Fouffeen Mountain Summits:the Dreams and Glory of Chinese Mountaineers

As the first mountaineering team to challenge the fourteen world's highest mountain summits,these Chinese mountaineers have finally realized their dream.They are all ethnic Tibetans and have gone through hardship and dangers over the years;some of them have even contributed their lives to the realization of the project.Finally,three of them have accomplished it and set a marvelous record in world mountaineering that is unprecedented.     

Discovery of Mountaineers Killed by Avalanche in Meili Mountain

Noneofthe17ChineseandJapanesemountaineersclimbingthetoweringMeiliMountainhavereturned.AllofthemwerereportedmissingontheeveningofJanuary3,1991.Allsignspointtotheconclusionthattheywerekilledinasnowavalancheweighingmorethan1,000tons.TheChineseAirForcedispatchedhelicopterstohoveraroundthedisasterarea,andRenqenPuncog,afamousChinesemountaineer,headedarescueteam,whichfoundCampNo.2tuckedawayatanelevationof5,300meters.Bothrescueteamsfoundtentsburiedinsnow,butnothingelse.A70-year-oldnunfromanancie…     

Agamben and the Migrations of Glory

Abstract

In the American political imagination, there is a longstanding and wide-ranging discussion about the separation of church and state. Though Americans argue about whether it should be a ‘‘high wall,’’ or whether certain ‘‘breaches’’ in it might be desirable, they all take ‘‘separation’’ to describe an institutional arrangement. From Giorgio Agamben's perspective, however, ‘‘separation’’ is an image that conceals much more than it reveals about the religious character of the state and the global economy. Agamben traces ‘‘the migrations of glory’’ from church, to state, to global capitalism. For part of this task, Agamben accepts Michel Foucault's diagnostic approach to power. By one reading, certainly, governmentality has us in its grip. But now government itself is overshadowed by the power of global capitalism. While Foucault sought only to make us ‘‘a little less governed,’’ Agamben is interested in a deeper iconoclasm and a greater emancipation. According to Agamben, our less-than-free condition can be illuminated by reflection on: (1) the state of exception and the camp, which are only made possible by a form of idolatry in which the sovereign assumes to themself a power that they should not have; (2) On another of the ‘‘maps’’ drawn by Agamben, however, there is a further ‘‘migration of glory,’’ away from national sovereignty, toward postmodern global capitalism; (3) The Coming Community provides the barest sketch of Agamben's hope for a remedy, while his reading of Paul's Letter to the Romans in The Time that Remains brings a more visible kind of messianic expectation or vocation back into the discussion of political life. A concluding section discusses five sorts of questions that might be put to Agamben about the overall shape of his project.     

Dreams and Conversions: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Buddhist Dreams in Ming and Qing China: Part I

Since the Church fathers, oneirology and dream revelations were regarded with considerable suspicion among theologians and ecclesiastical authorities, though dreams remained a powerful and pervasive feature of religious expression at a popular level. Among converts in Ming-Qing China, where lay initiatives were necessarily important given the paucity of European priests, holy dreams were crucial in the formation and consolidation of a powerful religious subculture. The following is a version of the keynote address delivered at the Fourth Biennial Meeting of the Religious History Society, in July 2004 in Newcastle, Australia.     

Dreams and Conversions: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Buddhist Dreams in Ming and Qing China. Part Two

A database of holy dreams, assembled from Jesuit reports of the 17th century, forms the basis for qualitative and quantitative analyses, the results of which are compared with a second database of holy dreams drawn from Buddhist sources of the 17th and 18th centuries. The comparative analysis of religious images, doctrines, and the social history of dreams allows for some tentative observations on the psychology of Christian conversion and the sociology of Christian community formation in late Ming and early Qing China.     

Tuna Dreams: Resource Nationalism and the Pacific Islands' Tuna Industry

The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea was expected by many to lead to a drastic redistribution of income from the world's fisheries. This article explores the extent to which this happened by examining the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry. The analysis shows that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted to convert those tenure rights into concrete economic gains. Notwithstanding their success in organizing and co-operating amongst themselves, the Pacific Island countries (PICs) were unable to compel the distant water fishing nations to pay them more than a nominal access fee. When the PICs tried instead to develop their own tuna industries, they were disadvantaged by being located at the raw material end of the commodity chain. This case study suggests that a change in property rights is only a starting point for achieving increased equity in a global natural resource industry; not only do the new resource owners have to develop expertise in managing their ‘property’; they also need to develop a good understanding of the organization and operation of these natural resource industries.     

Dreams of the old country: A room of one's own

This article reports the findings of a study concerning the politicization of abortion in Finland in the first half of the 20th century. The focus is on discussions and debates in the legal and medical professions, 1900?1950, showing the historical transformation of abortion from a criminal act to a medical issue, legalized by the 1950 abortion law. The argument throughout is that the strongest motivation for legalization of abortion in Finland was the perceived negative effect of criminal abortions on the population growth. The article also shows that the abortion debate was linked to the formation of a maternity care system and the development of the medical promotion of birth control. Thus the context for the line of argumentation is the formation of the Finnish welfare state and the medicalization of maternity.     

Wandering Spirits: Chen Shiyuan's Encyclopedia of Dreams

Savage Childhood: A Study of Kafir Children. By DUDLEY KIDD. London: A. and C. Black. 1906. By R. R. Marett.

Religion in Evolution. By F. B. Jevons, Littd. London: Methuen &; Co. 1906. By E. Sidney Hartland.

The Religious Songs of Connacht. By Douglas Hyde. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Dublin: W. H. Gill &; Son. IOS. By Eleanor Hull.

Folk-Lore of Women, as Illustrated by Legendary and Traditionary Tales, Folk-rhymes, Proverbial Sayings, Superstitions, etc. By T. F. Thiselton-Dyer, M.A. By W. Crooke.

Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race. By the Late T. W. Shore. London : Elliot Stock, 1906.

Ancient Law. By Sir Henry Sumner Maine, with Introduction and Notes by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. London: John Murray, 1906.

The Tribal System in Wales. By Frederic Seebohm. London: Longmans, 1904. By F. M. Stenton.