Religious nationalism can be understood in a number of ways, such as nationalism as a religion itself, a position articulated by Carlton Hayes in his text Nationalism: A Religion, or as the relationship of nationalism to a particular religious belief, dogma, ideology, or affiliation. This relationship can be broken down into two aspects: the politicisation of religion and the influence of religion on politics.
In the former aspect, a shared religion can be seen to contribute to a sense of national unity, a common bond among the citizens of the nation. Another political aspect of religion is the support of a national identity, similar to a shared ethnicity, language, or culture. The influence of religion on politics is more ideological, where current interpretations of religious ideas inspire political activism and action; for example, laws are passed to foster stricter religious adherence.
Ideologically-driven religious nationalism may not necessarily be targeted against other religions per se, but can be articulated in response to modernity and, in particular, secular nationalism. Indeed, religious nationalism may articulate itself as the binary of secular nationalism. Nation-states whose borders are relatively recent or that have experienced colonialism
may be more prone to religious nationalism, which may stand as a more
authentic or "traditional" rendering of identity. Thus, there was a
global rise of religious nationalism in the wake of the end of the Cold War, but also as postcolonial
politics (facing considerable developmental challenges, but also
dealing with the reality of colonially-defined, and therefore somewhat
artificial, borders) became challenged. In such a scenario, appealing to
a national sense of Islamic identity, as in the case of Pakistan (see two-nation theory), may serve to override regional tensions.
The danger is that when the state derives political legitimacy
from adherence to religious doctrines, this may leave an opening to
overtly religious elements, institutions, and leaders, making the
appeals to religion more 'authentic' by bringing more explicitly
theological interpretations to political life. Thus, appeals to religion
as a marker of ethnicity create an opening for more strident and
ideological interpretations of religious nationalism. Many ethnic and
cultural nationalisms include religious aspects, but as a marker of
group identity, rather than the intrinsic motivation for nationalist
claims.
Buddhist Nationalism is mainly prevalent and influential in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and is also present in Cambodia and Thailand.
Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism
is a political ideology that combines a focus on Sinhalese culture and
ethnicity with an emphasis on Theravada Buddhism, which is the majority
belief system of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.
The Patriotic Association of Myanmar and 969 movement
have the goal to "organise and protect" the Burman people and their
Buddhist religion, which is influenced by Buddhist nationalism in
Myanmar.
Christian nationalists focus more on internal politics, such as
passing laws that reflect their view of Christianity. In countries with a
state Church, Christian nationalists, in seeking to preserve the status of a Christian state, uphold an antidisestablishmentarian position. They actively promote religious (Christian) discourses in various
fields of social life, from politics and history to culture and science;
with respect to legislation for example, Christian nationalists
advocate Sunday blue laws. Distinctive radicalized forms of religious nationalism or clerical nationalism
(clero-nationalism or clerico-nationalism) were emerging on the
far-right of the political spectrum in various European countries
especially during the interwar period in the first half of the 20th
century.
In the Middle Ages, efforts were made to establish a Pan-Christian state by uniting the countries within Christendom to succeed the Roman Empire. Christian nationalism played a role in this era in which Christians
felt the impulse to recover lands in which Christianity flourished. After the rise of Islam, certain parts of North Africa, East Asia,
Southern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East lost Christian
control.
In Poland, nationalism was always characterized by loyalty to the Catholic Church. Groups like the National Revival of Poland use slogans like Wielka Polska Katolicka (Great Catholic Poland) and protest vigorously against legalization of gay marriage and abortion. Conservative religious groups connected with Radio Maryja are often accused of harboring nationalist and antisemitic attitudes.
Given the extensive linguistic, religious, and ethnic diversity of the Indian population, nationalism in India in general does not fall within the purview of a
solitary variant of nationalism. Indians may identify with their nation
on account of civic, cultural, or third-world nationalism. Commentators have noted that in modern India, a contemporary form of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, has been endorsed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Hindutva (meaning "Hinduness"), a term popularised by Hindu nationalist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, is the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. Hindutva is championed by right-wing Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), widely regarded as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's parent organisation, along with its affiliate organisations, notably the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
Unlike the secular form of nationalism which is espoused in most other countries, Pakistani nationalism is religious in nature, consisting of Islamic nationalism. Religion was the basis of the Pakistani nationalist narrative. (see Secularism in Pakistan) Pakistani nationalism is closely associated with Muslim heritage, the religion of Islam, and it is also associated with Pan-Islamism, as it is described in the Two-nation theory.
It also refers to the consciousness and the expression of religious and
ethnic influences that help mould the national consciousness. Pakistan has been called a "global center for political Islam".
Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, most Religious Zionists were observant Jews who supported Zionist efforts to rebuild a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. After the Six-Day War, and the capture of the West Bank,
right-wing supporters of the Religious Zionist movement integrated
themselves into Israeli nationalism and they eventually founded a new
movement which evolved into Neo-Zionism, the ideology of Neo-Zionism revolves around three pillars: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel, and the Torah of Israel.
