Administration, Savoir Technique et Reconnaissance Impériale Tang Ying 唐英 (1682–1756)

This paper examines the career of Tang Ying 唐英 (1682–1756), one of the first imperial administrators at the court of China, using archival material from the Workshop of the Imperial Household Department, which was responsible for creating art works commissioned by the emperors. The author investigates the emergence of a professional elite of imperial administrators, aims to shed light onto why and how technical expertise in art contributed to the ultimate political aims of Manchu emperors.     

Mundane Myths: Heritage and the Politics of the Photographic Cliché

This paper considers the impact of photographic clichés on the management, conceptualization, and experience of heritage. Working along the grain of pejorative readings of ‘snapshot’ photography, this account views the repetitiveness and redundancy of the cliché as a critical point of departure, rather than a cause for reproach. Taking the World Heritage Site of Angkor as a core case study, three intersecting axes of political concern are sketched out to elucidate the broad social, material, and affective implications of clichéd photography for heritage. First, processes of dehistoricization and depoliticization are interrogated in relation to the role certain images play in constructing a mythic sense of the past in the present. This leads directly in to the second strand of analysis, which examines the various ways in which individuals negotiate these myths through the production of their own highly personalized photographic clichés. Here I develop the concept of an embodied politics of heritage photography to grasp the multivalent resonances of tourist clichés in particular. Finally, the implicit and explicit forms of spatial control that permeate sites such as Angkor are examined in relation to the photographic clichés they respond to and help shape.     

The people and the professors: socialism and the educated middle classes in Italy, 1870–1915

This article examines the role of the educated middle classes in the Italian socialist and syndicalist movements from 1870 to 1915. After discussing the problems of defining the educated middle classes and the intellectuals, this article looks at the role of the creative free-floating intellectuals within the socialist movement of the 1890s. The importance of positivist and 'evangelical' socialism is highlighted and illustrated through the influence of Cesare Lombroso and Edmondo De Amicis. The article then focuses on the role of Filippo Turati and the Italian Socialist Party's Socialist Parliamentary Group, which was largely composed of individuals from the educated middle classes. In this part of the article, the author evaluates the influence of the educated middle classes in the Italian Socialist Party before 1915. This article concludes with a discussion on the nature of Italian intelligentsia socialism and its influence on Gramsci. Questo articolo esamina il ruolo delle borghesie intellettuali nel movimento socialista e sindacalista in Italia tra il 1870 ed il 1915. Dopo aver preso in considerazione le problematiche inerenti alla definizione sia delle borghesie intellettuali che degli intellettuali, l'articolo dedica spazio al ruolo creativo di intellettuali indipendenti all'interno del movimento socialista negli anni intorno al 1890. Si dÀ particolare rilievo all'importanza del socialismo positivista ed 'evangelico' attraverso l'analisi del pensiero di Cesare Lombroso e di Edmondo De Amicis. Si passa, infine, a considerare il ruolo di Filippo Turati e del gruppo parlamentare del Partito socialista, il quale era principalmente composto da personalitÀ di estrazione borghese intellettuale; l'autore valuta l'importanza e l'influenza delle borghesie intellettuali nel Partito socialista, nel periodo che precede il 1915. L'articolo si conclude con un'analisi della natura dell'intellighenzia socialista italiana e della sua influenza su Gramsci.