Irrigation and society

Wittfogel's hydraulic theory of the origin of the state has provided the subject of irrigation and society with a privileged place in archaeology; contemporary literature concerning the social consequences of irrigation development has been neglected by archaeologists. The literature suggests that irrigation technology has as much to do with bureaucratic power as with water. Bureaucratic managementand mismanagement of irrigation technology mediate the outcome of such development projects on the affected populations. This observation challenges theories that posit a linear relationship between population growth and technology. Archaeologists would benefit from applying the insights from the development literature to archaeological analyses of irrigation.     

Culture and international society

This article investigates a hypothesis drawn from Martin Wight, that a society of states lacking a shared culture, as a result of expansion beyond its original base, will be unstable. This instability hypothesis has been influential in how the English School has presented the history of the expansion of European international society to a global scale. The article starts by offering two models of how a global international society could have come about since the late classical era: a multicultural encounter among several expanding civilizations (polycentric), or the takeover of the system by one centre (monocentric). Using these models as a backdrop, two accounts of the expansion story are developed. The Vanguardist account emphasizes the exceptionalism of European culture, posits a 500‐year period of western domination, sees multiculturalism and the decline of western power as problematic, and tends to pessimism about the future of international society. The Syncretist account emphasizes the permanence of cross‐cultural exchange, posits only a 200‐year period of western dominance, sees culture and international society as evolving together, and is not pessimistic about the stability of international society. These two models and two accounts are then used to assess the possible future of international society. The article argues that culture is less of a problem for international society than Wight, and much of the English School, suppose. The evidence for the substantial success of syncretism is strong and provides considerable stability to most of the likely outcomes. The key problem is not culture, but socio‐political structure. How can what North et al. call natural states and open access orders find shared practices and institutions that do not destabilize international society?     

Elites and class in Australian society

Broom, L., Jones, F., McDonnell, P. and Williams, T., The Inheritance of Inequality. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 196. NP

Etzioni‐Halevy, E., Political Manipulation and Administrative Power. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979, pp. 218. $31.50

Field, G. L. and Higley, J. Elitism. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 135. $24.50     

Subjective society and socially constituted selves

Westen, Drew. Self and Society: Narcissism, Collectivism, and the Development of Morals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. xvii + 438 pp. including references and index. $57.50 cloth, $19.95 paper.

White, Geoffrey M., and John Kirkpatrick, eds. Person, Self and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsychologies. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1985, vii + 433 pp. including chapter references, chapter glossaries, and index. $38.50 cloth.     

Person,role, and society

Charles C. Hughes. Eskimo Boyhood: An Autobiography in Psychosocial Perspective. Lexington, Kentucky: The University of Kentucky Press, 1974. ix + 429 pp. Illustrations and references. $12.75 (cloth).     

民族问题与构建和谐青海

世界上只要存在着民族、存在着多民族国家结构,就会存在着民族问题,这就是一般意义上的民族问题的普遍性。青海在民族构成、自然条件、社会经济、习俗文化、宗教信仰、族际关系等方面具有的特点,决定其民族问题具有一些特殊表现形式。构建和谐青海,就要重视研究和解决民族问题在其中具有的作用及其所产生的影响。     

Sport and society in Italy today

Summary

In ‘Itinerary’ Patrick McCarthy provides an introduction to the four articles that examine the connections between sport, politics, business and contemporary culture in Italy. Noting that mass participation in sport has been closely related to modernization, McCarthy argues that the forms of contemporary mass sport reflect the particular cultural, political and economic conditions of each European society. In Italy these made soccer and cycling the most popular mass sports by 1945.

Patrizia Dogliani’s article ‘Sport and Fascism’ examines the development of mass sport in Italy from the late nineteenth century, showing the critical role played by the Fascist regime, which rapidly expanded public sports facilities while the language of politics and combat permeated the vocabulary of sport in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Initially the emphasis was on international competition as a symbol of national virility, but following the success of Germany and the USA in the 1936 Olympics the regime’s search for consensus placed new emphasis on recreational aspects. The institutional and administrative organization of sport established in the 1930s remained in place in Italy, however, until more recendy.

