Not just civic or ethnic,but mostly cultural: Conceptions of national identity and opinions about immigration in Quebec

It is well documented that individuals' conceptions of national identity influence their opinions about immigration. The most well-known ideal types to capture conceptions of national identity are the civic and ethnic conceptions. Yet, this dichotomy does not reflect contemporary debates about immigration, which are framed in cultural terms. Scholars have thus proposed a cultural conception of national identity. The relationship between this conception and immigration, however, remains contested. Using an innovative approach to studying public opinion, this research analyses qualitative interviews conducted with individuals from the general public to investigate how each conception of national identity influences opinions about immigration in the context of Quebec, Canada. It shows that the cultural conception of national identity is related to both positive and negative opinions about immigration. This is explained by an evaluation mechanism whereby individuals evaluate if immigrants are included or excluded from the national group based on their (non)conformity to specific markers of identity. This evaluation is subjective and is often informed and substantiated by mediatised information about immigration-related issues.     

Drones,Hobbes, and Liberal Enchantment

ABSTRACT

This article reconceptualizes military drones by drawing on early-modern debates about the sanctity of political power. Ian Shaw has claimed that the proliferation and automation of drones threatens to subject humanity to a robotic regime of control, which he describes as the ultimate instantiation of Thomas Hobbes’s artificial sovereignty. I argue instead that the United States’ drone strategy is closely informed by a liberal political theology that can be traced back to Hobbes’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opponents, Samuel Clarke and Nehemiah Grew. These physico-theologians held that constitutionally balanced polities such as Britain were important vessels for divine providence. Today, a parallel faith that the United States represents humanity’s best hope is used to justify the extralegal and secretive bombing of territories that are deemed to be profane in comparison with America. Hobbes’s demystification of politics in Leviathan provides the platform for a critique of this modern form of liberal enchantment.     

"The Human Condition" as social ontology: Hannah Arendt on society, action and knowledge

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from "society," and political theory from the social sciences. This conventional view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt's most important insights concerning the constitution of "society" and the significance of the social sciences. In this article, I argue that Hannah Arendt's distinctions between labor, work, and action, as these are discussed in "The Human Condition" and elsewhere, are best understood as a set of claims about the fundamental structures of human societies. Understanding Arendt in this way introduces interesting parallels between Arendt's work and both classical and contemporary sociology. From this I draw a number of conclusions concerning Arendt's conception of "society," and extend these insights into two contemporary debates within contemporary theoretical sociology: the need for a differentiated ontology of the social world, and the changing role that novel forms of knowledge play in contemporary society as major sources of social change and order.     

Your Tacitism or mine? Modern and early-modern conceptions of Tacitus and Tacitism

The purpose of this article is to show, by the example of Hugo Grotius's Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis (AH), that the nature and content of the concept of Tacitism (Tacitist, Tacitean) in the period around 1600 was markedly different from modern perceptions of the style and political purport of Tacitus's works. This gap between current and early-modern conceptions of Tacitus is important to bear in mind for intellectual historians dealing with early-modern intellectual currents such as Reason of State, Neo-Stoicism, Tacitism, and others.This article first describes how the Tacitean style is characterised in literary criticism around 1600; then it explores the qualities of Hugo Grotius's imitation of Tacitus from the 17th-century perspective and from that of some main aspects of the present-day view of Tacitus. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically 17th-century mirror, in that it puts emphasis on Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words (the stylistic micro-level), as well as on political iudicium and Reason of State, but omits imitation of the narrative and structural qualities of Tacitus's composition, and their implications, which are central to modern interpretations.     

“安成家鼎”所有者问题初探

新发现"安成家鼎"拓片,铭文构成为"列侯爵号+家+容积+重量+编号",西汉时期被封为安成侯的共有五位,按照时间早晚顺序分别为窦后父、三位世袭的刘姓安成侯以及外戚王崇,根据相关资料分析,"安成家鼎"所有者为西汉晚期的外戚安成侯王崇可能性最大。     

REFORM AND REVOLUTION IN SCANDINAVIA, 1917–1919

The articles in this special issue, entitled Reform and Revolution in Scandinavia, 1917–1919: Entangled Histories and Visions of the Future, deal with the political turmoil in Scandinavia in the late 1910s, accelerated by the First World War and the revolutions in Russia in February/March and October/November 1917 and eventually in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Their special focus is on the political debates about reform and revolution and the related visions of the future of political order and social structures in national contexts and across borders. The articles examine how actors with different agendas in different contexts exploited the opportunities opened up by a window of change. None of the Scandinavian countries were directly involved in the theatre of war, but the whole of Scandinavia was associated with the hostilities in many other ways. The revolutionary processes in Russia affected Finland directly but – reflecting the events spreading from Petrograd – the debates about the legitimacy of the established political order intensified in all Scandinavian countries. The articles demonstrate how the debates and political processes took diverse forms in varying national contexts but were often more dependent on international relations, transnationally interconnected and entangled, than has traditionally been recognized in nation-state-centred historiographies.     

