalism to capitalism or from agricultural to industrialised economies. That is certainly plausible, though nothing new. An interesting twist Fabian brings into this narrative, however, is the role of social movements which—at least on the surface—do not discuss poverty, hunger or other aspects of moral economies. In the Lollards he sees such a movement. Rather than presenting new historical findings, however, Fabian has produced a meta-study interested in historical sociology and patterns of historical progress, and thus he devotes the first volume of more than 500 pages solely to theoretical discussions; only in the second volume (another 700-plus pages) does he apply these ideas to his reading of contemporary sources and historical literature. Furthermore, his reading of Wyclif is explicitly inspired by ‘[p]aradigms of 20th-century socio-critical theology’ (author’s own English abstract, no pagination), which might add to its application in terms of democratisation and world societies, but remains rather vague in its impact on historical interpretation.

Tertullian’s moral theology on women and the accusation of misogyny

Some modern scholars have linked the second century church father, Tertullian, to misogynism. This article wades into the debate over whether Tertullian should be considered a misogynist. Through the combined approaches of historical enquiry and interpretative theory, this article probes the validity of such connections. This article also argues that a consideration of Tertullian’s infamous De cultu feminarum and prevailing views of gender in the second and third centuries CE establish that he was not a misogynist per se. Rather, the offending comments should be understood as part of his broader moral and theological worldview of his time to call the Christian women to genuine Christian virtues, sobriety, sincerity, and continence.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article provides a reinterpretation of Tertullian’s attitude towards women for modern readers. While modern thinkers become shocked of some of his remarks about women, we have shown that a proper understanding of Tertullian’s moral theology will change the perception of modern readers, especially on the accusation of misogyny.

Ahmad Syafii Maarif’s Journey of Thought: From Fundamentalism to Inclusivism

<p>This article aims to provide a historical narrative about the journey of thinking of one of the leaders of Islamic thought in Indonesia named Ahmad Syafii Maarif. Syafii Maarif experienced a fundamental thought change from a fundamentalist admirer of the Islamic State of Indonesia to becoming an inclusive person who fights for human values. The track record or range of points of intellectual development is divided into three stages. The first turning point or the phase of intellectual formation of Syafii Maarif's thoughts occurred when he received an education at the Muhammadiyah Mu'allimin Madrasah at Balai Tangah, Lintau, West Sumatra. The second point, or phase of intellectual growth, occurred after continuing his studies at Madrasah Mu'allimin Yogyakarta and finished in 1956. The third point, or phase of intellectual development, happened when he attended a doctoral program at the University of Chicago, United States, completed in 1983. At the university, he experienced a significant intellectual turning point by experiencing a new spiritual and intellectual awakening under Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988). This article uses the historical theory of Kuntowijoyo's thoughts, as a form of thought study methodology in which it examines the text, context, and the relationship between the text and society. This article uses a biographical approach to analyze the genealogy of thought and environmental conditions of Ahmad Syafii Maarif.</p>

‘Creative histories’ and the Australian context

This article brings together a group of history practitioners who, prompted by their experiences of creative approaches to the theory and practice of history, are exploring how the term ‘Creative Histories’ might apply within the Australian context. While the term and practice of Creative Histories has gained international currency in recent years, little has been done to consider its development and relevance in Australia. Here we develop a working definition for the term which has been shaped in conversation with Creative Historians at the University of Bristol and a suite of interviews conducted with 10 Australian ‘creative historians’ who have worked or still work within the academy, as well as four Indigenous artists, academics and activists who each employ creativity in the ways they ‘practice the past’. Together, these influences indicate that questions of purpose, poetics and politics go to the heart of Creative Histories in Australia and that a fuller understanding of both Creative Histories and the creative histories of Aboriginal practitioners will make a useful contribution to conversations concerned with decolonising the discipline in Australia.

Amy Kaplan on Realism and the Imperatives of Empire

Amy Kaplan on Realism and the Imperatives of Empire

A cervical compartment syndrome impairs cerebral circulation in post-thyroidectomy hemorrhage: data from an animal model.

Post thyroidectomy hemorrhage is a potentially life-threatening complication. As the mechanism leading to hypoxemic brain damage and death is still unknown, our aim was to examine the underlaying pathophysiology in an animal model. A series of experiments was performed in our established model for post thyroidectomy hemorrhage in 6 pigs. First, post thyroidectomy hemorrhage was simulated with an artificial increase of cervical compartment pressure. Second, spontaneous bleeding into the cervical compartment was initiated. Primary outcome measure is the correlation between cerebral oxygenation and cervical compartment pressure. With an increase in cervical compartment pressure apnea could be detected in all experiments. A significant 24.2% (9.5-34.4%) decrease of cerebral oxygenation at time of apnea (47.0%; 38.0-65.0%) compared to baseline values (63.5%; 56.0-74.0%; P=0.043) occurred due increase of cervical compartment pressure concurrent with an impaired cerebral perfusion. Apnea occurred about 200 sec after a 10% decrease of cerebral oxygenation, but 35 sec before a 10% decrease of peripheral oxygenation. Spontaneous bleeding into the cervical compartment causes an increase of cervical compartment pressure reaching levels of the mean arterial blood pressure 56.0 (35.0-72.0) mmHg. Peripheral hypoxemia occurs with relevant delay in time after decrease of cerebral perfusion and cerebral hypoxemia, therefore cerebral hypoxemia seems to be causal for a central apnea. With this evidence of impaired cerebral perfusion and cerebral hypoxemia due to an increased cervical compartment pressure we can disprove the historic theory of tracheal collapse due to a compressive hematoma in post thyroidectomy hemorrhage. A cervical compartment syndrome seems to be causal, not only for brain hypoxemia but also an additional laryngo-pharyngeal mucosal edema.

