Survey work in Mesopotamia during the war

The advent of North Sea oil transformed the relatively depressed Aberdeen economy through inward investment and employment opportunities in the oil supply industry. As a consequence of the fall in oil prices in 1985–86, Aberdeen is faced with economic uncertainty, and this has prompted responses by the local planning authority and the private sector.     

略论傅作霖在华之工作

本文研究葡萄牙传教士傅作霖入华进京的背景、在华期间的活动情况和科学工作,特别指出傅作霖长期参与和主持钦天监的日常工作,参与天文仪器制作,乾隆时期还参与了大地测量工作,对中西科学交流做出了贡献。     

The Legacy of the Vietnam War: Making a Living amid Unexploded Ordnance in Xieng Khouang Province,Northern Laos

Laos was drawn into the Second Indochina War, making the country the most heavily bombed country on earth. Although the war ended more than four decades ago, unexploded ordnance (UXO) continues to kill and injure civilians. In many provinces UXO constitutes the major hindrance to socioeconomic development and obstacle to local people earning a decent living. The aim of this article is to examine the ways in which local people have developed livelihood strategies to survive in dangerous environments through the lens of sustainable livelihood perspectives. This article argues that livelihood improvements in Xieng Khouang Province should be characterised as a bottom-up phenomenon. UXO is still a major concern for the government and local people with respect to achieving development objectives. As the financial resources for UXO clearance are limited, education is a powerful tool for creating awareness of UXO risks among local people. The research suggests that more resources should be mobilised to deal with UXO problems.     

The work of Norbert Elias

This paper argues that the moral legitimating reasoning of terra nullius assumed an under-recognised, different guise in the later years of colonial justification in the form of trusteeship. The idea of terra nullius has a central place in the political thought of thinkers such as Grotius and Locke. Although terra nullius, consolidated in European colonial thought in the early modern period, differed conceptually from the doctrine of trusteeship as the colonial legitimation for Africa, both instituted a moral justification for the appropriation of native land, and of empire itself.

The contention is that the trajectory from the one doctrine to the other was aligned with the change in the underlying moral framework of the rights and duties of Europeans and non-Europeans. In the early days of colonisation, there was a certain permissiveness on the part of the colonisers to appropriate the land of American Indians. By the late nineteenth century this seemed to change into a moral requirement for civilising the native Africans. Edmund Burke's conceptualisation of trusteeship illustrates the way in which traditionally conceived natural rights were transformed into fundamental social rights, and central to this idea was the expansion of European ‘civilised’ moral communities on which rights now depended.     

The work of Paul Ginsborg

This paper introduces a panel discussion of the work of Paul Ginsborg on contemporary Italian politics and society. A brief introduction to the studies under discussion is followed by comments from Judith Chubb, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Charles S. Maier that focus, respectively, on: the broader problems of the development of civil society and the rule of law in Southern Italy; popular culture, culture and civil society; and the role of politics in shaping contemporary Italy.     

海源阁刻书考

世人皆知海源阁藏书楼庋藏宏富,据王绍曾先生最新统计,其藏书达四千三百余部,十七万九千余卷①;海源阁藏书重宋元佳椠,其镇阁之宝"四经四史"传为我国藏书史上一段佳话.其实,海源阁刻书亦成绩斐然,但多年来为藏书成就所掩,且偶或散见篇章中亦说法不一.笔者经过多方考证,终于摸清海源阁刻书之底蕴.笔者以为海源阁刻书虽不能与以专事刻书售书的汲古阁等相提并论,但以海源阁刻书之内容及质量而言,它同样为保存传播我国文化起到了重要作用.     

The ideological work of the daily visual representations of nations

This paper explores the ideological work performed by the inconspicuous flagging of the nation across four locations: Bucharest (Romania), Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Calgary (Canada) and Madrid (Spain). Using data collected between 2012 and 2016, the paper maps the use of the nation in outdoor signage across different urban landscapes. This mundane flagging of diverse nations performs a triple function: it reproduces the nation as a universal epistemic category, it entrenches mobility within the imaginary of contemporary urban life and it sanitises select mobilities and the power dynamics producing them. The ongoing use of the nation by different objects in our urban surroundings participates in the naturalisation of nationalism, furthering existing trends in the commercialisation of the nation and its reinvention as an innocuous brand addressing a global marketplace.