The show must go on: Collapse,resilience, and transformation in 21st-century archaeology

Collapse is a theme addressed by specialists from many disciplines, from environmental and sustainability studies to popular culture and the hard sciences, as well as by archaeologists and historians. This review focuses on three recent books about past collapses and sets them in the context of collapse studies. The new contributions build on the growing body of collapse theory and increasing data on individual case studies, but each takes a new direction, adding to the ongoing debates about collapse, resilience, and transformation. While taking us forward, it is apparent that issues of definition and terminology are still an issue in collapse studies. The review also demonstrates that collapse is an area of lively research that can be regarded as a recognizable subfield of archaeological and historical research that also crosses over into other disciplines.     

REVIEW ESSAY: THE FRAGILITY OF CHILDHOOD: GABRIELLE ROY'S CES ENFANTS DE MA VIE

Both Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence have named L.M. Montgomery’s work— particularly her books about Emily—as childhood readings that are central to their development as writers. This essay explores how Montgomery’s three books about Emily—Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest—provide a persisting imaginary that The Diviners by Laurence and Who Do You Think You Are? by Munro reflect.     

《四库全书》与李氏朝鲜后期的文坛动向

清朝统治者为了巩固自身的统治地位,编纂了中国古代最大的官修书——《四库全书》,它的出现给中国的学术和文化的发展带来了重大的影响,促进了中国文献典籍的保存和传播。同时,《四库全书》也给邻邦朝鲜的文坛带来了巨大的影响,对朝鲜后期的文体改革,朝鲜文学的发展起到了极为重要的推动作用。     

Land,citizenship and the consolidation of constitutional democracy in Southern Africa

This review article discusses recent books on land reform and its implications for racial reconciliation and constitutional democracy in formerly white‐ruled states in Southern Africa. It is argued that President Mugabe's opportunistic use of the land issue in his power struggle with his domestic opposition—and propaganda warfare with his international critics—should not obscure the symbolic and material importance of Zimbabwe's highly unequal land ownership. Moreover, Mugabe's militant stance is having resonance in neighbouring South Africa and Namibia, where the racially skewed ownership of land—and other resources—could also become sites of struggle that, as in Zimbabwe, threaten not only economic growth, but also the construction of a broad (non‐racial) citizenship and the consolidation of constitutional democracy. Such a chain of events is also likely to have adverse consequences for western–African relations.     

The Consequences of Early Food Production: Three Recent Contributions

This essay reviews three books on food production, including the emergence, spread, and strategies of agriculture. As a group, the books draw on ethnographic, linguistic, archaeological, and biological anthropological approaches and sources of evidence. Combining multiple sources of evidence and theoretical approaches—even when these compete with one another or appear to conflict—provides the safest answers to anthropological questions on the consequences of the shift from foraging to agriculture.     

Jean Renoir,The Rules of the Game,Reputation, and Revisionism

Jean Renoir's film La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) was first shown in Paris, in 1939, and is now generally regarded as one of his masterpieces. But there is a strange side to the film. What most critics and reference books say concerning it—and they tend to say much the same thing—does not, to put it bluntly, square with the facts. What they say is that La Règle du jeu is about an aristocratic house-party that is a microcosm of the corruptness and exhaustion of French society on the eve of World War II. Far from perceiving in La Règle du jeu evidence of the “corruption” and “exhaustion” in French society that led to the country's defeat and occupation by the Germans during World War II, however, the author of this essay attempts to see the film for what it is—not for what historicist critics want it to be.     

Women and children,war and peace: political agency in time of conflict

The four books under review focus on different aspects of war and conflict, but they all make it clear that women and children are more than their victims. They can be, and often are, active participants in all dimensions of conflict, from taking up arms to working for peace. While all four books paint an appropriately grim picture of war and its impact, there is also some optimism to be found in the resilience shown by women and children as they face the brutality of war and often actively seek to work for peace. Three of the books examine women's involvement in conflict, war, peace and peacemaking, and the aftermath of these events, albeit in very different ways—although all view women as active participants in the process rather than as victims. The fourth book included in this article, Children and global conflict, is not only relevant to the discussion, but also provides another important lens through which we can examine issues of conflict, war and peace. This review article provides insight into the contrition made to the field by these recent books individually, as well as when considered as parts of a whole.     

明遗民周岐事迹探微

关于明遗民周岐清初时的活动轨迹,文献记载颇多矛盾、含混之处。本文通过考察相关史料。认为他实际上经历了一段国变归里,后外出旅食、游幕。最终重又还乡隐居的曲折过程。其同,他与多名清廷大僚过从交往,甚至一度为清军效力,因而绝非部分典籍所描述的典型明遗民。     

Andrea's Baggage: Reading (in) Laforet's Nada

One overlooked feature of Andrea's arrival in Barcelona at the beginning of Nada is the old and battered suitcase that she drags with her to her relatives’ apartment. It is filled almost entirely with books, books that—we may assume—she has read and plans to read again. Reading, it is clear, has played a large part in her intellectual and psychological formation as a teenager, but one of the strands of her overall maturation process during the forthcoming year will involve achieving a greater understanding of the distortions involved in how people (including her) see life through the optic of literature and literature through the optic of life. Gradually disabused of her overly literary adolescent imaginings, then, she eventually becomes a writer—of the text that is Nada—who is well aware of the traps that reading and writing hold.     

