Spirit Of Enterprise Research Articles

John Limbird, Thomas Byerley, and the Production of Cheap Periodicals in the 1820s

In January 1884 the Bookseller reported the death of the stationer, bookseller, and publisher John Limbird (1796?–1883), observing: few persons were even acquainted with his name, and fewer still with the work he had performed, and it will, perhaps be startling to some to be told that in losing John Limbird we lose the father of our periodical literature. Before Charles Knight, before William and Robert Chambers, Limbird published the most reputable and most successful of weekly publications, the Mirror, a sheet of sixteen demy octavo pages, with one or at most two woodcuts at the price of twopence.1 Described by Richard Altick as "the first long-lived cheap periodical," the Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction (1822–49) was by far the most successful among the spate of twopenny weekly miscellanies that appeared during the 1820s.2 Within a couple of years of its inception more than 80:000 copies of some parts had been printed, and total sales [End Page 75] of the first number ultimately exceeded 150:000.3 In regard to these most popular numbers, the editor, Thomas Byerley (1788–1826), had some justification for his hyperbolic claim that it gained "a circulation infinitely more extensive than that of any Periodical Work that ever was published."4 Sustained sales were undoubtedly lower, and a reported figure of 10:000 to 15:000 copies seems realistic.5 Even at this more modest figure, however, the Mirror matched the circulation of the six-shilling Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews (around 12:000 copies), and outstripped those of the half-crown (2s. 6d.) Blackwood's and two-shilling Monthly Magazine (around 3:000 to 4:000 copies), the eightpenny Literary Gazette (around 3:000 copies), and the sevenpenny Times (around 6:000 copies). Indeed, in numerical terms it was second only to such sixpenny religious monthlies as the Evangelical Magazine and the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine (around 18:000 to 25:000 copies).6 The Mirror thus had reasonable grounds for claiming to have "created a new era in the history of periodical literature."7 While it was neither the first of the cheap miscellanies nor the only one to experience a degree of success, it had a symbolic significance in demonstrating the commercial potential of the genre. The "men of trade," Byerley pointed out, seemed previously not to have grasped that "small profits on an extensive sale might be as productive as exorbitant charges where the sale was limited." One contemporary observed: There was a time, when it was considered, even by the most opulent booksellers, a great hazard to undertake a periodical publication. … But how different is the spirit of enterprise now-a-days. After the "Mirror of Literature" was established, innumerable twopenny or threepenny works arose in imitation, and at one time, we believe, there were upwards of sixty in existence. So profitable were these speculations then imagined, from their apparently flourishing condition, that every literary garreteer, and broken-down bookseller's clerk, considered the establishment of a twopenny publication as a new and certain way of realizing a fortune.8 Despite its obvious importance in periodical history, however, the circumstances of the Mirror's inception have remained obscure.9 It is clearly not a history that should be told in terms of a heroic "father of our periodical literature," as Limbird's obituarist had it. On the contrary, like many innovative periodicals, the Mirror resulted from a series of encounters among those we might call the technicians of print—publishers, printers, editors, writers, engravers, wholesalers, and retailers—who drew on existing [End Page 76] literary and publishing practices to create a commercially viable product. Unlike many of the better-known literary periodicals, however, those involved in shaping the Mirror were obscure publishers and Grub Street hacks, about whom little is recorded. In 1825 a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine imagined how such twopenny miscellanies were generally commenced: "Two youngsters...

