Charcot in contemporary literature

Charcot and his medical observations remain an enduring topic of scientific study in neurology, but he is also the topic of modern literary works. This essay examines the depiction of Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) as a character in late-twentieth-century literature as an index of the contemporary nonmedical literary public's interest in neurology and Charcot. It focuses on three contemporary works that involve Charcot as a central figure with comparison between primary source documents and the rendered context, character development, and plot lines of these literary works. The two French novels [Slumbers of Indiscretion and Dr. Charcot of the Salpêtrière] and one American play [Augustine (Big Hysteria)] approach Charcot and neurology with differing levels of historical accuracy. All create a figure of authority, each with a different coloration of the balance between power and its abuse. Two focus almost exclusively on his work with hysteria and inaccurately amplify Charcot's concern with symbolic sexual conflict as the origin of hysteria and fictionalize more extensive interactions with Freud than historical documents support. The three works demonstrate that Charcot retains an enduring fascination with an enigmatic personality, a controversial career, and a pivotal role in the development of studies involving the brain and behavior. Neurologists should not look to these works as replacements for more seriously composed historical studies, but as enrichments anchored in the imaginative possibilities of Charcot and his fin de siècle era.     

Expatriate everyday life in Dar es Salaam,Tanzania: colonial origins and contemporary legacies

Under German colonial rule and the British mandate, Dar es Salaam was a racially segregated city. The means of segregation were a series of building ordinances that established varying standards of construction in the city's neighborhoods. A result of these ordinances was the concentration of expatriates—those people living outside their home country—in two areas of the city: the City Center and the Msasani Peninsula. Using qualitative survey and interview data with fifty expatriates in contemporary Dar es Salaam, this paper demonstrates that segregation persists in spite of postcolonial efforts to desegregate the city. In fact, segregation in contemporary Dar es Salaam affects more than just residential patterns; all aspects of expatriate everyday life are overwhelmingly concentrated in these two urban areas. This paper engages with colonial city and expatriate literatures to identify the lingering effects of colonialism and the various ways that residents perceive and transform urban space. Several explanations exist for the persistence of this segregation. These two areas historically housed expatriates and thus contain desirable urban amenities such as supermarkets and shopping malls. These areas also offer expatriates the comfort of living among other expatriates in a perceived safe environment.     

Eating,serving, and self-realisation: food and modern identities in contemporary Indian women's writing

The ‘new Indian woman’ is often invoked in popular and academic discourse as the embodiment of a modern nation—the ‘new India’. Feminist studies of this figure typically focus on the body of the imagined ‘new woman’ as a site upon which modernity is inscribed, allowing little room for the agency of women who actively contest imposed identities and roles in the quintessentially modern project of self-determination. In this article I argue that narratives of food in contemporary fiction and fictionalised autobiographical writing by Indian women challenge both dominant feminist critiques of the ‘new woman’, and influential accounts of modernity as ‘rupture’ in masculinist theoretical literature. In these texts food, and particularly the practice of serving food to others, is used by women as a tool for gaining independence, as a weapon to combat oppression, and as a means of negotiating migrant identities, among other things. The texts thus demonstrate the importance of appreciating the gendered nature of modernity, recognising women's modernities to be genuinely transformative of the individual, as well as continuous with traditional and conventionally feminine practices rather than necessarily opposed to them.     

Elections,contemporary history,policy and ideology: Current writing on Mrs Thatcher

Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism. Macmillan Education, Basingstoke, 1988, pp.263 + xii, $21.95 (paper).

Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. Verso, London, 1988, pp.283 + vii, $29.95 (paper).

Martin Harrop and Andrew Shaw, Can Labour Win? The Fabian Series, Unwin Hyman, London, 1989, pp.143 + x, $16.95 (paper).

Peter Jenkins, Mrs Thatcher's Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era. Pan Books, London, 1988, pp.417 + xxxviii, $14.99 (paper).

Bob Jessop, Kevin Bonnett, Simon Bromley and Tom Ling, Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations. Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, 1988, pp.219 + viii, $25.95 (paper).

Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris, Consensus Politics from Attlee to Thatcher, Making Contemporary Britain. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989, pp.137 + xvii, $23.95 (paper).

