近代中国城市大众文化史研究笔谈

The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium, which is composed by Ma Min’s “Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural history,” Jiang Jin’s “Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in modern China,” Wang Di’s “The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses in Chengdu,” Joseph W. Esherick’s “Remaking the Chinese city: Urban space and urban culture” and Lu Hanchao’s “From elites to common people: The downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,” provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the studies. Four articles of the symposium are translated by Yang Kai-chien and Jin Xueqin from Shixue Yuekan 史学月刊 (Journal of Historical Science), 2008, (5): 5–19; Joseph W. Esherick provides the English version of his article.     

Resisting popular feminisms: gender,sexuality and the lure of the modern

Abstract

This article tracks discursive and political use of gender and sexual equality in nationalist and popular accounts of feminism, focusing on the ways in which such discourses produce a particular linking of time and space in the articulation of ‘the Modern’ in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. It further explores the increasing popularity of feminism in some media and celebrity contexts that have historically been so hostile to it, asking for care in tracking how and under what conditions feminism is cited as ‘universally desirable’ in light of this history. I suggest that feminism is partly reframed in this way insofar as it is newly sutured to femininity rather than masculinity, but also to singular rather than multiple or intersectional understandings of women’s oppression. A related claim of this article is that this shift of affective association with feminism is only possible when that singular cause of gender oppression is firmly understood as sexual oppression. I will be suggesting that if feminism is understood primarily or even only a fight against sexual oppression by men then the oppositional gendered roles that allow for its tethering to nationalism remain intact yet simultaneously obscured. In conclusion the article calls for an appreciation of feminism as a minority pursuit attentive to multiple power relations and histories.     

Protocol,politics and popular culture: the independence jubilee in Gabon

National days are powerful moments of commemoration that aim at renewing the citizens' bonds to the nation and the state. In order to be successful, public rituals need to draw large audiences, and their ceremonial design therefore has to be adapted to suit the masses, employing elements of popular culture and everyday forms of nationhood. Despite drawing its significance from the declaration of independence in 1960, however, Gabon's independence jubilee was less concerned with history and commemoration than with celebrating the state and the nation in the present. The ceremonial design of Gabon's jubilee featured intensive preparations, official ceremonies, popular festivities and symbolic politics. In this article, I look at why history and commemoration played such an unimportant role during the celebrations and how Gabon's jubilee organisers included official as well as popular forms of nationhood to assure the population's participation.     

The material culture of the modern world

SUMMARY: We discuss results of a content analysis of material culture articles in Post-Medieval Archaeology in the context of the development of historical archaeology as a discipline. We conclude that the journal remains an important outlet for detailed field reports, but in recent years, influenced by social and anthropological theories, the discipline has matured and articles have changed from antiquarian artefact presentations to contextualized material culture studies. Expansion of the journal’s temporal frame to include the recent past has so far had little effect, but the journal has benefited from the broadened international range of articles and the intellectual and theoretical backgrounds they convey.     

The beach at the end of the world: Eilat in Israeli popular culture

Located on the southernmost tip of Israel, at the meeting point of the Negev desert and the Red Sea, Eilat was occupied in March 1949 in the last military operation of Israel's War of Independence. Notwithstanding official notions of Eilat as a strategic asset and efforts to sustain Israeli presence there in the form of a permanent settlement, in Israeli popular culture Eilat, which later evolved into a thriving tourist resort, has had from the outset the reputation of being ‘different, special, distinct’. This article explores the unique position of Eilat in Israeli popular culture. The underlying argument is that this unique position of Eilat both evinced and reflected a dynamic interplay of liminal conditions and phenomena that rendered Eilat an exceptional experience. Furthermore, being situated at the southernmost tip of Israel, the location of Eilat at the geographical margin of Israel was productive of its image as an extraordinary place and sustained its prominence in popular imagination. The article charts and analyses a variety of liminal phenomena in their social and cultural contexts in different periods of Eilat's history.     

Ethics Ex Machina: popular culture and the plural futures of politics

ABSTRACT

The articulation of ethical responsibility can be conceived as a condition of ethical practice that brings into being a human subject to whom we owe consideration, and the reverse must also hold: we are brought into being – subjectified – through these relational connections. But can these connections exist between human and non-human subjects? In this short paper, we analyse the representation of artificially intelligent machines in the popular television series Westworld and the movie Ex Machina and elaborate on the boundary between human and non-human as a complex and contested ethical space. We argue that taking popular cultural representations of machine learning seriously can offer significant insight into how futures of human subjectivity and ethicopolitical responsibility might unfold. (117 words)     

南宋进书仪探析——以圣政为例

南宋时,圣政修纂完毕后,须进呈皇帝和太上皇。在进呈过程中,宋廷制定了一套庄严肃穆而又极其烦琐的仪式。进呈皇帝之仪在皇帝和大臣处理日常政务的垂拱殿中完成。进呈给太上皇帝之仪在太上皇帝居所完成。在迎奉圣政和皇帝赴太上皇帝居所的环节中,秘书省道山堂和祥曦殿成为与进呈仪式紧密相关的空间。圣政的进呈仪式是由太上皇帝、皇帝、臣僚面向公众共同完成的两场表演,这种可视化表演具有浓厚的象征意义:对皇帝而言,是向天下臣民宣示自己总结和继承先朝的政治遗产,开启本朝的治道,并且以自身的实践教化臣民,传递"孝"的理念,倡导"孝";对臣僚而言,通过仪式表演,表达了他们致君"贤能"的愿望。圣政这种史籍的进书仪式为我们考察南宋官修史籍进书仪式提供了一个典型案例。     

The Ballgame,Termination Ritual,and the Transformation of Classic Period Authority in the Mesoamerican Southern Gulf Lowlands

In the Gulf lowlands, Late Classic fluctuations were concomitant with the increasing importance of the Classic Veracruz style complex. A characteristic feature of the style was ballgame imagery on ballcourt panels, molded ceramics, and paraphernalia such as yokes, hachas, and palmas, as well as courts, markers, and stelae. Components of the Classic Veracruz style have been documented for the Gulf lowlands and adjoining regions of Mesoamerica. Few examples, however, derive from stratigraphic excavations of in situ deposits. We document the discovery, excavation, and initial interpretation of a monument-yoke-offering complex at Matacanela, located in the south-central Tuxtla Mountains. We present suggestive evidence for associated decapitation ritual. We conclude by assessing these data and generating hypotheses regarding the transitioning of authority. We situate the Matacanela complex within regional demographic, political, and economic transformations that occurred throughout the Classic period (ca. a.d. 300–800/1000), culminating in disruptions that may have been contentious.