A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia

In this paper I draw a set of partial connections between ways of using recorded music and utopia. The first half of the paper draws upon the process philosophy of Ernst Bloch to argue that utopia is not located else–where or else–when in a transcendent realm separate from the present but is paradoxically immanent to 'everyday life'. This argument revolves around the novel 'open' experimental ontology that Bloch elaborates through the operator the 'not–yet'. Bloch's work enables the beginnings of an immanent utopianism that is able to discern, rather than critique, the dimly vibrating figures of hope that exist within rather than outside 'everyday life'. The second half of the paper sets this thought in motion by connecting two of Bloch's concepts, the 'trace' and 'novum', to the logic of one particularly common way of using recorded music: the use of music to 'feel better'. Drawing on in–depth case study research with seventeen lower–middle–class households I describe how this practice enables people to momentarily enact two forms of hope that are both based around the geographies of affect and affection: how something better might feel and an ability to forget. I conclude by speculatively describing the practice of a Blochian 'immanent utopianism' that itself embodies 'a principle of hope'.     

In defence of utopian urbanism: imagining cities after the 'end of utopia'

What is the role of utopian visions of the city today? What is their use at a time when, for many people, the very concept of utopia has come to an end? Taking a wide perspective on contemporary debates, this paper addresses the general retreat from utopian urbanism in recent years. It connects it with the so–called crisis of modernist urbanism in the capitalist West as well as forms of 'utopic degeneration', and assesses some of its implications. Arguing against the abandonment of utopian perspectives, it advocates a rethinking of utopianism through considering its potential function in developing critical approaches to urban questions. The authoritarianism of much utopian urbanism certainly needs acknowledging and criticising, but this need not entail a retreat from imagining alternatives and dreaming of better worlds. Instead, it is necessary to reconceptualise utopia, and to open up the field of utopian urbanism that for too long has been understood in an overly narrow way. The paper suggests the potential value of developing, in particular, modes of critical and transformative utopianism that are open, dynamic and that, far from being compensatory, aim to estrange the taken–for–granted, to interrupt space and time, and to open up perspectives on what might be.     

In defence of utopian urbanism: imagining cities after the 'end of utopia'

What is the role of utopian visions of the city today? What is their use at a time when, for many people, the very concept of utopia has come to an end? Taking a wide perspective on contemporary debates, this paper addresses the general retreat from utopian urbanism in recent years. It connects it with the so–called crisis of modernist urbanism in the capitalist West as well as forms of 'utopic degeneration', and assesses some of its implications. Arguing against the abandonment of utopian perspectives, it advocates a rethinking of utopianism through considering its potential function in developing critical approaches to urban questions. The authoritarianism of much utopian urbanism certainly needs acknowledging and criticising, but this need not entail a retreat from imagining alternatives and dreaming of better worlds. Instead, it is necessary to reconceptualise utopia, and to open up the field of utopian urbanism that for too long has been understood in an overly narrow way. The paper suggests the potential value of developing, in particular, modes of critical and transformative utopianism that are open, dynamic and that, far from being compensatory, aim to estrange the taken–for–granted, to interrupt space and time, and to open up perspectives on what might be.     

论徐州西汉乐舞俑的艺术特色

徐州地区出土的西汉乐舞陶俑,其造型采用大写意手法刻画舞俑的形体、动作、表情,同武俑不仅具有艺术的共性。还有细微的个性特征,生动地表现了汉乐舞艺术的时代风格。     

The Yezidi Wednesday and the Music of the Spheres

The article is an attempt to answer the question why Wednesday has the status of a holy day in Yezidism. Wednesday can be seen as a commemoration of the fourth day of creation, when the life on earth began and the Peacock Angel became its ruler. The article points to the Yezidi worship of the Moon and the Sun and related angels (Melek Fakhradin and Melek Sheikh Shams) and connects it with the Pythagorean concept concerning the movement of the planets and the Music of the Spheres. Two sacred Yezidi instruments, def and shibab, appear as allegories of celestial bodies in the Yezidi sacred hymns in the cosmogonic context of the creation of the macrocosm and microcosm (Adam). The article also points out the meaning of Wednesday in Judaism as the day when God created the sun, moon and stars and briefly discusses relationships with planet worship in Harran, Zoroastrianism and Mandaeism, especially in the context of the Yezidi Çar?emiya Sor festival which takes place on the first Wednesday of the month of Nisan.     

