Philosophical debates about reason versus passion shaped colonial political decisions.

Evidence

In the colonies, Weber’s reasoned state, staffed by “cultivated men,” complemented Durkheim’s moralizing one. Colonial states were in the business of “engineering morality,” both among their agents and those ruled. As such, both Weber and Durkheim attended to a register of governance neither explicitly named: the harnessing of affect in the state’s shaping of what constituted morality and who had the right to assess it. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 426 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Metropolitan ideologies and science shaped colonial governors’ assumptions about uplifting Africans.; Competing colonial visions differed in how they cropped relevant knowledge; Colonial states engineered morality by harnessing affect in their agents. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 426 (+2 more)

Related

• Colonial states engineered morality by harnessing affect in their agents. (similarity 0.91)
• Colonial states combined Weberian rational and Durkheimian moral governance. (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial governance ran as much on sentiment’s management as on reason’s rule. (similarity 0.86)
• Civilizing policies normalized the presence of subjects in a nation of citizens (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial dispositions are trained, contested, and deliberately interpreted (similarity 0.83)
• Metropolitan ideologies and science shaped colonial governors’ assumptions about uplifting Africans. (similarity 0.83)
• Conceptions of morality as reason or passion decided colonial education spending (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial state vocabularies were built on sentiments, not just reason (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial studies centers reason and Enlightenment principles as foundations of rule. (similarity 0.81)
• Early-modern statecraft aimed to master affect, not oppose it. (similarity 0.81)
• States were once expected to produce passions, not merely check them (similarity 0.80)
• Dutch colonial governance centered on managing subjects’ affective states (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial-era governance oscillated between reason and sentiment rather than reason alone (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial states continuously staked political security on governing subjects’ feelings (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial regimes deliberately cultivated habits and redirected sentiments, a neglected topic. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Colonial emotional attributions constructed the social hierarchies they claimed to describe #expands (0.70)
• Colonial states engineered morality by harnessing affect in their agents. #expands (0.65) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 426
• Competing colonial visions differed in how they cropped relevant knowledge #expands (0.60)