Dennis Kavanagh and Anthony Seldon (eds.), The Thatcher Effect. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.355 + xvii, $23.95 (paper).

Kenneth Minogue and Michael Biddiss (eds.), Thatcherism: Personality and Politics. Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1987, pp.144 + xvii, $29.95 (paper).

Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, The Loyalties of Voters: A Lifetime Learning Model. Sage, London, 1990, pp.215 + xii, $22.90 (Paper).

Robert Skidelsky, Thatcherism. Chatto and Windus, London, 1988, pp.214, $29.95.

Leonard Tivey, Interpretations of British Politics: The Image and the System. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1988, pp.168 + x, $30.95 (paper).

Hugo Young, One of Us. Macmillan, London, 1989, pp.570 + ix, $39.95.     

当代视野中个人与社会的和谐发展

个人与社会的和谐发展是科学发展观的必然要求,是构建社会主义和谐社会的重要组成部分,具有重大的理论和现实意义。社会主义市场经济体制的建立和完善,把个人与社会从血缘、地缘或职缘共同体中解放出来成为各自发展的主体,为个人与社会的和谐发展奠定坚实的经济基础;建设服务型政府,实现三个根本转变,为个人与社会的和谐发展创造稳定的政治环境;创建契约型文化,实现从身份向契约的转变,为个人与社会的和谐发展提供良好的文化背景。     

Modeling social interaction: Marital miscegenation in colonial Spanish America

Abstract

In this article, the author constructs new life tables for the white population of the United States in each decade between 1790 and 1900. Drawing from several recent studies, he suggests best estimates of life expectancy at age 20 for each decade. These estimates are fitted to new standards derived from the 1900–1902 rural and 1900–1902 overall death registration area life tables using a two-parameter logit model with fixed slope. The resulting decennial life tables more accurately represent sex- and age-specific mortality rates while capturing known mortality trends.     

Whose politics and which science: beyond the colonial in liberal political theory

ABSTRACT

This article examines liberal political theory’s limits and possibilities in relation to indigenous self-determination. It shows that while the liberal tradition has provided theoretical rationale to the colonial project it is also equipped to rationalise a politics of substantive indigenous inclusion. The article introduces the recourses that exist within liberal theory for non-colonial interpretations of citizenship, democracy and sovereignty. It shows how these concepts may be interpreted to contribute to a liberal theory of indigeneity as a theory emphasising independent indigenous authority on the one hand and culturally contextualised and substantive participation in the politics of the state on the other.     

Praxis and theory in the writing of American historical geography

The use of primary sources in the writing of American historical geography is a relatively recent practice, and one which warrants more attention than it has been accorded. Of immediate appeal to historical geographers when they finally turned to primary sources were contemporary travel accounts, topographies and geographies. Because they were, and still are, much used, and because they reveal in simple and direct fashion the difficulty of encountering past “reality”, these kinds of material are the focus here. To turn from these essentially qualitative sources to more quantitative sources neither resolves nor avoids the issue we wish to raise, the problem of subjectivity. There are two sides to the problem of subjectivity; the first concerns the contemporary as observer and recorder of facts; the second concerns the latter-day scholar as observer and recorder of facts. The old conception of the geographer as an impersonal observer is no longer acceptable. In the quest for an understanding of the geography of the past, it may well be that “objectivity is the fruit of genuine subjectivity”, and that what is required is a collective effort of subjective scholars engaged in a continuing dialogue.     

当代安徽社会阶级阶层的演进

社会阶级阶层的分析与研究,一直是每个国家、地区在进行社会建设过程中制定路线、方针和政策的重要依据。建国以来,安徽社会和全国一样,经历了两次重大制度变革。随着经济发展,在经济结构、产业结构调整的同时,安徽的社会阶级阶层结构发生了深刻的演化,有些阶层分化了,有些阶层新生了,有些阶层的社会地位提高了,有些阶层的社会地位下降了。进入21世纪,安徽各个社会阶层之间的经济、政治关系发生了并且还在继续发生各种各样的变化,正在向与现代经济结构相适应的现代社会阶层结构方向转变。