From Ancient to Modern Urbanization: Intermediary Function of an Urban Society

A number of traits identify an urban society from a village. In the 1950s, V.G. Childe identified ten traits for an urban society, including permanent settlement in dense aggregations, centralization of surplus, monumental public buildings, social stratification, a ruling class, systems of recording and administration, exact and predictive sciences regulating the cycle of agriculture operation, conceptualized and sophisticated styles of art, long-distance trade and importing raw materials, and a social organization based upon residence rather than kinship. Although he identified these traits for ancient urban society, these also can be applied in modern times. The most important function of an urban society especially in southeast Iran is its intermediary function. This function can be seen both in ancient and modern times. The present paper aims to identify both urban societies in ancient and modern times, and to explain intermediary function of these societies, including Shahr-i-Sokhta during the third millennium BCE and Zahedan in modern time. In fact, this function may have caused the emergence and development of these urban societies during two different periods. It is also postulated that the decline of this function may have caused the collapse of both societies.     

From Global to Local: Perspectives on the Challenge of Geography in the 1990s

Today… it may be space more than time that hides consequences from us; the ‘making of geography’ more than the ‘making of history’ that provides the most revealing tactical and theoretical world (Edward Soja 1989, 1).     

Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia: A Critique of Neo‐Institutionalist Perspectives

This article assesses some of the major premises of neo‐institutionalist explanations of decentralization policy and practices, but focuses especially on the relationship between decentralization and democracy, in the context of the recent and ongoing Indonesian experience with decentralization. In the last two decades ‘decentralization’ has become, along with ‘civil society’, ‘social capital’ and ‘good governance’, an integral part of the contemporary neo‐institutionalist lexicon, especially that part which is intended to draw greater attention to ‘social’ development. The concern of this article is to demystify how, as a policy objective, decentralization has come to embody a barely acknowledged political, not just theoretical, agenda. It also suggests alternative ways of understanding why decentralization has often failed to achieve its stated aims in terms of promoting democracy, ‘good governance’, and the like. What is offered is an understanding of decentralization processes that more fully incorporates the factors of power, struggle and interests, which tend to be overlooked by neo‐institutionalist perspectives. The current Indonesian experience clearly illustrates the way in which institutions can be hijacked by a wide range of interests that may sideline those that champion the worldview of ‘technocratic rationality’.     

从乡村到都市:晚清绅士群体的城市化

传统的绅士群体与乡土有着不解之缘,具有分散性、地缘性和业缘性的特点,这些特点极大地限制了他们的视野。近代以后,绅士群体纷纷涌人并定居于都市。这种状况不利于知识精英与农村社会大众的沟通和联系,不利于农村经济和化的发展。然而,对于近代中国的有限人才资源的集中,促进城市社会的整合,具有积极的意义。     

日本当代女作家隔岸观

战后先后活跃在日本文坛上的女作家几近百人之多。日本有四百多种文学奖,据有关资料统计,仅1970年至1994年的24年中,勇摘日本文学第一大奖芥川奖的女新人就达19名,占同期总获奖者54人中的35．19％,颇可见巾帼不让须眉之势。     

From the Portolan Chart of the Mediterranean to the Plane Chart of the Atlantic: Cartometric Analysis and Modelling Maps of Portugal in the Eighteenth Century: From National Perspectives to Foreign Contributions

Handritade kartor över Sverige i Uppsala Universitetsbiblioteket. Katalog av Åke Davidson (Handgezeichnete Karten von Schweden in der Universitätsbibliothek zu Uppsala), Acta Bibliothecae R. Universitatis Upsaliensis, X (Uppsala, 1956), 136 pp., 5 tabs.

Franti?ek Roubik, Soupis map Ceských Zemí. Svacek 2, ?eskoslovenská Akademie Věd. (Praha, 1955), 311 pp.

R. Oehme, Joannes Georgius Tibianus. Ein Beitrag zur Kartographie und Landesbeschreibung Südwestdeutschlands im 16. Jahrhundert, Forschungen zur deutschen Landeskunde. Veröffentlichungen des Zentralanschluses für deutsche Landeskunde und der Bundesanstalt für Landeskunde, 91 (Remagen/RH., 1951), 154 p., 17 tabs.

T. E. Layng, Sixteenth‐century maps relating to Canada. A Check‐List and Bibliography (Ottawa, 1956), XXVI + 283 pp.

Dainville, François de, Cartes anciennes de l'église de France (Paris, 1956), 4°, 323 pp., with figures and XVI plates.

