Africa's Next Debt Crisis: A Relational Comparison of Chinese and Western Lending to Zambia

Africa faces a new debt crisis fuelled by Chinese and Western lending. At the forefront is Zambia, which defaulted on Eurobond payments in 2020. The article sets the developing Africa-wide crisis within a relational comparison that draws the current Zambian moment together with the financial collapse of the 1980s. By placing Chinese lending within a comparative global frame, we make three contributions. First, Zambia provides a “spatial fix” for capital, but such African borrowing is not passive and shapes hegemonic struggles between China and the US. Thus secondly, Africa's relationship with debt is co-constituent in the remaking of the global economy, as signalled by the contested execution and interpretation of development-as-modernisation. Finally, a relational comparison of the two debt crises demonstrates that global capitalist hegemony is, partly, engineered by the consent and coercion of African governments, yet the human costs of borrowing are fully borne by the world's poorest.     

从债务问题看西汉商品经济状况

本文从考察债务问题入手,对西汉的商品经济状况进行了探讨。认为：一、西汉时以货币为中心的债务关系已渗入每一阶层的生活中,对当时商品经济的发展有重要作用,放贷成了当时社会中司空见惯的事情;二、政府对当时的债务问题,在管理上有一系列程序,法律规范严格,并且保护债权人,此外本文还就息律限定等作了考察;三、西汉的商品经济是一种变态的不完全的商品经济形态,其市场繁荣是建立在赋税货币化和小农逐渐破产的基础上,随着小农群体与赋税货币化的萎缩,这种商品经济就必然走到它的尽头。     

From the Holiday to the Academy: Implications for physical geography in higher education arising from 'popular' field-based geography in Dorset

The popularity of physical geography at all levels of formal education is declining. This paper argues that a key factor in the decline may be the disparity between geographies studied within formal education and the popular geographies encountered during leisure pursuit. Through the example of the Jurassic Coast Project, an initiative for the interpretation of Dorset's coastal landscape, approaches towards the integration of popular and academic geographies are explored. Drawing explicit links between popular experiences and academic knowledge may benefit physical geography, improving its status amongst public and student audiences, and addressing the concerns that surround its decline within higher education.     

The New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: China's Ambiguous Approach to Global Financial Governance

The creation of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has generated a great deal of attention and controversy in the development community and beyond. Do these banks indicate that China is promoting a new model of multilateral development finance that undermines the existing system dating back to Bretton Woods? What are the forces shaping China's policy choices in this area? In contrast to the prevailing tendency to view these banks as part and parcel of the same challenge or opportunity for multilateral development financing, this article highlights major distinctions between the NDB and the AIIB. The fact that China is playing a prominent role in both the NDB and the AIIB suggests that China is not promoting a coherent new model of multilateral development financing, but is instead straddling different traditions in this realm of global financial governance. The ambiguity in China's approach to multilateral development finance is shaped by its multiple identities and complex economic and political interests.     

耕畜借贷与农业经营——以20世纪二三十年代长江中下游地区农村为中心

20世纪二三十年代长江中下游地区农村耕畜不仅不敷使用,而且分配不均,耕畜借贷现象十分普遍。农村出租耕畜者有牛行和地主、富农、一部分自耕农,并各具特点,此外,还存在“伙养牛”和“合犋”等形式的耕畜户际合作。耕畜借贷既是农家负债的一种方式,又是农业经营的一种方式,它具有一定的剥削性,农户收入因之有所减少,但不应过份夸大其消极作用,它在当时农村仍有存在的条件和理由。     

From medicine to psychotherapy: the placebo effect

If placebos have been squeezed out of medicine to the point where their official place in in clinical trials designed to identify their own confounding effect, the placebo effect nevertheless thrives in psychotherapy. Not only does psychotherapy dispose of placebo effects that are less available to medicine as it becomes increasingly technological and preoccupied with body parts, but factors of the sort inhibiting the use of placebos in medicine have no equivalent in psychology. Medicine today is disturbed by the placebo effect in a way psychotherapy is not. Psychotherapy does not have to grapple with such a disconcerting paradox as successful sham surgery, and unlike those physicians who once pretended to treat the patient's body while actually attempting to treat the mind, the psychotherapist can treat the mind in all frankness. Perhaps it is because psychotherapy is less burdened by doubts about the placebo effect that it was able to come to its aid when it was orphaned by medicine. It is vain to expect something with so long a history as the placebo effect to disappear from the practices of healing.     

救济与控制：中国通商、四明和中国实业三行的改组

白银风潮前夕,中国通商、四明和中国实业三行因长期经营不善而资金周转不灵.在白银风潮中,三行同时陷入挤兑的困境,而在法币改革后,三行因难以缴足发行准备金而再度陷入困境.在这两个过程中,国民政府以救济之名,实施控制,并最终对其增资改组,将其纳入政府金融体系.     

From the mind to the brain: an unusual pathway

One of the most unrecognized aspects of Golgi's life was his deep interest in neuropsychiatry. From 1865 to 1868 he attended the Clinica per le Malattie Nervose e Mentali in Pavia directed by Cesare Lombroso, the founder of modern criminology. Golgi was involved in research on the etiology of psychiatric ailments. During this short period of time he produced significant theoretic advances in clinical psychiatry. However, very soon he started to criticize the conceptual approach as well as the nosological system proposed by his academic mentor. In July 1868 he left Lombroso's school in search for a more rational method of studying brain functions and diseases. In spite of his anatomical approach to the central nervous system, he always maintained curiosity in the phenomenology of functional and organic mental disorders. This predisposition is witnessed by his capability to relate clinical observations to neuropathological findings.     

Guided by the dark: From thanatopsis to thanatourism

Abstract

Death is the one heritage that everyone shares and it has been an element of tourism longer than any other form of heritage. This paper looks at the historical development of Thanatoptic elements in travel and shows how the Dark Tourism to which this issue is devoted can be located within a historical tradition which sheds light on how it should be defined, typified and viewed today     

From the Mind to the Brain: An Unusual Pathway

One of the most unrecognized aspects of Golgi's life was his deep interest in neuropsychiatry. From 1865 to 1868 he attended the Clinica per le Malattie Nervose e Mentali in Pavia directed by Cesare Lombroso, the founder of modern criminology. Golgi was involved in research on the etiology of psychiatric ailments. During this short period of time he produced significant theoretic advances in clinical psychiatry. However, very soon he started to criticize the conceptual approach as well as the nosological system proposed by his academic mentor. In July 1868 he left Lombroso's school in search for a more rational method of studying brain functions and diseases. In spite of his anatomical approach to the central nervous system, he always maintained curiosity in the phenomenology of functional and organic mental disorders. This predisposition is witnessed by his capability to relate clinical observations to neuropathological findings.