This essay explores the conflict between individualism and communitarianism, attempting to clarify the nature of the conflict and its implications for rhetorical theory. The conflict is examined as it was manifested in a historical debate between liberals and conservatives during and after the French Revolution. Where liberals privileged the unencumbered judgment of autonomous individuals, conservatives attempted to marginalize individual dissent, defending “prejudice, “ “precedent, “ and “presumption. “Against this background, Richard Whately's notions of “presumption” and “burden of proof can be seen as an attempt to mediate the conflict between individualism and communitarianism. Whately's suggestion was developed farther in the works of John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville. For Mill and Tocqueville, presumption and burden of proof define a point of equilibrium in an ongoing dialectic between communal allegiance and individual judgement.

Haven in a Heartless World

Authority, freedom and liberal judgment: The presumptions and presumptuousness of Whately, mill and to Cqueville

The festival of Christmas is intimately linked to the attachment to places and the notion of home held by Americans. Both the practice of Christmas and the meaning of home underwent radical transformation during the nineteenth century. Theories of festivity highlight the political character of seasonal celebrations, but a historical approach gives an understanding of the role of place in the American celebration of Christmas. An interpretation of this role that relates the festival to recent notions of the family, the child, and the private home is suggested. EACH year in late November or early December, the overwhelming majority of Americans begin making preparations for their most important festival. Considering the amounts of money, time, and feeling devoted to it, Christmas obviously has a crucial role in American culture. Only at Christmas is there an entire season of festivity. The power of both the marketplace and the family is mobilized to support the celebration. Christmas is more meaningful to Americans than any other seasonal event. What is most striking from a geographical perspective is the extent to which people transform the landscape at Christmas. Visiting almost any American village, town, or city at Christmas, one cannot help but notice how the community is given over to the festival. Colored lights, evergreens, and a variety of religious and secular ornaments decorate civic sites, shopping districts, and private homes. Most scholars who have commented on the social and cultural meaning of Christmas have interpreted the festival as an interlude, a special time set apart from the rest of the year (Barnett 1954). But the attention given to composite landscapes and individual dwellings suggests that place, as well as time, is important to the celebration. By definition Christmas is a season, but as a festival it has a certain locus: to borrow a phrase from Peter Jackson (1988, 225), it literally "takes place." Almost any celebrant of this festival, if asked where it should take place, would respond that ideally Christmas should be celebrated at home. The place of Christmas is thus not merely incidental to the celebration: it is crucial. This essay explores the relationship between Christmas and place in the United States. Examining this relationship unavoidably also raises the issue of the political role of Christmas. The essay has four sections. The first outlines the lineaments of the relationship between place and the contemporary practice of Christmas. Before attempting an interpretation of this relationship, a second section provides an overview of the development of the festival. The third section explores the theoretical issues involved in interpreting festivals in general. The final section presents an interpretation of the centrality of place to the modern Christmas by relating the historical revival of * DR. MCGREEVY is an assistant professor of geography at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.220 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 04:21:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Place in the American Christmas

In 1870, the Dutch state privatized several oyster banks in Zeeland waters. This measure brought about a rapid capitalization of the oyster industry. The Zeeland town of Yerseke soon became the national centre of oyster farming and trade. Initially, oyster farming was quite successful. Yerseke turned into an affluent country town which attracted hundreds of migrants. When by the mid-1880s serious problems assailed the oyster industry, a large number of people left the town, although newcomers were continually arriving. In the wake of these developments the community's social organization changed drastically and social control withered. Fights, drunkenness and theft were part and parcel of everday life. In the course of the 1890s, this social disorganization was checked by the civilizing missions of churches and the disciplining offensives of the local authorities and police. Perhaps even more important was the increasing social integration of the village community. The present article aims to uncover the dynamics and interrelations of these processes.

https://www.uva.nl/binaries/content/documents/personalpages/g/i/r.j.vanginkel/en/tab-two/tab-two/cpitem%5B36%5D/asset?1355373421417

A Dutch Sodom and Gomorrah. Degenerates, Moralists, and Authority in Yerseke, 1870-1914

In recent years, reforms of police and criminal justice agencies have attempted to address the problem of family violence. This effort to expand the involvement of state agencies in private conflicts provides an opportunity to examine the extent and nature of state interests in the mediation of the familyin particular, relationships between men and women. This paper focuses on the state's responses to pressure from the women's movement to recognize and criminalize the problem of wife-beating through a description and analysis of two reform efforts. The first attempt instituted police training in crisis intervention skills; the second focused on a multi-agency treatment of the problem. These reforms will be viewed as a response to both internal pressures from within the law enforcement apparatus and to external pressures on that apparatus from the women's movement. The question of whether the reforms initiated a more active state role, or maintained a laissez-faire stance, will be discussed in terms of the larger issue of state intervention in private violence against women. Rather than providing victims leverage against their violent husbands and boyfriends, it will be seen that the new governmental "responsiveness" in fact further entrenched their disadvantaged position.

Domestic Violence Reforms: Policing the Private?

In this article I have attempted to theorize the relations of reproduction in a manner that makes their operation in history more apparent. Using an historical materialist analysis, I have diverged from previous analysis by situating reproduction in the base and positing a co-determinative relation between production and reproduction. I have argued that due to the distinctly different dynamic of reproduction, its longer completion time and its political subordination in class societies, we must pursue different research strategies than those used to illustrate the impact of production on reproduction. This article serves only to give the broadest outline of concerns and questions to focus upon in developing new strategies. As such it suggests that the ubiquity of patriarchy and its preservation, even in the face of structural contradictions with production, provide a starting place for such inquiry. To this end I have developed a model of the modes of reproduction in order to rediscover reproduction in history, its dynamic and its interaction with production. This perspective permits us to reanalyze old rules and customs previously understood exclusively as rules of production (e.g., rules of inheritance and property, certain labour and welfare laws), and discover within them the impact of the reproductive as well as the productive imperative. The model emphasizes the inextricable connection between production and reproduction at the same time that it calls attention to the distinctiveness of their dynamics. Dynamics which, because of their distinctiveness, do not automatically guarantee balance between the two spheres. Hence the continuous necessity for socially engineering this balance, a necessity requiring even more intervention as the two spheres become structurally more alienated.

Haven in a Heartless World

Citations

Authority, freedom and liberal judgment: The presumptions and presumptuousness of Whately, mill and to Cqueville

Place in the American Christmas

A Dutch Sodom and Gomorrah. Degenerates, Moralists, and Authority in Yerseke, 1870-1914

Domestic Violence Reforms: Policing the Private?

Toward a theory of reproduction

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