Perspective Of Social History Research Articles

Alexander Wakelam. Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England. An Economic History of Debtors’ Prisons. [Perspectives in Economic and Social History, Vol. 61.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2021. xi, 253 pp. £97.50. (Paper, E-book: £29.24.)

Alexander Wakelam. Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England. An Economic History of Debtors’ Prisons. [Perspectives in Economic and Social History, Vol. 61.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2021. xi, 253 pp. £97.50. (Paper, E-book: £29.24.)

Neither saintly nor psychotic: a narrative systematic review of the evolving Western perception of voice hearing.

We present a social-historical perspective on the evolution of the voice-hearing phenomenon in Western society. Based upon a systematic search from a selection of nine databases, we trace the way hearing voices has been understood throughout the ages. Originally, hearing voices was considered a gifted talent for accessing the divine, but the progressive influence of monotheistic religion gradually condemned the practice to social marginalization. Later, the medical and psychiatric professions of secular society were instrumental in attaching stigma to both voice hearers and the phenomenon itself, thereby reinforcing social exclusion. More recently, the re-integration of voice hearers into the community by health authorities in various countries appears to have provided a new, socially acceptable setting for the phenomenon.

The Kurds and World War II: Some Considerations for a Social History Perspective

Scholars generally argue that during the Second World War the Middle East, and the Kurdish areas in particular, was a peripheral theatre of an otherwise global war. While this is largely true, it seems necessary to introduce some nuances into this analysis. A view from the borderlands, combined with a socio-historical approach to how the war was experienced on a daily basis behind the front line, reveals that military tensions, large-scale arms smuggling, inflation, food shortages and economic migration were common features in the Kurdish borderlands between 1941 and 1945. Furthermore, looking at the uneventful can help us to better understand the context in which the Kurdish nationalist movement developed during the war and in the immediate post-war years.

The Kurds and World War II: Some Considerations for a Social History Perspective

Vědci obecně tvrdí, že během druhé světové války byl Blízký východ, a zejména kurdské oblasti, okrajovou oblastí jinak globální války. Ačkoli je to do značné míry pravda, zdá se, že je nutné do této analýzy vnést některé nuance. Pohled z pohraničí v kombinaci se sociálně-historickým přístupem k tomu, jak byla válka každodenně prožívána za frontovou linií, ukazuje, že vojenské napětí, rozsáhlé pašování zbraní, inflace, nedostatek potravin a ekonomická migrace byly v kurdském pohraničí v letech 1941-1945 běžnými rysy. Kromě toho nám pohled na neradostné události může pomoci lépe pochopit kontext, v němž se kurdské nacionalistické hnutí během války a v bezprostředně poválečných letech rozvíjelo.

Gesellschaftsordnung, Mentalität und Schriftsprache im Barock

This paper discusses striking, ‘bizarre’ features of textual design and language use in the Baroque period. These features include high complexity, prolixity, conspicuous formulas of politeness, indirectness, mixing of style levels, and the extensive use of a ‘squiggly’ script and other typographic devices. The perspective of social history and history of mentality is used to explain these phenomena. In particular, this paper reflects the influence of the estates in society and the role of confessional differences.

Poryadok, paradigma i politika estetiki: reforma odezhdy v period nepa (1921–1928)

Based on the combing and analysis of historical documents and newspaper images, this paper examines the early Soviet social costume style in the New Economic Policy (NEP) period, and the reasons for its transformation from the perspective of social history of art. The research shows that the dress reform during the NEP period of the Soviet Union experienced multiple model stages such as the paradigm shift from “simple imitation” to “self-construction”, and the discourse integration of “modern” and “national”. At the same time, the aesthetic discourse of socialist fashion, as the politics of aesthetics in daily life, become the mythic metaphor of socialist utopia in the process of constructing national ideology, social and cultural concepts and citizenship consciousness.

