An Index of Social & Historical Topics from the Modernist Era and

Social and Historical Topics

 

  • Automobile
    • Related keyterms: assembly-line (or production-line) manufacturing, covered body, electric ignition, four-stroke engine, horseless carriage, internal combustion (vs. steam-powered) engine
    • Related figures: Karl Benz (1844-1929), Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900), Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913?), Henry Ford (1863-1947), Charles Kettering (1876-1958), Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir (1822-1900), Ransom Olds (1864-1950)
  • Aviation
    • Related keyterms: aerobatic stunt, aeroplane, barnstormer, biplane, combat, dirigible (airship, blimp, Zeppelin), fighter pilot, fighter plane, flying ace, flying machine, glider, reconnaissance mission, synchronized machine gun, transatlantic crossing
    • Related figures: Amelia Earhart (1897-1937?), Manfred von Richthofen a.k.a. Red Baron (1892-1918), Orville (1871-1948) and Wilbur (1867-1912) Wright, Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838-1917)
  • Birth Control (also see: Eugenics, New Woman, Sexology)
    • Related keyterms: American Birth Control League, Comstock laws, contraception, eugenics, family planning (clinic), population control, sex education, social hygiene movement, sterilization, venereal disease
    • Related figures: Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), Marie Stopes (1880-1958)
  • Consumerism
    • Related keyterms: advertising (agency, budget, campaign), brands (brand loyalty, brand names, branded products), commodity, conspicuous consumption, consumer society, consumption (vs. production), convenience (ready-to-use) products, creating needs, credit, department stores, economy of abundance (vs. economy of scarcity), environment of desire, fixed prices, gold standard, jingles, leisure activities, low prices, mail order houses (catalogues), mass consumption, mass marketing (wholesaling), money-back guarantee, national magazines, planned obsolescence, principle of seduction (vs. principle of supply), production for exchange (vs. production for use), quantity buying, retail chains (revolution), return policy, slogans, theory of marginal utility, trademarks, uniform packaging, variety stores
    • Related figures: Stuart Chase (1888-1985), William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882), Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), Simon Patten (1852-1922), Richard Sears (1863-1914), J. Walter Thompson (1847-1928), Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913)
  • Degeneration (related topic: Primitivism)
    • Related keyterms: anthropological criminology, atavism, Boer War, decadence, decline plot, declining birth rate, devolution, downward spiral, health, heredity, hysteria, national decline, national health, naturalism, neurasthenia, parasitism, “people of the abyss,” pessimism, physiognomy, race suicide
    • Related figures: Comte de Buffon (Georges-Louis Leclerc: 1707-1788), Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), Bénédict Morel (1809-1873), Max Nordeau (1849-1923)
  • Efficiency (related topics: Eugenics, Modernization, Social Darwinism)
    • Related keyterms: “aristocracy of talent” (vs. landed or hereditary elites), competitiveness, cult of efficiency, cult of the businessman, discipline, efficiency engineer, expertise, hierarchy, national efficiency, organization, professionalism, scientific management (vs. national decline), reform (military, social), specialization, standardization, technocrats (vs. a “nation of amateurs”), trained intelligence, waste management
    • Related figures: Lloyd George (1863-1945), Earl of Rosebery (Archibald Philip Primrose: 1847-1929), Arnold White (1848-1925)
  • Egoism
    • Related keyterms: anarchy, anti-authoritarianism, egotism, individual conscience, individualism (vs. collective authority, social institutions), individualist anarchism, nihilism, self-interest
    • Related figures: Emma Goldman (1869-1940), Dora Marsden (1882-1960), Max Stirner (1806-1856), Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939)
  • Eugenics (related topics: Efficiency, Social Darwinism)
    • Related keyterms: artificial selection, biometrics, birth control, the Boy Scouts, degeneration, Eugenics Education Society, euthanasia, good breeding, health, negative eugenics, positive eugenics, race, race suicide, selective breeding, social class, social reform, state intervention, sterilization, the unfit
    • Related figures: Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), Francis Galton (1822-1911), Sarah Grand, William McDougal (1871-1938), Karl Pearson (1857-1936), Marie Stopes (1880-1958)
  • Evolution (related topic: Social Darwinism)
    • Related keyterms: adaptation, anti-teleology, chance, change, competition, development, diversity, genetics, germ plasma, Lamarkism (use inheritance), mutation, natural selection, progress, sexual selection, survival of the fittest, variation
    • Related figures: Grant Allen (1948-1899), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), August Weismann (1834-1914)
  • Fabianism (or Fabian Society)
    • Related keyterms: collectivism, co-operation (co-operative economics), eugenics, Fabian Society pamphlets, gradualism (v. revolutionary change), health care, imperialism, Labour Party, liberal internationalism, minimum wage, municipal socialism, progressivism, social reform, slum clearance, welfare state
