Rethinking the Historical Genealogy of Orientalism

The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978 Said, E. 1978. Orientalism, New York: Random House.  [Google Scholar]) marked a paradigm shift in thinking about the relationship between the West and the non‐West. Said coupled his critique of European discourse on the Middle East to issues of representation generally, demonstrating that Western discourse on the Middle East was linked to power, trafficked in racist stereotypes and continually reproduced itself. Despite important achievements, the critique of colonial representations often appeared abstract and disengaged from its own history as well as the specific colonial histories it sought to explain. We contend that while colonial representations have been theorized, they have yet to be adequately historicized. To this end, we trace the genealogy of the critique of colonial forms of knowledge in Britain, France and the US from the mid‐1940s to 1978. We argue for the historicization of the critique of orientalism, and for a more philosophically adequate theorization of modernity in world history.     

The Codex Mexicanus Genealogy: Binding the Mexica Past and the Colonial Present

Created in late sixteenth-century Mexico City, the Codex Mexicanus is an extensive bound book of miscellaneous contents, including a rare pictorial genealogy of the Tenochca dynastic lineage that traces the family line from its ancient origins to its colonial descendants. The Codex Mexicanus, as a whole, represents an attempt by its patrons and contributors to reconcile the Mexica past and the Christian present, and the inclusion of a genealogy in the larger book suggests that the Mexica royal house was believed to play an important role in this process. By providing a reading of the genealogy and comparing it with others, both native and European, I show that it presents a unique view of the Tenochca royal house that emphasizes its integrity and antiquity and in so doing effectively excludes outsiders who, at the time the codex was being created, were increasingly making claims on Mexica privileges without the proper family connections.     

南朝的谱学与政治

南朝谱学是南朝史学的一个重要组成部分,它较为突出地反映了史学与政治的密切关系。门阀政治深刻地影响着南朝谱学的发展,反之,谱学也成为门阀士族维护其特权政治的工具。南朝谱学的政治功用是它一个突出的时代特点,表现出很强的姓氏与地望相结合的姓族特征。同时,南朝谱学与南朝的选官、婚姻有看密切的内在联系。     

《叶赫那拉宗族谱》述评

那世垣先生撰修的《叶赫那拉宗族谱》以《那氏族谱》为底本,对其它支系多有衔接与添补,并加入了有关叶赫家族史的考述．首开叶赫那拉族谱中谱史结合之例。谱书理清了始祖奇玛瑚其人其事,使《那氏族谱》的许多问题迎刃而解,是叶赫家族史研究中的一个重要发现,《叶赫那拉宗族谱》在继承前人优长的基础上多有创新,必将促进叶赫家族史以及整个东北民族发展史的研究。     

The Gendered Genealogy of Political Religions Theory

This article explores the origins of certain theories of fascism, notably political religions theory, in the gendered intellectual milieu of the late nineteenth century. It suggests that political religions theory owes much to Gustave Le Bon's collective psychology (or crowd theory), a discipline that depended on a distinction between the feminised, racialised mass and the active male elite, and which saw women as trapped in the traditional phase of history. The article shows the influence of collective psychology in Durkheimian sociology and Freudian social psychology, and details its transmission to political theory via Talcott Parsons's account of the origins and nature of Nazism. The unacknowledged influence of collective psychology means that advocates of political religions theory either ignore women, or depict them as passive creatures defined by their need for the domination of a male elite.     

汪道昆的谱本宗与宗法收族理论

徽州为明清宗族制度发达地区,这也是徽州士大夫文人宗法制度庶民化努力的结果。宗法制度庶民化并不仅仅是宗法制度贯彻实践的问题,也包含士大夫文人对民间宗族建设活动的宗法理论解释。汪道昆的谱本宗主张及其修谱活动就是建立在民间宗族的祖先谱系文化基础之上,反映了世家大族的独立性追求与以村落宗族为中心的社会现实;其强调的亲亲收族是对谱本宗活动的宗法理论新解释,民间宗族建设实践推动了宗法制度的庶民化发展。     

Text as Policy: Measuring Policy Similarity through Bill Text Reuse

The identification of substantively similar policy proposals in legislation is important to scholars of public policy and legislative politics. Manual approaches are prohibitively costly in constructing datasets that accurately represent policymaking across policy domains, jurisdictions, or time. We propose the use of an algorithm that identifies similar sequences of text (i.e., text reuse), applied to legislative text, to measure the similarity of the policy proposals advanced by two bills. We study bills from U.S. state legislatures. We present three ground truth tests, applied to a corpus of 500,000 bills. First, we show that bills introduced by ideologically similar sponsors exhibit a high degree of text reuse, that bills classified by the National Conference of State Legislatures as covering the same policies exhibit a high degree of text reuse, and that rates of text reuse between states correlate with policy diffusion network ties between states. In an empirical application of our similarity measure, we find that Republican state legislators introduce legislation that is more similar to legislation introduced by Republicans in other states, than is legislation introduced by Democratic state legislators to legislation introduced by Democrats in other states.      