Foreign Practices: Immigrant Doctors and the History of Canadian Medicare. Sasha Mullally and David Wright

In Foreign Practices: Immigrant Doctors and the History of Canadian Medicare, Canadian historians of health Sasha Mullally and David Wright examine the interconnected history of Canadian healthcare and immigration. In documenting the relationship between the healthcare system and foreign-born and trained medical practitioners, Mullally and Wright demonstrate the profound impact that these physicians had on the success of Medicare and, in turn, on the shaping of Canadian identity in the mid-twentieth century. This text fills a significant gap in the historiography; the authors note that the social history perspective has long been lacking and the history of this multifaceted relationship has been dominated instead by policy histories, resulting in the absence of health care providers’ voices. This is remedied in Foreign Practices through both a micro and macro analysis, as chapter by chapter the authors first narrow the lens using existing and newly collected oral histories, published memoirs, and obituaries, and then broaden it using institutionally created sources such as published journals and the records of government offices. Through this methodology, the authors not only examine the relationship between Canadian institutions and foreign-trained physicians but also contribute to a growing pool of transnational histories studying the ways immigration policies were shaped across the global north and how immigrant physicians have in turn shaped the healthcare systems in their new home countries. While approaching this topic from the national and global perspectives, the authors skillfully negotiate the nuances that have shaped regional identity as they explore the motivations of immigrant physicians to settle or migrate within Canada after their arrival.

On the performance of conservatism in Song Dynasty and its influence on the Central Plains of later generations

With reference to Martin Heidegger's concept of "Machination" and Hegel's master-slave dialectic thinking, this paper explores the reasons for the emergence of the Song Dynasty, a dynasty conservative feature with special research value in ancient China, from the perspective of human social history. As a dynasty whose economy developed rapidly but was repeatedly defeated, invaded, and forced to compromise with other nationalities, the Song Dynasty was different from the radicalism and chauvinism that the previous dynasties and even more ancient dynasties had always adhered to. The conservative attitude directly led to the demise of the Song Dynasty and had an important influence on the later Central Plains, which provided a reference for the governance decisions of the later dynasties for nearly a thousand years.

Luxury, Fashion and the Early Modern Idea of Credit. Klas Nyberg and Håkan Jakobsson, eds. Perspectives in Economic and Social History 62. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. xiv + 230 pp. $160.

Luxury, Fashion and the Early Modern Idea of Credit. Klas Nyberg and Håkan Jakobsson, eds. Perspectives in Economic and Social History 62. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. xiv + 230 pp. $160. - Volume 76 Issue 1

Uticaj zakona iz aprila 1848 na preobražaj društva i ukidanje kmetstva

The study describes the development of serfdom, the Dózsa Uprising, which was caused by social conflicts and the limitation of serfdom and their legal consequences. A significant milestone was the Urbárium of 1767, followed by two other decisive boundary stones: the Revolution of 1848 and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The latter was also significant in the way that it paved the way for the Austro-Hungarian Empire (alongside Japan) to enter the First World War, in parallel with and in a similar way to the Meiji Restoration, which began in Japan in 1867-1868. The study outlines the relations between serfdom and the peasantry, not only from a legal-historical, but also from an economic and social-historical perspective.

Prolegomena to a New Methodological Approach to the Pagan Divine Man (θεῖος ἀνήρ) in Late Antiquity

Abstract With this article I propose a new methodological approach in the field of pagan divine men studies in late antiquity. The “Divine Men” were the last representatives of ancient παιδεία (education) in a context where religion, education, and philosophy were inextricably intertwined. Decades of scholarly claims bring the research path towards a multidisciplinary focus in which I suggest applying the Weberian concept of charisma from a social history perspective. Thus, this preliminary research puts forward a new heuristic and hermeneutical method to better understand the social processes that those communities influenced.

Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories, by Barbara Black

Reviewed by: Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories by Barbara Black Eloise Moss (bio) Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories, by Barbara Black; pp. x + 245. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2019, $64.95, $34.95 paper, $29.95 ebook, £54.95. The grand hotels of Victorian London provide the spatial crucible for Barbara Black's fascinating investigation of the role of hotels in shaping ideas of citizenship, national identities, morality (including discourses of crime, anonymity, and sexual fantasy), as well as global cross-cultural encounters since the mid-1800s. Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories is crammed full of literary and cinematic references to hotels and to the memoirs of both staff and famous guests—though predominantly focusing on the latter, particularly literary greats such as Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Ouida. The hotel magnates of the era, César Ritz and Richard D'Oyly Carte, are also afforded plenty of scrutiny here for effectively bringing the metropolis's hospitality industry up to the same standard as its Parisian and American counterparts, ensuring that London's hotels could become future "palaces" for luxury stays by exiled kings, diplomats, and celebrities (65). As such, one of the important contributions of this book (hinted at in its title) is to lay the groundwork for exploring the crucial role of hotels in determining the future course of international politics, gesturing toward the powerful motor of commercial hospitality spaces in the history of global diplomacy. [End Page 308] Hotel London is, however, a deep interrogation of hotel stays as a form of cultural psyche rather than a social history, although the second chapter, "Hotel Individualism," does offer architectural and social biographies of five case-study hotels: Brown's, Claridge's, the Langham, the Midland Grand, and the Savoy. Black argues that her focus on the similarity between hotels and the literary project, including the motifs of hotels as spaces of personal reinvention and arbiters of exclusion and inclusion in these texts (and in real life), shifts away from existing historiographical approaches to these buildings often written in an American history context. While scholarship on hotels in modern British history has been largely undertaken from a social historical perspective (particularly in work by John Walton and Kevin James, whose extensive scholarship on late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century British hotels does not feature in this book), literary scholar Charlotte Bates's oft-cited article about the interwar hotel, "Hotel Histories: Modern Tourists, Modern Nomads and the Culture of Hotel Consciousness" (2003), reached very similar conclusions to Black's work, with a comparable blend of disciplinary approaches—though some might simply call this cultural history. Emma Short's excellent recent book Mobility and the Hotel in Modern Literature: Passing Through (2019) is another example of this, though, being published in the same year as Hotel London, one could not expect Black to have drawn upon it. Where Black's work ranges more widely is in the dazzling set of connections it draws between hotels' cosmopolitanism—material, in the form of international goods and services, as well as human in these institutions' diverse populations—and the enduring power of London itself as a nexus of the global consumer economy, explicitly situating hotels as part of the dynamic trends outlined in Judith Walkowitz's study of pre-World War II Soho, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (2012). Black charts how Victorian women's access to hotels as spaces of leisure and sociability, having been coaxed into hosting tea parties and dinners at hotels rather than at home by savvy hoteliers, is an important contribution to the history of the democratizing effects of these commercial spaces. Power and inequality recur as key themes (though are much less developed in relation to race and ethnicity), and are assisted by Black's deft integration of a wide range of theoretical essays on the transitional, experimental nature of hotels by authors such as Wayne Koestenbaum, while the presiding spirit of the text is Walter Benjamin. This elegant conceptual framing of hotels as homes away from home, yet inherently transitional spaces, accompanied by...

Flexible Country in the Making

Internationally, the 1980s marked a shift in economic policy. In the Nether­lands, the supposedly moderate neoliberal turn and the first round of flexibilization characterized the decade. Nowadays, labour market flexibility is exceptionally high in the Netherlands compared to neighbouring countries. This article examines how the trade union movement in the 1980s responded to increasing flexibilization, which strategy was used, and how this contributed to early Dutch flexibilization. In contrast to literature reflecting an institutional perspective, the trade union movement is analysed in this article from a social-historical perspective and as a social movement. As a result, it is argued that the effects of rising flexibilization were noted very early on within the trade unions. Be that as it may, both the priorities that followed from the agreements with employer organizations and the internal dynamics were decisive for the trade union movement’s relatively late and unassertive responses to the flexibilization of labour in the 1980s.

