German Postcolonialism in Four Dimensions: A Historical Perspective

In 1919, the German overseas empire came to an end, a direct consequence of defeat in the First World War. Germany has thus been post-colonial, in the sense of being without colonies, longer than most other European nations. This article argues that German postcolonialism can best be understood as a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon, one that envelops memories of colonialism in white German and diasporic communities, as well as developments in the nation's more recent past. Its most salient aspects include the cultural memory of the colonial period itself, the resonances between colonialism, National Socialism and the Holocaust, the recovery of histories of Afro-Germans, and discussions of race, migration and integration which draw a very broad arc from the colonial past into the multicultural present. The multidimensional nature of German postcolonialism can be both an advantage as well as a disadvantage when it comes to meaningful engagement with Germany's colonial past. This article ultimately seeks a way of re-inserting the ‘colonial’ into German postcolonialism, without flattening the concept.     

安克斯密特历史经验理论——历史哲学的新视角

安克斯密特自20世纪80年代便开始了对历史经验理论相关问题的思考,在90年代及以后的一系列著作和文章中对历史经验理论进行了较为系统的论述。安克斯密特将历史经验分为主观的历史经验、客观的历史经验和崇高的历史经验三种类型,他最为推崇崇高的历史经验。历史经验最为明显的特征是它促使过去从当前分离出去,从而导致历史意识和历史编纂的产生;而历史经验又会通过超越过去与现在的距离或差异,去恢复到过去从当前分离出去之前的状态。安克斯密特的历史经验理论反映了当代哲学、历史哲学以及史学实践领域的变化,企图促成历史哲学的新转向,弥补历史哲学与史学实践之间的隔膜。     

现代史学方法论视角下的人口循环理论

马尔萨斯理论在史学上被广泛应用。马尔萨斯认为人口的增长导致饥饿和社会危机,随之而来的是人口数量的减少、消费增加,随后人口数量又开始增加。人口数量的稳定波动就是人口循环周期。20世纪30年代俄国经济学家雅什诺夫在史学研究中第一次揭示了马尔萨斯人口循环理论。随后W.阿贝尔和M.波斯坦在欧洲史研究方面运用了该理论。20世纪下半叶人口循环理论得到了深入的研究,尤其受到法国年鉴派史学家布罗代尔等人的重视。随后,J.戈尔斯通的人口结构理论为人口循环理论的发展注入了新的活力。近几年以J.卡姆罗斯、P.图尔钦为代表的学者广泛采用数学模拟方法研究人口循环理论,运用这一方法可将人口循环周期分为增长阶段、紧缩阶段和生态危机阶段。此外,运用人口循环理论取得的研究成果有助于对社会和经济发展做出预测。     

The hidden comparison: Modern Italy in German perspectives

The author reviews German‐language studies on Italian history since Unification and argues that the central theme in writings on economic and social history has been the ‘hidden comparison’ between the processes of political development and economic change in Italy and Germany.     

Managing National Diversity through Political Structures and Ideologies: The Soviet Experience in Comparative Perspective

Abstract. The nationalisms faced by Gorbachev after 1985 were an outcome of Soviet policies, and most of them were not secessionist. Why, then, couldn't the Soviet state accommodate them? This article puts Soviet attempts to manage ethnic diversity into a comparative perspective, and looks at some of the ways in which the ideology and political structures of the USSR contributed to its failure to overcome its ethnic problems. Like other authoritarian states, the Soviet state was not based on consensus, and some of its policies exacerbated rather than diminished differences between ethnic groups. Moreover, the absence of intellectual and political pluralism, and the inflexibility of Soviet political structures made it difficult for the Soviet leadership to reconcile differences between the centre and the union republics and between ethnic groups, and this rigidity contributed to the disintegration of the USSR.     

认真总结历史经验,努力构建和谐社会

继中共十六大提出和谐社会新概念后,中共十六届六中全会又在党的历史上首次将“和谐”与“富强民主文明”联系起来,提出要“建设富强民主文明和谐的社会主义现代化国家”,并明确指出“构建社会主义和谐社会是一个不断化解社会矛盾的持续过程”(《中共中央关于构建社会主义和谐社会若干重大问题的决定》,人民出版社2006年版,第4页)。构建社会主义和谐社会这一战略目标的提出和对这一目标本质的认识,是我党深入总结历史经验、全面分析     

战后美国对法国向现代消费社会转型的影响——一种文化视角

在20世纪期间,源于美国的现代大众消费文化对其他国家的发展产生了巨大影响,法国便是其中比较有代表性的国家.第二次世界大战之后,美国大众文化在法国得到了更为广泛的传播,促使法国人消费理念的变化,成为法国大踏步地迈入现代大众消费社会的主要原因之一.然而法国传统的生活方式并没有因为进入现代大众消费社会而发生本质上的变化,只不过是多了些现代生活的气息而已.     

Berlin and Florence in the Age of Enlightenment: Jewish Experience in Comparative Perspective

Into the 1930s, the Jewish population in Germany used the termEnlightenment (Aufklärung) emphatically to formulate itsself-image. At the end of the twentieth century scarcely anythingremained of the once emotional semantics. The most recent literatureon relations between Jews and the Enlightenment elaborates thehostility of the German Enlightenment towards Jews with philologicalacuity. The essay examines the relationship between the Enlightenmentand Jewry and Jewish experiences in the eighteenth century froma comparative perspective. The Berlin Enlightenment is comparedwith its Florentine counterpart. This comparison shows thatintellectuals in the Prussian capital were far more open andunbiased towards Jews than their Tuscan counterparts. Whilein Berlin Jews were admitted to the academies and convivialsocieties, this was largely denied them in Tuscany. Despite the altered climate at the end of the Enlightenmentperiod, the article emphasizes that, if there was ever a periodin German-Jewish history that may be deemed balanced, then itwas the age of Enlightenment. The comparison between Prussiaand Tuscany can thus help us to understand how the Enlightenmentcould become such an emphatic and emotional point of orientationfor German Jews in the nineteenth century.     

The Construction of Continuity in Lesu: The Historical Anthropology of a New Ireland Society

This study examines features of social organization originally encountered in New Ireland in 1929–30 by the anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker. It aims to depict important aspects of social life before these were transformed by colonial and missionary influences. Kinship and marriage are discussed as topoi in discourses of continuity. It is suggested that in a social landscape of demographic limitations and widespread violence, social morphology was generated through categorical distinctions providing symbolic order in a dense texture of factual kinship, an order imposed to counteract the ever‐present shadow of incest. The social grammar prescribed a primary uterinely defined demarcation of belonging. As a parallel counterpoint, there was also an agnatically inspired alternative cultural modality. In this other possible world, the main distinction was that between men and women, uterine belonging being irrelevant.     

On Making Fathers in Lesu: The Historical Anthropology of a New Ireland Society

ABSTRACT This article examines the initiation of boys in Lesu, New Ireland, in 1929‐30. It is argued that these rituals not only transformed the initiands but also their fathers and thereby created counterpoint notions of social continuity in an openly ‘matrilineal’ society. Discursive and iconic symbolism identified and made manifest an alternative male cultural modality, not generally accessible to women. The neophytes' socially ascribed fathers, not necessarily their actual genitors, were in the world of female presuppositions ritually very marginal to their discursively defined children, but circumcision established a new sort of iconic fatherhood. Male social continuity involved the construction of flows in two directions, the future being dependent on the establishment of a past.