Romanticist interest in non-classical antiquity coincided with the rise of Romantic nationalism and
the rise of the nation state in the context of the 1848 revolutions,
leading to the creation of national epics and national myths for the
various newly formed states. Pagan or folkloric topics were also common
in the musical nationalism of the period.
The "State Shinto" term was used to categorize, and promote, Imperial Japanese practices that relied on Shinto to support Japan's nationalistic ideology. By refusing to ban Shinto practices outright, Japan's post-war constitution was thus able to preserve full freedom of religion.
In the Korean peninsula, the Donghak movement and its leader, Choe Je-u, were inspired by Korean Catholic missionaries. However, they condemned the 'Western learning' preached by missionaries and contrasted it with the indigenous 'Eastern learning'. They started a rebellion in 1894 in Jeolla province in southwestern Korea. The Donghak movement served as a template for the later Daejonggyo and Jeungsan-gyo movements, as well as for other religious nationalist movements. The Buddhist-influenced Daejonggyo movement financed guerillas in Manchuria during Japanese colonial rule of both Korea and Manchuria. The North Korean state ideology, Juche, is sometimes classified as a religion in the United States Department of State's human rights reports.
In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, which is typically a part of the operating system. In many cases, a thread is a component of a process.
The multiple threads of a given process may be executed concurrently (via multithreading capabilities), sharing resources such as memory,
while different processes do not share these resources. In particular,
the threads of a process share its executable code and the values of its
dynamically allocated variables and non-thread-localglobal variables at any given time.
The implementation of threads and processes differs between operating systems.
History
Threads made an early appearance under the name of "tasks" in IBM's
batch processing operating system, OS/360, in 1967. It provided users
with three available configurations of the OS/360 control system, of which multiprogramming with a variable number of tasks (MVT) was one. Saltzer (1966) credits Victor A. Vyssotsky with the term "thread".
The use of threads in software applications became more common in
the early 2000s as CPUs began to utilize multiple cores. Applications
wishing to take advantage of multiple cores for performance advantages
were required to employ concurrency to utilize the multiple cores.
Related concepts
Scheduling can be done at the kernel level or user level, and multitasking can be done preemptively or cooperatively. This yields a variety of related concepts.
At the kernel level, a process contains one or more kernel threads,
which share the process's resources, such as memory and file handles – a
process is a unit of resources, while a thread is a unit of scheduling
and execution. Kernel scheduling is typically uniformly done
preemptively or, less commonly, cooperatively. At the user level a
process such as a runtime system can itself schedule multiple threads of execution. If these do not share data, as in Erlang, they are usually analogously called processes, while if they share data they are usually called (user) threads, particularly if preemptively scheduled. Cooperatively scheduled user threads are known as fibers;
different processes may schedule user threads differently. User threads
may be executed by kernel threads in various ways (one-to-one,
many-to-one, many-to-many). The term light-weight process variously refers to user threads or to kernel mechanisms for scheduling user threads onto kernel threads.
A process is a heavyweight unit of kernel scheduling, as
creating, destroying, and switching processes is relatively expensive.
Processes own resources allocated by the operating system. Resources include memory (for both code and data), file handles, sockets, device handles, windows, and a process control block. Processes are isolated by process isolation,
and do not share address spaces or file resources except through
explicit methods such as inheriting file handles or shared memory
segments, or mapping the same file in a shared way – see Interprocess communication.
Creating or destroying a process is relatively expensive, as resources
must be acquired or released. Processes are typically preemptively
multitasked, and process switching is relatively expensive, beyond basic
cost of context switching,
due to issues such as cache flushing (in particular, process switching
changes virtual memory addressing, causing invalidation and thus
flushing of an untagged translation lookaside buffer (TLB), notably on x86).
Kernel threads
A kernel thread is a lightweight unit of kernel scheduling. At
least one kernel thread exists within each process. If multiple kernel
threads exist within a process, then they share the same memory and file
resources. Kernel threads are preemptively multitasked if the operating
system's process scheduler is preemptive. Kernel threads do not own resources except for a stack, a copy of the registers including the program counter, and thread-local storage
(if any), and are thus relatively cheap to create and destroy. Thread
switching is also relatively cheap: it requires a context switch (saving
and restoring registers and stack pointer), but does not change virtual
memory and is thus cache-friendly (leaving TLB valid). The kernel can
assign one or more software threads to each core in a CPU (it being able
to assign itself multiple software threads depending on its support for
multithreading), and can swap out threads that get blocked. However,
kernel threads take much longer than user threads to be swapped.
User threads
Threads are sometimes implemented in userspace libraries, thus called user threads.
The kernel is unaware of them, so they are managed and scheduled in
userspace. Some implementations base their user threads on top of
several kernel threads, to benefit from multi-processor machines (M:N model). User threads as implemented by virtual machines are also called green threads.
As user thread implementations are typically entirely in
userspace, context switching between user threads within the same
process is extremely efficient because it does not require any
interaction with the kernel at all: a context switch can be performed by
locally saving the CPU registers used by the currently executing user
thread or fiber and then loading the registers required by the user
thread or fiber to be executed. Since scheduling occurs in userspace,
the scheduling policy can be more easily tailored to the requirements of
the program's workload.