In ‘Itinerary 2’ McCarthy examines the roles of the boxer Carnera from Friuli and the racing driver Tazio Nuvolari as sporting heroes of Mussolini’s Italy and in ‘Itinerary 3’ shows how the struggles between Catholic Italy and Communist Italy were personified in the rivalry between the cyclists Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi in the post-war period.

In ‘Itinerary 4’ he asks why soccer had by the 1970s overtaken cycling as Italy’s most popular sport. That theme is examined in greater detail by Nicola Porro and Pippa Russo, whose article reconstructs the ‘hybridization of sport, mass media and politics’ in Italy in the 1990s. Its central focus is Silvio Berlusconi, the self-made media tycoon who founded Fininvest in the 1970s, acquired AC Milan in 1986, and by 1994 controlled a media empire that enabled him to found a new political party (Forza Italia) and become Italy’s Prime Minister albeit for less than a year. Porro and Russo examine the ways in which Berlusconi’s roles in the world of the media and professional soccer have changed both Italian politics and Italian sport.

In ‘Itinerary 5’ McCarthy sets the example of Berlusconi in the context of the integration of soccer and mass media, the commercialization and politicization of sport at a global level in the last decade. These issues are developed in greater detail in Emanuela Poli’s article, ‘The revolution in the televised soccer market’, which emphasizes the critical role that has been played by soccer and soccer clubs in the development of the new media empires based on digital pay-per-view TV and the sale of sporting events in the 1990s. This has left control of the sport (in terms of who can watch and when) in the hands of major international communications moguls like Berlusconi and Rupert Murdoch.

‘Itinerary 6’ links the fragmentation of collective myths like the national soccer championships to the decline of the nation state, and surveys the situation of other sports in Italy (the Americas Cup, skiing, rugby football. Formula 1 motor racing and the gymnasium). The latter is the subject of the final article by Roberta Sassatelli on ‘The commercialization of discipline: keep-fit culture and its values’ which explores the social and cultural meanings attached to the growing vogue for fitness clubs and the shaping of the ideal body in contemporary Italy.     

Religion,society, and culture

Morris, Brian. Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ix + 369 pp. including chapter notes and references, selected bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth, $12.95 paper.

Webster, Graham. Celtic Religion in Roman Britain. Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1987. 205 pp. including chapter notes and references, photographs and illustrations, abbreviations, classical sources, selected bibliography, and index. $30.00 cloth.

Weller, Robert P. Unities and Diversities in Chinese Religion. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. viii + 215 pp. including appendices, notes, references, and index. $22.50 cloth.     

Knowledge and Proximity

Over the years knowledge has come to be seen as crucial for economic progress, and proximity as conducive to knowledge exchange. As a result, knowledge-related processes are often considered as possible explanation of the spatial agglomeration of economic activities. However, knowledge and proximity are general concepts that have to be detailed before it is possible to specify the concrete mechanisms at work. Building on recent work that focuses on proximity, this paper develops a perspective in which proximity features as an enabling element, but no more than that, in ongoing processes of knowledge creation, transfer, absorption, and change. We argue that knowledge is to be viewed as activity and process, rather than object or commodity. Concentrating on “knowledge agents”—those engaged in knowledge-related processes, individuals and collectives—will be more productive than persisting to rely on the distinction between tacit and codified knowledge to explain spatial aspects of the economy. Finally, we argue that regions are different when it comes to the extent, and the way, they facilitate creation, transfer, and other knowledge processes. Contributions to local or regional economic development, whether through research or policy, have to take existing repertoires—patterns in collective knowledge—into account.     

Royal Scottish geographical society

EUROPE.

Borrowstounness and District. By Thomas James Salmon. Edinburgh and London: William Hodge and Company, 1913. Price 6s. net.

Handbook of Baltic and White Sea Loading Ports, including Denmark. Revised Edition. By J. F. Myhre. London: William Rider and Son, 1913. Trice 21s. net.

Bennett's Handbook for Travellers in Norway. Thitteenth Edition, revised. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., 1913. Price 2s. 6d.

Sketches of North and West Ireland. By Mary Bedsdale Wilson. Illustrated by Jessie S. Wilson. London: Arthur Stockwell, 1913. Price 2s. net.

