Marital and family structures, together with the closely related areas of gender relations and attitudes to sexuality, constitute one area in which scholars have suggested medieval England clearly differs from other regions. It is always difficult to compare across regions when the nature of the evidence differs; but because marriage and sexual behavior were under the jurisdiction of the church courts and because the ecclesiastical court system used the same set of legal rules across Europe, one level of difficulty disappears (...) from a comparison. Records from different regions reflect somewhat different procedures or penalties, based on local synodal statutes, but are more commensurable than records of the secular courts, which did not depend on a common set of rules. Basic principles of canon law were universally accepted in western Christendom: marriage was formed by the consent of the parties; marital promises followed by sexual intercourse created an indissoluble marriage; and any extramarital sexual activity by either a husband or a wife was adultery. An examination of church court records from late-medieval Paris compared with better-known records from England suggests that differences between England and northern France in the understanding of sexual behavior and the formation of unions, while they reflect different approaches, were still addressing fundamentally the same issues, and the demographic patterns may not have been as different as scholars have assumed. (shrink)

Social anthropology flourished in the 20th century but ethnographic methods and intensifying ‘creative destruction’ in the elaboration of theory have combined to deflect attention away from earlier concerns with long-term historical change. The ‘theft of history’ that took place within anthropology refers to this loss, which is not to be confused with healthy interdisciplinary borrowing. With the demise of the evolutionist paradigm and intensifying global connectivity, anthropologists have struggled to find a new balance between empirical ethnographic description, the interpretation of (...) other social worlds, and theoretical explanation. It is not so much that the canon has continued to change but that many practitioners no longer acknowledge any canon. The difficulties are illustrated with a critical discussion of the Anglophone anthropological literature in a field that is novel for the discipline: socialism and its aftermath. The work of Jack Goody has a surprising relevance here; more generally, Goody’s oeuvre shows how ethnographic excellence and intellectual originality can be harnessed together to serve a longue durée comparative historical anthropology. (shrink)

The dominant, individualistic understanding of autonomy that features in clinical practice and research is underpinned by the idea that people are, in their ideal form, independent, self-interested and rational gain-maximising decision-makers. In recent decades, this paradigm has been challenged from various disciplinary and intellectual directions. Proponents of ‘relational autonomy’ in particular have argued that people’s identities, needs, interests – and indeed autonomy – are always also shaped by their relations to others. Yet, despite the pronounced and nuanced critique directed at (...) an individualistic understanding of autonomy, this critique has had very little effect on ethical and legal instruments in clinical practice and research so far. In this article, we use four case studies to explore to what extent, if at all, relational autonomy can provide solutions to ethical and practical problems in clinical practice and research. We conclude that certain forms of relational autonomy can have a tangibl... (shrink)

The contest between “Lockeian liberalism” and “classical republicanism” as explanatory frameworks for the intellectual history of the American Revolution, and therefore of the present-day United States, has been one of the longest running and most distinguished in recent U.S. historiography. It also has major implications for the history of political thought in the North Atlantic Anglophone world more widely. Yet this debate was merely suspended when it was held to have ended in an ill-defined compromise. Although some U.S. historians expressed (...) doubts and qualifications, attention in U.S. historiography moved on to other themes while leaving the initial problem unsolved. This article reopens the question; it suggests that a historicization of both these two categories is now both possible and necessary, and that their supersession will advance understanding of the Revolution. It seeks to help solve this problem by the same means that the debate began: that is, by re-establishing a link between U.S. and U.K. historiographies. (shrink)