America in Speech and in Deed

The author's primary aim in what follows is to fully articulate Chantal Delsol's critique of late modern universalism as an attempt to depoliticize the individual for the sake of replacing politics with morality. The result of this depoliticization is a quasi-pantheistic cosmopolitanism that not only effectively denies the significance of individuality, despite rhetorically lionizing it, but also undercuts the freedom of individual conscience that makes moral choice possible. Genuine political prudence and moral judgment are subsequently replaced by the rigid exactitude of a technocratic analysis that reintroduces the "clandestine ideology" it was, despite protestations to the contrary, intended to eliminate. The unhappy paradox produced by the attempt to replace the necessary limitations of political judgment with the universality of a priori moral decree is that a new set of culturally and historically idiosyncratic political attachments are surreptitiously introduced beyond the pale of reasonable debate and disagreement. Delsol's measured response is not a precipitous rejection of universalism as such but a rehabilitation of it that recaptures the Christian moral realism at its core.     

Demography and pronatalism in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

The fear of population decline in France is deep-rooted and complex. With a renewed decline in fertility in the 1970s, fresh concern has shown itself in the multiplication of books and comments, fitting into a pronatalist tradition which can be traced back at least one hundred and fifty years. In reviewing these works, and other new works on the history of population ideas in France, this paper emphasizes both the uniqueness of the French demographic case and the continuity of reactions both official and private. It isolates key periods of concern in the years before the First World War, in the 1930s and the late 1970s. It also draws attention to the proliferation of propaganda, four examples of which are re-published here.     

明清时期江淮地区的疫灾及救治

明清及民国时期江淮地区的地方志表明,明清时期江淮曾分别在1523—1524年、1588—1590年、1603年、1638～1644年、1709年、1756年、1785—1786年、1821年、1856—1858年间爆发了极为严重的大疫灾。疫灾在时间分布上多集中干春夏秋季节,往往多和大的水旱蝗灾害相伴生,在空间上没有像水旱蝗灾害那样有较为明显的地域差异,而多属于江淮同灾的情形。在国家救治力量相对薄弱的情况下,民间社会自发的救治力量得到了极大的发展。     

Mothers and children in post-war Europe: martyrdom and national reconstruction in Italy and Poland

References to family and nation abounded in post-war rhetoric and informed the painstaking process of (re)creating a normal life in the aftermath of devastation. Taking Italy and Poland as its main case studies, this article explores the connections that linked familial and national discourses in post-war Europe. It is argued that families did not simply provide a useful metaphor to talk about national communities, but represented a constitutive element of post-war reconstruction. References to the family as a place of civic and national resistance were modelled on earlier narratives of national and familial devotions, which found in the sacrifice of children (in the double meaning of young person and offspring) a central theme. Both in Poland and in Italy, the celebration of the sacrifice of young people and their mothers became a means of celebrating the nation, its suffering and its recovery.     

蒋介石与1935年中日苏关系的转折

1935年初国民政府的对日对苏政策具有多重性质.对处于复杂的互动作用中的中日苏三角关系及蒋介石的战略作出片面的理解,是日本发动华北事变的重大原因.蒋介石在对事变的因应中曾从正反两个方面运用苏联因素,并尝试以"共同防苏"换取日本对华政策的改善.但日本对之提出了中方难以接受的前提,最终迫使蒋介石及国民政府在大政方针上转向对苏不惜联合与对日不惧应战.导致这一转折的决定性的外因,是日苏两国在中国的主权问题与政权问题上的不同姿态.     

解读《边城》和《苔丝》中的画面与音乐

《边城》和《德伯家的苔丝》(简称《苔丝》)分别是中英两国“乡土文学”的典型代表沈从文和哈代的主要代表作。两位作家将画面与音乐视为文字之外的语义载体,填补了文字所不能表达的空白,丰富了作品的主题意境。     

Armed and unarmed: struggles without weapons in Europe and in Italy

Abstract

The starting point for this article is the concept of civil resistance formulated by the French historian Jacques Semelin to describe the forms of unarmed and often non-violent resistance adopted during the Nazi occupations. These included strikes, protests against high food prices, refusal to join Nazi professional associations, the moral isolation of the enemy, actions to rescue Jews, the organisation of clandestine schools (in Poland) as well as support for armed struggle. While historians have looked on these struggles merely as secondary to or supportive of armed restsitance, the concept of civil resistance shows instead how they were autonomous social responses to Nazi dominion. After showing how since the 1990s there has been much closer dialogue between these two apparoaches, the article examines the ways in which the forms of civil resistance in Italy differed from countries such as Denmark, with greater emphasis on private actions and indivdual intiatives and informal networks in which women were always especiallly active and influential. In Italy, civil resistance seems to have been less ‘political’ and more ‘female’ than in northern Europe. The article concludes by examining the realtionship between the struggles in which women were involved and the concept of civil resistance, which although extremely important is only one step towards a fuller evaluation of the role of women in civil resistance.     

Traditional and cosmopolitan medical systems in Asia and in the world today

Charles Leslie, ed. Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study.     

The end and renewal of ideology in Central Europe and in Hungary

Society has to be understood as a process of fast changes (revolutions) and slow transformations (reformism). This is what has been happening in Central Europe, where the big changes of 1989–1990 were preceded by several small social, political and ideological transformations. When analysing Central European societies, one should also remember that there is an ‘official’ society and a ‘hidden’ society.In addition, the relation of state and civil society is deformed since in most cases the civil sphere is repressed and undeveloped due to the predominance of the ‘official state’. In such societies, you cannot find real hegemony but only dominance, which is practiced by the state not only in the sphere of economy, society and culture, but also in and through ideology.The essence of modern totalitarian society cannot be understood without addressing the permanent existence of unofficial, ‘civil’ ideologies penetrating the ‘hidden’ society at the same time as the ‘official’ ideology. Apart from the slow transformation of ideologies and the crisis of ‘official’ ideology, the strengthening of ‘hidden’ ideology is also required for revolutionary changes. This is how a historically new situation with new ideologies can come into being, in clear contrast to the renewal of old ideologles, which generates a mixture of the old and the new. A look at what happened in Central Europe, but particularly Hungary, should clarify the point.     

Self and other in ethnicity and bureaucracy

Tambiah, S. J., Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1986. xi + 198 pp. including chapter references and Index. $17.95 cloth.

Raby, Namika, Kachcheri Bureaucracy in Sri Lanka. Foreign and Comparative Studies/South Asia Series. No. 10. Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Syracuse University 1985. 188 pp. excluding chapter references and index. $12.00 paper.