A Complete Edition of an Oral Tradition: Text Selection Practices in the History of Publishing Latvian Folk Songs

This article addresses the history of publishing folklore texts—particularly the attempts at creating all-inclusive publications that would represent an oral tradition in its entirety. Despite the quest for comprehensiveness, these attempts have always entailed the need to be selective in order to draw textual boundaries within the unbounded, diverse folk singing repertory. The focus of this study is on the text selection principles applied by two editors of Latvian folk songs: Kri?jānis Barons (1835–1923) and Pēteris ?mits (1869–1938).     

“影”、家谱及其关系探析——以陇东地区为中心

根据对陇东农村普遍存在的"影"、家谱及其中关系的调查,认为作为传统农村家族文化重要载体的"影"和家谱,在现代社会急剧转型期很大程度上依然影响着人们的思想观念和日常行为方式,应该正确看待"影"与家谱的关系及其在现代社会中发挥的社会功能。     

The Earliest cAlid Genealogy for the Safavids: New Evidence for the Pre-dynastic Claim to Sayyid Status

Studies on the pre-dynastic claim of the Safavids to sayyid status suffer from a dearth of primary source materials. Scholars have advanced various conjectures, but it is not yet clear when the Safavids began to promote this claim or indeed when the so-called “official” Musavid genealogy was developed. This study presents a genealogical chart drawn in the third quarter of the fifteenth century (most probably in the 1460s) in Iraq (most likely in Najaf), which records the “official” genealogy in an unequivocal manner. This chart is a valuable document in that it testifies to the circulation of the “official” genealogy some three to four decades before the establishment of the Safavid dynasty. A survey of the studies to date on the question of the pre-dynastic claim is also offered in order to clarify the significance of the chart.     

中国少数民族原始形态家谱调研报告

上海图书馆家谱课题组自2011年起,历时10年,赴东北内蒙、西北、西南、中南东南地区,以少数民族口传家谱、实物家谱、单页谱单和石碑家谱等原始形态家谱为重点,进行有计划、有重点的调研工作.少数民族原始形态家谱具有诸多独特而重要的历史文化价值,当下面临失传消亡、亟待抢救的紧迫境地,有关部门理应高度重视,抓紧做好抢救、保护和传承工作.     

Book-in-a-box to Xbox: materiality and the contemporary textual object

Book-in-a-box to Xbox is a discussion of developments in the material form of contemporary textual objects and of the impact this has on user/reader experience. The article formulates itself as a contemporary book history, situating the texts in question within the broader sphere of digital culture, and analyses textual function, reception, form and user interaction, presenting a cultural theorising of contemporary textual objects. The article conducts these discussions via a consideration of Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 (a key example of materially experimental literature); recent developments in e-reading and the implications of these developments; designing interactivity in massively multiplayer online gaming; and emerging forms of sociality, or shared experience, in virtual reading and playing communities.     

How to get a 2,000% profit from selling an object

Most readers will be aware of past and present issues surrounding the illicit traffic in antiquities. There are already a number of generic books available on the subject.1 See, for example, , Stealing History: The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material; , Illicit Antiquities: The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology; and ., Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the World’s Archaeological Heritage. This article reflects on the problem of treasure‐hunting in Bulgaria and the inadequacy of Bulgarian legislation, which is leading to the deterioration and destruction of Bulgarian heritage sites. As no changes in the legislative basis can be observed at this stage there is a real threat to the country’s cultural inheritance. This paper reflects upon the results of personal research undertaken in Bulgaria as part of a PhD.     

Following the Ancestors: Six Moments in a Genealogy of Urban Design and Heritage in the City of Cape Town

In 2014, Cape Town is celebrating its design in all its forms, having been voted the World Design Capital (WDC). The hopeful rhetoric of the city as ultimate holiday destination, African creative metropolis, prime global-events location or city of freedom indicates powerful cultural discourses at work. In this paper, I will give a series of insights into the links between colonial modernity, on the one hand, and the origins of contemporary discourses of urban design and heritage in Cape Town, on the other. I intend to discuss the function of official discourse concerning the design of the city as well as the sudden eruptions that disturb these constructs. I point to the recurrent patterns and moments in which design is made plain and unspoken. I will trace the genealogy of official or top-down design and heritage discourses as well as the moments or movements that are at odds with or embarrass this official discourse.