Mary douglas and the “new anthropology”

Mary Douglas. Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. xxi + 325 pp. Figures and index. $23.50.     

The “Philosophical Bible” and the Secular State

Almost all scholars of the Enlightenment consider Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke as the founding theorists of the “secular modern state.” In contrast to the widely held view of the modern state, I argue that far from being “secular” it was the product of the sacralization of politics, which resulted from the way these philosophers interpreted the Scriptures as part of their philosophical inquiries. The analysis of the “linguistic turn” in their biblical interpretations reveals how they tried to undermine the power of the Church to claim greater freedoms for the state. Their philosophical inquiries initiated the secularization of the Christian religion and the sacralization of politics as two correlative developments, rather than the secularization of the state per se, as is usually supposed. The philosophical arguments proposed by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke helped to resolve the religious battles of Europe’s many confessions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but are still pertinent to our current very different historical context.     

The new refugees and the “old ethnicity”

Haines, David W., ed. Refugees in the United States: A Reference Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Westport Press, 1985. viii + 243 pp. including chapter references, annotated literature guide, and index. $39.95 cloth.     

Tourism and the “villagers without history”: the case of Yubeng

In recent years, Tibetan Yubeng Village, located in southwest China, has become a hot spot for studying community tourism development in China's minority areas. Studies of Yubeng Village have been made on two tourism benefit distribution systems that are dominated by the community: the accommodation income distribution system and the caravan rotation system. Analysis and discussion of researchers are based on the formation, change, and influence of these two systems. However, different researchers have different interpretations of some fundamental facts, whether in terms of the time of the systems’ changes or in terms of the specific contents of such changes. Based on firsthand interview records and auxiliary secondhand materials obtained from field investigation, this study mainly takes “time of system change” as an example to discuss the reasons for these differences and advises that researchers should be more rigorous when facing those fundamental facts.     

The “informer” and the political and organisational culture of the Irish republican movement: old and new interpretations

This article will analyse recent interpretations of the “informer” as a subject of political and historical significance for a balanced understanding of the trajectory of the Provisional Republican movement. It will do so in part through a discussion of some recent fiction and memoir-writing devoted to the figure of the informer. Specifically, this will involve an exploration of the recent fictional re-imagination of the real-life case of Denis Donaldson, by the French journalist Sorj Chalandon (Mon traître, 2007 and Retour à Killybegs, 2011) (These novels have been translated into English as My Traitor (2011) and Return to Killybegs (2013)). All subsequent references are to the English versions. In the first section, the article analyses the historical evolution of the phenomenon and recent revelations regarding the apparently widespread existence of informers in the movement during the Troubles. This section engages with the academic debate concerning the effects of these revelations upon the morale and internal political culture of the republican movement; it is argued here that the “Republican family” has been significantly affected by these disclosures in the “post-conflict” era, and that they have become an important element in the contestation between leadership supporters and “dissenters” within contemporary republicanism. The second section utilises old and new literary representations of “the informer”, particularly based around Liam O’Flaherty’s The Informer and Chalandon’s work, to discuss continuities and changes in the image and perception of this phenomenon. It is argued that the interweaving of fiction with real-life and factual historical detail is a particularly appropriate means of interpreting the role and effects of the informer.     

Beneath the Rising Sun: “Frenchness” and the Archaeology of Desire

This article takes the case of “rouge pot” fragments found in an archaeological context in New Orleans’ French Quarter associated with the circa 1822 Rising Sun Hotel and investigates the discourses and desires that shape our interpretations of artifacts. We argue that archaeological, historiographic, and public desires overlap and inform one another in a complex web of relations. In New Orleans, the particular web into which the archaeology of cosmetic jars and hotel sites can fall is spun by the ways in which the former French colonial capital is sexualized in both textbooks and folk songs.     

On the “Belgic Ditches,” and the Probable Date of Stonehenge

The acceptance of Caerlaverock castle into guardianship was followed by consolidation of the masonry and the clearance of the silted moat. In parallel with these operations, a series of excavations was carried out to investigate the nature of the outer defences and any surviving evidence for earlier bridges. Four different phases of timber bridges had crossed the moat to the gatehouse; the first three were dated by dendrochronology to 1277, 1371 and to the second quarter of the fifteenth century. An outer earthwork, originally intended purely to retain the water of the moat, was remodelled in the sixteenth century as an artillery defence. The approach to the castle was remodelled with an additional rock-cut moat, crossed by a timber bridge dated by dendrochronology c. 1559–94. Documentary evidence is examined for the use of these artillery defences, especially in the final siege of Caerlaverock in 1640. A rich assemblage of finds was recovered, mainly from unstratified contexts, both from the excavation of the bridges and from the general clearance work of the moat.