Interactive nationhood: the relation between Croatian and Yugoslav national identity in the interwar period

Croatian and Yugoslav national identity have been closely connected throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. This article questions the assumption that Croatian national identification inherently opposed the Yugoslav nationalising efforts of the interwar Yugoslav state by means of a study of commemorative activities. In the commemoration of the millennial anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom in 1925, the Yugoslav level of national identity was activated as a complement to Croatian national identity. During the 1930s, commemorations of Matija Gubec and the Illyrian movement conveyed a mutually exclusive relation between Croatian and Yugoslav national identity. I argue that the dismissal of grassroots Croatian historical commemorations that were indifferent but not averse to Yugoslav nationhood in the integral Yugoslav policy of the authoritarian state during the 1930s curtailed the potential of these commemorations as vehicles for Yugoslav national identification and complicated the concurrence of Croatian and Yugoslav nationhood.     

Marriage and Kinship in South India,South America,and the USSR: Essays from three cultural perspectives

Dumont, Louis. Affinity as a Value: Marriage Alliance in South India, with Comparative Essays on Australia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. x + 230 pp. including references and index. $22.00.

Kensinger, Kenneth M., ed. Marriage Practices in Lowland South America. Illinois Studies in Anthropology, No. 14. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. x + 297 pp. including references and index. $19.95.

Dragadze, Tamara, ed. Kinship and Marriage in the Soviet Union: Field Studies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. xiii + 269 pp. including brief guide to Soviet ethnographic journals. $39.95.     

We have tailored Africa: French colonialism and the ‘artificiality’ of Africa’s borders in the interwar period

After the First World War, the discourse and methods used to determine and define boundaries changed radically. In Europe, the territorial agreements of 1919-20 put forward an ideal of territorial homogeneity, a concept based on the ideal correspondence of state, nation and territory. Meanwhile, in Africa, the French colonizers were also reconsidering their spatial arrangements along the same lines. In this context, the expertise of the social sciences became crucial in defining territory and therefore in political decision-making. At the same time, prominent representatives of the new colonial sciences were responsible for developing and disseminating the idea of the 'artificiality' of African boundaries. This new generation of experts on French colonization considered the borders of Africa to be scars left behind by the old and arbitrary colonial order, which they wished to see replaced by a more humanistic rule. Their discourses, however, offered a vision of Africa based on the continent's exceptional character. In essence, Africa was considered as a continent defined principally along ethnic territorial lines, a logic excluding any political definition of territory. This discourse contributed to redefining the continent as something radically other.     

后现代、现代性重建与中国的现代性问题

后现代主义对现代性的批判为人们提供了一个理解现代的有益视角,它有利于揭示现代性充满矛盾和悖论的一面,促使人们加强对现代性的反思并发掘其尚未释放的理性潜能,从而实现现代性的重建。就中国的后现代主义者而言,他们对现代性的批判过多地集中于剖析其“西化”本质,忽视了现代性的某些普遍内涵,使中国的现代性问题局限于中西对立的二元视野。客观地评价中国的现代性,就应当突破上述理论框架,认识到现代性中所包含的普遍性与特殊性之间的张力,同时借鉴后现代主义的建设性作用,努力实现现代性的解放功能。     

新四军文化建设的内容、特色与主要经验

新四军的发展壮大,除了其自身合法的国民革命军身份、广大官兵的浴血奋战和人民群众的鼎力支持外,文化建设也是其发展壮大的因素之一.新四军文化建设的历史同新四军的发展壮大、胜利的历史是紧密结合在一起的.在树立和落实科学发展观、建设社会主义和谐社会的新阶段,回顾新四军文化建设的主要内容,探讨其文化建设的个性特色,总结其文化建设的宝贵经验,对于今天的中国特色社会主义文化建设无疑具有重要的理论和现实意义.     

Maps,Mapping, Modernity: Art and Cartography in the Twentieth Century

While the history of cartography has freed itself from debilitating debates over the scientific and artistic status of maps, considerations of the relationship between art and cartography have continued to focus largely on pre‐modern maps, avoiding critical examination of twentieth‐century art and science in cartography and leaving intact the impression that these followed distinct paths in the modern period. In this paper, however, I have drawn on theoretical work in Science Studies and taken account of modern art's separation from aesthetics to suggest that an examination of art and cartography in the twentieth century should focus on mapping practices rather than on maps as such. A summary overview of modern‐art movements and selected works indicates a continued, if critical, engagement of avant‐garde artists with cartography, and the examination of more popular newspaper artwork produced in the context of the intensely modern visual culture of mid‐twentieth century Los Angeles indicates a similarly close connection between modernity, art and cartography.     