However, the use of blocking system calls in user threads (as
opposed to kernel threads) can be problematic. If a user thread or a
fiber performs a system call that blocks, the other user threads and
fibers in the process are unable to run until the system call returns. A
typical example of this problem is when performing I/O: most programs
are written to perform I/O synchronously. When an I/O operation is
initiated, a system call is made, and does not return until the I/O
operation has been completed. In the intervening period, the entire
process is "blocked" by the kernel and cannot run, which starves other
user threads and fibers in the same process from executing.
A common solution to this problem (used, in particular, by many green threads implementations) is providing an I/O API
that implements an interface that blocks the calling thread, rather
than the entire process, by using non-blocking I/O internally, and
scheduling another user thread or fiber while the I/O operation is in
progress. Similar solutions can be provided for other blocking system
calls. Alternatively, the program can be written to avoid the use of
synchronous I/O or other blocking system calls (in particular, using
non-blocking I/O, including lambda continuations and/or async/await primitives).
Fibers are an even lighter unit of scheduling which are cooperatively scheduled: a running fiber must explicitly yield to allow another fiber to run, which makes their implementation much easier than kernel or user threads.
A fiber can be scheduled to run in any thread in the same process. This
permits applications to gain performance improvements by managing
scheduling themselves, instead of relying on the kernel scheduler (which
may not be tuned for the application). Some research implementations of
the OpenMP parallel programming model implement their tasks through fibers. Closely related to fibers are coroutines, with the distinction being that coroutines are a language-level construct, while fibers are a system-level construct.
Threads vs processes
Threads differ from traditional multitasking operating-system processes in several ways:
processes are typically independent, while threads exist as subsets of a process
processes carry considerably more state information than threads, whereas multiple threads within a process share process state as well as memory and other resources
processes have separate address spaces, whereas threads share their address space
context switching between threads in the same process typically occurs faster than context switching between processes
Systems such as Windows NT and OS/2 are said to have cheap threads and expensive processes; in other operating systems there is not so great a difference except in the cost of an address-space switch, which on some architectures (notably x86) results in a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) flush.
Advantages and disadvantages of threads vs processes include:
Lower resource consumption of threads: using threads, an application can operate using fewer resources than it would need when using multiple processes.
Simplified sharing and communication of threads: unlike processes, which require a message passing or shared memory mechanism to perform inter-process communication (IPC), threads can communicate through data, code and files they already share.
Thread crashes a process: due to threads sharing the same
address space, an illegal operation performed by a thread can crash the
entire process; therefore, one misbehaving thread can disrupt the
processing of all the other threads in the application.
Until the early 2000s, most desktop computers had only one single-core CPU, with no support for hardware threads,
although threads were still used on such computers because switching
between threads was generally still quicker than full-process context switches. In 2002, Intel added support for simultaneous multithreading to the Pentium 4 processor, under the name hyper-threading; in 2005, they introduced the dual-core Pentium D processor and AMD introduced the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processor.
Systems with a single processor generally implement multithreading by time slicing: the central processing unit (CPU) switches between different software threads. This context switching
usually occurs frequently enough that users perceive the threads or
tasks as running in parallel (for popular server/desktop operating
systems, maximum time slice of a thread, when other threads are waiting,
is often limited to 100–200ms). On a multiprocessor or multi-core system, multiple threads can execute in parallel, with every processor or core executing a separate thread simultaneously; on a processor or core with hardware threads, separate software threads can also be executed concurrently by separate hardware threads.
Threading models
1:1 (kernel-level threading)
Threads created by the user in a 1:1 correspondence with schedulable entities in the kernel are the simplest possible threading implementation. OS/2 and Win32 used this approach from the start, while on Linux the GNU C Library implements this approach (via the NPTL or older LinuxThreads). This approach is also used by Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, and iOS.
M:1 (user-level threading)
An M:1 model implies that all application-level threads map to one kernel-level scheduled entity; the kernel has no knowledge of the application threads. With this
approach, context switching can be done very quickly and, in addition,
it can be implemented even on simple kernels which do not support
threading. One of the major drawbacks, however, is that it cannot
benefit from the hardware acceleration on multithreaded processors or multi-processor computers: there is never more than one thread being scheduled at the same time. For example: If one of the threads needs to execute an I/O request, the
whole process is blocked and the threading advantage cannot be used.
The GNU Portable Threads uses User-level threading, as does State Threads.
M:N (hybrid threading)
M:N maps some M number of application threads onto some N number of kernel entities, or "virtual processors." This is a compromise between kernel-level ("1:1") and user-level ("N:1") threading. In general, "M:N"
threading systems are more complex to implement than either kernel or
user threads, because changes to both kernel and user-space code are
required.
In the M:N implementation, the threading library is responsible for
scheduling user threads on the available schedulable entities; this
makes context switching of threads very fast, as it avoids system calls.