    • Related figures: Annie Besant (1847-1933), Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Edward Pease (1857-1955), George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Beatrice Webb (1858-1943), Sidney Webb (1859-1947), Leonard Woolf (1880-1969)
  • Fashion (post-war)
    • Related keyterms: attached collars, boyish look, casual style, chemise gown, cloche hats, comfort, cult of simplicity, democratization of fashion, department stores, fashion industry, flappers, functionality, jazz age, loose or relaxed designs, make-up, mass production, movie stars, Oxford trousers, rising hem-lines, ready-to-wear (vs. bespoke or tailored) clothing, simpler designs, synthetic fabrics (e.g., rayon), unwaisted, tubular dresses
    • Related figures: Louise Brooks (1906-1985), Gabriel “Coco” Chanel (1883-1971), Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973)
  • Freud & Psychoanalysis
    • Related keyterms: anal retentiveness, anxiety, condensation, consciousness, counter-transference, depth psychology, desire, displacement, dream content, dream work, drives (sex, death), ego (self), free association, hysteria, id, infantile sexuality, irrationality, latency period, libido, neurosis, the Oedipus Complex, parapraxis (Freudian slip), penis envy, physical symptoms, projection, repression, return of the repressed, self-censorship, sublimation, super ego, talking cure, transference, trauma, unconscious
    • Related figures: Josef Breuer (1842-1925), David Eder (1865-1936), Sándor Ferenczi (1873-1933), Anna Freud (1895-1982), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Ernest Jones (1879-1958), Melanie Klein (1882-1960), Joan Riviere (1883-1962), Alix Strachey (1892-1973), James Strachey (1887-1967)
  • Imperialism
    • Related keyterms: buffer states, colonization, “derelict empire,” empire (building), frontier, greater Britain, Imperial Federation League, imperial mission, protectorates, race (British race, imperial race), spheres of influence, tariff reform, Unionist party, white man’s burden, world’s fair
    • Related figures: Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), Earl of Rosebery (Archibald Philip Primrose: 1847-1929), Clifford Sharp
  • Labor
    • Related keyterms: class solidarity, collective bargaining, guild socialism, labor party, trade unionism, welfare state
  • Mass Media
    • Related keyterms: advertising, audience manipulation, best sellers, broadcasting, cinema, mass-circulation magazines (and newspapers), moving-picture show, radio, target demographic
  • Modernization (related topic: Efficiency)
    • Related keyterms: acceleration, bureaucratization, dynamo, enforced cooperation, Fordism, Gesellschaft (society) vs. Gemeinschaft (community), industrialization, the machine, massification, modernity, productivity, progressive era, scientific management, secularization, specialization, speed, standardization, Taylorism, urbanization (vs. agrarianism)
    • Related figures:  Henry Adams (1838-1918), Henry Ford (1863-1947), Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), Ferdinand Tönnes (1855-1936)
  • New Woman  (related topics: Birth Control, Women’s Suffrage)
    • Related keyterms: birth control, female emancipation (vs. traditional gender roles), feminism, flapper, Gibson girl, modern woman, “women adrift,” “working girls,” youth culture
    • Related figures: Grant Allen (1948-1899), George Egerton (aka Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright: 1859-1945), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964), Emma Goldman (1869-1940), Sarah Grand (1854-1943), Violet Hunt (1862-1942), Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
  • Political Movements
    • Related keyterms: anarchism, bolshevism, bourgeoisie, collectivism, communism, democracy, fascism, laissez-faire, liberalism, Marxism, nationalism, proletariat, revolution, socialism guilds, totalitarianism
    • Related key events: Russian Revolution
    • Related figures: Vladimir Lenin
  • Pragmatism
    • Related keyterms: action, conceptual relativity, empiricism, experience, instrumentalism, naturalism, practice (vs. theory), psychologism, usage
    • Related figures: John Dewey  (1859-1952), William James (1842-1910), George Herbert Meade (1863-1931), Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914), F. C. S. Schiller (1864-1937)
  • Primitivism (related topic: Degeneration)
    • Related keyterms: Africa (African masks), barbarism, classical antiquity, collective, crisis of reason, energy, folk, folk art, instinct, jazz, medievalism, noble savage, Other (vs. Same), prelogical, prehistorical, regression, rhythm, savage, simplicity (vs. complexity), syncopation, tribal (vs. individual), unity (vs. differentiation), vitality (vs. exhaustion, sterility)
    • Related figures: Fauves (Matisse),
    • Locations: the Trocadéro museum in Paris, the Dresden Ethnographical Museum, Oceania, South Pacific, Polynesia (Tahiti)
  • Race & Racism (see also: Degeneration, Eugenics, Primitivism)
    • Related keywords: color
    • Related figures: Franz Boas, W. E. B. Du Bois, Lothrop Stoddard, Booker T. Washington
  • Relativity & Relativism
    • Related keyterms: anthropological (or cultural, methodological) relativism (vs. ethnocentrism), ethnology, ethnography, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (observer effect), linguistic relativism (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), moral relativism, (vs.) Newtonian universe, perspectivism, philosophical relativism, psychologism, relationism, spacetime,theory of relativity (special: 1905; general: 1916)

