|
|
|
ABSTRACTS
| David Nash, "Analyzing the History of Religious Crime. Models of 'Passive' and 'Active' Blasphemy since the Medieval Period"
|
This article examines the comparatively neglected history and historiography of blasphemy relating this to wider histories of sin, crime and criminality. It charts the history of the subject and identifies significant epochs of change altering the crime's character in Europe and America over the last four hundred years. This history is then related to the chief paradigms associated with crime and violence, those proposed by Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias, noting the comparative strength and weaknesses of these two approaches.. The article suggests that blasphemy occurred as either a 'passive' or 'active' entity. The former was characteristic of late medieval and early modern states where the harm caused by blasphemy was visited upon the whole community and this entity was responsible for seeking restitution and redress. After the enlightenment and the rise of liberal regimes of rights this was replaced by 'active' blasphemy which henceforth required individuals to demonstrate the actual harm they had experienced. The article concludes that the dangerous fissures in multiculturalism and the vanishing confidence of liberal states is arguably rejuvenating the model of 'passive' blasphemy.
|
|
| Greg T. Smith, "Expanding the Compass of Domestic Violence in the Hanoverian Metropolis"
|
Recent historical scholarship has exposed the role of violence within the multiple dynamics of family life, providing important insights into gender relations and the abuse of power within domestic, conjugal relationships. With good reason, the analysis has privileged the experiences of women as victims of such violence in the past. Without denying this important characteristic of domestic violence, it may be helpful to expand the range of actions and actors to be considered when exploring its history. By scrutinizing the leading role played by women who used violence in the home, and by interrogating untapped sources such as newspaper accounts, the records of magistrates' courts or administrative records from charitable institutions, for example, for evidence of how other subordinate persons such as servants, apprentices and, of course, children, were also subjected to harsh physical correction and, in some terrible cases, systematic abuse, a clearer understanding of the eighteenth century thresholds of tolerance for such violence emerges. By expanding the compass of domestic violence, the subjective and discretionary application of the law in specific cases becomes better contextualized as the wide continuum for the role of violence in everyday life in eighteenth-century England comes more fully into focus.
|
|
| Karen Y. Morrison, "Creating an Alternative Kinship: Slavery, Freedom, and Nineteenth-Century Afro-Cuban Hijos Naturales"
|
This article contributes to the histories of slavery and of African-descended families in the Americas by examining the recognition of nineteenth-century Afro- Cuban hijos naturales (or children born outside of wedlock) as a means of family formation in late colonial Cuba. With legal "recognition," men from a variety of races and classes claimed responsibility for these children. In doing so, they created a creole family form that developed to suit a very local context and that did not conform to Anglo-American standards of legitimacy or illegitimacy. This article first outlines general Afro-Cuban reproductive patterns and then reveals the social experiences of the families that include hijos naturales. Such families were valuable social agents that sought the advancement of their members and that often provided a framework through which individuals endured slavery and advanced into freedom.
|
|
| Julia Gaffield, "Complexities of Imagining Haiti: A Study of National Constitutions, 1801–1807". . . |
There are about 802 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
