Tourism development,rights consciousness and the empowerment of Chinese historical village communities

In recent years, China's tourism researchers have started to pay attention to the empowerment of rural communities. Current theoretical research and social practices reflect that tourism needs to seek localized empowerment with respect to different types of tourism destinations. This paper, taking Furong Historical Village in Zhejiang Province as a case study, examines a special kind of Chinese historical village community in which the villagers’ consciousness of their rights is weak and tourism development is only in its initial stages. Based on the field surveys, this paper points out four roots of such a community's disempowerment: (1) the failure of political institutions to ensure the community's public interest; (2) accusations of historical villages ‘damaging protection’; (3) information asymmetry in the relationship between rural leaders and villagers; and (4) a sense of powerlessness in the daily lives of rural residents. Based on these findings, this paper suggests several empowerment paths: (1) placing the enhancement of psychological power as the core of community empowerment; (2) addressing villager empowerment needs according to different types, rather than generalizing a community as a whole; and (3) including a diversity of subjects in the process of empowerment. These empowerment paths would be a moderate extension toward increasing community empowerment, based on this empirical study.     

Wedding Culture in 1930s Shanghai: Consumerism,Ritual, and the Municipality

By the 1930s, a variety of forces were chipping away at the traditional Chinese wedding in urban centers like Shanghai. “New-style” weddings—with a bride in a white wedding dress—took place outside of the home and featured networks of friends, choice of one’s spouse, autonomy from one’s parents, and the promise of happiness and independence. With the publication of wedding portraits and detailed discussions of new-style wedding etiquette and its trappings, women’s magazines further shaped the new-style bride as a consumer and an individual. Early reformers had envisioned the new-style ceremony as a streamlined and affordable alternative to traditional ceremonies, but for most city residents these weddings remained out of reach. After the Nationalist consolidation of power in 1928, Shanghai was deemed a crucial site for the promotion of ritual reform and economic restraint. Weddings were at the crux of this movement, which was buttressed by the Civil Code of 1931 allowing children to legally marry without parental consent. New Life Movement group weddings came next. These ceremonies co-opted urban wedding culture in an attempt to frame the new-style wedding as a ritual of politicized citizenship under the Nationalist government. The tension between the popular, commercial, new-style wedding and the Nationalists’ Spartan political vision, as played out in the market, is examined below.     

Secondary burial cemeteries,visibility and land tenure: A view from the southern Levant Chalcolithic period

Off-site secondary burial cemeteries in the southern Levant are an innovation of the Chalcolithic period. Ethnographic studies suggest that location of burial places was one of the means used to establish and socially mediate ownership over the landscape. The current research examines whether the spatial pattern of burial sites during the Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant represents a land tenure system. Spatial analyses of burial and habitation sites located mainly along the central Israeli coastal area indicate that Ghassulian communities avoided locating their burial sites near habitation sites concentrations. Viewshed analysis indicates that the areas observed from burial sites are significantly larger than those observed from habitation sites, and that their location scattered across an area which increases rather than overlaps the size of area visible from the habitation sites. Furthermore, our results show that communities which wanted to claim land tenure over a larger territory use burial sites locations in order to maximize the observed area within habitation sites surroundings.     

弘扬民族文化与建设民族精神家园的思考

党的第十七次全国代表大会明确提出的弘扬中华文化,建设中华民族共有精神家园的要求,与全球化背景下以美国为首的西方发达国家对整个世界文化的扩张和渗透密切相关。在当今这个资本全球化的后殖民主义时代,西方发达资本主义国家在推行经济全球化的同时,也在推行文化全球化,对世界文化进行新殖民统治,以此来宣扬自己的价值观念和意识形态。这就要求我们加强文化安全建设,弘扬中华民族文化,建设中华民族共有精神家园。     

Radar and Air Defence in the 1930s

The article sets out to demonstrate that radar played a central,but hitherto unrecognized, role in the formation of Britishair policy during the 1930s. It is generally conceived thatthe secret of radar was stumbled across, as if by accident,in early 1935, and was then employed to devastating effect inthe Battle of Britain. The article, however, shows that thedesire for an effective instrument for air defence had gestatedduring the First World Wart—when Britain sought to fightoff the Zeppelin and Gotha bombing raids—and the searchcontinued throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Moreover, theprinciple of radar had been known since 1904, but scientificbackwardness precluded practical progress. There is detailedexamination of the intricate political manoeuvring by PrimeMinister Stanley Baldwin and others which accompanied the adoptionof radar as Britain's primary line of defence against the Luftwaffein preference to the increasingly obsolete doctrine of bomberdeterrence. In conclusion, radar was deliberately developed,and consciously conceived of, as a device that would be slottedinto a proved framework of observation and organization constructedon top of Britain's First World War air defence system.     

