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Commenting on Christopher Bayly's Remaking the Modern World, 1900–2015 is a bittersweet exercise. My assignment for this forum is to consider Remaking the Modern World, 1900–2015 from the vantage point of China studies. I will do so by framing my remarks with respect to some of the ways this major South Asia historian took his expertise into larger projects, the last of which is the volume under discussion.

In this essay, I argue that radical economics innovated in the communication of economic ideas, engendering new idioms and print formats to intervene in circuits of progressive activism. The essay mentions the pamphlet work of the Union for Radical Political Economics’ various public engagement projects of the early 1970s but at its heart is the 1974 founding of the mass distribution monthly Dollars & Sense. It looks at the positions taken by the periodical over the years and asks, “What kind of print object was it?” It places the publication within a twentieth century history of left political economy periodicals and compares it with its closest contemporaries in the cultures of print of the American Left, notably Monthly Review and Radical America. The attention to the print ventures of radical economics in the 1970s is a contribution to a new kind of historiography that takes an expanded and extra-curricular outlook of economics.

Scientization of the Social - Politization of Knowledge? On a Narrative of the History of the Twentieth Century. The spread of scientific methods and expert cultures in the social, political and economic fields represents a key aspect of twentieth century history. In German-speaking historiography, the "scientization of the social" (Lutz Raphael) has advanced to an influential concept for research into the role of social and human sciences within this development. Exploring this analytical framework against the background of methodological debates, this paper raises the question of how the relationship between the academic and the political spheres in modern societies can be theoretically conceived.

This article suggests that by breaking away from the couples-centric lens normally deployed by historians of intimacy, and instead focusing on the experience of single people, historians gain fresh insight into a key transition point in the late twentieth century history of relationships. Singles, particularly those actively seeking partners, were particularly hard-pressed to digest the implications of a decade of sexual rights campaigns, because, more explicitly than couples, they had to articulate what they wanted out of the opposite sex. In paying close attention to the articulations and experiences of singles, we gain fresh purchase on how the sexual legacies of the 1970s began to be digested, resisted and repurposed. This article makes a case for doing so through Singles, a magazine that brought together the experiences of a cross-section of mostly heterosexual, unmarried Britons at a moment of significant sexual reordering. Examination of the Singles debates around dating and gender suggests that the contemporaneous efforts of ordinary people to process the new sexual languages of the 1970s were more intense and conflicted than the existing historiography has yet allowed, and that much of the sexual antagonism felt by men and women facing each other across the lonely hearts pages stemmed from gendered anxieties about economic standing.

This article explores the work by Bernard Katz (1911-2003), Stephen W. Kuffler (1913-1980), and John C. Eccles (1903-1997) on the nerve-muscle junction as a milestone in twentieth-century neurophysiology with wider scientific implications. The historical question is approached from two perspectives: (a) an investigation of twentieth-century solutions to a longer physiological dispute and (b) an examination of a new kind of laboratory and academic cooperation. From this vantage point, the work pursued in Sydney by Sir John Carew Eccles' team on the neuromuscular junction is particularly valuable, since it contributed a central functional element to modern physiological understanding regarding the function and structure of the human and animal nervous system. The reflex model of neuromuscular action had already been advanced by neuroanatomists such as Georg Prochaska (1749-1820) in Bohemia since the eighteenth century. It became a major component of neurophysiological theories during the nineteenth century, based on the law associated with the names of François Magendie (1783-1855) in France and Charles Bell (1774-1842) in Britain regarding the functional differences of the sensory and motor spinal nerves. Yet, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that both the histological and the neurophysiological understanding of the nerve-muscle connection became entirely understood and the chemical versus electrical transmission further elicited as the mechanisms of inhibition. John C. Eccles, Bernard Katz, and Stephen W. Kuffler helped to provide some of the missing links for modern neurophysiology. The current article explores several of their scientific contributions and investigates how the context of forced migration contributed to these interactions in contingently new ways.

