Rosner,Erhard, Guide Signs of the Empire： Programmatic Place Names in the History of China （in German）

Successive dynasties used to emblazon their respective political agendas on the Chinese landscape by bestowing programmatic names on the towns and cities of their empire. Depending on the ruling elites＇ propagandistic aims, these messages could be allusive or blunt, bellicose or pacific, deprecating towards outsiders or culturally inclusive.     

Unity in the trees: Arbor Day and Republican China, 1915–1927

ABSTRACT

Scholars of modern China have overlooked the role environmental policy played in early Republican efforts to promote both modernization and national unity. Beginning in 1916, the national government in Beijing mandated that each province and county throughout the Chinese nation celebrate “Arbor Day” in order to foster a modern Chinese environmental culture. This change was made in response to global discourses that linked forest cover to a modern nation’s moral and economic health. Arbor Day coincided with the Tomb-Sweeping Festival, a day traditionally reserved for ancestor worship. Due to the vast climatic disparities within China, many governments planted Arbor Day trees under conditions that made it impossible for them to thrive. Nevertheless, officials throughout China continued to celebrate Arbor Day as proof of their loyalty to the government in Beijing. Arbor Day thus served more as an exercise in promoting national unity than in creating a viable reforestation campaign.     

Li,Huaiyin, Reinventing Modern China： Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing

Li Huaiyin＇s new book deals with the dialectic and competing processes ofwriting the history of ＂modem China＂ in China during the past century. Li presents the writing of history as a literary genre that has produced multiple narratives in different periods, narratives that corresponded to or were instigated by particular socio-political （especially political） circumstances of the protagonists of his story. In general, Li depicts these narratives as ＂romantic,＂ ＂optimistic,＂ or ＂pessimistic,＂ based on two major conflicting paradigms （or ＂grand narratives＂--Li often uses ＂narrative＂ and ＂paradigm＂ interchangeably）： ＂modernization＂ and ＂revolutionary.＂     

Warlords’ Rainmaking: Religion,Science, and Legitimating Governance in Early Republican China

This article uses case studies to examine the rainmaking activities of provincial military governors during a historical period when a decentralized China suffered from frequent droughts. On the one hand, it analyzes why their rainmaking has been interpreted in a very negative light and demonstrates that progressive intellectuals writing in the Republican-era (1912–49) print media were crucial to fostering misunderstandings of the rainmaking activities of these “warlords” as superstitious and backward. On the other hand, it argues that public ceremonies of praying for rain served as a crucial venue for the military governors to perform their local authority and make a claim to political legitimacy. Some of them pursued efficacy by all possible means, including experimenting with Western “scientific” rainmaking techniques of concussion and fire, which suggests that their rainmaking efforts were not merely a utilization of traditionalism, but drew from a complex and eclectic rainmaking culture emerged in early twentieth-century China. In an age when truly effective weather modification methods had not yet been discovered, the highly visible public rainmaking activities of warlords, regardless of results, constituted an integral and important dimension of their local governance, particularly in desperate times, amidst prolonged and severe droughts when popular feeling was unsettled and volatile.     

Constructing the Disabled Child in England, 1800–18601

At the core of much of the historiography of disability in so far as it relates to nineteenth century England is a belief that the support offered to those with physical and mental impairments was threadbare and that such people could be and were pushed to the social margins of their communities. The current article uses poor law records, letters, newspapers and coronial inquests to suggest that officials in fact had a sophisticated sense of degrees of mental and physical impairment and relief/support systems were tailored accordingly. Like many of the pauper families who wrote to them about children with impairments I argue that officials tended to construct hierarchies of ability rather than disability and that doing so took them deeply into areas like labour market subsidy and the avoidance of institutional confinement. On the subject of children with mental and physical impairments, officials and pauper shared a common rhetorical register and strategic approach to classification and treatment.     

Bosker,Bianca, Original Copies： Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China

The discovery and recognition of the value and potential of a society＇s ＂low culture＂ often require an outsider＇s eyes. During the Meiji period, while Japanese elites were immersed in the ink painting of literati tradition （bunjinga）, visiting Europeans were fascinated by the cheap and popular ukiyo-e prints, which had the earthly pleasure-the floating world-as the main subjects and were considered vulgar by serious scholars and artists of the time. In contemporary China,     

China＇s Unequal Treaties： Narrating National History

王栋（Dong Wang）女士的新书《中国的不平等条约——叙述民族历史》引用大量中西方第一手资料,分析了“不平等条约”这一词语的语言学发展和修辞用法,论证了中国各派政治力量对中外不平等条约历史的不断叙述,以及各种政治势力对“不平等条约”不断进行定义以求对风巩固统一、对外谋求独立自主及确立自身合法性和权威性的历史。作者的研究还表明,中国有关不平等条约的经历决定了20世纪中国运用国际法的方式。     

Recalling the War in China： The Dahoufang Project in Chongqing and the Restoration of a Legacy

This article presents a rare inside view of a unique project currently underway in China to study and preserve the memory of possibly the single most seminal event in Chinese modern history, the War of Resistance against Japan （1937-45）. The article introduces a multi-faceted program to preserve the wartime cultural heritage; the work is ongoing in the thriving western metropolis of Chongqing, once China＇s bomb-torn wartime capital and international Allied command center. It describes how, seven decades after World War II, scholars, cultural workers, government experts, and artists in China are joining hands in an unprecedented, all-encompassing project to record, restore, and recount the extraordinary legacy of China＇s War of Resistance in its local, as well as national and global contexts.     

