Maternalism and Its Discontents

Books reviewed in thgis article: Elizabeth J. Clapp, Mothers of All Children: Women Reformers and the Rise of Juvenile Courts in Progressive Era America Estelle B. Freedman, Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition Molly Ladd‐Taylor and Lauri Umansky (eds),‘Bad’ Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth‐Century America     

Renaissance Humanism and Its Discontents

Abstract

The essay explores humanism’s modernity by inquiring into the way the fifteenth-century humanist cultural program posited moral values and, at the same time, contributed to a sense of moral confusion. While Niccolò Niccoli, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and Leonardo Bruni associated ethical enlightenment with learning and even social acclaim, Leon Battista Alberti criticized these assumptions not only for their susceptibility to political manipulation but also for their failure to cultivate the attributes they promised: virtue, and by extension happiness and tranquillity. The tensions in humanist culture between conformity and dissent, rational certainty and sense of mutability, generated the creative energy that we, as moderns, have come to attribute to this culture.     

The Lawn-Chemical Economy and Its Discontents

The daily geographies of consumption represent some of the most ecologically important and economically complex frontiers for critical research. Among these, the turfgrass lawn is perhaps the most overlooked, owing to its very ordinariness. Despite the serious risks posed to human health and ecosystem viability by high-input lawn systems, little critical scholarship has engaged the lawn, especially as a structured economic phenomenon. This paper explores the forces and political economic conditions under which the lawn is produced, promulgated, and resisted in North America. In the process, we draw attention to the deeply structured economic impetus behind the direct sale of potentially toxic chemicals to urban dwellers. Based on survey research and a review of the industry, we argue (1) that chemical demand is driven by urban growth and classed aesthetics, (2) that direct and aggressive sales of chemicals to consumers are spurred by crises in the chemical-formulator industry, (3) that the search for consumer-lawn markets is driven by declining margins in the worldwide chemical trade, and (4) that counterinstitutional struggles against high-input lawns represent a salvo against otherwise abstract and daunting cultural-economic hegemony.     

Co-optation and Its Discontents: Seventh-Day Adventism in 1950s China

Most studies of Christianity in the early PRC have focused on the politicization of religious practices under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, explaining how the Christian faith empowered people to resist the state’s atheistic propaganda. In fact, both Communist officials and Christians invoked ideas about transcendent power and moral purpose, blurring the boundary between secular and religious concerns. The state-sanctioned patriotic religions had greatly impacted the political and theological orientations of Chinese Christians in the Maoist era. This article looks at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Shanghai, one of the first Protestant denominations to be denounced in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. When the state infiltrated the Adventist institutions, some of the pro-government Adventist leaders worked with the officials to bring the church closer to the socialist order. Most of the Adventists, however, resisted the state and organized themselves into a diffused network of house churches. This study highlights the fluid and complex political environment that the Adventists experienced, and the ways they interacted with the Maoist state. The reorientation of theological concerns, the new strategies for evangelization, and the growth of autonomous church networks enabled the Adventists to be a fast-growing religious movement.     

Formalization and its Discontents: Conceptual Fallacies and Ways Forward

The concept of formalization has long underpinned policy interventions and measures intended to connect informal entities with state institutions or formal economic structures. However, despite the policy enthusiasm, the outcomes of formalization policies have frequently been disappointing. This article argues that this disconnect lies in the concept of formalization itself and that common approaches to formalization are often rooted in three conceptual fallacies: a binary distinction between formal and informal economic actors, a lack of appreciation for the diversity of informal economic actors and the idea that ‘becoming’ formal necessarily spurs positive externalities. These conceptual confusions pay insufficient attention to contextual complexity and the political and social dynamics that shape informality in a given context and they are frequently rooted in the practicalities and power structures that shape knowledge creation in this area. This article demonstrates this through case studies of tax registration and property titling. Thus, it argues for a new research agenda on formalization that challenges both its conventional conceptual foundations and the practices of research that engage with it.     

Symmetry Its Significance in Science and Art

Abstract

Five types of symmetry are discussed: isometry, homoeometry, antisymmetry, colour symmetry, and symmetry of the most general kind. Examples are drawn from many different fields of science and art, including music and poetry. The inclusion of dissymmetry, or perturbed symmetry, is especially important in providing access to some of the most profound aspects of nature and art. Finally, the question of why symmetry plays such an important part in so many fields is raised.     

