A Changing House: The Life Peerages Act 1958*

The year 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the Life Peerages Act 1958. The first life peer to obtain his letters patent was Lord Fraser of Lonsdale (Sir William Jocelyn Ian Fraser) on 1 August 1958. The first life peer to be introduced in the Lords was Lord Parker of Waddington (Sir Hubert Lister Parker) on 21 October 1958. The first woman peer to receive her letters patent dated 8 August 1958 was Baroness Wootton of Abinger (Barbara Frances Wootton), and the first woman peer to take her seat in the Lords was Baroness Swanborough (Dame Stella Isaacs, marchioness of Reading), ahead of Baroness Wootton on 21 October 1958. This article gives an overview of the background to life peerages and women peers before 1958, including the importance of two peerage cases, the Wensleydale case 1856 and the Rhondda case 1922. It does so with particular reference to women and the house of lords. It also considers the passage of the act itself; the initial life peers created in 1958; final equality between men and women peers achieved by the Peerage Act 1963; and the impact of life peers on the House since 1958.     

北洋政府和平统一中国的尝试——善后会议再研究

善后会议是直奉战争之后,在各实力派形成暂时力量"均势"的背景下,由段祺瑞临时执政府做出的通过会议协商方式谋求国家统一的艰难政治尝试.会议旨在"收束军事"和"整理财政",并为召开"国民会议"做准备.其性质偏重战争善后问题解决,与涉及国体建设的国民会议并不构成冲突.从议程上看,会议不涉及政治权力分配,因而与"政治分赃"也不发生关系.由于中国政治权势的重心已经失却,善后会议未能实现主持者"和平统一"的初衷,但会议反映的中国政治语境变化及政治家的因应,却值得研究者关注.     

Research NotePork-Barrelling in Australian Politics: A Reconsideration of Leigh

This research note replicates Leigh's (2008) analysis of pork-barrelling in Australian politics and tests the validity of his findings using geographic techniques. Distributive politics is integral to nearly all theories of legislative politics because it is fundamental to the connection between legislators and constituents, and can be used to facilitate coalition-building. This note addresses an aspect of pork-barrelling that has been overlooked in most previous scholarship. It argues that distributive politics is, at its core, a geographic, constituency-centred process. It is therefore essential to reconsider the conventional models and take geography into account in both substantive and statistical terms. To that end, we replicate several of Leigh's results using a relatively new technique, Geographically Weighted Regression, and reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity in the coefficients. Our findings highlight the importance of political geography and have important implications for studies of legislative politics and elections.

本文重复了李（2008）对澳大利亚政治分肥拨款的分析,用地理学技术检测了其发现有效性。分配政治内在于几乎所有的立法政治理论,因为它是立法者与选民之间联系的基础,有利于联盟的构建。本文探讨了分肥拨款被以往学术研究所忽略的一个方面。作者认为,分配政治其核心是一个地理的、以选区为中心的过程。因此有必要重新检讨固有的模式,切实而且从统计的意义上采纳地理的视角。我们使用了一种相对新近的技术,即地理加权回归分析来重复李的几个成果,发现空间同质系数很高。我们的发现突出了政治地理的重要性,对于立法政治以及选举的研究有参考意义。     

Plant Cultivation on the Northwest Coast: A Reconsideration

Conventional wisdom suggests that the peoples of the Northwest Coast did not cultivate plants prior to European contact. Considerable evidence suggests the contrary, however, particularly the well-documented practice of estuarine root gardening among the Kwakwaka'wakw and other indigenous peoples of the region. These gardens were maintained through transplanting, weeding, selective harvesting, soil modifications, and the production of mounds or low terrace-like structures within individually demarcated root plots. The scholarly oversight of these practices can be attributed to a number of biases rooted in the colonial and academic agendas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In turn, scholarly legitimation of the region's “nonagricultural” label has served to undermine indigenous land claims on estuarine sites into the present day.     

Dating the A Cemetery at Kish: A Reconsideration

Abstract

The site of ancient Kish consists of a series of mounds about eight miles east of Babylon in the flood plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. On several of the eastern mounds extensive remains of the Sumerian (Early Dynastic = ED) period in the early 3rd millenium B.C. were excavated in the 1920s. Among these remains was a cemetery in which were found many examples of a distinctive kind of pottery, the so-called “goddess-handled jars,” which have come to be associated with the last phase of the period and thus to serve as a criterion for dating sites where these occur.

