宋代粮商的粮食投机

宋代商人在发挥调剂余缺功能的同时,还存在严重的投机行为。宋代粮商的投机行为,多见于三个领域：一是向官府贩粜军需粮草过程中,利用各种非法手段,诈取官府钱物;二是在、城市粮食贸易中投机取巧,从城市居民和城郊农民身上攫取暴利;三是乡村中的地主家庭,趁粮食短缺之机,残酷地压榨农民。这些投机活动,既暴露了宋代粮商惟利是图、为富不仁的丑恶嘴脸,也从一个侧面反映出古代商人的投机性。     

The Power of Infrastructures: a Counternarrative and a Speculation

“Infrastructural power” refers to how states “penetrate” their societies and also how local organizations resist such attempts. This essay explores the latter sense of infrastructural power. First, it notes aspects of local power in ancient Mesopotamia, tracing the existence of councils and assemblies over about 3000 years and establishing the concept of a “heterarchy of power” in Mesopotamia, which is a counternarrative to assertions of totalitarian power by kings and central governments. There follows a cross-cultural review of selected other ancient cities and states in order to assess comparable and contrasting local organizations and degrees of infrastructural power. Finally, resistance to state power is explored, and a speculation about the qualities of stability and fragility of political power in early cities and states is advanced.     

Networks of Speculation: Making Land Markets on Myanmar Facebook

Digital platforms have changed how property is sold and valued in the Global North, yet little is known about digital tools in emerging land markets. Drawing on in situ and digital ethnography, we argue that Facebook plays a key role in making a new kind of market in Myanmar, one in which land is transformed into a speculative asset, exchanged across ever-expanding networks. While commodification is familiar within longer histories of capitalism, this case highlights the significance of digital platforms to the contemporary remaking of property relations. Unlike classic cases of market-making enabled by active state regulation, Myanmar’s digital land markets were forged in the context of state absence by brokers who harnessed the technological affordances of social media to increase the scale, scope and speed of transactions. This creative re-appropriation of the platform forged new, unregulated digital markets that ultimately accumulated corporate profits and intensified participant risk.     

多尔衮所封王爵汉号颖亲王之推测

多尔衮所封王爵汉号颖亲王之推测@胡坚$南京大学历史系~~     

Material Politics Facing Post-Truth: Speculation,Infrastructure, and Ecology in Turkey

Despite their imposing material presence, the values and harms stemming from the construction of infrastructural megaprojects remain speculative affairs in Istanbul, Turkey. This article distinguishes two modes of speculation pertaining to megaprojects that present different ethical and political possibilities, namely de-materialising and re-materialising speculation. Contributing to debates about material politics informed by Noortje Marres (Material Participation; Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and William Connolly (The Fragility of Things; Duke University Press, 2013), our framework of de- and re-materialising speculation avoids isolating material and planetary agency to instead consider how their uncertainties and potentials play a role at the intersection with politico-economic life. Accordingly, we analyse the coalescence of ecological and democratic crises. In Turkey, populism’s anthropocentric construction of “the will of the people” exacerbates ecological collapse. But also, ecological collapse inspires a search for a politics and ethics that acknowledge human–nonhuman ecological entanglements. The contestation between de-and re-materialising speculation underscores possibilities and limitations of ecological politics in contexts of populism and post-truth.     

张若虚《春江花月夜》诗中景地推测

唐代诗人张若虚的《春江花月夜》被誉为“孤篇盖全唐”,诗中所描写的景地历来众说纷纭,根据《春江花月夜》诗中所描写的江潮连海、芳甸、汀等实景,与诗中景致相符的景地只有瓜洲一带。唐初期到唐中期,从瓜洲北面到镇江为近海广阔的江面,符合江潮连海的景象;初唐时瓜洲为江中大沙岛,符合诗中的“芳甸”描写;到中唐时瓜洲因泥沙淤涨,与扬子津相连,瓜洲与扬子津之间存在诸多小沙汀。从张若虚其人仕历以及与“吴中四士”的交游行踪分析,无论其从任职的山东兖州顺泗水、运河南下吴越,还是从扬州乘舟南下吴越访友,都必经扬子津渡口到江南,瓜洲为其必经之地。因此,瓜洲顺理成章地成为《春江花月夜》创作景地。扬州市瓜洲镇所建张若虚纪念馆暨春江花月夜艺术馆,再现千年前春江花月夜胜景,对理解与体悟《春江花月夜》诗中唯美意境,感受这一千古名诗的魅力等,均起了积极的作用。     

A Housing Crisis,a Failed Law,and a Property Conflict: The US Urban Speculation Tax

In 1978 the local government in the District of Columbia approved a measure to tax up to 70% of the profits made on residential speculation. The tax was the first of its kind in the USA. But, it was quickly overturned and deemed by supporters and opponents a failure. Based on 10 months of archival research and interviews in Washington, DC, this paper examines how property rights became a narrative barrier that tax supporters could not overcome. By narrative barrier, I mean the set of rules that shaped how speculation was discussed. Tax supporters did not publicly convey a counter‐hegemonic vision of how tenure security and economic wealth could be achieved for black residents through means other than private ownership and real estate investment. This paper contributes to understandings of housing markets, housing crises, and intersections between housing justice and property rights.