Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England
Author: Adam Kuper File Type: pdf Like many gentlemen of his time, Charles Darwin married his first cousin. In fact, marriages between close relatives were commonplace in nineteenth-century England, and Adam Kuper argues that they played a crucial role in the rise of the bourgeoisie. Incest and Influence shows us just how the political networks of the eighteenth-century aristocracy were succeeded by hundreds of in-married bourgeois clansin finance and industry, in local and national politics, in the church, and in intellectual life. In a richly detailed narrative, Kuper deploys his expertise as an anthropologist to analyze kin marriages among the Darwins and Wedgwoods, in Quaker and Jewish banking families, and in the Clapham Sect and their descendants over four generations, ending with a revealing account of the Bloomsbury Group, the most eccentric product of English bourgeois endogamy. These marriage strategies were the staple of novels, and contemporaries were obsessed with them. But there were concerns. Ideas about incest were in flux as theological doctrines were challenged. For forty years Victorian parliaments debated whether a man could marry his deceased wifes sister. Cousin marriage troubled scientists, including Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton, provoking revolutionary ideas about breeding and heredity. This groundbreaking study brings out the connection between private lives, public fortunes, and the history of imperial Britain. **
Author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
File Type: pdf
Reissue from the classic Muirhead Library of Philosophy series (originally published between 1890s - 1970s).
Author: Marc Auge
File Type: pdf
An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computers and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Auge calls non-space results in a profound alteration of awareness something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Auge uses the concept of supermodernity to describe a situation of excessive information and excessive space. In this fascinating essay he seeks to establish an intellectual armature for an anthropology of supermodernity.ReviewShopping malls, motorways, airport loungeswe are all familiar with these curious spaces which are both everywhere and nowhere. But only now do we have a coherent analysis of their far-reaching effects on public and private experience. Marc Auge has become their anthropologist, and has written a timely and original book.Patrick Wright It is indeed very seldom that one finds it difficult to put down a book because of the intellectual excitement it generates. Auges Non-Places is such a booka powerful message, modestly delivered, which stands out as a unique and refreshing anthropological voice.Current AnthropologyAbout the AuthorMarc Auge is Director of Studies at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris.
Author: D. Harlan Wilson
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Prophetic short stories and apocalyptic novels like The Crystal World made J. G. Ballard a foundational figure in the British New Wave. Rejecting the science fiction of rockets and aliens, he explored an inner space of humanity informed by psychiatry and biology and shaped by Surrealism. Later in his career, Ballards combustible plots and violent imagery spurred controversy--even legal action--while his autobiographical 1984 war novel Empire of the Sun brought him fame. D. Harlan Wilson offers the first career-spanning analysis of an author who helped steer SF in new, if startling, directions. Here was a writer committed to moral ambiguity, one who drowned the world and erected a London high-rise doomed to descend into savagery--and coolly picked apart the characters trapped within each story. Wilson also examines Ballards methods, his influence on cyberpunk, and the ways his fiction operates within the sphere of our larger culture and within SF itself. **
Author: Frank Vandenbroucke
File Type: pdf
Today, many people agree that the EU lacks solidarity and needs a social dimension. This debate is not new, but until now the notion of a social Europe remained vague and elusive. To make progress, we need a coherent conception of the reasons behind, and the agenda for, not a social Europe, but a new idea a European Social Union. We must motivate, define, and demarcate an appropriate notion of European solidarity. We must also understand the legal and political obstacles, and how these can be tacked. In short, we need unequivocal answers to questions of why, what, and how on that basis, we can define a clear-cut normative and institutional concept. That is the remit of this book it provides an in-depth interdisciplinary examination of the rationale and the feasibility of a European Social Union. Outstanding scholars and top-level practitioners reflect on obstacles and solutions, from an economic, social, philosophical, legal, and political perspective. **Book Description Today, many people believe that the EU lacks solidarity and needs a social dimension. Why is this? What does it mean? Is it viable? This book provides an in-depth examination of the arguments for, and the feasibility of, a European Social Union, incorporating economic, social, philosophical, legal, and political perspectives. About the Author Frank Vandenbroucke studied economics in Leuven and Cambridge (UK), and received his D.Phil. in Oxford. He was a member of the Belgian and Flemish parliament, and Minister of social affairs, employment, pensions, and education.
