|
Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history
This eye-opening study gives a nuanced, provocative account of how
German soldiers in the Great War experienced and enacted
masculinity. Drawing on an array of relevant narratives and media,
it explores the ways that both heterosexual and homosexual soldiers
expressed emotion, understood romantic ideals, and approached
intimacy and sexuality.
This book investigates handwritten entertainment fiction
(shouchaoben wenxue) which circulated clandestinely during the
Chinese Cultural Revolution. Lena Henningsen's analyses of
exemplary stories and their variation across different manuscript
copies brings to light the creativity of these
readers-turned-copyists. Through copying, readers modified the
stories and became secondary authors who reflected on the realities
of the Cultural Revolution. Through an enquiry into actual reading
practices as mapped in autobiographical accounts and into
intertextual references within the stories, the book also positions
manuscript fiction within the larger reading cosmos of the long
1970s. Henningsen analyzes the production, circulation and
consumption of these texts, considering continuities across the
alleged divide of the end of the Mao-era and the beginning of the
reform period. The book further reveals how these texts achieved
fruitful afterlives as re-published bestsellers or as adaptations
into comic books or movies, continuing to shape the minds of their
audience and the imaginations of the past. Chapter 5 is available
open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License via link.springer.com.
Though Graeco-Roman antiquity (‘classics’) has often been considered the handmaid of colonialism, its various forms have nonetheless endured through many of the continent’s decolonising transitions. Southern Africa is no exception. This book canvasses the variety of forms classics has taken in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and especially South Africa, and even the dynamics of transformation itself.
How does (u)Mzantsi classics (of southern Africa) look in an era of profound change, whether violent or otherwise? What are its future prospects? Contributors focus on pedagogies, historical consciousness, the creative arts and popular culture.
The volume, in its overall shape, responds to the idea of dialogue – in both the Greek form associated with Plato’s rendition of Socrates’ wisdom and in the African concept of ubuntu. Here are dialogues between scholars, both emerging and established, as well as students – some of whom were directly impacted by the Fallist protests.
Rather than offering an apologia for classics, these dialogues engage with pressing questions of relevance, identity, change, the canon, and the dynamics of decolonisation and potential recolonisation. The goal is to interrogate classics – the ways it has been taught, studied, perceived, transformed and even lived – from many points of view.
In the wake of the First World War, in which France suffered severe
food shortages, colonial produce became an increasingly important
element of the French diet. The colonial lobby seized upon these
foodstuffs as powerful symbols of the importance of the colonial
project to the life of the French nation. But how was colonial food
really received by the French public? And what does this tell us
about the place of empire in French society? In Colonial Food in
Interwar Paris, Lauren Janes disputes the claim that empire was
central to French history and identity, arguing that the distrust
of colonial food reflected a wider disinterest in the empire. From
Indochinese rice to North African grains and tropical fruit to
curry powder, this book offers an intriguing and original challenge
to current orthodoxy about the centrality of empire to modern
France by examining the place of colonial foods in the nation's
capital.
Computer: A History of the Information Machine traces the history
of the computer and its unlimited, information-processing
potential. Comprehensive and accessibly written, this fully updated
fourth edition adds new chapters on the globalization of
information technology, the rise of social media, fake news, and
the gig economy, and the regulatory frameworks being put in place
to tame the ubiquitous computer. Computer is an insightful look at
the pace of technological advancement and the seamless way
computers are integrated into the modern world. The authors examine
the history of the computer including the first steps taken by
Charles Babbage in the nineteenth century, and how wartime needs
and the development of electronics led to the giant ENIAC, the
first electronic computer. For a generation IBM dominated the
computer industry. In the 1980s, the desktop PC liberated people
from room-sized, mainframe computers. Next, laptops and smartphones
made computers available to half of the world's population, leading
to the rise of Google and Facebook, and powerful apps that changed
the way we work, consume, learn, and socialize. The volume is an
essential resource for scholars and those studying computer
history, technology history, and information and society, as well
as a range of courses in the fields of computer science,
communications, sociology, and management.
This book addresses emancipatory narratives from two main sites in
the colonial world, the Indian and southern African subcontinents.
Exploring how love and revolution interrelate, this volume is
unique in drawing on theories of affect to interrogate histories of
the political, thus linking love and revolution together. The
chapters engage with the affinities of those who live with their
colonial pasts: crises of expectations, colonial national
convulsions, memories of anti-colonial solidarity, even shared
radical libraries. It calls attention to the specific and singular
way in which notions of 'love of the world' were born in a precise
moment of anti-colonial struggle: a love of the world for which one
would offer one's life, and for which there had been little
precedent in the history of earlier revolutions. It thus offers new
ways of understanding the shifts in global traditions of
emancipation over two centuries.
