Harry Brighouse’s essay concludes Part I of the book by taking up one aspect of the task of clarifying the role of common education, by applying it to the teaching of patriotism in public schools. He asks whether liberal and cosmopolitan values are compatible with a common education aimed at fostering patriotic attachment to the nation. He examines numerous arguments recently developed to justify fostering patriotism in common schools from a liberal–democratic perspective, and finds them all wanting. However, even (...) if liberal–democratic arguments for teaching patriotism could be found that withstand the criticisms he advances, Brighouse argues that common schools should avoid using history as the vehicle for fostering patriotic loyalty, since even the most honest, clear-sighted, unsentimental attempts to teach national history are likely to degrade and undermine the other purposes that teaching history properly has. The chapter proceeds as follows: Section 6.1, discusses briefly the justifications of patriotism and the further arguments that patriotism is something that should be taught to children in school – and in particular the argument that history is an appropriate vehicle for teaching it; Section 2 casts doubt on the arguments for patriotism and even more doubt on the idea that it should be taught; Section 6.3 argues that history is a discipline particularly inappropriate for conveying patriotic feeling; Section 6.4 concludes. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Context Patriotism Citizenship History Teaching History Teaching for Patriotic Citizenship Conclusion Notes References.

History has long been taught in Australian schools with a view to encouraging patriotic citizenship. What has been taught and what is meant by patriotic Australian citizenship has changed markedly over the years. Current national initiatives to stimulate and direct the teaching of 'what we all know' to be Australian history may not meet the requirements of acceptable educational practice. The Commonwealth government may be better advised to pursue initiatives that encourage understanding of and commitment to (...) the common weal. (shrink)

History has long been taught in Australian schools with a view to encouraging patriotic citizenship. What has been taught and what is meant by patriotic Australian citizenship has changed markedly over the years. Current national initiatives to stimulate and direct the teaching of ‘what we all know’ to be Australian history may not meet the requirements of acceptable educational practice. The Commonwealth government may be better advised to pursue initiatives that encourage understanding of and commitment to (...) the common weal. (shrink)

The central question for this book is whether schools should attempt to cultivate patriotism, and if so why, how, and with what conception of patriotism in mind. The promotion of patriotism has figured prominently in the history of public schooling in the United States, always with the idea that patriotism is both an inherently admirable attribute and an essential motivational basis for good citizenship. It has been assumed, in short, that patriotism is a virtue in its own right and (...) that it is a foundational aspect of civic virtue more generally. Through an integrated historical and philosophical approach, this book demonstrates that there have been many and diverse attempts to cultivate patriotism in public schools in the United States and that they have been predicated on different conceptions of patriotism, citizenship, and learning. In order to assess these assumptions and evaluate the various practices of patriotic education, we address the nature of virtue and the motivational foundations of civic responsibility, and we frame a general approach to the ethics of education. We find that the history of attempts to cultivate patriotism in schools offers both cautionary and positive lessons. We argue that there is a virtuous form of patriotism and that an inclusive and enabling just school community may contribute to its development. Yet, we conclude that patriotism is not a virtue as such. We argue that civic virtue is what schools should aim to cultivate, and that civic education should be organized around three components of civic virtue, namely civic intelligence, civic friendship, and civic competence. We hold that virtuous patriotism is an appropriate responsiveness to a country’s value, and that such responsiveness is part and parcel of civic virtue that is also responsive to what has value beyond one’s own country. The book concludes with a defense of global civic education, arguing that it should promote global civic friendship and cooperation. The book situates its understanding of patriotism in the context of nationalist, populist, and authoritarian movements in the United States and Europe, and it mounts a spirited defense of democratic institutions that should be of interest to anyone concerned about the polarization of public life and future of democracy. (shrink)

