Time After Time

Summary

This essay is an analysis of a series of writings by the Australian intellectual historian Ian Hunter on the subject of ‘theory’. It examines the methodological issues raised by attempting to write a history of theory. The essay particularly seeks to analyse the various aporias at stake in Hunter's project: between the empirical and the transcendental, between history and the event, and between theory and ‘empirical’ history.     

The Newer New Life: A.S. Byatt,E. Nesbit and Socialist Subculture

This article considers the political implications of Victorian language-study for Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution (1837) (reprinted and edited by K.J. Fielding and David Sorensen (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1989)). I investigate how Carlyle responded to the scientific study of language with what he termed a ‘bodied word’, a reading of language based in the word-become-flesh or the doctrine of the Incarnation. I show how this bodied word reflects wider changes in modern conceptions of the polity in the wake of the French Revolution, in the shift from a hereditary body politic towards what critics have termed a ‘social body’ or a more broadly inclusive model that incorporates the working classes. I then offer a reading of The French Revolution to show how Carlyle's French history was crucial to the linguistic and conceptual production of this liberal notion of the social body, even as he worked both to acknowledge and contain its political agency.     

Beach Boys Do It Too: Subculture and Commoditised Desire in a Transnational Tourist Site in Kerala,South India

This article is based on an ethnographic study of a group of Scheduled Caste (SC) male youth in a globalised tourist site in Kerala, South India, who participate in situational sexual and romantic relationships with predominantly tourist women from the global north. We first aim to expand on the “sex and romance tourism” literature of such encounters to provide an Indian context. Secondly, we aim to highlight how young men involved in such encounters undertake complex mediations of localised and global forms of consumption and commoditisation to participate in the neoliberal tourist market place. Mainly by way of a subculture known as the Jungees, we describe how young men utilise the former processes to seek economic and social mobility for themselves and their families but also to valorise and re-imagine their identity along racial, gendered, caste and class-based dimensions. Finally, we explore the young men’s articulation of a hierarchy of preferred encounters that draws on gendered, sexualised and racialised local and global imaginaries of commoditised desire(s) of tourist women from the global north. We highlight the ways in which participants actively utilise the neoliberal context to engage in a range of self-generated livelihood strategies and to contest their marginality.     

Belarus' Ten Years After Chernobyl'

A recognized world authority on the history and consequences of the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl' nuclear power plant examines the present impact of the accident on the economy and society of Belarus'. An initial section focuses on the geography of radioactive contamination within the republic, followed by sections on evacuation procedures and official programs of assistance, living conditions within the contaminated zone, and the role played by international charitable institutions vis-á-vis the government in providing long-term assistance to those seriously affected by the accident. Political considerations underlying the involvement of government and grassroots organizations in Chernobyl' assistance programs are explored. 1 table, 1 figure, 32 references.     

寻找被遗忘的丝绸之路(上)

我们要去西北寻找一条路. 说是一条路,是针对于我们的行程而论的,它起自甘肃的酒泉,终于新疆的乌鲁木齐;但是,考虑到这条路曾经肩负的历史使命,它的起点应该是中原大地,终点是西方.整个古代和近代,在这条道路上来来往往的商旅用最原始的方式实践着"交流"这个词的含义.     

Aztecs Before and After the Conquest

Aztecs: An Interpretation. By INGA CLENDINNEN. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. xiii, 398.

The Slippery Earth: Nahua‐christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth‐century Mexico. By LOUISE M. BURKHART. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1989. Pp. xii, 242.     

House Appropriations After the Republican Revolution

This article applies the theory of “conditional party government” (CPG) to the interaction between the majority party and the Appropriations Committee in the period following the Republican Revolution of 1995. We extend the analysis of Aldrich and Rohde (2000b) by examining how actions within the committee have changed over time and analyzing whether behavior and outcomes continue to match the expectations of CPG theory, particularly with respect to the times in which power in Congress switched from the Republicans to the Democrats and back. The conditions of the CPG theory continued to be met so that we can continue to test the theory's predictions. We show that following the Republican Revolution, the role of the party remained paramount and the party leadership maintained its influence over the direction of policy. While in the majority, both parties used the Appropriations Committee as a vehicle for policy change and the party leadership monitored committee actions, either by blocking policy shifts away from what the majority party wanted or facilitating changes in the desired direction.     

大象退却之后

<正>最初决定阅读伊懋可先生所著的《大象的退却》,是因为书名的后面缀着一句:"一部中国环境史",这部由英国著名历史学家所著,却被誉为"中国环境史的奠基之作"的书籍在我的脑海中留下了大大的问号,一个英国人所写的中国环境史,会是什么样子的?中国的历史书籍大多与王侯将相、君主专制相关,而伊懋可笔下的中国环境     

Eduard Nielsen's Oral Tradition Sixty Years After

ABSTRACT

When Eduard Nielsen’s Oral Tradition appeared in 1954 the author’s main motivation for writing it was frustration with what was felt to be serious shortcomings in current methods of Old Testament research. Influ-enced by “Scandinavian” scholarship (above all Pedersen, Nyberg, and Engnell), Nielsen wishes to replace historical critical approaches with more adequate, updated methods. In particular, he wants to integrate insights into the oral processes that lead to the creation of the literature of the Hebrew Bi-ble into his exegetical techniques. For comparative purposes, Nielsen utilizes texts from ancient cultures where orality was predominant. He discusses above all Greek, Mesopotamian, and Old Norse sources. In view of the huge interest in orality and memory in academia today it is obvious that Nielsen was far ahead of his time. It is more than regrettable that so little attention has been paid to this pioneering work.