《追求真理:威廉·麦克尼尔回忆录》

<正>作者威廉·麦克尼尔,译者高照晶,浙江大学出版社2015年9月版。该书是美国当代著名的世界史学家威廉·麦克尼尔的回忆录。麦克尼尔详述了自己生活和学术研究的发展历程,同时也描绘出美国的世界历史研究及教学的演变,以及美国的学术机构如何运作。读者可从中了解到麦克尼尔本人对世界历史的理解,及其在推动美国世界史发展过程中的学术贡献。     

中国世界史学科体系的三大学术理路及其探索

整体史观、现代化研究和文明交往研究是我国新时期世界史研究的三大历史视野,也是中国学者为建构世界史研究中国学派具有代表性的研究成果。本文在对其学术构建和理论体系进行简明的回顾、梳理和评价的基础上对我国世界史学科体系建设进行探讨,认为建构中国的世界史学科体系不仅是必要的,而且是可能的。世界史的体系建构理路应该是在坚持唯物史观基本原理的基础上,充分吸收西方史学有益的研究成果,以整体化的世界历史为主线,以现代化的世界历史为主要内容,寻求并强调文明交往的历史意义与历史地位。     

人间与天庭——麦克尼尔与汤因比之间的学术渊源与分歧

对文明和文明史深刻而独到的认识,是麦克尼尔史学成就中的一个重要组成部分。就学理而言,麦氏与英国著名史学大师汤因比有着密切的关联,故而,就他们之间的学术关系加以梳理、辨析,不仅对认识麦氏本人史学主张和成就大有助益,亦可从一个特定角度和层面对20世纪西方史学在有关世界史研究领域的传承、变革与发展有更为清晰的了解与把握。     

评麦克尼尔的《西方的兴起》

一美国历史学家威廉·麦克尼尔 ① 所著《西方的兴起———人类共同体史》② 是一部在西方史学界影响巨大 ,并具有承先启后作用的“整体世界史”(ｗｏｒｌｄｈｉｓｔｏｒｙ)著作。可以称之为“世界史”的著作有数种。一是在统一的体例下 ,由多位专家合作编撰的国别史、地区史与断代史的多卷本总集 ,如《剑桥世界史》系列、苏联科学院主编的《世界通史》等。也有一些是简明概要的世界史读物或教科书。另一类则是由对世界整体历史有独到研究思考的学者 ,在对世界史各领域研究学术成果的基础上所撰写的体现了那个时代重要的思想、学派的世界历…     

美国著名环境史学家约翰·R.麦克尼尔到北京大学历史系讲学

应北京大学历史系包茂宏副教授的邀请,美国著名环境史学家、乔治城大学历史系和外交学院环境和国际事务讲席教授约翰·R.麦克尼尔于2006年3月13~19日访问了北京大学历史系,并给来自国内十余所高校和研究机构的学者和学生做了三场演讲。这是包茂宏副教授主持的环境史系列讲座的第三讲(前两讲分别由日本学者井上坚太郎和德国学者亚克西姆·纳德考主讲)。约翰·R.麦克尼尔出生于历史学世家,其父就是中国世界史学界非常熟悉的著名历史学家威廉·麦克尼尔。小麦克尼尔主要从事环境史和世界史的研究和教学,著作等身,成就斐然,在国际环境史学界享…     

中国世界史学科体系的构建与教学模式的改革

改革开放后,中国学者在世界史学科建设的过程中,提出了全球史、现代化和文明史等观点,这些研究成果为中国世界史学科体系的构建奠定了基础。高校世界史专业教师应当在吸收这些理论成果的基础上,培养新的史学观念,推动世界史教学模式的改革。     

弘扬华夏文明探索玉石文化——在“中国玉石之路与齐家文化研讨会”暨“玉帛之路文化考察活动”启动仪式上的致辞

为进一步挖掘和弘扬华夏文明,探索和分享玉石文化与丝绸之路研究成果,不断服务甘肃华夏文明传承创新区和丝绸之路经济带建设,今天,我们在这里举办由甘肃省委宣传部、甘肃省文物局、中国文学人类学研究会、西北师范大学联合主办的“中国玉石之路与齐家文化研讨会”暨“玉帛之路文化考察活动”启动仪式。在此,我代表西北师范大学对活动的举办表示热烈祝贺,对各位领导、专家长期以来对西北师范大学的关心和支持表示诚挚的谢意！     

世界历史上的文明：文化比较与交流：战争、国际关系体系与人类文明的发展

2007年4月13-15日,首都师范大学历史系世界史学科主办了以“世界历史上的文明：文化的比较与交流”为主题的学术研讨会,来自全国各地五十多个高等院校、研究机构、学术期刊和出版社的一百二十多名专家学者出席了本次盛会。学者们围绕着世界文明进程中的战争与和平、不同文明／文化对国际关系的影响、文化与现代化进程的关系、文明交流的机制等方面展开了多层次、多角度的讨论,并对“全球化”、“全球史观”和“全球史”等世界史教学和研究的理论前沿问题进行了深入探讨。本期刊发几位学者提交研讨会的文章,意在进一步推动相关问题的研究向深度和广度发展。[编者按]     