However, this increases complexity and the likelihood of priority inversion,
as well as suboptimal scheduling without extensive (and expensive)
coordination between the userland scheduler and the kernel scheduler.
Hybrid implementation examples
Scheduler activations used by older versions of the NetBSD native POSIX threads library implementation (an M:N model as opposed to a 1:1 kernel or userspace implementation model)
The Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) for the language Haskell uses lightweight threads which are scheduled on operating system threads.
History of threading models in Unix systems
SunOS 4.x implemented light-weight processes or LWPs. NetBSD 2.x+, and DragonFly BSD
implement LWPs as kernel threads (1:1 model). SunOS 5.2 through SunOS
5.8 as well as NetBSD 2 to NetBSD 4 implemented a two level model,
multiplexing one or more user level threads on each kernel thread (M:N
model). SunOS 5.9 and later, as well as NetBSD 5 eliminated user threads
support, returning to a 1:1 model. FreeBSD 5 implemented M:N model. FreeBSD 6 supported both 1:1 and M:N,
users could choose which one should be used with a given program using
/etc/libmap.conf. Starting with FreeBSD 7, the 1:1 became the default.
FreeBSD 8 no longer supports the M:N model.
Single-threaded vs multithreaded programs
In computer programming, single-threading is the processing of one instruction at a time. In the formal analysis of the variables' semantics and process state, the term single threading can be used differently to mean "backtracking within a single thread", which is common in the functional programming community.
Multithreading is mainly found in multitasking operating systems.
Multithreading is a widespread programming and execution model that
allows multiple threads to exist within the context of one process.
These threads share the process's resources, but are able to execute
independently. The threaded programming model provides developers with a
useful abstraction of concurrent execution. Multithreading can also be
applied to one process to enable parallel execution on a multiprocessing system.
Multithreading libraries tend to provide a function call to
create a new thread, which takes a function as a parameter. A concurrent
thread is then created which starts running the passed function and
ends when the function returns. The thread libraries also offer data
synchronization functions.
Threads in the same process share the same address space. This allows concurrently running code to couple tightly and conveniently exchange data without the overhead or complexity of an IPC. When shared between threads, however, even simple data structures become prone to race conditions
if they require more than one CPU instruction to update: two threads
may end up attempting to update the data structure at the same time and
find it unexpectedly changing underfoot. Bugs caused by race conditions
can be very difficult to reproduce and isolate.
To prevent this, threading application programming interfaces (APIs) offer synchronization primitives such as mutexes to lock
data structures against concurrent access. On uniprocessor systems, a
thread running into a locked mutex must sleep and hence trigger a
context switch. On multi-processor systems, the thread may instead poll
the mutex in a spinlock. Both of these may sap performance and force processors in symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems to contend for the memory bus, especially if the granularity of the locking is too fine.
A popular programming pattern involving threads is that of thread pools
where a set number of threads are created at startup that then wait for
a task to be assigned. When a new task arrives, it wakes up, completes
the task and goes back to waiting. This avoids the relatively expensive
thread creation and destruction functions for every task performed and
takes thread management out of the application developer's hand and
leaves it to a library or the operating system that is better suited to
optimize thread management.
Multithreaded programs vs single-threaded programs pros and cons
Multithreaded applications have the following advantages vs single-threaded ones:
Responsiveness: multithreading can allow an application
to remain responsive to input. In a one-thread program, if the main
execution thread blocks on a long-running task, the entire application
can appear to freeze. By moving such long-running tasks to a worker thread
that runs concurrently with the main execution thread, it is possible
for the application to remain responsive to user input while executing
tasks in the background. On the other hand, in most cases multithreading
is not the only way to keep a program responsive, with non-blocking I/O and/or Unix signals being available for obtaining similar results.
Parallelization: applications looking to use multicore or
multi-CPU systems can use multithreading to split data and tasks into
parallel subtasks and let the underlying architecture manage how the
threads run, either concurrently on one core or in parallel on multiple
cores. GPU computing environments like CUDA and OpenCL use the multithreading model where dozens to hundreds of threads run in parallel across data on a large number of cores.
This, in turn, enables better system utilization, and (provided that
synchronization costs don't eat the benefits up), can provide faster
program execution.
Multithreaded applications have the following drawbacks:
Synchronization complexity and related bugs: when using shared resources typical for threaded programs, the programmer must be careful to avoid race conditions and other non-intuitive behaviors. In order for data to be correctly manipulated, threads will often need to rendezvous in time in order to process the data in the correct order. Threads may also require mutually exclusive operations (often implemented using mutexes)
to prevent common data from being read or overwritten in one thread
while being modified by another. Careless use of such primitives can
lead to deadlocks, livelocks or races over resources. As Edward A. Lee
has written: "Although threads seem to be a small step from sequential
computation, in fact, they represent a huge step. They discard the most
essential and appealing properties of sequential computation:
understandability, predictability, and determinism. Threads, as a model
of computation, are wildly non-deterministic, and the job of the
programmer becomes one of pruning that nondeterminism."
