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Hiroshima After Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War (The Wellek Library Lectures)
by Rosalyn DeutscheMany on the left lament an apathy or amnesia toward recent acts of war. Particularly during the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, opposition to war seemed to lack the heat and potency of the 1960s and 1970s, giving the impression that passionate dissent was all but dead. Through an analysis of three politically engaged works of art, Rosalyn Deutsche argues against this melancholic attitude, confirming the power of contemporary art to criticize subjectivity as well as war. Deutsche selects three videos centered on the deployment of the atomic bomb: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Hiroshima Projection (1999), made after the first Gulf War; Silvia Kolbowski's After Hiroshima mon amour (2005-2008); and Leslie Thornton's Let Me Count the Ways (2004-2008), which followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of these works confronts the ethical task of addressing historical disaster, and each explores the intersection of past and present wars. These artworks profoundly contribute to the discourse of war resistance, illuminating the complex dynamics of viewing and interpretation. Deutsche employs feminist and psychoanalytic approaches in her study, questioning both the role of totalizing images in the production of warlike subjects and the fantasies that perpetuate, especially among the left, traditional notions of political dissent. She ultimately reveals the passive collusion between leftist critique and dominant discourse in which personal dimensions of war are denied.
Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses
by M.G. SheftallThe stories of hibakusha - Japanese for atomic bomb survivors - lie at the heart of this compelling minute-by-minute account of 6 August 1945 - the day the world changed forever as the Enola Gay dropped its payload over Hiroshima, ushering in the nuclear age. These survivors and witnesses, now with an average age of over 90, are the last people alive who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in Hiroshima before the bombings. In this heart-stopping account they relay what they experienced on the day the city was obliterated, and what it has been like to live with those memories and scars over the rest of their lives.M. G. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing survivors who were just adolescents at the time but have lived well into their nineties, allowing him to construct portraits of what Hiroshima was like before the bomb, and how catastrophically its citizens' lives changed in the seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and years afterwards. Fluent in spoken and written Japanese, his deep immersion in Japanese society has given him unprecedented access to the hibakusha in their waning years. Their trust in him is evident in the personal and traumatic depths they open up for him as he records their stories.The result is a deeply human history of an unfathomable tragedy, which continues to haunt the world today.
Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses
by M.G. SheftallThe stories of hibakusha - Japanese for atomic bomb survivors - lie at the heart of this compelling minute-by-minute account of 6 August 1945 - the day the world changed forever as the Enola Gay dropped its payload over Hiroshima, ushering in the nuclear age. These survivors and witnesses, now with an average age of over 90, are the last people alive who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in Hiroshima before the bombings. In this heart-stopping account they relay what they experienced on the day the city was obliterated, and what it has been like to live with those memories and scars over the rest of their lives.M. G. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing survivors who were just adolescents at the time but have lived well into their nineties, allowing him to construct portraits of what Hiroshima was like before the bomb, and how catastrophically its citizens' lives changed in the seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and years afterwards. Fluent in spoken and written Japanese, his deep immersion in Japanese society has given him unprecedented access to the hibakusha in their waning years. Their trust in him is evident in the personal and traumatic depths they open up for him as he records their stories.The result is a deeply human history of an unfathomable tragedy, which continues to haunt the world today.
His Hiding Place is Darkness: A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence
by Francis X. ClooneyHis Hiding Place is Darkness explores the uncertainties of faith and love in a pluralistic age. In keeping with his conviction that studying multiple religious traditions intensifies rather than attenuates religious devotion, Francis Clooney's latest work of comparative theology seeks a way beyond today's religious and interreligious uncertainty by pairing a fresh reading of the absence of the beloved in the Biblical Song of Songs with a pioneering study of the same theme in the Holy Word of Mouth (9th century CE), a classic of Hindu mystical poetry rarely studied in the West. Remarkably, the pairing of these texts is grounded not in a general theory of religion, but in an engagement with two unexpected sources: the theopoetics, theodramatics, and theology of the 20th-century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the intensely perceived and written poetry of Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham. How we read and write on religious matters is transformed by this rare combination of voices in what is surely a unique and important contribution to comparative studies and religious hermeneutics.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: A Reader's Guide
by Shambhala PublicationsThis is a short guide to the works of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, offering most especially a quick glimpse of His Holiness's books published in English by Shambhala Publications (including Snow Lion). It includes information on books both for practicing Buddhists and for general readers.
