Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores ...examples of this process of invention – the creation of Welsh and Scottish 'national culture'; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial rituals in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own. It addresses the complex interaction of past and present, bringing together historians and anthropologists in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism which poses new questions for the understanding of our history.
Nations and Nationalism since 1780 is Eric Hobsbawm's widely acclaimed and highly readable enquiry into the question of nationalism. Events in the late twentieth century in Eastern Europe and the ...Soviet republics have since reinforced the central importance of nationalism in the history of the political evolution and upheaval. This second edition has been updated in light of those events, with a final chapter addressing the impact of the dramatic changes that have taken place. Also included are additional maps to illustrate nationalities, languages and political divisions across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The essay is a translation of a chapter of Eric Hobsbawm’s classic book Primitive Rebels. Hobsbawm attempted to create an ideal model of a social bandit by analysing examples of European brigands ...from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. In the second part of the essay, the author reflects on the political potential of a social bandit, i.e. whether this kind of activity can effectively undermine existing hierarchies.
SOCIETY: NEW AND OLD Hobsbawm, Eric
New Left review,
07/2023
142
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The paradox of post-war Britain is that the social structure has not changed much, while the superstructure - or more precisely the most visible aspects of Britain's social life, its habits and ...customs - has undergone widespread change. The second of these observations is obvious, but not so much the first, which has been obscured by a number of factors. To start with, outward appearances and lifestyles in Britain have clearly altered: middle-aged workers from the provinces taking their holiday in Rimini rather than Scarborough; the building boom that has left our city centres unrecognizable; the transformation of Britain from officially among the most puritanical societies into one of the most sexually permissive; the newly multi-national and multi-racial character of urban life; the Profumo scandal. An undercurrent of self-analysis and self-observation now runs through the press and broadcast media, though not yet reaching the level of introspection found in the United States. Whoever takes his temperature from hour to hour tends to exaggerate the importance of momentary fluctuations. In those happy times when the British people viewed themselves with an uncritical conviction of their superiority, they felt all the steadier for not registering such movements. Today we have to pay attention to them. Finally, a cloud of propaganda has formed around the British situation, creating pseudo-problems of change.
A warm but critical appreciation of Bourdieu’s corpus, focusing on his engagement with the work of historians and asking what the latter can draw from his ambitious social theorizing and the ...conceptual tool-box it supplies. Let me start with a little story about intellectual exchange, which Bourdieu would have liked. As we know, Wittgenstein entirely changed the orientation of his philosophy after 1929, principally as a result of the criticisms of the Italian economist Piero Sraffa, with whom he liked to walk and talk at Trinity College, Cambridge. One day, when Wittgenstein was putting forth the argument that a proposition and what it describes must have the same 'logical multiplicity', Sraffa replied with a Neapolitan gesture of scepticism or contempt, brushing his fingertips up and outward from his chin: 'What is the logical form of this?' Clearly, these conversations were of the highest importance for Wittgenstein, who said he owed to Sraffa an 'anthropological method' of tackling philosophical problems; in other words, the realization that social rules and conventions contribute to the sense of our words and gestures.
America Kiernan, Victor
2015., 2015, 2015-10-15, Volume:
56217
eBook
While there have been many analyses of American imperialism, few have equalled the breadth or insight of this seminal text, one of the first to provide a historical perspective on the origins of the ...American empire. Victor Kiernan, one of the world's most respected historians, employs a nuanced knowledge of history, literature, and politics in tracing the evolution of American power. Far reaching and ambitious in scope, the book combines accounts of the changing relationship between Native Americans and the white population with readings of the works of key cultural figures, such as Melville and Whitman, as well as an analysis of the way in which money and politics became so closely intertwined in American democracy. Also included is a preface by Eric Hobsbawm providing insight into his own views on American imperialism as well as a valuable introduction to Victor Kiernan's work. Together, they shed useful light on such issues as the uses and misuses of American military might, its lack of respect for international agreements, and the right to pre- emptive defence – issues which remain just as urgent today.
A warm but critical appreciation of Bourdieu's corpus, focusing on his engagement with the work of historians and asking what the latter can draw from his ambitious social theorizing and the ...conceptual tool-box it supplies is presented here. OA
Antonio Gramsci Santucci, Antonio A; Porta, Lelio La; Hobsbawm, Eric ...
04/2010
eBook
"What the future fortunes of Gramsci's writings will be, we
cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure,
and justifies the historical study of his international reception.
The ...present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation
for this." -Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface Antonio Gramsci is a
giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural
critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent
Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the
first time in English, Santucci's masterful intellectual biography
of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms
such as "civil society" and "hegemony" are much used in everyday
political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words
have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for
contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to
do with Gramsci's purposes in developing them. Rather what we must
do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection
of Gramsci's writings, is absorb Gramsci's methods. These can be
summed up as the suspicion of "grand explanatory schemes," the
unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of
everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg
says in his Nota : "Gramsci did not set out to explain
historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as
hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social,
economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by
individuals in their specific historical circumstances and,
gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how
hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects
within the capillaries of society." The rigor of Santucci's
examination of Gramsci's life and work matches that of the seminal
thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and
inspired by every page.
Nothing appears more ancient, and linked to an immemorial past, than the pageantry which surrounds British monarchy in its public ceremonial manifestations. Yet, as a chapter in this book ...establishes, in its modern form it is the product of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ‘Traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented. Anyone familiar with the colleges of ancient British universities will be able to think of the institution of such ‘traditions’ on a local scale, though some – like the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the chapel of King's College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve – may become generalized through the modern mass medium of radio. This observation formed the starting-point of a conference organized by the historical journal Past & Present, which in turn forms the basis of the present book.The term ‘invented tradition’ is used in a broad, but not imprecise sense. It includes both ‘ traditions’ actually invented, constructed and formally instituted and those emerging in a less easily traceable manner within a brief and dateable period – a matter of a few years perhaps – and establishing themselves with great rapidity. The royal Christmas broadcast in Britain (instituted in 1932) is an example of the first; the appearance and development of the practices associated with the Cup Final in British Association Football, of the second. It is evident that not all of them are equally permanent, but it is their appearance and establishment rather than their chances of survival which are our primary concern.
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