Robbie Davis-Floyd is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University, and Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. She is the author of many books including Ways of Knowing about Birth: Mothers, Midwives, Medicine, and Birth Activism (2018, Waveland) and Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992,2003, 2022). Her new book, co-authored with Charles D. Laughlin, is Ritual: What It Is, How It Works, and Why.
In our interview with Cecilie Eriksen and Nora Hämäläinen, the editors of New Perspectives on Moral Change, volume 13 in the WYSE Series in Social Anthropology, they explain the thinking behind their work, how they found their contributors, and the range of issues that they tackled.
Excerpted by Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography by Rolf Hosfeld, Translated from the German by Bernard Heise
Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818. As a young man he was a journalist and an editor for Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal-socialist newspaper published in Germany. The paper was previously edited by Adolf Friedrich Rutenberg, who favored opinionated feuilletons, before Marx replaced him and gained recognition for his practical, evidence-based approach.
Moses Hess was the first communist Karl Marx personally encountered. Both were from the Rhineland, came from bourgeois families, and were under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy. Marx made an “imposing impression” on Hess upon their first acquaintance in September 1841. After their initial encounter Hess had the sense of having met the “greatest, perhaps the only real philosopher now living,” one who would soon—Hess was referring here to the lecture halls of Bonn University—“draw upon him the eyes of Germany.”
Continue reading “Karl Marx as a Young Journalist”
In 2011 a global wave of protest changed the way in which people saw contention. January saw two revolutions: first, in Tunisia culminating in the overthrow of then president Ben Ali; and second in Egypt with protests that would end the Mubarak regime within eighteen days. This wave of protest spread to Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain changing the course of history for each country forever.
But protest would not be confined to the Middle East. Later that year the Iberian Peninsula ignited with protest and popular mass movements soon followed. The same could be seen in Italy and Greece. What had spread to Southern Europe would soon cross the Atlantic with the rise of Occupy Wall Street: first, in New York then across Northern America and finally, by 2012, across the globe as a worldwide occupy movement.
In the academic community, a fervent interest in these new protests and the general question of Contention would awaken across disciplines and in October of that year many of us came together at the University of Kent for the first international and interdisciplinary conference on social protest. Attendees ranged from across the social sciences, humanities and arts, as well as a substantial contingent of activists, revolutionaries and NGOs.
This enthusiasm led to the very first issue of Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, on Theory, Action and Impact in Social Protest. This issue was merely a collection of abstracts of the almost 200 papers presented at the conference but generated considerable excitement among our colleagues.
This became the springboard for two distinct ventures, first the creation of the Interdisciplinary Network for Social Protest Research which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. Second, of course, was Contention which had expanded into a fully-fledged academic journal by 2013.
This year marks a similarly important step for Contention, with the move to a new publisher and to a new phase in the journal’s history. We are privileged to count among our editors a distinguished and international advisory board, as well as scholars of the highest calibre from across disciplines. The journal now attracts submissions of the highest quality and prides itself on a careful and inclusive review process.
So what’s next for Contention? Over the next five years we will aim to establish the journal as a world leading resource for social protest across disciplines. In conjunction with our partners at INSPR, we will strengthen our ties with academics and practitioners across the globe. In partnership with our publisher at Berghahn we will bring the journal to new audiences and even greater impact.
We look forward to your help along the way!
Benjamin Abrams and Giovanni A Travaglino
Editors
By Richard O’Connor, author of From Virtue to Vice
Richard O’Connor, professor of anthropology at the University of the South, is the author of From Virtue to Vice: Negotiating Anorexia. His book, written with Penny van Esterik, is Volume 4 in our Food, Nutrition and Culture Series that takes an anthropological perspective to human nutrition and food habits. In this blog post, Professor O’Connor debunks five commonly held beliefs on the disease that benefits clinicians, patients, and the friends and family of those who struggle with anorexia.
Excerpted by Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography by Rolf Hosfeld, Translated from the German by Bernard Heise
Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818. As a young man he was a journalist and an editor for Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal-socialist newspaper published in Germany. The paper was previously edited by Adolf Friedrich Rutenberg, who favored opinionated feuilletons, before Marx replaced him and gained recognition for his practical, evidence-based approach.
Moses Hess was the first communist Karl Marx personally encountered. Both were from the Rhineland, came from bourgeois families, and were under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy. Marx made an “imposing impression” on Hess upon their first acquaintance in September 1841. After their initial encounter Hess had the sense of having met the “greatest, perhaps the only real philosopher now living,” one who would soon—Hess was referring here to the lecture halls of Bonn University—“draw upon him the eyes of Germany.”
Continue reading “Karl Marx as a Young Journalist”
An Interdisciplinary Journal of Existentialism and Contemporary Culture
Volume 21, Issue 2
This is a special issue on the Diverse Lineages of Existentialism conference held in St. Louis from June 19 to 21, 2014. This conference featured a number of panels devoted to the work of eminent Sartre scholars: Ronald Aronson, David Detmer, Thomas R. Flynn and Ronald Santoni. We are pleased to present articles based on the papers presented at those panels in this issue.
Continue reading “Hot Off the Press – New Journal Issues Published in February”
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. Read more about her life here.
Below, we’ve curated a reading list related to Hannah Arendt and her political philosophy from a selection of our books and journals.
The Legacy of Liberal Judaism:
Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Conversation
Ned Curthoys
“Most readers will finish this work with a renewed appreciation of the continuing significance of the moral vision articulated by these exemplars of liberal Judaism.” · Choice
“The book then provides various interesting challenges to scholarship on Arendt, as well as the material on thinkers brought together here as part of the tradition of Liberal Judaism. All this make The Legacy of Liberal Judaism of relevance beyond an exclusively scholarly debate.” · Patterns of Prejudice
In 2007 the United Nations General Assembly resolved to observe 15 September as the International Day of Democracy—with the purpose of promoting and upholding the principles of democracy—and invited all member states and organizations to commemorate the day in an appropriate manner that contributes to raising public awareness. Read more about this special day at the UN website.
In honor of this year’s observance, we’ve highlighted select books and journals below.