Society and politics in China today

China's social and economic transformations, and their growing global impact, have prompted a plethora of books. This review article examines five recent books in Polity's China today series as a basis for discussion about society and politics in China. The series is structured around applying different themes or concepts to China, and these five look at consumption, social welfare, class, ethnicity, and the nature, role and performance of the Communist Party and state. The books provide well‐researched and balanced accounts of developments in China, especially since the era of ‘reform and opening up’ began in 1978. The article argues that important themes of the books—the growing discourse of consumption, the depoliticization of class as socio‐economic strata, the Party‐state as a pragmatic provider of citizen services, and the role of the private sector in the provision of social welfare—are all features of the current phase of a globalized capitalist modernity, and concludes that while the country wants to be seen as different, the accounts of politics and society in this series suggests that China today offers more of an alternative within that modernity than an alternative to it.     

Aspects of continuity and change in the Italian placitum, 962-72

In the preface to his liturgical calendar The reckoning of the course of the stars Bishop Gregory of Tours (538–594) — author also of Ten books of histories and Eight books of miracles as well as of a Commentary on the understanding of the Psalter (of which, however, only fragments are preserved) — declares God's “wonders” of the natural world to be superior to the seven ancient wonders of the world. The reason for this is that the latter, being works of men, are subject to decay and destruction, while the former, as miraculous works of God, are divinely sustained and renewed daily or annually, thereby becoming imperishable. An examination of the associative contexts in which two of these wonders — the sea (enlarged to include water in its various forms) and plant life — occur in the rest of Gregory's works reveals several essential themes of his thinking not only about nature, but also about God, man and society. Thought, for him, nature as a (divinely sustained) system of regularities does exist as a kind of backdrop, sudden unpredictable divine — and sometimes diabolic — action in and through phenomena occupies the center of the stage. Gregory tends to see this action in the shape of what he regards as pre-existing images or patterns of invisible spiritual truth, to which the visible, even material, structure of events must necessarily conform. He shows, too, how this action could reflect as well as meet various needs of the individual and of society as a whole. An association which recurs almost constantly in his treatment of divine action in these natural phenomena, which he sometimes describes as analogous to that in man, is precisely that with the cluster of closely related concepts of renewal, rebirth and creation ex nihilo. Together with what appears as an extreme, as it were ‘poetical’, sensitivity to sudden perceptions and intuitions, something like a longing for and surrender to what he describes as “astonished admiration” may have helped to make possible his recognition of that which he designated as divine creative power in the world of visible reality as well as in man's inner experience. His seeing this as an essential dynamic of the holy may mean that he felt it to be a fundamental need and concern not only of the individual personality but also, more obscurely, of the society in which he found himself.     

Writing on Stone; Writing on Paper: Myth,History and Memory in NW Amazonia

This paper deals with the relation between different kinds of indigenous speech and music and various iconographic forms such as petroglyphs, house painting, basketry designs and also features of landscape that are understood in graphic terms. It examines how Northwest Amazonian myth-history is structured and memorized, how it can appear in both verbal and non-verbal forms, and how contemporary books, maps and diagrams produced by indigenous organizations as part of programmes of research and education show continuity with these traditional forms. Rather than making firm distinctions between peoples with and without writing, I argue that it is more profitable to focus on how various mnemonic systems—“writing”—work in tandem with different narrative forms—“myth”. When “writing” and “myth” are understood in indigenous terms, contemporary written documents appear in a new light.     

Moving with practices: the discontinuous,rhythmic and material mobilities of leisure

When considering mobilities within social life, researchers have emphasized the importance of enactment and embodied practices. Yet such understandings of practice as praxis—human action in general—have often left the relationship between practices and mobilities vaguely characterized. This paper therefore engages with an understanding of practices as praktik—distinct patterns of social action made up of interconnected elements—in order to explore how people move not only with cars and trains but also with practices. Praktik provides a context for studying the multiple mobilities of people, objects and ideas, highlighting important dynamics of performance and units of study. Leisure subcultures, the empirical focus of the paper, are important social practices and yet limited attention has been given to how they rely upon and are constituted by mobilities. Drawing upon a qualitative study of patchwork quilting and bird watching, the paper demonstrates that enacting leisure is inextricable from enacting discontinuous mobilities. Enthusiasts' goals lead to common experiences of travelling-in-anticipation and travelling-in-disappointment, while the systematic circulation of objects, such as bird lists and bird books, shape travel even when they are not moving alongside participants. In this way, leisure practices unfold through temporally marked patterns of mobility.     

