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Gratitude is much discussed these days as an area of research in the positive psychology movement. But the quality has not been given much historical attention—despite the surge of historical attention to other types of emotional response. This article lays out the evidence for extensive reliance on gratitude in the nineteenth-century United States and its measurable decline in the twentieth century—at least until the recent revival. From childrearing materials to comments on etiquette, both references and conventions shifted measurably. The essay goes on to establish the context for these changes, relating gratitude to developments in gender relations and, particularly, to a heightened sense of self and, arguably, of self-entitlement. Current efforts to promote gratitude operate against the contemporary historical dynamic, and the resulting tensions deserve attention from historians and psychologists alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the changes in funerary rituals from the Early Agricultural period (2100 BC–AD 50) to the Early Preclassic period (AD 475–750) and how these changes concurrently reflect changes in social relationships between the dead, their families, and the community. The predominant mortuary ritual in the Early Agricultural period was inhumation, possibly emphasizing a variety of identity intersections of the dead and the mourners in the treatment of the body while creating collective memories and remembrances through shared ways of commemorating the dead. An innovation in funerary practices in the form of secondary cremation appeared in the Early Agricultural period and was slowly but broadly adopted, representing new social dynamics within the society. Thereafter, secondary cremation became the main funeral custom. During the Early Preclassic period, the variation in body position and the type and quantity of objects found with individuals decreased. It is possible that the vehicle for displaying different identity intersections changed and was not placed in the body, per se, as much as in previous periods. However, the transformation characteristics of these funeral rituals and the increase in community investment could have fostered the building or reinforcing of stronger social ties that highlighted a “collective identity.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Leyden jar surprised natural philosophers when it was invented in 1746 because it showed the paradoxical behavior of glass. But similar experiments had been done before, such as those by the Frenchman Charles Dufay. Why was Dufay oblivious to the paradox? The answer involves three kinds of historical explanation that are controversial but fruitful: hindsight, tradition, and national styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines complex core–periphery relationships in the medieval British Isles and, for the first time, explores the role of elite women in facilitating and shaping those relationships. It takes the advent of English-style dower in native Wales before Wales's conquest by Edward I of England (1282) as a case-study, and explores the interrelationship between 'law' and 'custom' in the native legal culture, in order to shed new light on Wales's relationship with England in the final eighty or so years of Welsh independence. It contends not only that Wales, like other 'peripheral' regions of the British Isles, was complicit (however unwittingly) in its own subjection to the English 'core', but also that the elite women for whom the dower provisions were made were integral to the very processes of cultural exchange that led to the development of 'Welsh dower'. While modelled on English common law provisions, Welsh dower—a hybrid phenomenon—was also consistent with Welsh legal norms. By variously turning to the law courts, and employing extra-curial and extra-legal methods of negotiation and redress, the women helped to shape and promote these changes, and to embed them in native Welsh before its final conquest by England. It also makes clear not only that the experiences of Wales in these matters differed from those of other of England's insular neighbours, such as Ireland, but also that the right of these women to suitable provision was always upheld, no matter how mixed or contested the legal environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tactics and techniques of advertising are examined by a content analysis of 2,000 print ads drawn from the 10 largest selling magazines for each of the first eight decades of the 20th century. A decade-by-decade analysis is presented, identifying fads and trends in tactics and styles of print ads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concepts of leadership in Greek literature prior to the fourth century B.C., including the Homeric tradition and the tradition of the fifth century Athens. Legal authority does not convey the right to give arbitrary commands and demand implicit obedience. The Greek concept of honor did not admit the propriety of feigning false humility. Of the four leadership qualities, valor and craft are always compared. The Homeric and Athenian traditions are notorious for their extreme emphasis on the dignity and independence of the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ezra Pound became a leading anglophone propagandist for fascist Italy – a kind of Romanesque Lord Haw-Haw – which subsequently coloured both his politics and his poetry. Between summer 1940 and spring 1945, and already building several dozen gratis propaganda texts lauding Italy’s imperial conquest of Abyssinia, supporting an ‘international fascism’ that embraced both Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and Hitler’s Germany, Pound wrote or broadcast thousands of radio items, first for Italy’s state-run EIAR, and then for the Salò Republic. In doing so, he never ceased his well-paid propaganda activities, using at least a dozen pseudonymous ‘personae’ in order to continue his radio transmissions throughout the war. This article examines the influence of Ernst Kantorowicz’s Frederick II, 1194–1250 ([1927] 1931) – a text described only 25 years ago as a ‘fascist classic’ – may have had on Pound’s embrace of Italian Fascism and later sacralization of Mussolini’s dictatorship. This article also includes new research into Pound’s handwritten annotations in his personal copy of Kantorowicz’s book, now in the Ezra Pound Collection of The Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas in Austin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a contemporary print, antiquarian histories and newspapers to examine the frost fair that took place on the River Severn at Shrewsbury during the great frost of 1739. By comparing the Shrewsbury frost fair with others that were organised on the Rivers Thames, Ouse and Tyne (for which printed handbills survive), it demonstrates how Shrewsbury’s mirrored other frost fairs held during the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It included printing activities, promenading and sociability, as well as spectacles, notably Robert Cadman a ‘flying man’ who entertained the crowds, before plummeting to his death. The paper highlights an aspect of eighteenth-century culture by showing the transient nature of entertainments, urban spaces and forms of sociability and spectacle and argues that historians should consider frost fairs in localities outside London as events which provide insights into provincial urban culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Manuscrits: Revista d'Historia Moderna is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article reassesses the current scholarly tendency to interpret Charles Gildon's The Golden Spy (1709) as the first fully fledged English object narrative by examining this fiction as a social critique of the reformation of manners movement in the late Stuart period. Special attention is paid to its contemporaneous reception, literary precursors and contributions to the debates concerning moral reform. The article argues that Gildon's fictional experimentation, not least the deployment of narrating spy gold coins, seeks not just to delight by its novelty but also to dynamise contemporary readers' reflection on the godly reformation and its politics of virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses history for charivari, the folk street custom depicted in 19th century British periodicals dealing with the adaptation of folk practice to deliver its social and political satire. Topics include preservation efforts of nineteenth-century folklorists, history of street charivari performances, and Victorian print culture. Also discussed is the blurring differences between folk and non-folk seen in the skimmington scene in Thomas Hardy's novel, "The Mayor of Casterbridge".