The associative chain between the personality of Joseph Stalin and his role in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 remains stable among the historical consciousness of Russians from the end of the war until now. Traditionally, high schools devote a large amount of time to study the history of the war, including a range of the events dedicated to remembering the war. As a result, a stable and positive attitude toward the war and its significance to the Russian (...) nation has been achieved, while the attitude toward Stalin remains ambivalent, ranging from assessing him as a perpetrator, who initiated genocide and terror against Soviet people, to national hero and great ruler, who led the country to victory. In 2017, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation introduced three new national history textbooks based on the single goal of teaching Russian history in schools, but in practice has actually returned history back to a uniform standardized historical education across the country, similar to the Soviet education system. In this regard, the historical comparative research based on content analysis of Soviet, Russian, and newly issued textbooks is deemed topical and aimed to track the evolution of the image of Stalin and to understand how the historical representation of Stalin and his war policy has changed over the last 70 years in school education. There is also the goal of identifying the main reasons for the diverse attitudes toward Stalin currently inherent in different generations and rooted in stable ambivalent assessments of his war policy among Soviet and post-Soviet Russian society. (shrink)

The distinguished historian Steven Pincus has recently argued that “Patriotism” was a distinctive ideology in the middle of the eighteenth century that indicated “governmental activism” and support for “the British way of governing, grounded in the principles set forth in England’s Revolution of 1688–89.” By contrast, this essay shows that “Patriot” was more commonly used as a generic term for opposition politicians in eighteenth-century Britain. Moreover, for much of the century, the term was frequently associated with a slightly more precise (...) and substantial set of political arguments: those associated with the “Country party” platform. In its eighteenth-century guise, the Country party’s raison d’être was opposition to the growth of executive power since the Glorious Revolution. It was not a party as such but rather an opposition stance and a set of principles which occasionally brought together Tories, Whigs, and independent Country gentlemen as well as self-proclaimed Patriots. In the eighteenth century, “the Country” was especially scathing of the “financial revolution” and the growth of the fiscal-military state in the years after 1688–1689. By its continuous association with the Country party tradition, Patriotism and suspicion of the growth of executive power and government finance were intimately linked. (shrink)

Donald Shriver argues that recognition of morally negative events in American history is essential to the health of our society. The failure to acknowledge and repent of these events skews the relations of many Americans to one another and breeds ongoing hostility. Focusing on the wrongs suffered by African Americans and Native Americans, Shriver examines the challenges associated with the call for collective repentance: What can it mean to morally master a past whose victims are dead and whose sufferings (...) cannot be alleviated? What are the measures that lend substance to language and action expressing repentance? In answering these questions Shriver creates a compelling vision of the collective repentance and apology that must precede real progress in relations between the races in this country. (shrink)

The volume, stemming from the long-term cooperation of scholars working on East Central European intellectual history, discusses the patterns of patriotic and national identification in the light of the multiplicity of levels of ethnic, cultural and political allegiances characterizing this region in the early modern period.

This paper discusses three adaptations of Shakespeare's history plays written during the 1720s. These texts, I contend, counter claims that positive representations of women during this period were confined to the domestic sphere. In these plays women are active participants in the public realm of politics and commerce. The heroines of Ambrose Philips? Humfrey Duke of Gloucester (1723), Aaron Hill's King Henry the Fifth (1723) and Theophilus Cibber's King Henry the Sixth (1724), rather than being driven by love and (...) domestic duty, act on political motivation. Patriotism, which characterises these women, is the primary political slogan of all three plays. These female protagonists exemplify the value of a patriotic political conduct that crosses party lines. Their unpartisan or universal brand of patriotism anticipates the opposition views expressed by Bolingbroke in the following decade. This paper also addresses the broad consensus amongst Feminist critics that women in adaptations of Shakespeare provide little more than mere ?breeches roles? titillation. The histories of Philips, Hill and Cibber represent heroines who, no less than their male counterparts, exercise control during political crises. These women are not objects of titillation but subjects for emulation. (shrink)

