The “Propaganda Age”

This article examines efforts to manage information in wartime Russia, with particular emphasis on revolutionary 1917. The author’s approach is informed by that of Western scholars, particularly Peter Holquist, using the term “surveillance” to discuss the modern state’s effort to mobilize its citizenry through information: gathering information about the population and enlightening the population through control of information. In 1917, the absence of civilian censorship aided the new authorities in learning much from the press, but the proliferation of press organs and worsening attitudes towards the war complicated their efforts to use the press to positively shape public opinion.     

The Origin of “Chinese Philosophy”

Using the analysis of a single word to launch a conceptual review of (a problem in) cultural history, the Chinese term zhexue 哲學 (wisdom-learning, tetsugaku) is not simply a translation of the word “philosophy”; its inventor, Nishi Amane (1829–97), regarded it as the (Western) counterpart of Oriental learning (Tōyōgaku). The first explicit linkage of “philosophy” with “the East” was at The University of Tokyo, where it played an important role in the work of Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1913) and Inoue Tetsujirō (1855–1944). Inoue’s History of Oriental Philosophy, written under Katō’s inspiration, used Western philosophy to systematize ancient Chinese thought, and transformed “philosophy” (tetsugaku) from a learning of others, or Western learning, into an important component of the spiritual world of the East, and into a kind of universal knowledge. This was completely different from earlier lectures on “China philosophy” (shina tetsugaku) by Nakamura Masanao (1832–91) and Shimada Jūrei (1838–98) which still followed the Chinese underlying structure, and in the background, it had the intent of grasping the power to control East Asian discourse. In China, when young scholars like Wang Guowei (1877–1927) embraced philosophy, they already took its universality as a self-evident premise. This kind of alignment later evolved into a situation where it seemed entirely natural to use Western systems to interpret Chinese thought, and it also induced serious scholars to reflect. However, “Oriental philosophy” and “Chinese philosophy” provide East Asia and especially China with an opportunity to reevaluate its traditional culture. In this connection, “Chinese philosophy” includes: first, using philosophical concepts to re-provision ancient thought (the so-called history of Chinese philosophy); second, the occurrence of “philosophy” and “Chinese philosophy” and their evolution after their arrival in China; third, drawing on philosophy to enrich and develop China’s thinking. When seeking out “philosophy” in the veins and arteries of China’s history, the first and second aspects must be strictly distinguished. As to what the future may hold, the effect of the third aspect is most important.     

The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia”

The multi-generation book project "The Peoples of Siberia" enabled a group of Leningrad-based scholars to reshape their museum into a Soviet ethnographic community. This article analyses the face-to-face performances, the legalistic stenographic documentation, the collective crafting of a single authoritative style, and a unique temporal frame as an important background to understand a hallmark volume in Siberian studies. The authors argue that the published volume indexes nearly thirty years of scholarly debates as much as it indexes the peoples it represents. The article concludes with a critical discussion of how this volume was translated and received by a Euro-American readership influencing the perception of Siberian peoples internationally. It also links the volume to contemporary post-Soviet publication projects which seem to retrace the same path. The article is based on extensive archival work and references collections recently discovered and which are presented for publication here for the first time.     

The Murders in Maupassant's “En Voyage”

The term futurism was used in aesthetic circles during the first decade of the twentieth century throughout Europe. The broad use of the term has sometimes led to critical attempts to link the various "futurisms" together into a coherent whole. In my article, I compare and contrast Alomar's Catalan futurism with the Italian futurism associated with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944). Although the two futurisms share the name and, to some extent, similar philosophical backgrounds, their foundational documents or manifestos are more different than they are similar, and Alomar's futurism cannot and should not be critically subordinated to Marinetti's Italian one. My article addresses what is futurist in Alomar's thought as well as its unique regionalist underpinnings that find no analogue in other European futurisms.     

The Sacred Economy of Ancient “Israel”

Abstract

Taking up the challenge to develop a new study of the economic patterns in the ancient Near East, including what passes for ancient “Israel’ (the Persian province of Yehud), this article proposes a model of the “sacred economy.” A study in economic history, it seeks to map out the broad contours of this sacred economy in light of the neglected but crucial economically–informed scholarship from the Soviet Union on the ancient Near East. The article identifies the key nodes of the sacred economy as the village–commune, the temple–city complex, the formation of the despotic state, the tensions between labour and class, and mediations between empire and village commune. It traces the development of the State to the tensions between the village commune and the city–temple complex. It also argues that the key features of this sacred economy may be described as regimes of allocation and regimes of extraction. The unique combination of these regimes and the tensions between them make up the sacred economy. The underlying logic of the regimes of allocation was to provide a rationale for the allocation of productive units such as land and fertility by means of kinship, the war machine, patron–client relations and the judiciary. All of this was posed in the language of the sacred, for the deity is the ultimate arbiter of allocation. By contrast, the regimes of extraction undermine the allocatory economic logic by means of a pattern of exploitation in terms of tribute and trade. This article insists upon the necessary centrality of economic analysis in any historiography of the Ancient Near East.