The Promised Medicine: Fore Reflections on the Scientific Investigation of Kuru

This paper explores the oral narratives of five South Fore men who assisted with the scientific investigation of kuru. Drawing on the framework of the dramaturgic form of epidemics, the narratives start with childhood memories of the social crisis at the height of the kuru epidemic. With the arrival of the European scientists they build to a climax of optimism over the prospect of a cure for kuru and enhanced personal futures before descending into disillusionment over the scientists' departure and a return to traditional village life.     

The Social Responsibility of the Scientific Community

Abstract

In his reply to President Scheel's speech to the Fraunhofer Society (above pp. 2–5) the author – a Member of our Editorial Board – disagrees with a number of his statements. Most important is his formulation of the crucial agreement that knowledge must be applied only to such an extent that the general welfare remain unharmed.     

新旧中西的冲突:关于学术规范讨论的思考

20世纪80年代以来,中国学术悄然进入一个范式大转变的多元化发展时期。在社会和学术双重转型的时代背景下,中国人文和社会科学界引人注目地出现了学术规范大讨论。在讨论中,来自不同学科的学术从业者基于学科发展的需要,就学术规范的内容及其体系结构、学术规范的作用与功能、学术规范传统的继承与发扬等重要问题,发表了很好的意见。这场历时十余年的学术规范讨论,既是社会转型期新旧中西冲突和学术范式转换的产物,也是中国人文和社会科学诸学科开始走向成熟的一个标识。     

Growing up within a Community in Conflict: The Rockford Files

A law suit for racial discrimination brought against the School District of Rockford, IL, over the last decade and more has meant that recent high school graduates have been educated for almost the whole of their school careers within an environment of conflict. The paper outlines the conflict as the context in which the young people have grown up, demonstrating the ways that adults purport to fight for their children, yet transform the issues into their own priorities. It analyses the ‘sensitivity’ and ‘resilience’ of recent high school graduates to such an upbringing. It also explains how the schools are sites where the community conflict is reworked in new ways and perpetuated among the young people. While perhaps an extreme case, Rockford illustrates a continuing, but underplayed, wider social malaise in the USA.     

Establishment Radical: Assessing the Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr's Reflections on the End of an Era

This article argues that Reinhold Niebuhr's most politically radical work, Reflections at the End of an Era (1934) is more determinative of his subsequent political theology than Niebuhr scholarship has acknowledged. In particular, the doctrine of grace and view of history that Niebuhr here developed continued to shape his mature thought, infusing his work with a politically unsettling quality that Niebuhr scholarship routinely overlooks in favor of depicting him as the “establishment theologian.” This article maintains that reclaiming the legacy of Reflections will enable future reception of Niebuhr to recover the radical dimension to his thought.     

关于师专教学质量问题的再思考

高等师范专科学校是我国高等师范教育的重要组成部分,担负着为基础教育培养合格师资的重任,其教学质量的高低,直接关系到基础教育的发展。因此,要提高教学质量,首先要树立正确的质量观,从实际需求出发,以发展的观点认识质量标准问题。同时,还应针对师专现有的教学状况,采取有效措施,努力提高教学质量,以便更好地服务于社会。     

对新疆建设兵团农牧团场职工代表大会的思考

职工代表大会是国有企业实行民主管理的基本形式,是职工行使民主管理权力的机构。新疆建设兵团作为＂党政军企＂合一的特殊组织,既具有企业性质,又具有政府性质,在这个大背景下,其职工代表大会必然具有特殊职能。文章立足团场这一体现兵团性质、履行兵团职能的基层组织,对其职工代表大会的组织保障、选举功能以及与人民代表大会职权的比较等方面作了梳理,指出了加强兵团团场职工代表大会权力的必要性。     

The Conflict between the Chief Justice and the Chief Executive: Ex parte Merryman

Rarely does the clash of ideas on the scope of governmental authority get reduced to a direct conflict between leaders of the branches of government. However, early in the Civil War period, the Chief Executive and the Chief Justice confronted each other in a direct fashion. The stakes were high, because the issues related to the conflict between national security and personal liberty.     

God,Otherness, and Community: Some Reflections on Hegel and Levinas

Many critics have argued that the alterity of God is negated within Hegel's philosophy of religion. This paper will present the position that Hegel's approach to theology depends on a rigorous hermeneutic which does not negate the meaning and power of religious language and practice as they are found within various Christian traditions, though it does challenge the view that God is absolutely “other” than the human. Further, Hegel's approach to the interpretation of the divine-human relationship need not be limited to Christianity alone. Although Hegel regards Christianity as the highest, most spiritually developed form of religious life, certain fruitful correlations can be established between his work on the ethical dimensions of religious community and Levinas's ethical interpretation of Judaism. These correlations suggest that both Hegel and Levinas offer articulations of what can be seen as a “biblical” mode of thought in which the dialectical relation of God and human beings is central.     

Animal Electricity at the End of the Eighteenth Century: The Many Facets of a Great Scientific Controversy

In the 1790s, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta were the main protagonists of a lively debate on the role of electricity in animal organisms. Significant developments originated from this debate, leading to the foundation of two new disciplines, electrodynamics and electrophysiology, that were to play a crucial role in the scientific and technological progress of the last two centuries. The Galvani-Volta controversy has been repeatedly reconstructed, sometimes in an attempt to identify the merits and the errors of one or the other of the two protagonists, sometimes with the aim of demonstrating that the theories elaborated by the two Italian scholars were irreconcilable, reflecting completely different ways of looking at phenomena and conceiving of scientific research. In this article a different interpretation is offered, based on a discussion of the scientific issues that were central to Galvani's and Volta's research, and with reference to the context of science and society of the eighteenth century.     

The Gibeonite Deception: Reflections on the Interplay between Law and Narrative in Josh 9

The paper relates the redaction history of Josh 9 to the development of legal concepts in Deuteronomy and beyond. It shows that the earliest version of the text provided an impartial portrayal of a peace treaty between Gibeon and Israel, which prepared for the events recounted in Josh 10. After the emergence of the law of ?ērem (Deut 20,15-18), this original version of Josh 9 implied an open contradiction to Deuteronomy’s warfare legislation. As a result, a first Deuteronomistic editor (D 1) introduced the idea that the Gibeonites had tricked the Israelites into making a covenant and thus saved their lives with deceit. At this stage of the literary development, the prohibition of making a covenant with the inhabitants of the land (e.g. Deut 7,2) was not in view yet. Compared to the ?ērem, the respective prohibition represents a later stage in the development of the legal material (perhaps triggered by the D 1 version of Josh 9). It is only reflected in a second Deuteronomistic layer (D 2) of the chapter, which should afterwards receive one more major editorial reworking by a priestly hand.     

Contexts for Conflict: Conceptual Tools for Interpreting Archaeological Reflections of Warfare

Abstract

There has been a long history of interest in the material remains of conflict, but in the last two and a half decades archaeologists have made strides in the study of war and warfare. Techniques have been developed, refined, and borrowed to expose the material record of combat. Sites associated with other military undertakings have been discovered and the material culture of conflict has been documented. This growth has expanded an understanding of past conflicts and challenged previously held ideas about warfare. Although archaeologists do not currently have interpretive frameworks to link the diverse sites and objects that form the archaeological record of war, modern military planners have developed such models. This paper uses sites from the North American Great Plains to suggest that military models of conflict analysis can contribute to a synthetic archaeological interpretation of conflict.