Chocolate City——Washington D.C.

<正>Washington D.C.'s nickname-Chocolate City-is a cute way to explain its big perportion of African American residents. Personally, I also have the same connection with the city and its name:I love it; and I hate it: it is amazing yet sometimes a bit bitter and, yes, very addictive.     

Paris——City of Romance

<正>Believe it or not,a friend of mine's sister just went to France with her husband to cap-ture the magic and amour     

The “Floating Population” in Lhasa City

Lhasa,to some extent,is regarded as a holiday city.It is hard to meet people when they are in a rush. Whenever a pilgrimage procession passes by,you can always see the pilgrims holding their praying wheels, followed by dogs,while they walk peacefully along the path of the pilgrimage.On the edges of streets and laneways,tea bars are teeming with people playing cards or chatting.Once they sit down,they might easily let half a day slip by.     

Guidelines for the “Perfect Inner City”. Discussing the Appropriateness of Monitoring Approaches for Reurbanization

In this paper, we analyse the appropriateness of monitoring approaches for the observation of inner-city reurbanization processes. Reurbanization is conceptualized here as a process of long-term stabilization of inner-city areas by both a readiness of present residents to stay and an influx of new residents. It has been recently re-set on the top of the European urban research agenda since non-growth has proved to be a major path of future development for many European cities. Recent research evidence across Europe underscores the fact that reurbanization depends much on local settings of institutional, socio-economic and infrastructural factors. To foster a clearer understanding of the nature and dynamics of local reurbanization, to assess its extent and progress and, what is more, to help practitioners to shape sustainable policy initiatives appropriate to the respective context, reurbanization needs to be observed over the long term. The complex character of reurbanization sets new challenges for monitoring approaches and indicator-based tools. Due to the genuine relation of the present debate on reurbanization to the phenomenon of non-growth or the return of the compact city, the focus in this paper is set on demographic development trends and their impact on inner-city change. In this vein, our paper presents a monitoring design and a respective newly developed indicator set for reurbanization which focuses more on the initial recognition of reurbanization than on its long-term stability. Methodically, chances and limits of the integration of household-related indicators and qualitative knowledge on reurbanization into monitoring tools are highlighted. Empirical and statistical evidence is taken from a recently completed EU FP 5 research project and from municipal surveys.     

“The Country Christ Knew”: New Zealanders' Interactions with Christianity in the Middle East,Greece, and Italy during the Second World War

During the Second World War, New Zealanders of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF) interacted with Christianity throughout the Mediterranean from 1940 to 1945. Stationed in the Middle East, New Zealanders saw the birthplace of Christianity in Egypt and Palestine. In Greece, Crete, and Italy, New Zealanders saw countries where Christianity was deeply ingrained in the landscape and social fabric. This article explores New Zealanders' interaction with Christianity in the Mediterranean during the Second World War on two levels: Firstly, by discussing New Zealanders' visits to Christian religious sites; secondly, by examining New Zealanders' observations on religious practice and the place of religion in society in the Middle East, Greece, and Italy. The article will argue that New Zealanders demonstrated a keen interest in religious tourism during the war, and more broadly, that Christianity was an important lens through which New Zealanders viewed the places in which they served in the Mediterranean.     

Review Article — The Buildings of England Series — the Second Editions

Abstract

An account of the excavation by members of the Somerset Industrial Archaeological Society of a stone built engine house dating from the mid-nineteenth century. Documentary evidence indicated that a portable engine pumped and wound from Smoky Bottom mine. The archaeological and historical evidence has enabled a conjectural restoration of the building and machinery.     

Levantine Perspectives on the Middle to Upper Paleolithic “Transition”

This article presents a synthesis of the presently available data concerning the processes and meaning of the technical changes in lithic productions across the Middle Paleolithic/Upper Paleolithic boundary in the Levant. As a “corridor” between Africa and Eurasia, this area is of first importance in the discussion of Modern Human origins. The results of several new field projects (especially concerning the Initial Upper Paleolithic), the recent lithic technological studies (based on the chaîne opératoire concept) as well as radiometric dating were used here to discuss the rhythms and processes of technical changes at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic, examining carefully the lithic repertoire from the Late Middle Paleolithic through the Initial Upper Paleolithic from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Israel. This paper puts forward the idea that the emergence of Upper Paleolithic technical characteristics did not occur following a single process, even in the same region (here the Levant), but most probably followed a “mosaic” pattern. However taking into account the data presently available, the main basic scenario for the onset of the Upper Paleolithic in this region would have been the generalization of new technical traits that would have emerged within certain local Late Middle Paleolithic and the following Initial Upper Paleolithic groups. If a diffusion phenomenon should be considered, as claimed by many scholars, the available information suggests that it has functioned more as a stimulus rather than the simplistic scenario of a catastrophic wave of population and the resulting acculturation.     

