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the same scale as that of the 1640s. The political and social disruption was insufficient to generate radical and active popular movements as had existed in the Civil War period. Nevertheless, the strife and bitterness were such that they still provided the essential ingredients for a considerable degree of political and religious alienation. The religious response of the 1690s and the first years of the next century was thus narrower in terms of social class, less politically radical (one searches in vain for Diggers) and dominated by welleducated men. As a result
the gender display within. Indeed, subtle questions like attitudes to gender in the past cannot be understood unless the social context is first explored. In the introductory sections of this volume we discussed the materiality of shoes. This discussion revealed different attitudes towards shoes or dress mediated by class, status, gender, life course and individual or group expression. Indeed, social science understands that our contemporary attitude towards gender, for example, is mediated by generation, personal experience, education, class and regional or
expectations and expressions of gender identity (Reay, 1998 ). Modern Australian, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, English or American societies all have subtly, and not so subtly, different approaches to the body, family, marriage, childbirth, social class, gender and age or education, based on wider cultural contexts like history, religion or law. Most importantly there is not in fact a single approach to these ideas in any of the places described. Indeed, your own attitude to family, for example, might depend on your past, your background and, importantly, the regional or class
‘the education in Zionist citizenship’, which formed an integral part of Hebrew pedagogy prior to the State’s establishment. The essentials of ‘education in Zionist citizenship’ well represented ethno-national aims. They embraced the entire fabric of the Jewish pupil’s life at school and were integrated into all class courses – particularly those subjects where it was easy to instil ideological strains, such as Moledet (geography of Israel, literally, ‘homeland’) and Bible classes – but could even be found in mathematical studies. The subject matter of such
which were both vertical and horizontal with regard to social class structure. Sorcery and magical harm practised by neighbouring farm households against each other can be understood in part as a result of resource scarcity and the notion of ‘limited good’, 14 in which it was assumed that the good fortune available to a community was of a fixed amount, so that a person prospered only at the expense of others. The concept of
then we have to bear in mind that most of the people who were and are drawn to the religion came from social classes whose members had already largely abandoned witchcraft as a mechanism of accusation by the eighteenth century. A comparative approach may shed some more light on this, because at present the religion is hardly studied outside England. Continental instances nevertheless appear to be strongly influenced by the
In his provocatively entitled Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture , anthropologist Marvin Harris suggests a one-dimensional explanation for the witch-hunts of early modern Europe, an all-encompassing theory of class warfare manipulated by elite culture, in effect, ‘the magic bullet of society’s privileged and powerful classes’. Of course, the case for the marriage of anthropology and
separation of complex, dynamic practices that cut across lines of class and power within a single society. 4 Of course, power relationships do profoundly influence belief and practice; my adoption of the term ‘vernacular’ is not meant to deny this, but rather to call attention to how particular individuals shape their own beliefs and practices in response to their social position, as well as to the many ways that vernacular religion and magic can both
enlightenment. More importantly, however, we know that most philosophes viewed the process of enlightenment in class terms. As 206 The ‘public sphere’ and the hidden life of ideas Voltaire put it, the ‘rabble … are not worthy of being enlightened’.13 Given that this view was common, can we really expect the philosophes to be frank about the important role of the lower orders in the formation and expression of public opinion? As we have seen, however, the evidence demonstrates quite clearly that, in the struggle against the oppression of the Jansenists, the most crucial
particularly adopted by middle-class families was to pay a pre-determined fee for general medical cover. The popularity of such self-help strategies underlines the fact that despite efforts made in some quarters, a national medical welfare system failed to emerge before the Civil War. 8 Only maternity was covered by national social protection after 1931 and only after hard negotiation. 9 Although it would be too simplistic to say