Media Framing and Racial Attitudes in the Aftermath of Katrina

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many African Americans held fairly negative attitudes about effective and speedy government response to the storm. We employ framing theory to examine the role of race in shaping attitudes following Katrina. We hypothesize that a dominant media frame of Black storm victims led African Americans to develop a stronger empathy with storm victims, and thus, more negative views about government response. We test this hypothesis using a unique national poll of adults conducted in September 2005 that over sampled African Americans. Our results support the hypothesis that race strongly shaped attitudes following the storm.     

Disaster Management in the United States: Examining Key Political and Policy Challenges

The failures associated with the Hurricane Katrina response call attention to the challenges of, and the need to better understand disaster management practices in the United States. This article reviews several recent contributions to the field of disaster research and considers four key issues: the concept of disaster vulnerability, how individuals respond to hazard risks, challenges associated with effective hazard mitigation, and the idea of policy learning in the area of disasters. Beyond a review of these aspects of disaster management, future directions in disaster research is discussed.     

Teaching Across the Divide: Physical and Human Geographies of Hurricane Katrina

This article critically reflects on our effort to ‘teach across the divide’, by integrating physical and human geography in a new first-year course. We achieved this integration by structuring our course around a series of key events, in order to draw out the interaction of ‘natural’ and ‘social’ forces. After setting out the intellectual and institutional reasons for integration, we illustrate our approach with reference to one of the key events covered in our course: Hurricane Katrina. Finally, we draw on our own reflections and student evaluations to consider the positive outcomes of our approach, and the challenges it poses.     

Bad elements: Katrina and the scoured landscape of social reproduction

Hurricane Katrina scoured the political economic landscape of New Orleans revealing the toll of decades of disinvestment in and ‘hostile privatism’ toward social reproduction in a city with corrosive inequalities around class, race, and gender. This piece addresses the failures of the state and capital around issues of social reproduction in the wake of Katrina, and gestures toward the sorts of activism these failures have called forth. Organized around five elements of social reproduction, including the environment and relief infrastructure, health care, education, housing, and social justice, the essay argues that the absence of these elements of the social wage both created conditions that made Katrina a disaster and thwarted response to the storm's social, economic, and physical destruction in New Orleans. The costs can be seen most obviously in the unevenness of neighborhood and infrastructural recovery, the difficulty of establishing a stable workforce of residents because of the lack of support for workers and their families which especially affects women and lone parents, and the deepening of various neoliberal tendencies toward privatization in education, health care, and housing. Examining the classed, gendered, and racialized nature of these issues, I will look at community based social movements working to redress this situation, and interrogate the underlying politics and policies – explicit and implicit – that have produced this situation.     

《从巴黎到伯尔尼》:恩格斯的一份社会调查

对原始献和目击记录进行认真的分析,以便深入了解历史事件与人物的真实面目,这是历史科学的传统。恩格斯的《从巴黎到伯尔尼》正是一篇具有珍贵的社会史史料价值的目击记录。在这篇未完成的手稿中,恩格斯给了法兰西有关地区的风土人情以较好的评价。它是当时法国的社会情景、民间心态与自然风貌的写真,是后人研究法国近代历史的宝贵资料。     

当代中国口述史学透视

1948年哥伦比亚大学口述历史研究室的建立 ,正式标志着现代口述史学的诞生。经过 50多年的发展 ,口述史学成为历史学中一支举足轻重的分支学科。但是 ,到底中国有没有口述史学 ?这个问题很少被人问及 ,也很少有人做出明确的回答。口述史学在中国的发展和普遍流行将是一个必然的趋势 ,甚至在随后的几年内会有一个发展高潮。那么未来中国口述史学将如何发展 ,以一个怎样的高度作为起点呢 ?要解决这个问题 ,笔者觉得应该了解中国口述史学的渊源和现状。本文集中探讨当代中国口述史学的发展状况。     

历史与记忆

当代史学和历史哲学中关于记忆问题的探讨为我们关于史学的理解提供了新的视角。在这一视野下,记忆超越单纯个体心理的层次获得了作为脑外"文化记忆"的历史维度。在历史与记忆关系的层面上,历史记忆的多元性对历史记载的单一性提供了重要的补益,同时,史学文本的宏观视野对于历史记忆的微观局部性和片断性亦显示出认识上的优越性。在认识论维度之外,历史记忆诉诸历史正义的道义性是其十分显著的特质,于此凸显史学科学性与道义性维度复杂的张力关系,历史科学性不能成为漠视道义性的理由。最后,在历史与记忆关系上传统的历史本位立场之外,对人生有意义的历史终究要落实在人间的历史记忆中,从而彰显记忆本位的合理性,这或许是关注历史记忆所能带给我们的一点理论启示。     