It will be argued here that such jars were actually manufactured over a longer span of time within the Early Dynastic period and that they are therefore a less precise instrument for dating than has been believed. In my view their absence from some sites is to be explained not by chronology but by regional differences. If this argument is correct, then the dating of a number of Early Dynastic sites will have to be re-examined with greater attention to regional considerations that have often been overlooked in the past.     

关于第二轮修志的再思考

续修与续志、上限与下限、静态事物与动态事物、章节体与纲目体等是修志实践必须解决的基本问题,一直也是方志界争论不止的“老问题”。作从理论和实践上给出了作的一家之言,以期能够得出一个能够为方志界认可的结论。     

Eisenhower and Castro: US-Cuban relations, 1958-60

Books reviewed in this article:
United States Government Printing Office, Foreign Relations of the United States 1958-1960, Vol. V. American Republics
United States Government Printing Office, Foreign Relations of the United States 1958-1960, Vol. VI. Cuba     

对法国“五月风暴”的再思考

196 8年 ,欣欣向荣的法国突然爆发了全面的危机 ,这对戴高乐的政治生命产生了重大影响 ,也引起他对造成这一事件原因的思考。他认为主要是教育中存在的问题和一些严重的社会问题 ,如住宅问题、通货膨胀、贫富差距等和心理原因造成的。本文作者从资本主义基本矛盾、国家利益与个人利益的矛盾及国际环境的影响三个方面阐述对这一问题的看法     

"A Dogged Inch-by-Inch Affair": The Church of the Nazarene in Australia 1945–1958

The Church of the Nazarene began work in Australia in 1945 at the instigation of a handful of disaffected Australian evangelicals, marginalized from more orthodox believers in their holiness radicalism. They were often looked upon as holy rollers and sinless perfectionists, purveyors of a brand of religion thought to be populist, coarse, and theologically suspect. In America in the 1940s, the holiness movement churches had moved much further toward the traditional mainstream than was the case in Australia. The early Australian Nazarenes saw a decline in the religious fervour of other evangelical bodies, and saw themselves as raised up to champion a return to the apostolic fire of early Methodism. They were, perhaps naively, unaware of the lowering of religious tension in their own mother church. Differences between the ecclesiastical culture of Australian and American Christianity were to prove internal challenges to be added to the challenge of external opposition.     

“圣库制度”考辨

太平天国设有圣库和负责管理圣库的总圣库等官员,但负责“生活必需品”供给的官员还有总圣粮、典圣粮、典油盐、典买办等等,这些官员也不是以总圣库为首的,所以太平天国的生活必需品供给方式不应称为“圣库制度”。太平天国官兵的礼拜钱、俸钱与高级官员吃肉都是有等差的,所谓“圣库制度”并不是绝对平均的“军事共产主义”。太平天国不准私藏金银的禁令主要是针对太平军士兵的,主要目的是防止他们开小差,因而太平军士兵是“不准私藏丝毫金银”的,允许拥有少量金银的是普通居民。圣库是太平天国已经在朝内和军中建立的一种机构,《天朝田亩制度》中的国库是太平天国打算将来在每个社会基层组织“两”建立的仓库,二在机构的“级别”、性质、职能和物资来源等方面都截然不同,且没有必然的联系,用国库来解释圣库是不妥的,说国库来源于圣库亦纯属推测。     

1958-1964年的英国核裁军运动

1958—1964年的英国核裁军运动,是一场以中产阶级为主体的颇具影响力的社会运动。运动的基本目标是反对核军备竟赛,主张推迟、禁止、甚至完全取消英国和其他国家的核试验,削减核军备。它反映了战后英国社会对核武器和核战争前景的恐惧心理。但运动内部,尤其是运动的组织领导者成分复杂,对战争的理解、英国的防务政策以及运动的战略和策略分歧广泛而深刻,从而造成内部协调和合作的困难,最终导致运动的衰落和解体。     

三星堆服饰文化探讨

三星堆考古发现,为我们研究了解古代蜀人服饰文化,提供了翔实而丰富的资料。古代蜀人不仅有形式多样的冠帽和服装,而且有各种装饰品,特色鲜明,自成体系,说明三星堆时期古蜀王国已经大致形成了一套服饰制度。丰富多彩的三星堆服饰文化,是和当时古蜀王国的经济发展、社会生活状况密切联系在一起的,形象地展示了古蜀青铜文明的繁荣和辉煌。