Cancer, quackery and the vernacular meanings of hope in 1950s America

Hope was central to cancer control in twentieth-century America. Physicians placed great store in its power to persuade people to seek medical help as early as possible in the development of the disease, when it was most amenable to treatment; to maintain patients' loyalty through what could be a long, painful and uncertain course of therapy; and to encourage doubts about alternative healers. Some also argued that hope could have beneficial therapeutic and psychological effects for patients. However, we know very little about its meanings for the public. Focusing on a large collection of letters written to the Food and Drug Administration in the 1950s concerning an anti-quackery campaign, this article explores how men and women responded to the competing messages of hope promoted by orthodox cancer organizations and by alternative healers. It asks: What did hope mean to such men and women? How did they construct this meaning? How did they decide which treatments were hopeful and which were not? And, how did they use hope to imagine the social world of cancer? In short, this article explores the vernacular meanings, epistemologies, and imaginative uses of hope among Americans in the mid-twentieth century.     

汉武帝追求长生的心路历程

目前学者大多侧重分析汉武帝迷信神仙的原因和弊端,却很少有人关注他追求长生的复杂心态及其变化.在任用方士希求长生的过程中,汉武帝尝尽希望和失望交替的痛苦;在亲临海上求仙或派人到海上寻仙的过程中,汉武帝深谙寻觅失败的滋味;在追求长生的道路上,汉武帝鲜明地体现出屡求屡败,败而不馁的执著;汉武帝晚年终于认识到神仙的虚妄,不再祈求长生,伴随醒悟而来的是些许失落和无奈.     

Why Do We Ask “What If?” Reflections on the Function of Alternate History

The new prominence of alternate history in Western popular culture has increasingly prompted scholars to historicize it as a broader phenomenon. What has largely escaped notice until now, however, has been the question of the underlying function of alternate history as a genre of speculative narrative representation. In this essay, I argue that writers and scholars have long produced "allohistorical narratives" out of fundamentally presentist motives. Allohistorical tales have assumed different typological forms depending upon how their authors have viewed the present. Nightmare scenarios, for example, have depicted the alternate past as worse than the real historical record in order to vindicate the present, while fantasy scenarios have portrayed the alternate past as superior to the real historical record in order to express dissatisfaction with the present. The presentist character of alternate histories allows them to shed light upon the evolving place of various historical events in the collective memory of a given society. In this essay, I examine American alternate histories of three popular themes—the Nazis winning World War II, the South winning the Civil War, and the American Revolution failing to occur—in order to show how present–day concerns have influenced how these events have been remembered. In the process, I hope to demonstrate that alternate histories lend themselves quite well to being studied as documents of memory. By examining accounts of what never happened, we can better understand the memory of what did.     

Ruins of hope in a Kyrgyz post‐industrial wasteland (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

When people find themselves in dire situations, they use their imagination to transcend space and time. Forward‐projected hope and backward‐looking nostalgia are usually juxtaposed for their different temporal orientations and their different roles in social action. This article examines how this plays out in a former mining town in post‐Soviet Kyrgyzstan, whose inhabitants treasure the memories of Soviet modernity while dreaming of a future of economic abundance. Here, the sentiments of nostalgia and hope converge in their resonance with the ruins of empire, while their effects depend upon concealing the fragility of utopian visions.     

The complexity of aspiration: the role of hope and habitus in shaping working-class young people’s aspirations to higher education

In this paper, I explore how working-class young people in Leicester hope and plan for their futures as they consider the possibility of attending university. I respond to Pimlott-Wilson’s [2011. “The Role of Familial Habitus in Shaping Children’s Views of Their Future Employment.” Children’s Geographies 9 (1): 111–118] call for further research to investigate how individual dispositions and habitus affect how young people hope and aspire towards the future. I do this in three ways. First, I empirically test Webb’s [2007. “Modes of Hoping.” History of the Human Sciences 20 (3): 65–83] hope theory to understand how aspirations are formed on an individual and societal level. In doing so, I critically question what is understood by the term ‘aspiration’. This allows me to question what it means for young people to ‘raise aspirations’ towards university. Second, I explore how a spatial analysis can contribute towards an understanding of how habitus, hope and aspirations interlock to shape young people’s futures. Third, I argue that hope can be regarded as a form of capital which in turn influences habitus.     