Local and “Global” Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast

During the Middle Woodland period, from 200 BC to AD 600, southeastern societies erected monuments, interacted widely, and produced some of the most striking material culture of the pre-Columbian era, but these developments are often overshadowed by the contemporaneous florescence of Hopewell culture in Ohio. I argue that the demonstrable material links between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Midwest demand that we cease to analyze these regional archaeological records in isolation and adopt multiscalar perspectives on the social fields that emerged from and impacted local Middle Woodland societies. In synthesizing recent research on Middle Woodland settlement, monumentality, interaction, and social organization, I make explicit comparisons between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Ohio Hopewell, revealing both commonalities and contrasts. New methodological approaches in the Southeast, including geophysical survey techniques, Bayesian chronological modeling, and high-resolution provenance analyses, promise to further elucidate site-specific histories and intersite connectivity. By implementing theoretical frameworks that simultaneously consider these local and global dimensions of Middle Woodland sociality, we may establish the southeastern Middle Woodland period as an archaeological context capable of elucidating the deep history of the Eastern Woodlands as well as long-standing issues surrounding middle-range societies.     

The Middle Ground, “Middle Ground Moments,” and Accommodation in the Study of Later Qing Borderland History

This article examines Richard White’s concept of the “middle ground” and its prospective application to the study of China’s Qing (1644–1911) borderlands from the late eighteenth century. It argues that although White’s model, in its specific formulation, is problematic to apply due to the dissimilarity of Qing conditions, it yet has value and can be adapted. One possibility is advanced in the notion of “middle ground moments,” briefly explored in the cases of Shaanxi’s Dabashan highlands in a “population boom,” Hunan’s Miao Frontier in the “fog of war,” and Xinjiang’s Kashgar crossroads during the “fall of empires.” Focusing on group exchange, adaptation, and hybridization offers insight into regional cultural creation, as well as a means to question received narratives of breakdown, pacification, resistance, or Great Game struggle. Such modeling, and shared attention to accommodation perspectives generally, also presents a space for dialogue across the New Qing History and Chinese nationalist divide in Qing frontier studies.     

The Use of the Middle: Mitteleuropa vs. Strední Evropa

Since its introduction, Central Europe has been a contested term, subject to rival efforts to lay daim to the continent's middle. This article traces how a German and then a Czech ‘idea’ of Central Europe has taken shape since the nineteenth Century, based on broader discourses on Europe, including ‘Eastern Europe’, and on ‘the middle’ as a virtuous place and attribute. It is argued that the new debates on Central Europe of the 1980s were heavily indebted to these older discourses, and that the seemingly competing and conflicting Czech and German ideas of Central Europe shared many basic assumptions, using much the same parameters for defining the région and its Others.     

The Middle Volga Economic Region—Outpost of the Chemical Industry

A review of the resource base of the Middle Volga chemical industry, with particular emphasis on petrochemicals, and of some of the development problems. These include incomplete utilization of hydrocarbon gases for chemical production, the absence of a local sulfuric-acid base and inadequate attention given to the development of a fertilizer industry.     

Séances in the City: The “Operational Aesthetic” and “Modern Spiritualism” in the Popular Culture of New York City, 1865–1870

This paper will demonstrate that spiritualism became a significant element of popular culture in New York City between 1865 and 1870 because it catered to the “operational aesthetic” so prevalent in urban entertainments. The historian Neil Harris invented the term “operational aesthetic” to denote the spirit of playful inquiry common to the urban culture of mid-nineteenth-century America. By the 1860s, urbanization had undermined the social transparency so integral to the American Republic, causing cultural anxiety about the fraud and deceit, which was thought to thrive on urban anonymity. Several cultural genres, including detective fiction and urban guides, not only reflected, but also invited the investigation into, the divorce between the “superficialities” of the city and the “processes” driving criminal behavior. Spiritualism featured regularly in these genres, particularly the urban guides, as it was appealing to people eager to uncover another instance of urban deceit. Similarly, spiritualists attracted skeptical and agnostic audiences who shared this interest in investigation. Apparent “exposés” of spiritualism, therefore, as well as the mediums themselves, reached out to skeptical audiences, drawn to the “operational aesthetic” inherent in spiritualist demonstrations.     

Nostalgia as Affective Landscape: Negotiating Displacement in the “World City”

Bangalore, an aspiring “world city”, is rapidly transforming as factories and mills are sold to private developers. As their neighbourhoods now accommodate multi-million-dollar gated communities and post-industrial labour markets, residents experience an in situ displacement, staying in place while landscapes around them dramatically reconfigure. This paper makes sense of how old-time residents locate themselves within such urban growth through nostalgic invocations of the past. Emplaced within histories and geographies of neighbourhood change, nostalgia creates “affective landscapes” through which residents invoke their closeness to past landscapes of abundance and involvement in community-making. Such affective landscapes bring together embodied, sensorial, and more-than-human fields of action to shape an everyday politics in which residents narrate their marginalization within the world city and articulate their own value here.