Takejirô Akioka, Nippon Chizu Shi (A History of Cartography of Japan) (Tôkyô, 1955), 10 + 217 pp., 1 facsimile map, 1 fullsize coloured map, 72 plates and 40 ills, in the text     

Anti-Semites on Zionism: From Indifference to Obsession

This article compares European and Middle Eastern anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1870s through the 1930s, in parallel fashion anti-Semitism became a mobilizing, all-embracing ideology in Europe, while the Arab world witnessed an eruption of anticolonial and nationalist sentiment, often directed against the Zionist project. Arab anti-Semitism featured the irrational and fantastic qualities of its European counterpart, but it took form against the reality of the Zionist project. The article draws a distinction between the realms of systemic intolerance, aggravated by socio-economic crisis, and political strife, driven by discrete events and policies. Its main sources are fin-de-siècle European anti-Semites' writings on Zionism, which are shown to be fundamentally different from the anti-Zionist rhetoric emanating from the Middle East at that time.     

Early Chinese Migrants to Australia: A Critique of the Sojourner Narrative on Nineteenth-century Chinese Migration to British Colonies

This paper critically assesses the issues surrounding nineteenth-century Chinese migration to British colonies, especially Australia. The issues discussed in the paper include the origin of the term “sojourner” and its relationship to Western colonialism, and the origin of the term huaqiao (overseas Chinese) and its relationship to Chinese nationalism. By being critical of the narrative of the “sojourner” for its cultural essentialist approach to Chinese migration, the paper highlights two important aspects of Chinese migration patterns and behaviour that are often neglected by the sojourner narrative: socioeconomic circumstances at the origin of migration and Western colonialism at the destination of migration. The paper argues that the Chinese publications by the migrants and what happened in Hong Kong at that time demonstrate the consequences of the combination of these two aspects of history. The paper finally observes that the little understood behaviour of the Chinese peasantry migrants appears to be post-modern and transnational.     

Understanding Rituals: A Critique of Representationalism

The explanations of ritual practices observed in archaeological contexts often proceed on the representationalist basis that the human mind contains the social constituted ideas or representations that underpin the practice of rituals. Such a view remains widespread and, despite the often proclaimed rejection in contemporary theory of the Cartesian mind-body and other dualisms, it perpetuates the Enlightenment representationalist heritage according to which mental contents represent social reality and, as such, drive ritual practices and human action more generally. This article illustrates the meaning and value of rejecting such a representationalist view of human (ritual) action in favour of what we call an institutional view. In such a view, a ritual can be conceived as a form of recurring activity involving temporally and geographically dispersed actors active in differing roles and hence also with differing interests and levels of knowledge of the ritual and the associated belief system.     

Perspectives on Pompidou

Abadie, F., and Corcelette, J.‐P., Georges Pompidou 1911–1974: Le désir et le destin (Balland, 1994), 460pp., 110F.

Esambert, B., Pompidou, capitaine d'industries (Odile Jacob, 1994), 277pp., 140F.

Jullian, M., La France à voix haute: Le Soldat et le Normalien (Fayard, 1994), 272pp., 120F.

Roussel, E., Georges Pompidou 1911–1974, 2nd edition (Jean‐Claude Lattès, 1994), 686pp., 195F.     

Adwa: From monument to document

To the Italian historian the Battle of Adwa in March 1896 has offered a field of interpretation which has been heavily marked by the events that occurred between (and within) the two countries—Ethiopia and Italy—before and after the battle. Adwa has been variously depicted by Italian historiography of the liberal period as a major military defeat, a political mistake by Crispi's expansionist government and the result of deep contrasts within the newly born state over the 'colonial burden'. Fascist historiography painted Adwa as proof of liberal decay and political inefficiency. Adwa's name could be avenged only in the battlefield, which was done during Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36. From the Ethiopian point of view, Adwa's image changes no less. Until recently, the Battle of Adwa was painted as the landmark for Ethiopian unification and independence during the colonial era. Menelik's momentous victory at Adwa crowned his bid for power in the national arena, while his successful ability to stave off external colonial pressure appeared to cancel, or rather conceal, the internal policy of expansion and consolidation of his country's rule in the region. Today's insistence on Adwa as an African victory appears to be the dominant historiographical representation. The different interpretations all contain elements of truth, yet all, if frozen into historiographical truths, become embarrassing to the historian who needs documents, rather than monuments, as tools of analysis. To many historians both in Italy and Ethiopia, Adwa's respective symbolism of victory/defeat has been transformed into an icon, an historiographical monument, unassailable and immovable. The centenary of Adwa allows us to reconsider historical events of a shared past as critical documents and biased representations reflecting their own culture and time. This article attempts to deconstruct the historiographical monument of Adwa in Italian society so as to transmit such a heavily coded event to the critical examination of future historians in both Italy and Ethiopia.