Crafting forgiveness accounts after war: Editing for effect in northern Uganda (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

After two decades of conflict and internment in camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), the Acholi people have returned to their homes and are trying to heal their wounds after the long war in northern Uganda. Bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, cultural organizations, and religious institutions are involved in the politically and personally sensitive work of reconciliation. Yet for most people, the actual restoration of peace lies in establishing an everyday life and being able to rebuild relationships with kin, friends and neighbours. In a collaborative project with an installation artist, the authors collected personal voice accounts of these ‘social repair’ processes and audio edited them in order to share them with a local public. The editing process raised critical issues regarding ‘editing for effect’, which are of wider relevance for discussions of ethnographic representation and social processes of editing past experience. As a way of crafting and controlling material, editing is always ‘for effect’. But the authors were struck by the powerful potentials of this artistic editing and by the difficulty in foreseeing or controlling its consequences among listeners. They suggest that personal processes of forgiveness resemble processes of editing, in the sense that past experience is revised and given narrative form, with an effect on the present and future of social relationships. When we edit, we foreground and background segments of data and experience, and cut parts of our representations. We do so while deciding something is irrelevant and other aspects should ‘stand out’ for the receiver and ourselves as more important.     

文化遗产保护中的“人”——增冲鼓楼文物保护规划中的一些尝试

增冲鼓楼,具有双重属性的文化遗产地 增冲鼓楼是一处比较特殊的文化遗产地。 首先,它是一座文物建筑。增冲鼓楼位于贵州省黔东南苗族侗族自治州从江县往洞乡增冲村增冲侗寨,始建于清康熙十一年（1672年）,为木结构中心柱型鼓楼,     

Living with anthropogenic climate change: Learning from environmental history to question narratives of doom,hope, and crisis

We are living with anthropogenic climate change and must address the causes and reduce the negative impacts on our planet, humans, and other species. This commentary offers a brief review of environmental history from deep time to recent waves of environmentalism demonstrating that climate change has occurred before; that people have faced perceived end times; and that predictions of doom have helped us to act to avoid that potential scenario. These are important lessons for how we may live today and into the future, given the shift from climate change denial to narratives of impending doom because we have already failed to act. The commentary presents a matrix of positions adopted in relation to climate change and environmentalism more generally, highlighting narratives of hope, doom, and urgency. While not exhaustive, these summarised positions alert us to possibilities and are intended to generate wider discussion about how we may live with anthropogenic climate change. We have to learn to live with anthropogenic climate change while addressing the causes and reducing the negative impacts on our planet, humans and on other species.     

近20年福建长乐人移民美国的动机和条件——以长乐实地调查为主的分析

长乐人素有海上谋生的传统,并在近20年间塑造了移民海外的社会风尚。长乐与纽约之间巨大的收入差距和美国较好的谋生与发展条件,使长乐人选择美国作为移民的主要目的地。长乐人在美国成功建立的互助网络,使长乐人能承担巨额出国费用和成功地在美国求职与发展。因此,美国虽然是绝大部分中国国际移民的首选目的地,但唯有长乐人(福州人)能大规模移民美国,创造了在20年间近20万人成功地从一个仅60多万人口的县级市移民美国的奇迹。     

Organizing for British national strategy

In December 1968 Ernest May asked how the US government could gain access to ‘long‐headed’ staffers to provide greater strategic depth to foreign policy. The challenge of long‐term strategy persists: how should government be organized to support it, how can the right people be found to staff it and how can political leaders make time for longer‐term policy‐making given the challenge of the immediate? The policy planning staff in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have traditionally had the task of supporting longer‐range, broader foreign policy. A small group of diplomats—later leavened by externals from the media, non‐profit and private sectors—was meant to generate an improved approach to British interests and policy. As Robert Wade‐Gery recalls of its role in the 1960s, there was a push to forge fresh links with outside thinking. Did it work? Former policy planners can be circumspect about its achievements. One former British planner said he felt like ‘a spare part rattling around in a tin’, while former American planners have written about the challenge of injecting fresh thinking when detached from decision‐making. Other planners were dragged into operational work or speechwriting. Many planners nonetheless enjoyed the opportunity to think more broadly. Policy planning can be intellectually rich without being the source of actionable strategic thinking about the long‐term national interest. This article suggests that a greater focus on people rather than systems might help to foster more strategic, anticipatory and innovative thinking about the national interest.     

