Showing papers in "Journal of Interdisciplinary History in 2001"

From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 (review)

Abstract: Fraternal organizations, both familiar ones such as the Elks and Moose, and less familiar ones, like Ladies of the Maccabees or the Workmen’s Circle, played a number of important roles in nineteenthand twentieth-century American society. Skocpol and other social scientists have argued persuasively that these organizations provided important sites for a vibrant, cross-class civic life.1 In this book, Beito examines the means by which these societies provided insurance beneats and other socialwelfare services to their members. The Freemasons and similar societies had provided sickness and funeral beneats to members since preRevolutionary times, and developed a strong presence in United States cities during the latter part of the nineteenth century. During this period, both local and national benevolent societies and life-insurance orders provided both social functions and a “safety net” for many working people, including immigrants, laborers, and many African-Americans. Beito arst describes the values and goals of these organizations. He examines in detail the operation of two orphanages (run by the Loyal Order of Moose and the Security Beneat Association [sba]), the provision of medical services by organizations to their members (referred to as “lodge practice”), and the history of two black fraternal-run hospitals in rural Mississippi. He also details the debates and controversies surrounding the moves of the federal and state governments toward increasing regulation of insurance and health care, as well as the effects that these changes had on the fraternal organizations’ functions. From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State is a fascinating window into these efforts by various organizations to provide “cradle to grave” help and support to their members. Beito argues convincingly about how important for women and blacks the opportunity to learn entrepreneurial, anancial, and leadership skills was. He also offers evidence to counter the argument that fraternal organizations, like public and private charities, imposed middle-class values on the poor, by focusing on the extent to which those values (for example, self-reliance, thrift, self-control, mutual aid, and patriotism) were shared also by working-class organizations. The book is less satisfying as a comprehensive picture of the role that fraternal associations played in the transition to the welfare state. Beito’s methodology—in particular, his criteria for choosing organizations to study and the small number that he analyzes in depth—is not clearly outlined. It is difacult, for example, to evaluate his claims that societies were less exclusive and selective than is sometimes assumed without more demonstrations of the generalizability of his descriptions of the REVIEWS | 337

The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (review)

Abstract: sions to Karl Marx—represents ideology, despite displays of doubt and demystiacation. Novels uncover social problems but offer no solutions. Nor does the new historicism, though it does suggest, at least anecdotally, post-Marxist approaches to ideology critique. In one way, my discussion is inadequate to the virtuosity of the individual essays in this collection, but this oaw is inherent in the very nature of the assignment (“We sincerely hope that you will not be able to say what it all adds up to,” the authors submit, meta-pretentiously). Products of the new historicism are not intended, any more than Archibald MacLeish’s poem (created not “to mean” but “to be”) to be reduced to prosaic summary; curious readers are free to and their own meanings, puzzles, and pleasures in these essays. Personally, I derived much enjoyment and some proat from the experience, though I could do without all the advertising (including the counter-advertising).

Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (review)

Abstract: for the Democrats also became winners because the Clintonite New Democrats devised policies that appealed to a wider political spectrum than either liberals or dlcers could ever have reached independently. Well-researched and informative, Reinventing Democrats seeks to explain the Democratic party’s transformation over the last twelve years. Shining a light on important members of the supporting cast, it tells a piece of that story. But the overarching story remains out of focus, because the point of view of the auxiliary players is mistaken for that of the star.

The Concept of Political Culture

Abstract: Although historians have frequently employed political culture in their writings, they often seem unaware of the long-standing controversy that has engaged social scientists regarding its theoretical grounding, its methods, and its substantive findings. Moreover, cultural historians who have pioneered new ways of looking at symbolic and expressive forms of power have tended to slight the more traditional dimensions of power—such as persisting elite hegemony and control of material resources—that ought not be excluded from the concept's domain. Historians would do well to attend more fully to the implications of political culture, especially its inherently comparative logic.

Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750 (review)

Abstract: will unveil a new model of change in European ascal history.1 The multi-authored book under review is part of this team effort. Its intentions are not primarily comparative; rather than surveying broad parallels from country to country, it instead presents detailed independent case studies of the ascal development of a dozen countries or regions, including England, France, Castile, the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. It does not claim to cover all these countries and regions evenly or uniformly. The sources and available scholarly expertise preclude doing so. Nor do the book’s chapters all use the same model, or even the same categories, to describe how each region’s ascal system operated. As a result, some readers may be a bit frustrated, because they will not easily be able to compare, say, the fraction of government expenditures that went for warfare in Poland with the fraction spent on war in England. Nonetheless, the book will certainly be a valuable source for historians and social scientists who want to understand the ascal systems of early modern Europe and how they varied and evolved. Not only does the book provide essential information about the level and nature of taxes, but it also takes up the issues that are often overlooked in older ascal histories, such as government borrowing and the nature of government expenditures. (Related evidence from the other work that the team has done is available on the World Wide Web site that Bonney has established.) Like the other books done by Bonney’s team, this volume will prove particularly important for those who want to generalize about the relationship between warfare, taxation, and political development.

Slave Naming Patterns: Onomastics and the Taxonomy of Race in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica

Abstract: An analysis ofthe naming patterns of Jamaican slaves in the mid-eighteenth century shows that whites considered blacks to be entirely different from themselves. The taxonomic differences between European naming practices and slave naming practices were both considerable and onomastically significant. Slaves could be recognized by their names as much as by their color. Slaves reacted to such naming practices by rejecting their slave names upon gaining their freedom, though they adopted methods of bricolage common to other aspects of Afro-Caribbean expressive culture.

Monastic Poor Relief in Sixteenth-Century England

Abstract: The amount of poor relief provided by religious houses and hospitals in pre-Reformation England on the eve of the Dissolution, as well as its proportion to income, can be retrieved from the government's fiscal assessment of the Church - the Valor Ecclesiasticus (1535). An accurate calculation, however, requires the use of a statistical methodology to model, and correct for, the bias inherent in the members of the commission appointed by the state to perform the audit. This novel approach to the Valor Ecclesiasticus, the only source for the data in question, extracts valuable information about the effect of the Dissolution on English society

Personal wealth in South Australia

Abstract: Probate and succession-duty records are a rich source of information about the living standards and material wealth of past communities. According to these records, the small, mainly rural, and comparatively egalitarian population of South Australia held a diverse array of personal assets at the beginning of the twentieth century. Despite the strong British influence on the former colony's culture, however, South Australia's distribution of wealth before World War I was more similar to that of the United States fifty years earlier than to that of contemporary Great Britain.

Does decline make sense? The West Indian economy and the abolition of the British slave trade.

Abstract: Most historians describe the moral distaste for slavery as the sole reason for the cessation of the British slave trade. Data from the Caribbean, however, along with contemporary commentary, show that an economic crisis faced by sugar planters was critical to the timing of abolition in 1807.

Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (review)

Abstract: printed page, these sweeping assertions need more demonstration and far more rigor than Hare is willing to provide. If his tendentious claims are correct, the “Osiran” aspect of ancient Egypt is alive and well, even in benighted Western culture—“it opens our minds to the unaccustomed and resurrects our bodies from the sepulcher of Idealism” (246). Hare is an ardent foe of discredited Orientalism and revels in being the “arst postmodern” interpreter of ancient Egypt, but few things are more Eurocentric, class-speciac, and transcendental, than postmodern academic literary discourse, which is, in the words of Sterne, “hung round and befetish’ed with the bobs and trinkets of criticism. . . . Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.”3

Rise and Fall of a Nation of Joiners: The Knights of Labor Revisited

Abstract: The rise and fall of the Knights of Labor organization (1869Ð1917) has frequently been portrayed as a crucial event in the history of "American exceptionalism." The KnightsO collapse heralded the rise of more conservative unions (such as the American Federation of Labor), which largely eschewed the cause of major sociopolitical reform, focusing instead on minor wage disputes and workshop improvements. The impact of external competition from fraternal lodges and trade unions on the Knights' ability to retain members is often overlooked. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence support the conclusion that a profusion of voluntary associations during "the golden age of fraternity" had the unintended consequence of undermining American workers' ability to organize and maintain a vital constituency mobilized for decisive political action.

