This book provides an original and multidisciplinary approach on Magna Carta (1215) as a joint heritage, a source of inspiration both for long established democracies and countries which only ...recently experienced the Rule of Law. Far from simply extolling the virtues associated with Magna Carta, it explores the gaps of the Great Charter. Instead of dealing separately with the historians' and the lawyers' outlooks as two conflicting perspectives, it juxtaposes the views of medievalist and contemporary historians with those of practicing lawyers and law academics, offering readers a thorough yet accessible historic and legal analysis of the charter and its meaning for the citizens of twenty- first century democracies. At a time of the erosion of civil liberties and fundamental rights, The Rights and Aspirations of the Magna Carta provides a rare insight into the 1215 medieval charter and its legacy.
This open access book provides a multifold exploration of how people in early modern Europe understood, conducted, and actively used private conversations. From sharing personal matters to discussing ...delicate secrets, all layers of early modern society had their motives for wanting to keep certain exchanges out of public eyes and ears, and ways of trying to achieve this. Detecting such instances in historical sources typically becomes a complex pursuit, full of subtle references that require creative approaches, especially when it comes to more informal practices. Yet, in a reading against the grain, different sources can offer us hints of how conversations took place in private. The book consists of a historiographical and methodological introduction to the study of private conversations, followed by ten case studies from a variety of cities, villages, and countryside across early modern Europe. The concluding epilogue suggests some pathways to further explore the terrain of how people have talked in private in past societies.
This open access Palgrave Pivot explores four major aspects of globalization: foreign trade, capital and information flows, and the movement of people. The book examines how the state socialist ...countries of East Central Europe fit into the general trend of globalization after WWII. It focuses on three specific countries in the region: Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. The study also considers conceptual problems: whether recently introduced terms such as ‘alternative globalization’ and ‘socialist proto-globalization’ are plausible for interpreting state socialist globalization. Special attention is paid to the study of continuities and discontinuities in the process of globalization in East Central Europe, which is a key issue in current debates. This requires a long-term perspective, so the study covers not only the decades before 1989 but also subsequent developments. In doing so, the book attempts to find a balance between old and new mainstream interpretations: it recognises that East Central European societies experienced considerable globalization during the state socialist era; however, based on empirical findings, instead of ‘alternative’ or ‘proto-’ globalization, the book suggests other notions to conceptualise this process, including fragmentation, selectivity, and unevenness. Thus, the proposed understanding could also contribute to discussions on globalization beyond East Central Europe.
This open access book explores the transnational and transoceanic dimensions of the debate on gender and women's cultural agency and mediation in the long eighteenth century. It aims to decenter ...perspectives on traditional Enlightenment geographies, by emphasizing cultural transfers between Southern Europe and the rest of Europe, as well as with the Americas; by focusing on a variety of cultural mediators—women authors, female (and male) translators, readers, travelers, and disseminators; and by examining diverse written and visual sources—from correspondence, travel narratives, and philosophical essays, to novels, opera, portraits.
La profesora italiana Antonella Cagnolati nos acerca al origen de la situación relegada de las mujeres en el mundo de la literatura y a cómo se produce la estrecha vinculación entre ese papel ...invisible de creadoras y su función de educadoras dentro del hogar, lugar desde el que levantan su pluma, extienden sus opiniones, convirtiendo esta actividad, a su vez, en motor de cambio para las demás. Este recorrido comienza con la Eva anciana, decrépita y apergaminada, de Piero della Francesca, que abandona la representación de la mujer atractiva y hasta voluptuosa característica de gran parte del Renacimiento, pasando por los retratos identificados con el tormento, la locura, la brujería y con los pecados del pasado, para llegar a la representación de dignidad y sosiego característica de la iconografía de santa Ana o de las ancianas protagonistas de innumerables retratos de la escuela pictórica de los Países Bajos. Sin abandonar ya Inglaterra, en el cuarto capítulo se aborda el salto a la esfera pública de las mujeres escritoras que, con las vivencias familiares como centro, conforman el género literario de los Mother's Advice Books, de marcado carácter educativo y, sobre todo, devocional -con continuas referencias a la Biblia-, y que pretenden ser una guía moral para los hijos.
Providing a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the way national and European identities are intertwined in old and new member states of the European Union, this volume assembles nine country ...case studies. Each country has experienced different processes of state formation, nation-building and democratization, thus they have each developed different forms of national identity and different patterns of interaction between national and European identities. The case studies illuminate the similarities and differences in how national and European identities have evolved among the nine countries. Rich in empirical data, the volume examines the historical entanglement of national and European collective identities and is therefore well suited for courses on European studies including European integration and enlargement, international relations and sociology.
Atsuko Ichijo is Reserach Fellow in European Studies at Kingston University, UK. She is the author of Scottish Nationalism and the Idea of Europe. Willfried Spohn is Adjunct Professor at Free University of Berlin, Germany. His major publications include: Can Europe Work? Germany and the Reconstruction of Postcommunist Societies.
Contents: Preface; Introduction, Atsuko Ichijo and Willfried Spohn; A balancing act: British state and nation formation and 'Europe', Atsuko Ichijo; Germany: from Kulturnation to Europeanization?, Michael Minkenberg; Austria: from Habsburg empire to a small nation in Europe, Willfried Spohn; A European Spain: the recovery of Spanish self-esteem and international prestige, Pablo Jáuregui and Antonia M. Ruiz-Jiménez; Italy and Europe: internal others and external challenges to national identity, Anna Triandafyllidou; Modern Greece: a profile of a strained identity, Nikos Kokosalakis and Iordanis Psimmenos; Nation, state and national identity in modern Hungary, Paszkál Kiss and György Hunyady; Czech Republic: nation formation and Europe, Karel KubiÅ¡, Vlasta KubiÅ¡ová, KarolÃna Ruzicková, and Michael VorÃÅ¡ek; Europe and the formation of the Polish state, nation, and national identity, Krystyna Romaniszyn; Index.
The great famine Jordan, William Chester
1996., 19971215, 1997, 1996, 1996-01-01, 19960101
eBook
The horrors of the Great Famine (1315-1322), one of the severest catastrophes ever to strike northern Europe, lived on for centuries in the minds of Europeans who recalled tales of widespread hunger, ...class warfare, epidemic disease, frighteningly high mortality, and unspeakable crimes. Until now, no one has offered a perspective of what daily life was actually like throughout the entire region devastated by this crisis, nor has anyone probed far into its causes. Here, the distinguished historian William Jordan provides the first comprehensive inquiry into the Famine from Ireland to western Poland, from Scandinavia to central France and western Germany. He produces a rich cultural history of medieval community life, drawing his evidence from such sources as meteorological and agricultural records, accounts kept by monasteries providing for the needy, and documentation of military campaigns. Whereas there has been a tendency to describe the food shortages as a result of simply bad weather or else poor economic planning, Jordan sets the stage so that we see the complex interplay of social and environmental factors that caused this particular disaster and allowed it to continue for so long.
In this article, I call for anthropologists of Christianity to do more to address the 'difference' that 1492 has made in Christian institutions, practices, and social worlds. In so doing, I argue the ...most significant condition constraining critical analyses of Christianity is not modernity's secularity, but, what Jared Hickman has called its 'global' condition. I push back against attempts to integrate Christian theology into anthropological analyses in ways that protect religious life from the violence and exploitation found in social worlds. Instead, I argue that analytical tools developed in political theology and theopolitics can help anthropologists to address how, following 1492, Christianity has often been accompanied by attempts to annihilate ontological difference. In addition, anthropologists of Christianity are well positioned to seek out those 'incarnations' that elide the eradication of difference.
