1 a Unitary Process of Big-World History. a Transcendental And

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

1 a Unitary Process of Big-World History. a Transcendental And A Unitary Process of Big-World History. A Transcendental and Constructivist Perspective in History. by Eduardo R. Saguier Senior Researcher, CONICET (Argentina) e-mail:[email protected]; An earlier version of this essay was offered at the Club del Progreso (Buenos Aires), June 4, 2001. Abstract. Keywords. 1. Introduction. 2. Historiographical approaches. 3. Methodology: historical categories, properties and prototypes inside structures, processes and foundational events. 4. Building integrated semantic properties (I): Rise of religions, empires and civilizations. 5. Building integrated semantic properties (II): Fall of religions, empires and civilizations 6. Building a documental source: Conceptual maps and cross-space mapping 7. Geographic Cartography 8. Electronic Resources. 9. Conclusions. 10. Acknowledgments. Endnotes Table I. World and Big historical categories. References Abstract: In this manuscript I am trying to prove the intimate linkage between religion, politics, sociology, aesthetics, economics and linguistics, and more specifically the linkage between the rise and fall of civilizations and historical stages and the rise and fall of myths, rituals, languages, religions, arts, sciences, political powers and social and economic hegemonies, in the context of the rivalry between the East and the West, and between the South and the North, as well as to justify the need to transcend traditional ways of doing scientific research in both Big and World histories. For that purpose, an historiographical consideration emphasizing the need of a reconceptualization of the historical subject, a unitary process rather than the sum of local processes, and an increasing complexity of cultural spheres, by the multiplication of mythological, social, symbolic, linguistic, political and economic differentiations, regressions and integrations, was important to understand the demand of new cultural units. In that sense, based on a fuzzy set theory, on subjectivity theories (Laclau´s hegemony, Badiou´s subjectivity, Zizek´s transcendental gap, Balibar´s egaliberte, and Ranciere´s mesentente), on a new hermeneutic theory, comprising semiotics, semantics, syntax, and autopoietics, or a methodology inspired by Rosch´s prototype theory of categorization, Putnam-Kripke´s theories of reference, Forbus & Gentner´s analogical mapping- inference, Grimshaw´s thematic role theory, and Luhmann´s autopoiesis, and more than seven hundred (700) footnotes referring to a bibliography of more than five thousand (5000) titles, I have developed the so-called prototypical historical categories and properties, almost a hundred (100) categories, half a thousand (500) sub-categories and their corresponding functions built as qualitative equations. These categories, properties and functions need to be cross-culturally confronted with those foundational events capable of contributing shifts between historical stages. Finally, a methodological consideration centered on new documental sources consisting of a collection of simple and integrated semantic properties and conceptual maps is highly demanded in order to develop multiple paths to alternative pasts, potential paths to optional futures, and to stimulate the development of a radical, transcendental and constructivist historical theory. Keywords: constructivism, cognitivism, cognitive linguistics, autopoietics, objectivist semantics, prototype theory of concept categorization, fuzzy set theory, conceptual integration or combination, blending theory, egaliberte, mesentente, analogical mapping-inference or structural-alignment process, cross-domain and conceptual mapping, causal theories of reference, conceptual projections, knowledge representation, thematic role theory, global and big history, family resemblance, suffixation, semiotic and semantic properties, polysemy, unitary process, instantiation or interactive property attribution approach. 