How do our institutions shape us, and how do we shape them? From the late nineteenth-century era of high imperialism to the rise of the British welfare state in the mid-twentieth century, the concept of the institution was interrogated and rethought in literary and intellectual culture. In Institutional Character, Robert Higney investigates the role of the modernist novel in this reevaluation, revealing how for a diverse array of modernist writers, character became an attribute of the institutions of the state, international trade, communication and media, labor, education, public health, the military, law, and beyond. In readings of figures from the works of E. M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, and Virginia Woolf to Mulk Raj Anand, Elizabeth Bowen, and Zadie Smith, Higney presents a new history of character in modernist writing. He simultaneously tracks how writers themselves turned to the techniques of fiction to help secure a place in the postwar institutions of literary culture. In these narratives—addressing imperial administrations, global financial competition, women’s entry into the professions, colonial nationalism, and wartime espionage—we are shown the generative power of institutions in preserving the past, designing the present, and engineering the future, and the constitutive involvement of individuals in collective life.

How do our institutions shape us, and how do we shape them? From the late nineteenth-century era of high imperialism to the rise of the British welfare state in the mid-twentieth century, the concept of the institution was interrogated and rethought in literary and intellectual culture. In Institutional Character, Robert Higney investigates the role of the modernist novel in this reevaluation, revealing how for a diverse array of modernist writers, character became an attribute of the institutions of the state, international trade, communication and media, labor, education, public health, the military, law, and beyond. In readings of figures from the works of E. M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, and Virginia Woolf to Mulk Raj Anand, Elizabeth Bowen, and Zadie Smith, Higney presents a new history of character in modernist writing. He simultaneously tracks how writers themselves turned to the techniques of fiction to help secure a place in the postwar institutions of literary culture. In these narratives--addressing imperial administrations, global financial competition, women's entry into the professions, colonial nationalism, and wartime espionage--we are shown the generative power of institutions in preserving the past, designing the present, and engineering the future, and the constitutive involvement of individuals in collective life.

An address by Robert Owen outlining his view of the malleability of human nature, and calling for a radical change in the way social institutions are established. Human progress is inhibited by the lack of knowledge about how human beings are to be educated so as to pursue productive activities and eschew debilitating vices.

The educational system in the United States has ended its failed experiment with separating the intellectual from the moral. Schools from K–12 to colleges and universities are increasingly paying attention to students' values and character. But how can we ensure this new era in character education makes the right kind of difference to young people? What obstacles in our current educational system must we overcome, and what new opportunities can we create? This anthology offers unique perspectives on what is needed to make character education an effective, lasting part of our educational agenda. Each chapter points out the directions that character education must take today and offers strategies essential for progress. The expert contributors reveal why relativism has threatened the moral development of young people in our time—and how we can pass core values down to new generations of students in ways that will elevate their conduct and their life goals. And they show the critical importance of reestablishing student morality and character as targets of higher education's central mission. Perhaps most important, they clarify the necessity of authority in any moral education endeavor—and show how it is a powerful force for developing personal freedom and building character.