Tree Totems and the Tamarind People: Implications of Clan Plant Taboos in Central Flores

ABSTRACT Among the Nage of eastern Indonesia, a sizeable minority of clans maintain totemic attitudes towards trees and other plants whose names they share. Tree totemism is mostly expressed in taboos on burning the wood and using the timber in construction. In addition, there is the idea that all Nage people should not burn wood of the Tamarind (Nage) tree. Comparative evidence and local historical narrative locate the source of phytonymic clan names in an earlier use of such names as toponyms and settlement names. Insofar as this is their origin, Nage plant totemism can thus be understood as a residue of a naming practice relating to places rather than to people, either human ancestors or groups. As the use of ‘Nage’ as the formal name of an inclusive ethnic, socio‐political, and territorial entity is relatively recent, and indeed largely a function of a colonial administration introduced barely a century ago, this case further demonstrates how taboos and totemic relations can develop rapidly in contexts of major social change.     

黑山会的故事:明清宦官政治与民间社会

关于明清时期宦官的研究 ,以往史学界多从政治史的角度入手 ,探讨宦官干政及其与皇权的关系。本文从黑山会这样一个宦官的祭祀组织出发 ,探讨他们塑造刚铁这样一个宦官祖神的意义 ,从新的角度理解宦官政治 ,并进而探索宦官与京师民间社会的关系 ,以及他们在宫廷与民间社会之间的中介角色     

宗族与地方社会的国家认同——明清华南地区宗族发展的意识形态基础

考察明清时期“宗族”的历史 ,应该超越“血缘群体”或“亲属组织”的角度。华南地区宗族发展是明代以后国家政治变化和经济发展的一种表现。宗族的发展实践 ,是宋明理学家利用文字的表达 ,改变国家礼仪 ,在地方上推行教化 ,建立起正统性的国家秩序的过程和结果。文章概括讨论了宗族意识形态通过何种渠道向地方社会扩张和渗透 ,宗族礼仪如何在地方社会推广 ,把地方认同与国家象征结合起来的过程。     

The Symbolic Making of a Common Property Resource: History,Ecology and Locality in a Tank-irrigated Landscape in South India

Today there is a pervasive policy consensus in favour of ‘community management’ approaches to common property resources such as forests and water. This is endorsed and legitimized by theories of collective action which, this article argues, produce distinctively ahistorical and apolitical constructions of ‘locality’, and impose a narrow definition of resources and economic interest. Through an historical and ethnographic exploration of indigenous tank irrigation systems in Tamil Nadu, the article challenges the economic-institutional modelling of common property systems in terms of sets of rules and co-operative equilibrium outcomes internally sustained by a structure of incentives. The article argues for a more historically and politically grounded understanding of resources, rights and entitlements and, using Bourdieu's notion of ‘symbolic capital’, argues for a reconception of common property which recognizes symbolic as well as material interests and resources. Tamil tank systems are viewed not only as sources of irrigation water, but as forming part of a village ‘public domain’ through which social relations are articulated, reproduced and challenged. But the symbolic ‘production of locality’ to which water systems contribute is also shaped by local ecology. The paper examines the historical and cultural production of two distinctive ‘cultural ecologies’. This serves to illustrate the fusion of ecology and social identity, place and person, in local conceptions, and to challenge a currently influential thesis on the ecological-economic determinants of collective action. In short, development discourse and local actors are seen to have very different methods and purposes in the ‘production of locality’. Finally, the article points to some practical implications of this for strategies of ‘local institutional development’ in irrigation.     

京郊四村80年:乡民社会的历史图景与现实处境

20世纪20年代李景汉调查的京郊四村长期以来一直得到学术界的关注,2006～2008年,我们又对京郊四村进行了田野调查和文献研究,目的意在秉承前辈学者的研究理路,以村民的收入和消费为主线,呈现其从乡土社会到城市街区的转换历程,以及失地农民在适应城市生活中所面临的诸多问题。作为城乡关系的"连接点",大城市边缘村落既是乡土社会转型的前沿地带,也是都市化引发社会矛盾和冲突的焦点。因此,对京郊四村的再研究,不仅续写了村庄的历史,更突显了认识和记录中国社会变迁的价值所在。     

Regional spaces, spaces of regionalism: territory, insurgent politics and the English question

Amid the globalization of economic life and a myriad of powerful challenges to Westphalian traditions of political statehood, it is now routinely contended that regions are 'in resurgence'. Nonetheless, much of the debate on this purported regional renaissance is bedevilled by confusion over what scholars and activists mean by regions and an analogous mystification as to why some regions are 'successful', 'lagging' or 'different'. Our paper aims to instil some coherence to this debate by distinguishing between what we term regional spaces and spaces of regionalism . It then draws on this distinction to explore the institutionalization of England's South West region, highlighting some tensions which prevail over its economic future, its political representation, its territorial shape and cultural vernacular. In undertaking this, we demonstrate how the formation of any given regional map is reflective – and indeed constitutive – of an unevenly developing, often overlapping and superimposing mosaic of economic practices, political mobilizations, cultural performances and institutional accomplishments. This prompts us to question the currently fashionable inclination to fully jettison a scalar and/or territorial approach to the theory and practice of spatiality in favour of relational/topological/non-territorial approaches.     