Were etiquette books published between 1890 and 1914 conducive to preserving the identity of the members of the German Empire's Catholic milieu in contradistinction to the state and other social groups? This analysis of a small but significant sample shows that such publications included a remarkable amount of milieu-specific advice and references that reached far beyond the realm of manners and had the potential to serve as political and religious signposts. These specific contents did not necessarily address the Catholic milieu as a whole but referred to its regionally and socially separate segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the customs, natural history and travel history of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Topics discussed include presentation of customs as a principle of progress and paradigm in modern civilization that helps in diagnosing and prescribing the functioning of the society in formation, superiority of customs over other literary genres as it offer the study of the population through the exercise of direct observation and increasing importance of reading in nineteenth century societies.

The article discusses the negative ascriptions of violence and love which project human traits upon God. It examines the arbitration of violent manner in varying degrees of unremitting love and justified violence in human contexts. It also stresses the definitive manner of violence with the inexplicable divine behavior of God.

This article discusses the early 1960s Thai etiquette manual Kritsana son nong: Naenam marayat thi ngam haeng araya samai [Kritsana's instructions to Little Sister: An introduction to the fine manners of the civilised period]. A comparison between this book and its American source reveals literary mechanisms devised by the Thai author to negotiate conflicts arising from the domestication of Western-based manners in Thai society. Kritsana son nong's special emphasis on women reflects a perceived need to control and regulate female social interaction with and in comparison to their male counterparts during a period of rapid and profound socioeconomic change. This study of a Thai ettiquette manual and its historical context demonstrates that manners are a cultural artefact whose meanings are open to contest. This complex negotiation between local and foreign practices is often overlooked in the history of and the discussions about manners in modern Thai society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our Lady of the Rockies (OLR) is a ninety-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking Butte, Montana, from its perch high atop the Continental Divide. In the popularized account, OLR is a uniquely local undertaking reflecting the community's character and pride. Yet OLR is far more than this, for it taps into a rich vein of cultural and spiritual tradition. As Mircea Eliade pointed out, the notion of the earth as female pervaded early Western civilizations. Mines were like the vagina of the earth, leading to the womb where metallic ores waxed like embryos. Accordingly, miners purified themselves through various rites to amend their violation. OLR began as a plan for a small, private altar. With the collapse of Butte's copper mining economy, unemployed miners rallied around the idea of building a major shrine to the Virgin Mary that would help restore the city's culture and economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appropriate personal conduct has long been intrinsic to notions of Thai national identity. Thailand has an especially large corpus of didactic works on proper manners. Formerly, one of the major sources of ideas about bodily comportment was Theravada Buddhism. From the late nineteenth century, however, another genre of literature on manners began to appear, written to instruct students in the newly established modern education system about the personal qualities necessary for a career in the expanding royal bureaucracy. This article examines the most famous of these didactic texts, Qualities of a Gentleman, written by the prominent educational reformer Chaophraya Phrasadet Surentharathibodi (1867-1916). Largely as a result of this work, the royal official became the new exemplar of proper social behaviour in Thai society. With the conservative political turn and the restoration of the monarchy in the late 1950s, the work was revived, and the social etiquette it taught was reproduced as the model not only for government officials, but for Thai citizens generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the pre-Lenten festivities labeled entrudo in early nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro and traces the efforts to repress them, which enjoyed a measure of success by the mid-1850s. During