The Vietnam War as Theo-Drama: Balthasar,Kenosis, and the Cold War's Temporal Desperation

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Vietnam War through the lens of Hans urs von Balthasar's "theological-drama." According to Balthasar, the unfolding of God's eternal self-giving illumines creaturely temporality as desperate when turned inward, no longer desiring its eternal fulfillment but rather idolatrously grasping its own immanent meaning. By contrasting Balthasar's portrayal of divine kenosis with American foreign policy and its "domino theory" view of Southeast Asia, this paper shows how desperation privatizes and colonizes temporal space.     

“冷战”的起源与终结——世界历史的视角

20世纪的世界体系经历了从"解构"到"局部重构"、再到"全面重构"的历史过程。冷战处于世界体系的"局部重构"阶段。这种特殊的国际关系形态既反映了世界体系结构的内在矛盾,也反映了世界体系与国际体系的张力与互动。冷战史表达的结构性矛盾不仅是一般意义上的国家利益竞争和国际关系中的霸权之争,更具实质性的是两种对抗性社会制度及其指导性意识形态的斗争。冷战后的历史运动表明,冷战终结并非人类社会在发展道路选择上的最后结果。后冷战时代世界体系结构性矛盾的升级和深化使国际社会面临诸多现实的挑战和风险。由于世界体系层面全球治理机制的滞后,缺乏公共产品支撑的国际体系面临失范的风险,后冷战时代的世界正呈现出难以把握的"不确定性"。     

The Hollowing Out of Brazilian Metropolitan Governance As We Know It: Restructuring and Rescaling the Developmental State in Metropolitan Space

Despite regulatory and financial rollout of the state at a number of scales, and a strengthening of the institutional framework that guides territorial planning and management, Brazilian metropolitan governance continues to be characterized by fragmented and relatively competitive organizational structures. Likewise, the Brazilian metropolis is marked by economic dynamism and intense socio‐spatial and environmental contradictions. Much of the mainstream literature on metropolitan governance has emphasized a natural “optimum” scale for planning and management in city‐regions, articulated by public and private stakeholders aimed at the coordinated delivery of economic, social and environmental services. Combining the literature on new state spaces and critical Brazilian urban‐regional studies, this paper provides an alternative framework to understand the impasse of Brazilian metropolitan areas, which is grounded within a geo‐historic reading of the contradictory projects and strategies of the developmental state and the contested nature of metropolitan scale itself.     

Theology and the Origins of Conflict

Abstract

War has its origins in the clash of socially-constructed identities, interests, and norms of behavior of states and armed nonstate actors. This essay examines the economic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the construction of such identities, interests, and norms during the Shining Path insurgency and the Peruvian government’s response in the years from 1980 to 2000. Drawing on the three levels of liberation outlined by Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, the essay then describes how theology enriches without replacing socio-political and cultural explanations of the Peruvian conflict. The practices that formed both the Shining Path and the government’s response to it can be described as social sin, whereas the Catholic Church in Peru’s commitment to truth and the creation of community solidarity became practices that, by imitating the self-giving love of Christ, helped overcome violence and build peace.     

Courses of Conflict: Transmission of Knowledge and War's History in Eastern Sri Lanka

After three decades of armed confrontations, the Sri Lankan civil war ended in May 2009 with the military defeat of the liberation tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). To sustain the war for so long, mechanisms of knowledge reproduction were used legitimizing violence and assuring the conflict's transmission across the generations involved in it. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork in the island's Eastern Province, this article addresses the processes through which Sri Lanka's war-history has been taught and learnt, empirically linking the multiple sites of knowledge transfer. It suggests a trajectory moving from the institutional (policy and textbooks) to the defiant (specific schools and armed movements) spaces of transmission, while comparing the attitudes, memories of violence and transmission strategies of educators, students and former combatants. The data are embedded within the broader discussions on social change and the cultural reproduction of war, a process illustrated with the help of a new concept: semantic alliances.     

The Ancient Origins of Medieval Fields: A Reassessment

This article questions the suggestions that have been made by a number of archaeologists and landscape historians concerning the Roman and prehistoric origins of large tracts of the medieval rural landscape in lowland England. It suggests that arguments for large-scale continuity of field systems, mainly based on the evidence of excavations and topographic analysis, are flawed because they fail to take fully into account the topographic contexts, and the practical functions, of field boundaries. When these matters are given due weight, much of the evidence cited in support of ‘continuity’ instead appears to suggest a significant degree of discontinuity, at least in terms of systems of land division, between Roman Britain and medieval England.     

走到世界的尽头 乌斯怀亚

<正>我能想到的最浪漫的事,就是牵着你的手,一起走到世界的尽头。这个"世界的尽头",就是阿根廷乌斯怀亚,有人类居住的最南端的城市,出了乌斯怀亚港口1000海里,就是渺无人烟的茫茫冰河南极洲。皑皑雪山下"美丽的海湾"乌斯怀亚,位于南半球的顶端火地岛南海岸,走到这里,就走到了世界的尽头——出港口,过德雷克海峡,就是无人居住的冰封南极极地。这里依山傍水,小镇的建筑色彩绚丽,山顶常年积雪,山下的森林却郁郁葱葱,风光旖旎