Historia de un biblioteca: De Platón a Nietzsche
by Tomás AbrahamAbraham nos permite seguir el curso de la filosofía occidental yencontrar los nudos de su articulación en los lugares menos pensados. Este libro evoca una historia personal y construye un programa irresistible y exclusivo. Las respuestas habituales se borran, abolidas por un rigor asistemático que no asigna valores juzgados desde algún tribunal sino que contrasta usos, pasiones y texturas. En pocos textos como en este de Abraham la idea de libro se consolida con la de biblioteca y cultura. Dentro de cada uno de estos conceptos una sustancia única y renovada nos permite seguir el curso de la filosofía occidental y encontrar los nudos de su articulación en los lugares menos pensados. A partir de esos hallazgos, esta «historia universal de una sola biblioteca» nos ayuda a habitar la filosofía desde la sorpresa y admiración que prodiga el autor a los responsables de su vocación.
Historian in Chief: How Presidents Interpret the Past to Shape the Future
by Rick Perlstein John Milton Cooper Jr. Kathleen Dalton James T. Kloppenberg Jeffrey L. Pasley David Waldstreicher David Sehat Jonathan Earle Edward Countryman Charlie Laderman Elvin T. LimPresidents shape not only the course of history but also how Americans remember and retell that history. From the Oval Office they instruct us what to respect and what to reject in our past. They regale us with stories about who we are as a people, and tell us whom in the pantheon of greats we should revere and whom we should revile. The president of the United States, in short, is not just the nation’s chief legislator, the head of a political party, or the commander in chief of the armed forces, but also, crucially, the nation’s historian in chief.In this engaging and insightful volume, Seth Cotlar and Richard Ellis bring together top historians and political scientists to explore how eleven American presidents deployed their power to shape the nation’s collective memory and its political future. Contending that the nation’s historians in chief should be evaluated not only on the basis of how effective they are in persuading others, Historian in Chief argues they should also be judged on the veracity of the history they tell.
Historians on Leadership and Strategy: Case Studies From Antiquity to Modernity
by Martin GutmannThis book examines the well-covered subject of leadership from a unique perspective: history's vast catalogue of leadership successes and failures. Through a collection of highly compelling case studies spanning two millennia, it looks beyond the classic leadership parable of men in military or political crises and shows that successful leadership cannot be reduced to simplistic formulae.Written by experts in the field and based on rigorous research, each case provides a rich and compelling account that is accessible to a wide audience, from students to managers. Rather than serving as a vehicle for advancing a particular theory of leadership, each case invites readers to reflect, debate and extract their own insights.
Historias de la Argentina deseada
by Tomás AbrahamUn ensayo narrado sobre las estrategias cotidianas y las elaboraciones de alto vuelo con que se quiso conjurar el peligro que acecho y sigue acechando la pureza de la gran familia argentina. ¿Acaso podemos negar que Perón fue amado; que la Libertadora llenó plazas con un público feliz, que Onganía asumió al mando con el beneplácito de la comunidad; que las acciones guerrilleras del 70 recibieron aprobación de grandes sectores de las clases acomodadas; que el regreso del líder fue aclamado; que a Videla lo coronó el suspiro de alivio de millones de argentinos; que Galtieri encontró eco durante sus sangrientas maniobras para perpetuarse en el poder; que Alfonsín fue votado por la mayoría de los argentinos y que el menemismo gobernó con repetido consenso? Gestas inconclusas o fracasadas que nos han hecho la medida de los deseos, de los recuerdos, de su memoria. ¿Cuál es el país que las clases dirigentes -apoyadas por nosotros- quisieron hacer? Tomas Abraham describe y narra en este libro el lado oscuro de la Argentina: la caza de hippies en la brillante década del setenta, la cruzada moral de la izquierda en tiempos de Frondizi, la polémica sobre el gauchos fines del cuarenta, la trayectoria de formadores de opinión como Mariano Grondona. Articula así un relato infrecuente en la plácida atmósfera intelectual que simula indignación por temor a argumentar. Deja emerger además una historia personal -cifrada, por muchos motivos, en el año 48- que involucra, a través de las múltiples ficciones colectivas, la clave ética de un discurso insoslayable. Un ensayo narrado sobre las estrategias cotidianas y las elaboraciones de alto vuelo con que se quiso conjurar el peligro que acechó y sigue acechando la pureza de la gran familia argentina.