Peculiar Living Shrines and Yuan Governance as Background to Ming Populism

Although post-mortem apotheosis and secular honor in temples have received more attention, shrines to living men were also ordinary institutions from Han times onwards in Chinese history. Previous scholarship so far on pre-mortem shrines in Tang and Song relates them to pre-mortem commemoration in inscribed records of local commendation on the one hand and Neo-Confucian Daoxue Shrines to Local Worthies on the other. That scholarly work suggests that Tang and Song premortem shrines when political were basically elite institutions; and that when common people were involved their motivations were religious rather than political. In Ming times, by contrast, premortem shrines were normatively established by commoners and constituted a venue for popular political participation, while the steles commemorating the shrines explicitly argued that non-elite people had the right to political speech. This article speculates, as a hypothesis awaiting further research, that both Yuan modes of government generally, and creative uses of premortem enshrinement in Yuan times specifically, may have contributed to Ming populism.     

城中村外来人口的购房意愿研究——以深圳为例

本文以快速城市化的典型地区深圳作为研究区域,以居住在城中村的外来人口作为研究对象,调查其居住现状以及购房意愿,并分析其购房意愿的影响因素。分析发现,通过影响住房改善需求、未来发展规划、购房能力等,户主年龄、户主学历、住深时间、家庭收入、现住房的租金以及满意度、户主户口以及留深发展意愿对城中村外来人口家庭购房意愿有着显著的影响。     

VARYING EFFECT OF FERTILITY DETERMINANTS AMONG MIGRANT AND INDIGENOUS FEMALES IN THE TRANSITIONAL AGRO-ECOLOGICAL ZONE OF GHANA

The transitional agro‐ecological zone of Ghana, located between the richly endowed south and the impoverished north, has attracted seasonal and permanent farm migrants, mainly from northern Ghana, who now live side by side with the indigenous people. While migrants have higher numbers of Muslims, indigenous people are mainly Christians. Although the majority of the migrants live in migrant quarters with less favourable socio‐economic conditions, they are more successful farmers and therefore wealthier. The objectives are to examine the varying effect of fertility determinants among migrants and indigenous females. This paper uses data collected in 2002 among 194 females aged 15 to 49 years. Multiple regression models are used to assess fertility determinants. Results show that although migrant households were wealthier, migrant females were more traditional. They had more children living in foster care, and a lower proportion of them approved of men participating in household activities. In addition, they were less well educated, recorded higher infant mortality, gave birth earlier and used less contraception. Furthermore, while a female's migration status is statistically significant so far as non‐proximate determinants of fertility are concerned, the same variable is not significant with respect to proximate determinants. In addition, a married female migrant would on average have almost one more child compared to her indigenous counterpart, and migrant females who had experienced the loss of a child would on average have 2.5 more children compared to their indigenous counterparts. Finally, more affluent migrant females have 0.08 fewer children compared to their indigenous counterpart.     

Dead missionaries,wild Sentinelese: An anthropological review of a global media event

This article aims to shed light on the background to a media event that occupied the world press, and even more the digital media, for a few weeks at the end of last year. The trope of the violent ‘murder’ of a white missionary by one of the last ‘uncontacted tribes’ is likely to evoke a variety of Western projections. Ultimately, it is about power over images, interpretations and how we want to behave towards isolated groups of people in today’s world: leave them alone? Protect them from the culture of violence at the fringe of their territories or contact them now and support them in the long term? An anthropological reading of the case does not lead to a simple answer to this question, but it might help in getting a more informed perspective on a complex subject matter.     