Counterfactualism,utopia, and historical geography: Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt

Though counterfactual histories are treated with suspicion by some historians, they can be both useful and politically progressive. In fact it is possible to argue that counterfactual historical geographies might even be utopian. Though this seems counter-intuitive (how could alternative histories imagine a better future?), both histories and utopias encourage a kind of popular historicism, a sense that things have been (and could be) different. Whether this makes counterfactual fictions utopian depends on how you define utopia. Recent critical re-appraisals of the concept have suggested that we might think of it as a process, an ongoing critique of the present, not as an end in itself. Counterfactual histories can be utopian because they encourage a critique of teleology and determinism; their geographies can also be utopian because they remind us that spaces are multiple and open. A close reading of Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt (2002), a novel that describes a world without Europe after a more virulent version of the fourteenth-century plague kills everyone west of Constantinople, demonstrates that counterfactual historical fictions present an unequalled opportunity to reflect upon the practice of history. The novel also suggests that counterfactual historical fictions also allow for a critical evaluation of the nature of space. The paper concludes by demonstrating the value of counterfactual fictions through their representations of history, and of spaces of movement, multiplicity, and agonistic encounter.     

Securing disunion: Young people's nationalism,identities and (in)securities in the campaign for an independent Scotland

This paper explores ethnic and religious minority youth perspectives of security and nationalism in Scotland during the independence campaign in 2014. We discuss how young people co-construct narratives of Scottish nationalism alongside minority ethnic and faith identities in order to feel secure. By critically combining literature from feminist geopolitics, international relations (IR) and children's emotional geographies, we employ the concept of ‘ontological security’. The paper departs from state-centric approaches to security to explore the relational entanglements between geopolitical discourses and the ontological security of young people living through a moment of political change. We examine how everyday encounters with difference can reflect broader geopolitical narratives of security and insecurity, which subsequently trouble notions of ‘multicultural nationalism’ in Scotland and demonstrate ways that youth ‘securitize the self’ (Kinnvall, 2004). The paper responds to calls for empirical analyses of youth perspectives on nationalism and security (Benwell, 2016) and on the nexus between security and emotional subjectivity in critical geopolitics (Pain, 2009, Shaw et al., 2014). Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), this paper draws on focus group and interview data from 382 ethnic and religious minority young people in Scotland collected over the 12-month period of the campaign.     

Border Practices,Boundaries, and the Control of Resource Access: A Case from China,Thailand and Burma

This article traces border practices along boundaries that China and Thailand share with Burma. It portrays a spectrum of small border polities, from principalities on the fringes of Southeast Asian kingdoms, through Nationalist troops in Burma following their defeat in China, to ‘drug lords’ and ‘rebel armies’. The focus here is on Akha village heads who have worked their connections in multiple directions, including into Burma, to position themselves as patrons controlling local resource access. With state appointment as border guardians, village heads become chiefs of new kinds of small border entities, protecting the border for the homeland while enabling certain illicit information, people, and goods to cross. In regions with a history of complex patronage relations, state efforts to control peripheral people, resources, and territories have in fact produced small border chiefs, with practices similar to those of frontier princes in the past.     

《晋书·地理志》县级封国考论

反映西晋前期政区全貌的《晋书·地理志》中记载了58个县级封国,包括公国、侯国两类。虽然西晋朝廷已设置公、侯、伯、子、男五等爵,但这些封国所对应的爵位,却是位在五等爵之下的一般县公、县侯。各家县公主要是由曹魏宗王降封而来。为县侯者,有功臣、敌国降将、曹魏宗室,还有不少是曹魏时即已受封而入晋后仍保留爵位者。     

乾嘉汉学治学宗旨及其学术实践探析--以戴震、阮元为中心

乾嘉汉学治学宗旨是由文字音韵训诂入手以寻求经书义理。但汉学家对这一宗旨的理解并不一致 ,学术实践的途径亦有差异。考察其代表人物戴震、阮元各自的学术主张与学术实践 ,比较二者的同异之处 ,有助于我们进一步理解汉学治学宗旨的科学性与局限性。     

