Sleepwalking through history: medicine, arts, and courts of law

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking, has always been of interest to theologians, writers, philosophers, physicians, and others fascinated by unusual behaviors. This parasomnia, which was defined less precisely in the past than it is today, has long been featured in medical dissertations and books of medicine. Further, Shakespeare, Bellini, and Brown, among others, incorporated it into their plays, operas, and novels. Because some somnambulists turned violent and committed other acts detrimental to society, sleepwalking also demanded attention from legal systems, and guidelines were set for whether somnambulists could be held responsible for their actions. This historical review focuses on these developments pertaining to somnambulism through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.     

Wills,deeds, acts: women's civic gift-giving in Ottoman Istanbul

The waqf (plural awqaf) is the Islamic pious endowment founded for charitable purposes. The Ottoman waqf, especially between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, became a gift-giving practice of solidarity in which women played an active role in founding and maintaining endowments as benefactors. These endowments served almost exclusively civic public services. While there has been considerable research on women and waqf, by moving beyond interpreting the ostensible motives that are always intertwined with women's role as ‘family caretakers’ or ‘devout Muslims’, we attempt to suggest that, interpreted as acts of piety, awqaf, and especially those that were founded as organized spaces known as külliyes, became institutions by which women were able to cultivate (in themselves and others) civic identities, and articulate civic solidarities as citizens of their cities. This image of women as civic gift-givers recasts them as active citizens of Ottoman cities, especially Istanbul.     

Biros,Books and Big‐men: Literacy and the Transformation of Leadership in Simbu,Papua New Guinea

This article examines local strategies used to build leadership roles and enlist public support in a newly literate Papua New Guinean highlands rural community. The ethnographic evidence presented shows how the relationship between literacy and local ideas about modernisation and development has facilitated a shift in patterns of local political structures. When literacy is viewed as an unequally distributed and novel resource with inherently modernist connotations it becomes evident why male villagers in a contemporary highlands village endeavour to acquire and exploit it in rivalry with others. And while individual villagers market their reading and writing proficiency as a means to bolster their reputations within the existing socio‐political system, this has significance for traditional leadership and authority patterns, given that village leaders have traditionally been unschooled and therefore do not possess these highly regarded skills. To illustrate these processes I examine the political careers of two prominent villagers with particular attention to their respective claims to head two competing village‐based development projects. An analysis of the agendas they use to legitimate their authority roles in these projects makes clear how the quest to be seen to be literate has become a constitutive component of a prospective leader's repertoire of skills.     

Ukraine’s unfinished natural gas and electricity reforms: one step forward,two steps back

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to explain Ukraine’s natural gas and electricity sector reforms, to outline the challenges facing these two sectors going forwards and to identify prospects for renewables. It makes three core arguments: First, the regulatory templates promoted by the European Union do not lend themselves to swift implementation. This is because the EU’s approach has been supply-driven, in the sense that it exports regulatory templates already developed within the EU; it is not, therefore, a suitable problem-solving measure for a crisis-stricken country with limited capacities and powerful vested interests. Second, there has been very slow progress made in innovative and creative shifts in Ukrainian energy transition policy, showing a lack of commitment to the transformation and modernisation of energy systems that should in principle be based on the promotion of new business models backed up by reformed political, regulatory and industrial infrastructures. Third, Ukrainian elites have been formally open to the flow of rules as evidenced by a number of agreements concluded between the EU and Ukraine. But, in practice, the pre-existing, deep-seated preferences of those elites have perpetuated the opaque gas trading system, resulting in them being very selective about the rules that they are actually prepared to adopt.     