Summary Sister and brother Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin; 1743–1825) and John Aikin (1747–1822) are two famous Rational Dissenting writers who strategically appropriated republican discourse to advance the Dissenting cause. Both make the case that, far from being subversive, Rational Dissent actually granted its adherents the independence that, from a republican perspective, was considered essential to true patriotism. In a fresh formulation of republican discourse, they present the strength of the Rational Dissenting commitment to ‘free inquiry’ as security for continuing (...) independence, enabling liberal Dissenters to act as patriotic guardians of British virtue and liberty against the dangerous effects of luxury, even as they continued to contribute towards the development of the British commercial economy and to promote the benefits of commerce, traditionally regarded with hostility by classical republicans. Effectively exploiting the classical republican belief in the central role of education, Barbauld and Aikin particularly sought to publicize the role that the Dissenting academies had played in producing patriots by making ‘free inquiry’ the basis of their pedagogical philosophy and practice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preamble Introduction Three Historical Periods Contemporary Debate Virtue and Tradition in Japan Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes References.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "Success has a thousand fathers" is a familiar expression. And while it is for the readers to judge the success of what follows, ...

Rousseau is often seen as the quintessential representative of Swiss republicanism. But to most of his Swiss contemporaries Rousseau's brand of republicanism and his self-professed Protestantism remained deeply suspect. They found his thinking, and especially his discussion of the natural origins of morality, far too sceptical and thus ultimately unsuited for their own attempt to forge a theory of republican reform. The article focuses on the reply by Rousseau's most sympathetic yet also most persistent critics, the Basle secretary of state (...) and author of the famous ‘History of Mankind’. (shrink)

My focus in this article is on a small group of German theorists, designers and patrons who thought extensively about the relationship between national identity and garden design: Christian Hirschfeld, Prince Franz von Anhalt-Dessau and his wife Luise, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Prince Pückler. These garden enthusiasts knew one another through personal contact or their writings, and they responded to and developed their ideas in relation to the newly framed creative enterprise in German lands of “garden-landscape-art”. What they shared (...) was a conviction that garden forms affect feelings, with the role of the garden artist to determine paths that would alter and diversify the visitor’s experience of place. This essay explores how spontaneous emotions, elicited by movement through the garden, were linked with a growing sense of patriotism that contrasted with cosmopolitan judgments in the writings of Hirschfeld, Pückler, and Goethe. (shrink)

In the Edwardian period, the essays, novels, and criticism of G.K. Chesterton gave voice to a unique but emblematic form of patriotic anti-imperialism. The article places his views in the context of the Liberal Little Englander reaction to the Boer War, and offers two comparative case studies. The first focuses on Chesterton's inheritance of the late-Victorian anti-imperialist rhetoric of William Morris; the second assesses his fraught relationship with internationalism, as represented in the writings of Morris's political collaborator, E.B. Bax. (...) Chesterton's radical populist patriotism, it turns out, had more in common with contemporary socialist ideologies than the currently prevailing view of its parochialism would allow. ☆ I am grateful to Peter Mandler, Julia Stapleton, and Tom Deveson for their input. (shrink)

