Women in European culture and society

Summary

Historians of all kinds are beginning to return to temporally expansive studies after decades of aversion and neglect. There are even signs that intellectual historians are returning to the longue durée. What are the reasons for this revival of long-range intellectual history? And how might it be rendered methodologically robust as well as historically compelling? This article proposes a model of transtemporal history, proceeding via serial contextualism to create a history in ideas spanning centuries, even millennia: key examples come from work in progress on ideas of civil war from ancient Rome to the present. The article concludes with brief reflections on the potential impact of the digital humanities on the practice of long-range intellectual history.     

The strategic culture of the European Union: a progress report

This article re‐examines the EU's character and potential as a strategic actor, setting that analysis in the context of the debate on strategic culture. The definition of strategic culture as the political and institutional confidence and processes to manage and deploy military force, coupled with external recognition of the EU as a legitimate actor in the military sphere, lends itself to a reappraisal around four core questions. First, military capabilities: establishing a European strategic culture is vital in order to rationalize the acquisition of capabilities necessary for the range of humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks envisaged. Equally, without military capabilities, all talk of a strategic culture would ring hollow. This article discusses how much closer the EU has come to acquiring those essential capabilities. Second, while the EU has gained significant experience of, albeit limited, military/policing experiences and established a growing reputation and some credibility for ad hoc action, to what extent and in what quarters have these experiences engendered a sense of reliability and legitimacy for autonomous EU action? Third, given that so far operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Balkans have depended on an integrated civil–military effort, do the policy‐making processes of the EU now ensure the appropriate level and depth of civil–military integration? Finally, considering that EU operations have been limited in time and scope, and that much of the EU's work in the Balkans has depended upon cooperation with NATO, what can be said of the evolving relationship between the EU and NATO?     

Japanese culture and society: A feast of perspectives

Eichiro Ishida. Japanese Culture: A Study of Origins and Characteristics. Translated by Teruko Kachi. An East‐West Center Book. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1974. 156 pp. Appendices, bibliographies, and index. $9.00.

Thomas P. Rohlen. For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White‐Collar Organization in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974. 299 pp. Figures, tables, references, and index. $12.50.

Takie Sugiyama Lebra and William Lebra, eds. Japanese Culture and Behavior: Selected Readings. An East‐West Center Book. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974. xi + 459 pp. Tables and figures. $5.95 (paper).     

The Danes on the Gold Coast: culture change and the European presence

Denmark was one of several European nations which vied for West African trade between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The Danes established more than thirty forts, trading lodges and plantations on the Gold Coast, and they played an important role in the development of African-European relations in the region. Traces of Danish outposts and the results of recent excavations at the Daccubie plantation are briefly surveyed. The available data illustrate the circumscribed nature of African-European interaction on the Gold Coast, providing insight into the context in which culture change occurred within African populations. The archaeological record of European expansion in Africa and elsewhere is used to illustrate the varying nature of European contact.

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Résumé Le Danemark était l'une des nombreuses nations européennes qui rivalisaient pour le commerce avec l'Afrique occidentale entre le dix-septième et le dix-neuvième siècles. Les Danois établirent plus de trente forts, comptoirs commerciaux et plantations sur la Côte de l'Or, et jouèrent un rôle important dans le développement des relations afro-européennes dans la région. Des traces de postes coloniaux danois et les résultats d'excavations récentes à la plantation de Daccubie sont brièvement passés en revue. Les données existantes illustrent le caractère limité de l'interaction afro-européenne sur la Côte de l'Or, donnant des indications sur le contexte dans lequel un changement culturel se produisit parmi les populations africaines. Les témoignages archéologiques de l'expansion européenne en Afrique et ailleurs servent à illustrer la nature changeante du contact européen.

     

The implications of information and communication technologies for sexualities and sexualised violences: Contradictions of sexual citizenships

