Conflict and mutual support between local consciousness and national consciousness disturbance on Chuanxing suoji in 1936

From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republican period, there was a transition on the understanding of the relationship between China as a state and its localities. Local and national consciousness generally supported each other but were in conflict at times. In this essay the author intends to explore the reasons and influences of the Sichuan people’s criticism of the Chuanxing suoji (Rambling Notes on Sichuan) letter written by Chen Hengzhe, and analyze the interplay between local and national consciousness in the early days when the Nanjing government controlled Sichuan. The uproar caused by the article also showed the gap between mainstream intellectuals and peripheral intellectuals. __________ Translated from: Sichuan Daxue Xuebao Zhexue Shehui Kexue Ban 四川大学学报: 哲学社会科学版 (Journal of Sichuan University, Social Science Edition), No.1, 2004     

Village restoration in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The recent political changes in the Czech Republic have led to a major re‐evaluation of the role of the countryside. An extensive Village Restoration Programme is now underway, which is here described, with a detailed example from south Moravia. The holistic nature of the programme is notable.     

A New Diplomatic History and the Networks of Spanish Diplomacy in the Baroque Era

Diplomatic history has undergone profound alterations during the last century. According to the old model built by Mattingly in 1955, diplomatic history was the analysis of international and political relations within a national context. Subsequent studies analysed how diplomacy evolved towards a more institutionalised and professional scheme (established in eighteenth-century European diplomacy). However, was this conclusion an inevitable one for Early Modern and Baroque diplomacy? This essay intends to retrace the steps that have been taken towards a new history of diplomacy, by early-modern historians in general, and by Spanish historiography in particular, as well as to assess the idea that what made a difference for Spanish Baroque diplomacy was the extent of networks that allowed cultural transference, the capacity to influence others, rather than the institutional extent of connections and practices. Which people or processes promoted the circulation of ideas, information, and culture, within and outside the Spanish monarchy, during the seventeenth century? This question will form the focus of the second part of this essay, in which the author analyses several specific cases of Spanish ambassadors in Europe: their networks of communication, their building of stereotypes, their informal diplomatic practices, and their use of ceremonial practices.     

Hatching Feminisms: Czech Feminist Aspirations in the 1990s

This article explores a range of conversations in Czech that have been undertaken by popular and intellectual Czech feminists since 1989. These have attempted to ‘explain the usefulness of feminist thinking’ to frequently reticent Czech audiences. It examines feminists' claim that feminism and feminist social criticism have an important role to play in making a new social order in which what they describe as women's values and cultures would have a central place. It explores the often maternalist strategies that intellectuals have devised for working through the pall of ambivalence that surrounds feminism in the Czech Republic, and it examines how an enthusiastic defence of local feminisms and the desire to highlight intransigent attitudes towards the remaking of gender identities have become important hallmarks of contemporary Czech feminisms.     

Kant and the scientific study of consciousness

We argue that Kant's views about consciousness, the mind-body problem and the status of psychology as a science all differ drastically from the way in which these topics are conjoined in present debates about the prominent idea of a science of consciousness. Kant never used the concept of consciousness in the now dominant sense of phenomenal qualia; his discussions of the mind-body problem center not on the reducibility of mental properties but of substances; and his views about the possibility of psychology as a science did not employ the requirement of a mechanistic explanation, but of a quantification of phenomena. This shows strikingly how deeply philosophical problems and conceptions can change even if they look similar on the surface.     

Czech Women Writers and Racial Others: (Un)timely Reflections on the History of Czech Nationalism

Czech historians are often reluctant to study negative aspects of the Czech past, including more extreme forms of Czech nationalism and particularly racism. This article examines attitudes of Czech women writers at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to racial Others. Focusing on the works of Bo?ena Bene?ová, Gabriela Preissová, and R??ena Svobodová that featured Jewish and Romani characters, it argues that women’s views resembled those of their male contemporaries and ranged from interest in marginalized groups to implicit and explicit antisemitism. The article explores contradictions characteristic of the three writers’ works with Jewish and Romani themes and points out commonalities and differences in the treatment of both groups. It is intended as an opening of a discussion on a little-studied aspect of Czech nationalism.     

捷克旅游 漫步时光——专访捷克旅游局北京办事处主任依歌瓦乌拉

《风景名胜》：一部小说,一部电影,让布拉格变得尽人皆知。然而,也正是这部小说,这部电影,令整个捷克变得温柔而神秘。请问一下,作为捷克旅游局北京办事处的主任,作为在捷克和北京两地都有居住体验的人士,您眼中捷克的独特魅力何在？何以吸引全世界游客的眼球？