Repensar “Organizações e Sociedade” a partir das Escrevivências: por uma Gestão das e nas Lacunas

Abstract This is not a conventional manuscript that follows the established norms of research in organizational studies, but it does not give up the scientificity required by academia. It is yet another way of doing and writing, as it occurs with the practices developed by those who have been secluded from the prevailing way of organizing in Brazil. Therefore, we propose to rethink the forms of management from the experiences of lacunar subjects and knowledge forms, from the social-historical perspective on the formation of the boundaries of this scientific field. To do so, we adjust our lenses to frame what lies outside the privileged enunciative locus of the instrumental rationality ruling the field and come across Carolina Maria de Jesus and her escrevivências1 about a reality that has been unnoticed by management practices according to the success model of this form of rationality. Therefore, we present a theoretical and scientific article, in which literature is employed as source material to outline the proposed reflections and reframe “organizations and society” from the know-how of those who have been underprivileged by dominant reason.

Colonel Muhammadin and Aman Nyerang’s Fight against the Dutch in Gayo Alas 1910-1950

The purpose of this study was to inform two warrior figures from Gayo, Colonel Muhammadin and Aman Nyerang who had not been recorded in the previously published historiography of the Aceh war. It was important regarding the dimension of the Aceh War which did not cover the coastal area, but also penetrat-ed into Gayo and Alas Land. The researchers conducted several colonial data searches to find the war activities of Colonel Muham-madin and Aman Nyerang. Several annual reports of the colonial government, namely the Koloniaal Verslag and Dutch-language newspapers, were two important sources. The collected sources were then verified through external and internal criticism, until a selected source was found. The available data were then critically read and analyzed to obtain information to answer problems being investigated. The study found out that both figures used different war strategies against the colonials. Aman Nyerang was a fighter who liked guerrilla tactics and used close range attacks armed with a dagger or machete. Muhammadin was a warrior figure who adopted modern war strategies, because he had received Japanese military education. He used such strategies in ambushing the enemy, including by placing snipers in his troops. Colonel Muhammad and Aman Nyerang in the Gayo war had an important role in defending the Aceh re-gion from Dutch rule. Therefore, the roles of both figures need to be recorded in the historiography using social history perspective to provide more comprehensive information for the next generation.

A History of States and Economic Policies in Early Modern Europe. Silvia A. Conca Messina. Perspectives in Economic and Social History 57. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. viii + 238 pp. $160.

A History of States and Economic Policies in Early Modern Europe. Silvia A. Conca Messina. Perspectives in Economic and Social History 57. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. viii + 238 pp. $160. - Volume 75 Issue 3

History of homeopathy and social history of medicine: the story of a successful marriage

The Institute for the History of Medicine (IGM) was established in 1980 by the Robert Bosch Foundation, in Stuttgart, Germany, on the basis of a collection of documents and other small objects belonging to Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. However, since its very inception, its directors considered that the history of homeopathy also had a role to play in the larger picture of the history of medicine. On the other hand, the history of homeopathy was not restricted to the account of the development of ideas and careers of practitioners, but it would benefit significantly by approaching it from the perspective of social history, including the study of institutions, patients’ views, lay supporting societies and publications. This paper presents a review of this project as assessed by an analysis of recent publications that, taken as a whole, reflect the historiographical contribution of researchers at IGM.

„Pozycja prawie idealna”. Związek Polskich Artystów Plastyków wobec przemian politycznych, kryzysu gospodarczego i napięć środowiskowych w latach 1980–1981

