Colonial Institutions: Uses,Subversions, and Material Afterlives

Archaeologically based explorations of colonialism or institutions are common case-studies in global historical archaeology, but the “colonial institution”—the role of institutions as operatives of colonialism—has often been neglected. In this thematic edition we argue that in order to fully understand the interconnected, global world one must explicitly dissect the colonial institution as an entwined, dual manifestation that is central to understanding both power and power relations in the modern world. Following Ann Laura Stoler, we have selected case studies from the Australia, Europe, UK and the USA which reveal that the study of colonial institutions should not be limited to the functional life of these institutions—or solely those that take the form of monumental architecture—but should include the long shadow of “imperial debris” (Stoler 2008) and immaterial institutions.     

孙中山与晚清革命党人社会背景的再认识

孙中山早期革命(晚清时期)的社会背景(或基础)不是资产阶级,他所领导的革命也不是资产阶级革命。兴中会时期,他所依赖的社会力量是背离了传统社会体制、率先接受西方影响的边缘阶层,其社会基础十分薄弱,所以他的革命活动到处碰壁。1901年以后,孙中山转向新政中产生的追求民族主义目标的新知识分子,由于革命得到这一新社会精英阶层的认同,社会基础迅速扩大,终获辛亥革命的成功。     

Coming of Age: Law,Sex and Childhood in Late Colonial India

This article revisits child‐marriage legislation in colonial India between 1891 and 1929 to re‐envision the ‘child’ as a subject constituted by laws governing sex, rather than as an a priori object requiring protection from patriarchal sexual norms. Focusing on the digital construction of the child in the twentieth century, this essay introduces a new angle from which to examine recent conclusions regarding child‐marriage reform in India. By drawing attention to an understudied figure, this article demonstrates the ways in which the problem of the child might transform understandings of the nation and its women; the universe of rights and the location of culture and the place of age as number in the formulation of legal subjectivities, colonial governmentality and humanitarian accounting in late colonial India.     

How Peasants Become Revolutionaries: Some Cases from Latin America and Southeast Asia

Most of the material used in this article was collected while the author worked for ILO in Latin America and Southeast Asia. The opinions expressed are those of the author. This is a revised version of a paper that will be published in World Anthropology, Proceedings of the IXth International Conference of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences 1973 (Mouton, forthcoming).     

The Grammar of Domination and the Subjection of Agency: Colonial Texts and Modes of Evidence

This article focuses on colonial accounts of the killing of the Xhosa chief, Hintsa, in 1835 at the hands of British forces along what came to be known as the eastern Cape frontier. It explores the evidentiary procedures and protocols through which the event came to be narrated in colonial frames of intelligibility. In proposing a strategy for reading the colonial archive, the paper strategically interrupts the flow from an apartheid historiography to what is commonly referred to as ‘alternative history.’ The aim in effecting this interruption is to call attention to the enabling possibilities of critical history. This is achieved not by way of declaration but rather through a practice whereby the foundational category of evidence is problematized. The paper alludes to the limits of alternative history and its approaches to evidence on the one hand, and the conditions of complicity within which evidence is produced on the other. Whereas alternative history identifies its task as one of rewriting South African history, critical history, it issuggested, offers the opportunity to reconstitute the field of history by addressing the sites of its production and also its practices. In exploring the production of the colonial record on the killing of Hintsa, the paper seeks to complicate alternative history's slippage in and out of the evidentiary rules established by colonial domination even as it constitutes the category ofevidence as an object for a politics of history of the present.     

Democratization, Legitimacy and Political Change in Central Asia

This article examines the concepts of democracy and legitimacy in the context of post-Soviet Central Asia. Its first argument is that democratization projects have lived through hard times in five Central Asian countries despite the failure of the institutional expression of democracy to incorporate the values and structures of these societies. The Soviet legacy of cynicism combined with local conservative political culture obstructs the emergence of democratic values and processes crucial for successful institutional development. If democracy does not provide a basis for political legitimacy, should the conclusion be that the ruling regimes are illegitimate? The article’s second argument is that the current sources of legitimacy stem from the fact that the regimes managed to cope with the initial challenges of post-communist transition with relative success and laid the foundation of the new states. Moreover, the populations do not see viable alternatives to the present order. However, there are new problems, such as mounting social tensions, regionalization and criminalization of politics. These challenges are largely a by-product of developments in the post-independence era. The continuing legitimacy of the regimes will depend on their ability to cope with these new, highly problematic issues.     

Animal Use and the Urban Landscape in Colonial Charleston, South Carolina, USA

The quantity and variety of animals contributing to foodways and landscapes are often overlooked in studies of urban colonial experiences. In colonial Charleston, South Carolina (USA), wild and domestic animals contributed to a unique lowcountry cuisine. Some of these animals lived in the city where their activities shaped, and were shaped by, the urban landscape. Many aspects of the environment were designed to accommodate and restrict these animals. Excavations at two eighteenth-century sites provide more detailed views of the changing role of animals in the lowcountry foodways and landscape from 1720 into the 1800s.     

英印殖民时期的缅甸华人及其政治参与——从1923年仰光华社迎接英印总督访缅谈起

论文利用中英文资料,以仰光唐人街为出发点,探讨缅华社会从19世纪中期开始,在殖民地多元种族下的传承和变迁。尤其借助1923—1924年英印总督访缅这一背景事件,剖析华社在这一帝国正式场合上的表现和各方反应,并借此探讨20世纪20年代缅华社区的结构、冲突和转型及其与殖民地主流社会的政治互动,展现缅华这一个既有南洋华侨华人共性又不失本土特色的亚洲移民群体及其殖民经历。