Historic Power Europe: A Post-Hegelian Interpretation of European Integration (Critical European Studies)
by Davide BarileThis book proposes a new theoretical framework to move beyond the traditional tenets of modern international relations theory to investigate European integration and shed light on current events. Based on contemporary analyses, Hegel’s political philosophy, and the fundamental role of historical interpretation, this book addresses the institutional dynamics as well as the discursive practices behind both the Eastern enlargement and the current critical situation. Looking back in particular at European integration in one of its most significant events, namely the enlargement of the European Union to include former Socialist countries, it offers a unique conceptualisation of the nature and limits of European integration and for understanding the current crisis between Brussels and the Visegrád countries, 30 years since the revolutions of 1989. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European politics and history, and political theory and philosophy.
Historical Background of Wang Yang-ming’s Philosophy of Mind: From the Perspective of his Life Story
by Ping DongThis open access book offers comprehensive information on Wang Yang-ming’s life, helping readers identify and grasp the foundations on which his philosophy was established. Though a great man, Wang had an extremely difficult life, full of many hardships. Based on various official histories, Wang’s own writings, and his disciples’ records, the book explores the legendary life of this ancient philosopher, who not only diligently pursued his objective of living as a sage, but also persistently sought the ideal state of a sage in ideology. The author also shares his own interpretations of the main aspects of Wang’s philosophy using simple and straightforward language.This book will help readers understand and appreciate Wang Yang-ming’s extraordinary life, his generous mind, deep thoughts and bright personality, inspiring them to pursue enriching lives. It offers a unique and insightful work for undergraduate students and all others interested in Wang’s philosophy and life story.
Historical Consciousness and Practical Life: A Theory and Methodology
by Paul ZanazanianHistorical Consciousness and Practical Life introduces a novel approach to examining how people construct and employ historical knowledge in their daily lives. In viewing history as an embodied cultural practice that constitutes the background to our meaning-making, the book demonstrates how researchers and others can investigate the ways in which people make sense of time’s flow in their now-moment engagements with the world and use that information to position themselves regarding key social problems with historical roots. The book provides a glimpse at how humans enter historically embedded thinking problems, seeking to resolve them. Paul Zanazanian draws on a study of the community leaders of English-speaking Quebec to illustrate the practical life methodology’s workings. In looking at their different uses of history for strengthening their group’s vitality in the province, he identifies five key stances these leaders employ for positioning their sense of purpose and responsibility for securing English-speaking Quebec’s future. Ultimately, Historical Consciousness and Practical Life argues that community leaders who complicate and problematize their uses of history are the best positioned to make positive transformations for their group.
Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger's Being and Time
by Johannes FritscheThere has been much debate over the relationship of Heidegger's philosophy—in particular his book Being and Time—to his practical involvement with National Socialism. Yet the question has never been addressed through a comparison of Being and Time with other texts on history and politics written at the time. Johannes Fritsche does this, providing a detailed interpretation of the relevant passages in Being and Time—especially sections 72-77 on fate, community, and society. He analyzes for comparison two other authors who explicitly regarded themselves as rightists—Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf) and Max Scheler (Formalism in Ethics and other writings)—and two authors on the left—Georg Lukács (History and Class Consciousness) and Paul Tillich (The Socialist Decision).Fritsche concludes that Being and Time is a brilliant summary of right-wing politics in general, which proposes the destruction of liberal society in order to regenerate an idealized community. In addition, Heidegger rejects positions on the right, such as Scheler's, that enabled their authors to distance themselves from the most extreme political rightists, and thus he paves the way for National Socialism. Being and Time, Fritsche demonstrates, must be seen as a clear case for the National Socialists and their project of revitalization of the Volksgemeinschaft, the community of the people.
Historical Epistemology and European Philosophy of Science: Rethinking Critical Rationalism and Transcendentalism (Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics #62)
by Fabio MinazziThis book offers a comprehensive analysis on the evolution of philosophy of science, with a special emphasis on the European tradition of the twentieth century. At first, it shows how the epistemological problem of the objectivity of knowledge and axiomatic knowledge have been previously tackled by transcendentalism, critical rationalism and hermeneutics. In turn, it analyses the axiological dimension of scientific research, moving from traditional model of science and of scientific methods, to the construction of a new image of knowledge that leverages the philosophical tradition of the Milan School. Using this historical-epistemological approach, the author rethinks the Kantian Transcendental, showing how it could be better integrated in the current philosophy of science, to answer important questions such as the relationship between science and history, scientific and social perspectives and philosophy and technology, among others. Not only this book provides a comprehensive study of the evolution of European Philosophy of Science in the twentieth century, yet it offers a new, historical and epistemological-based approach, that could be used to answers many urgent questions of contemporary societies.