Cronies,economic crime and capitalism in Putin's sistema

The books included in this review article are essential for the understanding of what I call Putin's sistema—the governance model that originated in the Soviet system but has transformed and adapted to global change. Each book tackles, from a different angle, the issues of Russia's transition and suggests ways to describe its political consequences. The books all attempt to identify some underlying logic or organizing force in a Russian society that has emerged through weak institutions. Although I join the authors in their criticisms of the ‘transition paradigm’ and its ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of democracy’ formula, transformations of the Soviet sistema seem to resonate with the ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of capitalism’. Perestroika can be seen as an ‘opening’ in shaking the foundations of sistema; Yeltsin's era as a ‘breakthrough’; and Putin's regime as the ‘consolidation’ of capitalism but with its distinct characteristics.     

The spring,the seed and the tree: Gregory of Tours on the wonders of nature

In the preface to his liturgical calendar The reckoning of the course of the stars Bishop Gregory of Tours (538–594) — author also of Ten books of histories and Eight books of miracles as well as of a Commentary on the understanding of the Psalter (of which, however, only fragments are preserved) — declares God's “wonders” of the natural world to be superior to the seven ancient wonders of the world. The reason for this is that the latter, being works of men, are subject to decay and destruction, while the former, as miraculous works of God, are divinely sustained and renewed daily or annually, thereby becoming imperishable. An examination of the associative contexts in which two of these wonders — the sea (enlarged to include water in its various forms) and plant life — occur in the rest of Gregory's works reveals several essential themes of his thinking not only about nature, but also about God, man and society. Thought, for him, nature as a (divinely sustained) system of regularities does exist as a kind of backdrop, sudden unpredictable divine — and sometimes diabolic — action in and through phenomena occupies the center of the stage. Gregory tends to see this action in the shape of what he regards as pre-existing images or patterns of invisible spiritual truth, to which the visible, even material, structure of events must necessarily conform. He shows, too, how this action could reflect as well as meet various needs of the individual and of society as a whole. An association which recurs almost constantly in his treatment of divine action in these natural phenomena, which he sometimes describes as analogous to that in man, is precisely that with the cluster of closely related concepts of renewal, rebirth and creation ex nihilo. Together with what appears as an extreme, as it were ‘poetical’, sensitivity to sudden perceptions and intuitions, something like a longing for and surrender to what he describes as “astonished admiration” may have helped to make possible his recognition of that which he designated as divine creative power in the world of visible reality as well as in man's inner experience. His seeing this as an essential dynamic of the holy may mean that he felt it to be a fundamental need and concern not only of the individual personality but also, more obscurely, of the society in which he found himself.     

Museums as Relational Entities: The Politics and Poetics of Heritage

Over the last 40 years museums have become important sites to understand the politics and poetics of heritage management, display, and knowledge production. The books under consideration here all help demonstrate how museums as relational entities—containing dynamic relations between persons and things, as well as generating them—are emergent processes. Each work helps demonstrate why museums in their many guises remain critical terrains for the negotiation of identity, history, and culture in the push for more collaborative accounts of our world and the circulation and display of things.     

BETWEEN GENOCIDE AND “GENOCIDE”

The two books discussed here join a current pushback against the concept (thus also against claims for the historical occurrence) of genocide. Nichanian focuses on the Armenian “Aghed” (“Catastrophe”), inferring from his view of that event's undeniability that “genocide is not a fact” (since all facts are deniable). May's critique assumes that groups don't really—“objectively”—exist, as (by contrast) individuals do; thus, genocide—group murder—also has an “as if” quality so far as concerns the group victimized. On the one hand, then, uniqueness and sacralization; on the other hand, reductionism and diffusion. Alas, the historical and moral claims in “defense” of both genocide and “genocide” survive.     

Touching the Divine: Recent Research on Neo-Paganism and Neo-Shamanism

Why do religions that are in some sense invented out of the western scholarship on shamanism and paganism have such a hold on the western imagination? This article reviews four recent contributions to the literature on neo-paganism and neo-shamanism. As exemplified in the books under review, these religions have three basic characteristics—magical realism, playfulness, and experientalism—which are not unique to them, but shared by many modern faiths. The article argues that these are not primitive throw-backs but ways of responding to the doubt and skepticism of a modern pluralistic age.     

The Genealogical Society Library of Salt Lake City: A Source of Data for Economic and Social Historians

Abstract. Some important novelists have written a great novel early in their careers and have produced lesser works thereafter, whereas others have improved their work gradually over long periods and have made their major contributions late in their lives. Which of these patterns a novelist follows appears to be systematically related to the nature of his work. Conceptual writers typically have specific goals for their books, and they produce novels that emphasize plot; experimental writers' intentions are often uncertain, and their novels more often stress characterization. By examining the careers of 12 important modern novelists, the author demonstrates that conceptual novelists—including Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway—are generally those who have declined after writing landmark early novels, while, in contrast, experimental novelists—including Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf—have typically arrived at their most important work later in their careers. As is the case for modern painting and poetry, the ranks of great modern novelists have included both conceptual young geniuses and experimental old masters.