#social-reform — Public Fediverse posts

A quotation from Victor Hugo

Whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.
 
[Italiens ou français, la misère nous regarde tous. Depuis que l’histoire écrit et que la philosophie médite, la misère est le vêtement du genre humain; le moment serait enfin venu d’arracher cette guenille, et de remplacer, sur les membres nus de l’Homme-Peuple, la loque sinistre du passé par la grande robe pourpre de l’aurore.]

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Letter (1862-10-18) to M. Daelli [tr. Wraxall (1862)]

More about this quote: wist.info/hugo-victor/83222/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #victorhugo #lesmiserables #future #humancondition #humanity #misery #progress #reform #socialimprovement #socialreform #socialwelfare #woes

From @joannechocolat

Savitribai Phule (1831 – 1897) was an Indian educator, social reformer, and #poet, regarded as the first female #teacher of modern India.

She played a pivotal role in advancing women's rights and education, and her legacy continues to influence social reform movements across #India.

. .. ...

Personal note: again, Joanne only has limited characters with which to write a bio; I encourage you to do even a single rudimentary search on #Savitribai_Phule - what she did for women, child brides, widows, and lower castes was extraordinary.

#CelebratingWomen #Education #WomensRights #Poetry #SocialReform

Birth Anniversary of Savitribai Phule – 3 January

India’s first woman teacher and a pioneer of women’s education.
In 1848, Savitribai Phule and Jyotiba Phule started India’s first girls’ school at Bhide Wada, Pune, challenging caste and gender barriers. She worked for widow welfare, opposed child marriage, and used education as a tool of social reform. She died in 1897 while caring for a plague patient.

Contact 07994058393.

#EnliteIAS #SavitribaiPhule #WomenInHistory #SocialReform #UPSC2026

Latest News: Assam Cabinet: Assam Cabinet approves bill banning polygamy
https://vaartha.com/national/assam-cabinet-approves-bill-to-ban-polygamy/579408/
#Assam #AssamCabinet #PolygamyBan #AssamProhibitionOfPolygamyBill2025 #WomenRights #SocialJustice #HimantaBiswaSarma #SevenYearsImprisonment #VictimCompensation #BreakingNews #AssamAssembly #SocialReform #StopPolygamy #LegalReform

Picked out a copy of "The Red Deal" from a shelf at the local #library with selections for Native American Heritage Month. Here are some good passages from the introduction, looking forward to cruising through the rest of the book.

My wife teaches and she doesn't get paid enough for what she does. Transfer of military spending to caretakers hits home. I hope one day we can bring about the world this book is painting.

#NativeAmericanHeritage #Divest #Society #Activism #SocialReform

The Victorian ‘Drink Maps’ Wielded by Anti-Booze Crusaders. Author Kris Butler reveals how Temperance advocates mapped bars to discourage their spread. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-drink-maps #drinkhistory #Temperance #socialreform #cartography

The Victorian ‘Drink Maps’ Wielded by Anti-Booze Crusaders. Author Kris Butler reveals how Temperance advocates mapped bars to discourage their spread. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-drink-maps #drinkhistory #Temperance #socialreform #cartography

Uzbekistan is aiming to reduce its poverty rate from 11% to 7% by 2027 through comprehensive economic and social reforms. The government is focusing on boosting private sector growth, improving social protection, and enhancing access to education and healthcare. Significant funds will be allocated to regions with high poverty levels to support families directly.

#Uzbekistan #PovertyReduction #EconomicDevelopment #SocialReform #GoodNews

@goodnews

https://timesca.com/uzbekistan-targets-further-reduction-in-poverty-rate/

The racialized efforts of housing reformers missed the big picture, says Carolyn Swope in a new Social Science History article. Poverty & marginalization not housing damaged the health of low income Black residents in early 20th century Washington DC. Open access.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.19
@economics @demography @socialscience @sociology @politicalscience @geography @anthropology @econhist @archaeodons #history #histodons #housing #socialreform #washingtondc

How America’s Philosopher of Democracy Influenced India’s Leading Caste Reformer

Bhimrao Ambedkar’s vision of a more equal society combined John Dewey’s pragmatist ideas with a novel form of Buddhism, writes Scott R Stroud.