This article sheds new light on the interesting but little-studied figure of Thomas Scott of Canterbury (1566–1635). In presenting Scott's ideas I will modify the interpretation laid out by Peter Clark whose groundbreaking study, ‘Thomas Scott and the Growth of Urban Opposition to the Early Stuart Regime’, is still the only secondary source that pays detailed attention to Scott and his thought, especially his religious opinions. The necessity to revisit Clark's interpretation of Scott's place within the political and doctrinal debates (...) of early Stuart England stems from the conviction that his political work and his ideological stances deserve more subtle attention. Most importantly, they were part of the emerging reaction against the policies of the first two Stuart Kings which can be labelled ‘country patriotism’. Finally, the elucidation of Scott's writings will provide a novel insight into an early configuration of English national identity. ☆ Earlier versions of this article were presented at the seminar ‘British History in the 17th Century’ held at the Institute of Historical Research (London) and at the ‘Modern History Seminar’ held at the History Department of the University of Birmingham. I wish to thank the audiences on both occasions for their questions and comments, especially Justin Champion, Richard Cust, John Miller. I would also like to thank Jonathan Scott, Johann P. Sommerville and Richard Whatmore for reading the text. This article is based on archival research pursued at the Kentish Archive Office, Maidstone (KAO), Canterbury Cathedral Library (CCL), Bodleain Library, Oxford (BLO) and British Library, London (BL). The manuscripts referred to in the text are listed as KAO U951/z/9, U951/z/10, U951/z16, U951/z17 (Knatchbull Papers); CCL Urry Mss 66 (‘Thomas Scott's Papers on the Elections to the Parliament of 1626’, 1a–141a); BLO Ballard Ms 61; BL Harley 7018, Additional MSS 62135, n. 31. The majority of the material consists of Scott's diary and of a series of mostly unfoliated papers in Scott's own hand. Some portions of the diary are in secretarial hand, whilst others are reproduced in Proceedings in Parliament 1628, ed. R.C. Johnson et al., 6 vols. (New Haven and London, 1977–1983), VI, Appendixes and Indexes, 126–37, 218–43 (hereafter PP 1628; where there are passages in both manuscript and printed form I refer to the latter). Amongst the miscellanous Scott manuscripts two are in Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Ms A 346, 224a–34b and 285a–97b. These are transcribed and published in Dorothea Scott, otherwise Gotherson and Hogben, of Egerton House, Kent, 1611–1680, A New and Enlarged Edition by G.D. Scull (Oxford, 1883) (hereafter Dorothea Scott). (shrink)

Clive Bell was not an ethicist. He was an aesthetician, known for his very strong formalist views, according to which art has nothing to do with ethics and politics. At least that is the textbook description of his general stance. ‘Art and war’ is a relatively unknown piece by him that has been ignored within art history partly because the relation between art on the one hand and ethics and politics on the other is much more complex here.

This paper was presented at the Conference on ‘Traditions of Intolerance’, at the University of Southampton, 16–17 September 1987.

This children's history of England by Maria Callcott was written as though she were telling a series of stories to a young boy known as 'Little Arthur'. Having travelled widely during her first marriage, publishing accounts under the name Maria Graham, she had become an invalid by 1831 owing to a burst blood vessel. Nevertheless, she continued her literary activity and became best known for this highly popular work. The first edition, published by John Murray in two volumes in (...) 1835, is reissued here in a single volume. In the course of the century after its appearance, the book went through seventy editions and sold some 80,000 copies. Its success stemmed partly from its romantic and patriotic depiction of the protagonists of English history. Also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection are Callcott's travel journals describing her time in India, Brazil and Chile. (shrink)

Purpose: A poetic work of fiction haunts the base of the Statue of Liberty. The act overshadowed the original tribute to the Civil War victory and the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln's praises of the Black American military fell silent. Eurocentrists shrouded centuries of genius and scaled-down Black American mastery. Sagas of barrier-breaking Olympians, military heroes, Wild West pioneers, and inventors ended as forgotten footnotes. Today, countries around the world fetishize Black American history and culture to the point of ethnocide. (...) The real-time case study of Woni Spotts explores the phenomenon. Until ancient traditions evolve with authenticity, global cultures will wither and die. The presented research chronicles over half a millennium of archives. Lists with names, dates, and genealogies seal the Black American legacy in stone. Methodology: The presented research for case studies draws from archival data, dated events, news articles, and an interview with Woni Spotts. The case studies generated three lists. Fifty sports and competitions were dated and cataloged. The athletes were analyzed by a genealogist. Forty music and dance genres were cataloged by publishing or recording dates. The artists were analyzed by a genealogist. Copyright infringements were noted. Inventors were researched for U.S. patents. NASA astronauts and inventors were analyzed by a genealogist. Findings: The presented research showed centuries of untold, reframed, stigmatized, and fetishized Black American history and culture. In the case studies, foreigners of African descent (Africans, Caribbeans, Central Americans, and South Americans) practiced ethnocidal behavior in concert with European descendants. Prolific abolitionists, patriots, politicians, and inventors were written out of history. Superstar athletes were obstructed or outshined by fictional Recommendations: Case studies showed centuries of fragmented narratives created biases and distortions. Black Americans were written out of history, reframed as background characters, stigmatized with skewed statistics, and fetishized globally to the point of ethnocide. The presented research stands as a vital resource for preservationists. Music and dance genre architects were solidified by publishing and recording dates. Athletic events, inventions, and NASA scientists were recorded. (shrink)