Historical Epistemology of Ecological Economics: Essays on the Styles of Economic Reasoning (Contributions to Economics)
by Alberto FragioThis volume uses historical epistemology in order to address several topics in the history of economic thought, with special emphasis on ecological economics, environmental metaphors of scarcity, and mathematical ecology. Using the field of ecological economics as an anchor point, the author reflects on the styles of reasoning in economics with a view towards understanding the nature of disagreement that stems from a failure of communication between rival approaches in economics. A thorough inquiry into issues related to identity, coherence, pluralism, and reception, this volume will appeal to researchers and students interested in history of economic thought, ecological economics, and philosophy of the sciences.
Historical Epistemology of Space
by Matthias SchemmelThis monograph investigates the development of human spatial knowledge by analyzing its elementary structures and studying how it is further shaped by various societal conditions. By taking a thoroughly historical perspective on knowledge and integrating results from various disciplines, this work throws new light on long-standing problems in epistemology such as the relation between experience and preformed structures of cognition. What do the orientation of apes and the theory of relativity have to do with each other? Readers will learn how different forms of spatial thinking are related in a long-term history of knowledge. Scientific concepts of space such as Newton's absolute space or Einstein's curved spacetime are shown to be rooted in pre-scientific structures of knowledge, while at the same time enabling the integration of an ever expanding corpus of experiential knowledge. This work addresses all readers interested in questions of epistemology, in particular philosophers and historians of science. It integrates forms of spatial knowledge from disciplines including anthropology, developmental psychology and cognitive sciences, amongst others.
Historical Evolution of the Eastern Mode of Production (China Perspectives)
by Zhao JiaxiangIn the four volumes of The Development Trajectory of Eastern Societies and the Theories and Practices of Socialism, the author re-examines Marx and Engels’ theories on the development trajectory of Eastern societies by integrating theoretical analysis of Marxist theories and a historical investigation of socialist revolution and socialist construction around the world. This second volume focuses on Marx and Engels’ historical materialism, explains the general laws of historical development, and brings this to bear within the context of Eastern societies. The author notes that Marx and Engels’ historical materialism and its derivative theories on Eastern societies are compatible and interconnected. In addition, he reveals how Marx and Engels’ theory of the “Asiatic mode of production” plays an important part in the development trajectory of Eastern societies, and is closely related to their theory of “five social forms.” This volume is a key reference for readers who study and are interested in Marxism, Marxist philosophy, and the history of philosophy.
Historical Experience: Essays on the Phenomenology of History (Routledge Approaches to History)
by David CarrThis volume brings together a collection of recent essays on the philosophy and theory of history. This is a field of lively interdisciplinary discussion and research, to which historians, philosophers and theorists of culture and literature have contributed. The author is a philosopher by training, and his inspiration comes primarily from the continental-phenomenological tradition. Thus the influence of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur can be discerned here. This background opens up a unique perspective on the issues under discussion. Phenomenology differs from other philosophical approaches, like metaphysics and epistemology. Phenomenology asks, of anything that exists or may exist: how is it given, how does it enter our experience, what is our experience of it like? Very broadly we can say: phenomenology is about experience. At first glance, this approach may seem ill-suited to history. In our language, “history” usually means either 1) what happened, i.e. past events, or 2) our knowledge of what happened. We can’t experience past events, and whatever knowledge we have of them must come from other sources—memory, testimony, physical traces. But the author maintains that we actually do experience historical events, and these essays explain how this is so. Sitting at the intersection of philosophy and history, and divided into three parts—Historicity, Narrative, and Time, Teleology and History, and Embodiment and Experience—this is the ideal volume for those interested in experience from a philosophical and historical perspective.
