Social Studies versus Social Science

The authors of this article examine several controversial U.S. monuments and offer teachers a rationale, resources, and suggested activities for incorporating these historical monuments into classroom instruction. The authors discuss why controversial issues should be discussed in the social studies classroom through the critical examination of national monuments. We argue that discussing key social issues through the analysis of contentious monuments will not only provide students with a more complete picture of history but also allow them to develop critical twenty-first-century skills such as visual literacy and understanding multiple perspectives. The focus is to provide secondary social studies teachers with an alternative approach to examining historical monuments and controversial issues through the analysis of contemporary and historical debates regarding the nature of commemoration on the United States’ landscape. A brief rationale for the inclusion of monuments and controversial issues into the social studies curriculum is provided, as well as examples of provocative historic monuments, example activities to teach these monuments, and suggested resources to further examine this topic.     

Transformative Events and Generational Memory: A Case Study Over Time in Lithuania

Research on the distribution of collective memories in national populations has often been conducted in relatively stable societies, where most individuals have experienced a limited range of event types. We examine collective memories in Lithuania, a society that has seen substantial change, using three surveys conducted during the two decades since Lithuanian protests against Soviet rule began in the late 1980s. We identify two types of events that individuals may recall, drawing on Sewell's ( 2005 ) distinction between structure‐transforming events and other events that are significant but less momentous, and we find that the two types of events exhibit different patterns of change over time: in particular, transformative events may absorb other events through assimiliation and are likely to be the focus of commemoration. Recall of transformative events also shows a distinctive relation to birth cohort. Our results support the need to take into account the nature of events in order to understand which events are remembered as important and by whom.     

Protestant exiles and their assimilation in early modern England

Recent published and unpublished studies of the protestant migration to England are surveyed in this article, written in the context of the commemoration of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes which occurred three hundred years ago this year. Conclusions about migration and settlement to England need to be set into the European context and various further directions for future research in England are suggested by the comparison. Detailed historical investigation has enabled us to be more precise about the chronology and extent of the migration to England. The study of the mentality of exiles and their assimilation is shown to be an important one for the understanding of early modern culture.     

A Theoretical Framework Explaining Cross-Cultural Sexual Harassment: Integrating Hofstede and Schwartz

After a slow beginning, research on sexual harassment from a cross-cultural and international perspective has begun to assume more importance in the literature. Several recent studies have given weight to cultural differences in explaining cross-cultural sexual harassment behaviors across samples from various countries. Herein, we synthesize elements of Hofstede's and Schwartz's cross-cultural theories and specifically apply them to the field of sexual harassment. Our model highlights how the integrated conceptualization based on Hofstede and Schwartz's work is consistent with much of the existing empirical research on sexually harassing or exploitative behaviors, directed towards women, in many different countries and cultures. We offer testable propositions for future empirical research as well as theory development in the area of cross-cultural sexual harassment. The derived research propositions suggest that differences in the likelihood to sexually harass by men, as well as the tolerance of sexual harassment by women, vary across different countries due to the fundamental differences in cultures and values.     

Memory and (Dissemi) Nation: Völkerschlachtdenkmal and Deutsche Bücherei at Leipzig 1813/1913 Between Real Bones and Symbolic Letters1

Abstract At Leipzig, the monument to the victorious battle against Napoleon in 1813 was inaugurated one hundred years after the event. The article raises the questions: how far is the authority of the monument dependent on material relics (bones) and what correspondences are there between symbolic commemoration and the infrastructure of national memory as represented by the neighbouring German Library at Leipzig. The dimension of sacred space and time’ is set against the hardware of agencies of memory, while an archaeological perception serves methodologically as a challenge to historical discourse in processing the material or textual archives of the past.     

LOCAL SPORTS TEAMS AND CELEBRATION OF COMMUNITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE HOME ADVANTAGE

In major sports events between representatives of different cities, the home team has been known to have a major advantage over the visiting team. Drawing on Durkheim, Schwartz and Barsky (1977) have demonstrated that the social support of the audience is the main determinant of this advantage. In their conclusion, Schwartz and Barsky characterize sports events as a "celebration of local community"(p. 658). This article tests the celebration of community thesis by comparing the relative home advantage among 23 professional basketball teams during the 1981–82 season. Three broad variables are hypothesized to affect a team's home court advantage: (1) provincialism and stability of the city; (2) uniqueness of the home arena; and (3) the tradition of the team. Support is found for all three variables. Not only is there a home advantage in organized sports, but the magnitude of the advantage is itself bound by the social context within which the team performs.     

Engaging Geography at Every Street Corner: Using Place-Names as Critical Heuristic in Social Studies

In this article I explore an often overlooked feature of everyday life that can serve as a powerful heuristic for students to engage history and geograhpy critically: everyday place-names. Drawing on scholarship in critical toponymy, I explore how the city-text—the past as it is overlaid on top of the geography of the community through place-names—serves to commemorate particular histories that are often simultaneously exclusionary and taken-for-granted. Outlining three of the city-text's primary features—its unconventional narrative structure that emphasizes a worldview, its existence as a manifestation of state control over commemoration in the community, and its exclusive focus on heroism—I suggest that social studies classrooms be sites from which students critically engage the everyday city-texts of their own communities as a way of fostering critical thinking skills and commitments to historical and geographic critique.     