Brown and the "Road to Reunion"

ON MAY 16, 1954, AFTER A HEROIC SCRAMBLE TO MEET A SELF-IMPOSED publishing deadline, University of North Carolina Press released Harry S. Asbmore's The Negro and Schools just hours before United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Ashmore's conclusion to his impressive compilation of interdisciplinary insights reflected his characteristic optimism, as well as his lifelong pursuit of status of a prophet. In long sweep of history, he wrote, the public school cases before Supreme Court may be written down as point at which South cleared last turning in road to reunion--the point at which finally, and under protest, region gave up its peculiar institutions and accepted prevailing standards of nation at large as legal basis for its relationship with its minority race. Abandoning all caution in his death-defying plunge into prophecy, Arkansas editor continued: This would not in itself bring about any great shift in Southern attitudes, nor even any far-reaching immediate changes in pattern of bi-racial education. But it would re-define goal Southern people, white and Negro, are committed to seek in way of democracy. (1) How good a prophet was Harry Ashmore? The Arkansas editor was simply first in a long line of commentators on Brown decision, such a long succession, in fact, that ongoing debate has begun to exhibit characteristics of a cottage industry. George B. Tindall captured some of spirit of enterprise when he cautioned his former graduate students, I've managed to make a pretty good living out of this for a good many years, and if you all will just keep your mouths shut, you can too. Just stop talking about 'the vanishing South'! (2) Academic assessments of Brown decision have ranged from questioning its legitimacy to trumpeting its vast reach to decrying its insignificance, but because of decision's symbolic importance in heralding an end to segregation in this country, it has assumed an iconic status that scholars have challenged at their peril. (3) Brown's fiftieth anniversary invites reflection and renewed dialogue, although arena of debate on this issue is clearly no venue for timid. Surely Ashmore's no-holds-barred attitude is appropriate one for undertaking, just as surely as his spirit hovers--in a pose of expectant urgency--over entire enterprise. The Ford Foundation employed (as he said, because no southern university would risk placing its imprimatur on such an endeavor) to provide federal courts and southern school districts with an assessment of status of black education in preparation for expected success and implementation of Brown. (4) While fact-finding was his first priority and assignment, admitted to a confidant that a major focus of project was necessarily a quiet public relations job intended to line up some of in South to step forward i[f] blow falls and urge everybody to count up to ten before they start talking about blood in streets. (5) The Ford Foundation subsequently applied funds left over from Ashmore Project to create Southern Education Reporting Service, a neutral agency charged with tracking progress of desegregation in South (its monthly Southern School News quickly became standard source of information for school boards and editors across region). (6) One of big wheels lobbied to respond positively to Brown was Little Rock school superintendent Virgil T. Blossom. At least in part as a result of Ashmore's influence, Blossom led his school board--an exceptionally moderate and enlightened group of public servants--into an immediate endorsement of desegregation in city's public schools; within a matter of months he had fashioned so-called Blossom Plan of gradual implementation of Brown in his city. …

Wenham, ‘More Enterprising Spirit’

Wenham, <i>‘More Enterprising Spirit’</i>

Women and the Amistad Connection--Sierra Leone Krio Society (review)

