The Holy Thorn Ceremony: Revival,Rivalry and Civil Religion in Glastonbury

This study examines the chapbook tales of Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer. The earliest recorded forms of these stories are discussed and it is contended that the common dismissal of their Arthurian elements as unimportant background—Arthur's Britain as a variant of “Once upon a time”—is unhelpful. Rather, both arguably embody and illustrate important points about the nature of the Arthurian legend in an era in which interest in this had declined considerably. It is suggested that the Arthurian element in Tom Thumb is, while not central, significant, and that it is best viewed in the context of an established pattern of development and expansion of the international Arthurian cycle that meets the needs and interests of different audiences. Jack the Giant-Killer, in contrast, seems to owe a noteworthy debt to the Arthur of Welsh and/or Cornish folklore rather than to the roi fainéant of the international legend, perhaps reflecting the decline in importance of the latter since the time of the The History of Tom Thumbe (1641).     

断裂与传承:沦陷时期北平的文化生态

1937年7月全面抗战爆发之后,北平成为沦陷之区,众多高校与文化、学术机构南迁,大批文化人离平避难,曾经的文化中心陷入沉寂。日伪政府利用中日地域接近、文化相似等特点,鼓吹"同文同种"、"中日亲善"理论,通过构建严密的管制体系,在文艺、教育、学术、媒体等领域推行一系列殖民政策与措施,力图将北平的文化发展纳入到"日化"的轨道中。但文化建设并非一朝一夕,亦非仅靠强制力可以推行。在殖民统治之下,北平的文化生态虽然受到很大程度的破坏,但作为具有数百年历史的国都与国家文化中心,城市的文化传统也在断裂中实现着传承。     

The Art of Hunger: Self-Starvation in the Red Army Faction

The founding generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a WestGerman terrorist group, spent two frenzied years in the undergroundfollowed by five years in prison, culminating with the suicidesof the group's leaders in 1976 and 1977. This paper examinesthe prison hunger strikes of the RAF as structured acts of communicationthat together with accompanying texts were central to a sustainedmedia campaign run from within prison. It examines the internaland external prison communication networks established to enablethe coordination of the strikes as well as the discursive functionsof the self-starvation of the RAF members. Within the prisonsystem hunger was constructed as ‘holy’ and ascribeda pseudo-religious function used to support a group identityand maintain an internal group discipline. In the texts producedfor publication beyond the prison walls, however, hunger becamea central element in the RAF strategy to counter what it sawas a mainstream medicalization of terrorism. This, in turn,was the tool employed to repackage the group's established rhetoric,as self-starvation allowed RAF prisoners to literally embodytheir long-standing ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-imperialism’.     

'The Proliferation of Identity Politics in Australia': A Critique

It is good to see more work being done on the institutionalising of ‘identity politics’, as in Elizabeth Fells' article ‘The Proliferation of Identity Politics in Australia’ in the March 2003 issue of this journal (Fells 2003). However, some assumptions in that article result in seriously misleading conclusions. I examine these here, taking the example of women's portfolios. Fells uses allocation of ministerial portfolios as an indicator of government responses to identity politics and, following Moon and Fletcher (1988), of policy innovation and policy substance. She acknowledges that governments may respond to demands that they be active in a particular area by creating portfolio responsibilities without establishing separate ministries. She suggests, however, that failure to establish a separate ministry to support the portfolio could be seen as a failure to ‘institutionalise a long-term commitment’. Hence she announces her intention to exclude from her analysis the creation of portfolios without ministries, such as the Commonwealth Status of Women portfolio, for which both the Prime Minister and a Minister Assisting the Prime Minister have responsibility (Fells 2003, 104).     