Congress at the Grassroots: Representational Change in the South, 1970-1998 (review)

Abstract: Excellent book is always being the best friend for spending little time in your office, night time, bus, and everywhere. It will be a good way to just look, open, and read the book while in that time. As known, experience and skill don't always come with the much money to acquire them. Reading this book with the PDF congress at the grassroots representational change in the south 197

The Cultural Worlds of Marco Polo

Abstract: In the thirteenth century, the Mongols created a vast, transcontinental empire that intensified commercial and cultural contact throughout Eurasia. As with other forms of booty generated by conquest, the Mongolian elite systematically identified, and shared out, the cultural resources oftheir more sedentary subjects. Thus, the Mongols military-political dominance ofthe continent was accompanied by—even accomplished through—cultural dependence. As a product ofthis complex, interactive world of contending cultural currents, Marco Polo viewed the East, and China in particular, through multiple cultural filters—European, Muslim, and Mongolian.

Economic change and infant mortality in England, 1580-1837.

Abstract: Adaptation of the results from a recent family-reconstitution study of twenty-six parishes in pre-transition England reveals that long-term trends in post-neonatal mortality follow trends in a real-wage index, and that trends in neonatal mortality correlate with other economic factors. Thus, the hypothesis that infant mortality and economic performance in pre-transition England were related is consistent with the family-reconstitution data.

Counting the Votes: South Carolina's Stolen Election of 1876

Abstract: South Carolina's election of 1876 was rife with allegations of electoral intimidation and fraud.The presidential outcome and the future of Reconstruction hung in the balance.Although Democrat Wade Hampton apparently won the popular vote in the gubernatorial contest, a partisan Board of Canvassers, ultimately to no avail,declared Republican Daniel Chamberlain the victor after negating thousands of the ballots cast.Rigorous quantitative analysis suggests that the Board's adjustment of the vote was correct and that Chamberlain most probably wouldhave won had the election not been so corrupt.

A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (review)

Abstract: Elman argues that China’s national civil-service examination system, as administered from 1384 to 1905, was a joint product of the ruling monarchy and the nation’s af uent classes. It perpetuated both a mandarin predominance in the higher levels of government and a scholar–gentry hegemony in local society. Elman characterizes his colossal, almost encyclopedic work, as “cultural” history, emphasizing exactly how the exams were run, what questions were put to candidates, and what grading standards were applied. The author Ž nds both strong continuity (Ch’eng-Chu Neo-Confucian orthodoxy) as well as surprising change (for example, the Qing dynasty’s dropping of “natural studies” in favor of questions about history and the new “evidential” studies that were developed in the eighteenth century). Too hastily, the Qing scuttled the whole system in 1905, creating serious, unforeseen cultural consequences. Elman acknowledges the in uence of Bourdieu and Passeron, with special reference to their ideas about cultural reproduction, although he modiŽ es their ahistoricism and edits out their hostility to institutions and intellectual authority. In this context, it is possible to discern the in uence on his own thinking of the history-minded “evidential research” (k’ao-cheng) that was developed in Qing China, and to which he devoted a well-received book in 1984. No other society on the globe offers anything resembling to China’s exam system. In the United States, comparable tests for entry into any level of government would require (1) a rote knowledge of sacred texts, such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, with special emphasis on the founding fathers’ original intent; (2) a thorough grounding in the lessons of American political history; and (3) an ability to discuss the pros and cons of such past and current issues as the annexation of Hawaii, the rise of afŽ rmative action, or the problems of illegal immigration. These exams would be written in Latin, or some other language different from English. Every male child whose parents could afford the expense would take the threetiered exams—at county, state, and national levels—but only a fraction short of 1 percent would make it all the way to the Ž nal level and ofŽ cial appointment. Dealing with the 99 percent failure rate would pose problems of major “cultural” dimensions. How that problem was handled in China throughout the 500 years of the examination REVIEWS | 673