this period, the predominant form of pre-Lenten revelry involved various forms of water play that transgressed the boundaries between the sexes but tended to respect other social hierarchies. After independence, authorities and members of a self-proclaimed ''civilized'' elite sought to repress what they condemned as a ''barbarous'' game. These efforts obtained some success in the 1840s and 1850s as masked balls and parading by elite carnival societies came to dominate middle- and upper-class forms of celebration, although entrudo persisted longer among the lower classes. Based on travelers' accounts and the extensive newspaper debates about entrudo and its repression, this article analyzes a major cultural change among the Brazilian capital's elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report on the social life of urban lower classes in New Spain during the 18th century, especially María de los Gallegos' mysterious disappearance in 1731. The report was presented during the Symposium No. 5 entitled "Urban Spaces, Conflicts and Passions in Spanish America" held under XVII International Congress of the Association of Historians European Latin Americanists in Berlin, Germany in September 2014.

A response is provided to articles by authors Fredrika J. Teute and David S. Shields in the issue on the political culture and manners and customs of U.S. presidents and their spouses during the Early Republic of 1789 through the 1800s. Particular focus is given to the powerful impact that women had on manners within the masculine society of the U.S.

The article discusses the manners and customs and political culture in Washington D.C. (District of Columbia) under the U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, including in regard to his perspective on the manners of the presidential home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under U.S. First Lady Martha Washington. The impact that republicanism had on the manners at Jefferson's dwelling is discussed.

The article discusses the manners and customs and political culture under the influence of U.S. First Lady Abigail Adams. The article compares the White House under U.S. President George Washington and First Lady Martha Washington with that of Abigail Adams. An overview of the rooms in which Abigail Adams entertained guests, including the drawing and reception rooms, is provided.

The article discusses the history, political culture and social life of the U.S. during the mid 1780s of the Confederation period, including the role that women played in establishing American manners and fashion during this period. An overview of the widow of U.S. patriot Richard Stockton Annis Boudinot Stockton's entertaining of people at gatherings is provided. An overview of the U.S. Continental Congress during the Confederation period is also provided.

Starting from the significance of the visual for the creation of distinction in early modern Europe, the article investigates the everyday practices of eyeing, inspecting and scrutinizing other people's dress and personal possessions. In that, it addresses the ways of seeing (rather than the ways of displaying) that were at the root of managing appearances and that formed a significant part of the urban experience. Cases are drawn from everyday visual practices among the lower orders in early modern Stockholm. The article argues that a discerning eye that inspected people and their material goods played an integral part in distinguishing respectability and honour in the city - a way of seeing that was very different from the overview and order sought by city authorities. Therefore, these visual and material practices were part of ordering the social in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current paper analyzes the life and works of the cultural agent Cornélio Pires whose activities involved the conservation of the caipira culture, disseminating it through publications, recordings, sound tracks, spectacles (scenes, music, guitar and musical groups) and propagating it on the radio. Contrastingly to the intense transformations in São Paulo, representations of plantations and life in the hinterland were emerging. They are actually different scenes in which the people of the Brazilian interior are sometimes praised and at other times criticized. Within this context, the life, works and artistic productions of Cornélia Pires are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the television series "Game of Thrones." It explores how the title sequence works and how its visual vocabulary relates to the history of social life. It says that the concave world featured in the title sequence of the series points to what American physicist and author Freeman Dyson ratifies as the reality of simulation.