“水锡”考辨

本文根据有关“水锡”的文献记载,对“水锡”一词所代表的物质作了详细考辨,指出“水锡”不是“倭铅”而是锡,宋应星《天工开物》“倭铅,京中名水锡”的说法是不能成立的,并就宋氏之说的缘由,提出了一种商榷性的意见。 宋应星《天工开物》“冶铸·钱”篇,在“倭铅”名下有脚注“京中名水锡”,这似乎在倭铅(金属锌)与水锡之间划了等号。因此,直至今日,科技史界普遍都将水锡一词当作倭铅(锌)的别名。然而,根据笔者的研究,实际情况并非如此。     

The Curious Case of the Vanishing Debate over Irish Home Rule: The Dominion of Canada,Irish Home Rule,and Canadian Historiography

In the 1880s, the British Empire was abuzz with debate over the Irish Home Rule Bills being discussed at that time in the Westminster Parliament. The Dominion of Canada was no exception and the Canadian House of Commons held no fewer than three debates on the concept of Irish Home Rule. Studying these debates provides a way to explore British identity beyond the British Isles. Although the nineteenth century attempts to implement Irish Home Rule were ultimately a failure, for almost half a century the concept was discussed throughout the Empire. This article takes an in-depth look at the Canadian parliamentary response to Irish Home Rule. In doing so, it argues that the debates reveal much about British identity in the Dominion, at least at the parliamentary level, and sheds light on conceptions of Britishness in the wider British world. It also suggests that these imperial debates represent an important stage in the development of Canadian history and deserve to take their place in Canadian historiography.     

DOMESTICATING POSTMODERNISM

This paper proceeds in three steps. First, it gives more focus and rigor to the geographic reception of "postmodernism," through an investigation of the problem of representation as it has evolved from Kant through de Saussure and Wittgenstein to Derrida. Second, it arranges historical materialist encounters with the problem of representation along a spectrum of increasing seriousness leading from Palmer through Jameson to Adorno. Third, the various geographic responses to and avoidances of the key issues involved in postmodernism are read against the backdrop of possible seriousness opened up by the first two sections of the paper. The essay concludes by considering implications, for both social science and politics, not limited to questions about the possibility of disciplinary legitimacy.     

曹植《洛神赋》意旨蠡测

从“余”和洛神的单一对应关系出发,《洛神赋》中间人神由遇合到分离、由喜转悲的过渡文字则相当突兀甚至不舍情理。与《神女赋》人称所指的变化相似,《洛神赋》中创作者与抒情者具有重合和分离的两面,重合时“余”、“吾”指曹植,洛神为爱情寄托对象;分离时曹植以洛神自喻,“余”暗喻政治寄托对象。《洛神赋》通过混合运用人称所指的变化来悼念妻子崔氏及父亲曹操,表达爱情希望及政治理想的两重幻灭之感。爱情和政治并非各自独立,而是相互补充的有机整体,具有互斥性、相济性、整合性三个基本特征。两者一为表,一为里;一为主,一为辅;一为正面,一为侧面;一为直接,一为间接;一为文学性之表现,一为政治性之表现;一为艺术价值所在,一为思想价值所在。     

Commentary on "History Declassified"

In their welcome article, "History Declassified," Zachary Karabell and Timothy Naftali offer valuable insights and advice for researchers first approaching the new intelligence documentation that the CIA has begun to declassify. From their experience with CIA records already available on the 1954 Guatemalan coup, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the 1979 Iranian crisis, the authors appraise the "perils and promise" of the CIA's emerging new body of documentation. While it is not my purpose to quarrel with their judgments and opinions, I think that I can add some information that the article overlooks and clarify several misunderstandings about how the CIA's Historical Review Program actually works.     

清朝“正统性”再认识——超越“汉化论”“内亚论”的新视角

中国历代王朝的正统论均建立在"承天授命"和"以德化人"的儒家思想基础之上,也主要是由汉民族加以继承和阐释。清朝与前朝的区别是其版图已延伸至许多非汉人族群聚居的地区。儒家正统观显然无法全面涵盖这些地区的民众信仰和习俗。如何理解清朝对藩部边疆地区的统治仍然是目前清史研究的一项重要课题。本文提出清朝分别针对内地和边疆形成了新型的"正统性"的统治模式,清帝在内地的统治仍然依赖儒家的道德教化,对藩部的控制则主要依靠边疆少数族群对藏传佛教的信奉,从而建立起了另一种对前朝正统性的补充性制度框架。本文特别提出要区分"统治"和"治理"的涵义,"统治"主要是指皇权对一系列带有虚构色彩的象征性隐喻系统的利用和尊崇,"治理"则是对各类象征性统治符号的技术性延伸。其背后具有相当深刻的思想史背景在起作用。     

