Reforming Women

Reforming Women
Author: Lisa J. Shaver
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2019-02-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0822986469

In Reforming Women, Lisa Shaver locates the emergence of a distinct women’s rhetoric and feminist consciousness in the American Female Moral Reform Society. Established in 1834, the society took aim at prostitution, brothels, and the lascivious behavior increasingly visible in America’s industrializing cities. In particular, female moral reformers contested the double standard that overlooked promiscuous behavior in men while harshly condemning women for the same offense. Their ardent rhetoric resonated with women across the country. With its widely-read periodical and auxiliary societies representing more than 50,000 women, the American Female Moral Reform Society became the first national reform movement organized, led, and comprised solely by women. Drawing on an in-depth examination of the group’s periodical, Reforming Women delineates essential rhetorical tactics including women’s strategic use of gender, the periodical press, anger, presence, auxiliary societies, and institutional rhetoric—tactics women’s reform efforts would use throughout the nineteenth century. Almost two centuries later, female moral reformers’ rhetoric resonates today as our society continues to struggle with different moral expectations for men and women.

Moralists and Modernizers

Moralists and Modernizers
Author: Steven Mintz
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 1995-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801850813

Moralists and Modernizers tells the fascinating story of America's first age of reform, combining incisive portraits of leading reformers and movements with perceptive analyses of religion, politics, and society.

The Structure of Moral Revolutions

The Structure of Moral Revolutions
Author: Robert Baker
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2019-11-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262043084

A theoretical account of moral revolutions, illustrated by historical cases that include the criminalization and decriminalization of abortion and the patient rebellion against medical paternalism. We live in an age of moral revolutions in which the once morally outrageous has become morally acceptable, and the formerly acceptable is now regarded as reprehensible. Attitudes toward same-sex love, for example, and the proper role of women, have undergone paradigm shifts over the last several decades. In this book, Robert Baker argues that these inversions are the product of moral revolutions that follow a pattern similar to that of the scientific revolutions analyzed by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. After laying out the theoretical terrain, Baker develops his argument with examples of moral reversals from the recent and distant past. He describes the revolution, led by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, that transformed the postmortem dissection of human bodies from punitive desecration to civic virtue; the criminalization of abortion in the nineteenth century and its decriminalization in the twentieth century; and the invention of a new bioethics paradigm in the 1970s and 1980s, supporting a patient-led rebellion against medical paternalism. Finally, Baker reflects on moral relativism, arguing that the acceptance of “absolute” moral truths denies us the diversity of moral perspectives that permit us to alter our morality in response to changing environments.

The Age of Light, Soap, and Water

The Age of Light, Soap, and Water
Author: Mariana Valverde
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 080209595X

" BACK IN PRINT WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION The turn of the last century saw a greatwave of moral fervour among Protestant social reformers in English Canada.Their targets for moral reform were various: sex hygiene, immigration policy,slum clearance, prostitution, and "whiteslavery." Mariana Valverde's groundbreaking TheAge of Light, Soap, and Water examines the work and the ideas of moralistclergy, social workers, politicians, and bureaucrats who sought to maintain - orcreate - a white Protestant Canada. The morality idealized by evangelical,feminist, and medical activists was not, as is often assumed, completely repressiveand puritanical. On the contrary, the self-defined social purity movement atthe centre of this book talked endlessly about sex in order to create a healthsexuality among both native-born and immigrant Canadians. Sexual health was linkedto racial purity, and both of these were in turn linked to efforts to abolishurban slums by means of symbolic as well as physical "light, soap, andwater." Back in print with a new introduction by the author, this classicwork offers fascinating insights on the social history of Canada. "learance, prostitution, and "white slavery." Mariana Valverde's groundbreaking The Age of Light, Soap, and Waterexamines the work and the ideas of moralist clergy, social workers, politicians, and bureaucrats who sought to maintain - or create - a white Protestant Canada. The morality idealized by evangelical, feminist, and medical activists was not, as is often assumed, completely repressive and puritanical. On the contrary, the self-defined social purity movement at the centre of this book talked endlessly about sex in order to create a healthy sexuality among both native-born and immigrant Canadians. Sexual health was linked to racial purity, and both of these were in turn linked to efforts to abolish urban slums by means of symbolic as well as physical "light, soap, and water." This study uncovers a little known dimension of Canadian social history and shows that moral reform was not the project of a marginal puritanical group but was central to the race, class, and gender organization of modern English Canada.