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS): challenges of implementation in Churchill,Manitoba

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) increasingly are utilized in geographic research, yet researchers rarely are provided with guidance on how to implement PPGIS in an appropriate and effective manner. This article reports on the process of research that explores responses to current and future local tourism development offered by a sample of residents using a modified PPGIS approach called ‘community action geographic information system’ (CAGIS). The conceptual development of CAGIS is reported and the challenges encountered during its implementation in Churchill, Manitoba during 2005–2007 are reviewed. It is suggested that researchers wishing to conduct similar research should undertake thorough preliminary fieldwork to assess the likelihood of finding agreement on a common problem; acquiring adequate resources; establishing collective responsibility for the project's outcome; attaining stakeholder support; developing trust and meaningful relationships; and incorporating indigenous knowledge appropriately. Feedback of results to community members also should be an integral part of the research process. A number of feedback mechanisms are reported, including an interactive weblog, which helped facilitate communication between heterogeneous groups in Churchill. Although ambitions for a truly participatory GIS approach to this project have been set aside, it is held that PPGIS can yield positive outcomes for communities and academia. Sharing this research experience will be useful to others who venture into PPGIS research, especially in northern communities.     

Whose Mandate? Policy Promises,Strong Bicameralism and Polled Opinion

The political theory of Australian politics has been dominated, since the election of a Liberal-National Party government in 1996, by claims and counterclaims about electoral mandates. The government has privileged its position in the House of Representatives; opposition parties have pointed to their support in the Senate. This paper provides a historical re-examination of the meanings and merits of mandate theories; it outlines the difficulties posed by strong bicameralism for any mandate theory; and it shows how the rise of survey research has strengthened some claims to a mandate, especially in bicameral systems, while weakening others.     

Vegetative States: Potatoes,Affordances, and Survival Ecologies

The potato has been critical to plant–human assemblages both in South America and in Europe. A study of the capacities, or affordances of this plant within diverse political economies highlights its mutability in some circumstances and vulnerability in others. The contrasts are stark. In South America, peasant agriculture took the potato across a large and diverse ecumene allowing its elaboration into many varieties and sustaining extensive state systems that taxed its production. Spanish colonialism repurposed the plant as the calorific basis for concentrations of coerced labour at silver mines. Back in Europe it was initially the resistance of the potato to state violence that encouraged peasants to turn over their fields to a tuberous plant that “concealed” its food underground. But its calorific productivity per acre again saw it repurposed as peasants were converted to proletarians, allowed to subsist on only the smallest plots while working for landlords on larger estates.     

Israel's intellectuals and political independence

Over the past two decades, a new phenomenon has emerged in secular kibbutzim, in which some members have adopted a religious way of life. Some of these “newly religious” (hozrim bi-tshuvah) choose to leave the kibbutz, but others, who are the subject of this article, decide to remain in the kibbutz, which continues to serve as the framework of their life. Based on observation and in-depth interviews with newly religious members of secular kibbutzim, this article discusses the array of dilemmas created by the transformation of their identity and the response to it on the part of kibbutz society. One of the dilemmas concerns the question whether their choice reflects a break with the kibbutz way of life or rather a link and continuity with this ideal. The article contributes to understanding both the changes in modern-day kibbutz society and the identity issues related to these changes.     

中国建筑遗产再认识

中国仿生的构架体系建筑,在历史早期就已传播到邻近的东亚国家,从而形成了一个东方建筑体系。18世纪以来,又影响到欧洲,与西方新材料、新技术相结合,使摩天楼得以矗立;中国《老子》的空间学说,引起世界"近代建筑革命";中国的陶制砌块用植物油处理的原理,促成抗酸、碱的"有、无机相结合"的建材理论,被誉为世界"建材革命"。直至今日,不同于西方"花园"(ga rden)和"林园"(pa r k)的中国人为环境与自然环境相融合的园林原理,促成了现代景观学;中国的精神与物质统一功能场效应的风水学说,已经在日、韩、美、德、法等西方国家兴起。作为全人类的财富——中国建筑遗产,将继续对人类生存环境的建设做出贡献。     

Shamanism,Sorcery and Cannibalism: The Incorporation of Power in the Magical Cult of Buai1

This article explores aspects of bodily belief and embodiment among the people of the Lelet Plateau of central New Ireland (Papua New Guinea). Far from being merely a surface upon which power relations are inscribed, as is suggested by some Western theory, the body, for the Lelet, is a central and active site for the appropriation of power. Power can be incorporated into the body through ingestion of substances, and acts of power over others can involve incorporation of their vital organs. Such acts of incorporation, whether to obtain power or to wield it, denote the significance of the boundaries of the body. I examine these conceptions of power as they occur in Lelet belief and in the practices of the shamanistic magical cult called Buai that has been imported from other parts of New Ireland and New Britain. This article examines the acts of incorporation and ideas of embodiment that are deployed in this cult and in the powerful forms of cannibalistic sorcery associated with it. I focus upon bodily practices through detailed ethnography in order to elucidate the complexity of the Lelet's understanding of their world.     