Historical Explanation: An Anti-Causalist Approach (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
by Gunnar SchumannThis book is concerned with the appropriate form of explanations in historiography and the social sciences. It combines action theory and philosophy of historiography and develops a theory of teleological explanations of human actions based on late-Wittgensteinian and Ordinary Language Philosophy insights. In philosophy of action, many philosophers favor causal theories of human action. Additionally, in current philosophy of historiography the majority view is that historians should explain historical phenomena by their causes. This book pushes back against these mainstream views by reviving an anti-causal view of explanation of current and past human actions. The author argues that disciplines that deal with human actions require a certain form of explanation, namely a teleological or intentional explanation. This means that past human actions and their results will have to be explained by reasons of agents, not by causes. Therefore, historiography employs a method of explanation which is in stark contrast to the sciences. The author thus proposes a Verstehen (understanding) approach in historiography and the social sciences. Historical Explanation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of action, philosophy of history, and philosophy of the social sciences.
Historical Foundations of Informal Logic (Avebury Series in Philosophy)
by Douglas Walton Alan BrintonIn just the last twenty years there has arisen a strong interest, especially among teachers of logic at the universities, in teaching techniques of applied logical reasoning and critical thinking. Many universities are now stressing these skills at an introductory level, and to meet the need, informal logic has begun to form and grow as a discipline in its own right. Like all subjects, it helps us to understand it if we can situate it in a context of historical development. This collection of essays provides the readings required to understand the development of a subject whose historical origins have been so far little studied. Many of the chapters are written by scholars in philosophy and speech communication who are themselves leading contributors to the subject, and their contemporary views throw light on how these earlier writers have influenced their thinking. This dimension gives an added interest to the essays, and indicates the way informal logic is currently evolving and seeking out its ancient historical origins.
Historical Geography, GIScience and Textual Analysis: Landscapes of Time and Place (Historical Geography and Geosciences)
by Ferenc Gyuris Charles Travis Francis LudlowThis book illustrates how literature, history and geographical analysis complement and enrich each other’s disciplinary endeavors. The Hun-Lenox Globe, constructed in 1510, contains the Latin phrase 'Hic sunt dracones' ('Here be dragons'), warning sailors of the dangers of drifting into uncharted waters. Nearly half a millennium earlier, the practice of ‘earth-writing’ (geographia) emerged from the cloisters of the great library of Alexandria, as a discipline blending the twin pursuits of Strabo’s poetic impression of places, and Herodotus’ chronicles of events and cultures. Eratosthenes, a librarian at Alexandria, and the mathematician Ptolemy employed geometry as another language with which to pursue ‘earth-writing’. From this ancient, East Mediterranean fount, the streams of literary perception, historical record and geographical analysis (phenomenological and Euclidean) found confluence. The aim of this collection is to recover such means and seek the fount of such rich waters, by exploring relations between historical geography, geographic information science (GIS) / geoscience, and textual analysis. The book discusses and illustrates current case studies, trends and discourses in European, American and Asian spheres, where historical geography is practiced in concert with human and physical applications of GIS (and the broader geosciences) and the analysis of text - broadly conceived as archival, literary, historical, cultural, climatic, scientific, digital, cinematic and media. Time as a multi-scaled concept (again, broadly conceived) is the pivot around which the interdisciplinary contributions to this volume revolve. In The Landscape of Time (2002) the historian John Lewis Gaddis posits: “What if we were to think of history as a kind of mapping?” He links the ancient practice of mapmaking with the three-part conception of time (past, present, and future). Gaddis presents the practices of cartography and historical narrative as attempts to manage infinitely complex subjects by imposing abstract grids to frame the phenomena being examined— longitude and latitude to frame landscapes and, occidental and oriental temporal scales to frame timescapes. Gaddis contends that if the past is a landscape and history is the way we represent it, then it follows that pattern recognition constitutes a primary form of human perception, one that can be parsed empirically, statistically and phenomenologically. In turn, this volume reasons that literary, historical, cartographical, scientific, mathematical, and counterfactual narratives create their own spatio-temporal frames of reference. Confluences between the poetic and the positivistic; the empirical and the impressionistic; the epic and the episodic; and the chronologic and the chorologic, can be identified and studied by integrating practices in historical geography, GIScience / geoscience and textual analysis. As a result, new perceptions and insights, facilitating further avenues of scholarship into uncharted waters emerge. The various ways in which geographical, historical and textual perspectives are hermeneutically woven together in this volume illuminates the different methods with which to explore terrae incognitaes of knowledge beyond the shores of their own separate disciplinary islands.