论思想文化战线上党的执政能力建设

党在思想文化战线上的执政能力和执政水平,是党的执政能力建设的重要组成部分。在当今世界经济全球化、政治多极化、文化多元化的新形势下,提高思想文化战线上党的执政能力和执政水平,对于坚定人们的共产主义理想和中国特色社会主义信念具有极其重要的意义。     

The Politics of Suffering: Progress,Modernity and the Adolescent Crisis

A concern for progress is central to the public agendas of modern societies. Political actors compete with one another mainly with regard to their respective claims to bring about a better future, particularly in the economic and technological spheres. The focus on progress has, however, deeper roots which date back to the aspirations of the Enlightenment. Around that time, the belief arose that systematic improvements are made possible by the structural features of modern society and culture, improvements that will gradually release humanity from much of the suffering characterising its historical past. This article argues the persistence of a culture of progress, rather than easing suffering, in fact enhances and mobilises it for the pursuit of superficial forms of gain. It is also claimed the attempt by Habermas' critical theory to develop a broader and more satisfactory conception of progress fails to address this problem. The article suggests an alternative and more fundamental critique of progressive ideas is required. It reflects upon these abstract theoretical questions in connection with the concrete example of the 'adolescent crisis' and the role ideas of progress play within it.     

Uncontrolled urban housing in interwar Greece: the rise of the city in urban and national politics

The case of urban housing in interwar Greece was unique. After the end of the war in Asia Minor in 1922 almost 1.3 million Greek Orthodox refugees transferred from Turkey to Greece in the first obligatory exchange of populations in world history. Until that time accommodation and property were the privilege of the rich and there was no consideration for public housing as welfare to cater for the needs of low-income people. This paper explores how the impact of uncontrolled housing in the urban centres of interwar Greece led to the emergence of the town in urban and national politics. It will investigate how the uncontrolled housing defined different spatial configurations and reflected various forms of power relations. It will examine how the need for housing of the masses of refugees led to the collapse of the limited infrastructure and had a catalytic effect on town planning. It will also analyse how urban issues were raised on the political agenda and the way that cities produced electoral behaviours that changed the political map of the country.     

War,Modernity, and Motion in the Edison Films of 1898

This essay examines films created by the Edison Company of the US military campaign in the Caribbean in 1898 and their projection and reception in Vaudeville theaters and other similar venues in the larger urban areas of the US. Through an analysis of these films in regards to their production and reception contexts, it discusses relationships between entertainment, nationalism, and colonialism in this early cinema. Features foregrounding technology, production capacity, tourism, and military campaigns in tropical settings are examined in order to explore the blurred boundaries between journalism and entertainment in the context and how specifically the technology of the incipient cinema shaped these perceptions. The venues, in which they were exhibited, situated these war films within larger variety shows including oddities, acrobats, skits, and musical entertainment, together with technological exhibitions involving devices revered for both their destructive and constructive capabilities. It considers, furthermore, how tourism and the possibilities for travel related to the war shaped entertainment and dialogued with public desires regarding American empire and the roles of the Caribbean and, by relation, Latin America in these scenarios. The essay seeks to underscore, finally, how these films, and the war that they attempt to depict, resonated deeply with a type of audience and a corresponding mode of spectatorship that would come to expect an entertaining dimension in journalism.     

‘The second coming of the Lord’: early christianization,episodic time,and the cultural construction of continuity in Sibog

The conversion to Christianity in Melanesia has often been accompanied by the expectation of an imminent millennium. The expectation of a comprehensive and almost immediate transformation could be read as an expression of a cultural concept which sees real change as an occurrence premised on discontinuity and resulting in the total transformation of society. In reconsidering a millenarian movement among the Ngaing around 1930, I suggest that, in this concept of change, a cultural schema is manifested that has durability over time. Expectations aroused and actions undertaken during early Christianization have been influenced by this concept as have Sibog reflections on these past events, with their stressing of continuity in certain cultural domains.