#BRAmbedjar #JohnDewey #ambedkar #pragmatism #philosophy #SocialJustice #caste #SocialReform #buddhism #india

https://newlinesmag.com/essays/how-americas-philosopher-of-democracy-influenced-indias-leading-caste-reformer/

An experiment in local self-improvement: the thread about Thomas Chalmers and the West Port Territorial Free Church

This site likes to indulge in occasional posts to answer the question of “why did the Victorians build so many churches and why should we care?” Well, this is another such post! The Chalmers Territorial Free Church and its associated school was established in 1844 in the early days of the Free Kirk as a Territorial church; that is, a church with its own defined territory to serve, but not one that had a legally defined parish. “Rapid urbanisation left many city communities entirely un-churched. Limitations on how churches and parishes were authorised hampered “planting” churches… So Territorial churches were established to meet the need.” (my thanks to Neil Macleod for keeping me right on this subject).

Chalmers was Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847); minister, theologian, moral philosopher, political economist and reformer. Born in the Fife village of Anstruther, he found himself at different times as moderator of both the Kirk (the Church of Scotland) and Free Kirk. Ministering in Glasgow after 1815, he was acutely aware of the lack of churches in urban, industrial communities and therefore the social security services they provided to people, particularly the urban poor. He made a survey of his parish (the Tron) and found of 10,000 people, there were fewer than 100 boys in Sabbath school. To remedy this he sought to establish such schools but was not content to just wait for people to come to his schools, he saw the task as akin mission work and “they must go forth to the population inhabiting [the] territory“. And so he recruited 4 Sabbath school teachers but instead of spreading them amongst the entire parish, he assigned each a neighbourhood containing 30 families and instructed them to concentrate on trying to encourage as much of their “territory” into Sunday education as possible. The scheme was a success and drew recruits to it; he soon had 44 teachers.

Chalmers believed that communities should be assisted to help themselves at a local scale; financially, socially and morally; rather than just exist on charitable or state support (or with neither!). And he of course believed that the church could – no, should – be at the centre of such a self-improving community; this was his concept of Territorial ministry. Back in Edinburgh and as head of the Free Kirk (which went its own way in The Disruption of 1843), the West Port district was selected by him as an ideal community to test his ideas, and the Territorial Church was established in 1844.

He called this scheme an Experimentum Crucis; an experiment of the Cross. This would go on to serve a territory that encompassed the districts of the West Port, Grassmarket, part of the Lawnmarket and upper Cowgate; however he was clear that to be a success the scheme would have to start small, and local, and grow from there.

Chalmers’ first school in the Territory (which doubled as a preaching hall on Sundays) was established in November 1844 in a disused tannery in the West Port, until more permanent premises were constructed. It was “rather repulsive in character” entered “by a close, which is so low that people are obliged to stoop to make their way through it“. This school, in Chalmers’ words, should show a preference to “one and all of the families of [the] district, where the great object is that the school should be filled from among the families of the district“. This may seem a sensible concept to those of us brought up in a system of school catchments, but these did not exist at the time. His idea was that a community school, serving the community, would increase the education of the community as a whole; not just distribute it thinly across the city to where its scholars were drawn from. The school charged a token 2d per week per child, to “[teach] people that education was worthy of its price“. It began with fewer than 60 scholars but soon had 280. Entrance was strictly for families of the Territory.

The first minister for the Territory was the Rev. William Tasker. Tasker’s task would not be easy, and he initially reported:

We remember of having the seventh successive door slapped in our face ere we had time to tell our message, and of then going to another tenement and entering house by house only to find men and women rolling on the floor of a desolate dwelling in indiscriminate drunkenness; whilst mingling with their curses and their blasphemies, the heart-piercing looks and cries of their infant children assailed us with irresistible appeals for bread to allay the cutting pangs of hunger.

Rev. William Tasker, quoted from New College Library Blog.

The permanent church (that in the illustration at the top of this post) was established in 1845 thanks to a bequest of £300 from Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne. It had seats for 600 worshippers, included a purpose-built school room and also had a washing house, drying green and playground for the children, “so that they have a great step in advance towards the completion of their parochial economy“.

The Experiment would go on to include the schools and church, a savings bank and a library. While the local population paid for these services, the church provided an enthusiastic corps of visitors, teachers and improvers to attend to the needs of the Territory. It should be noted that the latter “do-gooders” were not always welcomed with open arms.

Thomas Chalmers died in 1847, 176 years ago tomorrow (at the time of writing). He went to bed after working on a report for the General Assembly of the Free Kirk, and never woke up. His photograph was taken by Hill and Adamson in 1845 as part of their grand photography project for Painting the Disruption.

By the 1880s the Territorial congregation had outgrown its initial, humble premises. In 1884 a new, grander church, 50% larger than its predecessor, was built up the road on the corner of a widened Lady Lawson Street. The old church was retained as a mission hall. Its minister was the Rev. James Jolly, who had served the community here since 1872.

