Progress before modernization: Foreign interpretations of American development in James Bryce's generation

This essay considers how observers from various national backgrounds explained the late nineteenth‐century United States as a developing nation. Outsiders often portrayed American industrialization, urbanization, corporate capitalism, and similar modernizing trends as manifestations of transnational forces that would eventually reshape their own countries, but they also stressed ways that American development diverged from what was taking place at home. The evolutionary mindset that infused many of these writers ‐ law professor and politician James Bryce being a noteworthy example ‐ encouraged them to view the ‘progress’ of the United States as a product of Darwinian adaptation and variation. The enormous territory and resources held by the United States supposedly rewarded and reinforced the aggressive, enterprising qualities of Anglo‐American culture, which facilitated emergence of a distinctive American civilization. Racial thinking thus pervades these accounts. Nevertheless, they draw attention to ways that environment, resources, and regional dynamics ‐ factors often overlooked in the modernization framework normally applied by historians to this so‐called Gilded Age ‐ drove and molded American development.     

'That Beijing Thing': Challenging transnational feminisms in Kampala

How does the representation of gender in the transnational 'gender and development' discourse shape lived social relationships? This article draws on research carried out in Kampala, capital of Uganda, a site of extensive development initiatives over the last 15 years. Analysing the way gender is discussed within the local print media and in a series of interviews and focus groups, the article shows how Ugandans interpret the 'gender and development' discourse as a European feminist agenda. The article demonstrates that middle-class Ugandans localise these 'transnational feminisms' by rejecting overt labels such as 'activist' or 'feminist'. Insisting that a 'Ugandan' approach to gender issues should be based on the principle of consensus rather than conflict, women and men negotiate appropriate masculinities and femininities in response.     

The shell game: analytic problems in archaeological mollusc quantification

MNI calculations for archaeological molluscs that rely on counts of non-repetitive elements (NREs) are popular for their analytic speed and efficiency. Yet the reliability of this approach as compared to ‘traditionally’ calculated MNI has not been explored. Here, I examine these approaches using data from the Caribbean coastal midden site of Grand Bay, Carriacou. Results suggest that an NRE-based approach to MNI calculation can be unreliable under certain circumstances. In addition, dependence on the NRE-based method may hinder the integration of invertebrate with vertebrate data, obscuring a holistic understanding of prehistoric diet and resource exploitation. These findings are discussed in relation to practical constraints and fulfillment of zooarchaeological goals.     

The Specificity and Universality of Chinese and Western Politeness

礼貌是一种普遍存在的语用现象,但是由于文化、社会价值的差异,每种语言的礼貌又存在很大的不同。一些中国学者认为中国式礼貌具有自己的特殊性,西方的礼貌理论对中国是不适用的。本文通过对比英汉礼貌的异同,证明英汉礼貌虽然有诸多的不同,但是并没有必要将两者孤立而论。     

Natural hazards and religion in New Orleans: Coping strategies and interpretations

Socially disadvantaged people are more vulnerable and exposed to the effects of extreme natural events and the social disasters which follow. This article presents the coping strategies and cultural creativity of the most vulnerable (non‐conformist African American religious/spiritual) communities in New Orleans today and in the aftermath of Katrina. Rituals and religious practices play an important role in resilience‐building and for relief and recovery from disasters. Case studies are presented to demonstrate how these devotions, and the community‐building and mutual support that take place as a result (as well as individual practices), have assisted practitioners in their struggle for survival during Katrina and the yearly hurricane season. The article also examines how natural hazards are perceived and reflected in religious explanations and expressions, as well as in spiritual arts, and how they lead to change and adaptations. Here, affected people are not regarded as ‘passive victims’ but as creative and active agents.     

The post-Islamist problematic: questions of religion and difference in everyday life

The term post-Islamism has been broadly applied to suggest that we are witnessing a new phase of Islamist politics in which the goal is not to make the state Islamic but to change the lived experiences of Islam. Whether post-Islamism applies to the Turkish case has been a matter of much debate. We approach post-Islamism in Turkey using a feminist geographic analytic that shifts our focus from formal politics to the embodied and the everyday. Drawing upon eight focus groups with men and women in Istanbul in 2013 and 2014, we analyze discussions of education reform, the possibility of religious politics and religious difference to demonstrate how the premises of post-Islamism depend upon the (often unsuccessful) papering over of multiplicity. We argue that everyday, embodied solutions to the questions of post-Islamism often undermine the very categories (state, society, religion and secularism) upon which the post-Islamic problematic is based.     

Early agriculture and sedentism in the American Southwest: Evidence and interpretations

Recent archaeological research in the American Southwest is rapidly altering long-held perspectives on early agricultural adaptations. The adoption of maize and squash is now reliably dated to ca. 1200 B.C., rather than 4000–2000 B.C. as previously thought, and new sites have been found in a variety of unexpected ecological settings. These emerging spatiotemporal patterns suggest that the development of sedentary communities after A.D. 500 may have been the result of changing systems of foraging, instead of simply a greater dependence on agricultural production.     

Transnational artifacts: Grappling with fluid material origins and identities in archaeological interpretations of culture change

There has been a gradual shift in historical archaeology towards interpretive approaches to material culture, including recognition of the potential for multiple functions and meanings in local contexts. It is argued here that artifacts can also maintain multiple, fluid origins and identities that affect our understanding of the nature of cultural persistence and change among migrant, indigenous and other ethnic groups. However, predefined classification schemes are often rigid and do not allow for this kind of fluidity, including the potential for artifacts from one culture to be indigenized into another. Data drawn from recent research on Japanese migrants in British Columbia, in conjunction with an approach rooted in transnationalism and diaspora, are used to highlight the nature of these ambiguities and to suggest methodological and theoretical means of overcoming them. These solutions include the need to develop contextual classification schemes that incorporate multiple artifact identities and to conduct detailed material culture histories that trace shifting origins and identities both before and during periods of migration or displacement.     

The substance of sexual difference: change and persistence in representations of the body in eighteenth-century England

The claims of Thomas Laqueur for a shift from a one-sex to a two-sex model of sexual difference are incorporated into many recent histories of gender in England between 1650 and 1850. Yet the Laqueurian narrative is not supported by discussions of the substance of sexual difference in eighteenth-century erotic books. This article argues that different models of sexual difference were not mutually exclusive and did not change in linear fashion, but that the themes of sameness and difference were strategically deployed in the same period. Thus, there was an enduring synchronic diversity which undermines claims for linear transformation.     

近代中国农村收入分配与消费差异研究

本文首先计算了近代中国农村收入的宏观基尼系数;之后通过作为农村最高收入阶层的城居地主和最低收入阶层的雇农,具体分析近代中国农村收入分配差距及其变动趋势;最后通过恩格尔系数比较了近代农家不同收入群体的消费水平差异,以印证对农村收入差距状况的估计。三种方法的结论均表明,近代中国农村各阶层间的收入分配差距并没有高到悬殊的程度,也没有出现恶化的趋势,农村不同收入阶层间的恩格尔系数差距也不很大。