1 1. Introduction. In order to face the challenges of knowledge explosions and contradictions resulting from the cognitive revolution --that includes the prototypical, instantiation and autopoietic evolutions-- and to turn back cyclic, ethnocentric, anachronistic and reductionist approaches in the social sciences and the humanities, the vision of a unitary process of both Big and World histories, that intimately links the rise and collapse of civilizations and historical stages with the rise and fall of myths, rituals, languages, religions, political powers, artistic and scientific discoveries and socio-economic hegemonies, must centrifugalize again the knowledge already acquired.1 The rise and collapse of civilizations and historical stages is usually assigned to instant and fast events or sudden historical changes and very seldom to long-lasting factors. Among instant events or events of short duration one can find politico-military phenpomenons, artistic creativities, and geopgraphic-scientific discoveries; and among events of long duration, one can find cultural phenomenons (rituals, myths, languages and religions) and socio- economic factors (ethnia, class, gender, kinship, age or generations). This centrifugalization should rearrange historical knowledge based on different levels of approach, on a fuzzy set theory, or cross-cultural, transcultural, border or hybrid-oriented studies, on theories of knowledge representation (exemplar view), and on theories of political subjectivity (Laclau´s hegemony theory, Badiou´s subjectivity theory, Zizek´s transcendental gap Balibar´s egaliberte theory, and Ranciere´s mesentente or disagreement theory). This subjectivity should be analyzed by a new interpretative or hermeneutic theory, comprising psychology, sociology, economics, political science, semiotics and linguistics (semantics, syntax), and by a new methodology conformed by Putnam-Kripke´s causal theories of reference, Rosch´s prototype theory of categorization, Forbus & Gentner´s analogical mapping-inference or structural-alignment process, Dowty and Grimshaw´s thematic role theory, Luhmann´s autopoietic system, and Glucksebrg and Wisniewski´s property attribution approaches to the cognitive process.2 These theories of political subjectivity refer to the ontological distance between empty significants and multitude of particular contents (which are struggling to fill the absent plenitude or empty universal).3 Luhmann´s autopoietic system consists of a method of self-referentiality of sociological elements and processes visualized independently from other´s points of view. Putnam-Kripke´s causal theories of reference, are a reaction against Frege-Russell´s analytic position and a return to Stuart Mill´s theories, and consist of an objectivist semantics where linguistic meanings are based on a correspondence between words and the world, where a strict distinction between proper and common names prevails, and where proper names are rigid designators that do not have sense but only reference.4 The structural-alignment process proposed by Forbus & Gentner (1989) is essentially an analogical structure-mapping, but not a conceptual combination, and intends to play a central role in the construction of reasoning and meaning.5 The thematic role theory, proposed by Dowty (1989), Grimshaw (1990), Jackendoff (1990) and Mylne (1999), refers to the thematic interpretation of natural language sentences. According to Jackendoff (1990) the thematic interpretation of a sentence consists of the association of its syntactic structure with the distinct levels of lexical conceptual structures. 2 Moreover, the recent prototype theory of concept categorization or feature theory of meaning, as a specific field of a non-analytic and objectivist cognitive semantics, rather than defining categories with well-defined borders and by means of necessary and sufficient conditions for an invariant typicality or representativeness, as it was done by the classical linguistic approach (Aristotelian, Cartesian and Linnean), lies more on the study of categories from a family resemblance approach.6 More specifically, the prototype theory lies on the study of categories from the perspective of their internal structure taken separately, of the larger conceptual structures that combine and integrate several categories into mental models, blended concepts and fuzzy boundaries, and of the relationship between form and meaning.7 Prototypical categories are efficient analytical units because, according to Geeraerts (1997), they are not rigidly defined, and they are functional because they carry informational density, structural stability, and flexible adaptability, in the same epistemological line as the indeterminacy of meaning.8 Similarly, by interpreting new beliefs and practices in terms of existing prototypical categories or family resemblances, agents are able