Relationality, place, and absence: a three-dimensional perspective on social memory

This article builds on recent work on memory and place in the social sciences. One emphasis in the literature on ‘Western’ forms of social memory has been on official, intentional sites of commemoration, such as war memorials and monuments. Based on fieldwork in the north of England with older residents of a former coal mining village, I approach social memory from a different perspective, emphasising the work of memory and its complex interactions with place, absence, social relations and social rupture. Like Village on the Border, this research has taken place in a setting that has undergone significant socio‐economic change: the closure of the South Yorkshire coalfields. The embeddedness of local knowledge in social relations emerge in both Ronnie Frankenberg's work and my own and I explore these topics here in connection with what I term a ‘three‐dimensionality of memory’.     

COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND HISTORY:

Abraham Lincoln's changing relation to the African American community of memory is a means of addressing unresolved problems in the work of Maurice Halbwachs. Many sociologists, beginning with Halbwachs, have recognized that commemorative symbolism creates new images of the past, but the process by which this occurs has never been closely studied. I draw on a variety of sources, including Lincoln Day observances, press commentary, oratory, cartoons, and prints, in my effort to understand how commemorative symbolism works. During the past century, no new information about Lincoln's racial attitudes has appeared; yet commemorative pairing and coupling mechanisms and their resulting commemorative networks have transformed him from a conservative symbol of the status quo during the Jim Crow era into the personification of racial justice and equality during the New Deal and the civil rights movement. Since the symbolic devices employed to depict Lincoln are shaped by the very historical record they transcend, however, Halbwachs's distinction between fact-based history and symbol-based commemoration must be modified.     

Public relations intersections: Statues,monuments, and narrative continuity

Public relations theory addresses strategic processes, including rhetorical strategies, that enable critical understanding of why and how communities develop, promulgate, and use text, in this case, statues and monuments, to establish narrative continuity based on moral judgment in the pursuit of relatedness. That paradigm reasons that narratives provide enactable continuity that binds the past, present, and future to culturally guide coordinated discourse and action. How statues and monuments are important to that end can be demonstrated by public relations practice in the United States: Post-Civil War to today. To develop that theme, this paper discusses how statues and monuments serve as textual resources that bind time and moralize behavior through commemoration/counter commemoration. As an intersection with narrative theory, epideictic rhetoric has celebrated (or condemned) citizenship actions that reflect and define moral behavior. Such rhetoric uses moral standards to judge acts, and advocates acts as worthy of praise as they exemplify moral standards. If standards change, acts that once were lauded can become condemned as unworthy of praise. Using the civil society intersection of narrative continuity, epideictic rhetoric, and relational capital, three eras will be examined to demonstrate the issue cause-related intersection of statues/monuments in the USA: (1) Post-Civil War and Reconstruction (roughly 1868–1900), (2) Jim Crow era (late 19th and early 20th century); and (3) recent efforts to erect, protect, and remove statues and monuments that support or disrupt the narrative continuity that enacts race-based marginalization and disempowerment as relatedness tensions.     

Ethical Practice and Narratives of Resistance to Violence: Becoming Resilient Part 2

This paper is the second part of a previous publication in this journal and is based on a plenary address at the 30th Australian Family Therapy Conference in 2009. It develops the idea of ethical practice in therapy for men and boys with a history of significant violence and abuse. This fosters a connection with resilience that resists or refuses to participate in historical narratives that support violence and its effects. In the paper, I provide several therapeutic examples of working with narratives of violence and present a theory of resilience and ethical practice drawing on the ideas of Deleuze. This helps to understand resilience as a process of ethical agency, creative renewal, and the production of expansive difference.     

On the tournament equilibrium set

An example is provided showing that Schwartz's tournament equilibrium set is not identical to the minimal covering set of Dutta.     

The responsive community (I & we)

Opposition to collectivism from both libertarians who challenged totalitarianism and laissez faire conservatives who opposed controlling collective institutions led to a celebration of individualism. However, this movement to individualism in America has undercut the legitimacy of the community and of the public realm. This paper examines the extreme historical positions of individualist (Whigs) and collectivists (Tories), and argues for a synthesis between the two that invests rights in both the person and society, and views individuals and their union as both commanding primary status. He is working on a book spelling out the I & We paradigm and its use to advance a socio-economic theory. (This essay draws on the author’sAn Immodest Agenda and on his presentation at the Peter E. Heller Conference on the National Social Conscience at Brandeis University.)     

