Mendicants as victims: scale,scope and the idiom of violence

This article establishes the scale of violence perpetrated against mendicant friars in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, and provides a list of these events in an on-line appendix. It underscores and analyses the wide variety of contexts in which such incidents took place and examines the ramifications for the history of the mendicant orders and medieval urban society generally. Violence was a subtler form of communicative action than is sometimes recognised, and the paper points to the inverse relationship between power and violence in medieval urban conflicts.     

Mendicants as victims: scale,scope and the idiom of violence

This article establishes the scale of violence perpetrated against mendicant friars in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, and provides a list of these events in an on-line appendix. It underscores and analyses the wide variety of contexts in which such incidents took place and examines the ramifications for the history of the mendicant orders and medieval urban society generally. Violence was a subtler form of communicative action than is sometimes recognised, and the paper points to the inverse relationship between power and violence in medieval urban conflicts.     

Planners' Role: Torn between Dialogical Ideals and Neo-liberal Realities

Planners are inclined to be in favour of public involvement and open processes and opposed to manipulation and lenient control of developers. The hypothesis here is that the attitudes of the typical Nordic planner, in particular, are much closer to communicative planning theory than to New Public Management. The planner role is currently under cross pressure from conflicting values and expectations held by educators and part of the professional community influenced by communicative planning theory on the one hand, and politicians and administrators promoting New Public Management on the other hand. However, patches of common ground are also identified and analysed, in particular the concern for user influence, service quality, and client satisfaction.     

Ethnic Election and National Destiny: Some Religious Origins of Nationalist Ideals

Abstract. Central to assertions of national identity in the contemporary world is a sense of collective mission and destiny. This is clearly manifest in the recent spate of religious nationalisms, but it is also present as a component of secular nationalisms. In both cases, it is possible to trace the origins of the sense of collective destiny to much earlier beliefs in ethnic chosenness. In some cases a strict ‘covenantal’ form of the myth of ethnic election, such as was found in the Old Testament, has survived more or less intact into the modern era. In many other instances, a looser sense of ethnic election by the deity has continued to influence the outlook and purposes of secular nations. While there is no strict covariance between the earlier myths and modem national ideals, the ancient beliefs in divine election have given modern nationalisms a powerful impetus and model, particularly among peoples in the monotheistic traditions.     

理想与利益——浙江省宪自治运动新探

1919-1926年的浙江省宪自治运动,是民初中国联省自治浪潮中的一个重要组成部分。它在省内外多种因素的推动下而发生,并在运动中先后产生了三种不同的省宪：九九省宪、三色宪法、浙江省自治法。省宪的条体现了当时人们的许多自治理想,但运动参与动机各异使之自始便存在着严重分歧,省宪理想成为他们追求不同利益目标的工具。运动断断续续的进行伴随着各方势力激烈的冲突,亦折射出浙省多重的地方政治权力结构。运动的无果而终,并非简单由于“军阀扼杀自治”。     

"仁人"钟敬文

前几天,钟敬文先生的公子钟少华来电话,说定于本月十六日举行钟先生百岁寿辰纪念暨学术研讨会,问我能否参加,我说我愿意参加,没想到钟先生这么快就去世了。钟先生身体不错,就是体弱,没什么病。可能他自己也没想到去得这么快。他躺在医院里还说,身体好了,我就出去给学生们上课。