Reform Movements

The Lutheran reformation brought challenges both in ecclesiastical, social and political life. Lutheran reformers spread far and wide to different places even though they faced lots of opposition from the papal authority of Rome and other theologians. Through Catholic reformation the Roman church was regenerated and regained half of the territories that the Roman church lost to Protestantism. It paved way for the moral and educational standards of the clergy. And most importantly Catholics came to know clearly what to believe. The religious orders contributed much to the catholic reformation especially Society of Jesus and these movements inspired many people to have a missionary zeal.

The twentieth century witnessed serious interest in the field of ethics, as demonstrated in the number of edited manuscripts, translated works, and newly published studies. These activities moved the field of ethics from the exclusive focus on “traditional practical ethics” which dominated the field for centuries to the level of theoretical and philosophical investigations.
This study gives a historical overview of the developments in the field of ethics, which took place in Modern Egypt since the end of the nineteenth century. The study fathoms out the motives behind this new interest in the field and the broad context in which these developments took place. Additionally, the study explores the key trends and directions, which influenced these developments or were actually produced by these developments. This historical period was specifically chosen because it represents the Renaissance epoch in the Arab world and also coincides with the movement of reviving Arabic heritage and publishing its works. The aim here is to discover new dimensions of the reform movement away from the juristic and maqāṣid¬-oriented endeavours, which have already received much attention.

The research which made this thesis possible was undertaken with the financial support of postgraduate scholarships awarded by the University of Manchester and the ESRC.  The thesis uses the case study of the experience of middle-class northern white women in America during the period 1800-1860 to explore several issues of wider significance. Firstly, the research focuses upon the dynamic relationships between the culturally-constructed categories of public/formal and private/informal power and participation at both the practical and symbolic levels, suggesting ways in which they intersected on the lives of women. Secondly, consideration is given to the validity of the stereotyped view that 'domestic' women were necessarily disadvantaged and dominated relative to those who aspired to public political and economic roles. Thirdly, the relationship of religious belief to these two areas is discussed, in order to discover its relevance to the way in which women both perceived themselves and were perceived by others. In seeking to explore these issues, the research has analysed the patterns of social and cultural change in the era under question, indicating how those changes influenced the perceptions and experiences of both women and men. Their reactions in terms of discourse and activity are located as strategies of negotiation in redefining both social role and participation for the sexes. The rhetoric of 'separate spheres', which was used by men and women to order their mental and physical surroundings, is reduced to its symbolic constituents in order to illustrate that the distinction between male and female arenas was more perceptual than actual. The motivating forces behind the activities and ideas of women themselves are investigated to determine the role of religion in the construction of both female self-images and wider negotiational strategies. The context of nineteenth-century social dynamics has been revealed by detailed analysis of extensive primary sources originated by both women and men for private as well as public consumption. Feminist tools of analysis which enable the conceptualisation of 'meaningful discourse' as including female contributions have further enhanced the specific focus on how women constructed their own world-views and approaches to reality. 'Traditional' approaches and tools are shown to have seriously skewed and misrepresented the reality and variety of both discourse and female experience in the era. Great efforts have been made to allow women to speak in their own words. This has produced an insight into a richness of female social participation and discourse which would otherwise be obscured. The research indicates that women were indeed actors and negotiators during the period. Those women who advocated as primary the duties of women in the domestic and social arenas were by no means setting narrow limitations on female participation in both society and discourse. The religious impulses and eschatological frameworks derived by women (varied as they were) served to order and renegotiate reality and meaning, whilst they produced female roles and influence of great significance. Women were not passive victims of male oppression. Religion can thus be perceived as a positive force which women were able to approach both for its own sake, and for their own particular ends.

English Abstract below.

German abstract: Erna und Kurt Kretschmann waren Pioniere des DDR Naturschutzes. Ihre Lebensphilosophie war verankert in der Reformbewegung des 19. Jahrhunderts und ihre Ideale und Prinzipien konstituierten eine Gegenwelt die in merklicher Opposition zur regierenden Staatspartei, SED, stand. Dieser Artikel analysiert die Entwicklung und Verankerung dieser Gegenwelt, diskutiert ihre Auswirkungen auf die SED Diktatur und untersucht wie und in welchem Umfang die DDR Umweltbewegung der 1980er Jahre die Kretschmann’schen Prinzipien übernahm. Mit dem theoretischen Zugriff der „Gegenwelt“ wird ein neues Analysewerkzeug bereitgestellt, um deviantes Verhalten in der DDR zu erklären.

English abstract: Erna and Kurt Kretschmann were the pioneers of environmental conservation in the GDR. Their philosophy, rooted in nineteenth-century reformist movements, and their ideals and principles constituted a counterworld in opposition to the ideology promoted by the state’s ruling party, the SED. This article analyzes the development and consolidation of this counterworld, discusses its effects on the SED dictatorship and examines howand towhat extent the environmental movement of the 1980s adopted the Kretschmanns’ principles in the GDR. This account of an aspect of non-compliant behavior in the GDR provides us with a new analytical tool to approach this field of GDR research.