非洲的反政府武装问题

反政府武装问题是非洲政治发展进程中的一个巨大的挑战。在非洲“前民族国家”的“新家长制”下,既得利益集团维护私利而损害了大多数民众的福祉,迫使民众寻求家族、部落、宗教集团等的庇护,导致反政府武装兴起并与政府对抗。而经济发展困境、非洲民众与国家在经济关系上的脱节,及西方经济发展模式对非洲主动性的扼杀,则滋生出反政府武装兴起与发展的社会经济因素。被边缘化群体的不满情绪,某些突出人物的领导力,以及独特的士兵群体的参与,则为反政府武装提供了人员、智力与武力支持,使反政府武装具有了强大的破坏力。而“本土性、独立性”的认同则为反政府武装提供了斗争的合法性理由,并以此赢得部分民众的认可与同情。     

The Forgotten Union

The personal union between Norway and Sweden, established in 1319, has received little interest by historians, and is usually seen as terminated in 1363, if not earlier. But it was, in fact, an important factor in Scandinavian politics all the way until the establishment of the Kalmar Union under Queen Margrete in 1389. Important parts of western Sweden stayed in the union with Norway, which gave the now Norwegian-based old Swedish dynasty an important bridge-head and opened for contacts between Margrete and Swedish oppositionals. The territorial uncertainty along the western Swedish border also played a part when the Swedish lords opted for a union with Denmark and Norway.     

The Forgotten Semantics of Regression Modeling in Geography

This article is concerned with the semantics associated with the statistical analysis of spatial data. It takes the simplest case of the prediction of variable y as a function of covariate(s) x, in which predicted y is always an approximation of y and only ever a function of x, thus, inheriting many of the spatial characteristics of x, and illustrates several core issues using “synthetic” remote sensing and “real” soils case studies. The outputs of regression models and, therefore, the meaning of predicted y, are shown to vary due to (1) choices about data: the specification of x (which covariates to include), the support of x (measurement scales and granularity), the measurement of x and the error of x, and (2) choices about the model including its functional form and the method of model identification. Some of these issues are more widely recognized than others. Thus, the study provides definition to the multiple ways in which regression prediction and inference are affected by data and model choices. The article invites researchers to pause and consider the semantic meaning of predicted y, which is often nothing more than a scaled version of covariate(s) x, and argues that it is naïve to ignore this.     

Medieval English Martinmesse : The Archaeology of a Forgotten Festival

Beginning with Elizabethan literary references to a carnivalesque celebration of Martinmas, the present article surveys the St Martin cult in England in order to isolate features of the medieval celebration of the Christian feast and determine the feast's relationship to seasonal activities of early November. Martinmas is seen as both the last harvest festival and a curtain raiser for the extended winter revelling season, in effect a "Carnival" in late autumn.     

The Intellectual Internment of a Conflict: The Forgotten War in Northern Ireland

One of the most enduring ideas about the Northern Ireland conflict is that it has been rigorously studied. This is a myth. The stark absence of analysis of its military and international dimensions makes the conflict one of the least understood of modern times. Scholarly studies of Northern Ireland have been insulated from influences in the wider academic world by the dominance of hitherto unchallenged images about the crisis. These images support a dominant orthodoxy that has confined intellectual investigation of the 'Troubles' to Northern Ireland itself, sustaining a view that little of value can be gained from studying the military nature of the conflict. This orthodoxy is one to which, depressingly, the international relations community has been only too willing to contribute to justify its fear and neglect. Not only does this reflect poorly on academic practice but it has also helped to engender a dangerously distorted image of the conflict that bodes ill for the future.     

The Forgotten Menzies: Cultural Puritanism and Australian Social Thought

Recent debates on the social thought of Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, describe his career as a programme either to realise liberalism, conservatism, or liberal conservatism in Australian institutions and national identity. While these analyses have some merit, they fail to capture the historical context of Menzies' age, particularly the kind of Britishness for which he stood, a Britishness compatible with modes of liberalism and conservatism, but far more comprehensive than either of those traditions conceived narrowly as systematic ideologies. We contend that what Menzies was trying to do for much of his career was to reinvigorate what modern historians, and Menzies' contemporary social commentators, identified as a cultural puritan inflexion to British character. Once the nature of this cultural puritanism is understood, Menzies' political ideas, at least up until the Cold War, look less like attempts to promote liberalism or conservatism, and more as a project to reinvigorate a conception of Britishness that many during Menzies' time feared was in mortal danger by the forces of affluence, individualism, and socialism. We focus on his most well-known speech, “The Forgotten People” (1942), and analyse it in the context of many of his other writings, published and hitherto unpublished.