With reference to Arabic primary sources written in the middle ages, firstly, this paper will account for North African food as a symbolic cultural system expressing local values of hospitality, bravery and manhood. It will also explore the metaphoric and symbolic significance of cynophagy as a customary practice related primarily to the belief in magic by North African Amazigh, Arabs, Christians and Jews. Moreover, the paper will try to contextualise such a practice within the broader North African cultural framework, expressing an awareness of indigenous socio-cultural milieu. Secondly, the paper is designed to address the significance of North African body as an articulation of particular socio-cultural and aesthetic values. It will tackle North African gender and sex relations in a medieval Islamic context totally or partially different from the native milieu of Islam, namely Arabia. In this paper, studying and interpreting North African homosexuality as an act of hospitality will be of paramount importance. Finally, the paper will trace the links between anthropophagy, the offering of female flesh for cannibals and hospitality through scrutinising the ideological underpinnings and the socio-cultural interrelatedness. Medieval sub-Saharan anthropophagy is said to be a social behaviour that displays hospitality and kindness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses international adjudication in relation to tradition, progress, and the views of the late international lawyer James Brown Scott who died in 1943. International legal history is addressed, along with opposition to the U.S. government and the jurisdiction of international courts. The concepts of cosmopolitanism and internationalism are examined, as well as the rule of law in America, sovereignty, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Between the 1600s and 1700s, button production in Italy, traditionally oriented to the creation of precious items, was influenced by changes in taste and function that affected clothing and its accessories in the European panorama and pushed consumers toward less grand but more comfortable forms of luxury. After an introduction of this context, this article describes both the consequent increasing interdisciplinarity of Italian button-making-- originally centered in the hands of goldsmiths and jewelers--and the geography of new forms of button production on the peninsula. Through several case studies concerning innovations--both in products and processes, especially in glass- and metalworking techniques-- the article analyzes the way in which traditional technical skills, directed to the production of precious and long-lasting items, were reinterpreted in order to create a new material object--a button, whose form would change more quickly in this new market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although performance traditions have long been important parts of Bedouin identity in the North Badiya, Jordan, many factors have affected these traditions over the years, especially since the latter part of the twentieth century, resulting in the loss of some genres and the retention of others. This study examines how the traditions that remain, particularly poetry that is spoken or sung to the accompaniment of the rababa, are traditions from the male and public spheres, while the traditions that have been abandoned are those from the female and private spheres. Because of the separation of male/public and female/private realms, the male genres are the only ones that can be seen by outsiders, and thus are selected to be the public face of Bedouin identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the journal, focusing on the journal's creation in 1964 and the subsequent evolution of Renaissance studies in Canada. Topics discussed include the topics of the journal in the early days including studies on drinking, alcoholism, and good manners, in addition to Renaissance music, legal literature, and science. Topics further discussed include Canadian library collections, the journal's interdisciplinary and collaborative nature, and contributors to the journal.

The tradition accumulated through history and the concern of historiography is also named the pass down of tradition itself, which gives rise to a series of issues to consider. First, it should justify the dialectic relationship between the matters about practical tradition and those of ordinary tradition, which is in fact a process of change from quantity to quality and conceives constant and variation throughout. Second, it should prove the dialectic relationship between tradition and innovation that are both opposite and complementary; and the tension between tradition and innovation is in precise the motive force in terms of which history makes progress. Third, it should elaborate that the general process of human history is an unfolding one between tradition and innovation. Finally, it should prove that historiography, which appeals to and reflects on the objective historical process, has to embody and in turn is able to exist exclusively in such a successive advance of tradition and innovation in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces the history of the handshake and discusses the importance of perpetuating this practice in the classroom as information and technology shifts toward the digital age. An overview of the origins of the handshake from the ancient Egyptians is presented. Also noted is the relation of power, peace and agreement to handshake. Strategies for teaching and implementing handshaking in the classroom as a form of interpersonal communication among students are suggested.