to bring beliefs about the prototype and its cognitive extensions in line with historical experiences by simply integrating new concepts or adjusting the incorporation of peripheral conceptual categories. In doing so, Geeraerts believes, agents are able to relate these categories "…to general epistemological beliefs about the working of the human conceptual system".9 But Wierzbicka (1996) critically argues that because there is enough room for both prototypes and invariants, what is at need today is a synthesis of both traditions, the classical and the modern.10 And cognitive psychologists, like Hampton (1997) and Wisniewski (1997, 1998), together with generative linguists, like Dowty (1989), Jackendoff (1990) and Grimshaw (1990), and cognitive
Recommended publications
  • Forced Labour at the Frontier of Empires: Manipur and the French Congo”, Comparatif
    “Forced Labour at the Frontier of Empires: Manipur and the French Congo”, Comparatif. Yaruipam Muivah, Alessandro Stanziani To cite this version: Yaruipam Muivah, Alessandro Stanziani. “Forced Labour at the Frontier of Empires: Manipur and the French Congo”, Comparatif.. Comparativ, Leipzig University, 2019, 29 (3), pp.41-64. hal-02954571 HAL Id: hal-02954571 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02954571 Submitted on 1 Oct 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Yaruipam Muivah, Alessandro Stanziani Forced Labour at the Frontier of Empires: Manipur and the French Congo, 1890-1914. Debates about abolition of slavery have essentially focused on two interrelated questions: 1) whether nineteenth and early twentieth century abolitions were a major breakthrough compared to previous centuries (or even millennia) in the history of humankind during which bondage had been the dominant form of labour and human condition. 2) whether they express an action specific to western bourgeoisie and liberal civilization. It is true that the number of abolitionist acts and the people concerned throughout the extended nineteenth century (1780- 1914) had no equivalent in history: 30 million Russian peasants, half a million slaves in Saint- Domingue in 1790, four million slaves in the US in 1860, another million in the Caribbean (at the moment of the abolition of 1832-40), a further million in Brazil in 1885 and 250,000 in the Spanish colonies were freed during this period.
    [Show full text]
  • Sociology at Stanford University
    Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sf/soy091/5113163 by Stanford University, [email protected] on 01 October 2018 Varieties of Indigenous Ethnicity 1 Varieties of Indigenous Ethnicity Varieties of Indigeneity in the Americas Edward Telles, University of California–Santa Barbara Florencia Torche, Stanford University .................................................................................................................. e examine sources of indigenous identity in the two countries with the larg- est indigenous populations in the Western Hemisphere—Mexico and Peru. WWe find that the size of the indigenous population varies dramatically de- pending on the measure of indigeneity used, and that using multiple measures captures distinct modes of indigeneity. Using latent class analysis, we find that contemporary indigenous classification clusters around four types, which we characterize as Traditional Indians, Indigenous Mestizos, New Indians, and Non-Indigenous. Traditional Indians tend to be indigenous on virtually all indicators, and they are especially poor, dark, and rural. Indigenous Mestizos tend to speak an indigenous language, but self- identification as indigenous is tenuous. New Indians assert an indigenous identity despite their frequent lack of linguistic knowledge and close indigenous ancestry, and they are as urban, educated, and light-skinned as the Non-Indigenous. The analysis ad- dresses sociological concepts of ethnic boundaries, assimilation, mestizaje, and symbolic ethnicity and discusses the implications of distinct modes of indigenous ethnicity. .................................................................................................................. Although ethnic boundaries are fluid in the real world, states strictly define eth- nic groups through their censuses on the basis of one or two questions. By creat- ing ethnic categories, such as indigenous, states estimate its population composition but also shape representations of the nation and its identity (Loveman 2014; Wimmer 2013).
