Some Political Processes of Ranked Societies

This article explores the emergence of inequality in two regions of Mesoamerica: the Soconusco and Valley of Oaxaca. Dichotomous models that propose a continuum of political strategy (i.e., Leach 1954; Renfrew 1974; Spencer 1993; Blanton et al. 1996) are used to examine the different processes evident in the comparison of settlement, mortuary, and architectural data between these two regions. The elite in Early and Middle Formative Soconusco appear to integrate society with a comparatively external oriented and exclusionary strategy whereas in the Valley of Oaxaca Early and Middle Formative elites employed a more group-oriented, internally focused, and corporate strategy. Environment richness and proximity of competing communities may account for the primary, and perhaps unintentional, emergence of inequality in the Soconusco around 1400 B.C.E. In the Valley of Oaxaca inequality emerged as many as 250 years later in a less circumscribed area. Such environmental, political, and chronological factors may be responsible for some of the differences in integrative strategies evident in the two regions.     

American neurophysiology and two nineteenth-century American Physiological Societies

This article contrasts two American Physiological Societies, one founded near the beginning of the nineteenth century in 1837 and the other founded near its end in 1887. The contrast allows a perspective on how much budding neuroscience had developed during the nineteenth century in America. The contrast also emphasizes the complicated structure needed in both medicine and physiology to allow neurophysiology to flourish. The objectives of the American Physiological Society of 1887 were (and are) to promote physiological research and to codify physiology as a discipline. These would be accomplished by making physiology much more inclusive than traditionally accepted by raising research standards, by giving prestige to its members, by providing members a source of professional interchange, by protecting its members from antivivisectionists, and by promoting physiology as fundamental to medicine. The quantity of neuroscientific experiments by its members was striking. The main organizers of the society were Silas Weir Mitchell, John Call Dalton, Henry Pickering Bowditch, and Henry Newell Martin. The objective of the American Physiological Society of 1837 was to disperse knowledge of the “laws of life” and to promote human health and longevity. The primary organizers were William Andrus Alcott and Sylvester Graham with the encouragement of John Benson. Its technique was to use physiological information, not create it as was the case in 1887. Its object was to disseminate the word that healthy eating will improve the quality of life.     

歃血盟誓与秘密会党

以往治秘密社会史者,着重于探究“是什么”的问题,至于“为什么”则少人问津。近年,我一直以秘密社会为视角,借用民俗学、宗教学等学科的研究方法,探索文化与叛乱之问的关系。本文便是这一探索的成果之一。     

关于宋代的泰山香会

对大山的崇拜,在世界各民族中都有着一定的历史渊源;但像泰山那样历史文化延续之长、宗教信仰影响之大,乃至成为一个民族精神的象征,实不多见。因着这种历史的优势、文化的优势,作为泰山化身的泰山神,走出了大山,走向了全国。其信仰渗透于各个社会阶层之中,以致影响着一代帝王、一介百姓。封禅大典成就着帝王的理想与希冀;而年复一年的朝山进香,则寄托着庶民的渴望与追求。我们相信,对泰山的信仰是自由的,尤其对平民百姓而言。香客来泰山,或许愿,或还愿,是自发的。