'It is absolutely brilliant, I think every woman should read it'
PANDORA SYKES, THE HIGH LOW 'My wish is that every white woman who
calls herself a feminist will read this book in a state of hushed
and humble respect ... Essential reading' ELIZABETH GILBERT All too
often the focus of mainstream feminism is not on basic survival for
the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. Meeting basic
needs is a feminist issue. Food insecurity, the living wage and
access to education are feminist issues. The fight against racism,
ableism and transmisogyny are all feminist issues. White feminists
often fail to see how race, class, sexual orientation and
disability intersect with gender. How can feminists stand in
solidarity as a movement when there is a distinct likelihood that
some women are oppressing others? Insightful, incendiary and
ultimately hopeful, Hood Feminism is both an irrefutable indictment
of a movement in flux and also clear-eyed assessment of how to save
it.
Exploring notions of history, collective memory, cultural memory,
public memory, official memory, and public history, Slavery in the
Age of Memory: Engaging the Past explains how ordinary citizens,
social groups, governments and institutions engage with the past of
slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. It illuminates how and why
over the last five decades the debates about slavery have become so
relevant in the societies where slavery existed and which
participated in the Atlantic slave trade. The book draws on a
variety of case studies to investigate its central questions. How
have social actors and groups in Europe, Africa and the Americas
engaged with the slave past of their societies? Are there are any
relations between the demands to rename streets of Liverpool in
England and the protests to take down Confederate monuments in the
United States? How have black and white social actors and scholars
influenced the ways slavery is represented in George Washington's
Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in the United
States?How do slave cemeteries in Brazil and the United States and
the walls of names of Whitney Plantation speak to other initiatives
honoring enslaved people in England and South Africa? What shared
problems and goals have led to the creation of the International
Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the National Museum of African
American History and Culture in Washington DC? Why have artists
used their works to confront the debates about slavery and its
legacies? The important debates addressed in this book resonate in
the present day. Arguing that memory of slavery is racialized and
gendered, the book shows that more than just attempts to come to
terms with the past, debates about slavery are associated with the
persistent racial inequalities, racism, and white supremacy which
still shape societies where slavery existed. Slavery in the Age of
Memory: Engaging the Past is thus a vital resource for students and
scholars of the Atlantic world, the history of slavery and public
history.
It is an often ignored but fundamental fact that in the Ottoman
world as in most empires, there were 'first-class' and 'second
class' subjects. Among the townspeople, peasants and nomads subject
to the sultans, who might be Muslims or non-Muslims, adult Muslim
males were first-class subjects and all others, including Muslim
boys and women, were of the second class. As for the female members
of the elite, while less privileged than the males, in some
respects their life chances might be better than those of ordinary
women. Even so, they shared the risks of pregnancy, childbirth and
epidemic diseases with townswomen of the subject class and to a
certain extent, with village women as well. Women also made up a
sizeable share of the enslaved, belonging to the sultans, to elite
figures but often to members of the subject population as well.
Thus, the study of Ottoman women is indispensable for understanding
Ottoman society in general. In this book, the experiences of women
from a diverse range of class, religious, ethnic, and geographic
backgrounds are woven into the social history of the Ottoman
Empire, from the early-modern period to its dissolution in 1922.
Its thematic chapters first introduce readers to the key sources
for information about women's lives in the Ottoman Empire (qadi
registers, petitions, fetvas, travelogues authored by women). The
first section of the book then recounts urban, non-elite women's
experiences at the courts, family life, and as slaves. Paying
attention to the geographic diversity of the Ottoman Empire, this
section also considers the social history of women in the Arab
provinces of Baghdad, Cairo and Aleppo. The second section charts
the social history of elite women, including that of women in the
Palace system, writers and musicians and the history of women's
education. The final section narrates the history of women at the
end of the empire, during the Great War and Civil War. The first
introductory social history of women in the Ottoman Empire, Women
in the Ottoman Empire will be essential reading for scholars and
students of Ottoman history and the history of women in the Middle
East.
'We need this message more than ever' - Malala Yousafzai
The right to:
Spend your own money. Go to school. Earn an income. Access
contraceptives. Work outside the home. Walk outside the home. Choose
whom to marry. Get a loan. Start a business. Own property. Divorce a
husband. See a doctor. Drive a car.
All of these rights are denied to women in some parts of the world.
The Moment of Lift is the Sunday Times bestselling debut from Melinda
Gates, a timely and necessary call to action for women's empowerment.
'How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings – and especially
for women? Because when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.'
For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find
solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live.
Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to
her: If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women
down.
In this moving and compelling book, Melinda shares the stories of the
inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world
and the lessons she’s learned from them. As she writes in the
introduction, “That is why I had to write this book – to share the
stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want
all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.”
Melinda’s unforgettable narrative is backed by startling data as she
presents the issues that most need our attention – from child marriage
to lack of access to contraceptives to gender inequity in the
workplace. And, for the first time, she writes about her personal life
and the road to equality in her own marriage. Throughout, she shows how
there has never been more opportunity to change the world – and
ourselves.
Writing with emotion, candour, and grace, she introduces us to
remarkable women and shows the power of connecting with one another.
When we lift others up, they lift us up, too.
|
|