PRODUCTION,EXCHANGE, AND SOCIO-POLITICAL COMPLEXITY ON BRONZE AGE CYPRUS1

Summary. During the centuries 1700–1400 BC, the archaeological record of the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus shows a number of significant innovations: urban centres with public and ceremonial architecture, differential burial practices, writing, an intensification of metallurgical production and export, extensive trade relations with the surrounding cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, fortifications, ‘mass’burials, and increased finds of weaponry. Documentary evidence from Egypt, the Levant, and the Aegean sheds further light on these developments. These changes represent the transformation of an isolated, village-based culture into an international, urban-oriented, complex society. One of the key questions to consider is why these developments in Cyprus lagged so far (400-1200 years) behind those of the island's neighbours: Egypt, Crete, Syria-Palestine, and Anatolia. Using concepts from development economics and political anthropology, and models developed by archaeologists working on similar problems elsewhere, this study attempts to explain the process of change and innovation apparent in the Cypriot archaeological record of 1700–1400 BC.     

1. NARRATIVE FORM AND HISTORICAL SENSATION: ON SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER'S THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION1

Saul Friedländer's magnum opus, The Years of Extermination, has been received worldwide as an exemplary work of history. Yet it was written by a historian who in the last two decades has strenuously asserted the limits of Holocaust representation. At the center of this essay is a problem of historical writing: how to write a historical narrative of the Holocaust that both offers explanations of the unfolding events and also suggests that the most powerful sensation about those events, at the time and since, is that they are beyond words. I explore Friedländer's crafting of such a narrative by considering, first, the role of his attempt in The Years of Extermination to explain the Holocaust and, second, the narrative form of the book. The book is best seen, I argue, not primarily as a work of explanation but as a vast narrative that places an explanation of the Holocaust within a specific form of describing that goes beyond the boundaries of the historical discipline as it is usually practiced. This form of describing goes beyond the almost positivist attachment to facts that dominates current Holocaust historiography. By using Jewish individual testimonies that are interspersed in the chronological history of the extermination, Friedländer creates a narrative based on ruptures and breaks, devices we associate with works of fiction, and that historians do not usually use. The result is an arresting narrative, which I interpret by using Johan Huizinga's notion of historical sensation. Friedländer sees this narrative form as specific to the Holocaust. I view this commingling of irreducible reality and the possibility of art as a required sensibility that belongs to all historical understanding. And in this respect, The Years of Extermination only lays bare more clearly in the case of the Holocaust what is an essential element in all historical reconstruction.     

ON THE DATING OF THE TYRRHENIAN GROUP1

Iconographic and epigraphic evidence suggest that the Attic black-figure vases of the Tyrrhenian Group should be dated to the period c.560–530 BC rather than to the second quarter of the sixth century BC. Imagery on some vases, particularly those of the later painters, points to a lowering of the date for the end of the group to c. 530 BC. Epigraphic evidence, particularly the absence of crossed theta , closed heta and qoppa from almost all of the vases of the earlier painters allows the start of the group to be lowered to c. 560, closer to Exekias than to Kleitias.     

1. TOWARD A HISTORY ON EQUAL TERMS: A DISCUSSION OF PROVINCIALIZING EUROPE

This essay is a critical discussion of Dipesh Chakrabarty's book Provincializing Europe as well as a first sketch of a History on Equal Terms. After giving a short summary of Provincializing Europe, I first argue, against chakrabarty, that there is no necessary connection between the discipline of history and the metanarratives of modernity. To the contrary: the founding idea of the discipline of history was a turn against such grand narratives. With his attempt to deconstruct the narratives of the European Enlightenment and of modernity, Chakrabarty therefore has to be regarded as a thinker of radical historicism rather than as a critic of the discipline of history. Second, I criticize the use of the term “modernity” in Provincializing Europe and the concept of modernity in general. Instead of a deconstruction of the discipline of history, I propose a deconstruction of the concept of modernity. This could open up the way for a History on Equal Terms situated within the discipline of history, that is, a historiography that would—just as Chakrabarty rightly demands—in principle pay the same attention to and expect relevant results from any region in the world, depending only on the focus of research.     

THE TRUE FACE OF MOUNT LU: ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PERSPECTIVES AND PARADIGMS1

From a hermeneutic point of view, understanding is always conditioned by one's own horizon and perspective. as the great poet Su Shi remarks, we do not know the “true face of Mount Lu” because what we see constantly changes as we move high or low, far off or up close. But the point of the “hermeneutic circle” is not to legitimize the circularity or subjectivity of one's understanding, but to make us conscious of the challenge. How do we understand China, its history and culture? What should be the appropriate paradigm or perspective for China studies? More than twenty years ago, Paul Cohen argued for a “China‐centered” approach to understanding Chinese history, but to assume an insider's perspective does not guarantee adequate understanding any more than does an outsider's position guarantee emancipation from an insider's myopia or blindness. By discussing several exemplary cases in China studies, this essay argues that neither insiders nor outsiders have monopolistic or privileged access to knowledge, and that integration of different perspectives and their dynamic interaction beyond the isolation of native Chinese scholarship and Western Sinology may lead us to a better understanding of China and its history.     