把当代社会史提上研究日程

改革开放新时期以来,史学研究繁荣和发展的标志之一是社会史研究的复兴和高潮迭起。然而,迄今为止,全国还没有一部权威性的当代社会史或包括当代社会史在内的中国社会通史问世。无论从中国通史的一个断代史(中华人民共和国史)的角度审视,还是从中国正在经历并将长期经历的一个社会形态史(社会主义史)的角度审视,当代社会史都是一个亟待填补的空白。中华人民共和国史研究者要以学习和贯彻中共十六届六中全会精神为契机,加大力度研究与中国特色社会主义事业四位一体总体布局中社会建设相对应的当代社会史,把当代社会史提上研究日程,为构建社会主义和谐社会提供历史依据和理论支撑。     

时代、实践与主流意识形态:当代中国思想史研究的三重维度

当代中国思想史研究必须把握三重维度:一是探究思想变迁与社会发展的关系,准确把握当代中国思想史的时代维度,因为时代维度决定着当代中国思想发展的主题,决定着当代中国思想发展的历史进程及其方向;二是探究社会实践与思想变动的互动关系,准确把握当代中国思想史的实践维度,因为实践维度决定着当代中国思想发展的高度,也决定着当代中国思想发展的理论深度;三是探究主流意识形态的变迁,准确把握当代中国思想史的主流维度,因为主流维度决定着当代中国思想发展的核心和主脉。     

Crises all around: Do recent predicaments and their responses imperil ‘neoliberalism’?

The announcement of a record trade surplus for Norway in 2022, and a proposal to create a guarantee fund for investments in renewable energy for Ukraine, Europe and beyond, indicate how the economic and financial situation of the Norwegian state is intimately linked to the predicaments or crises that pertain to the contemporary world. While these phenomena at first glance appear legible in terms of neoliberalism, the article sketches how they instead concern a longstanding history and experience, where commercial corporations, financial markets and private profits are deployed for public benefit. While these dynamics suggest that neoliberalism never was relevant for the Norwegian context, the ascendancy of similar notions and practices elsewhere raises the question of whether current predicaments and their policy responses also spell a crisis for this analytic. Is it time to let the concept go?     

当代中国史研究与口述史学

当代中国史是历史学家族中最年轻的一门学科,也是目前最有活力、发展最快的研究领域之一。口述史学的出现适应了时代的需要,也顺应了国史变革的方向。寻求二者的最佳结合途径能使二者相得益彰,“合之则两美,离之则两伤”。当代中国史研究需要通过开展口述史来拓展研究视野,活跃研究思路,并弥补与修正史料之不足,以最大程度地发挥其面向社会公共教育和启迪的功能。     

The Freak Show’s ‘Missing Links’: Krao Farini and the Pleasures of Archiving Prehistory

This article offers a new perspective on Victorian freakery and prehistory by reading the career of Krao Farini, the ‘Missing Link’, through lenses of queer theory and archival studies. Born in Laos with hypertrichosis, a condition that produces an abundance of body hair, Krao transformed into living proof of the ‘Missing Link’ upon migrating to London in the 1880s. I contextualize Krao’s exhibition by situating her show within contemporaneous visual, textual, and performed examples of the ‘Missing Link’. Reading Krao alongside these other ‘Missing Links’ illuminates inconsistencies in their representations of gender and sexuality that nullify firm distinctions between ‘pre’ and ‘history’. I argue that the freak show’s ‘Missing Link’ materializes rhetorical and epistemological connections between Victorian prehistory and contemporary queer historiography to provide a valuable framework for accessing queer archives otherwise buried in the historical record. Though the correlations between prehistory and queer history are not necessarily explicit, locating their similarities reveals how persistent notions of Victorian time inform contemporary queer scholarship. Presaging recent queer archival interventions, Krao’s remaining archive demonstrates how prehistory breeds alternative models of evidence that disorder the archive’s relation to time: evidence of the ‘Missing Link’ unravels the language of stability, family, and presence on which archives typically rest. Resisting the implicitly heteronormative logic of the archival document, prehistory makes possible new ways of narrating Victorian histories of freakery, imperialism, and gender and sexuality.     