This 1914 photo by the Edinburgh Photographic Society shows the new church of 1884, by which time it was in the United Free Church following the merger of (most of) the Free Kirk and the United Presbyterian (U.P.) Church.

In 1929 the majority of the United Free Church merged into the Church of Scotland and so too did the Territorial. The old church buildings was by now surplus to requirements and was sold in 1930. It became a store and commercial premises. The below photo is also an Edinburgh Photographic Society one from 1914, the close-up of the painted sign in the window of the neighbouring restaurant is fascinating. FISH & TRIPE. SUPPERS. HOT PIES.

A new church hall was built, adjoining the 1884 church, with the proceeds of the sale of the first church, The Chalmers Hall, seen in this 1972 photo by S. G. Jackman.

The effects of post-war decline in church attendance and the depopulation of the Grassmarket and West Port (which had been taking place since 1920s) meant that there were just too many churches in this part of town – particularly now that nearly all of them were together in the Church of Scotland. And so in 1958 the Territorial merged with Lauriston Church just 150m away. From 1959, both church premises were used on alternate Sundays. In 1965 the Territorial building was sold to the Art School and Lauriston became the sole home. This combined Lauriston-Chalmers congregation would merge with, and moved to, Barclay Church at Bruntsfield in 1980, leaving not one, not two, but three vacant churches in the district.

Neither of these churches fared well. The Lauriston was sold to the YWCA in 1980 and on to the Arab Social League in 1981, who were never able to fund any work to convert it into a cultural centre and it slowly fell into disrepair. After almost 30 years of neglect, fire damage, vandalism and the toll of the elements and owner absenteeism, it was sold to new owners and slowly has come back to life as the Darul Arqam Masjid and Muslim Community Centre. The original Territorial church, later the mission hall, lay abandoned for decades. It was finally demolished in 1987 and a six-storey block of flats was built in its place in a mock-vernacular style. The Art School had the second Territorial pulled down and used it as little more than a car park. The site of the Territorial and adjacent derelict former Post Office tower block, eventually got the glass and synthetic stone office box redevelopment treatment so prevalent of noughties Edinburgh. The bombastically named Evolution House lay embarrassingly empty for a number of years however as occupants fell through, until the College of Art took it over and moved in. Which was an ironic end to things considering they had singularly failed to do anything meaningful with the plot or the predecessor building for the previous 40-odd years!

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Building a Kinder, Wiser Democracy

Today's committed activists spend hours working on their cause.

Today's volunteer political players spend hours trying to get their party elected.

By these standards, building a new democracy sounds impossible.

Yet this movement requires only 10 hours a month.

https://www.tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/blog_details.php?blog_cat_id=30&id=11

#tiereddemocraticgovernance
#socialreform

Iconic Designs — Ebenezer Howard [Garden Cities]
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https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/blueprintforliving/colin-bisset-iconic-designs-ebenezer-howard-garden-city/103057280 <-- shared media podcast
--
#GIS #spatial #mapping #urbanplanning #urban #demographics #EbenezerHoward #GardenCities #neighbourhoods #planning #plannedcities #history #design #urbanplanner #socialreform #industry #housing #qualityoflife #slums #gardens #vegetation #facilities #democraticsociety #workers #Letchworth #proximity #15minutecity #access #infrastructure

Carina Schmitt & Amanda Shriwise identify the implications of warfare for social reform in West Africa, compare/contrast French & British colonies after WWI, & argue for more research on social policy trajectories in the Global South. New & open access in Social Science History!
https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2023.14
@sociology @anthropology @politicalscience @economics @geography @socialscience #history #histodons #SocialPolicy #SocialReform #war #colonialism #WWI #France #Britain #GlobalSouth #WestAfrica

1930s Chinese female sociologists Zhou Shuzhao, Liu Qingyu & Xu Huifang theorized that social conditions rather than biology shaped the crimes of women, according to Stephanie Montgomery who reconstructs their intellectual contributions in a new Social Science History article https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2022.34
@sociology @politicalscience @anthropology @economics @econhist @geography @criminology #history #histodons #China #crime #sociology #women #ChicagoSchool #biology #criminalization #SocialReform

I would rather see politicians paying a no-strings, unconditional, GLBI wage to three homeless and/or drug addicted people to help them rebuild their lives than one more police officer to “enforce” the laws.

#GLBI #UBI #socialReform #LiftPeopleUp #bcpoli #canpoli

200 yrs ago

Whether there be a god
& whatever be its nature;
whether or not we have
an immortal soul
or whatever may be our state
after death,
I can have no fear
of having to suffer
for the study of nature
and the search for truth.
#AlfredRusselWallace 🎂
#evolutionary #biology #zoology #biogeography #socialreform