Interest in the history of psychiatry in the social sciences manifested itself in the sixties and seventies at a moment when concepts such as marginality and deviance appeared as a thought-provoking path to rewrite the history of Western societies. This history of madness faces a turning point. Material culture, as this paper’s line of argument expounds, allows one to remain faithful to the critical heritage of the sixties and seventies while still opening up the field to alternative questions by integrating new actors and themes hitherto largely ignored. It allows nuanced narratives that take into account the structural imbalances of power while at the same time being attentive to the agencies of all the actors, as well as the failures of the institutional utopias. This article is part of the special issue 'Blurring Boundaries: Towards a Medical History of the Twentieth Century'.Materiële objecten in de twintigste eeuwse geschiedenis van psychiatrieDe belangstelling voor de geschiedenis van de psychiatrie in de sociale wetenschappen manifesteerde zich in de jaren zestig en zeventig op een moment dat begrippen als marginaliteit en afwijkend gedrag veelvuldig werden gebruikt om de geschiedenis van de westerse samenlevingen te herschrijven. De geschiedschrijving over krankzinnigheid staat nu op een keerpunt. Door het bestuderen van materiële cultuur, zoals in dit artikel wordt betoogd, maakt het mogelijk om de erfenis van de jaren zestig en zeventig te behouden, maar tegelijkertijd het vakgebied te confronteren met alternatieve vragen door actoren en thema’s te integreren die tot nu toe grotendeels buiten beschouwing gebleven zijn. Dit maakt het mogelijk een genuanceerd betoog te schrijven, daarbij rekening houdend met structurele machtsverschillen, recht te doen aan de verschillende actoren, en tegelijkertijd het falen van de institutionele utopia’s in ogenschouw te nemen. Dit artikel maakt deel uit van het themanummer 'Blurring Boundaries: Towards a Medical History of the Twentieth Century'.

In this essay I provide an account of how research on gun violence has evolved over the last four decades, intertwined with personal observations and commentary on my contributions. It begins with a sketch of the twentieth century history of gun control in the United States. I then provide an account of why gun violence is worth studying, with a discussion of how and why the type of weapon used in crime matters, and assess the social costs of the widespread private ownership of firearms. I then detour into the methodological disputes over estimating basic facts relevant to understanding gun use and misuse. In Section IV, I focus on how gun availability influences the use of guns in crime and whether the incidence of misuse is influenced by the prevalence of gun ownership, regulations, and law enforcement. I go on to review evaluations of efforts to focus law enforcement directly at gun use in violent crime. Next I turn to the hottest topic of our day, the role of guns in self-defense and what migh...

Until recent years, historians of twentieth-century Britain have made relatively little use of the popular press as a source. This is partly due to the practical problems of working with newspapers (pre-digitisation); there has also been, however, a widespread perception that popular journalism is predictable, trivial and politically and socially conservative, and therefore not worthy of sustained scholarly attention. These attitudes are starting to change, encouraged by the process of digitisation. Nevertheless, substantial gaps remain in our understanding of the impact of the press. This article is in two sections; the first examines how popular national newspapers have been used in political narratives, and the second explores their place in discussions of social and cultural change. The article argues that not only have entrenched stereotypes prevented historians from properly understanding the nature of popular newspapers, they have also led to them misinterpreting broader developments in British pol...

One of the most remarkable recent developments in Colombian twentieth century history is the success of the indigenous political movement. This article argues that this success was due in part to the nation state’s willingness to support an ethnically based political movement. The article explores the gradual development of a discourse and political space that favoured the indigenous communities’ demand for land and cultural rights by focusing on one of the main architects of this discourse and political space: Gregorio Hernandez de Alba, an ethnologist who became the director of the Division of Indigenous Affairs in the 1960s. Through the study of his life, this article delves into the different stages of the relationship between the Colombian state and the indigenous movement as well as mapping out the interaction between anthropologists and indigenous communities in southwestern Colombia. Through Hernandez, the Colombian state legitimized the most important demands of the present day indigenous movement. Resumen: Gregorio Hernandez de Alba (1904-1973): La legitimacion de las politicas indigenas etnicas en Colombia Uno de los desarrollos recientes mas notables en la historia colombiana del siglo veinte, es el exito del movimiento politico indigena. En este articulo se sostiene que este exito se debio en parte a la voluntad del estado-nacion para apoyar un movimiento politico de bases etnicas. El articulo explora el desarrollo gradual de un discurso y de un espacio politicos que favorecia la demanda de tierra y de derechos culturales de las comunidades indigenas, concentrandose en uno de los principales arquitectos de este espacio y discurso politico: Gregorio Hernandez de Alba, un etnologo que llego a ser director de la Division de Asuntos Indigenas en los anos sesenta. Mediante un estudio de su vida, este articulo profundiza en las diferentes fases de la relacion entre el estado colombiano y el movimiento indigena, y traza la interaccion entre el antropo- logo y las comunidades indigenas en el sudoeste de Colombia. A traves de Hernandez, el estado colombiano otorgo legitimidad a las demandas mas importantes del movimiento indigena de hoy.

