4. “KEEP THAT WOMAN OUT!” NOTIONS OF SPACE IN TWENTIETH‐CENTURY FLEMISH WITCHCRAFT DISCOURSE

This article considers the importance of a spatial dimension for witchcraft research, which has so far been largely neglected. In twentieth‐century Europe people in certain regions still considered their world in terms of witchcraft; they attributed misfortune to bewitchments and usually blamed their neighbors. Here a part of Flemish‐speaking Belgium is investigated with the help of legend texts collected in the 1960s. The witchcraft discourse that informed these texts did not just contain formulations of space; sometimes it also determined how people negotiated space. In this part of Flanders, witchcraft was embedded in Roman Catholicism; monasteries were the favored destinations of all those who considered themselves or their family members bewitched. In order to find cures for bewitchments people undertook hazardous journeys of considerable distance and found their efforts hindered by the witch they sought to counteract. The measures against evil influences that they were given were meant to consolidate the boundaries between their own (private) space and the (outside) space where witches roamed. Bewitchments were generally blamed on women. In the contemporary patriarchal social order, both public and domestic spaces were nearly always under men's control. This is why bewitchment was caused less by transgressions of male‐defined boundaries than by infringements of bodily spaces such as by eying or touching somebody else's children. This suggests a different approach to female space based on notions of proximity.     

中国古村镇保护利用中的悖论现象及其原因

中国的古村镇保护利用工作经过了30多年的发展取得了积极的进步,但是也出现了因保护而破坏的严重问题。本文尝试从对古村镇定义的修订切入,将古村镇作为一种文化综合体和文化生态系统进行分析,强调古村镇是由器物、行为、制度、精神四个层面构成的文化综合体,是具有自组织性的文化生态系统,对系统中任意环节的破坏都会造成保护利用的悖论现象。在此基础上,本文总结出保护环境与破坏环境、重现建筑特色与消解建筑特色等四重"中国式悖论",并进一步从社会文化环境、理念认知、管理机制以及开发模式等层面分析了中国式悖论产生的原因。     

TEXTS AND TRADITIONS IN CHINESE AND COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

This article considers Quentin Skinner's critique and methodology in his seminal essay “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” vis-à-vis the current methodological debates in Chinese and comparative philosophy. It surveys the different ways in which philosophers who work with ancient Chinese texts in those related fields deal with the tension between textual contexts and autonomy and how some of the errors criticized by Skinner under the mythology of coherence, mythology of doctrines, mythology of parochialism, and mythology of prolepsis might apply to those fields. It argues that Skinner's insistence that understanding a text requires recovering its author's intended meaning by studying its linguistic context has limited application to Chinese and comparative philosophy because those fields’ most important texts are not best understood as means of communication by specific historical authors with intended messages to convey to readers. These texts are instead the means by which Chinese traditions perpetuate their respective beliefs and practices. Instead of being circumscribed by authorial intent, the meanings of traditional texts are dynamic and co-created in the process of producing, reproducing, and consuming texts as well as in the evolution of practices that also constitute each tradition. The meanings received by the audience are never exactly what authors or transmitters intended but have been transformed by each audience's own concerns and interests, even if the audience attempts to grasp what the former intended. Using the Five Classics and the Analects as examples, this article illustrates how such texts’ purposes to teach and perpetuate the practices that constitute a way of life determine their meanings. Understanding is not merely cognitive but practical as well. The meanings of such texts are not static but dynamic as traditions evolve. The debates about methods of reading and interpreting ancient Chinese texts are also debates about the nature of Chinese traditions and struggles over their futures.     

MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN MALAYSIA

Malaysia is one of the countries most influenced by international migration, not only in Asia, but globally. Most attention is focused on its role as a major immigration country, but it also experiences significant emigration, having an estimated diaspora of 1.5 million people. This paper demonstrates the scale and composition of the contemporary Malaysian diaspora, and discusses its potential impacts on economic development. In undertaking this task, it is necessary to rely mostly on data from destinations of emigrants from Malaysia because of an inherent bias in migration data collection towards immigrants and destinations. In order to gain deeper insights into the composition of the diaspora and the linkages which it maintains with Malaysia, there is a focus on a single destination country—Australia, which has the second largest community of Malaysian expatriates after Singapore. The potential role that the diaspora could play in Malaysian development is discussed.     

THEORY AND GOD IN GOTHAM

“Theory” is all the rage among religious studies scholars generally. But with the tiniest number of exceptions, this is not true in American religious history. American history in general has not proven receptive to theoretically oriented scholarship, and American religious history may epitomize this aversion; most histories of religion in America follow the classic forms of narrative history. yet the study of religion in modern urban America illustrates the desirability and perhaps even the inevitability of rethinking both religion and modernity. Without rethinking modernity, especially the assumption of its secularity, our histories cannot explain or even adequately describe the remarkable resilience of religion in so seemingly secular a place as Manhattan. And without rethinking religion we may not be able to comprehend its ability to thrive and to embrace uncertainty and spiritual pluralism alike.     

VARIATIONAL PRINCIPLES AND CONSERVATION CONDITIONS IN VOLTERRA'S ECOLOGY AND IN URBAN RELATIVE DYNAMICS*

ABSTRACT. Relative spatial population dynamics are analyzed in this paper under Volterra-Lotka specifications. At first, the Volterra conservation conditions under absolute growth and their variational principles are reviewed, extended, and interpreted. Then, the relative dynamics are presented which demonstrate the presence of competitive exclusion. The main aim is to derive the variational principles underlying relative population dynamics. It is found that these principles produce an integrand, the stationary value of its integral being the cumulative entropy of the population distribution over a time horizon. Substantive interpretation of these results in accordance with optimization principles in economic theory is presented.     

2010夏 藏地自驾新体验

<正>四姑娘山由四座连绵不断的山峰组成,长年冰雪覆盖,如同头披白纱,姿容俊俏的四位少女,四姑娘中以幺妹身材苗条、体态婀娜,现在人们常说的"四姑娘"指的就是这座最高最美的雪峰。藏地旅游是近年来人们最为关注的经典旅游方向之一,那里壮美的高原风光和厚重的民族文化,让每一个旅行者都魂牵梦萦。     

SMOKING AND HEALTH IN INDONESIA

Indonesia is one of the top five tobacco-consuming countries in the world (Ng et al. 2006). Most Indonesians consider cigarette-smoking socially acceptable (Aditama 2002). This study seeks to determine the extent to which the three theoretical debates identified by Pampel and Rogers (2004) are applicable in Indonesia. The empirical work of this study will be based on the 2000 Indonesian Family and Life Survey (2000 IFLS). The main conclusion from the regression analyses is that the effect of smoking on health is similar across all the socio-economic characteristics at the individual, household and community levels. Overall, multivariate analyses suggest that an additive relationship between socio-economic status and health, and the health impact of smoking in Indonesia, reflect neither the forces of the Blaxter nor social vulnerability hypotheses. The analyses of 2000 IFLS also suggest that marriage has beneficial effects on health and smoking-related morbidity.     

观鸟,拍鸟,深呼吸:湿地的N种诱惑

到了今天,人们忙得厌倦了,又反过来追求慢生活。成行的鸟飞翔在芦苇荡上空,正弥补了现代人被现实压抑掉的浪漫情愫;湿地里负氧离子多,那是身处都市,怎么深呼吸都得不来的,去湿地玩叫"生态游",健康风尚的旅游方式正受推崇;湿地更是鸟儿赖以生存的家,湿地中总能寻到鸟的身影,如果给湿地找一个主人,那非鸟儿莫属了。