The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450-1700 (review)

Abstract: Germany in the postwar world, and, anally, the transformation of Italy as a nation that today receives more migrants than its sends beyond its borders. Although Gabaccia has previously demonstrated a mastery of primary sources, her topic in this book is so vast and so synthetic that reliance on secondary materials is necessary and probably preferable. Inevitably, she has drawn mostly on works in the English and Italian languages, but her command of relevant publications in French and German is also apparent. Lucidly written and effectively organized, this book is a splendid accomplishment. Its essence is interdisciplinary; the study of diasporas necessarily blends variables of time, space, and culture. Unfortunately, the spatial dimension and its ramiacations are underdeveloped; this deaciency is marked most obviously by a lack of maps. A greater attention to the many effects of technology on patterns of migration would have been helpful.

"Who is the captain of all these men of death?" the social structure of a tuberculosis sanatorium in postwar Germany.

Abstract: The dynamic interaction of patients and medical practitioners has emerged as one of the more important questions in the the study of the history of medical institutions.The diary of the "Capri Pirates," a group of patients in a German tuberculosis sanitorium during the late 1950s, offers a unique view of patients' experience in long-term medical treatment.The secondary adaptation of patients, the effects of gender segregation and male bonding in patients' communities, andthe coexistence of medical and social hierarchies within institutions all demonstrate the benefits of an interdisciplinary agenda in the study of modern medicine.

Re-Enlistment Patterns of Civil War Soldiers

Abstract: The results of a demographic profile of age, occupation, and prewar residence of western Pennsylvania soldiers—created from enlistment and muster rolls, and examined at enlistment, at the end of 1863, and after re-enlistment—when placed within the context of individual soldiers' letters and the social history of western Pennsylvania, show that soldiers with rural backgrounds and poor occupations re-enlisted at higher rates than soldiers with urban backgrounds and better occupations. The reason for the difference lies in the greater opportunities available to civilians in the city.

The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (review)

Abstract: and its subordination to critical theory building. Historians concerned with the origins of their own discipline in the changing relationship between geography and history, or drawn to the recent “cartographic turn” in historical studies, will Ž nd their own work stimulated by Godlewska’s account of how mapping became a technical exercise and how maps became trivial, that is, how we came to take geography for granted.

Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920 (review)

Abstract: Edison’s invention, except in emphasis. Bazerman does bring one aspect of theory to the foreground in a fascinating analysis of patents as speech acts, but readers unfamiliar with speech-act theory will Ž nd the discussion hard to follow. Theoretically inclined readers may want to read the conclusion Ž rst. Also useful for framing the book is a recent article by Bazerman that distinguishes his approach in this book from his earlier work on the rhetoric of science. Finally, Bazerman could have posed more sharply some of the critical questions involved in the analysis of technology as a system of meaning. For example, the relationship between the rhetoric of technology and its materiality remains largely untouched, even though he insists that “ultimately . . . the technology must be physically realized if it is to maintain discursive value” (340). Nor does Bazerman address the differences between rhetorical models of meaning and other approaches, particularly those that acknowledge nonlinguistic meanings, such as sociosemiotics. Overall, however, Bazerman has provided an impressive model of how rhetorical analysis can enrich an understanding of technological change.

New Approaches to Old Shanghai

Abstract: The study of Shanghai has become an increasingly prominent, international, and topically diverse sub-field within Sinology. Though much of the most interesting work has focused on the period from 1843 through 1943, when Shanghai was a subdivided treaty port, scholarship since the 1950s has seen important changes in theme and methodology. The availability of new archival materials in the 1980s had a dramatic effect on the analysis of the city's past,and a more comparative approach of late has placed Old Shanghai into a broadly international perspective.

Literacy, Orality, and Property: Church Documents in Ethiopia

Abstract: Manuscript documents produced by the Ethiopian church are valuable historical sources about the relations of property and politics. Historians, however, should consider them as part of a political culture in which orality and literacy operated jointly to convey meaning and political validity.