Locality,Mobility and Governmentality in Colonial/Postcolonial New Caledonia: The case of the Kouare tribe (xûâ Xârâgwii), Thio (Cöö)

The colonial history of New Caledonia has been one of dispossession, alienation, and racial segregation. Indigenous people did not experience a life of all‐embracing confinement and immobility. Instead, Kanak localities were historically shaped by the interplay of colonial projects, ideas, tensions, power relations, practices, representations, values, norms, and emotions. Based on the example of Thio, located on the south‐east coast of New Caledonia, this article explores these transformations, focusing on processes of localization and mobility in the colonial and postcolonial eras. The first section focuses on the encounter with and the interplay between different organisations in Thio: the missionary, mining, pastoral, and administrative frontiers. The second section explores the multilayered history of the landscape and settlement patterns in Xârâgwii/Kouare (a tribe located in the mountainous part of Thio), and the third section analyses the interplay of locality and mobility since World War II. The final section examines the ‘invention’ of the tribe as part of colonial governmental projects. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the meaning of this evolving dialectic in the current context of decolonization.     

Voting Technology,Political Institutions,Legal Institutions and Civil Society: A Study of the Hypothesis of Cultural Lag in Reverse

The 2000 Presidential election was plagued by butterfly ballots and ‘pregnant chads’. Electronic voting systems, lacking verifiable paper trails that are subject to possible fraud, promise to wreak havoc with the 2004 Presidential election. There is a great diversity of systems of voting technology in the 50 states: from paper ballots, lever‐operated machines and punch cards to optical scanners and electronic systems. Associated with each technology is an estimated error rate. The underlying theory of this paper was set forth by William F. Ogburn in his famous book entitled Social Change, published in 1922. Dividing culture into material and non‐material elements, Ogburn argued that non‐material elements lag behind material elements. His explanation for this lag is that technology, which underlies material culture, changes at a faster rate than elements of non‐material culture. Obgurn did not contemplate the possibility of a reverse lag, viz., technology lagging behind non‐material culture. In analyzing the anomalous relationships between voting technology, political institutions and legal institutions, a striking instance of a ‘reverse cultural lag’ is discerned. To eliminate the phenomenon of the reverse cultural lag, there is a need for a federally‐funded program of a uniform, state‐of‐the‐art voting technology, plus an amended Help America Vote Act, to implement the innovations in the 3,114 counties. The complex problems reviewed in this paper point to a vexing question: how do we educate an electorate in a democratic society—such as the United States in the twenty‐first century—to be responsible for ensuring that periodically‐elected representatives implement the will of the people?     

Studying the Development of Complex Society: Mesopotamia in the Late Fifth and Fourth Millennia BC

Inca specialist D'Altroy (2001, Uruk Mesopatamia and Its Neighbours: Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation, School of American Research, Santa Fe, NM, p. 445) has written, Uruk Mesopotamia has stood as the model for the study of the rise of the state for several decades. Work on this problem of the origin of complexity has remained one of the foci of scholarly research even these several decades after the completion of many of the classic and key studies of Uruk culture and its neighbors in adjoining areas. At the same time, the questions asked, the size and richness of the empirical record, and the interpretations of various scholars have undergone significant change. These changes parallel scholarly trends in studies of similar phenomena in other areas of the world. This article reviews key questions that are currently being asked about societal complexity with a primary focus on the cultures and societies of late fifth and fourth millennia BC Mesopotamia. In doing so, new perspectives and interpretations on perhaps the earliest complex societies are synthesized and assessed.     

晚清保甲制的历史演变与乡村权力结构——国家与社会在乡村社会控制中的关系变化

保甲制是清王朝实施乡村社会控制的主要制度 ,但在乡土社会权力制约下 ,国家政权向乡村社会的延伸屡受挫抑。围绕着乡村权力格局 ,国家与社会之间的复杂关系及其权力力量变动 ,不仅构成了“政治近代化”过程中乡村权力结构的历史前提 ,而且也是我们认识近代中国社会的一个新视角     

Republicans,Unionists and Jacobites: The 1st Marquess of Tweeddale and the Restoration of the British Parliament

Although John Hay, 1st marquess of Tweeddale, contributed significantly to both the ruthless overthrow of Charles I, and the establishment of the first British parliament in the 1650s, most of his political career was concerned with attempting to re-establish this parliament after it was dissolved at the restoration of Charles II. His first attempt ended in defeat at the hands of the king and the duke of Lauderdale in 1670, but following the overthrow of James VII and II in 1688, Tweeddale tried to persuade the prince of Orange to unite Scotland and England. The prince, however, showed much more interest in securing the crown of Scotland than uniting the two kingdoms. Tweeddale, as lord high commissioner to the Scottish parliament in 1695, responded by passing legislation designed to provoke the English parliament into accepting union. He was also engaged in a jacobite intrigue to restore King James. Tweeddale intended that the restored monarch would be little more than a puppet, who could be used to legitimise what was effectively a republican regime in all but name. By this means the restored parliament would avoid the unpopularity which brought down the first British parliament in 1660. Tweeddale's scheme came to nought, but the technique he employed to manipulate the English parliament, and exploit the jacobite threat, contributed to the restoration of the British parliament ten years after his death.     

