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The title of this thesis is taken from the Book of Common Prayer, specifically from the section 'Of Ceremonies: Why some be Abolished and some Retained'. It takes as its premise the theory that arguments over the way in which worship was conducted were more important than doctrinal matters in the religious tensions which arose before the Civil War, focussing attention upon the diocese of Winchester. The thesis is split into three broad sections. The first section deals with the ceremonies of the church, and is split into two chapters. The first of these chapters is based largely around the physical structure of a church, whilst the second is more concerned with the rites and rubrics as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer. The second section, in three chapters, focusses upon the use of the arts in the early Stuart church. The first of these chapters concentrates on the visual arts, and the way in which they were used, particularly with regard to their hierarchical arrangement. The second turns attention to the aural arts, examining the differences, and similarities, in approach taken at the time. The third examines the idea that there was a specific culture which can be associated with Puritanism. The final section focusses upon the defence of hierarchy within the church. The first chapter in this section examines defences of Episcopal government which were produced by clerics who worked in the diocese. The second chapter looks at attempts to induce greater conformity within the diocese, and places this in the context of national events.

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<p> This thesis analyzes Yinka Shonibare's appropriation of narratives to address identity-as-construct and develops a theoretical framework for interpreting his art using theories alternative to postmodernism and identity politics. I begin the analysis by citing Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault whose ideas have influenced Shonibare. Then I apply postpositivist realism and conceptual narrativity to Shonibare's work. These theories are intriguing because they offer a more complex and therefore more accurate way of viewing identity, allowing for a multiplicity of signifiers to form an individual's identity, not just one signifier such as race. Thus they account for the differences that explain individual reactions to shared experience within a group. This acknowledgement of differences frees people from category-based expectations such as Shonibare's tutor wanting to limit him, a Yoruba artist, to creating African-themed art. This incident was the catalyst for Shonibare's practice. Use of the alternative theories allows me to accomplish my objectives. </p>

<p> The field of artists' books is a realm in which a phenomenon is mapped and territorialized. This is based on the human necessity to map the world and have a better grasp of it. Additionally, it is constructed on the understanding of the history of the book&rsquo;s physicality as an important emblem in civilization. An artist&rsquo;s book is an isolated realm, both a map and a territory. It is closed in itself, and has its own rules and dynamics, yet carries varied affinities with the outside world.</p>

The thesis of this dissertation is that not only was Darwin the first Social Darwinist, but that only through appreciation of the roles of confusion, metaphysics, the social and political context, and the work of Alfred Russel Wallace can a better understanding of Darwin's achievement be accomplished. By revealing and then analyzing the Social Darwinist aspects of Darwin's science of transmutation the position of most critics--who hold that Darwin's Social Darwinist followers perverted his "pure" science--is debunked. Darwin's development of a race war theory was done for scientific reasons which cannot be stripped away to reveal a non-political "core" without utterly transforming his ideas. For instance, Darwin developed a biological ranking of indigenous peoples which helped fill in evidential gaps for the theory of evolution as well as provide confirmation for his radical form of reductive materialism. Darwin's Social Darwinism has been noticed by a few critics, but is usually dismissed as either ephemeral or indicative of commonly-held "backround" political biases. The first view is shown to be inadequate by revelation of the deep relation of his metaphysics to his science. The second is exploded through an examination of the work of Alfred Russel Wallace. He opposed Darwin's concept of race war, and his opposition was rooted in his commitment to an emergentist metaphysics. Once the juxtaposition of the social and political aspects of Wallace's work to that of Darwin is provided, the wider context of their work is revealed by an examination of Darwin's use of Malthus, the politics of emerging professional classes, Victorian birth control, and the work of T. H. Huxley. Revelation of the intimate social and political details of the scientific work of Darwin and Wallace helps to create an understanding of how nineteenth century science was constituted and demonstrates that the particular historical relations of science and ideology make the concept of "pure science" an oxymoron.

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This dissertation is a study of the intellectual history of Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 903/1498) and Ghiyāath al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 949/1542), two important Shirazi philosophers and Shi'i thinkers who lived in the late Timurid and early Safavid period. It argues that Avicennan philosophy was revived and provided with a new impetus at a time when it was under attack by Ash'ari thinkers belonging to the later tradition. Paradoxically, many of the later Ash'ri thinkers saw it fit to engage in metaphysical speculations that took the Avicennan tradition as its basis. Yet, these same thinkers accused Avicenna and his followers of advancing specious arguments and for making incoherent statements about God, the cosmos, religious matters, and the general nature of things. So overarching was this later Ash'ari tradition, that it became the intellectual tradition par excellence in the centuries leading up to the Safavid period. In many of their major philosophical writings, the Dashtakīs sought to decouple Avicennan philosophy from Ash'ari kalām, and, at the same time, to attack the foundations of the Ash'ari tradition. In doing so, the Dashtakīs proposed a particular reading of Avicenna that was purified of Ash'ari influences and closer to philosophical Shi'ism.

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<p> The rise of social practice art in Europe and North America since the 1990s has provoked a variety of critical alignments and contestations around multi-authored "post-studio" artwork, aimed at collapsing the boundaries between visual and performing art, and between art and everyday life. One of the most visible and impassioned contestations has centered on the value assigned by different critics to so-called convivial and antagonistic directions for social practice art. This project enters the debate on collaborative and participatory art by highlighting the commonalities between the turn away from spectatorialism in philosophy and the politically-driven, activist social practices coming out of the visual arts. Contending that the more salient problems under debate revolve around what art historian Grant Kester has described as "a series of largely unproductive debates over the epistemological status of the work," I focus on the way different epistemological frames impact the reception of convivial and antagonistic directions in art. With attention to the theory and criticism of Clare Bishop, Grant Kester, Shannon Jackson and Tom Finkelpearl, I examine how a variety of epistemological frames both reflect the work's values around social change, and also impact the critical lenses through which such values are communicated to the public through art criticism. While Bishop raises important questions around the limits of a turn against traditional art spectatorship and singular authorship of visual art, I claim that her view of a convivial tendency in social practice art overlooks key epistemological insights embodied in feminist standpoint theory and American pragmatist epistemology. I contend that John Dewey's view of knowledge as <i>transactional</i> captures the epistemological framing of some of the more socially ameliorative directions social practice work has taken in recent decades because Dewey rejects a view of knowledge that divides subjective entities from each other and from their wider environments. Bishop's traditional spectatorship model fails to capture the aesthetico-political ethos of an area of art that acknowledges the fragile contingency of standpoints. I show that the criticism of Kester, Jackson and Finkelpearl recognize this contingency and then enlarge their perspectives by bringing attention to feminist standpoint theory and pragmatist aesthetics and epistemology. I conclude by claiming that a more robust way of understanding the value of social practices in art recognizes that transactional and contingent standpoints demand an ethos rooted in the continuity of convivial and antagonistic features of aesthetico-political experience.</p>