1930年代的康、青、藏战争——边政、权力和地方的视角

在1930年代的康、青、藏边界战争中,相关各方均在不同程度上按各自的利益诉求在操弄着战争.战争的结果是,康、青军阀较战前更进一步扩充和巩固了各自的势力范围.西藏地方则在这场旷日持久的边疆战争中失去了1918年所占据的康区大片土地.而国民政府在战争过程中所进行的多项边疆议题则由于康、青、藏地方势力的抵制,最终没有取得预期的效果.     

Emergence and early development of Russian neurosurgery (1890s-1930s)

This paper is a case study of specialization in clinical medicine - it is a story of the difficult and complicated birth of a neurosurgery clinic in Russia and the Soviet Union. It demonstrates the futile attempt to institute a new specialty as surgical neurology advocated by neuro(patho)logist V.M. Bekhterev (1857-1927) and implemented by his pupils L.M. Pussep (1875-1942) and A.G. Molotkov (1874-1950). However, surgical neurology was gradually replaced by neurological surgery performed by general surgeons N.N. Burdenko (1875-1946), A.L. Polenov (1871-1947), and V.N. Shamov (1882-1962). Part of my paper is dedicated to the institutional history (emergence of the Institute of Surgical Neurology in Leningrad (in 1926) and the Central Institute of Neurosurgery in Moscow (in 1934). The Moscow Neurosurgical School was focused on lesions of the central nervous system whereas the Leningrad neurosurgical school dealt primarily with peripheral nerve surgery. In the 1930s neurosurgical clinics were established beyond the two capitals - in Rostov-on-Don, Kharkov, and Gorky. Similar to the centralized five-year planning in the Soviet economy, a new discipline of neurosurgery was also centralized and planned from Moscow in the 1930s. It was characterized by kompleksnost' - concentration of several auxiliary disciplines (neuroradiology, neuroophthalmology, neurophysiology, etc.) within neurosurgical research institutions in Leningrad and Moscow. Particular stress was made on the experimental nature of a new discipline, which was viewed as a sort of applied neurophysiology.     

Intertextual relations: The geopolitics of land rights in Thailand

This paper explores the geopolitics surrounding the “modernization” of the formal property rights regime in land in Thailand (formerly Siam) from the mid 1850s to the late 1930s. The paper argues that this weak, peripheral state, in pursuit of international recognition of territorial and jurisdictional sovereignty, employed a strategy of “counter-spatialization” in order to mitigate or deny claims for control over natural resources and population groups by imperial powers. The intertextual dimensions of this “spatial” mode of resistance are elucidated through a close reading of the ways in which diplomatic negotiations of a series of unequal treaties, beginning with the Anglo-Siamese treaty of 1855, shaped—and were shaped by—the formulation and implementation of regulations governing formal property rights in land in Siam. The political economy of land rights at the large scale (local implementation of land titling) and the medium scale (enactment of national land laws) was nested within a process of geopolitical contestation over land rights at the small scale (international recognition of Siamese territorial sovereignty).     

芝加哥华人：19世纪70年代至20世纪30年代的跨国移民与商业活动

论文通过中英文原始资料,追述了芝加哥唐人街历史,论证了19世纪70年代至20世纪30年代的芝加哥华人社区在跨国移民与商业网络中的重要作用。认为芝加哥所拥有的水陆空交通枢纽的优越地理位置让城中的华人杂货业得以扩大生意范围;芝加哥的国际化氛围还培养了中餐精致饮食文化的先驱;城内的华人洗衣业也成为美国中西部城镇洗衣业的典范。这些特征都表明了芝加哥城内的华埠社区是美国中西部地区跨国移民与商贸中心的一个重要枢纽。华人企业家们不仅仅为他们个人商业的成功做出了贡献,同时也为美国中西部地区华人社区及家乡父老的集体生存、发展与成功做出了重要的贡献。     

Christian co-operation and the ecumenical ideal in the 1930s and 1940s

This article looks at the early ecumenical movement and the difficulties confronting Christian co-operation. It is particularly concerned with co-operation between the Roman and non-Roman churches. It explores how a combination of institutional suspicion, individual prejudice, and political considerations at both the national and international level, exacerbated an already complex and difficult situation caused by deep doctrinal divisions and ancient animosity. In addition to the institutional obstacles to be overcome in realising the ecumenical ideal, its advocates, despite believing in the principle and working selflessly toward its achievement, harboured severe doubts about the inclusion of the Roman Catholic Church which hindered the very task they had set themselves. Insights into this dilemma are provided by the struggle of William Temple, perhaps one of the most well known and respected figures in the ecumenical movement, to overcome his own anti-Roman sentiments and suspicions. Temple's inner conflicts and the influence of external events are key components illustrating the complex amalgam of problems that confronted early ecumenists. Post-war reactions following Temple's death to his efforts to facilitate a wartime approach to Pius XII serve not only to extend the insights, but also to demonstrate further the constraints and limitations imposed by secular as well as ecclesiastical politics.