Scholars often turn to Livy’s famous digression on Aulus Cossus and the spolia opima (4.17–20) to shed light on his larger political inclinations. These readings generally regard Livy as either an Augustan (or at least a patriotic Roman) or an apolitical skeptic. Yet neither view, I argue, fully explains the Cossus affair. What is needed is an interpretation that recognizes the political nature of the Cossus digression and its skepticism toward Augustus. Attending to Livy’s rhetorical strategy in the digression (...) allows us to see it as an instance of oblique criticism of Augustus and his control over Roman life. The explanatory power of this reading extends to episodes from the life of Romulus as well. I argue Livy uses these stories to make a theoretical argument about the nature of despotism, namely, that it seeks to control narratives of the past just as much as it aims for political domination. (shrink)

SummaryAlthough ‘Burke and Irish history’ is a theme which has long been known to modern commentators, it has not necessarily been addressed sufficiently. This essay seeks to put forward a more comprehensive account of Burke's views on Irish history than has previously been offered by scholars. According to Burke, the protection of Christianity had brought flourishing science to seventh- and eighth-century Ireland. Nevertheless, the nation was plunged into a barbarous state after the invasions of the Danes and other (...) northern tribes. Burke's sympathy with the Brehon law was possibly unique, although he was not uncritical of it. Unlike the Irish patriots, his chief concern with historical Ireland was not the origins of the Irish legislature. He was rather most interested in the religious affairs which had continued to plague the nation during history. Throughout his career, Burke considered the Irish Rebellion of 1641 to have been ‘provoked’, and continuously endeavoured to remove the penal laws imposed on the Roman Catholics after the Williamite Conquest of 1689–1691. In his view, despite the substantial increase in prosperity after 1688/9, the series of religious persecutions, as well as other oppressive policies, had still obstructed the further progress of Irish society. (shrink)

Voltaire's reform program for history-writing emerges when his scattered utterances on method are collected under three headings: I. Details. Voltaire objects to tedious details, but characterizing detail can be used. There must be selection, and its criterion is significance to large-scale trends. II. Falsehoods. Most historians are to be distrusted. Falsehoods arise from relating very ancient or mythical elements, a matter Voltaire comprehends only superficially; also from partisanship, exaggerations, and traditions. Criteria of probability and for the evaluation of testimony (...) are explained. III. The new history. Unlike crude, pedantic historiography of dynastic and political affairs, the new history must deal with leading ideas, cultural, ethnographic, and economic factors. Voltaire's universalism, his stress on humanity and mankind, is limited by his patriotic and monarchical bias and by polemical and stylistic concerns. - Other Voltairean observations are assembled under judgments on his predecessors ; and under his evaluation of historical figures and events in ancient, medieval, and modern history , marked by correct insights but also by occasional naivety and credulity. (shrink)

Originally published in 1971, this volume examines the relationship between the history and sociology of education. History does not stand in isolation, but has much to draw from and contribute to, other disciplines. The methods and concepts of sociology, in particular, are exerting increasing influence on historical studies, especially the history of education. Since education is considered to be part of the social system, historians and sociologists have come to survey similar fields; yet each discipline appears to (...) have its own aims and methodology. (shrink)

There is a common tradition in European education going back to the Middle Ages which long played a part in providing the curriculum of schools which catered both for the wealthy and for able sons of less well-to-do families. Originally published in 1974, this volume examines the relationship between education and society in the different countries of Europe from which differences in tradition and practice emerge. The countries discussed include: France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden.

