Rural settlement and economic development in Southern Italy: Troia and its contado, c.1020 - c.1230

The history of urban life in Southern Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries was particularly disjointed. At varying points many of the regions' cities were subject to the domination of petty Lombard princes, Byzantine emperors, Norman dukes and, as one passes into the twelfth century, Sicilian kings and German emperors. This paper uses the case of the northern Apulian city of Troia to show that, below this surface of political discontinuity, it is possible to discern a different understanding of an urban history. In highlighting the significance of the economic development of Troia's surrounding territory and the manner in which this created a damaging rivalry with the neighbouring settlement of Foggia, this essay emphasises the need to take into account local (and not only wider-ranging political) influences on the shaping of medieval south Italian urban life. In this context the paper also considers the importance of the development of a stable local government and a burgeoning civic conscience at Troia.     

民俗——日常情景中的中国人的精神生活

民俗和人类的精神生活有着天然的切合。相对于人类在社会上的外在活动,精神生活是人类内在创造、传递和体验精神价值的心意活动,而民俗则是人类日常情     

Negotiating Neoliberal Empowerment: Aboriginal People,Educational Restructuring,and Academic Labour in the North of British Columbia,Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are gaining influence in post‐secondary education through Aboriginal‐directed programs and policies in non‐Aboriginal institutions. However, these gains have occurred alongside, and in some cases through, neoliberal reforms to higher education. This article explores the political consequences of the neoliberal institutionalization of First Nations empowerment for public sector unions and workers. We examine a case where the indigenization of a community college in British Columbia was embedded in neoliberal reforms that ran counter to the interests of academic instructors. Although many union members supported indigenization, many also possessed a deep ambivalence about the change. Neoliberal indigenization increased work intensity, decreased worker autonomy and promoted an educational philosophy that prioritized labour market needs over liberal arts. This example demonstrates how the integration of Aboriginal aspirations into neoliberal processes of reform works to rationalize public sector restructuring, constricting labour agency and the possibilities for alliances between labour and Aboriginal peoples.     

Healthy for Family Life: Television, Masculinity, and Domestic Modernity during West Germany's Miracle Years

This article uses the history of West German television as alens to analyse the politics of consumption and domestic modernityduring the ‘economic miracle’ in the 1950s and early1960s. Politicians, academics, broadcast executives, industrypromoters, clerical leaders, and cultural critics engaged ina ferocious debate about the effects of the new mass media onWest German society and family. While some championed the democratizingand modernizing effects of television, others decried its supposedlytotalitarian and ‘feminizing’ qualities; their arguments,pro and con, marked a foundational moment in contemporary culturalcriticism that continues to resonate. Installed in the familyhome, television accelerated the arrival of a highly commodifiedsociety and transformed the private habits of everyday life.Men in particular began to spend more leisure time on domesticpursuits, crossing traditional boundaries between public andprivate gender roles. Such private practices had larger effects:buying, watching, and thinking through television helped replacetraditionalist social conservatism with its neoliberal variantand linked West Germany into the social, political, and culturalstructures of corporate capitalism and western consumer society.