世界史研究的规范化问题——兼谈论著中注释的作用

我们承认中国的世界史研究相对落后这一事实,并不等于我们永远甘于落后。对外开放为世界史研究提供了新的环境和条件,世界史研究早日与国际学术界接轨已成为中国世界史研究的愿望。学术水平是通过研究成果来体现的,规范化可谓与国际学术界接轨的关键点之一。在世界史研究的规范化问题上,我想谈一点自己的想法,以就教于史学界前辈。     

评麦克尼尔《世界史》

威廉·麦克尼尔(William H. McNeill)是美国著名历史学家,"世界史"学科的领军人物之一,曾担任美国历史学会主席.1963年他以一部<西方的崛起>(The Rise of the West)一举成名,并因此获得美国国家图书奖.此后他笔耕不止,迄今已出版20多部作品,包括<疾病与人>、<欧洲的草原疆界>、<追逐权力>等,在西方史学界享有很高的声誉.     

AMERICAN HISTORY IN A GLOBAL AGE1

Historians around the world have sought to move beyond national history. In doing so, they often conflate ethical and methodological arguments against national history. This essay, first, draws a clear line between the ethical and the methodological arguments concerning national history. It then offers a rationale for the continued writing of national history in general, and American history in particular, in today's global age. The essay makes two main points. First, it argues that nationalism, and thus the national histories that sustain national identities, are vital to liberal democratic societies because they ensure the social bonds necessary to enable democratic citizens to sacrifice their immediate interests for the common good. The essay then argues that new methodological and historical work on the history of nations and nationalism has proven that nations are as real as any other historical group. Rejecting national history on critics' terms would require rejecting the history of all groups. Instead, new methods of studying nations and nationalism have reinforced rather than undermined the legitimacy of national history within the discipline.     

Counter-lineages within the history of anthropology: On disciplinary ancestors’ activism

Anthropologists frequently conceive of their disciplinary history in terms of intellectual lineages linked to ‘schools’ of anthropological theory. This article considers the importance of what might be called ‘counter-lineages’ – intellectual lineages which have tended to be eclipsed from our intellectual history due to interference by the secret state. One such significant counter-lineage is found in the lives and works of American anti-fascist anthropologists during the mid-20th century. During World War II, anthropologists’ findings had tended to support racial equality and anti-fascism. This motivated many to contribute to the war effort. During the post-war period, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and loyalty committees actively targeted anthropologists speaking out against racism in America. The history of how these counter-lineages of public anthropologists eventually ended up marginalized within the discipline is easily forgotten. However, their study can help to inform anthropologists as we face our current crises.     

古典历史的基础:从国之大事到普通百姓的生活

由于古代史料的性质和近代早期历史写作目的的影响,从古代到近代早期的西方,古代史基本为政治和军事史以及大人物所统治,社会经济与普通人遭到忽视。21世纪的古代史写作,大多将政治史排挤到相对次要的地位,普通人及其日常生活成为主要内容,其笔下的古代世界,着重古希腊罗马公民的社会生活以及影响公民生活的诸种政治和经济因素。古代史主题变换与研究转型,既与学者们对史料的认识以及对社会科学方法的借鉴有内在联系,也与西方史学注重公民活动的传统相关。世界古代史研究仍需在掌握语言工具的基础上,更多地借鉴现代社会科学理论与方法,实现从理论、方法到内容的转型,深入古代社会的历史。     

The elephant in the sky: On how to grapple with our academic flying in the age of climate change

This article discusses the author’s personal journey into the anthropology of climate change and his concern about the multiple drivers of anthropogenic climate change, among them an increasing number of aeroplane flights around the world, including those made by academics and more specifically, anthropologists. Given that the people who anthropologists often study will be those most severely impacted by the ravages of climate change, it is imperative that anthropologists find strategies to drastically reduce their flying in relation to attending conferences, research meetings and undertaking fieldwork. In this article, the author urges anthropologists to turn their attention to a growing global ‘fly less’ movement.     

‘Material support’: US anti‐terrorism law threatens human rights and academic freedom

A US federal law prohibiting the provision of “material support” or resources to terrorist groups has broad implications for anthropologists and other academics working with groups who may be designated as terrorists and the populations that support them or live under their influence. The broad scope and vague language of the law raises the possibility that individuals engaging in some forms of humanitarian aid, charitable giving, peace‐building or academic activities could be prosecuted for offering material aid to terrorists. Problems with the material support law are critically examined as are the dangers faced by anthropologists whose ordinary research, writing and speaking activities might be seen as violating the law. Historical context and the chilling effect on anthropological research and analysis are considered.     

