History, Memory, and Identity in Modern Singapore: Testimonies from the Urban Margins

In 2006–2007, I interviewed elderly Singaporeans on theirexperiences of resettlement from an urban kampong (village)to emergency public housing after a great fire in 1961. I learnedmuch about the lives of semiautonomous dwellers in an unauthorizedsettlement and the individual and social transformation followingtheir rehousing. My informants also highlighted what the experiencesmeant to them and their identity in a modern city-state. Thispaper treats the testimonies as both source and social memoryand seeks to avoid the essentialism into which many social historians,oral history practitioners, and memory scholars have fallenin their approach toward the craft. As a source of social history,when used in conjunction with other historical sources, thereminiscences are patently useful for understanding the roleof public housing in transforming a marginal population intoan integrated citizenry. This enables the writing of a new socialhistory of postwar Singapore that departs from the discursiveofficial accounts of urban kampong life and of the 1961 inferno.At the same time, the oral history also underlines powerfulsocial and political influences on individual memory, beingmarked by nostalgia for the kampong and ambivalence toward theimagined character of younger Singaporeans. Statements on therumors of government-inspired arson in the 1961 calamity, however,constitute a significant countermyth in contemporary society,revealing a more critical side to the social memory.     

Vengeance, justice and the reactions in the Revolutionary Midi

This article explores the nature of political conflict, violenceand justice in the Midi provençal during the French Revolution.It emphasizes the continuity of conflict between rival factionsdividing most communes in the region throughout the Revolutionarydecade, conflict that frequently issued in individual and collectiveviolence, most notoriously the prison massacres of the WhiteTerror (or the Reaction, as it was known among contemporaries)at Aix, Tarascon and Marseille in the spring of 1795. Thesemassacres, among the most spectacular expressions of collectivevengeance and popular justice in the Revolution, presented thenascent judicial system of the Revolution with some of its greatestchallenges in the pursuit and punishment of these crimes, notleast because of the political partiality of the judicial authorities.This article further illustrates how the phenomenon of multipleReactions between warring factions, representing fundamentalsocio-economic differences and competing visions of the Republic,provides an understanding of the whole Revolutionary processin the region.     

The Chora and the Great Church: Intervisuality in Fourteenth-Century Constantinople

Abstract

In Gregoras' history, the most important building project during the second decade of the fourteenth century is not Theodore Metochites' redecoration of the Chora monastery, but Andronikos II's restoration of II. Sophia and the nearby column of Justinian. Two mosaics at the Chora, the Deesis in the inner narthex and the adjacent lunette of Metochites and Christ, make visual reference to the Great Church. The nature of such relationships is explored through reference to Mikhail Bakhtin and his analysis of dialogic language.     

Laughter and Truth in Fiji: What We May Learn from a Joke

This paper examines a series of events which took place in a Fijian village in the late 1980s and which, for the ethnographer, brought into question joking, lying and telling the truth. The analysis suggests that our ideas of what language is good for necessarily inform our understanding of the truth conditions of what is said, from which it follows that truth may be regarded not as an absolute, but as a function of the moral force of language — itself an historical phenomenon that is embedded in, and constituted through, the everyday social relations that we may analyse in terms of gender, kinship, chiefship, and ideas of the person. Laughter emerges as central both to the events described and their analysis. Subtle though they may be, people's ideas of the moral force of language are amenable to investigation and analysis; but for all we may learn from laughter, it ultimately eludes any analysis — an observation that provides the key to its revelatory force.     

From Sacred Mystery to Divine Deception: Robert Holkot, John Wyclif and the Transformation of Fourteenth-Century Eucharistic Discourse

In his extremely popular preaching handbook the Summa praedicantium , in a chapter devoted to the Eucharist, the fourteenth-century Dominican John Bromyard relates an exemplum about a certain holy man. This man's "faith towards the sacrament was so great," Bromyard writes, that it was often said that were Christ himself to enter "the church during the elevation of the host, the man would not go to look at him, and in so doing lose sight of the host." ¹ While it lacks the spectacular firepower that characterizes so many Eucharistic miracle stories, that characterize so many of Bromyard's own stories — like the one about the bees who construct a honeycomb tabernacle and buzz chants to honour a hive-hidden host — in many ways it does more than most to move us to the very centre of the medieval Eucharistic experience. ² It is, when all is said and done, a story about belief and about the miracle of the Eucharist. This unnamed holy man does not need to get up, does not need to hurry over to greet Christ at the door. He does not need to do any of these things because he already sees Christ right there in the upraised hands of the priest, in the consecrated host.     

A Father,a Daughter and a Procurator: Authority and Resistance in the Prison Memoir of Perpetua of Carthage

The prison narrative attributed to the early third‐century Christian martyr Perpetua of Carthage has long attracted attention because of its dramatic portrayal of a Roman father's failure to extract obedience from his adult daughter as he tries to dissuade her from allowing herself to be punished as an enemy of the Roman state. This study explores the alignment between paternal authority and the authority of the Roman procurator Hilarianus in Perpetua's narrative, considering how the civic spaces of forum and arena became theatres for both filial and civil disobedience.     

Cities in a pandemic: Evidence from China

This paper studies the impact of urban density, city government efficiency, and medical resources on COVID-19 infection and death outcomes in China. We adopt a simultaneous spatial dynamic panel data model to account for (i) the simultaneity of infection and death outcomes, (ii) the spatial pattern of the transmission, (iii) the intertemporal dynamics of the disease, and (iv) the unobserved city-specific and time-specific effects. We find that, while population density increases the level of infections, government efficiency significantly mitigates the negative impact of urban density. We also find that the availability of medical resources improves public health outcomes conditional on lagged infections. Moreover, there exists significant heterogeneity at different phases of the epidemiological cycle.     

Unmanaging the past: Truth,data and the human being

Management systems in archaeology seek to impose the scientific objective‐reductionist paradigm on archaeologists and their data. This orthodoxy has been enshrined in English Heritage's document Management of Archaeological Projects (English Heritage 1991) which prescribes rigorous application of a standardized methodology. MAP II, as it is known, is based on a processual model in which ‘data’ enter at one end and valuable archaeology emerges at the other. Such a view not only lacks any appreciation of the distinctions between ‘data’ and ‘information’ but also fails to acknowledge the beliefs and values which underpin the decision‐making criteria crucial to the model. In this paper we argue for an approach which un‐manages the past — by building relativistic humans into our strategies for dealing with the past. Examples are given which demonstrate how such an approach might work in practice.     

"Testimonies from the Field": The Coming of Christian Science to Australia, c. 1890–1910*

The account of the coming of Christian Science to Australia given in this article is based on testimony contributed by early adherents to the two main church publications, The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel , supplemented by Church records and other sources. The first two decades are covered, from the earliest known intimations of interest to the death of Mary Baker Eddy in 1910, when a Christian Science presence in Australia was assured. Interest shown by writer Miles Franklin, and her association with Melbourne adherents such as leading feminist Vida Goldstein, provides the starting point. The focus is on positive responses. It is postulated that in addition to the documentary and expressive value of the testimonies, they point to problems of class and health in turn-of-the-century Australia. A preponderance of women in both the testimonies and the practice is evidenced, and the openness of progressive women to new approaches is noted. With reference to male testimony, it is suggested that further research into responses to American ways in religion by the urban midle class would be very valuable.