Critical tourism scholars: brokers of hope

Abstract

The past four decades of tourism research have demonstrated that the field would be impoverished without recognising the human aspect of scientific inquiry. The contributions made through critical approaches, Indigenous perspectives, qualitative methods and morally instilled concepts such as ‘sustainability’ or ‘community development’ have accentuated that tourism scholars are not detached and value-free producers of knowledge. Rather, our gender, ethnicity, personal and political views enter research agendas and actively shape knowledge. Alarmed by a host of social, economic, environmental, political and ethical concerns, and motivated to end injustice, inequality, oppression and discrimination, we also circumnavigate hope. However, researchers’ relationships with hope can be problematic, as evidenced by the recent tensions within critical tourism scholarship. In order to examine the extent to which hope ought to be part of tourism research, it is important to engage with the notion of hope seriously and methodically. By drawing on different varieties of hope, it is argued that these can underpin research projects to different degrees, including critical hope, hope-as-utopia, transformative hope, radical hope and pragmatic hope. It is emphasised that hope is connected to critical research in elementary ways and plays a vital role in envisioning a more just, inclusive, sustainable and equitable world. The acknowledgment of hope as part of critical research is particularly valuable amid the COVID-19 pandemic – an event with devastating consequences for communities worldwide. Through a hopeful lens, our momentary loss of tourism may bring with it a renewed appreciation and care, which has been eroded by rampant commodification and comatose consumerism. The hope driving post COVID-19 visions of tourism is argued to lie in more thoughtful and responsible engagement with tourism, and in our ability to positively transform it.     

Dialectical movements with the Toba people in the Argentine Chaco

Since 1998, I have undertaken fieldwork with the Indigenous peoples of the Argentine Chaco, focusing initially on their dances and embodied practices. After this ethnographic research, I began to think more deeply about the relationships between fieldwork and reflexivity and the possibilities of redefining analytical categories in the global South. The purpose of this article is to revisit my emphasis on a ‘dialectical approach to embodiment’ as a starting point for analysing cultural transformation in Latin America. I argue that this methodological approach has been closely linked to the interweaving of conflicting embodied experiences and peripheral geopolitical locations. In this regard I analyse how the contradictory experiences identified in my fieldwork with the Toba people, and also in my intersubjective and geopolitical positions as a Latin American academic woman, led me to a critical re-examination of dialectics. Further, I describe how this methodological approach, while well received among Latin American scholars has to some degree been resisted by (North) American and British scholars, and I explore the geopolitical implications of these disparate academic positions. Through these critical movements, I hope to contribute to rethinking dialectics in postcolonial contexts, adding some embodied voices from the Latin American South.     

The Production and Exchange of Marine Shell Prestige Goods

Marine shell ornaments have several characteristics that make them significant for archaeological analysis. Made from a raw material valued by cultures throughout the world and imbued with water, life, health, and fertility symbolism, shell objects have functioned as prestige goods. Shell prestige goods circulated between individuals, groups, and societies and materialized interpersonal relationships, making them valuable for archaeologists shifting focus from objects to the people in past societies. Shell ornaments had multiple roles, including ornamentation, wealth, marking status, and as ritual paraphernalia, and had varying symbolic associations even within a society. The rich ethnographic literature on shell use provides a source for archaeological model building. Marine shell artifacts often moved between societies and across long distances, offering a way for archaeologists to explore regional relationships and the interactions between ancient societies. To do this requires using several scales of analysis to investigate archaeological residues of a system that includes marine shell ornaments, the social organization of their production and exchange, and the people who made, displayed, and circulated them.     

论王劭魏澹修史

隋朝修史也是有成绩的。隋朝史官王劭与魏澹在修史方面做的工作、取得的成绩 ,从一个侧面反映了隋朝修史的成就。他们的修史工作也有失误。     

明清鄂西南土家族地区民族的分布与变迁

在明代及清初 ,鄂西南土家族地区民族分布存在土蛮集中分布的土司区和汉蛮杂居区两大区域 ;土司区内民族构成中土蛮占绝大多数 ,汉蛮杂居区内汉人、土蛮间比例几乎相等。清代改土归流后 ,由于大量流民的涌入 ,形成土蛮大分散小聚居分布 ,汉、苗等兄弟民族插花般镶嵌分布的格局 ;民族构成转变为以汉族人居多、以土蛮为少数民族主体的构成格局。明清时期导致该地区民族分布与构成及其变化的因素有自然和人文两方面 ,自然因素提供变化的可能 ,人为因素决定变化的方向。当前该地区的发展还得多从人文方面着手。     

《今水经·浈水》考释

北江是珠江的三大支流之一, 对广东省有着重要的意义。黄宗羲《今水经》以“浈水”的名义, 对其加以记载, 但其中错误甚多。本文试图通过考证的方式, 对北江的源头、支流、入海情况一一辨正之, 试图把一个完整的北江水系呈现在读者面前, 为进一步进行对北江的历史地理研究做基础性的工作。