Historical Introduction to Philosophy
by Albert B. HakimThis text/anthology is designed to lead beginning students to an appreciation of Western philosophy through an exploration of its history, the problems (classical questions) it has dealt with, and the major philosophers and their works within that historical setting.
Historical Judgement: The Limits Of Historiographical Choice
by Jonathan GormanThe historical profession is not noted for examining its own methodologies. Indeed, most historians are averse to historical theory. In "Historical Judgement" Jonathan Gorman's response to this state of affairs is to argue that if we want to characterize a discipline, we need to look to persons who successfully occupy the role of being practitioners of that discipline. So to model historiography we must do so from the views of historians. Gorman begins by showing what it is to model a discipline by using recent philosophy of law and philosophy of science. There are different models at work, whose rivalry and resolution are to be historically understood. With this approach in place he is able to develop the history of historiography and explore the character of historiography as presented by historians. He reveals that historians conform to various norms - that historians now and in the past have agreed and disagreed about the same set of interrelated matters: truth-telling, moral judgement and the synthesis of facts - and it is this internal understanding that we need to recover if we are to arrive at a correct characterization of the discipline of historiography. Demonstrating how the practice of historiography requires choices and therefore the exercise of judgement, Gorman is able to show that in their making of judgements historians enjoy the immense benefit of hindsight. He shows how, in reflecting on their own discipline, historians have typically failed to attend adequately to the history of historiography, neglecting to situate previous historians within their historical contexts, or to pay adequate attention to the fact that present historians, too, are within a context that will change. In addition, Gorman's approach, which emphasizes the power and necessity of choice, and which rests on the pragmatic holistic empiricism of Quine, shows postmodernism not to be the threat that some historians feel it to be, indeed, it is shown to be a radical form of empiricism. Gorman shows how the historical enterprise may be established in our factual and moral understanding in the light of our choices and commitments to a shared world. "Historical Judgement" is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of history. By bringing together the ideas of historians and philosophers, Gorman presents a much more practitioner-focused examination of the discipline of history, one that will, hopefully, encourage historians to think more about the nature of what they do.
Historical Justice and History Education
by Henrik Åström Elmersjö Daniel Lindmark Björn Norlin Mati KeynesThis book explores how the expectations of historical justice movements and processes are understood within educational contexts, particularly history education. In recent years, movements for historical justice have gained global momentum and prominence as the focus on righting wrongs from the past has become a feature of contemporary politics. This imperative has manifested in globally diverse contexts including societies emerging from recent, violent conflict, but also established democracies which are increasingly compelled to address the legacies of colonialism, slavery, genocides, and war crimes, as well as other forms of protracted discord. This book examines historical justice from an educational perspective, exploring the myriad ways that education is understood as a site of historical injustice, as well as a mechanism for redress. The editors and contributors analyse the role of history education in processes of historical justice broadly, exploring educational sites, policies, media, and materials. This edited collection is a unique and important touchstone volume for scholars, policy-makers, practitioners, and teachers that can guide future research, policy, and practice in the fields of historical justice, human rights and history education.
Historical Mosques in Indonesia and the Malay World: Roots, Transformations, and Developments
by Bagoes WiryomartonoThe book is an interdisciplinary study on the relationship between Muslims and their mosques in Indonesia and Malaysia. It presents selected historic mosques that demonstrate local interpretations and sociocultural assimilation, as well as a geographical syncretism, of Islam in local societies. The book unveils the contestations, synchronizations, assimilations, and integrations of local and foreign elements into the contextual architecture and sociologically institutionalized system that is the mosque: the Islamic place of worship. The author excavates the mosque’s historical origins and traces the iconic elements, features, and designs from their earliest historical settings and contexts. He then identifies, analyzes, and theorizes the outcomes of the interaction between Islam and local traditions through Malaysian and Indonesian case studies. The book proposes that Islam, at its philosophical level, can be culturally acceptable anywhere because it contains universal virtues of humanity for equality, fraternity, and social justice. The book unfolds how a dialectical contestation and acculturation of Dutch colonialism, Middle Eastern elements of culture, and local customs and traditions, might then come into dialogue, peacefully. Finally, the book considers the relationship between Malay and Indonesian architecture within their respective political cultures, shedding light on Islam and its practice within rich multicultural contexts. Relevant to students and researchers in Islamic studies, architecture, and Southeast Asian studies more broadly, the book uncovers the issues, constraints, and opportunities relating to the meaning of mosques for Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia.