Since the 1970s the feminization thesis has become a powerful trope in the rewriting of the social history of Christendom. However, this ‘thesis' has triggered some vehement debates, given that men ...have continued to dominate the churches, and the churches themselves have reacted to the association of religion and femininity, often formulated by their critics, by explicitly focusing their appeal to men. In this book the authors critically reflect upon the use of concepts like feminization and masculinization in relation to Christianity. By presenting case studies that adopt different gendered approaches with regard to Christian, mainly Catholic discourses and practices, the authors capture multiple ‘feminizations' and ‘masculinizations' in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, it becomes clear that the idea that Christianity took on ‘charicteristically feminine' values and practices cannot withstand the conclusion that what is considered ‘manly' or ‘feminine' depends on time, place, and context, and on the reasons why gendered metaphors are used.
The 'European' in the Boxer Movement Zhao, Xiya; Pasture, Patrick
International history review,
01/2023, Letnik:
45, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Boxer movement broke out in China. European countries were the main powers involved in the intervention and suppression of the Boxer movement. In their ...cooperation, European countries displayed unconscious European identity. This paper analyzes under which circumstances did Europeans use the 'European' instead of nationality? What does the identity 'European' entail? And what unites them together as 'European'? In the newspapers of the UK, France and Italy, European usually appeared in three identities: Europeans as the victims of the Boxer movement, European powers that determined international relations and European armies that were important parts of the Allied Forces. Behind these three identities lies an implied sophistication of European civilization. Another essential element was the interest that, despite inter-state disputes, have glued Europe together through balance and gambling, with China becoming the arena of European balancing politics.
Major historical overviews of human rights frame human rights in an exclusively European or western narrative, even if not necessarily as a simple story of progress. By referring to documents such as ...the Cyrus Cylinder created by King Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BCE, the Edicts of the ancient Indian King Ashoka (269— 232 BCE), and the Constitution of Medina (622 CE) the Wikipedia entries on 'human lights' and 'history of human rights' are remarkably less blatantly Eurocentric, but they nevertheless also focus on European legal history, referring to the Magna Carta (121 5), the development of natural rights in European early modernity and the introduction of •universality' in the US Declaration of Independence ( 1776) and the Declaration on the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789).2 The next major milestones in the history of human lights referenced after the late eighteenth- century grand declarations then appear to be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) of 1950. The time in between gets remarkably little attention. Apparently, human rights did not advance much in 'Modernity' .3 And they remain perceived as quintessentially European: the 'decolonization of human rights' advocated by postcolonial scholars still has a long way to go, although The Human Rights Revolution edited by Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde and William I. Hitchcock (2012) effectively constitutes 'a quantum leap forward' (blurb, Ben Nathans)(alas not so much followed).'
This collection explores how Christian individuals and institutions combined the topics of faith and national identity in twentieth-century Europe. “National identity” is understood in a broad sense ...that includes discourses of citizenship, narratives of cultural or linguistic belonging, or “national” characteristics. It considers various geographical contexts, and takes into account processes of cross-national exchange and transfer. It shows how national and denominational identities were often mutually constitutive, at times leading to a strongly exclusionary stance against “other” national or religious groups. In different circumstances, religiously minded thinkers critiqued nationalism, emphasising the universalist strains of their faith, with varying degrees of success. Throughout the century church officials and lay Christians have had to come to terms with the relationship between their national and “European” identities within the processes of Europeanisation.
The origin of this book lies in a collective research project aimed at developing a gender perspective on socio-religious history. The project focused on Belgium, a country that was relatively ...understudied - although an extensive literature exists on the social and political aspects of Christendom in Belgium, gender was (and arguably still is) hardly used as a research perspective¹ - but particularly interesting because of the dominant position of Catholicism and the country’s geographical position between Germany and France. At the time, the project was conceived in the perspective of the ‘feminization thesis’ that seemed to be becoming an alternative
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