Being untestable. In general, multithreaded programs are
non-deterministic, and as a result, are untestable. In other words, a
multithreaded program can easily have bugs which never manifest on a
test system, manifesting only in production.This can be alleviated by restricting inter-thread communications to certain well-defined patterns (such as message-passing).
Synchronization costs. As thread context switch on modern CPUs can cost up to 1 million CPU cycles, it makes writing efficient multithreading programs difficult. In
particular, special attention has to be paid to avoid inter-thread
synchronization from being too frequent.
Programming language support
Many programming languages support threading in some capacity.
IBM PL/I(F) included support for multithreading (called multitasking)
as early as in the late 1960s, and this was continued in the Optimizing
Compiler and later versions. The IBM Enterprise PL/I compiler
introduced a new model "thread" API. Neither version was part of the
PL/I standard.
Many implementations of C and C++
support threading, and provide access to the native threading APIs of
the operating system. A standardized interface for thread implementation
is POSIX Threads
(Pthreads), which is a set of C-function library calls. OS vendors are
free to implement the interface as desired, but the application
developer should be able to use the same interface across multiple
platforms. Most Unix platforms, including Linux, support Pthreads. Microsoft Windows has its own set of thread functions in the process.h interface for multithreading, like beginthread.
Some higher level (and usually cross-platform) programming languages, such as Java, Python, and .NET Framework
languages, expose threading to developers while abstracting the
platform specific differences in threading implementations in the
runtime. Several other programming languages and language extensions
also try to abstract the concept of concurrency and threading from the
developer fully (Cilk, OpenMP, Message Passing Interface
(MPI)). Some languages are designed for sequential parallelism instead
(especially using GPUs), without requiring concurrency or threads (Ateji PX, CUDA).
A few interpreted programming languages have implementations (e.g., Ruby MRI for Ruby, CPython for Python) which support threading and concurrency but not parallel execution of threads, due to a global interpreter lock
(GIL). The GIL is a mutual exclusion lock held by the interpreter that
can prevent the interpreter from simultaneously interpreting the
application's code on two or more threads at once. This effectively
limits the parallelism on multiple core systems. It also limits
performance for processor-bound threads (which require the processor),
but doesn't effect I/O-bound or network-bound ones as much. Other
implementations of interpreted programming languages, such as Tcl
using the Thread extension, avoid the GIL limit by using an Apartment
model where data and code must be explicitly "shared" between threads.
In Tcl each thread has one or more interpreters.
In programming models such as CUDA designed for data parallel computation, an array of threads run the same code
in parallel using only its ID to find its data in memory. In essence,
the application must be designed so that each thread performs the same
operation on different segments of memory so that they can operate in
parallel and use the GPU architecture.
Hardware description languages such as Verilog have a different threading model that supports extremely large numbers of threads (for modeling hardware).
Historical sociology is an interdisciplinary field of research that combines sociological and historical methods to understand the past, how societies have developed over time, and the impact this has on the present. It emphasises a mutual line of inquiry of the past and present to
understand how discrete historical events fit into wider societal
progress and ongoing dilemmas through complementary comparative
analysis.
Looking at how social structures are changed and reproduced,
historical sociology strives to understand the visible mechanisms and
hidden structures that hinder certain parts of human development, whilst
allowing other parts to thrive. Throughout this, it challenges the ahistoricism of modern sociology as a discipline, of the limited engagement with the past in studying social structures, whilst simultaneously critiquing the disengagement of historical study with the differences between societies and the broader social patterns between historical events.
This interdisciplinary field operates within a spectrum between
history and sociology with a 'sociology of history' residing at one end
and a 'history of society' residing at another. A diverse range of
people can be found throughout this spectrum that explore history
through a sociological lens compared to others that dissect society
through its historical events. Although valid lines of research, they are based on singular disciplinary approaches and are reductionist
in nature. In the middle of this spectrum historical sociology can be
found that works to intertwine these mono-discipline efforts into an
interdisciplinary approach.
Origins
As
time has passed, history and sociology have developed into two
different specific academic disciplines. Historical data was used and is
used today in mainly these three ways: examining a theory through a
parallel investigation, applying and contrasting events or policies
(such as Verstehen), and considering the causalities from a macro point of view.
John Stuart Mill's
method: " a) principle of difference: a case with effect and cause
present is contrasted with a case with effect and cause absent; and b)
principle of agreement: cases with same effects are compared in terms of
their (ideally identical) causes. There is an important debate on the
usefulness of Mill's method for sociological research, which relates to
the fact that historical research is often based on only few cases and
that many sociological theories are probabilistic, not deterministic. Today, historical sociology is measured by a conjunction of questions that are rich in detail.
Themes
Human agency
A shared theme of sociology and history is accounting for the paradox of human agency. "The problem of agency
is the problem of finding a way to account for human experience which
recognises simultaneously and in equal measure that history and society
are made by constant and more or less purposeful individual action and
that individual action, however purposeful, is made by history and
society".