Mittelmeerbilder. Von Dr. Theobald Fischer. Zweite Auflage besorgt von Dr. Alfred Rühl. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1913. Price 7 marks.

Spain and Portugal: Handbook for Travellers. By Karl Baedeker. Fourth Edition. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913. Price 15s.

Naples and Environs: Capri. Grieben's Guide‐Books. London: Williams and Norgate, 1913. Price 1s. 6d.

Photographic Supplement to Stanford's Geological Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland. Arranged and edited by Horace B. Woodwakd, F.R.S., F.G.S. London: Edward Stanford, 1913. Price 4s. net.

The Cathedrals of Southern France. By T. Francis Bumpus. London: T. Werner Laurie, Ltd., 1913. Price 6s. net.

AFRICA.

The Land of Footprints. By Stewart Edward White, F.R.G.S. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1913. Price 2s. net.

Les Sociétés Primitives de l'Afrique Equatoriale. With 9 Figures, 18 Plates, and Map. By Dr. Ad. Cureau. Paris: Armand Colin, 1912. Price 6 fr.

AMERICA.

The Southland of North America. By George Palmer Putnam. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1913. Price 82.50 net.

Colombia. By Phanor James Eder. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913. Price 10s. 6d. net.

Twentieth‐Century Jamaica. By H. G. De Lisser. Kingston: The Jamaica Times, 1913.

POLAR.

Le Monde Polaire, par Otto Nordenskjöld. Traduit du Suédois par Geoeges Parmentier et Maurice Zimmermann. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1913. Prix 5fr.

GENERAL.

Animal Geography. By Marion I. Newbigin, D.Sc. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1913. Price 4s. 6d.

Making the most of the Land. By James Long. London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913. Price 5s. net.

The “Welcome” Photographic Exposure Record and Diary, 1914. London: Borroughs, Wellcome and Co. Price 1s.

“The Car” Road‐Book and Guide. An Encyclopædia of Motoring. Edited and revised by Lord Montagu. London: The Car Illustrated, Ltd., 1913. Price 12s. 6d. net.

Bradshaw's Through Routes to the Chief Cities, Bathing and Health Resorts of the World. Edited by Eustace Reynolds Bell. London: Henry Blacklock and Co., 1913. Price 6s. net.

EDUCATIONAL.

Dent's Practical Notebooks of Regional Geography. By Horace Piggott and Robert Finch. Book i. The Americas; ii. Asia; ii. Africa; iv. The British Empire in America and Asia. London: Dent and Sons, 1913. Price 6d. net each.

Questions and Exercises in Geography. By R. J. Finch, F.R.G.S. London: Ralph Holland and Co., 1913. Price 2s. 6d. net.

A Comparative Geography of the Six Continents. By Ellis W. Heaton, B.Sc., F.G.S. London: Ealph Holland and Co., 1913. Price 1s. 9d, net.

The British Empire with its World Setting. By J. B. Reynolds, B.A. London: A. and C. Black, 1913. Price 1s. 4d.     

Royal Scottish geographical society

Conflict and Change in the Countryside. By Guy M. Robinson, 237 × 162 mm, xxvi + 482 pp, Belhaven, London, 1990, pbk, ISBN 1–85293–044–6, £14.95.

The Third Statistical Account of Scotland: The County of West Lothian. Edited by Patrick Cadell, 230 × 145 mm, 377 pp, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1992, hbk, £37.50.

The Third Statistical Account of Scotland: The County of Roxburgh. Edited by John Herdman, 230 × 145 mm, 368 pp, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1992, hbk, £37.50.     

关于法律与社会之间的法学研究

法社会学的形成可以说是人们整合以往法律认识的结果。社会学方法在法学田野里的耕耘导引出一种更贴近现实、更具活力的法律认识方式。在法律中认识社会以及在社会中认识法律,这种着眼于法律与社会之间的认识活动,为法学研究开辟了一个前所未有的广阔领域。法学和社会学的联姻,不仅使法学理论更具有包容性,而且还为法学研究超越传统提供了综合与多维的方法指向。