A key aspect of globalisation, glocalisation and transnationalisation is the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Such technologies have major implications for sexualities and sexualised violences, and raise profound implications, contradictions and challenges for sexual citizenship. These implications include the affirmation of sexual citizenship, with the creation of new forms of sexual communities; and the denial of sexual citizenship, with the production of new opportunities for pornography, prostitution, sexual exploitation and sexual violences. The article goes on to focus particularly on the contradictory implications of ICTs for sexual citizenship. These include the simultaneous development of more democratic and diverse sexual communities, and sexual work and sexually violent work; movements beyond the exploiter/exploited dichotomy; complex relations of non-exploitative and sexual exploitation, commercialisation of sex, and enforcement of dominant sexual practices; blurring of the social, sexual–social, sexual and sexually violent, and of the sexually ‘real’ and sexually ‘representational’; closer association of sex with the ‘visual’ and the ‘representational’; increasing domination of the virtual as the mode(l) for non-virtual, proximate sociality, and possible impacts of the virtual on increased non-virtual, proximate sociality, even greater possibilities for ‘pure relationships’; shifts in sexual space and sexual place; development of new forms of transnational sexual citizenship, within shifting transpatriarchies. Contradictions between the scale of global material sex economies and the representation and reproduction of the sexual through ICTs appear to be increasing.     

Region, culture and society: understanding antiquity from the field

Approaches to the finds, monuments and settlements of past and present landscapes in different parts of Europe, and the contributions of their regional archaeological traditions, are briefly evaluated from a historical perspective. The point of departure is the work of the Dane, Ole Worm, in the early seventeenth century, on the whole of Denmark and Norway. Worm pioneered systematic large-scale topographical recording of monuments, and so provided data for the earliest archaeological distribution maps. Another Dane, N.F.S. Sehested, in the mid-eighteenth century, led the development of intensive small-scale regional studies. In conclusion, the methods of large scale active survey (e.g. in the Mediterranean) are reconsidered, and the particular role of Communist Eastern Europe in pioneering early large-scale excavation is emphasized.     

Religion,society, and culture

Morris, Brian. Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ix + 369 pp. including chapter notes and references, selected bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth, $12.95 paper.

Webster, Graham. Celtic Religion in Roman Britain. Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1987. 205 pp. including chapter notes and references, photographs and illustrations, abbreviations, classical sources, selected bibliography, and index. $30.00 cloth.

Weller, Robert P. Unities and Diversities in Chinese Religion. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. viii + 215 pp. including appendices, notes, references, and index. $22.50 cloth.     

Economic theory and European society: The influence of J.M. Keynes1

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.¹We have changed, by insensible degrees, our philosophy of economic life, our notions of what is reasonable and what is tolerable; and we have done this without changing our technique or our copybook maxims. Hence our tears and troubles.²     

市场经济条件下文物工作的思考

自我国改革开放以来,人民的物质生活和精神生活得到极大丰富,思想意识领域空前活跃。国家、城市、行业、单位甚至个人都渴望在社会面前重塑形象。文博工作一向被视为比较特殊的行业,在交融与整合的新经济条件下,积极应对社会变革,树立“有为才能有位”的观念,已势所难免。 一、问题：文博业能形成市场 经济条件下的服务理念吗 服务理念是一个行业、一个个体立业立身的最根本的理念。它包括两个方面的内容：一是内在的,包括服务意识、服务态度和服务质量;二是外在的,就是社会对这种服务的认可程度。此二者究竟哪个更重要？只看社会…     

关于我国民族乡经济社会发展的思考

民族乡是民族区域自治制度的一种补充形式,民族乡是我国解决民族问题的一项特殊政策,是党和国家民族政策的重要组成部分。本坚持以“三个代表”重要思想为指导,深入分析民族乡工作面临的形势和存在的问题,探索和研究加快民族乡经济和社会发展的思路和措施。     

Towards a mighty union: how to create a democratic European superpower

A strong European Union is needed today more than ever: to act as a reliable partner to the United States, Great Britain and the other great democracies; to deal with the growing threats on her southern and eastern periphery; and most pressingly of all, to deal with the euro sovereign debt crisis. In order to do so, Europeans will have to abandon the gradualist fallacy that union will be achieved in small incremental steps and learn the lesson of history that all successful mergers, such as the British and the American, have been carried out in one fell swoop at a time of extreme crisis. They will have to recognize that the road to unity took a fatal turn when the failure of the European Defence Community caused a bifurcation between politico‐military and economic integration. Today, as we face potential fiscal and economic meltdown and as the external threats to Europe mount, we have another opportunity. We can only seize it, however, if we realize that full European union, if there is to be one, will be an event, not a process. It must follow more or less the American example with a directly elected presidency, a house of representatives elected by population and a senate, which represents the former nation‐states and regions. There is no need for the United Kingdom to be part of this project, but it is essential that both unions work together for the common good. Because the existing political elites are incapable of rising to the occasion—and in many cases are actually antipathetic to it—the task must fall to a new pan‐European party: the Party of Democratic Union.