The Role of Theatre in Society: A Comparative Analysis of the Socio-Cultural Theories of Brecht,Benjamin, and Adorno

Abstract

This article analyzes the socio-cultural theories of Adorno, Benjamin, and Brecht through the lens of the theatre, most especially as it pertains to the work of actors. It explores the forces of capitalism that determine how art is produced, distributed, and consumed. Following Adorno’s reading of Marx, actors are here posited as commodities whose labor is separated from the product they create for public consumption. This commodification raises various questions: How does a market economy shape the production and consumption of art? What is technology’s function in the commodification of art? What is art’s sociopolitical role and how does it apply to theatre? To address these questions I juxtapose the cultural theory of Adorno and Benjamin with Brecht’s epic theatre. This comparison exposes the ritualistic potential of the theatre to bring an audience together as a community through sharing a socially enriching event.     

The Politics of Cognitive Dissonance: Spin,the Media,and Race (and Ethnicity) in the 2008 US Presidential Election

This article examines the roles of spin, the media, and race (and ethnicity) in influencing voter behavior in the 2008 US presidential election. It invokes the concept of cognitive dissonance to explain how political strategists effectively propagandize – i.e., “reinvent their candidates” and “reinvent their opponents' actual record” – in order to successfully garner votes for their candidates. In particular, it considers spin and how spin and the media are used to shape public opinion by causing voters to distrust the veracity, credentials, and records of opposing candidates and to set the policy agenda. It also discusses how race, ethnicity, gender, and policy issues were used in the 2008 US presidential election campaign, and describes the impact of “spinning” on voter behavior and the election outcome. Equally important, it discusses the implications of the Obama victory for Canadian governance in two pivotal areas: domestic race relations and direct parliamentary representation of minorities. The article closes with a brief discussion of the symbolism attributed to Barack Obama's electoral victory by both American and Canadian voters.     

Mutuality, De-Mutualization and Communities: The Implications of Branch Network Rationalization in the British Building Society Industry

The paper examines the withdrawal of branches from local communities by financial institutions. It assesses whether mutually owned building societies are more adept than the former societies that have converted to public limited companies (plcs), or the high street banks, in serving disadvantaged communities. The paper shows that during the mid-1990s: mutual building societies were more likely than former societies that have converted to plcs to maintain their branch network; mutual societies were less likely than banks to withdraw from socially deprived locations and more likely to open branches in such places; differences between mutual societies and convertors are less marked, but mutual institutions appear less likely than convertors to close branches in deprived communities. Among the remaining mutual building societies there are differences of perspective, with more commercially-minded societies less positive than socially-concerned mutuals about the need to maintain or even expand branches in disadvantaged areas.     

印尼棉兰华人族群融入主流社会初探

以田野调查数据为基础,从国家认同、民族认同、生活习俗,以及华人社团的宗旨及活动等方面分析探讨了棉兰华人族群融入主流社会的程度及其存在的问题。认为印尼棉兰华人族群目前已处于融入主流社会的进程中,这是一种历史发展的必然趋势,又是一个缓慢渐进的社会过程。这种融入是一个非强制性的行为,是双向的、群体性的运动,其程度和速度受时空和各种主客观因素的制约。     

Continuity,chance, and change: The character of the industrial revolution in England

This article examines the life and works of Robert Blakey, author of the first English-language history of political thought. Studies of Blakey have typically concentrated on one aspect of his life, whether as an authority on field sports or as an historian of philosophy. However, some of Blakey’s lesser-known ventures, particularly his early Radical politics, his hagiographies, and his attempts to write a biography of Charlemagne, heavily influenced his more famous works. Similarly, Blakey’s upbringing in a Calvinist tradition, rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense philosophy helps makes sense of his philosophical and theological commitments, yet has been largely ignored. This article provides a sketch of Blakey’s life, tying these disparate strands together, and explaining their influence upon, and relevance to, the first history of political philosophy.     

粮食生产供求变动与清代地方的社会经济——以湘南为中心

清初两湖地区尚属地广人稀,但湘南大部却因为田土开发殆尽而出现了人口过剩问题,这直接影响到地方的传统农业经济和造成了民食之困,湘南因此成为两湖最早引种玉米、甘薯等高产旱地粮食作物的地区,但这种人地紧张关系也在客观上刺激了该地区的多元化经济发展。清中期以后,上述两种作物的广泛种植,使湘南的民食之困得到有效缓解,人口亦出现了高速增长,这些都有力促进了地方社会经济的再发展。需要指出的是,这种受人口压力所迫而以"使用劳力"方式为主的经济发展,并没有普遍提高民众的生活水平,因此具有明显的历史局限性。