THE TEETH OF TIME: PIERRE HADOT ON MEANING AND MISUNDERSTANDING IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS1

The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault. An aspect of his work that has received less attention is a set of methodological reflections on intellectual history and on the relationship between philosophy and history. Hadot was trained initially as a philosopher and was interested in existentialism as well as in the convergence between philosophy and poetry. Yet he chose to become a historian of philosophy and produced extensive philological work on neo‐Platonism and ancient philosophy in general. He found a philosophical rationale for this shift in his encounter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in the mid‐1950s (Hadot was one of Wittgenstein's earliest French readers and interpreters). For Hadot, ancient philosophy must be understood as a series of language games, and each language game must be situated within the concrete conditions in which it happened. The reference to Wittgenstein therefore supports a strongly contextualist and historicist stance. It also supports its exact opposite: presentist appropriations of ancient texts are entirely legitimate, and they are the only way ancient philosophy can be existentially meaningful to us. Hadot addresses the contradiction by embracing it fully and claiming that his own practice aims at a coincidence of opposites (a concept borrowed from the Heraclitean tradition). For Hadot the fullest and truest way of doing philosophy is to be a philosopher and a historian at the same time.     

REPORT ON THE 2001 BEIJING SEMINAR ON TIBETOLOGY

The China National Center for Tibetan Studies and the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences held the2001 Beijing Seminar on Tibetology from July 25-29 at the Beijing-based China National Center for Tibetan Studies. As the fourth of its kind (the previous three were held in 1986, 1991 and 1997 respectively), it attracted some 170 Tibetan studies workers and scholars from Tibet, the Tibetan-inhabited areas in the four inland provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu, Beijing, Shanghai…     

SYMPOSIUM ON INTRODUCTORY TEXTBOOKS ON PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS

WORLD POLICAL ECONOMY
Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation
Zuhayr Mikdashi, The International Politics of Natural Resources
Mason Willrich, Energy and World Politics
RECENT RELEVANT LITERATURE
J. Clarence Davies III and Barbara S. Davies, The Politics of Pollution
POLICY STUDIES PAPERS FROM NON-POLITICAL SCIENCE CONVENTIONS
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF POLICY STUDIES BOOKS     

ON LONELINESS

Contemporary Western societies are characterized by ‘until further notice’ relationships (and precarious or very loose social bonds), historically high levels of mobility of both capital and labour and growing numbers of single person households. As artefacts of freedom and choice these social arrangements do not inevitably give cause for concern but they may come at a price and that might involve more frequent and more sustained experiences of loneliness. This article argues that we know very little about loneliness even though some observers have described it as a new plague. The article sets out to describe the dimensions of a sociology of contemporary loneliness in terms of its social distribution, its extent and impact as well as its nature as an emotional and ontological experience. While we may be heading towards a civilization which, as Michel Houellebecq darkly hints in the recent novel The Possibility of an Island (2006), may have little further need for ‘the social’, for the time being it seems as though this problem (that would ‘rather not’ speak its name) is the cause of considerable suffering and pain.     

初论段义孚人本主义地理学思想的形成

1976年,人本主义地理学之父段义孚在《美国地理学家协会会刊》发表的论文中首次使用了"人本主义地理学"这一称法。人本主义地理学的出现由20世纪60年代末的人本主义思潮所带动,其通过关注人类自身状况而反映出与地理学学科的其他分支息息相关的各种现象,因而从属于地理学。段义孚将融合了地理学与哲学的、曾被称为"地理知识学"的学科推向一个新的高度。段义孚认为,"对生命意义的探求"是人本主义地理学的实质性核心,也是一直以来推动其进行人本主义地理学研究的动力。正如人本主义研究以人类的经验、意识以及知识为出发点,本文从人本主义视角出发,对段义孚人本主义地理学思想的形成过程进行系统化梳理。通过追溯段义孚人生经历中对其有重大影响的人物和经典著作,指出时代背景与个人经历共同促成段义孚人本主义关怀的形成。     

女性旅游研究进展

文章搜索了国内外女性旅游研究的相关文献,总结了女性旅游的研究进展,指出国内外研究的成果主要集中在女性旅游者行为、女性旅游市场两方面。文章对比分析国内外女性旅游在研究方法和研究内容上的异同。研究方法上,国外主要运用社会学、旅游学研究的方法,通过问卷调查、面对面的访谈、电话访谈等获取资料,侧重于定量分析,国内多以统计年鉴作为研究的基础资料,习惯于从宏观视角进行定性分析。通过对国外、国内女性旅游的研究方法及内容的对比分析,作者认为目前女性旅游研究的文献偏少,女性旅游研究尚处于起步阶段,内容欠系统,成果欠丰富。     

智力迁移国外研究进展

智力迁移是一种国际现象,是世界各国普遍关注的问题。目前有关国际智力迁移的理论成果尽管很丰富,有新古典经济学理论、二元劳动力市场理论、新迁移经济学理论、相对贫困假说、世界体系理论、社会网络理论和机构理论等,但这些理论都有其侧重点,都不能全面综合的解释智力迁移现象。在评述这些理论的基础上,把影响智力迁移的要素归纳为四种:经济、社会、政治和国家联系;重点分析了智力迁移对迁出国的不利影响,认为应该通过国家之间的补偿机制逐渐消除其不利影响。