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 185-206 [Access article in PDF] Machiavelli's Sketches of Francesco Valori and the Reconstruction of Florentine History Mark Jurdjevic... As for the lies of these citizens of Carpi, I can surpass them all, because it has been a long time since I became a doctor of that art... for some time now I have never said what I believed and (...) never believed what I said; and if indeed I do sometimes tell the truth, I hide it behind so many lies that it is hard to find.... Niccolò Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini, Carpi, 17 May 1521. 1Is Machiavelli a reliable source for Florentine history? This article addresses that question by focusing on a remarkable discrepancy in Machiavelli's writing: the Florentine secretary's contradictory interpretations of Francesco di Filippo Valori, a major figure in the post-Medicean republican regime and one of the leaders of the Savonarolan movement. In the Discourses, Machiavelli described Valori as an ambitious politician whose quasi-princely power engendered dangerous factional violence. Several years later, in The Natures of Florentine Men, one of the few texts from Machiavelli's literary corpus that has yet to receive any sustained analysis, Machiavelli described Valori as a republican patriot who consistently sought the common good and upheld the republic's laws. Both assessments were written over a decade after Valori's murder (1498). [End Page 185]What caused Machiavelli to alter his initial interpretation? Were both accounts part of a larger single interpretation of the Florentine statesman? If not, which portrait more faithfully conveyed the nature of Francesco Valori's career and its effect upon Florentine political life and what did Machiavelli hope to achieve by the other portrait? Finally, why did Machiavelli praise a man so directly associated with Savonarola and the political party that had excluded Machiavelli from office before 1498? Machiavelli's reputation as an opponent of Savonarola was the cause of his rejection for an office in the Second Chancery in February 1497, during Valori's term as Gonfaloniere di giustizia. It was also a likely cause of his more spectacular success in April 1498, immediately following the downfall of Savonarola and Valori. 2This article examines the political circumstances surrounding the composition of The Natures of Florentine Men, Machiavelli's ties to the Valori family, and contemporary accounts of Valori's personality and career. It argues that The Natures are the preliminary sketches of the unwritten ninth book of the Florentine Histories and that Machiavelli, writing in a Florence of renewed Medici power, rewrote Valori's role in recent history to obscure his own ties to the principal statesmen of the Soderini regime. In particular, arguing from a different set of sources, it confirms Felix Gilbert's cautious and often-forgotten reminder about the impact of politics and political survival on the pioneering historical literature of early sixteenth-century Florence: that Machiavelli and Guicciardini "frequently had political purposes when discussing historical events and thus consciously constructed a historical myth." 3The Valori family played a prominent role in the political and cultural life of Quattrocento Florence. The family had been allied with the Medici since Cosimo de' Medici's political ascent in 1434 and Bartolomeo Valori, as a generous patron of neo-Platonic philosophy, became a close friend of Lorenzo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino. Francesco, however, dramatically realigned the family's political identity and loyalties along strong anti-Medicean lines. He began his political career as a successful participant in the Medici party, receiving numerous offices and distinctions, including election as Gonfaloniere di giustizia three times (1484, 1489, 1493). When the political tide turned against Piero de' Medici in 1494, however, Valori was among the first ottimati to capitalize on Medici weakness. He participated in the popular revolt against Piero de' Medici and became one of the constitutional founders of the new Republic. His power and ambition became famous, even notorious, after he emerged as one of the most important and powerful political allies (1495-98) of the prophetic friar... (shrink)

Robert Michels is best known as the author of a classic work of political sociology, Political Parties. However, not only are his voluminous other writings typically sidelined in most commentary, but his quite substantial writings on the subject of patriotism have been the subject of almost total neglect. This paper examines these writings and suggests that Michels's analyses of patriotism can indeed best be interpreted within the context of his general intellectual trajectory from socialist to ‘elite theorist’. However, one important (...) consequence of illustrating Michels's account of the history, theory and sociology of patriotic thought in particular is that the picture of the transition in his writings towards elite theory appears to be rather more complex than is normally appreciated. A corollary of this is that the descriptive tag of ‘elite theorist’ actually obscures important aspects of Michels's position in the history of European ideas. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper draws upon transitivity and Appraisal within Systemic Functional Linguistics to study the traumatic discourse of Nanjing Massacre in Chinese Mainland’s and Japan’s history textbooks. Through corpus analysis, this research finds that the Chinese discourse mainly uses effective process, relational process, verbal process to construe Japan’s victimizering experience and China’s victimhood, and employs negative Affect, opposite values of Judgment, negative Appreciation, Expand, Raise and Sharpen to construct a critical voice for the Japanese army and a sympathic tone (...) for the Chinese. By contrast, the Japanese discourse largely uses pseudo-effective and middle processes, mental and existential processes to cover up Japan’s victimizering experience, and employs negative Judgment, positive Appreciation, Contract and Raise to construct an almost uncritical voice for the Japanese army and the massacre. The difference in the representation and evaluation of Nanjing Massacre results from the politics of official memories in both countries. As China endeavors to strengthen its patriotic education by using Nanjing Massacre as an ideological weapon for national solidarity, Japan expedites its nationalist historiography move to recreate its normal national image by marginalizing the massacre. (shrink)

