THE PRICE OF METAPHOR

In his critical response to our skeptical inquiry, “Does Culture Evolve?” (History and Theory, Theme Issue 38 [December 1999], 52–78), W. G. Runciman affirms that “Culture Does Evolve.” However, we find nothing in his essay that convinces us to alter our initial position. And we must confess that in composing an answer to Runciman, our first temptation was simply to urge those interested to read our original article–both as a basis for evaluating Runciman's attempted refutation of it and as a framework for reading this essay, which addresses in greater detail issues we have already raised. Runciman views the “selectionist paradigm” as a “scientific”“puzzle‐solving device” now validated by an “expanding literature” that has successfully modeled social and cultural change as “evolutionary.” All paradigms, however, including scientific ones, give rise to self‐validating “normal science.” The real issue, accordingly, is not whether explanations can be successfully manufactured on the basis of paradigmatic assumptions, but whether the paradigmatic assumptions are appropriate to the object of analysis. The selectionist paradigm requires the reduction of society and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some not; and with society and culture thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to “evolution.” But these reductions, which are required by the selectionist paradigm, exclude much that is essential to a satisfactory historical explanation–particularly the systemic properties of society and culture and the combination of systemic logic and contingency. Now as before, therefore, we conclude that while historical phenomena can always be modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute anything new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history.     

THE ECOSYSTEM HEALTH METAPHOR IN SCIENCE AND POLICY

Ecosystem health' is an increasingly common metaphor in the langauge of science and policy. Given the prominence of both the ecosystem and health concepts within geography, this paper examines the meanings generated by the adoption of the metaphor for scientific research and for environmental policy on the North American Great Lakes. 'Ecosystem' can be characterized as an entity, an abstract concept, or a perspective. As perspective, ecosystem shares many features of postmodern science, emphasizing complexity and holism and calling for the inclusion of human beings in our considerations of nature. The ecosystem health metaphor is politically powerful in its ability to evoke action and concern for the environment with an appeal to the universal experiences of human ill-health. The organismic ecosystem health metaphor provides a new, relevant way of thinking about the natural world. In policy discourse, however, metaphor can be problematic in that there is potential for the author or speaker to hide behind the nonliteral language. Moreover, the acceptance of the ecosystem health metaphor which can draw upon widely held beliefs and norms implies that other ways of knowing the world are necessarily omitted. We highlight some of these issues in a case study of a policy document prepared by the Ecological Committee of the Great Lakes International Joint Commission. To continue to know how to study nature in new ways, metaphors must be encouraged, but their meanings must also be widely explored     

文化与创意产业集群的研究谱系和前沿:走向文化生态隐喻?

文章基于文献研究,梳理文化和创意产业集群的研究谱系,指出该领域学术界:①没有将文化和创意产业本体论知识整合到集群分析框架;②对艺术家和创意阶层及其项目生产方式、知识流的空间过程关注十分薄弱;③忽视文化消费和中介因素对创意集群和文化生产的反身性;④比较偏向生产型创意集群的研究、忽视空间型创意集群和消费型文化产业园区和城市空间的研究;⑤在研究方法上相对单一。作者提出通过运用文化生态系统隐喻,进一步展开综合研究的可能性。     

RUSSIA ON THE PACIFIC: THE ROLE OF THE AMUR

The key to the expansion of Russia to the Far East and to America is to be found in the loss of the valley of the Amur to China by the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 and its reacquisition in the period from 1854 to 1860. R. J. Kerner, "Russian Expansion to America, Its Bibliographical Foundations, Papers of the Bibliographicul Society of America.     

THE CRISIS OF THE MOVEMENTS: THE ENABLING STATE AS QUISLING

The basic argument of this paper is that the anti-systemic movements political successes over the last century have turned out to be medium-term cul de sacs at the expense of the real longue duree purposes of the movements. The discovery of the enabling state by radicals towards the end of the nineteenth century has resulted in a Quisling in the anti-systemic ranks. This argument brings to the fore the anarchist critique which never accepted the enabling state as a legitimate part of the radical political repertoire. Nevertheless this essay is not a plea for a return to anarchist roots but rather attempts to reinsert anarchism, and feminism, into a single framework of anti-systemic movements alongside socialism and nationalism. As the state is being shown to be disenabling rather than enabling across the various zones of the world-economy it is argued that anarchist ideas deserve some priority as we revise radical political strategies.