A Door of Hope Re‐opened: The Fifth Monarchy,King Charles and King Jesus

A Door of Hope was the manifesto of the Fifth Monarchists’ desperate uprising in London in January 1661, a few months after the Restoration of Charles II. While the rising itself is well known, its manifesto has never been examined in detail. Probably based on a sermon to Venner's congregation, it displays a defiant conviction that the Restoration could be understood as part of God's providential plan, the next step towards the imminent kingdom of Christ on earth. But it also reaches out to a much wider constituency, all the supporters of the “Good Old Cause,” offering a programme that might appeal to many radicals. And the author draws on secular, republican discourse to buttress his apocalyptic claims, revealing close links between even the most extreme Fifth Monarchists and wider currents of interregnum radicalism.     

Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch Colonial Cape of Good Hope, South Africa: A History of Local Production and Typology of Products

Coarse earthenware production at the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Cape settlement began shortly after the Company established its mercantile entrepôt on the shores of Table Bay in 1652. Made by European Company potters, these vessels reproduced the forms of the homeland in the raw materials of the colony. A history of VOC pottery manufacture and a typological examination of the products illustrates how the global movements of mercantile capitalism combined with the local circumstances of the Cape settlement to create a material form reminiscent of Europe, but purely colonial in the dynamics of its production and use.     

“The Old Vexed Question:” Divergent Attitudes and Practices in the Sacred Music of Early Ballarat

When gold was discovered at Ballarat in 1851, the peaceful pastoral community was transformed into a rough mining camp. People from all parts of the world came in search of wealth, bringing with them a diversity of cultural and spiritual affiliations. As the musical life of the various denominational groups developed according to specific doctrinal principles and local influences, strong opinions were expressed in the community regarding the place of music in worship. This article looks at the developments in sacred music during the two decades that saw Ballarat transformed into a major city. The strong differences in discourse and practice that were evident between and within particular religious groups form a background for reflecting upon contemporary perceptions of the function of music in worship.     

The Tragedy of the Highway: Empowerment,Disempowerment and the Politics of Sustainability Discourses and Practices

It is argued in this paper that the orthodox sustainable transport vision leads to the further empowerment of technocratic and elitist groups in society while simultaneously contributing to the further disempowerment of those marginalized social groups who were already bearing the burden of the environmental problems resulting from a troubled transport system. Scalar redefinitions of the transport problem play a prominent role in the twin processes of empowerment and disempowerment. Furthermore, the contributions of spatial planning and neo-classical transport economics to the sustainable transport discourses will be critically investigated. The issues of transport inequality and transport poverty should be re-inserted into the dominant transport policy debates and practices.     

Law,Principle, and the Theologico-Political History of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article takes it cue from the debate between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson regarding the possibility of political theology within Christianity, and in response, offers a conceptual-historical portrait of sovereignty and its juridical dimensions. Beginning with the introduction of Roman law into the medieval Church, the article traces the logic of “legal principle” as the basis of sovereign decision and how the form of legal distinctions adopted into canon law translate the Romanitas of law into the theory of papal sovereignty. By the Romanitas of law, that is to say the principle of sovereignty in law. The article then seeks to describe the conceptual translations of Roman politics and Stoic metaphysics into theological form and the logic of this translation into medieval natural law. The article concludes by evaluating how the civic theology of Rome is conceptually inherited by the politics and legal framework of sovereignty and returns to Peterson’s critique of Schmitt, arguing that political theology can be understood as a dynamic where politics is theologized, assuming that in the history of religion, theology and politics are never fully distinct to begin with.     

长沙走马楼简牍所见户籍检核制度及其相关问题

检核户籍和人口是我国古代一直实行的一项根本制度,但其检核程序如何,史载缺佚,此前的考古发掘亦未发现实物。走马楼简牍中两枚关于户籍检核制度的木牍和有关竹简的发现,填补了这一空白。从两牍所记内容来看,当时孙吴政权检核户籍要经过官吏被书、隐核户口、登记为簿、破莂保据等四道程序。