This paper examines the participation of the Polish Artists' Union in the complex transformation of communist Poland in 1980–1981 . It is one of the most mythologized phenomena in Polish art history. The main approach to this period assumes that before the of “Solidarity” movement uprising, the Polish Artists' Union was totally dependent on the communist authorities. Then, after August 1980, the Union was to become idealistic, anti-communist organization. The following paper recognizes this kind of historiographical narrative as an example of the 'totalitarian model'. It is a model based on a simple, binary vision of the communist system as a field of permanent struggle between “innocent” society and “oppressive”, omnipotent authorities. The  analysis presented here uses the perspective of social history (Sheila Fitzpatrick et al.). From this perspective, communism is viewed as a complex tangle of active, causative social actors (groups and individuals), who could be politically engaged, but may not be. One of those actors was the Polish Artists' Union. Based on various kinds of sources, I show how the Union tried to take the optimal political position after August 1980. To examine this issue I use two types of political mentality, which dominated in those days in the Party, in “Solidarity”, and also in the Union. One is termed “fundamental”, and treats politics in terms of morality, dignity, and so on. The other is called “pragmatic”, and is focused on institutional games, while also allowing compromises or concessions. To track the dynamics of how the Union functioned from August 1980 until martial law was declared (in December 1981), I introduce a division into three phases of the Solidarity revolution: September-December 1980, January-July 1981, and September-December 1981. An analysis of the Union's documents, art magazines, and Party's documents (both official and internal), shows that after the first phase, the Polish Artists' Union was ready to join  the new configuration of power, based on Solidarity and the Polish United Workers' Party agreement. According to David Ost's theory, I define this project as a “neo-corporatist” model of the state socialism in the art system.
  
  

Hungarian health care in the 1930s and 1940s: health care at a crossroads in East Central Europe before World War II

ABSTRACT The relationship between the Horthy era (1920–44) and the communist era shows continuities from a social historical perspective. The paper contributes to the reinterpretation of these relations by examining Hungarian health care in the 1930s and 1940s with a focus on the relationship between international transfers and path dependency in forging health care reforms. The author argues that the achievements communists regarded as inventions of socialism in health care and the welfare state had already been developed in the 1930s and 1940s. It was only because of the strict wartime budget of the early 1940s that these welfare reforms had not been realized. With the help of internal affairs documents, essays on health care, official statistics records in the National Archives of Hungary and the Semmelweis Library and Archives of Medical History as well as press material, Cora demonstrates that, even if communists depicted the interwar period as ‘fascist and imperialist’, the health care system of the so-called ‘productive social policy’ showed continuities. Moreover, social policy makers of the 1930s and early 1940s, such as Béla Johan, Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer and Béla Kovrig also designed welfare and health care reforms for the post-war period by both developing already existing Hungarian programmes and selectively adapting foreign welfare models (American management principles, the Alsace scheme and the Beveridge Plan). The study investigates Hungarian health care in view of the theory of path dependency and the macrohistorical convergence thesis developed by Tomka (on East–West convergence). It is within this framework that the paper addresses the issue of health care transfers to better understand the development of twentieth-century European health care systems by identifying similarities and differences in their development as well as to speculate on the trajectory of various political solutions to social challenges, including health care.

Whitewashing of Social Work History

Severe racial inequity has characterized the incorporation of ethnic minorities’ contributions to U.S. history and advancements (Sandoval et al., 2016). These disparities are inextricably connected to White Supremacist ideologies and practices, and are perpetuated in higher education through textbooks, pedagogy, and research. Social work, like many disciplines, teaches about its early roots with a whitewashed historical lens. Indeed, review of the social work literature reveals the scarcity of attributions to Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). Without a more racially diverse perspective on social work’s history, social work scholars promote and sustain White Supremacy. The implications of this are crucial since social work education is predominantly populated by privileged White students who adopt this mentality, unaware of Black, Brown, Latino, Asian, Native or Other ethnic “Jane Addams” who have massively promoted the social welfare of communities for decades without historical recognition or the privileged positions of Addams and Richmond. Historical distortions also potentially discourage BIPOC social work students’ self-efficacy and future efforts to contribute and excel in the discipline. To properly address this issue, social work history must be refaced with a more equitable and just lens. This review seeks to address the gap in the literature pertaining to the need for a greater integration and infusion of racially diverse social work historical contributions in several ways. Recommendations will be made for future research in this area to dismantle racist perspectives in social work history, and strategies will be offered to help social work educators and researchers address this critical issue.