从《当代江西简史》的编纂探析地方史的编写规律

研究与编纂当代地方吏是研究与编纂中华人民共和国国史的重要组成部分。作者从研究与编纂《当代江西简史》入手,对编写当代地方吏过程中的一些规律做了有益的探索。文中认为,编写好当代地方史是国史研究中的一个新课题,必须领导重视,具有一支政治可靠、业务强、熟悉省情的编写队伍;要从系统研究本地区经济和社会发展的历史轨迹入手;必须坚持正确的指导思想;必须突出地方特色;忠于历史,科学修史,对历史进程中发生的一些问题,力求做出科学的分析和论述,为促进建设有中国特色的社会主义事业服务,为促进江西在中部地区崛起服务。     

Anecdote And History

Although the term “anecdote” entered the modern European languages fairly recently and remains to this day ill‐defined, the short, freestanding accounts of particular events, true or invented, that are usually referred to as anecdotes have been around from time immemorial. They have also always stood in a close relation to the longer, more elaborate narratives of history, sometimes in a supportive role, as examples and illustrations, sometimes in a challenging role, as the repressed of history —“la petite histoire.” Historians' relation to them, in turn, varied from appreciative to dismissive in accordance with their own objectives in writing history. It appears that highly structured anecdotes of the kind that are remembered and find their way into anecdote collections depend on and tend to confirm established views of history, the world, and human nature. In contrast, loosely structured anecdotes akin to the modern fait divers have usually worked to undermine established views and stimulate new ones, either by presenting material known to few and excluded from officially authorized histories, or by reporting “odd” occurrences for which the established views of history, the world, and human nature do not easily account.     

Environmentalism,Culture, Ethnography

Such is the ubiquity of environmentalism as a significant community experience throughout the world that most anthropologists will nowadays find themselves attending to the concerns their respondents have for the environments which surround and sustain them. In this article, we take stock of some of the issues addressed, and the achievements realized, by environmental anthropology to date. First, we emphasize that there is already a literature which stands as testament to the variety of environmental issues ‐ water, whales and the weather, for instance ‐ on which anthropologists have original insights to offer. Second, we argue that an important anthropological focus is on how ordinary people think and talk about their environments, especially when faced with external forces that have to be responded to in innovative and creative ways in order to be effective. It is not the view from above or below, but the view from within environments that matters most in local settings, which anthropologists have been concerned to unravel. Third, we emphasize that the Asia Pacific region constitutes an exceptionally rich field for anthropological research. Studies already carried out in places as diverse as Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chile and the Torres Strait make categorically clear that local and regional environmental concerns and conflicts are influenced by history, religion, Indigeneity, ethnicity, gender and other considerations that deserve critical anthropological enquiry. It is a crucial message that is endorsed and amplified by our fellow contributors in this special issue.     

Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North American Indian Oral Traditions

As an historian of the American West, I find myself in the unusualposition of writing a review of a book, written by an archaeologist,for an audience of oral historians. But Ronald J. Mason's elegantlyprovocative Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North AmericanIndian Oral Traditions cries out for interdisciplinary linkagesand understandings. Mason spent his professional years as anarchaeologist among anthropologists and is the author of thehighly acclaimed Great Lakes Archaeology (1981). In InconstantCompanions, Mason "addresses a fundamental historiographicalproblem in archaeology, history, and anthropology":     

Passing strange: the convergence of evolutionary science with scientific history

In the second half of the twentieth century, a surprising change in the notion of scientific truth gained ground when an evolutionary cosmology made the Newtonian world machine into no more than a passing phase of the cosmos, subject to exceptions in the neighborhood of black holes and other unusual objects. Physical and chemical laws ceased to be eternal and universal and became local and changeable, that is, fundamentally historical instead, and faced an uncertain, changeable future just as they had in the initial phases of the cosmos. The earth sciences along with biology had become historical in the nineteenth century; and the Big Bang cosmology in effect brought physics and chemistry into line, allowing venturesome intellects to concoct a new all‐embracing worldview that recognizes the catalytic role of the observer in defining what is observed, and how different levels of local complexity provoke new and surprising phenomena—including terrestrial life forms, and most notably for us, humanly‐constructed symbolic meanings—of which science is only oneexample. The article then argues that it is time for historians to take note of the imperial role thus thrust upon their discipline by making a sustained effort to enlarge their views and explore the career of humankind on earth as a whole, thus making human history an integral part of the emerging scientific and evolutionary worldview. Tentative suggestions of how this might be addressed, focusing on changes in patterns of communication that expanded the scale of human cooperation, and thus conduced to survival, follow. Dance, then speech, were early breakthroughs expanding the practicable size of wandering human bands; then caravans and shipping allowed civilizations to arise; writing expanded the scale of coordination; warfare and trade harshly imposed best practice across wide areas of Eurasia and Africa and kept the skills of that part of the world ahead of what the peoples of other continents and islands had at their command. Then with the crossing of the oceans after 1492 our One World began to emerge and swiftly assumed its contemporary shape with further improvements in the range and capacity of communication—for example, printing, mechanically‐powered transport, instantaneous data transmission—with consequences for human society and earth's ecosystem yet to be experienced. Much remains to be investigated and, in particular, interactions between the history of human symbolic meanings and the history of other equilibria—ecological, chemical, physical—within which we exist needs further study. But with suitable effort, history can perhaps become scientific and the emerging scientific evolutionary worldview begin to achieve logical completeness by bringing humankind within its scope.