当代中国史视角下的社会史研究

新时期以来当代中国史研究日益受到学界重视,取得了引人瞩目的研究成果。近几年来,当代中国史研究出现了新的发展态势,越来越多的学者提出了要加强与政治史、经济史、文化史并列的社会史研究,强调以整体视角来拓展与深化当代中国史研究,这既蕴涵着学术演进的内在逻辑支配,又有着与外在的社会现实相契合的时代机遇。在此发展背景下,一些国史学者从宏大叙事转向微观实证,致力于地方、社会层面的微观研究,重视地方史料的发掘与整理,取径民间,以区域或地方为个案进行实证研究,力求在地方史或区域史研究的基础上把握总体史的样态。因此,很有必要从方法论的角度,以社会史为视角检讨当代中国史研究的开拓与进展,从而推动社会史这一新的学科的建设与发展。     

从《当代江西简史》的编纂探析地方史的编写规律

研究与编纂当代地方吏是研究与编纂中华人民共和国国史的重要组成部分。作者从研究与编纂《当代江西简史》入手,对编写当代地方吏过程中的一些规律做了有益的探索。文中认为,编写好当代地方史是国史研究中的一个新课题,必须领导重视,具有一支政治可靠、业务强、熟悉省情的编写队伍;要从系统研究本地区经济和社会发展的历史轨迹入手;必须坚持正确的指导思想;必须突出地方特色;忠于历史,科学修史,对历史进程中发生的一些问题,力求做出科学的分析和论述,为促进建设有中国特色的社会主义事业服务,为促进江西在中部地区崛起服务。     

国史中的社会史：内容和框架结构

社会史本当是国史研究的一个重要内容,但目前对中国当代社会史的研究还基本是一片空白。社会工作的蓬勃发展需要对建国以来的社会发展历程和社会建设进行全面系统的研究,于是中国当代社会史的研究和学科构建成为急需开展的课题。目前的中心任务是要构建一个比较成熟的中国当代社会史学科体系,先分门别类地研究专题史,然后在这个基础上综合研究总体史。而方志界已经在社会史研究和记述方面积累了一些经验,很值得国史研究借鉴。     

GLOBAL CHANGE: THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA PERSPECTIVE

Geological processes are fundamental to the understanding of Global Change and the geological record provides a baseline against which to assess the nature and significance of contemporary global change (Price 1986)     

A Better Savage than the Savages: Thor Heyerdahl's Early Ethnographical Attempts and their Importance for the Development of the ‘Kon-Tiki Theory’

ABSTRACT

In this paper Thor Heyerdahl's early attempts at ethnography and his first contact with Polynesian archaeology are discussed. It is argued that Heyerdahl, prior to his first Pacific expedition to the Marquesas Islands in 1937, carried with him a romanticized perception of the Polynesian people, imagining them to be the last living ‘natural men’. This perception was shattered during his expedition, and the disappointing contrast between the imagined reality and the lived reality led Heyerdahl to separate the contemporary Polynesian population from the Polynesian archaeological record. It is further argued that this separation between contemporary Polynesians and the Polynesian archaeological record would form the foundation for the dual migration wave hypothesis Heyerdahl later launched with his ‘Kon-Tiki theory’.     

Presidential Oral History: The Clinton Presidential History Project

Most conventional oral history takes a bottom-up approach tothe past, focusing on settings where there is little in theway of a functional written record. This essay discusses thevalue of oral history in the opposite case of the American presidency.The written archive and journalistic record on each presidentis immense. Yet oral history is a valuable resource in thiselite environment, too. There are routine silences in even thebest of presidential papers, which oral history interviews canhelp fill. Moreover, the White House has become a workplacewhere recorded details can be hazardous to one's political health.Accordingly, few presidential aides today keep diaries or notesof key meetings—impoverishing the archive future historianswill use to study the presidency of our times. Oral historythus fortifies a weakening documentary record. This essay exploresthese broad issues and how they are being dealt with in theconduct of the William J. Clinton Presidential History Project.     

跨学科研究与当代中国史学科发展的前景

当代中国史是历史学家族中最年轻的一门学科,也是最富发展潜力的一门学科,其优势和活力主要表现在能够充分借鉴、运用和整合其他学科的理论和方法。在当代中国史学科中提倡跨学科研究,一方面是指运用其他学科的理论和方法拓宽当代中国史研究的范围,从而更好地体现当代中国史学科的整体性、综合性;另一方面是指借鉴其他学科的理论和方法,从新的视角或新的思路拓展当代中国史研究的深度,增强其学术性与科学性。越来越多的学术实践表明,整合其他学科的理论和方法、实现自身的进步已成为当代中国史学科发展的重要趋势。