    [Show full text]
  • View the Manual
    Game Manual Libertad o Muerte! - Rules 1 CONTENTS 1.- INTRODUCTION 2.- INSTALLATION 3.- MAIN MENU 4.- NEW GAME 5.- INSIDE THE GAME 6.- THE MAP 7.- THE UNITS 8.- GAME PHASES 9.- LAND MOVEMENT 10.- LAND COMBAT 11.- NAVAL MOVEMENT 12.- NAVAL COMBAT 13.- SIEGES 14.- CARDS 15.- MAINTENANCE 16.- PURCHASES AND REPLACEMENTS 17.- PBEM 18.- SECONDARY MENU 19.- WINNING THE GAME 20.- APPENDICES 21.- TIMELINE 22.- CREDITS 1.-INTRODUCTION Libertad o Muerte! is a historical strategy computer game that represents the wars of Independence of the Latin American Spanish colonies. In Libertad o Muerte! players can take the role of the Patriots, fighting for their freedom, Libertad o Muerte! - Rules 2 or that of the Royalists, trying to change history and keep that great empire under Spanish control. The game starts on 1810 and it can reach 1825 in the bigger scenario. 1.1 Features and concept of Libertad o Muerte!. - Turn based game, eah turn divided in several phases : - Card Draw - Reinforcements - Income - Maintenance - Purchase - Naval Movement - Naval Combat - Land Movement - Land Battle - Siege - Placement of new units - Replacements - End of Turn - Two decks of cards, one for each player. - Great Map divided in areas 1.2 Game Scale The units in Libertad o Muerte! represent regiments or batallions for land units, each naval unit is a ship and the main historical leaders have their own unit. 2.-INSTALLATION 2.1 Downloading and Installing Libertad o Muerte! - Rules 3 The game is installed through digital download (from Avalon-Digital site or from Steam). Once you have purchased the game you will receive a serial number.
    [Show full text]
  • NERG News a Number of People Will Tell You That Using CW Decoding Software Is Just As Good As Actually Learning the Code
    NERG June 2017 NEWS North East Radio Group Inc PO Box 270, Greensborough, VIC 3088 www.nerg.asn.au ABN - 19 340 249 865 Incorporated 1985 Victoria Reg No A0006776V Affiliated with the WIA Learning CW (Morse WHAT'S ON THIS MONTH Code) Strange as it may seem there are still many Monthly meeting CW QSO's happening on the bands. As a matter of fact there were 280 DXCC entities active on Thursday 8th June 2017 Regular club CW in 2016 (Source “2016 DXCC Year End Review – meeting 8:00 pm till late at the club rooms. by Joe Reisert, W1JR”) For the rare DXpeditions on the air in 2016 more CW contacts were made HF Antenna Modelling – Paul VK3DIP will than any other mode (Same source) Therefore if show us how to model HF antennas, including you want to get your DXCC total up learning CW Tony VK3CAB's “Linked Dipole” from April can be a great advantage. 2017 NERG News A number of people will tell you that using CW decoding software is just as good as actually learning the code. When conditions are good and signals are in the clear then software like Coffee Club nd MRP40 can be fantastic, but introduce weak, Thursday 22 June 2017 7:30 pm till fading signals and some QRM and the decoder around 10:00 at the club rooms. can let you down at the critical instant that the rare DX station is sending your call! Gainfully Unemployed Lunch Once you have decided to learn CW the next Group question is how do I learn it? Tuesday 27th June 2017 - AT The Greensborough RSL Coffee at 11:00 and First concentrate on receiving the code as lunch around 12:30 in the Bistro.
    [Show full text]
  • Representations of Spain in Early Modern English Drama
    Saugata Bhaduri Polycolonial Angst: Representations of Spain in Early Modern English Drama One of the important questions that this conference1 requires us to explore is how Spain was represented in early modern English theatre, and to examine such representation especially against the backdrop of the emergence of these two nations as arguably the most important players in the unfolding game of global imperialism. This is precisely what this article proposes to do: to take up representative English plays of the period belonging to the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) which do mention Spain, analyse what the nature of their treat- ment of Spain is and hypothesise as to what may have been the reasons behind such a treatment.2 Given that England and Spain were at bitter war during these twenty years, and given furthermore that these two nations were the most prominent rivals in the global carving of the colonial pie that had already begun during this period, the commonsensical expectation from such plays, about the way Spain would be represented in them, should be of unambiguous Hispanophobia. There were several contextual reasons to occasion widespread Hispanophobia in the period. While Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1509) and its subsequent annulment (1533) had already sufficiently complicated Anglo-Hispanic relations, and their daughter Queen Mary I’s marriage to Philip II of Spain (1554) and his subsequent becoming the King of England and Ireland further aggravated the 1 The conference referred to here is the International Conference on Theatre Cultures within Globalizing Empires: Looking at Early Modern England and Spain, organised by the ERC Project “Early Modern European Drama and the Cultural Net (DramaNet),” at the Freie Universität, Ber- lin, November 15–16, 2012, where the preliminary version of this article was presented.
