Browsing by Subject "Social sciences"

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    Aristocrats and Professionals: Country-House Science in Late-Victorian Britain
    (2004-12) Opitz, Donald Luke
    The historiography of late-Victorian and Edwardian science has overwhelmingly emphasized the importance of new institutional arrangements and the professional growth of the scientific disciplines, largely owing to the initiatives of the British middle-class and the increasing support of research by the British government. While historians consistently acknowledged the agency of gentlemen of science and domestic sites for research in the background to these developments, few have analyzed the tenacity and influence of the individuals, their activities, and the domestic social contexts in which they worked beyond the mid-nineteenth century. This dissertation considers the status of country-house science and "professionalization" from roughly 1850 to 1920. I argue that, enabled by a familial social infrastructure, an extensive aristocratic network--consisting of the Balfour, Campbell, Cavendish, Darwin, Gascoyne-Cecil, Parsons, and Strutt families--contributed to the intellectual and professional advancement of scientific fields in ways that applied, generally, politically-Conservative, yet liberally intellectual, theistic beliefs. Their perspectives, which contrasted with agnosticism, scientific naturalism, and middle-class professionalism, emphasized the respectability of the amateur study of nature at home as a means for personal atonement and the promotion of social good--an outlook consistent with the evangelical, aristocratic values in which their society came of age. Country-house science thus provided a model for the study of science at home as well as within purpose-built sites; it was a distinct vision and an enterprise that, amid social hierarchies governed by class and gender, encouraged broad participation within a dynamic intellectual milieu.
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    Toward “free trade” from Kant's cosmopolitan ideal
    (2012-09) Deng, Yi
    My dissertation aims to present a coherent Kantian justice in terms of Kant's publicity principle. The theoretical construction arises from inquiries about the case of China's soybean market shift after its accession to the WTO, and holds the practical aims of diagnosing injustices and prescribing individuals', states' and global institutions' responsibilities in rectifying injustices. Specifically, I advocate for publicity as negotiable consent, which could entail active citizenship and moral politicians. By appealing to publicity as negotiable consent, I argue that the Chinese soybean case involves injustice, and provide corresponding expansions of Kant's cosmopolitan right, republicanism, and a federalism of free states as conditions for justice. The puzzling relationship between the WTO and federalism of free states suggests the need to address connections between trade liberalization and cosmopolitan ideal. By appealing to the I-Ching, I present the dynamic balance of Yin and Yang as a model for the interaction between capital and labor in the context of global justice. The interdependent yin-yang indicates that the discrepancy between theoretical predictions from the WTO and empirical evidence in the Chinese soybean case has resulted from the WTO's neglect of mobility differentiations among the factors of production. At the end of my dissertation, an appropriate capital-labor relation prescribed by yin-yang leads to practical suggestions for the WTO. Emphasizing a mixture of bottom-up and top-down restrictions, both "publicity as negotiable consent" and yin-yang energize an account of Kantian justice as a dynamic theory which is continually responding to the uncertain, complicated, but practical issues.