This theme is presented across authors from Marx to Spencer where a symbiotic relation enables action to create structure, whilst that structure defines action. Here, historical sociology outlines that the key to understanding our
human agency is to track its development over time. Better enabling us
to see the changes and continuations of actions and structures that
shape human agency throughout our societies.
Comparative historical sociology
Contemporary historical sociology is primarily concerned with how the state has developed since the Middle Ages, analysing relations between states, classes, economic and political systems.
Historical sociology has become an increasingly used approach in international relations
to draw upon the reflective usefulness of historical sociology in
exploring the past and present together, challenging unhistorical
viewpoints in the field that stem from realist and neoliberalism paradigms that often see the wider structural makeup of the world as static.
The work of political economy
aims to reconcile the development of political and economic systems for
insight into policy. Historical sociology critiques political economy
for (1) viewing the present as a natural structure, (2) focus on history
as a path dependent outcome, and (3) shaping their insights around
prominent figures with limited engagement of wider processes and
"regular" people.
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599. The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623.
The play is set in Messina
and revolves around two romantic pairings that emerge when a group of
soldiers arrive in the town. The first, between Claudio and Hero,
is nearly scuppered by the accusations of the villain, Don John. The
second, between Claudio's friend Benedick and Hero's cousin Beatrice, takes centre stage as the play continues, with both characters' wit and banter providing much of the humour.
Through "noting" (sounding like "nothing" and meaning gossip, rumour, overhearing), Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each
other, and Claudio is tricked into believing that Hero is not a maiden
(virgin). The title's play on words references the secrets and trickery
that form the backbone of the play's comedy, intrigue, and action.
Characters
Benedick, a lord and soldier from Padua; companion of Don Pedro
Dogberry, the constable in charge of Messina's night watch
Verges, the Headborough, Dogberry's partner
Friar Francis, a priest
a Sexton, the judge of the trial of Borachio
a Boy, serving Benedick
The Watch, watchmen of Messina
Attendants and Messengers
Synopsis
A painting of Beatrice by Frank Dicksee, from The Graphic Gallery of Shakespeare's Heroines
In Messina, a messenger brings news that Don Pedro
will return that night from a successful battle, along with Claudio and
Benedick. Beatrice asks the messenger about Benedick and mocks
Benedick's ineptitude as a soldier. Leonato explains, "There is a kind
of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her."
On the soldiers' arrival, Don Pedro tells Leonato that they will
stay a month at least, and Benedick and Beatrice resume their "merry
war". Pedro's illegitimate brother, Don John, is also introduced.
Claudio first lays eyes on Hero, and he informs Benedick of his
intention to court her. Benedick, who openly despises marriage, tries to
dissuade him. Don Pedro encourages the marriage. Benedick swears that
he will never marry. Don Pedro laughs at him and tells him he will when
he finds the right person.
A masquerade ball is planned. Therein a disguised Don Pedro woos
Hero on Claudio's behalf. Don John uses this situation to sow chaos by
telling Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself. Claudio rails
against the entrapments of beauty. But the misunderstanding is later
resolved, and Claudio is promised Hero's hand in marriage.
Meanwhile, Benedick and Beatrice have danced together, trading
disparaging remarks under the cover of their masks. Beatrice knows who
Benedick is under his mask, but Benedick does not recognize the mystery
lady. Benedick is stung at hearing himself described as "the prince's
jester, a very dull fool", and yearns to be spared the company of "Lady Tongue". Don Pedro and his men, bored at the prospect of waiting a week for the
wedding, concoct a plan to match-make between Benedick and Beatrice.
They arrange for Benedick to overhear a conversation in which they
declare that Beatrice is madly in love with him but too afraid to tell
him. Hero and Ursula likewise ensure that Beatrice overhears a
conversation in which they discuss Benedick's undying love for her. Both
Benedick and Beatrice are delighted to think that they are the object
of unrequited love, and both resolve to mend their faults and declare their love.
Meanwhile, Don John plots to stop the wedding, embarrass his
brother, and wreak misery on Leonato and Claudio. He tells Don Pedro and
Claudio that Hero is "disloyal", and arranges for them to see his associate, Borachio, enter her
bedchamber and engage amorously with her (it is actually Hero's
chambermaid). Claudio and Don Pedro are duped, and Claudio vows to
humiliate Hero publicly.
Swooning of Hero in the Church scene by Alfred Elmore
The next day, at the wedding, Claudio denounces Hero before the
stunned guests and storms off with Don Pedro. Hero faints. A humiliated
Leonato expresses his wish for her to die. The presiding friar
intervenes, believing Hero innocent. He suggests that the family fake
Hero's death to fill Claudio with remorse. Prompted by the stressful
events, Benedick and Beatrice confess their love for each other.
Beatrice then asks Benedick to kill Claudio as proof of his devotion.
Benedick hesitates but is swayed. Leonato and Antonio blame Claudio for
Hero's supposed death and threaten him, to little effect. Benedick
arrives and challenges him to a duel.
"Much Ado About Nothing", Act IV, Scene 2, the Examination of Conrade and Borachio (from the Boydell series), Robert Smirke (n.d.)