    [Show full text]
  • Max Weber Programme Annual Report on 201/17
    ANNUAL REPORT ACADEMIC YEAR 2016-2017 The Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies ANNUAL REPORT ACADEMIC YEAR 2016/17 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME FOR POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES European University Institute Badia Fiesolana Via dei Roccettini, 9 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) – Italy Email: [email protected] www.eui.eu/MaxWeberProgramme PUBLISHED IN ITALY IN NOVEMBER 2017 BY THE EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE © EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, 2017 The European Commission supports the EUI through the European Union budget. This publication reflects the views only of the author(s), and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Contents FOREWORD BY RICHARD BELLAMY, DIRECTOR OF THE MAX WEBER PROGRAMME 5 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME IN 2016-2017 STATISTICS 7 1. APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2016-2017 MAX WEBER FELLOWSHIPS 7 2. MAX WEBER FELLOWS: THE 2016-2017 COHORT 9 3. MAX WEBER FELLOWS AND THE JOB MARKET 13 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME ACTIVITIES 14 1. ACADEMIC PRACTICE 14 2. MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH 19 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME ACTIVITIES FEEDBACK 36 1. EVALUATION SURVEY 36 2. ACADEMIC PRACTICE GROUP REPORTS 40 3. THEMATIC GROUP REPORTS 43 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME ACADEMIC CAREERS OBSERVATORY (ACO) 47 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME STEERING COMMITTEE 48 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME TEAM 48 MAX WEBER FELLOWS 49 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME FOR POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES Foreword his report covers the first year of the Max Weber Programme Tsince moving to its new home in Villa Paola. As the report shows, it also coincided with yet another high number of applications to the Programme, and the largest intake of new Fellows so far.
    [Show full text]
  • Explore-Travel-Guides-R.Pdf
    Please review this travel guide on www.amazon.com Submit additional suggestions or comments to [email protected] Businesses in Colombia are constantly evolving, please send us any new information on prices, closures and any other changes to help us update our information in a timely manner. [email protected] Written and researched by Justin Cohen Copyright ©2013 by Explore Travel Guides Colombia ISBN – 978-958-44-8071-2 Map and book design by Blackline Publicidad EU Bogotá, Colombia This travel guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. You are free: to share, to copy, distribute and transmit this work. Distributed by Explore Travel Guides Colombia www.gotocolombia.com [email protected] CONTENTS General Information ............................................................................. 17 Colombia Websites for Travelers .............................................................. 48 Activities in Colombia ............................................................................. 59 A Brief History of Colombia ..................................................................... 64 Bogotá .................................................................................................. 89 Outside of Bogotá ................................................................................ 153 Suesca............................................................................................. 153 Guatavita .......................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • FAMILIA Y PODER · EN NUEVA Eseana Memoria Del Tercer Simposio De Historia De Las Mentalidades Seminario De Historia De Las Mentalidades
    ... FAMILIA Y PODER · EN NUEVA ESeANA Memoria del Tercer Simposio de Historia de las Mentalidades Seminario de Historia de las Mentalidades COLECCION CIENTIFICA 3U4G2 ~milia y poder en Nueva Espana Mernoria del Tercer Sirnposio de Historia de las Mentalidades ~minario de Historia de las Mentalidades l I Serie H,storia lnstituto Nacional de Antropologla e Historia po,vRe,1oli)' J"vi/l ~ - 6vt.l!lr I 'Pl 0 1 EdiciOn: Antonio Guzman V. y Lourdes Martfnez 0. Portada: Serie Castas num. 1 (detalle) An6nimo, siglo XVIII. Oleo/tela Colecci6n Banco Nacional de Mexico Cortesfa de Fomento Cultural Banamex, A. C. Primera edici6n: 1991 © lnstituto Naclonal de Antropolog(a e Historia C6rdoba 45, Col. Roma, Mexico, D.F. lmpreso