This article provides a literary criticism for the treatise "Galateo Español," adapted from the Italian "Galateo overo de'costumi," by Lucas Gracián Dantisco. The author comments on the influence of the text on the establishment of proper behavior and manners for courtiers in the presence of the monarch or other royal officials.

Copyright of Mundo Agrario is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

National holidays are one of the major instruments of regimes and rulers aiming to legitimise their hegemony and maintain the social and political order. This article deals with the way in which successive Syrian regimes have celebrated the national—secular and religious—holidays. It compares the various Syrian regimes: the monarchy (1918–1920); the mandate period (1920–1946); and the republic period (1946–present).Although the latter period will be treated as a whole, the analysis differentiates between five periods: post-independence (1946–1958); the United Arab Republic (UAR; 1958–1961); the secessionist regime (1961–1963); and the Ba‘th regime (1963–present), with Bashar replacing his father in June 2000. The main thesis of this article is that Syrian regimes prefer continuity over change in the realm of state holidays. Thus, in contrast to Iraq, where each new regime has attempted to delegitimise its predecessor by abolishing the national calendar and inventing a new one, Syrian regimes have added new holidays to the calendar without erasing the old ones. In this way, Syria's calendar resembles an edifice occasionally renovated according to the regime's needs, but never demolished. This policy emanated from a desire to demonstrate continuity even in times of change and upheaval, while at the same time consolidating the local national identity, which has often competed with other supra-identities, such as pan-Arabism and Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By outlining the contribution made by private libraries to the intellectual and cultural lives of a specific group of readers in the rural north-east of Scotland, this article asks what role family libraries played in the growth of library provision in the long eighteenth century. With book lending becoming something of a social imperative in the polite culture of late Georgian Britain, private libraries often served as a practical resource for the wider community, providing books that could not be acquired elsewhere, and filling important gaps in 'public sphere' provision in rural communities without access to subscription or circulating libraries. More importantly, though, the practice of book sharing had far-reaching consequences for community cohesion, shared reading habits, and intellectual culture. In particular, this essay points to the role played by the physical exchange of private books in the dissemination and widespread acceptance of new ideas relating to female education, child-rearing, and separate spheres associated with James Fordyce and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, a flood of historical scholarship has been spawned by the groundbreaking works of Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger, and others who have illustrated how a host of traditions were creations invented in the recent past to inform modern identities. The rituals of the British monarchy, the trappings of Scottish Highland culture, and many other traditions were revealed to have anything but ancient origins. Examination of such inventions, Hobsbawm argued, provided, among other things, a means to observe broader historical shifts. The intention of this article is not to illustrate another example of a tradition invented in the recent past. Rather, it seeks to examine how longer-standing traditions have been subject to related processes of reinvention. Some recent work, even if not written to theorize on reinvention, could be read through such a lens. Work in memory studies, for example, has shown how broad notions of national, regional, or local “tradition” could be reshaped based on how and which historical events were remembered. Works on “sites of memory” have similarly shown how conceptions of traditional objects and places can shift due to the fluctuation of memories attached to them. Beyond memory studies, scholars of theological traditions, often confronted with themes of universal truth and intergenerational change, have also produced works that could be viewed through the prism of reinvention. Kurt Schori demonstrates, for example, how the transmission of theological tradition through the written word could lead to submerged reformulation as different generations constructed linguistic meanings according to temporally specific circumstances. While such work could be read through the lens of reinvention, I would argue that more explicit consideration of the dynamics of reinvention is needed both to expand our knowledge of such processes and to develop theoretical models that characterize its diverse occurrences. I would also suggest, as Hobsbawm does with invented traditions, that examination of reinvention provides a means to lay bare symptoms of broader historical shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Stratum Plus Journal is the property of P.P. Stratum plus and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Stratum Plus Journal is the property of P.P. Stratum plus and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the solicitor William Henty's 1842 journal of a visit to Sydney, New South Wales, arguing that Henty's anxiety about whether to speak, sit, or stand in the presence of the Governor Sir George Gipps and an Executive Council is indicative of conventions resulting from familial reputations, financial statuses, and manners in colonial Australia. Topics include manliness and manners, independence and autonomy, social power, and the social conditions experienced by some men.