On the night of Don John's treachery, the local Watch overheard Borachio and Conrade discussing their "treason" and "most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth", and arrested them therefore. Despite their ineptitude (headed by constable Dogberry),
they obtain a confession and inform Leonato of Hero's innocence. Don
John has fled, but a force is sent to capture him. Remorseful and
thinking Hero dead, Claudio agrees to her father's demand that he marry
Antonio's daughter, "almost the copy of my child that's dead".
After Claudio swears to marry this other bride, she is revealed
to be Hero. Claudio is overjoyed. Beatrice and Benedick publicly confess
their love for each other. Don Pedro taunts "Benedick the married man", and Benedick counters that he finds the Prince sad, advising him: "Get thee a wife". As the play draws to a close, a messenger arrives with news of Don
John's capture, but Benedick proposes to postpone deciding Don John's
punishment until tomorrow so that the couples can enjoy their newfound
happiness. The couples dance and celebrate as the play ends.
Shakespeare's immediate source may have been one of Matteo Bandello of Mantua's Novelle ("Tales"), possibly the translation into French by François de Belleforest,[6] which dealt with the tribulations of Sir Timbreo and his betrothed Fenicia Lionata, in Messina, after Peter III of Aragon's defeat of Charles of Anjou. Another version, featuring lovers Ariodante and Ginevra, with the
servant Dalinda impersonating Ginevra on the balcony, appears in Book V Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (published in an English translation in 1591). The character of Benedick has a counterpart in a commentary on marriage in Orlando Furioso. But the witty wooing of Beatrice and Benedick is apparently original and very unusual in style and syncopation. Edmund Spenser tells one version of the Claudio–Hero plot in The Faerie Queene (Book II, Canto iv).
Date and text
According to the earliest printed text, Much Ado About Nothing was "sundry times publicly acted" before 1600. The play likely debuted in the autumn or winter of 1598–99. The earliest recorded performances are two at Court in the winter of 1612–13, during festivities preceding the Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate (14 February 1613). In 1600, the stationers Andrew Wise and William Aspley published the play in quarto. This was the only edition prior to the First Folio in 1623.
Analysis and criticism
Style
The play is predominantly written in prose. The substantial verse sections achieve a sense of decorum.
Setting
Much Ado About Nothing is set in Messina, a port city on the island of Sicily, when Sicily is ruled by Aragon. Its action takes place mainly at the home and grounds of Leonato's Estate.
Benedick and Beatrice quickly became the main interest of the play.
They are considered the leading roles even though their relationship is
given equal or lesser weight in the script than Claudio's and Hero's
situation. Charles I wrote, 'Benedick and Beatrice' beside the title of the play in his copy of the Second Folio. The provocative treatment of gender is central and should be considered in its Renaissance context. This was reflected and emphasized in certain plays of the period but was also challenged. Amussen notes that the undoing of traditional gender clichés seems to have
inflamed anxieties about the erosion of social order. It seems that
comic drama could be a means of calming such anxieties. Ironically, the play's popularity suggests that this only increased interest in such behavior. Benedick wittily gives voice to male anxieties about women's "sharp tongues and proneness to sexual lightness". In the play's patriarchal society, the men's loyalties are governed by
conventional codes of honour, camaraderie, and a sense of superiority
over women. Assumptions that women are by nature prone to inconstancy are shown in the repeated jokes about cuckoldry, and partly explain Claudio's readiness to believe the slander against Hero.This stereotype is turned on its head in Balthasar's song "Sigh No
More", which presents men as the deceitful and inconstant sex that women
must abide.
Infidelity
Several
characters seem obsessed with the idea that a man cannot know whether
his wife is faithful and that women can take full advantage of this. Don John plays upon Claudio's pride and fear of cuckoldry, leading to
the disastrous first wedding. Many of the men readily believe that Hero
is impure; even her father condemns her with very little evidence. This
motif runs through the play, often referring to horns (a symbol of
cuckoldry).
In contrast, Balthasar's song "Sigh No More" tells women to
accept men's infidelity and continue to live joyfully. Some
interpretations say that Balthasar sings poorly, undercutting the
message.This is supported by Benedick's cynical comments about the song, comparing it to a howling dog. In Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film,
Balthasar sings it beautifully: it is given a prominent role in the
opening and finale, and the women seem to embrace its message.
Deception
Beatrice, Hero and Ursula, John Jones, after Henry Fuseli (c. 1771)
The play has many examples of deception and self-deception. The games
and tricks played on people often have the best intentions: to make
people fall in love, to help someone get what they want, or to lead
someone to realize their mistake. But not all are well-meant: Don John
convinces Claudio that Don Pedro wants Hero for himself, and Borachio
meets 'Hero' (actually Margaret) in Hero's bedroom window. These modes
of deceit play into a complementary theme of emotional manipulation, the
ease with which the characters' sentiments are redirected and their
propensities exploited as a means to an end. The characters' feelings for each other are played as vehicles to reach
the goal of engagement rather than as an end in themselves.
