The Concept of Corruption in J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment

SUMMARY

In the scholarship on the concept of political corruption, one frequently encounters the lamentation that the manner in which the concept is deployed in liberal modernity is insufficiently attuned to the richer sense in which the term was employed in the ‘civic humanist’ tradition. In these lamentations, the usual point of reference is J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment, a work that made corruption the central term of art in a political language stretching from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century and beyond. Certainly there is something quite attractive today about the ‘Machiavellian’ inflection of the term—our era is replete with the very things the protagonists of Pocock's story decried: debt, dependency, oligarchy, standing armies and the diminution of civic duties. But to what extent is Pocock's classic text a reliable guide for those studying the concept of corruption? This article suggests that Pocock uses the term in an excessively capacious manner, which both weakens his book's utility for understanding eighteenth-century political thought and undermines its power as a foundation for political critique by civic-minded anti-corruption reformers.     

荒野大爱,撼动心灵——藏民肉保夫妇与野生动物的不解情缘

<正>作为一名野生动物摄影师,用影像的力量唤起公众对自然环境和野生动物的保护,是我坚持生态摄影的初心和动力,特别是去青藏高原拍摄野生动物更是我多年的夙愿。2018年7月12日,为了观察和拍摄这一区域的野生动物,我从山东烟台乘飞机经西安中转到了西宁,然后与朋友驱车530多公里到达都兰县沟里乡。单程3000多公里的路途劳顿和最高     

The late F. P. Pullar

In Rhodesia, as in many other countries of the Third World, rapid population growth aggravates development problems and compounds them with others of its own making. Problems are greatest in the African rural areas but prospects for development there are generally poor. Growth within the monetary sector as presently constituted can provide no more than a palliative. A new national strategy for development is required and this must be based on a comprehensive population policy.     

The European Sky-God.

Traditional beliefs and customs concerning pregnancy and childbirth are still numerous and vivid in Romania and among Romanian inhabitants in neighbouring countries. Fieldwork on this theme carried out over several decades has resulted in a large body of material showing the special position of a pregnant woman in traditional Romanian society. This paper deals specifically with Moldovan birth tradition and concentrates on society's view of the pregnant woman and her unborn child as indicated by the large variety of beliefs and traditions aimed at protecting her and her child. It is evident from this material, that both the prospective mother and society are expected to be aware of, and to engage with, traditional precepts concerning the healthy development of the foetus and the achievement of an unblemished birth. It is also clear that the role and influence of the former untrained midwife in the magical protection of the mother and her child are still part of cultural memory in Moldova. The idea that a pregnant woman has the ability to bring rain in times of drought seems to emanate from a traditional perception of her as embodying fertility powers linked or analogous to the earth's germinative capacity.     

The U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: The Documentary Record

U.S. Department of State . Foreign Relations of the United States , 1952 – 1954 : Guatemala . Washington, DC : U.S. Government Printing Office , 2003 . 461 pp. $ (hardcover).