Reviewed by: Women and the Amistad Connection—Sierra Leone Krio Society Sylvie Kandé Women and the Amistad Connection—Sierra Leone Krio Society By Filomina Chioma Steady Rochester, VT: Schenkman, 2001. 305 pp. Annexes, bibliography, index. Filomina Steady, a well-known scholar of feminism in Africa and the diaspora (see The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, Schenkman, 1985) as well as on the primacy of women's issues in development projects (see Women and Children First: Environment, Poverty and [End Page 180] Sustainable Development, Schenkman, 1985), has undertaken in the present work a cultural anthropology of the Krio women of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. The Krio (or Creole) community of Sierra Leone, for purposes of identification, is composed of descendants of "Returnees" who came back between 1787 and 1800 from Great Britain, the United States of America, and Jamaica to establish themselves in that area, followed by the "Liberated" who came from the African coast (sometimes from the region of Sierra Leone itself) between 1807 and 1863. The "Black Settlers," to use the designated term, occupied land bought by English philanthropists who nourished the idea of "recycling" these ex-slaves as agents in the burgeoning colonial enterprise. Returnees and Liberated thus founded the colony of Sierra Leone, its capital Freetown, and the neighboring villages on the peninsula, despite efforts by the area's first African occupants (Temne, Sherbro, Loko, Kissi, Mende, and others) to recuperate their territory. Historiography generally sets the Creole/Krio group, united by their Christian values, Victorian tastes, and spirit of enterprise, against the people of the hinterland (aka Protectorate), even though there are examples of collusion among the Returnees/Krio and the first inhabitants/"natives" against the authority of the Company of Sierra Leone, then against the British government and the Christian missions. With Women and the Amistad Connection, Steady has written a valuable monograph—one that is, dare I say, broad, diasporic. She puts forward, in effect, two interrelated propositions: that the Krio represent "the archetypal people of the African Diaspora" (xv), while being "sui generis" (xviii); and that the condition of Krio women is thus emblematic of the condition of women of the whole Diaspora, while remaining highly specific. At the local level, the study of this particular female condition is central to the understanding of Sierra Leonean culture, according to Steady, because women—who secretly control the maintenance and changes in domestic institutions, as well as the evolution and resolution of interpersonal conflicts—are the principal cultural engineers of the Krio society of Freetown. But the current situation of this community, still greatly marked by ten years of war, is such that the text could already, in part, be a study of ruins (216). The author abstained from bitter statements, assuring the reader that "Freetown is still a vibrant and dynamic city whose people have developed survival mechanisms not only against economic and political hardship but also against war and despair" (xxvii-xxviii), whereas at about the same time, the Guardian was characterizing Sierra Leone as a "country which has, in any meaningful sense of the word, ceased to exist. At least 50,000 Sierra Leoneans have died since the R[evolutionary] U[nited] F[ront] launched its bloody campaign. Up to a quarter of a million are believed to have fled into exile. The death rate from starvation is around 100 a day, and for the survivors, life is filled with terror and misery" ("Who Is Foday Sankoh?" 3). Indeed, Steady's text does not assess the traumas that the war has inflicted upon the forms, or even the nature, of Krio culture, although she is certainly aware of this correlation, as seen in the following lines: "Economic conditions have become even more difficult as a result of the implementation of Structural Adjustment Programmes, chronic recession, political instability, and a protracted war. It [. . .] affects the degree to which many cultural rituals, which requires a financial outlay, can be effectively maintained" and "the degree to which people can adhere to the norms and values that support ideas like kindred solidarity and economic stability [. . .]" (215). But she chooses not to exploit this vein. For example, in chapter 13, devoted to "Rituals of Death," we...

Gestion du secteur pétrolier et développement institutionnel. Le cas du Vietnam

After having summarized the development of the oil sector in Vietnam during the past decade, this paper details the institutional features which have enabled its success. Their persistent aim of controlling the transition process has led the Vietnamese political leaders to adopt a pragmatic approach: on one hand, decentralization of economic management is framed by a centralization of decision-making powers through the State corporations; on the other hand, they manage to implement a soft and selective liberalization of the oil sector, relying on an horizontal extension and an internal competition among the State corporations. However, the socialist market economy building claimed by Vietnam's political leaders has caused emerging contradictory effects: at the province level, regional decentralization is hampered by a fiscal dependence which still shapes the relationship between the central Budget and the localities; at the enterprise level, the managers' autonomy is curbed by a decision-making dependence which hinders any enterprising spirit.

La promoción del empleo autónomo entre los jóvenes desempleados

El fomento del espíritu emprendedor y el apoyo a la creación de empresas y al trabajo por cuenta propia son líneas de actuación que recomienda la Comisión Europea a los Estados miembros para ayudar a los jóvenes y adultos desempleados a buscar una salida profesional en el campo del empleo autónomo. Este trabajo analiza una de las líneas de actuación en materia de apoyo a la creación de empleo: la evolución del número de beneficiarios acogidos al programa de apoyo al empleo autónomo español durante el periodo 1998- 2002, con especial referencia a la implicación de los jóvenes menores de 25 años en el mismo.

