The Challenge to the State in a Globalized World

Individual instances of state failure and collapse must be placed within a broader appreciation of the evolution of statehood within the international system. The idea that the inhabited area of the globe must be divided between sovereign states is a recent development, and likely to prove a transient one. Largely the product of European colonialism, and turned into a global norm by decolonization, it is threatened both by the inherent difficulties of state maintenance, and by processes inherent in globalization. States are expensive organizations to maintain, not only in economic terms but also in the demands that they make on their citizens and their own employees. Poor and dispersed peoples, and those whose values derive from societies without states, have found these demands especially burdensome. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union revealed the hollowness of existing models of sovereign states, and challenged the triple narratives on which the project of global statehood has depended: the narratives of security, representation, and wealth and welfare. While individual cases of state failure and collapse may owe much to specific circumstances and the behaviour of particular individuals, they must also be understood within the context of a world in which maintaining states has become increasingly difficult.     

Place Making: the Social Construction of Newcastle

The city of Newcastle has experienced significant transformations of identity. The city's contemporary reconstruction is a deliberate shift from industrial to post-industrial identity. An industrial identity is now held to be debilitating for places, while a post-industrial vision proffers an impression of improvement. The notion that places are constructed, symbolically as well as materially, allows us to problematise the identity of place, and to expose the ideologies and the actors behind such (re)constructions. Creative literature, media comment and autobiographical material provide insight into the landscapes and discourses of the city's changing identity, and into persisting patriarchal ideology, Anglo-centrism and elitism.     

Plurality and Globalization: The Challenge of Economics to Social Theology

Abstract

The phenomenon of the global market economy, drawing as it does on ‘liberal’ concepts of plurality and the transcending of tradition, offers a serious challenge to social theology. Neither liberal nor communitarian (confessional) approaches are able to give adequate accounts of two fundamental economic problematics: scarcity and interrelatedness. Liberal approaches have tended to subordinate theological insights to secular narratives in ways which obscure distinctive contributions from the Christian tradition. Confessional approaches have not handled finitude or translatability between communities and traditions with sufficient subtlety. This article argues that an adequate social theology on the economy will bridge liberal and communitarian approaches in ways which are cognisant of the particularity of traditions yet open to encounter between them, and, drawing on MacIntyre, Shanks and Selby, among others, sketches the outlines of such a dialogic traditionalism.     

Reconceptualizing Senses of Place: Social Relations, Ideology and Ecology

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize sense of place through the examination, re-analysis and theorization of two case studies, one of an ex-urban community in England, the other a Himalayan farming and herding community. The paper begins by examining the traditional locus of sense of place research in humanistic geography with extensions to political geography and interpretive anthropology. Identifying three core components—social, ideological and ecological—of senses of place, the paper goes on to reconceptualize these elements using Habermas's theory of communicative action and Ingold's work on environmental psychology. It then applies this reconceptualization to the case studies of Towcester and Shimshal. The paper concludes by emphasizing the ways these cases enrich our understanding of sense of place, by stressing the theoretical contributions of conceiving sense of place as rooted in theories of social organization and society, and as being variably and contingently ecologically emplaced.     

Social Change in An Urban-Rural Fringe: Marques,Brazil

Communities at the fringe of cities in southeastern Brazil are characterized by rapidly changing social values associated with elements of economic modernization. The economy of the small rural village of Marques, situated near Piracicaba, a city of 500,000 population, has been transformed from one based on local subsistence and cash crop farming to one of diversified urban employment. Migration to the city has been significant. Despite diminished economic output, family and institutional ties have kept many from moving away from Marques and draw former residents back for special occasions.     

略论世界历史上的社会变革

人类进入文明社会以来,经历了农业文明和工业文明两大时代。期间贯穿了三次社会变革：第一次社会变革是在公元前4000年代末,由于社会生产力的发展和农业的进步,最终导致原始公社制的解体和奴隶制国家的建立。随之而来的是贯穿整个文明时代始终的脑力劳动和体力劳动的对立、农民和手工业劳动者的对立、城市与乡村的对立。第二次社会变革是由奴隶制向封建制过渡,马克思认为这两个社会阶段都是以人身依附关系为特征的。前者是完全处于人身依附状态,后者是部分处于人身依附状态,两者的差别不大。第三次社会变革是实现经济和社会的现代化。这是一次规模最大的经济和社会大转变,概括地说,就是要实现市场化、工业化和民主化,三者相辅相成,缺一不可。中国的现代化只能走有中国特色的社会主义道路。     

《经济-社会史评论》首发座谈会

20 0 5年 1月 2 9日 ,《史学理论研究》编辑部、天津师范大学“经济—社会史研究中心”和三联书店在京联合召开《经济—社会史评论》首发座谈会。下依与会者的发言顺序 ,将发言整理如下 ,三位因故未到会的学者提交了书面发言稿 ,现按姓氏笔画为序一并发表。