Social and Moral Reform

Social and Moral Reform
Author: Nancy F. Cott
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2013-02-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3110971097

No detailed description available for "Social and Moral Reform".

Reforming the Moral Subject

Reforming the Moral Subject
Author: Tracie Matysik
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801447129

Introduction : critical ethics, or the subject of reform -- An ethics of Gesellschaft -- The "new ethic" : a particularist challenge -- Conflicted sexualities and conflicted secularisms -- Global influences, local responses -- Moral laws and impossible laws : the "female homosexual" and the Criminal Code -- Social matters : social democracy and the ethics of materialism -- Losses and unlikely legacies : psychoanalysis and femininity -- Afterword : moral citizenship, or ethics beyond the law.

Moral Reconstruction

Moral Reconstruction
Author: Gaines M. Foster
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2003-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807860166

Between 1865 and 1920, Congress passed laws to regulate obscenity, sexuality, divorce, gambling, and prizefighting. It forced Mormons to abandon polygamy, attacked interstate prostitution, made narcotics contraband, and stopped the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Gaines Foster explores the force behind this unprecedented federal regulation of personal morality--a combined Christian lobby. Foster analyzes the fears of appetite and avarice that led organizations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the National Reform Association to call for moral legislation and examines the efforts and interconnections of the men and women who lobbied for it. His account underscores the crucial role white southerners played in the rise of moral reform after 1890. With emancipation, white southerners no longer needed to protect slavery from federal intervention, and they seized on moral legislation as a tool for controlling African Americans. Enriching our understanding of the aftermath of the Civil War and the expansion of national power, Moral Reconstruction also offers valuable insight into the link between historical and contemporary efforts to legislate morality.

Making English Morals

Making English Morals
Author: M. J. D. Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2004-06-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139454218

Campaigns for moral reform were a recurrent and distinctive feature of public life in later Georgian and Victorian England. Anti-slavery, temperance, charity organisation, cruelty prevention, 'social purity' advocates, and more, all promoted their causes through mobilisation of citizen volunteer support. This 2004 book sets out to explore the world of these volunteer networks, their foci of concern, their patterns of recruitment, their methods of operation and the responses they aroused. In its exploration of this culture of self-consciously altruistic associational effort, the book provides a systematic survey of moral reform movements as a distinct tradition of citizen action over this period, as well as casting light on the formation of a middle-class culture torn, in this stage of economic and political nation-building, between acceptance of a market-organised society and unease about the cultural consequences of doing so. This is a revelatory book that is both compelling and accessible.

Purity Crusade

Purity Crusade
Author: David J. Pivar
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 330
Release: 1973-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN:

Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations

Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations
Author: Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2012-12-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1461448638

In many facets of Western culture, including archaeology, there remains a legacy of perceiving gender divisions as natural, innate, and biological in origin. This belief follows that men are naturally pre-disposed to public, intellectual pursuits, while women are innately designed to care for the home and take care of children. In the interpretation of material culture, accepted notions of gender roles are often applied to new findings: the dichotomy between the domestic sphere of women and the public sphere of men can color interpretations of new materials. In this innovative volume, the contributors focus explicitly on analyzing the materiality of historic changes in the domestic sphere around the world. Combining a global scope with great temporal depth, chapters in the volume explore how gender ideologies, identities, relationships, power dynamics, and practices were materially changed in the past, thus showing how they could be changed in the future.