Creating regional wealth in the innovation economy: models, perspectives, and best practices

Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgments. Introduction. About the Authors. 1. The Innovation Economy. I. SILICON VALLEY: MAGNETIC FORCE. 2. Global Entrepreneurs and Marketing of Multinational Companies. 3. Linking Organizations: Non-Government Organizations, Strong Regional Business Associations, and Philanthropies. 4. Local Government Working in Partnership with Business. II. IRELAND: ENTERPRISE ISLE. 5. Enterprise Spirit and Trade Union Social Contract. 6. National Government Directing the Growth of Ireland. 7. The Branding of Ireland: International Corporations Choosing Ireland for Multifunctional Operations. III. STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN: THE HIGH-SPEED GLOBILE INNOVATIONS COMMUNITY. 8. Industry Specialization and Leveraging Intellectual Capital. 9. Entrepreneurship Infusion: Political and Societal Change for the Innovation Economy. IV. GERMANY, UNITED KINGDOM, AND FRANCE: EUROPE'S INDUSTRIAL GIANTS ADAPTING TO GLOBAL INNOVATION ECONOMY. 10. Munich - The Hidden Champion: Creating an Entrepreneurial Culture with State Government in Partnership with Business. 11. Cambridge-Incubator for Innovation, Small is Beautiful. 12. Sophia Antipolis-Technology Park the French Way. V. HIGH-TECH ISLANDS OF TAIWAN AND ISRAEL. 13. Taiwan Technology Parks and NGOs. 14. Taiwan's Financial Capitalization: the Chinese Networking Culture Extends to China and Beyond. 15. Israel's Military Technology: The Transfer to Civilian Applications and Universities as Incubators. 16. Immigration to Israel, Venture Funding, and Entrepreneurship. VI. INDIA: BEST HOPE FOR BRIDGING DIGITAL DIVIDE. 17. India's IT Sector and Government Initiatives in Education. 18. Transnational Links in Venture Capital for the Public Good-An Advantage in Networking. 19. Endnote. Special Perspectives - Dialogue Across the Atlantic: Lester Thurow and Jacques Attali. Special Perspectives - Governments Can Help Make Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy: A Dialogue Between Kailash Joshi and Davidi Gilo. Special Perspectives - Human Resources Management in the Innovation Economy: Self-Managed Living Systems. Index.

Entrepreneurship, Firm Size and the Structure of the Italian Economy

Since World War II, Italy's economic growth has been one of the highest in the world. The objective of this study is to examine the structure of the Italian economy and causes of this growth. It was found that small and medium-sized firms, most of them family-owned, have been the dynamic force behind the country?s extraordinary economic performance. The vital role of the family and that of the entrepreneur – as the supreme spirit of enterprise and initiative - has been paramount in this process. Production by small and medium-sized firms have concentrated in a specific geographical area called “industrial districts” and are capable of great cooperation with other firms, leading to increased production, efficiency and employment. In addition, it was found that small Italian firms have been very successful in the age of globalization, better able to take advantage of their small size by means of flexible strategies to innovate, invest and increase their export. Contrary to conventional wisdom, modernization theories (so widespread in the 1950s and 1960s) indicate that large firms have been models for growth in other industrialized countries and have exerted a passive role in the structure and development of the Italian economy.

PERFORMING VIRTUAL WHITENESS: GEORGE GILDER'S TECHNO-THEOCRACY

Over the past twenty years, US conservatism has achieved a dominance by symbolically reconciling two historical strains that are, in reality, marked by contradictions: the social gospel of traditional values and the economic gospel of the free market. While this movement has often been characterized as irrational because of its emotional language, in fact, conservative activists were brilliantly rational in their deployment of a symbolic logic organized by the metaphor of Spirit. Drawing on resources already available from the history of religion in the USA, Spirit was also directly reconnected with the imperialist Spirit of Enterprise. But though its terms are drawn from nineteenth-century white supremacist hierarchies, this constellation is resolutely postmodern in its use of media and technology; as a result, whiteness is displayed so overtly that it has become all the more difficult to counter precisely because of that display. This essay will show how white masculinity has been translated into the language of the digitalized frontier by the cyberspace guru, George Gilder, who hails from an old New England family but reconnects the North to a strong Southern theocratic belief in the natural law of God and the markets. Next, the essay analyses a talk by George Will, in which white supremacy comes to be defined as meritocracy in a rebuttal to Toni Morrison. And finally, the display of whiteness will be analysed in terms of appearances on cable TV talk shows of The Blondes: the right-wing political commentators Laura Ingraham, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, Ann Coulter and the late Barbara Olson.

The bourgeois spirit and the spirit of enterprise in the middle ages

The bourgeois spirit and the spirit of enterprise in the middle ages

One Point of View: Odds Are Stacked When Science Tries To Debate Pseudoscience

ONE POINT OF VIEW I vividly remember the first time I was hijacked on the radio. I had agreed to participate in a debate for a Florida radio program that specialized in alien visits and U.F.O. sightings. My better judgment suggested that I should be wary. But I thought if I kept my focus purely on the physics challenges involved in space travel, I might be able to persuade some listeners to be skeptical of the claims that aliens were regularly visiting, abducting and experimenting with our fellow earthlings. I should have known better, After 45 minutes defending myself against the claim that I was close-minded, when I argued that science did in fact impose constraints on what is possible, and politely responding to demands that I must first scrupulously review all the specific claims of alien sightings before I could possibly have the temerity to make general statements about plausibility or implausibility, I felt that any uninformed listeners who might have been waiting to be swayed probably found themselves merely confused at the end of the show. In a debate that confronts the results of science with pseudoscience, from alien abductions and crop circles on one hand to the health benefits of weak magnetic fields or young earth creationism on the other, the odds are stacked against science. Part of the problem is uniquely American. We in the United States are constantly regaled by stories about the limitless possibilities open to those with know-how and a spirit of enterprise. Combine that with a public that perceives the limits of science as targets that are constantly being overcome, and the suggestion that anything is absolutely impossible seems like an affront. Indeed, modern technology has made the seemingly impossible almost ordinary. How often have I heard the cry from an audience, Yeah, but 300 years ago people would have said it would be impossible to fly! Although true, the problem with that assertion is that 300 years ago people did not know enough about the laws of physics to make the assertion, so the claim would have been improper. Had they made a simpler claim like Three hundred years from now, if you drop this cannonball off the Tower of Pisa, it will fall down, they would have been right. Science Unfair: All Ideas Are Not Created Equal Although it is probably true that there is far more that we do not know about nature than we do know, we do know something! We know that balls, when dropped, fall down. We do know that the earth is round and not flat. We do know how electromagnetism works, and we do know that the earth is billions of years old, not thousands. We may not know how spacecraft of the future will be propelled, whether matter-antimatter drives will be built or even if time travel is possible. But we do know, absolutely, how much on-board fuel will be needed to speed up a substantial spacecraft to near the speed of light-an enormous amount, probably enough to power all of human civilization at the present time for perhaps a decade. That means that aliens who want to come here from a distant star will probably have to have some better reason than merely performing secret kinky experiments on the patients of a Harvard psychiatrist. As difficult as debating ultimate limits of the possible may be, there is another debate that is even harder to win. But it is a debate that may be even more important. It is a debate on the fairness of science. The reason for the difficulty is simple. Science is not fair. All ideas are not treated equally. Only those that have satisfied the test of experiment or can be tested by experiment have any currency. …

The entrepreneurial age: awakening the spirit of enterprise in people, companies, and countries

A business guide that explains how the power of entrepreneurship can be harnessed by individuals, organizations, and entire countries to compete and thrive in the 21st century. Examining the four fundamental practices of the world's great entrepreneurs, the author provides simple and proven strategies.

Will the power pay?

'THE NHS cannot be run from Whitehall.' Alan Milburn, secretary of state for health, speaking at the English chief nursing officer's conference last week. In the normal run of things, this sounds very like the kind of rhetoric we are more than used to hearing from politicians. And yet, taken as part of Mr Milburn's speech in Harrogate, it seems just possible on this occasion that it might be significant. He says this philosophy underpins his plan to devolve more power to clinicians. And in case it should be confused with the previous Conservative government's drive to introduce an internal market, Mr Milburn stresses that he sees a new culture of 'public sector enterprise' as a rival to 'the spirit of private sector enterprise which developed during the last few decades'.

Debt and Dispossession: Farm Loss in America's Heartland

never felt he left me or our marriage or the children. I felt he was leaving the farm problems. These words are from a woman reflecting on the farm crisis of the 1980s, the greatest economic disaster to hit rural America since the Depression. During this period, hundreds of thousands of farmers lost their farms and farm communities were irrevocably altered. As Kathryn Dudley demonstrates in this book, the crisis gave rise to a devastating social trauma that continues to affect farmers today. Through interviews with residents of an agricultural county in western Minnesota, Dudley chronicles the experience of financial failure in a that extols the virtues of independent business management, competitive production and middle-class self-sufficiency. Media images of the farm crisis fostered the impression that a majority of farmers banded together to protest the forced sales of neighbouring farms. Dudley counters this misleading view with her perceptive analysis of the local culture of suspicion that rejects political activism, discourages solidarity among neighbours and regards deeply indebted farmers as bad managers who deserve to lose their farms. Farming as a way of life turns out to be not a cultural refuge from the impersonal forces of capitalism, but emblematic of the very spirit of enterprise that animates a market-oriented society. With its focus on the moral dimension of economic loss and dislocation, this book raises far-reaching social questions: What does it take to be middle class in America? What kind of community is possible in a capitalist society?

Entrepreneurship: what triggers it?

It is apparent that there exists no such thing as one identifiable and universal entrepreneurial culture. Furthermore, the key to initiating the process of entrepreneurship lies within the individual members of society, and the degree to which a spirit of enterprise exists, or can be stimulated. The key question is, what triggers the release of this invaluable enterprising spirit? This paper seeks to make a small contribution towards an explanation by focusing on one aspect – the relationship of certain cultural and societal factors. It is argued that there is a significant relationship between entrepreneurship and cultural specificity. This has been progressed through a cross‐country study that involved Australia, Slovenia, Mexico, North America, Finland, Scotland, South Africa and Kenya. Following a review of the variables that contribute to culture in general and entrepreneurial culture in particular, a sample of findings from the study are integrated to illustrate key categories of analysis. The aim is to instigate a shift in thinking from universal generalisations relative to entrepreneurship, to a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationship between entrepreneurship and culture.

?A message to be given?: The Spiritual Activism of Rebecca Harding Davis

A Faded Leaf of History (1873) reflects Rebecca Harding Davis's spiritual activism, or her own textual message to be given. Emphasizing dialogic play, Davis enshrines a double-voiced narrative that not only challenges the imperialist biases manifest in Jonathan Dickinson's popular seventeenth-century captivity narrative, but more important, offers an alternate history of women and nature. Accordingly, A Faded Leaf of History coalesces one woman's spirituality, social activism, and protoecofeminist sensibilities through aesthetic representation. This article addresses that representation as a spiritual enterprise in order to chronicle Davis's temporal fusion of artistry and activism in the name of women and nature.

Life control of members of the Kainuu Martha Organization in Finland.

The purpose of this study was to describe the life control of members of the Kainuu Martha Organization (the Marthas), based on their written autobiographic material. The study material consisted of written thematized autobiographies of members of the organization (n = 41). The material was analysed using qualitative content analysis with concepts of the health portrait. The Marthas were classified into three groups (member, participating and leading) on the basis of their participation in Martha activities. According to the generational categorization of Roos, the member Marthas represented the Finnish generations of well-being, structural change and shortage. They did not participate actively in the Martha activities. Their feeling of life control was based on the sense life made to them. The member Marthas emphasized the meaning of family in their lives. The participating Marthas represented the generations of structural change and shortage. They participated in the Martha activities as observers or by attending the functions of their local organizations. Their feeling of life control was related to a favourable attitude towards life and concern for their human relations. The leading Marthas represented the generation of shortage and participated actively in the Martha activities. They believed in the continuity of the Martha Organization in Kainuu. They had a strong feeling of life control. This manifested as an enterprising spirit in everyday life, which included a skill to live life as it occurred. The lives of the leading Marthas were characterized by a favourable attitude, a feeling of responsibility and initiative.

Psychological Crystal Palace?: Late Victorian Confession Albums

Psychological Crystal Palace? Late Victorian Confession Albums Samantha Matthews (bio) The “Secret Treasury” of Autograph When I began considering nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British autograph books, I was surprised to find that a genre with such piquant relevance to current critical preoccupations had received scant scholarly attention. What commentary there is was largely produced by American anthropologists in the 1970s, as part of the broader movement to map American regional character by cultural products. Sylvia C. Henricks, W. K. McNeil, and Robert P. Stevenson are typical in their descriptions of autograph verse as orally transmitted texts of American identity and rites of passage. 1 My aim in this essay is to read the confession album, a specialized form of Victorian printed, published autograph album, with the careful historiographic attention we are accustomed to give to literary texts. As far as I can discover, the confession album has attracted almost no sustained scholarly interest. 2 In seeking to restore the history of these specialized autograph albums to the evolving history of the book, I will explore how publishers played upon the common reader’s aspiration also to be a common writer—even an autobiographer. 3 At the root of the Victorian fascination with collecting autographs in albums and books is the potential of autograph to signify subjectivity; and the age’s spirit of innovation and enterprise sought ingenious variations on the basic genre, of which the confession album is probably the most elaborate. The confession-writers not only inscribed their autographs, but answered a series of questions about personal traits, tastes, and opinions. I will document the fortunes of this relatively sophisticated subgenre, from [End Page 125] its origins in archetypal question and answer exchanges (catechism, confession to a priest, rote learning), and the influence of fortune-telling games, religious controversy, and the significance of autograph in nineteenth-century culture, through its zenith in the 1870s and 1880s, to its brief revival during World War I. There is an innate sympathy between confessional literature (typified by the development of confessional autobiography by St. Augustine, Rousseau, De Quincey, and others) and the function of autograph. Literary confession is self-writing, self-definition, and justification, addressed to God perhaps, but read by the author’s contemporaries. On the first page of his Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims that he will present his book on the Day of Judgment as a testament of selfhood: “I have displayed myself as I was, as vile and despicable when my behavior was such, as good, generous, and noble when it was so. I have bared my secret soul as Thou thyself hast seen it, Eternal Being!” 4 While we may feel entitled to question the author’s self-representation, the rhetoric of self-writing is clear; in comparison, autograph (in the general sense of the author’s handwriting, and the specific sense of the self-written name) is a comparatively opaque and democratic form of self-writing. What confessional literature does rhetorically and discursively, autograph does graphically—both gestures attempting to reveal the mystery of the maker’s identity. Could this identification of writing and selfhood then make the confession album, as one early twentieth-century commentator phrased it, a “psychological Crystal Palace,” a formidable summarizing symbol of Victorian personality? 5 A typical novelty autograph album (actually produced in 1909, but Victorian in conception) suggests autograph’s enigmatically revelatory symbolization in the nineteenth century. Secret Signatures of My Friends is a narrow, octavo book bound in red cloth. 6 The title page identifies author and publisher in the conventional way, and an ink stamp on the reverse indicates reception by the British Museum on 6 April 1915. This is clearly a book. But what kind of book has blotting card pages, pink and absorbent on one side, white and shiny on the other, and almost no textual content? The brief preface states, “This little book is intended to be a sort of secret Treasury for the safe keeping of our Friends Signatures.” Signatures were written onto a sheet of paper, then transferred to the blotting-paper pages while wet, leaving a reversed imprint. 7 Thus the enigmatic epigraph “As in a mirror” (a translation of the...