民俗资料学的建立与意义

民俗学是一门特别重视资料的学科,但民俗学者在传统上往往将民俗资料与文本类的民俗志和民俗文献互为等同。广义的民俗资料概念与此不同,意指一切能够为民俗学研究提供有效信息的文字与非文字资料,包括文本、图像、文物和影音资料等。民俗资料学借鉴史料学、文献学、文物与博物馆学、图书馆学、信息科学等的理论与方法,从民俗学的学科需求出发,着重研究民俗资料的搜集整理、分类属性、保存利用等问题。开拓这一学术研究方向的目的,在于坐实民俗学"资料之学"的名义,对内促进民俗学的学科发展,对外与历史学、文献学、人类学、计算机科学等形成对话,并为政府、社会团体与个人提供民俗资料方面的咨询服务。     

Donor‐Driven Justice and its Discontents: The Case of Rwanda

Never before was a process of doing justice driven so strongly from the outside as in post‐genocide Rwanda. Not only did the 1994 genocide lead to the founding of the International Tribunal, but it also induced intensive donor involvement in domestic attempts to ‘break the cycle of hatred’— from the work done by the national courts and the Unity Commission to the gacaca. In this sense, Rwanda became the forerunner of a much wider trend, towards a judicialization of international relations, for instance through an emphasis on international criminal law. However, the past decade of donor involvement in Rwanda in general, and the case of the gacaca in particular, show us how this specific — technocratic, de‐contextualized — emphasis on justice might seem innocuous at first glance, but carries dangers within it, particularly if it takes place in an increasingly autocratic and oppressive political environment like that of contemporary Rwanda.     

历史学的功用及其在当代的发展趋向

历史学的功用不在于“求真”、“致用”,因为求真是历史学的职责,致用是历史学的义务,并非历史学独有的品格。历史学的功用是一个复杂的问题,从史学的任务看,其功用在于记录保存历史、追求真实;从史家的动机看,其功用在于借史抒怀、求知释疑、谋求生存和建设化;从史学的作用看,其功用在于满足人的精神欲求和生成知识;从史学的应用看,历史学是一把双刃剑,可以用来创适,也可以用来破坏。在全球化背景下的今天,精神的满足和知识的生成将是历史学发展的主要趋向。     

The Last Big Man: Development and Men's Discontents in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

Big Men achieve that status by making good things happen for others as well as for themselves. In the minds of many Papua New Guineans development promises a direct route to becoming Super Big Men and Women. Mostly, however, it produces inequality and conflict. This is striking in places peripheral to major developments and in situations where not everyone benefits (e.g. compensation to ‘local landowners' - narrowly defined by mining companies - and lucrative urban employment - enjoyed only by the few, mostly male elite). Uneven development pits men and women, parents and children, and whole communities against one another as those less fortunate fail to match the generosities or competition of more prosperous exchange partners. In this article, I look at development through the eyes of one self-proclaimed ‘last Big Man’. As a youth, Ruge participated in male initiation and worked for the colonial outsiders, hoping to manipulate both old and new systems. He married several wives in the tradition of past Gende leaders but chose one because she had been to school, knew the ways of Europeans and had a keen business sense. In spite of what looked like the right moves and a sincere concern for his followers, Ruge could not prevent his society from being ravaged by inequality or help a growing number of bachelors afford expensive brideprices as more and more village girls married wealthy strangers from other parts of Papua New Guinea. In the end, a clan brother killed Ruge in an argument over land, making Ruge a victim to capitalist development's indifference to local traditions of family, reputation, and leadership.     

Modernity and its Discontents: On the Durability of Nationalism in the Arab Middle East

Abstract. Because many area experts studying the Arab Middle East commonly credit assumptions about nationalism that have, for the most part, been abandoned by their colleagues working in other parts of the globe, they assert that nationalist sentiment in the region has declined, either as a result of a series of political shocks or as the result of competition from other ideologies (such as Islamism). However, popular forms of nationalism not only have strong roots in the region, they have been continually reinforced over time. As a result, the current popular support for Islamism cannot be taken as a sign that nationalist sentiments are on the decline, particularly in light of the fact that Islamic movements share with nationalism a number of significant attributes.     

建国以来党的科技发展战略及其启示

建国以来特别是改革开放以来,我国的科技事业取得了巨大的成就.本文通过回顾建国后党的科技发展战略重点的几次转移以及"科教兴国"战略的确立过程,论述了新中国具有中国特色科学技术发展道路的探索轨迹,这对于通过科学技术的作用提高我国的综合国力,具有重大的意义.     

Freedom and the Responsibility of Science Science and the Public

Abstract

Academic essays in Germany either start or end with a citation from Goethe. I cannot refrain from this tradition as I have in mind three lines which described the situation in his time and during the last century, but which no longer hold true in our changing world. This is not easy to accept, especially for a scientist.     

Science and Sense

At the end of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Edinger completed the first comparative survey of the microscopic anatomy of vertebrate brains. He is regarded as the founder of the field of comparative neuroanatomy. Modern commentators have misunderstood him to have espoused an anti-Darwinian linear view of brain evolution, harkening to the metaphysics of the scala naturae. This understanding arises, in part, from an increasingly contested view of nineteenth-century morphology in Germany. Edinger did espouse a progressionist, though not strictly linear, view of forebrain evolution, but his work also provided carefully documented evidence that brain stem structures vary in complexity independently from one another and across species in a manner that is not compatible with linear progress. This led Edinger to reject progressionism for all brain structures other than the forebrain roof, based on reasoning not too dissimilar from those his successors used to dismiss it for the forebrain roof.