Marriage,Sex, and the Church of Scotland: Exploring Non‐Conformity Amongst the Lower Orders

The history of marriage amongst the Scottish lower orders in the eighteenth century has largely been a story of sexual discipline by the Kirk (Church of Scotland). As much of this history has been produced through kirk session records — the arm of the church that monitored sexual morality and marital conformity — this is often construed as a story of contest between the church and a resistant lower orders, trying to negotiate alternative forms of family life. Using kirk session and secular court records and popular literature, this article explores how religious belief shaped sexual and marital behaviour, particularly non‐conformity, during this period. It examines the Kirk's interpretation of chastity and marriage, how these ideas filtered into popular culture and were used by the lower orders to negotiate their own sexual and marital behaviour and relationship to the Church. It argues that the Kirk's varying attitude to marital and sexual non‐conformity meant that marital non‐conformity was less significant than sexual sin in the popular and religious imagination.     

Explaining the Congo Wars

Abstract

From 1996 to 2003, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the scene of two major regional wars. The second Congo war (1998–2003) was an especially complex formation of wars within wars, characterised by repeatedly changing alliances between various actors, both internal and external, and by the spread of ethnic conflicts across national borders. However, the recent troubled history of the DRC has often been understood from either a national or an international perspective. The terms of this debate centred on whether the continental wars were linked either to the weak or collapsing state of Zaire/Congo or outside interferences by neighbouring states. The two studies reviewed in this essay both suggest ways of addressing this dichotomy between the internal and external dimensions of the conflicts. By analysing the multitude of conflicts from a regional perspective, both authors can aptly illuminate the linkages and interdependencies among local and national conflicts that became inextricably intertwined and developed into regional and continental conflicts. Thus, this review argues that both comprehensive works on the multiplicity of recent crises in the Great Lakes region significantly contribute to an understanding of the causes and evolution of the Congolese wars.     

20世纪80年代的婚姻法律与婚姻家庭变迁

颁布于中国全面改革开放起步时期的1980年《婚姻法》,反映了国家在婚姻家庭领域的法制重建以及社会转型带来的家庭婚姻制度的变化。在社会上引起较大反响的主要有三个方面:第一,明确了夫妻财产制,人们的个人财产权利意识增强;第二,实行计划生育政策,但由于重男轻女思想的影响,使性别选择问题更突出地表现出来;第三,明确把感情破裂作为离婚的条件,但“感情破裂”的衡量标准很难掌握,司法部门在处理离婚案件时仍有很大困难。总之,1980年《婚姻法》是一部承前启后的法律,它既是对1950年《婚姻法》的继承与发展,又通过20年的司法实践,为2001年《婚姻法》的修正案的制定作了法律上的铺垫。     

Notes on the Marriage Customs of the Bedu and Fellahin

This article focuses on a significant Sicilian folk prayer, ‘U Vebbu’ (The Word). It shows that this important oral tradition was not based on an ‘illogical extract of random religious ideas’, virtually assembled by the folk imagination, but was the direct result of the impact that different medieval cultures had within southern Italy during and subsequent to the Crusades. This ultimately indicates that significant elements of folklore are selectively adopted on the basis of what carries meaning or has a perceived benefit, due to the people's history within their living environment.     

Pliocene sand injectites from a submarine lobe fringe during hydrocarbon migration and salt diapirism: a seismic example from the Lower Congo Basin

Large‐scale conical and saucer‐shaped sand injectites have been identified in the Upper Miocene sediments of the Lower Congo Basin. These structures are evidenced on the 3D high‐resolution seismic data at about 600 ms TWT (two‐way traveltime) beneath the seabed. The conical and saucer‐shaped anomalies range from 20 to 80 m in height, 50 to 300 m in diameter, and 10 to 20 ms TWT in thickness. They are located within a sedimentary interval of about 100 m in thickness and are aligned over 20 km in dip direction (NE‐SW), above the NW margin of an underlying Upper Miocene submarine fan. We have interpreted the conical and saucer‐shaped anomalies as upward‐emplaced sand injectites sourced from the Upper Miocene fan because of their discordant character, the postsedimentary uplifting of the sediments overlying the cones and saucer‐shaped bodies, the alignment with the lateral fringe of the Upper Miocene submarine fan, and the geological context. Sand injection dates from the Miocene–Pliocene transition (approximately 5.3 Ma). The prerequisite overpressure to the sand injection process may be due to the buoyancy effect of hydrocarbons accumulated in the margins of the fan. Additionally, overpressure could have been enhanced by the lateral transfer of fluids operating in the inclined margins of the lobe. The short duration of sand injection and the presence of many sandstone intrusions suggested that the process of injection was triggered by an event, likely due to a nearby fault displacement related to diapiric movements. This is the first time that sand injectites of seismic scale have been described from the Lower Congo Basin. The localized nature of these injectites has led to a change in the migration path of fluids through the sedimentary cover. Consequently, the sand intrusions are both evidence and vectors of fluid migration within the basin fill.     

Love and Marriage Among the Ruins

Abstract

Walker Percy articulated that the American South, liberated by civil rights legislation and economic growth from former strife, was needed in a new quest to save the Union. Percy believed that the troubles facing America were the philosophical and anthropological failures of late-modern thought. Difficult consequences emerged from these failures in the form of failed marriages. The distinctive capacity of the person to intimately love the other for the other's own good is displaced, if not eliminated, by theorists who narrow man to a this-worldly preoccupation while simultaneously denying his unique aspects. One injured element, broached by Percy in his novels The Second Coming and Love in the Ruins, is the shared love of the domestic family that becomes misconceived and misshaped in an age no longer conversant with the sacramental significance of man. Percy's discerning observations in these novels afford a unique purchase on the institution's diminishment in the midst of a humanistic age. The failure of this basic and complex love is one of the most deeply and painfully felt consequences achieved by the intrapersonal splits that have resulted from the age of theorist–consumerism. From man's failures to move beyond ideology and theory emerge his inability to even understand love's connection with his existence.