Part of the educational system in England has been geared towards the preparation of particular professions, while the identity and status of members of some professions have depended significantly on the general education they have received. Originally published in 1973, this volume explores the interaction between education and the professions. It also looks at the education of the main professions in sixteenth century England and at how twentieth century university teaching is a key profession for the training of new recruits (...) to other professions. (shrink)

Hòa Hảo Buddhism belongs to that traditional lay and frugal buddhism encouraging practicing at home (tu tại gia) while being engaged with the world (nhập thế). It appeared in Southern Vietnam at the end of the 1930’s. Obviously, colonial contest and economic depression have played the part of a powerful catalyst in the spread by a young charismatic and reformist character of this millenarianism. Then, during three decades of postcolonial and cold wars (1945–1975), this New Religious movement hardly expressed its (...) Buddhist ethic of social statements in order to lend moral support and material protection to the local peasantry. Eventually, at the end of the war, this autonomous Buddhist community finally tried to morph again into a legal religion at a time when the Vietnamese Communist Party had to urgently impose a new sovereign socialist republic (1976). In other words, the new regime had to reunify the Nation and build a new secular state. In the southern part of the country, the replacement of a former liberal regime (Republic of Vietnam) by a socialist republic (called formerly a Democratic Republic in Northern Vietnam) completely changed the nature of the State-Church relations. Therefore, many religious groups’ agencies suffered a drastic blow as these groups were subordinated to the Patriotic Front and its mass organizations. Nevertheless, in 1991, the reorientation of the religious policy officially reaffirmed the religions’ social utility. Since then, new debates emerged to define the nature of the social actions of religious groups and then to delineate the legal sphere of their activities in this secular state. This essay intends to question how the two notions of being engaged with the world (nhập thế) and that of the secular state (nhà nước trung lập thế tục) interacted during these last decades. To tackle this pivotal issue, we focused on the specific implementation of Hòa Hảo social activism, from 1940’s until now, to underline how this activism evolved under different political regimes and how a new culture of social service has been promoted since the Hòa Hảo official church was recognized in 1999 and achieved years later. It questions more generally how religious groups can negotiate with the state for the emergence of a civil society or, at least, for the acceptance of their own tribute to the prosperity of the Nation. (shrink)

This article draws from my current research on the challenges that the concept ‘citizenship’ brings to postcolonial Africa. The article takes Zimbabwe as a case study with the view to interrogate how the decade-long crisis has been obfuscated by the elites' manipulation of the education system which has left it redundant for envisioning both postcolonial and world citizenship. First, this article seeks to outline the challenge of enunciating the crisis. Second, it outlines and discusses how the limits of postcolonial education (...) reforms and the demand for a patriotic citizenry have stemmed from the political ideologues' deployment of ‘patriotic history’ to mobilise citizens' allegiance to the party-state. Third, the article situates the citizenship education debate within the broader discourse of democratic citizenship and argues that the Zimbabwean crisis can be meaningfully addressed, among other measures, by taking citizenship education seriously and making schools and institutions of higher learning sites for democratic engagement. (shrink)