Business,Politics and Money in Australia: Testing Economic,Political and Ideological Explanations

The flow of business money to political parties is a vital issue for Australian democracy. Nonetheless, there has been no systematic study of why Australian businesses contribute to political parties and why they contribute more to one party than to others. I exploit Australian Electoral Commission data on payments to parties by 450 large businesses over 7 years at the Commonwealth and State levels. Economic characteristics (income and sector) are important to understanding which businesses make political contributions. However, they are little help in understanding how businesses distribute their cash. This is best interpreted as an interaction of ideological bias and political pragmatism. If Labor has the political advantage businesses tend to split contributions evenly between the ALP and the Coalition. If the Coalition has the political advantage businesses overwhelmingly target their contributions on the Liberal and National parties.     

A VENGEFUL EDUCATION? URBAN REVANCHISM,SEX WORK AND THE PENAL POLITICS OF JOHN SCHOOLS

This article considers how useful the urban revanchism thesis is in helping us understand the John School, a “mobile” educational programme that has been rolled out in the United States, Canada, the UK and South Korea which teaches those arrested for soliciting for the purposes of buying sex the negative consequences of their actions. The article begins by unpacking the urban revanchism thesis and bringing it into dialogue with ideas on punishment. It then draws on a case study of one English John School in the anonymized town of Redtown. It demonstrates that the operations and rationales of the Redtown John School have traces of revanchism and that they are also infused by ideas and practices of care. As a result it argues that the urban revanchism thesis illuminates some important aspects of the Redtown John School while silencing or misreading others. The article concludes therefore by calling for future research to think more broadly about punishment (rather than revanchism) in the city and its entanglements with care.     

Enoch Powell,Parliament and Europe

In recent years, there has been substantial academic reappraisal of Enoch Powell alongside a growing public realisation, increased by the debate over Brexit, that his interests were wider than immigration and notably included opposition to British membership of the European Community – a topic that this article probes further. It begins by examining Powell's understanding of the British nation as a unitary state, centred on parliament, that underpinned his interpretation of both Conservatism and Unionism. Then, covering the period up to the 1975 referendum, the article analyses exactly how Powell argued that membership of the European Community threatened parliamentary sovereignty. It situates Powell's thinking in the context of arguments made by others and explores the connections made by Powell between the threat from Europe and the history of parliament itself, particularly the formation of the unions with Scotland and Ireland. The article shows that while Powell's arguments were marginalised in the later 1970s and for much of the 1980s, they were revived from the early 1990s – albeit in a changed constitutional context.     

Das Förderprofil der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft 1949 bis 1969

The DFG, short for ‘Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’ (German Research Foundation), was founded in 1920 and re‐founded after the 2. World War in 1949. This article concentrates on the activities of the DFG in the period between 1949 and the end of the sixties and on the two major programmes (the so‐called ‘Individual Grants Programme’ and the so‐called ‘Priority Programme’) because until now it has not been known, how many — and more importantly — which studies in which disciplines had been financed by the DFG. All together almost 54.000 studies (36.500 in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ and 17.400 in the ‘Priority Programmes’) were accomplished with the support of the DFG, whereas — in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ — less than 3.000 proposals were declined (there are no figures for the ‘Priority Programmes’). Till the end of the seventies the whole amount of money allocated for the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ was not fixed for the different disciplines in advance. Consequently every proposal submitted in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ had to compete against all others for the overall allocated funds. Who — in other words: which of the disciplines — won this competition? The analysis shows a clear result. With regard to both, the number of successful proposals and the money received, the winner was medical science (with 23 percent of all successful proposals in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’). Chemistry finished second with 15 percent and then biology a distant third (9 percent), followed by physics (8 percent) and agronomy (8 percent). Coming to the ‘Priority Programmes’, which were instituted in the middle of the 1950s, it must first be stated that here the topic is fixed in advance. The broad issue of investigation is devised by the DFG itself or — to be more precise — by the Senate of the DFG. In contrast to the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ the ‘Priority Programme’ can therefore be seen as an important instrument of the politics of research support. This leads to the following question: Which programmes did the DFG establish between 1954 and 1969? In other words: Which research topics or fields were, in the view of the DFG, the most important ones? The database again shows a clear result. Almost 50 percent of the money distributed overall and more than 50 percent of all programmes were benefitted to natural science, another fifth part to engineering technology (which didn't play an important role in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’). Medical science which was the most successful discipline in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ received 16 percent of the funds. With regard to — first — the number of successful proposals within a Programme, — second — to the money received and — third — to the duration there were three frontrunner programmes: nourishment research, research on water and hydraulic engineering, and aeronautical research. And the humanities? The DFG didn't grant much relief giving only 7 percent to these disciplines.     