Neoconservatism,bohemia and the moral economy of neoliberalism

This paper is concerned with the moral economy of neoliberalism. The goal is to show the development of this moral economy through the discourse of neoconservatism. The research pays particular attention to the incorporation of aspects of bohemia in the construction of this moral economy. The paper charts the development of the neoconservative moral critique of political modernity in the second half of the twentieth century by drawing on the leading neoconservative figures, Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol. The first part of this research makes clear the homology between the neoconservative critique of bohemia and excessive capitalism, where both are accused of nihilism as part of the moral abyss of liberal modernity. The second part of this research shows how, through the work of George Gilder, neoconservatives re-imagined a moral economy for capitalism that overcame the apparent nihilism whilst retaining the unrestrained nature of accumulation. Through a celebration of the heroic entrepreneur, neoliberalism’s moral economy is based upon a celebration of risk, an embrace of chance and an overturning of bourgeois morality. Neoliberalism incorporates the bohemian critique of bourgeois capitalism into a critique of the social democratic welfare state which, by prioritising safety over pleasure and excess, is deemed to be both incapable of offering spiritual satisfaction as well as being ill suited to a post-Fordist economy. The flexible nature of bohemia that rebelled against organised strictures of bourgeois morality and Fordist organisation is welcomed by the neoliberal turn. The spiritual satisfaction of life on the edge offered to the neoliberal subject acts as a form seduction and mirrors the creative freedom offered through bohemia. Neoliberalism’s gift, however, comes at a price, the edgy existence is coupled with removal of social safety nets and increasing insecurity and precariatisation.     

Experiences from Pagan women: A closer look at croning rituals

In this qualitative study I explore how Pagan women conceptualize aging, more specifically social aging, through the ritual process of being a Pagan and becoming a Crone. The central question of this research revolves around how older women who identify as Pagan experience, understand, and conceptualize their social aging and their role as aging women in American society. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data and explore the meaning of aging for women identifying as Pagan. Major emergent themes within the data demonstrate that the croning ritual, a central aspect of Paganism, affirms these women in their process of aging. These women, through the ritual of croning, are able to understand their aging as celebration, maintain a positive sense of self while aging, and reclaim visibility as aging women. These women were able to embed their experiences of aging within a unique and specific cultural framework, a spiritual and foundational framework cultivating a spiritual connection with nature.     

Merchandizing the Sacred: Commodifying Hindu Religion,Gods/Goddesses,and Festivals in the United States

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the gates for immigrants from India, who have come to the United States for various reasons other than religion. Their religious consciousness has grown along with the age of their children who are born in the United States. They have felt the need to retain and hand down their tradition and culture. In the process, sustaining their tradition and culture has become equivalent with religion, so they express it through rituals and festivals. With these festive observances has developed an intimate connection between commerce and religion, fashion and festival, celebration and consumption. In this scholarly essay, I analyze how Hindu religion has succumbed to the world of advertisements, mass production, and marketing in the United States. This aspect is significant because it gives an opportunity to conceptualize a larger transnational space that deals with Hindu religious practices and sees the participation of retailers and businesses located in various Hindu diasporic spaces using various marketing media strategically.     

Città Aperta o Cultura Chiusa?: The Homosexualization of Fascism in the Perverted Cultural Memory of the Italian Left

The essay analyzes the equation of Fascism and homosexuality offered by two founding works of the Italian left-wing Neorealist movement: Roberto Rossellini's film Roma, città aperta (1945) and Vasco Pratolini's novel Cronache di poveri amanti (1947). By identifying Fascism and homosexuality, both works limited their commemoration of the victims of Fascism to heterosexuals and contributed to the erasure of a gay and lesbian Holocaust from historical memory. As shown by Carlo Lizzani's film Celluloide (1996) and the coverage of the World Pride 2000 by the Communist daily Liberazione, briefly analyzed at the end of the essay, the Italian Left has still not found a satisfactory way of dealing with the homophobic legacy of Neo-realism.     

Suffering in Silence: A Qualitative Meta-Data-Analysis of Postpartum Depression

In this article, we apply a relational lens to a grounded theory meta-data-analysis of qualitative studies on postpartum depression (PPD) conducted between 1999 and 2005. Women in all studies report feeling that they have failed to live up to cultural standards for a "good mother." Central to this experience is a sense that these negative feelings could not be spoken. The analysis shows how constructions of motherhood and the reactions of others combine with feelings of incompetence to precipitate isolation from others. Women survive depression through support that validates their experience and promotes eventual reconnection with others. Conclusions emphasize the need for persons trained to facilitate relational connection to develop interventions that address the interpersonal contexts of PPD.     

Silencing the Good: Memory,Forgetting and the Belated Reputation of Giorgio Perlasca

The sociological analysis of the reputation of historical figures has rarely paid attention to temporal delays in the emergence of collective memory. This article focuses on a case of belated reputation as a particular reputational trajectory. I analyse the reputational trajectory of the Italian Giorgio Perlasca, who posed as Spain's representative in Budapest during the German occupation of 1944‐5, and saved thousands of Jews from deportation. Upon his return to Italy, his story was neglected, only to resurface forty years after the events. An analysis of these processes requires the consideration of three factors: the presence of agents who promote a reputation, the configuration of centre‐periphery relations, and the memorability of the figure. The consideration of how these three factors change over time offers an adequate account of processes of commemoration.