This article draws from my current research on the challenges that the concept ‘citizenship’ brings to postcolonial Africa. The article takes Zimbabwe as a case study with the view to interrogate how the decade‐long crisis has been obfuscated by the elites' manipulation of the education system which has left it redundant for envisioning both postcolonial and world citizenship. First, this article seeks to outline the challenge of enunciating the crisis. Second, it outlines and discusses how the limits of postcolonial education (...) reforms and the demand for a patriotic citizenry have stemmed from the political ideologues' deployment of ‘patriotic history’ to mobilise citizens' allegiance to the party‐state. Third, the article situates the citizenship education debate within the broader discourse of democratic citizenship and argues that the Zimbabwean crisis can be meaningfully addressed, among other measures, by taking citizenship education seriously and making schools and institutions of higher learning sites for democratic engagement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese HistoryGary L. Ebersolekamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xvii + 411.In the 2004 American presidential campaign, a film clip of a young John Kerry testifying against the Vietnam War before a congressional committee hearing received significant television air time. In (...) the clip, Kerry poignantly asks: "How do you ask a young man in his twenties to be the last to die in the Vietnam War?" In kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney attempts to answer a similar set of questions regarding the best and the brightest young Japanese men sent to their deaths as kamikaze pilots in the closing days of the Pacific War. "How and why," she asks, "do individuals sacrifice themselves for the[ir] country?" "When a soldier 'volunteers' to die for his country, does he do so both in thought and in action? Or does he sacrifice himself only in action without espousing the ideology of state nationalism in toto?" (p. 1).Ohnuki-Tierney suggests that in recent years, as a reaction against structuralism, many anthropologists have shifted their attention to issues of praxis (what social actors and agents do). This shift is certainly evident, but I wonder if her next characterization is accurate: "Thus we now seldom differentiate between reproduction of behavior and that of an ideology or thought structure" (p. 186). She is certainly correct [End Page 607] to answer two of her own additional questions in the negative: "Is identifying reproduction in behavior enough for us to understand historical continuity and discontinuity? Is our quest satisfied if we find that a perfect reproduction takes place in action, even in the absence of reproduction in the thoughts and feelings of social agents?" (ibid.). She is wrong, though, to suggest that few other scholars have recognized and addressed this issue. If anything, the issues surrounding structure and change or cultural reproduction and change have been at the center of the work of Marshall Sahlins, James Fernandez, and Talal Asad, to name only three such scholars of note in anthropology. Moreover, generations of sociologists and historians of religion have also grappled with the issues of continuity and change.In this study, Ohnuki-Tierney has made an important contribution to our understanding of the kamikaze pilots by focusing on the lives and writings of a handful of university conscripts. Specifically, she has culled the limited number of published writings in Japanese by these former students, as well as more numerous unpublished diaries, letters, and other documents. Additionally, in an appendix (pp. 307-340) she has compiled a startling list of the works read by four of the kamikaze pilots that can help us to understand their interests and the possible influences on their thoughts. They were extremely well read in theology, philosophy, literature, and political thought—and they read widely in European languages, as well as Japanese. Through these sources, Ohnuki-Tierney attempts to understand why these young men went off to certain death, even when they did not ascribe to the emperor-centered ideology of the Japanese militarist state. In part, she seeks to counter the prevalent image that these patriotic young men worshipped the emperor and died for him. In doing so, she argues for the necessity to distinguish between patriotism and state nationalism, or, to put it another way, between dying for one's country and dying for the emperor.Much of Ohnuki-Tierney's earlier work has dealt with the roles of specific symbols in Japanese society. The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual (Princeton University Press, 1987) traced the changing uses of the monkey as a symbol of identity and otherness throughout Japanese history, while Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time (Princeton University Press, 1993) focused on rice as an important multivalent symbol of Japanese identity. The present study apparently began innocently enough as a study of the symbolic complex surrounding cherry blossoms in Japanese cultural history. Only in the course of her research did Ohnuki... (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

The Pythagorean Life is the most extensive surviving source on Pythagoreanism, and has wider interest as an account of the religious aspirations of late antiquity. "...admirably clear translation and sensible introduction"--The Classical...