The Cultural Challenge to Individualism

The Cultural Challenge to Individualism Hahm Chaibong (bio) Individualism is the quintessential product of modernity. Modern philosophy, political thought, and economic theory all point toward and revolve around the individual. Modern political and economic institutions like liberal democracy and the free-market economy were designed to safeguard and to reward the individual. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it quite matter-of-factly, “individualism is of democratic origin” (II, 98). Yet individualism is also modernity’s most ambiguous achievement. While providing hitherto unimagined opportunities for political freedom, economic prosperity, and self-expression, it has also been responsible for modern man’s isolation, alienation, and loneliness. By unleashing individual creativity, it has fostered the spirit of enterprise and adventure, but it has also encouraged people to become selfish and self-centered, unwilling or unable to contribute to the public good. If individualism is ambiguous, however, then so are the liberal democracy and free-market economy that produce it. Tocqueville himself, the earliest and most famous celebrant of American democracy, was deeply troubled by its individualistic implications. As he put it, individualism “originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart” (II, 98). Indeed, ambivalence—and sometimes outright hostility—toward individualism has often been the basis for resistance to liberal democracy [End Page 127] and the free-market economy and has prevented thoughtful observers from Tocqueville down to present-day communitarians from whole-heartedly embracing them. Is it possible to have liberal democracy and a free-market economy without individualism? With the continuing triumph of these two institutional pillars of the liberal version of modernity, which seems to defy all efforts at resistance, it would seem that the answer is no. In the aftermath of the Cold War, all efforts to articulate alternative visions of democracy and capitalism seem to have been virtually exhausted. Yet even as some have begun to predict the “end of history,” we now seem to be entering a new phase in the longstanding argument over democracy, capitalism, and individualism, as the cultural resources of non-Western civilizations are increasingly being brought to bear on the debate. With the spread of industrialization and democratization to the non-Western parts of the globe, religious and philosophical traditions indigenous to these areas are providing new intellectual and institutional resources for contesting liberal democracy and the free-market economy. And once again, the focus is on individualism. The “Asian values” debate, for example, is sparked by anxieties over the individualistic implications of liberal democracy and the free market. In that sense, it is only the latest phase in a controversy that has been going on for almost two centuries. It is the first time, however, that the debate is being conducted in an intercultural and intercivilizational context. Individualism and Free Institutions Tocqueville sensed that, with the coming of more equal social conditions and the attendant strengthening of the passion for equality, people “will not endure aristocracy.” He warned that “all men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion will be overthrown and destroyed by it” (II, 97). Yet even though Tocqueville predicted the demise of the aristocratic virtues, it is clear that he preferred them to individualism. Two things about individualism particularly troubled Tocqueville—its threat to traditional family ties and its threat to civil society. For Tocqueville, an aristocracy provides the basis for strong family ties because “a man almost always knows his forefathers and respects them; he thinks he already sees his remote descendants and he loves them.” Thus he “willingly imposes duties on himself towards the former and the latter, and he will frequently sacrifice his personal gratifications to those who went before and to those who will come after him.” Moreover, aristocracy has the effect of “closely binding every man to several of his fellow citizens. As the classes of an aristocratic people are strongly marked and permanent, each of them is regarded by its [End Page 128] own members as a sort of lesser country, more tangible and more cherished than the country at large” (II, 98). In a democracy, on the other hand, family bonds are relaxed: “Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after...

The Era of finance: Proposals for the future

Finance, the economic activity intermediating between savings and investments, is probably the first to reach the stage of globalization; as a consequence, the financial sector is taking a leading position in modern economic systems. While the world expects from financial efficiency an increasingly positive contribution to welfare, it appears that recent developments of financial leadership in an increasingly deregulated world system, are also acting negatively on world welfare. In many aspects, it can be established that finance is crisis prone, induces deflationary biases and stimulates speculative behaviour: crisis, deflation and speculation are often harmful to the real economy. A set of proposals are made in order to improve world financial stabilization, promote growth and encourage the spirit of enterprise, as a way of enhancing the future contribution of financial activities to world welfare.