On Spatial Planning and Marxism: Looking Back,Going Forward

The renewed interest in Marxism that occurred in social sciences and humanities after the 2008 economic crisis has not yet found its counterpart in spatial planning. This paper examines what Marxist planning theory and practices could mean in the current conjuncture. It does so through scrutinising (1) the vibrant Marxist discourse in planning that existed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, (2) the recent history (since the 1980s) of planning theory and its relation to the political economy, and (3) the current political economic context (not least defined by the diabolic crisis). Where previous Marxist approaches to planning were very strong on analysing the political economy, I argue there is currently a need—with old hegemonies losing ground, communicative approaches losing support, and neoliberalism in the political economy losing legitimacy—to also discuss establishing alternatives.     

Looking Forward by Looking Back: May Day Protests in London and the Strategic Significance of the Urban

This paper deals with the question of how oppositional movements can adapt their protest strategies to meet recent socio-spatial transformations. The work of Lefebvre provides several clues as to how an alternative discourse and appropriation of space could be incorporated in such protest strategies. One of the central themes in Lefebvre's work is that the appearances, forms and functions of urban space are constitutive elements of contemporary capitalism and thus that an alternative narrative of urban space can challenge or undermine dominant modes of thinking. What exactly constitutes the "right" kind of alternative discourse or narrative is a matter of both theoretical and practical consideration. The paper analyses one case: the May Day protests in London in 2001, in which a protest group, the Wombles, managed to integrate theoretical insights into their discourse and practice in a highly innovative manner. Since cities, and global cities in particular, play an ever more important role in maintaining the consumption as well as production practices of global capitalism; they potentially constitute local sites where global processes can be identified and criticised. It is shown that the Wombles effectively made use of these possibilities and appropriated the symbolic resources concentrated in London to exercise a "lived critique" of global capitalism. Since the Wombles capitalised on trends that have not yet ended, their strategies show a way forward for future anti-capitalist protests.     

注释学研究的回顾与前瞻

新兴的“注释学”经过三十多年的发展,已经在各个层面展开了广泛研究并取得了初步成果。本文描述了注释学研究的概貌,总结了得失,并展望今后注释学发展的方向,提出应加强注释史、不同类型文献的注释、注释学实践操作技术和注释学本体等四项课题的研究。     

东北地方史研究的回顾与展望

一、东北区域的形成及其战略地位 今辽宁、吉林、黑龙江三省,以地处祖国东北方,概称为东北地区。早在先秦时代的典籍中,已把辽、吉、黑三省指为“东北”,其意为地理方位,而作为区域名,却是伴随着干百年行政区划的不断变迁而形成的。战国时,燕国在今辽宁省境设辽东、辽西两郡。     

冷战后宗教与美国外交——动力、路线与机制

冷战后,宗教对美国外交的影响日益走向组织化、法制化和机制化,呈现出以宗教利益集团为动力、以在国会推进1998年国际宗教自由法为路线、以国务院国际宗教自由办公室和国会国际宗教自由委员会互动合作为机制的发展趋势。在此背景下,美国对华外交中也凸显宗教因素。     

The Secret Policemen's Ball: the United States, Russia and the international order after 11 September

In this article, Anatol Lieven argues that the collapse of the Soviet and communist threats and the triumph of capitalism and bourgeois values gave the United States an unprecedented chance to act as a status quo hegemon, dominating the world with the consent of other major powers. The United States threw up this chance by acting instead as a 'dissatisfied' and even revolutionary power, creating a sense of menace and resentment across much of the world. After the 11 September attacks, the near-global threat of Sunni Islamist terrorism and revolution gives the United States another opportunity to rally much of the world behind it, in a kind of new 'Holy Alliance' of states against threats from below. But by mixing up the struggle against terrorism with a very different effort at preventing nuclear proliferation, and by refusing to take the interests of other states into account, the US risks missing this opportunity for a second time, and endangering itself and its closest allies such as Britain.     

The Fall of the Fall in Early Modern Political Theory

In this essay I offer a contribution to a political genealogy of secularization through the fading of the Fall in early modern political theory. I begin by giving a brief overview of the importance of the Fall in pre-modern Christian political thought. I then examine the fate of the Fall in early modern thought, briefly discussing Niccolò Machiavelli and Francisco de Vitoria, but concentrating on the English tradition most influential on our context, namely Thomas Hobbes, Robert Filmer, and John Locke. I show how and why the Fall is replaced by the “state of nature” as pre-historical justification of political power. I conclude with some comments on what is lost when Western society no longer uses the Fall to mark the difference between the way things are and the way things are meant to be.     

The Fall of Mosaddeq,August 1953: Institutional Narratives,Professor Mark Gasiorowski and My Study

Over the decades that followed the overthrow of Mosaddeq in August 1953 a narrative attributing the fall exclusively to foreign conspiracy has taken hold and become institutionalized. In this narrative the internal factors are reduced to the simplest level of abstraction. They do not exist outside foreign conspiracy! This narrative is premised on an Anglo-American coup plot code-named TP-AJAX that was attempted in the late hours of 15 August but failed. The ensuing flight of the Shah generated dynamics which led to the fall of Mosaddeq four days later. The CIA chief operative in Tehran Kermit Roosevelt was quick to take credit claiming that these dynamics were inseminated by his ingenious and spontaneous planning. For abiding internal reasons both the CIA and the MI6 headquarters preferred to claim victory rather than admit failure. Evidence that emerged following the declassification of the State Department papers in 1989 and the leak of a secret CIA internal history in 2000 produced glaring evidence that the fall of Mosaddeq on 19 August 1953 had taken Washington, even its embassy in Tehran, by complete surprise and that post facto claims by Roosevelt were inconsistent both with Washington's explicit policy directives and Roosevelt's own situation reports filed with the CIA Washington during the interval between the two events. Roosevelt later published a phantasmagorical account of the event which, together with reminiscences of a few unnamed former operatives, was given credence by Professor Gasiorowski and associates, who curiously chose to ignore archival evidence.     

云南省新编地方志工作的回顾与前瞻

云南省人民政府于1981年11月成立了以省长为主任的云南省地方志编纂委员会,领导全省的新编地方志工作。迄今为止,云南省地方志编纂委员会先后换了四届,每届都由当时的省长担任主任委员。20年来,在省委、省政府的领导下,通过全省数以万计的地方志工作的艰苦奋斗,我省的新编地方志事业取得了巨大成就。     

淮河中游地区史前文化研究的现状与展望

淮河中游地区的考古发掘与研究,虽然属于起步晚的区域,但经过近20年的努力,获得了非常可喜的成果,与其他地区相比可以说是后来居上,并在同期文化中的某些领域达到了领先的程度,从而使学术界对这一区域的关注和重视程度大幅度提高。前期的工作给我们增加了信心,潜在的信息令研究者为今后的发掘和研究充满着期待。