The participation myth

Policy rhetoric around strategies to and the value of increasing participation in the arts has been well documented internationally over more than a decade. But in the UK, which is the focus for this article, targets to increase participation have been consistently missed and there remains a direct correlation between those taking part in cultural activity and their socio-economic status. The starting point for this article is to examine the barriers to increasing participation in the arts and question the way that such policy has been implemented within the English context, which may have relevance for policy-making in other countries. What is demonstrated is that policy implementation is influenced by vested interest of those in receipt of funding and that a narrow range of voices, from a powerful cultural elite, are involved in the decision-making in the arts. The article makes a case for widening the range of voices heard in decision-making in order to support both artistic practice and public engagement.     

The history of marriage and the myth of Friedelehe

The idea that Friedelehe and Muntehe constituted two distinct forms of Germanic marriage was based upon an attempt to reconstruct common Germanic culture with scraps of evidence from widely different times and places. A thorough re-examination of the sources for the institutions that were posited, based on this now outmoded methodology, reveals no evidence that transfer of Munt, or guardianship, distinguished between two different types of marriage, except perhaps in Lombard Italy, under the influence of Roman law. The idea that marriage with a dos is a different institution from marriage without one is not attested until the Carolingian period.     

中国古代神话的特色及其成因

中国古代神话是中国本土的产物,它深深地植根于中国悠久的文化土壤之中,渗透着东方智慧的光芒。诚如德国哲学家黑格尔所言,中国是个早熟的儿童,中国的古代神话就是中国这个早熟的儿童,通过神话的方式,对中国历代著名人物的思考与评价。中国古代的神话闪烁着理性的光芒,它有明确的指导思想,那就是尚德、尚功与尚智,着眼于著名人物对时代与民众的贡献,中国的古代神话与中国祭祀文化的精神实质是一致的。因而中国的古代神话,在世界各民族神话之林中,是独具特色的神话之一。     

The state of globalisation and the globalisation of the state

This article examines how to evaluate claims about the extent and impact of globalisation. A focus on the significance of earlier phases of globalisation is essential, but underestimating the importance and scope of recent developments is the wrong lesson to learn from a more historically informed analysis. While it is necessary to maintain a healthy scepticism towards endings, inevitability and irreversibility, it is important to remain open to the possibility that the world political economy has indeed undergone substantial transformation. This article argues that quantitative measures of globalisation need to be supplemented with an analysis of the pivotal role of the state in spurring and sponsoring the process of global economic interaction. State constructions of the imperatives of globalisation have aimed to bolster the acceptance of policy changes that support globalisation and transform domestic political economies. There is continuing potential for state activity to have effects--both positive and negative--on the progress of economic globalisation.     

The myth of the Byzantine origins of the Osmanlis: an essay in interpretation

Abstract

The story that gave the Osmanlis a distant Comnenian origin emerges in sixteenth-century Italian and Greek histories, inspired by the twelfth-century accounts of the renegade prince John Komnenos, as related by Niketas Choniates Its invention and propagation might have served the legitimacy of Ottoman rule, in which case, it was addressed to gulams and converts rather than to the Christian subjects of the sultans. It can also be interpreted as fitting the ideals and the imaginations of highly positioned converts in the Ottoman service, who previously belonged to the Byzantine and Balkan aristocracies.     

The darkness and claustrophobia of the city: Victor Hugo and the myth of Paris

Dark, mysterious, and dangerous: The representation of Paris in 19thcentury French literature contrasts sharply with the ideals and expectations of a society that dreamt of progress and modernity. Through his symbolism, Victor Hugo recaptures the dark side of Balzac's Paris, and turns the capital into a gigantic spider's web that symbolises the power of Fate upon individuals, and underlines the carceral oppression of the city. In this article, a reading is proposed of some of Hugo's major prose (Notre-Dame de Paris , Les Misérables) illustrating his claustrophobia: Paris, the capital of 'materiality', is represented metaphorically in Hugo's writings as a huge prison, and ultimately as a dreadful monster, swallowing and literally digesting its prey. This image of Paris connects Hugo's work to that of several other major 19th-century French writers, notably Balzac, Zola and-less obviously-Baudelaire.