Darwin's Flinch: Sensation Theatre and Scientific Looking in 1872

This article explores the relationship between Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: Murray, 1872) and the debates surrounding audiences of sensation theatre. It takes as its starting point a flinch performed by Darwin in a self-experiment at London Zoological Gardens. Darwin's flinch combined the act of scientific observation with a self-consciously staged emotional gesture. In the 1860s and early 1870s, the passionate and demonstrative audiences of sensation plays were similarly understood to watch themselves feeling. In this economy of emotional surfaces, actors and audience were caught up in unsettling relations between outwards expression and the remote landscape of interior feeling. Entangled in this theatrical instability, Darwin's scientific observation reflected broader cultural concerns about the reliability of the emotional body. Thus the article offers Darwin's Expression as an unusual but nonetheless suggestive artefact of theatrical spectatorship in 1872, while also contributing to recent debates about the history of objectivity and its supposedly unemotional and restrained scientific observer. It argues that the technique of self-conscious emotional spectatorship, shared by Darwin and theatre audiences, constituted a distinctive model of late Victorian emotion and visuality, in which communities of spectators were also spectators of themselves.     

Structural concepts of anastylosis

Abstract

Ancient buildings have been re-erected for more than one hundred years, during which time various concepts concerning the preservation of monuments have been developed. Classical buildings in particular – considered to represent the European cultural heritage – became the focus of fundamental discussions. In order to understand and compare approaches to historic monuments, this paper contrasts ancient and modern building structures. New supporting systems – using modern substitute materials and connecting elements – nevertheless remain weaker than the original structures. From the beginning of the twentieth century until recent years, the concepts of anastylosis have in many cases been determined by what was technologically feasible at the time.     

Darwin's historical sketch - an American predecessor: C.S. Rafinesque

When early reviewers of Darwin's "On the origin of species" chided him for neglecting to mention predecessors to his theory of evolution, he added an "historical sketch" in later editions. Among the predecessors he cited was a French émigré to American named Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, who in the mid-1830s had written about the emergence of new species at a time when most naturalists (including Darwin initially) accepted the biblical story of creation and assumed the immutability of species. Rafinesque discovered and named thousands of new plants and animals in his American travels and flooded the taxonomic literature with reports, which seemed incomplete, confusing, and excessive to other naturalists. He alienated many who later dismissed his findings and excluded them from the biological literature. Soon after Rafinesque's death in 1840, Asa Gray, the young American botanist, wrote a damning critique of his work and suggested it be ignored. How Darwin learned of Rafinesque and his views on species is the focus of this essay, which also mentions briefly the two other American naturalists cited by Darwin in his sketch. Gray seems the likely informant through his correspondence with Darwin or his close associates.     

Storytelling and meal experience concepts

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to explore how storytelling with local and regional origin can be used to develop meal experience concepts in restaurants. Focus is on Nordic food from the perspective of the experience economy. The first goal is to analyse the transformation of menus into experience concepts and dining areas into experiencescapes. The second goal is to investigate if storytelling activities in restaurants can lead to destination development. It is also reflected upon if meal experience storytelling in restaurants has implications for consumers’ everyday food consumption. Three cases in Sweden and Norway with different storytelling strategies are selected. In all these cases, the stories are unique, the places are linked to the stories and the personnel take part in the storytelling activities. The stories are easy to communicate and easy for the target group to connect to. The menus are linked to the story and are all based on local Nordic food culture and local food products. The menus are set and offered in experiencescapes that in various ways fit the stories. The concepts have contributed to the destinations with more visitors, more collaboration among businesses and increased media attention.     

Some Nahua concepts in postconquest guise

Merchant activity was a central element in the networks and webs of relationship over the Atlantic in the eighteenth century. When closely analyzed, however, daily merchant practice does not fit easily into regional categories, whether Atlantic or imperial. Merchant life was heavily dependent on the building of chains of trusted correspondents, who would both be able to guarantee adequate quality and satisfactory pricing upon acquisition or sale of the goods traded, and willing to extend credit in a trading world in which all operations included long time lags before final payment. For each trading center, the addition of such chains of correspondents constituted networks both supra-regional, covering the entire world, and sub-regional, specializing in some areas more than others according to prevalent political-imperial pressures. It is argued that the common element in all these networks, i.e. merchant development, is best identified as a worldwide, but Europe-dominated social process underpinning much of what is usually meant by “Atlantic” history.     

The development of core concepts of yield management

Abstract

Yield management offers an Operations Manager a decision support framework for examining the revenue and conservation decision variables that integrate the characteristics of the Heritage Visitor Attraction (HVA) experience. The principles of yield management are drawn from the hotel and airline industries to demonstrate how the problem of fixed capacity is managed in other service sectors. This paper compares these principles against Heritage Visitor Attractions (HVAs), suggesting how they could adopt such concepts. As HVAs serve broader objectives, other than profit maximisation, financial pressures are encouraging the operations manager to devise imaginative and new ways of managing sites. Ten core principles of yield management are suggested that are appropriate to Heritage Visitor Attractions. These core principles are used to evaluate Historic Scotland's and the National Trust for Scotland's approach to revenue management.     

Marinus of Tyre's place in the Columbus concepts

Summary

Thomas Jefferys (died 1771) was one of the most significant London mapsellers of the mid‐eighteenth century. He enjoyed an international reputation and apparent prosperity as a publisher of American and European maps during the Seven Years War. Yet in 1766 he became bankrupt. The paper offers an interpretation of Jefferys’ bankruptcy in the light of his business activities. After reconstructing the main phases of his career, the conclusion is reached that the causes of bankruptcy only operated in the period after 1765, when he became involved in the production of a series of English county maps based on original field survey. Hitherto, his maps had been compiled from inexpensive secondary sources; the field surveys involved a new set of costs which led to his failure.

The bankruptcy explains an otherwise puzzling change of ownership in some of his maps after 1765—especially the acquisition by Robert Sayer of a substantial share in his enterprises. These events may have wider implications in the history of eighteenth‐century cartography. Many map‐publishers were under‐capitalized and had to survive on low profit margins. These, in turn, may have retarded cartographical progress; the conclusion reached is that plagiarism was frequently an economic necessity for many mapsellers.     

试论当前细石器研究中的几个概念问题

本文对细石器、细石器技术和细石器传统等概念问题进行了梳理、分析。作者赞成细石器是由特殊的工艺技术制成的石制品的观点,并将其范围限定在与此种技术相关的石制品之内。细石器技术的本质是一种石片剥离技术,而非是石器的制作技术。细石器传统所指的应是某种细石器技术的延续。     

Integrating concepts in the teaching of geography in higher education

Abstract

To be coherent and effective, teaching programmes require broad integrating concepts. Such paradigms of modern geography as quantification, behaviouralism, Marxism, and systems theory are discussed as a guide to finding these concepts. Any frameworks that are adopted must recognise the dualism between methodological and theoretical concepts.     

中国思想史研究中的概念省思

王权、君权和皇权在中华专制主义的语境中只具有一种形态差异,而没有实质差异.中国历史一文化和政治-思想虽非理性类型,但这并不妨碍依然可以使用"理性"这一概念来对中国历史-文化和政治-思想进行描述和分析.问题是,运用"理性"概念来作出的这种描述和分析本身则必须包含有前在的概念省思,以便使我们对其内涵和界限能有一个确切的思想把握.