天津大沽炮台海字炮台和威字炮台“三合土”研究

"三合土"是一种性能较好的中国传统建筑材料。准确解析三合土的配比,不仅可揭示古代当时的建筑工艺,还可为文物保护工作提供依据和借鉴。为准确测试出天津大沽炮台的三合土配方,以便完成对炮台的本体保护,本工作借助SEM-EDX、XRD、XRF等仪器,采用线扫描和面扫描等测试手段,分析了天津大沽海字炮台和威字炮台的三合土样品,结果表明海字炮台三合土为三元配方,粘土、石灰及砂子的配比约为1∶2∶1;而威字炮台表面台基三合土为二元配方,粘土及石灰的比例约3∶1,拟以此两种配方的三合土展开相关实验,以便完成对炮台的加固。本研究为相似材料的分析提供了一种简便易行的方法。     

“Et nulle autre me faict plus proprement homme que cette cy:” Michel de Montaigne's embodied masculinity

Writing in a period of considerable anxiety about gender roles, Montaigne (1533–92) developed a series of reflections on gender and masculinity in which he destabilized the gender and sexual hierarchies of early-modern France. First, drawing on an increasingly global archive of information about non-European societies, he argued that culture plays a major role in shaping the lives and experiences of women. Secondly, his understanding of nature enabled him to foster a notion of the equality of the sexes, even as he recognized that nature creates certain differences between men and women. Finally, on these foundations, Montaigne constructed a vision of masculinity that stresses it as an ethical value, one that he opposes above all to cruelty. Montaigne's sexual politics were, I suggest, at least in part a response to the Wars of Religion that had led to an excess of barbarity in early-modern France.     

释易

古字中的“易”字可分析为从“肜”从“皿”。“肜”是“不绝”议,“皿”是“器”之义。许慎说“易”象蜥蝎,其说不确。     

"Must not their languages be savage and barbarous like them?" Philology, Indian removal, and race science

This article highlights the federal government's role as a collector and arbiter of scientific knowledge of "the Indian," in projects directed by Lewis Cass, Albert Gallatin, and Henry R. Schoolcraft; examines the linguistic precursor to biological essentialism; demonstrates white philologists' reliance on Native tutors, some of whom also entered scientific and policy debates; and suggests why the federal government began moving toward English-only instruction even as biological notions of race gained ascendance. During the removal debates, Indian languages focused the attention of men of letters, statesmen, and the broader public. Peter S. Du Ponceau and Cass argued over the grammatical character of the "American languages," with the former praising them and the latter attacking those tongues and the "philanthropic" philology. At stake was the future of Indian affairs and inquirers explored Native languages for evidence of Indians' intellectual and moral capacity to be assimilated into U.S. society. In denying that language corresponded to social condition, Du Ponceau suggested that all Indians spoke according to a uniform, unchanging, and unique "plan of ideas." He and other participants in the debate, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Schoolcraft, began to define, linguistically, a distinct and fixed "Indian mind." Scholars of the early republic and antebellum era who wish to study scientific definitions of race must come to terms with linguistic ideas, which requires confronting the intercultural encounters, intellectual exchanges, and institutions through which they emerged.     

"Housewives' films" and the modern housewife. Experts,users and household modernization: Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s

Between 1952 and 1976, "Housewives' Films" spread the message of modernity to about half a million Swedish housewives across the country. A program with commercials and entertainment depicted the wonders of household technology, modern living and a rational and positive attitude to life. This article analyzes the images of expertise presented in the films and links them to changing configurations of household rationalization in the 20th century. The "path through the laboratory" was presented as essential for making the users trust the experts' products and advice. But science alone did not suffice to create legitimacy. Expertise had to be negotiated. The films show the various ways in which the housewives themselves were enrolled into the work of the laboratory, in order for their expertise to be fully accepted as legitimate.     

Network Autocorrelation

Even though Cliff and Ord (1969) do not question "network autocorrelation," their paper contains an interesting ambiguity that is here discussed. Hence, this article aims at discussing the problem of spatial autocorrelation in (perhaps preferably on) a network as well as at giving an overview of the existing relevant literature. A typology of network autocorrelations is suggested and it is hoped that this discussion initiates debates and points to new research challenges.     

清末民初“传统”的出现:概念史视角的考察

古代汉语中已有"传"和"统"两字连用的情况,但所指的都是皇位的传递。日语里"传统"的词义在19世纪90年代开始发生变化,到大正时期新义"传统"真正流行,汉语受此影响,作为新词的"传统"从1920年后才开始频繁出现在报端著述,到20世纪30年代之后才进入辞典,并成为"tradition"的译词。"传统"在新文化运动之后开始流行,有其历史缘由,它为经过"新旧之争"冲击的文化保守主义表述提供了一个更适合的词汇选择。但同时,围绕"传统"和"现代"迅速形成了二元对立的观念和话语体系,这使得"传统"不断被重新定义,增加了它的复杂性。