Masks and mistaken identity
Characters
are constantly pretending to be others or mistaken for others. Margaret
is mistaken for Hero, leading to Hero's disgrace. During a masked ball
(in which everyone must wear a mask), Beatrice rants about Benedick to a
masked man who is actually Benedick, but she acts unaware of this.
During the same celebration, Don Pedro pretends to be Claudio and courts
Hero for him. After Hero is proclaimed dead, Leonato orders Claudio to
marry his 'niece', who is actually Hero.
Nothing
A watercolor by John Sutcliffe: Beatrice overhears Hero and Ursula.
Another motif is the play on the words nothing and noting. These were near-homophones in Shakespeare's day. Taken literally, the title implies that a great fuss ('much ado') is
made of something insignificant ('nothing'), such as the unfounded
claims of Hero's infidelity and that Benedick and Beatrice are in love
with each other. Nothing is also a double entendre: 'an O-thing' (or 'n othing' or 'no thing') was Elizabethan slang for "vagina", derived from women having 'nothing' between their legs. The title can also be understood as Much Ado About Noting:
much of the action centres on interest in others and the critique of
others, written messages, spying, and eavesdropping. This attention is
mentioned several times directly, particularly concerning 'seeming',
'fashion', and outward impressions.
Examples of noting as noticing occur in the following instances: (1.1.131–132)
Claudio: Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signor Leonato? Benedick: I noted her not, but I looked on her.
and (4.1.154–157).
Friar: Hear me a little,
For I have only been silent so long
And given way unto this course of fortune
By noting of the lady.
At (3.3.102–104), Borachio indicates that a man's clothing doesn't reveal his character:
Borachio: Thou knowest that the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak is nothing to a man.
A triple play on words in which noting signifies noticing, musical notes, and nothing, occurs at (2.3.47–52):
Don Pedro: Nay pray thee, come;
Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,
Do it in notes. Balthasar: Note this before my notes:
There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. Don Pedro: Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks –
Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!
Don Pedro's last line can be understood to mean 'Pay attention to
your music and nothing else!' The complex layers of meaning include a
pun on 'crotchets', which can mean both 'quarter notes' (in music) and whimsical notions.
The following are puns on notes as messages: (2.1.174–176),
Claudio: I pray you leave me. Benedick: Ho, now you strike like the blind man – 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.
in which Benedick plays on the word post as a pole and as mail delivery in a joke reminiscent of Shakespeare's earlier advice 'Don't shoot the messenger'; and (2.3.138–142)
Claudio: Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of. Leonato: O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?
in which Leonato makes a sexual innuendo, concerning sheet as a sheet of paper (on which Beatrice's love note to Benedick is to have been written), and a bedsheet.
The title track of the 2009 Mumford & Sons album Sigh No More uses quotes from this play in the song. The title of the album is also a quotation from Act 2 Scene 3 of the play.
A version of the 1967 National Theatre Company Production,
directed for television by Alan Cooke. The play was originally directed
for the stage by Franco Zeffirelli. With Maggie Smith (Beatrice), Derek Jacobi (Don Pedro). Music by Nino Rota
In 2012 a filmed version of the live 2011 performance at The Globe was released to cinemas and on DVD.The same year, a filmed version of the 2011 performance at Wyndham's
Theatre was made available for download or streaming on the Digital
Theatre website.
In 2015, Owen Drake created a modern movie version of the play, Messina High, starring Faye Reagan.
The 2023 romantic comedy Anyone but You, directed by Will Gluck and co-written by Ilana Wolpert, is a loose adaptation principally set in contemporary Australia. It stars Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as analogues of Beatrice and Benedick.
Television and web series
The 1973 New York Shakespeare Festival production by Joseph Papp, shot on videotape and released on VHS and DVD, includes more of the text than Branagh's version. It is directed by A. J. Antoon and stars Sam Waterston, Kathleen Widdoes, and Barnard Hughes.
In 2005, the BBC adapted the story as part of the ShakespeaRe-Told
season. This version is set in the modern-day studios of Wessex
Tonight, a fictional regional news programme. The cast includes Damian Lewis, Sarah Parish, and Billie Piper.
The 2014 YouTube web seriesNothing Much to Do is a modern retelling of the play set in New Zealand.
There are several young adult novels adapting Much Ado About Nothing. Lily Anderson's 2016 novel The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You is about Trixie Watson and Ben West, who attend a "school for geniuses". In Speak Easy, Speak Love (2017) by Mckelle George, the play's events take place in the 1920s; it is focused around a failing speakeasy. In Nothing Happened (2018) by Molly Booth, Claudio and Hero are a queer couple, Claudia and Hana. Under a Dancing Star (2019) by Laura Wood is a modernized version set in Florence. Two Wrongs Make a Right (2022) by Chloe Liese is another contemporary version.
I am trusted with a muzzle and
enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my
cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do
my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
Jensen later explained that this was a reference to the censorship imposed after the German invasion of Denmark in 1940.
_Robert_Smirke_(1753%E2%80%931845)_Royal_Shakespeare_Theatre.jpg)