Author: Nicholas Paul
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Few events in European history generated more historical, artistic, and literary responses than the conquest of Jerusalem by the armies of the First Crusade in 1099. This epic military and religious expedition, and the many that followed it, became part of the collective memory of communities in Europe, Byzantium, North Africa, and the Near East. Remembering the Crusades examines the ways in which those memories were negotiated, transmitted, and transformed from the Middle Ages through the modern period. Bringing together leading scholars in art history, literature, and medieval European and Near Eastern history, this volume addresses a number of important questions. How did medieval communities respond to the intellectual, cultural, and existential challenges posed by the unique fusion of piety and violence of the First Crusade? How did the crusades alter the form and meaning of monuments and landscapes throughout Europe and the Near East? What role did the crusades play in shaping the collective identity of cities, institutions, and religious sects? In exploring these and other questions, the contributors analyze how the events of the First Crusade resonated in a wide range of cultural artifacts, including literary texts, art and architecture, and liturgical ceremonies. They discuss how Christians, Jews, and Muslims recalled and interpreted the events of the crusades and what far-reaching implications that remembering had on their communities throughout the centuries. Remembering the Crusades is the first collection of essays to investigate the commemoration of the crusades in eastern and western cultures. Its unprecedented multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approach points the way to a complete reevaluation of the place of the crusades in medieval and modern societies.**
Author: Cennino Cennini
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A Translated version of the Art of Cennino Cennini. A contemporary practical treatise on Quattrocento Painting, including notes on medieval methods, and early explanations of oil painting and other techniques.
Author: Wahida Khandker
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Using animals for scientific research is a highly contentious issue that Continental philosophers engaging with the animal question have been rightly accused of shying away from. Now, Wahida Khandker asks, can Continental approaches to animality and organic life make us reconsider our treatment of non-human animals? By following its historical and philosophical development, Khandker argues that the concept of pathological life as a means of understanding organic life as a whole plays a pivotal role in refiguring the human-animal distinction. **
Author: Gordon M. Hahn
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The Ukrainian crisis that dominated headlines in fall 2013 was decades in the making. Two great schisms shaped events one within Ukraine, its western and southeastern parts divided along cultural and political lines the other was driven by geopolitical factors. Competition between Russia and the West exacerbated Ukraines divisions. This study focuses on the historical background and complex causality of the crisis, from the rise of mass demonstrations on Kievs Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) to the making of the post-revolt regime. In the context of a new cold war, the author sheds light on the role of radical Ukrainian nationalists and neofascists in the February 2014 snipers massacre, the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, and Russias seizure of Crimea and involvement in the civil war in the eastern region of Donbass. **Review Ukraines 2013-2014 revolution, its civil war, and Russias annexation of the Crimea have been succeeded by newer crises, but political analyst Hahn uses detailed reportage and geopolitical theory to argue for their long-term significance, presenting Ukraine as a troubling turning point in Russo-American relations and a case study of how democratization efforts can go awry...with Russia atop American headlines to an extent not seen since the end of the Cold War, [this book] will be a strong addition to global studies collections --Booklist It was not only Ukraine that went over the edge in 2014, but the whole European security system disintegrated, while a new cold war chills relations between the great powers. In this masterful study, Gordon Hahn examines how Ukraines internal divisions combined with external lines of fragmentation to create an explosive mix, which in turn intensified domestic conflicts. The result is an internationalized civil conflict, with catastrophic consequences for Ukraine and the world. Hahn is one of the few scholars with the knowledge and discernment to make sense of it all. His impressively well-researched and well-written book is essential reading.--Richard Sakwa, University of Kent This impressively researched and strongly argued book is an essential corrective to the myths that have been generated concerning the crisis in Ukraine, and an essential warning against a continuation of the frivolous and dangerous policies of regime change adopted by the West after the end of the Cold War. --Anatol Lieven, Professor, Georgetown University in Qatar and author of Ukraine and Russia, A Fraternal Rivalry Ukraine Over the Edge is a rigorous analysis of the cultural, historical, and intellectual origins of the Ukrainian crisis. While stressing that blame for the latest phase of this crisis is shared all around, Hahn traces its domestic origins to the militancy of the opposition to president Yanukovych, and its international origins to NATO expansion, which he regards as militarized democracy-promotion. The result is both a sophisticated, multilevel analysis of how and why Ukraine emerged as the key hotspot in East-West relations, and an indispensable guide for those wishing to understand the origins of the New Cold War.--Nicolai N. Petro, Silvia-Chandley Professor of Peace Studies and Nonviolence, University of Rhode Island Ukraine Over the Edge is a very useful contribution to understanding origins and key developments of the crisis in this important European and post-Soviet country. Gordon M. Hahn challenges simplistic and often misleading narratives by the media and politicians and provides a corroboration that the Maidan massacre was a false flag mass killing. --Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottawa About the Author Gordon M. Hahn is an advisory board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, and at the American Institute of Geostrategy (AIGEO), Los Angeles a contributing expert for Russia Direct, and a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), San Jose, California. He lives in Mountain View, California.