y hecho en Mexico ISB N-961:Hl487-68-9 lndice I Agradecimientos 7 lntroducci6n 9 Matrimonios hispano-indios en el primer siglo de la Colonia Pedro Carrasco 11 El papel del estado en la organizaci6n economica de la familia campesina en el Mexico central durante el siglo XVI Teresa Rojas Rabiela 23 ii La familia indfgena noble y la conservaci6n de un poder disminuido Jose Ruben Romero Galvan 35 Matrimonios, alianzas y mitos Alfredo Lopez Austin 43 El poder de los mercaderes. La Mixteca alta: del siglo XVI a los primeros aiios del XVIII Ma. de las Angeles Romero Frizzi 49 Las familias de comerciantes en el trafico transpacifico en el siglo XVII I Carmen Yuste 63 El papel de la familia en la organizaci6n empresarial en la Nueva Espana John E. Kicza 75 i Terc,;r simposio de historia de las mentalidades I Marfa Teresa Huerta 87 Pobres y poderosos.
    [Show full text]
  • Memorandum of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on The
    Memorandum of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on the Application filed before the International Court of Justice by the Cooperative of Guyana on March 29th, 2018 ANNEX Table of Contents I. Venezuela’s territorial claim and process of decolonization of the British Guyana, 1961-1965 ................................................................... 3 II. London Conference, December 9th-10th, 1965………………………15 III. Geneva Conference, February 16th-17th, 1966………………………20 IV. Intervention of Minister Iribarren Borges on the Geneva Agreement at the National Congress, March 17th, 1966……………………………25 V. The recognition of Guyana by Venezuela, May 1966 ........................ 37 VI. Mixed Commission, 1966-1970 .......................................................... 41 VII. The Protocol of Port of Spain, 1970-1982 .......................................... 49 VIII. Reactivation of the Geneva Agreement: election of means of settlement by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1982-198371 IX. The choice of Good Offices, 1983-1989 ............................................. 83 X. The process of Good Offices, 1989-2014 ........................................... 87 XI. Work Plan Proposal: Process of good offices in the border dispute between Guyana and Venezuela, 2013 ............................................. 116 XII. Events leading to the communiqué of the UN Secretary-General of January 30th, 2018 (2014-2018) ....................................................... 118 2 I. Venezuela’s territorial claim and Process of decolonization
    [Show full text]
  • Regime Legitimacy and Comparative Chinese Secession Movements
    POSC 289: Nationalism, Secession, and the State. Spring 2009, Dr. Thomas Julian Lee, Research Paper Regime Legitimacy and Comparative Chinese Secession Movements (PHOTO: A tattered PRC flag waves above a Beijing restaurant in the Xizhimen Wai District, 2001.) ABSTRACT: Much of foreigners’ “misunderstanding” of China is a result of its own environment of restricted information. An undeniably ideographic case, the current regime of the People’s Republic of China faces an ongoing crisis of legitimacy in its post-totalitarian state, to which its primary response has been the instrumental tapping of any and all potential sources, including vestigial socialist ideology, economic development, traditional Chinese culture, and perhaps most of all, a self-proclaimed status as the protector of a civic Chinese nation which may not actually exist. While denying its imperial past and present, the PRC seeks to construct such a nation, while retaining the territories and nations in its periphery which, due largely to non-identification as members of the Chinese nation, would prefer autonomy or independence by means of “secession”. Secessionist movements based on nationalist conflicts with the central government are unlikely to “succeed”, and as Chinese power rises, the more important issues are transparency and the types of tactics the Chinese Communist Party employs in pursuit of national integration. What all concerned parties must be vigilant for, additionally, is any evidence of a long-term strategy to reconstruct a “Sinocentric world” which would begin with the revisionist construction of a “Greater China”. China itself faces a choice of what kind of state it would prefer to be, and a primary indicator of its decision, by which the international community has judged it harshly, has been the policies toward “minority nationalities”, effectively denying their rights to self-determination, in turn denying the regime its desired legitimacy.