甘肃省永登县连城鲁土司属寺壁画的科学分析和时代研究

本项研究主要是运用光学显微镜、扫描电子显微镜和共聚焦显微激光拉曼光谱技术,分析了甘肃永登连城鲁土司属寺中的妙因寺、感恩寺和雷坛中的部分壁画。分析结果表明感恩寺和雷坛壁画基本保持了明代最初的绘制风格和内容。其中感恩寺主要壁画的绘画颜料和工艺特点鲜明,表明绘制该壁画的画工不同于绘制鲁土司属寺其他壁画的工匠;妙因寺万岁殿壁画存在后期改动和重绘的情况,其中万岁殿外回廊壁画主要部分的最初绘制时间要早于万岁殿大殿内壁画的最后绘制时间;而妙因寺塔尔殿壁画则绘制于19世纪后期。     

Of burning monks,unidentified churches and the last Cistercian foundation in the East: Our Lady of Camina in the principality of Achaia

The existence of the monastic church of Camina in Frankish Morea has long been noted by historians of Frankish Greece, but its history has never been thoroughly investigated and its location remains unknown. Moreover, some of the documents pertaining to this church have not been published while others have been published in faulty editions that have obscured their full significance. In the present study the surviving documents are edited and the church's history is reconstructed and its location identified. It is suggested that some of the original Benedictine inhabitants of Camina were the only Latin religious to have been burnt at the stake for heresy in medieval Greece. It is also argued that Camina was the last Cistercian abbey to be founded in the Latin East, and that it may be identified as the present monastery of Our Lady of Blachernae near Glarenza (Killini).     

Connecting meanings of ageing,consumption, and information and communication technologies through practice

Practices involving the consumption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are increasingly important to the maintenance of everyday life for older New Zealanders. Developing competency with ICT can provide a way of challenging negative discourses of ageing. Interviews with 20 older New Zealanders reveal that “keeping up” with the times, with changing technologies, and with others is a means by which to shape aged subjectivities. However, while competency in ICT practices enables participants to refute discourses of ageing that locate older people negatively as part of an aged digital divide, it can also work to reproduce this divide. Consequently, understanding the nuanced and situated nature of meanings related to ICT practice is necessary in order to interrogate normative assumptions associated with the “more than human” possibilities of ageing well.     

LEVINAS,HISTORY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

In this book Anton Froeyman has provided us with a colorful and intriguing account of a Levinasian approach to historical inquiry and historical writing. In my discussion of his book I describe central features of his account and notice how he uses, to develop his view, recent developments in historiography—including the work of figures like Natalie Davis and Carlo Ginzburg, in philosophical thinking about history and historiography, and in various postmodern developments. I sketch central features of Levinas's ethical metaphysics and show that Froeyman's focus on Levinas's interest in our relations with other persons and in particular with their relative differences from us is too narrow. A proper understanding of our infinite responsibility to and for all others, as Levinas portrays it, leads to a broader account than the one Froeyman gives and one that enables us to understand with greater clarity how historiography fits into the Levinasian understanding of our temporal and interpersonal relations with others.