沙漠中的金色之城:杰沙梅尔

<正>杰沙梅尔位于印度西部的拉贾斯坦邦,与巴基斯坦接壤。由于城内的建筑全都由黄砂岩建成,故有"金色之城"的美誉。每当黄昏来临,夕阳照在石头上,把每一块都变成了金子,整个城堡笼罩在一片金色的光雾里,行走其间的人和牛也都被染成金色,从远处看,城堡金光闪烁,犹如神话中纯金打造的宫殿,反射着人间没有的豪华。那里的人相信,杰沙梅尔原是天上的宫殿,只因中了魔法师的咒语,一夜之间,被移到了荒凉的塔尔沙漠腹地。     

Hunger in the land of plenty: The complex humanitarian crisis in Venezuela

Oil-rich Venezuela is being hit by the largest crisis in living memory. Now, more than 4.8 million Venezuelans have fled the country in search of food and safety. News about migration and humanitarian aid dominate. Yet, many Venezuelans stay and seek alternative strategies to cope with scarcity and insecurity. Ad hoc solutions mainly depend on alternative economies in the borderlands that do not always fit within frameworks of human rights and rule of law, but do provide relief and produce opportunities along with new inequalities that (un)willingly sustain the crisis. Amid collapsing state infrastructures, these transborder economies tie into the global trade of basic supplies, narcotics, drugs, natural resources and human trafficking that operate in the interface of the legal and the illegal. The complex humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is as much about poverty and scarcity as it is about wealth and abundance benefiting only a very few. An ‘anthropology of abundance’ allows us to grasp these underlying socio-economic dynamics that turn crisis management into crisis maintenance.     

'The ravages of permissiveness': sex education and the permissive society

In this article we explore how sex education in schools has become an adversarial political issue. Although sex education has never been a wholly uncontroversial subject, we show that for two decades after the Second World War there was a broad consensus among policy-makers that it offered a solution to public health and social problems, especially venereal disease. From the late 1960s, this consensus came under attack. As part of a wider effort to reverse the changes associated with the 'permissive' society and legislation of the late 1960s, moral traditionalists and pro-family campaigners sought to problematize sex education. They depicted it as morally corrupting and redefined it as a problem rather than a public health solution. Henceforth, the politics of sex education became increasingly polarized and adversarial. We conclude that the fractious debates about sex education in the 1980s and 1990s are a legacy of this reaction against the permissive society.     

近代日本中国观的变迁及其东亚强国地位的确立

近代以来,日本首先从文化价值观和国家定位上实现了对中国的价值自立,随后在外交实践上争得与中国平等的国际地位,在对欧美实地考察后逐渐确立起对中国的优越意识,并在对中国试探性的侵略战争中将这种优越意识固定化。依凭其在亚洲独一无二的近代化成果,日本将其近代中国观在甲午战争中付诸实践,两国近千年来的强弱态势由此发生结构性的转变,日本的东亚强国地位得以确立,并最终以君临的姿态把中国纳入其扩张视野。     

Status Rivalry and the Politics of Biculturalism in Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand

Could it be that despite a huge literature spanning decades from many disciplines, a corpus of writing that examines seemingly every twist and turn of a complex situation, we still are missing something basic and fundamental to a proper understanding of contemporary cultural politics in Aotearoa New Zealand? A thing so obvious and omnipresent, that it was characterized long ago in the anthropological literature as the fundamental dynamic of Polynesian culture, and acknowledged even further back by Maori in their ancestral sayings? He tauranga uta, he toka tu moana (a resting place ashore, a firm rock at sea). ‘This metaphor describes the chief whose influence is unchallenged in his territory which extends from the land to the sea’ (Mead and Grove 2003:125). But surely real chiefs, those solid anchoring points, no longer exist as they did before the coming of the Pakeha. Be that as it may, the elements of social organization and associated cultural values of chiefly status continue to resonate in contemporary society. This paper argues that Goldman's concept of status rivalry is that crucial overlooked aspect of cultural politics necessary to a full understanding of what is happening today in the Waitangi Tribunal, Parliament, and so many other places where biculturalism and multiculturalism are debated and discussed, and that it is an aspect of Polynesian culture that has been part of the interrelationship between the Crown and te tangata whenua (the indigenous people) since their first encounters.