This article examines the complex history of the grey seal problem in Britain since 1914. In particular, it will focus on our different reactions to the animal over time, and show how fishing communities and organisations have called for a government-sponsored seal cull since the mid-1920s, and how the very different types of culls that came in the 1960s and 1970s were opposed and halted by public outcry in Britain and emerging international environmentalism. The essay is broad based, to show how the grey seal problem has been a political, environmental, social, cultural, economic and animal welfare issue. The study illustrates the value of an historical perspective in assessing the different strands of contemporary debate as to the wisdom and content of consciously managing a large mammal population. From this case study, using primary evidence from England and Scotland, wider conclusions about our changing modern relationship to the natural world can be drawn.

A core of Commonwealth Studies can be discerned which constitutes a coherent intellectual agenda for this field of study at the beginning of the 21st century. It should be built around four disciplines--twentieth-century history, international relations, comparative politics, and political economy. It is important too that these disciplines should be pursued in combination and in appropriate dialogue.

The twentieth-century American library is one of this nation's most understudied yet ubiquitous institutions, possessing a rich history of service to millions of users who over the generations have variably appropriated library collections and services for multiple purposes. For the most part, however, the library and information science (LIS) research community has failed to analyze the deeper meanings of these appropriations or to evaluate their significance for library users, in large part because it has yet to harness the ideas of many critical theorists whose thinking now dominates so much of the discourse occurring in other professions and academic disciplines. This article constitutes a reexamination of the twentieth-century history of American librarianship that is grounded on this thinking. It argues that contemporary LIS discourse is plagued with tunnel vision and blind spots that greatly limit the profession's ability to understand the role of the American library in the present accurately, and...

Despite general Russian/Soviet hostility toward Zionism and the Jews, the Soviet Union supported the establishment of Israel in 1948. This study examines the important but neglected aspect of the twentieth century history: the short period of Soviet‐Israeli friendship, its background, reasons for its existence and termination. This article concludes that the unexpected interlude of friendship was caused by a common interest: the expulsion of British presence from Palestine. After the two sides achieved what they had wanted, however, the relations between the two deteriorated very rapidly for two reasons: anti‐Semitism in the Soviet Union and the intensification of the Cold War. The Soviet Union then realized that Israel belonged to the West and the Islamic world offered much more opportunities for the Soviets.

(1994). Posters as Historical Documents: A Resource for the Teaching of Twentieth-Century History. The Social Studies: Vol. 85, No. 2, pp. 52-61.

The author reviews a series of deep affinities between the Catholic social teaching embodied in Pope John Paul II's recent encyclical,Centesimus Annus, and traditional Jewish teachings about economic justice. At the same time, the author maintains that from a Jewish perspective there is a “disquieting” feature to this recent papal letter. It presents twentieth century history in ways that mute or conceal the role some earlier papal teaching played in the rise of corporatist states, with their authoritarian regimes and xenophobic nationalism.Centesimus annus thus obscures the complex contribution Catholic social teaching made to the events leading up to the Holocaust of European Jewry.

In light of (a) recent work by Stark and Bainbridge on new religions, (b) some socialpsychological theories, and (c) recent changes in the Mormon religion, this essay proposes a modification in the traditional sect-church model of unidirectional change in the natural history of new sects. The twentieth century history of the Mormon religion is then reviewed briefly to illustrate the need for this theoretical modification to fit cases like that of the Mormon retrenchment and retrogression on the sect-church continuum. Finally, the changing Mormon uses of the Protestant Bible are reviewed to demonstrate the kinds of markers or indicators available for tracing the changing positions of religious groups along that continuum.

Thephrase “welfare state” is of recent origin. It was first used to describe Labour Britain after 1945. From Britain the phrase made its way round the world. It was freely employed, usually but not exclusively by politicians and journalists, in relation to diverse societies at diverse stages of development. Historians also took over the phrase. Attempts were made to re-write nineteenth and twentieth century history, particularly British history, in terms of the “origins” and “development” of a “welfare state”.