Exploring the Self/Group Initiated and On-the-Job Learning Activities of Low Income Women

This paper explores the breadth of learning undertaken by small group of low-income women who came together to explore various income generating ideas. Bringing into view these learning experiences disrupts some of the individualistic, sexist and classist assumptions about self-directed and on the-job learning dominating adult education and lifelong learning policy and programs

We\u27ve Got Nothing/Everything to Lose: Lessons Learned from an Anti-poverty Action Research Project

This paper explores my efforts as a feminist activist scholar working with a group of poor women engaged in creating, on their own terms, a viable economic venture. Negotiating through this landscape marked by different class, race, status and institutional locations illuminates the challenges to conducting research and establishing relationships of solidarity

Discourses of Tolerance and Intolerance at the Four Years' Sejm (1788-1792)

The reforms passed by the Polish Revolution, or Great Sejm (parliament) of 1788–1792, are sometimes viewed as the culmination of the delayed confessionalization of the Commonwealth, but on the other hand as an important stage in the process of its deconfessionalization. The content of the first article of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, “The dominant Religion,” is well known. This includes its provisions regarding the rights of the heterodox to free worship, but also regarding the maintenance of the prohibition on conversion from Catholicism to other confessions. The problem of the drafting and editing of this text was researched by Emanuel Rostworowski. However, the Four Years’ Sejm dealt with confessional questions in various contexts, not only the new Constitution. Such problems were raised, for example, during the panic about “rebellions” in Ruthenia in the spring of 1789, in the question of establishing a domestic Orthodox hierarchy in May 1792, in the course of debates on the urban reform in April 1791, and during discussions of the Cardinal Laws in August and September 1790. They were also connected with the question of the status of Jews. Discussions in the parliamentary forum were accompanied by polemics among pamphleteers. The clashes over the exact rights and privileges belonging to the heterodox yield both characteristic discursive forms and different concepts of tolerance or toleration, based on different axioms. Sometimes historical arguments were used to justify particular solutions. The aim of the paper is to sketch the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable discourse on religious tolerance and intolerance during the Great Sejm and to indicate changes in attitudes that took place at this time

Challenges for the Commonwealth: The Counsel of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projettée was written in 1771 at the request of the confederates of Bar and published for the first time in 1782. It was published in a Polish translation by Maurycy Franciszek Karp in 1789. By far the best analysis of the sources and arguments of the Considérations remains Jerzy Michalski’s Rousseau i sarmacki republikanizm, published in 1977, which has until now made no significant impact on worldwide Rousseau studies. Michalski showed the extent and limits of the consanguinity between Rousseau’s doctrine and Polish-Lithuanian republicanism. The present article argues that Rousseau threw down a fundamental challenge to his readers: did Poles want to be themselves or did they want to be modern Europeans? He counselled a reconception of the Polish—and by extension any—nation on the basis of a fundamental rejection of enlightened and cosmopolitan modernity

Clergymen on the Move: Journeys by Vilnan Canons and Prelates in the 16th Century

Mobility and journeys were an integral part of the life of intellectual elites, including the clergy,in the Early Modern Period. Taking to the road was often the outcome of the functions theyperformed: arrival at the destination was the main aim. In the case of pilgrimages, both thedestination and the route were important. Itinerant clergy in search of sustenance became adisciplinary problem for their superiors. This article is based on records of journeys undertakenby canons and prelates of Vilnius Cathedral.Key words: journeys, Cathedral chapters, Vilnius, mobility, Early Modern Period, ecclesiasticalhistory. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/ ahuk.v29i0.106