    • Related figures: Franz Boas (1858-1942), Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

  • Saussure
    • Related keyterms: Course in General Linguistics (1916), differences (vs. positive terms), parole vs. langue, signified vs. signifier, structuralism, structural linguistics, synchronic (vs. diachronic) linguistics
    • Related figures: Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949), Franz Boas (1858-1942), Edward Sapir (1884-1939), Ferdinand Saussure (1858-1913)
  • Sexology (related topic: Birth Control)
    • Related keyterms: aberration (deviation, perversion), androgyny, autoeroticism, bisexuality, erotomania (nymphomania, promiscuity), eugenics, masochism, miscegenation, narcissism, prostitution, sadism, sexual inversion (homosexuality), sexual liberation, sexual pathology, taboo, transvestism
    • Related figures: Iwan Bloch (1872-1922), Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Otto Gross (1877-1920), Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), Max Marcuse (1877-1963), Albert Moll (1862-1939)
  • Skyscraper
    • Related keyterms: 1916 zoning law (New York City), airmindedness, Art Deco, competition, density, icon, landmark, monument, Neo-gothic, Otis elevator, skyline, spirituality, steel frame (vs. load-bearing walls), tiered structure, urban planning, vertical extension (extrusion), “world’s tallest building”
    • Related figures: Daniel Burnham (1846-1912), Hugh Ferris (1889-1962), Cass Gilbert (1859-1934), Raymond Hood, Louis Sullivan
  • Social Darwinism (related topics: Efficiency, Evolution)
    • Related keyterms: adaptability, biological sociology, competition (business competition, the law of competition, unrestrained competition), evolutionary individualism, free enterprise (vs. state intervention), gilded age, gradual evolutionary progress (vs. rapid social reform), laissez-faire, limited government, natural rights, natural selection, political conservatism, secularism, self-sufficiency (vs. state welfare), social determinism,  struggle for existence, survival of the fittest
    • Related figures: Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), Benjamin Kidd (1858-1916), Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), Karl Pearson (1857-1936), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), Lester Ward (1841-1913)
  • Spiritualism (or Mysticism, the Occult)
    • Related keyterms: the absolute, the afterlife, apparitions, automatic writing, awakening, comparative religion, eastern philosophy, esotericism, the Fourth Way (The Work), Gurdjieff movements, guru, higher consciousness (heightened spiritual awareness), higher self, illumination, inner attention, insight, karma, mesmerism, the New Age, the occult, purification (purgation), Society for Psychical Research (SPR), the occult, paranormal phenomena, radical unity, reincarnation, séance, self-awareness, self-development, spirit mediums, spiritual evolution, telepathy, Theosophical Society, theosophy, trances, transcendence, unselfing, the way (path)
    • Related figures: Annie Besant (1847-1933), Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949), Harry Houdini (aka Ehrich Weiss: 1874-1926), Frederic Meyers (1843-1901), A. R. Orage (1873-1934), P. D. Ouspensky (1878-1947), Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
  • Women’s Suffrage (related topic: New Woman)
    • Related keyterms: the Cat and Mouse Act, feminism, hunger strike, militant activism, Representation of the People Act (February 1918), the right to vote, suffragist, suffragette, WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union), window smashing, the Women’s Party
    • Related figures: G. Colmore (aka Gertrude Renton Dunn: 1855-1926), Millicent Fawcett (1848-1929), Christabel (1880-1958) Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960), Elizabeth Robins (1862-1952)
  • World War I (or The Great War)
    • Related keyterms: Allies (vs. Central Powers), Armistice (Nov. 11, 1918), barbed wire, box respirator, the British (Tommy), camouflage, censorship, chlorine gas, front line, the Germans (Jerry, Fritz, Hun), the Great War, grenades, Kitchener’s Army, lice, Lord Derby’s scheme (conscription), machine guns, mortars, mud, mustard gas, no-man’s land, periscopes, government propaganda, RAF (Royal Air Force), rats, rum, shelling, shell-shock, stalemate, submarines, tanks, thigh-boots, total war, trench warfare, war of attrition, war to end all wars, waste (waste land), Western Front
    • Related figures: Haid, the Kaiser, Lord Kitchener, Lord Northcliffe, Herbert Plumer
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