Guided by the dark: From thanatopsis to thanatourism

Abstract

Death is the one heritage that everyone shares and it has been an element of tourism longer than any other form of heritage. This paper looks at the historical development of Thanatoptic elements in travel and shows how the Dark Tourism to which this issue is devoted can be located within a historical tradition which sheds light on how it should be defined, typified and viewed today     

毕达哥拉斯:从人到神的演变——“古史层累”现象的西方个案探究

顾颉刚创立的“古史层累说”理论具有普遍适用性,不仅适用于中国古史研究,也适用于其他地区古代史的研究。本文以“古史层累说”的理论为指导,分析毕达哥拉斯从人到神的演变过程以及导致这种现象产生的背后原因,进而通过这个具体个案的研究,来论证顾颉刚“古史层累说”理论所具有的普遍意义。     

From folklore to patriotic and protest songs: Music,youth, and Basque identity during the 1960s

Taking a bottom‐up approach to the study of nationalism, the following pages constitute an attempt to shed light on the role singing played for a young generation of Basques who actively participated in the process of construction of Basque collective identity during the cultural revival movement of the 1960s. In doing so, this article aims at showing the fundamental role of active audiences, as well as their changing political and social context, in conforming the meaning of “Basque songs” as means to promote Basque nationalism and sustain opposition to the Franco regime. The study of the production, reception, and reinterpretation of Basque music during the cultural revival of the 1960s presented here intends to emphasize the interest of focusing on how ordinary people contribute to the recreation of the nation through their appropriation and interpretation of cultural symbols and practices.     

From Image to Identity: Building Regions by Place Promotion

This article discusses the idea of institutionalizing a region and building a regional identity by constructing a regional image. Identity and image are thus regarded as intertwining both conceptually and in the everyday practices of regional development, where regional competitiveness is emphasized. It is argued that regional identity is to some extent a prerequisite for successful image building, but the interplay is nevertheless distinctly bidirectional. This means that non-standard or newly established regions are increasingly being constructed by place promotion outside the region, although they do also become familiar to the inhabitants of the region in such an institutionalization process, so that the inhabitants will identify with them accordingly. The link between regional identity and image will largely be shaped conceptually, but the sub-regions in Finland serve as case studies for scrutinizing this linkage.     

《从巴黎到伯尔尼》:恩格斯的一份社会调查

对原始献和目击记录进行认真的分析,以便深入了解历史事件与人物的真实面目,这是历史科学的传统。恩格斯的《从巴黎到伯尔尼》正是一篇具有珍贵的社会史史料价值的目击记录。在这篇未完成的手稿中,恩格斯给了法兰西有关地区的风土人情以较好的评价。它是当时法国的社会情景、民间心态与自然风貌的写真,是后人研究法国近代历史的宝贵资料。     

From medicine to psychotherapy: the placebo effect

If placebos have been squeezed out of medicine to the point where their official place in in clinical trials designed to identify their own confounding effect, the placebo effect nevertheless thrives in psychotherapy. Not only does psychotherapy dispose of placebo effects that are less available to medicine as it becomes increasingly technological and preoccupied with body parts, but factors of the sort inhibiting the use of placebos in medicine have no equivalent in psychology. Medicine today is disturbed by the placebo effect in a way psychotherapy is not. Psychotherapy does not have to grapple with such a disconcerting paradox as successful sham surgery, and unlike those physicians who once pretended to treat the patient's body while actually attempting to treat the mind, the psychotherapist can treat the mind in all frankness. Perhaps it is because psychotherapy is less burdened by doubts about the placebo effect that it was able to come to its aid when it was orphaned by medicine. It is vain to expect something with so long a history as the placebo effect to disappear from the practices of healing.     

Adwa: From monument to document

To the Italian historian the Battle of Adwa in March 1896 has offered a field of interpretation which has been heavily marked by the events that occurred between (and within) the two countries—Ethiopia and Italy—before and after the battle. Adwa has been variously depicted by Italian historiography of the liberal period as a major military defeat, a political mistake by Crispi's expansionist government and the result of deep contrasts within the newly born state over the 'colonial burden'. Fascist historiography painted Adwa as proof of liberal decay and political inefficiency. Adwa's name could be avenged only in the battlefield, which was done during Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36. From the Ethiopian point of view, Adwa's image changes no less. Until recently, the Battle of Adwa was painted as the landmark for Ethiopian unification and independence during the colonial era. Menelik's momentous victory at Adwa crowned his bid for power in the national arena, while his successful ability to stave off external colonial pressure appeared to cancel, or rather conceal, the internal policy of expansion and consolidation of his country's rule in the region. Today's insistence on Adwa as an African victory appears to be the dominant historiographical representation. The different interpretations all contain elements of truth, yet all, if frozen into historiographical truths, become embarrassing to the historian who needs documents, rather than monuments, as tools of analysis. To many historians both in Italy and Ethiopia, Adwa's respective symbolism of victory/defeat has been transformed into an icon, an historiographical monument, unassailable and immovable. The centenary of Adwa allows us to reconsider historical events of a shared past as critical documents and biased representations reflecting their own culture and time. This article attempts to deconstruct the historiographical monument of Adwa in Italian society so as to transmit such a heavily coded event to the critical examination of future historians in both Italy and Ethiopia.