    [Show full text]
  • Religion and the Abolition of Slavery: a Comparative Approach
    Religions and the abolition of slavery - a comparative approach William G. Clarence-Smith Economic historians tend to see religion as justifying servitude, or perhaps as ameliorating the conditions of slaves and serving to make abolition acceptable, but rarely as a causative factor in the evolution of the ‘peculiar institution.’ In the hallowed traditions, slavery emerges from scarcity of labour and abundance of land. This may be a mistake. If culture is to humans what water is to fish, the relationship between slavery and religion might be stood on its head. It takes a culture that sees certain human beings as chattels, or livestock, for labour to be structured in particular ways. If religions profoundly affected labour opportunities in societies, it becomes all the more important to understand how perceptions of slavery differed and changed. It is customary to draw a distinction between Christian sensitivity to slavery, and the ingrained conservatism of other faiths, but all world religions have wrestled with the problem of slavery. Moreover, all have hesitated between sanctioning and condemning the 'embarrassing institution.' Acceptance of slavery lasted for centuries, and yet went hand in hand with doubts, criticisms, and occasional outright condemnations. Hinduism The roots of slavery stretch back to the earliest Hindu texts, and belief in reincarnation led to the interpretation of slavery as retribution for evil deeds in an earlier life. Servile status originated chiefly from capture in war, birth to a bondwoman, sale of self and children, debt, or judicial procedures. Caste and slavery overlapped considerably, but were far from being identical. Brahmins tried to have themselves exempted from servitude, and more generally to ensure that no slave should belong to 1 someone from a lower caste.
    [Show full text]
  • Permanent War on Peru's Periphery: Frontier Identity
    id2653500 pdfMachine by Broadgun Software - a great PDF writer! - a great PDF creator! - http://www.pdfmachine.com http://www.broadgun.com ’S PERIPHERY: FRONT PERMANENT WAR ON PERU IER IDENTITY AND THE POLITICS OF CONFLICT IN 17TH CENTURY CHILE. By Eugene Clark Berger Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History August, 2006 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Date: Jane Landers August, 2006 Marshall Eakin August, 2006 Daniel Usner August, 2006 íos Eddie Wright-R August, 2006 áuregui Carlos J August, 2006 id2725625 pdfMachine by Broadgun Software - a great PDF writer! - a great PDF creator! - http://www.pdfmachine.com http://www.broadgun.com HISTORY ’ PERMANENT WAR ON PERU S PERIPHERY: FRONTIER IDENTITY AND THE POLITICS OF CONFLICT IN 17TH-CENTURY CHILE EUGENE CLARK BERGER Dissertation under the direction of Professor Jane Landers This dissertation argues that rather than making a concerted effort to stabilize the Spanish-indigenous frontier in the south of the colony, colonists and indigenous residents of 17th century Chile purposefully perpetuated the conflict to benefit personally from the spoils of war and use to their advantage the resources sent by viceregal authorities to fight it. Using original documents I gathered in research trips to Chile and Spain, I am able to reconstruct the debates that went on both sides of the Atlantic over funds, protection from ’ th pirates, and indigenous slavery that so defined Chile s formative 17 century. While my conclusions are unique, frontier residents from Paraguay to northern New Spain were also dealing with volatile indigenous alliances, threats from European enemies, and questions about how their tiny settlements could get and keep the attention of the crown.
    [Show full text]