The drying Salton Sea and asthma: A perspective on a “natural” disaster

The Salton Sea is a drying salt lake in an arid region with high aerosol particulate-matter concentrations. This region is plagued by a high incidence of asthma, attributed in part to the aerosols surrounding the Sea. But the connection between the Sea and asthma may be more than simple calculations of dust concentrations. While dusts might contain toxic substances that impact the lungs of residents, the complex dynamics related to the environmental degradation of the Salton Sea may be generating additional toxins relevant to public health, such as microcystins produced by algal blooms. This collection of pollutants may be driving inflammatory responses in the lungs of residents through multiple mechanisms. As such, examination of the full range of potential environmental triggers of lung inflammation promises to yield a better understanding of key mechanisms driving the high incidence of asthma in local residents. Our discussion provides a perspective aiming to re-frame the issue in the context of the historical theory of “miasma” and the linkages between environmental change and health impacts.

Polityka pisarstwa historycznego i polityka literatury. Hayden White i Jacques Rancière czytają Ericha Auerbacha

Politics of Historical Writing and the Politics of Literature – Hayden White and Jacques Rancière Read Erich Auerbach Hayden White and Jacques Rancière used Erich Auerbach’s approach to the history of realistic European literature to construct their own theoretical discussions of historical and literary writing. White thus formulated the concepts of a figural relationship, modernist and figural realism, while Rancière critically commented on the undemocratic historiography of the Annales school and sought egalitarian writings in Western literature. White’s and Rancière’s readings of Auerbach will be used to compare their two theoretical approaches. The purpose of this analysis will be, first, to critically compare some of their contributions, and second, to incorporate Rancière’s claims into the English-language debate on the theory of history. I will try to answer the following question: how in their commentaries on the works of Auerbach White and Rancière defined the relationship between politics and historical and literary writing; how they articulate the politics of historical writing (White) and the politics of literature (Rancière).

Benjamin Constant, political power, and democracy

ABSTRACT For several decades now, a steady flow of scholarly contributions from both intellectual history and political theory has been reasserting Benjamin Constant as a theorist of liberal democracy. Constant’s visionary understanding of liberal democracy is usually conflated with his understanding of limited popular sovereignty. In this article, I reconstruct Constant’s positive conception of popular sovereignty, i.e. his conception of what popular sovereignty means within its limits and take it as the starting point of an analysis of Constant’s understanding of democracy. I argue that Constant’s understanding of popular sovereignty as ‘the assent of all’ leads to a distinction between ‘governmental authority’ and ‘sovereign power’. The latter is exercised by the individual members of the political community and has features that align with contemporary aggregative and contestatory approaches to democracy. Even though according to this analysis, Constant’s conception of democracy allows for both pluralism and dynamism, those are operative against the background of a more fundamental conservatism: Constant’s understanding of sovereign power is predicated on an institutional status quo.

From Dismantling the Class Society to Investing in Human Capital: The Rise and Fall of the Selective Student Finance System in Sweden 1939–1964

The article highlights the history of the early gift-based and selective student finance system of the social democratic welfare state in Sweden, targeting students from the working classes. This lesser-known system, introduced in 1939, preceded the present loan-financed and universal system established in 1965 designed to reach students from all classes. The arguments for launching the selective system, how this system met the objective of broadening the social recruitment of students and the arguments behind the dismantling of the system are analysed. The equalising effect of the selective system was strong, but student loans were nevertheless more compatible with an emerging idea, imported from the Chicago School, that education could be considered an (loan-financed) investment in human capital, that provides future yields rather than a right. Historical institutional theory is used to analyse the shift between two diametrically opposed models that took place within the same Social Democratic regime.

Transformational Processes in the Activity System and in the Educator/Designer through Design Procedure under CHAT

This study analyses the role of design procedures under Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) in the system of the activity and in the educator/designer’s professional and personal skills. Our effort has come as metacognitive outcome of a research that took place at a Contemporary Art Museum and in a classroom for students (11 years old). The purpose of the initial research was to highlight how an educational program under CHAT in a Contemporary Art Museum with the Life Cycle of Materials, as its Object, could affect students’ sustainable literacy, motives and relationships. As a metacognitive process the educator/researcher, who was simultaneously the designer, also studied the transformational processes of all Subjects of the activity system as well as her professional and personal transformations as an internal study for self-literacy. This paper describes trajectories of strategies, interactions, and expansions to the activity system, and puts forward for discussion the use of theoretical tools and epistemological principles of expansive learning for metacognitive analysis. Practical engagements with the theoretical framework of CHAT, came out as an important factor in the development of transformative agency and self-literacy at a professional level.

Towards an eco-decolonial museum practice through critical realism and Cultural Historical Activity Theory

ABSTRACT Museum practice remains rooted in its historical ontology of nature-culture dualism. This article moves beyond this dualism by combining Bhaskar’s dialectical MELD schema with cultural historical activity theory. It therefore provides an iterative, practical pathway towards a new, ecological-decolonial mode of museology that potentially disrupts normalized practice and generates new possibilities for museums to offer people agency. A situated turn for museum practice is thus envisioned, with a focus on people as complex social-ecological entities. Specifically, this involves a dialectical relationship between peoples’ stories, or intangible heritage, and the core museum activity of collecting.

Assembling Path Dependency and History: An Actor-Network Approach

Abstract Historians and social scientists struggling to redefine the relationship between synchrony (structure) and diachrony (events and human agency) have recently turned to the notion of path dependence, the core idea of which is that history matters. But history and path-dependence theory have less in common than might appear at first glance. Actor-network theory (ant) helps to bridge the gap between history and path dependence by incorporating the complex, layered, open, and hybrid nature of interlocked economic, symbolic, institutional-political, and socio-technical systems.