马衡藏书及题跋

本文运用统计学方法,分析了马衡先生的藏书结构、特点及其学术研究的主攻方向。以对一个藏书家的视角,分析了马衡的生平志趣、访书、鉴藏、抄校、考订、以书会友、学术交游等活动。     

A Popular Public Theology

Abstract

The article begins by exploring what is meant by a popular public theology drawing on the work of the missiologist Werner Ustorf. A popular public theology refers to the informal and unofficial theological speech of society, distinct from the more formal theology of the Church and academy. Such popular public theology is found in contemporary culture, albeit often in diffuse and incoherent form. It is then argued that a popular public theology has an inbuilt relevance to the concerns of society, avoids problems associated with public theologians needing to be fluent in more than one academic discourse, and is not in danger of being reliant on the social sciences. Finally, it is suggested that by discussing the implications of cultural theological statements, public theologians are able to contribute critically to social and political debates.     

近代中国城市大众文化史研究笔谈

The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium, which is composed by Ma Min’s “Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural history,” Jiang Jin’s “Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in modern China,” Wang Di’s “The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses in Chengdu,” Joseph W. Esherick’s “Remaking the Chinese city: Urban space and urban culture” and Lu Hanchao’s “From elites to common people: The downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,” provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the studies. Four articles of the symposium are translated by Yang Kai-chien and Jin Xueqin from Shixue Yuekan 史学月刊 (Journal of Historical Science), 2008, (5): 5–19; Joseph W. Esherick provides the English version of his article.     

文化与创意产业集群的研究谱系和前沿:走向文化生态隐喻?

文章基于文献研究,梳理文化和创意产业集群的研究谱系,指出该领域学术界:①没有将文化和创意产业本体论知识整合到集群分析框架;②对艺术家和创意阶层及其项目生产方式、知识流的空间过程关注十分薄弱;③忽视文化消费和中介因素对创意集群和文化生产的反身性;④比较偏向生产型创意集群的研究、忽视空间型创意集群和消费型文化产业园区和城市空间的研究;⑤在研究方法上相对单一。作者提出通过运用文化生态系统隐喻,进一步展开综合研究的可能性。     

寓乐于会:近代博览会与大众娱乐

近代博览会的兴起固然主要是源于商品经济与科技传播的需要,但大众娱乐文化又始终与各类博览会形影相随,成为其不可或缺的构成要素。大众娱乐是将博览会传播科技、文化功能与群众\"找乐子\"心态连接起来的最好形式之一,并使博览会能够吸引成千上万民众参与其中。近代中国举办的博览会充分借鉴了西方博览会的做法,加入了大量的娱乐活动,寓乐于会,寓教于乐。大众娱乐活动不仅丰富了博览会的内涵,增强了博览会对大众的吸引力,而且使博览会本身成为研究近代城市大众文化时不容忽视的重要内容之一。     

'Giant Strides' in Documentaries, 'Ascents' in Archaeology: Nautical Archaeology's Relationship with and Place within Popular Culture

This article covers 30 years of the representation of nautical archaeology on television. It criticises and positions current research, then develops an objective methodology for examining television documentaries. The relationships and similarities between television documentaries and academia and the wider professional and amateur discipline is debated. Original research, which argues for a structure that is ever-present in nautical archaeology as in popular culture and academia, is deconstructed, and the implications reviewed. A sequence of images is defined and it is demonstrated that this forms a 'unique selling-point' used by both television and the academic discipline.
© 2008 The Author     

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.     

Women’s magazines and socioeconomic change: Para Ti,identity and politics in urban Argentina

Popular media plays an important role in the production and reproduction of hegemonic cultural norms, as well as in the construction of class and gender identities. Periods of economic crisis generate struggles over ways of understanding social reality that can destabilize or reinforce different identities. The media often plays an important role in the reconfiguration of identities. Expanding on these ideas, I conduct a discourse analysis of a women’s magazine to examine how popular media reflected and influenced shifting gender and class identities in Buenos Aires, Argentina between 1995 and 2008, a period of major socioeconomic change. By drawing attention to supposedly ‘non-political’ actors and spaces, I argue for expanding the range of sites we investigate in order to make sense of changing class and gender subjectivities during times of socioeconomic crisis.