Intertextual geopolitics and La Carte et le territoire: a cautionary tale for UNESCO and the repas gastronomique des Français?

ABSTRACT

La Carte et le territoire features a France in decline, saved, entre autres, by attracting foreign tourists with ‘heritagised’ French food. Eight days after the novel won the 2010 Prix Goncourt, the repas gastronomique des Français was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list (ICH). Considering Houellebecq’s use of tropes of culinary heritage alongside the French ICH bid reveals parallels in their manipulation of culinary heritage to create globally marketable products. Yet the motivations and ramifications of the ‘gastrodiplomacy’ in the novel and in the French state’s arguably neo-imperialist initiative differ tellingly. Houellebecq’s novel brings into cautionary focus how responding to perceived geopolitical imperatives by creating narratives of cultural heritage can instead eradicate the conditions of renewal upon which it depends and limit cultural diversity. The instrumentalisation of food heritage by a global corporation, national government and UNESCO—an ostensibly benign supranational institution—risks creating new conditions of global competition. However, comparing the novel and the narratives surrounding the repas gastronomique des Français nonetheless suggests that representations of food—like language—can exceed authorial intention, and the gastronomic miscegenation that is strategically missing from Houellebecq’s novel and elided in the ICH bid may yet continue to feed French food heritage.     

孔子：战后美国华人餐饮的文化标记——基于美国主要报纸的考察

本文引用美国报纸上对华人餐馆的宣传报道,介绍了美国中餐馆注重建立与中国文化圣人孔子的联系、将孔子融人餐馆品牌之中的特色宣传策略,认为中餐能一直吸引着成千上万的消费者,不仅因为华人餐饮以中国为源的表面现象,而是有着更深层次的文化共识。孔子就是这一共识的核心。华人餐饮以孔子为品牌魅力,抓住美国民众熟悉孔子的现象,积极渗入美国非华裔社会的饮食文化。研究餐饮文化中的孔子是我们考察华人群体心理变化、现实处境和美国族裔关系变迁的独特视角,值得学术界利用跨学科方法进一步探讨。     

Resource extraction and national anxieties: China’s economic presence in Mongolia

Abstract

Over the last two decades and particularly in the last 10 years, Chinese investment in Mongolia has skyrocketed, with the vast majority of the country’s exports now flowing to China. As foreign investment has grown in Mongolia, particularly in the mining sector, apprehension circulates about the extension and meaning of increased Chinese power. We argue that contemporary anxieties about China’s economic influence in Mongolia go beyond recent and contemporary political economic issues and are tied to memories of the Qing Dynasty. Controversies surrounding Mongolia’s flagship mine, the Oyu Tolgoi copper–gold mine in South Gobi province, demonstrate how even non-Chinese foreign mining operations are intertwined with Mongolia’s past and future relationships with China. Rather than acting simply as resource nationalists, the people and government of Mongolia often see contemporary Chinese economic power through a historical lens, with fears of declining sovereignty and becoming Chinese through control over land and resources. This paper draws on fieldwork conducted by the authors in Mongolia from 2009 to 2015 and contributes to discussions about fears of Chinese influence, extractive industry development, and resource nationalism in Mongolia.     

Stewart,Kant, and the Reworking of Common Sense

Summary

Dugald Stewart was the first metaphysician of any significance in Britain who attempted to take account of Kantian philosophy, although his analysis appears generally dismissive. Traditionally this has been imputed to Stewart's poor understanding of Kant and to his efforts to defend the orthodoxy of common sense. This paper argues that, notwithstanding Stewart's reading, Kant's philosophy helped him in a reconsideration and reassessment of common sense philosophy. In his mature works—the Philosophical Essays (1810), the second volume of the Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1814), and the second part of his historical ‘Dissertation? (1815–1821)—Stewart's analysis of Kantian philosophy is far from being uniform. In the first two works, he takes a cautious approach to transcendentalism, showing some interest in the challenge it might represent for common sense; in the last, he turns to rash criticism. This change may appear confusing and inconsistent unless considered in the light of a precise ‘nationalistic’ strategy. In fact, once Stewart had taken from Kantian philosophy what he deemed useful for his own aims, he eventually dismissed it in order to show that his reworked version of common sense was the most original and most consistent outcome of the whole Anglo-Scottish philosophical tradition.     

Alberta Wilson Server

By highlighting central anthropological theories of food and identity—(1) food events, (2) group eating, (3) the act of eating itself, and (4) the idea of consumption—and linking them to medieval portrayals of Iberian diet, this article aims to elucidate societal coding based on a culinary system and reveal unconsidered or unnoted aspects of medieval Castilian culture. Medieval texts are analyzed, including Cantigas de Santa María, Siete Partidas, El libro de Alexandre, and El cantar del Mio Cid.     

Movements upon movements: Refugee and activist struggles to open the Balkan route to Europe

ABSTRACT

In 2015–2016, 1.2 million refugees sought safety in Europe via the Balkan Route. How, in an era of securitized borders, did this unprecedented movement of people from the global south reach the global north? Ethnographic research from two post-Yugoslav nodes along the Route—Preshevë, Serbia and Ljubljana, Slovenia—offers answers that diverge from state-centric accounts, revealing that the relationships between movements, in the sense of both migration and activism, were integral to the dynamics of the Route.     

Gender,Class, and Patriotism: Women's paramilitary units in first world war britain

Abstract

Scholarly histories of twentieth-century China, commonly identified as an East Asian power, tend to cover only the eastern half of the country. As John King Fairbank suggests, Chinese foreign affairs are considered principally as a matter of East Asian international relations.¹ Yet China is also a Central Asian power: present-day China encompasses large parts of Central Asia — Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet — of which the population is chiefly composed of non-Han ethnic minorities. When the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s removed a major security threat to China, the creation of the Central Asian republics — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan — gave it the opportunity to reassert its historical claims to influence throughout Central Asia.² The launch of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization in 1996, and the annual Shanghai summits that followed, are clear evidence of China's attempts to dominate Central Asian affairs in the post-Soviet era.³     

A Reevaluation of the Kesil’s Image in the Book of Qohelet

Abstract

During the early stages of its evolution, the book of Kings was a history narrative uninfluenced by Deuteronomy. Later, as the scroll ceased to express an interpretation of the past—that is to say, ceased to be a history narrative—it began to reflect a literary dialogue with Deuteronomy. At no point in time was Kings both Deuteronomistic and a history, and it was not, therefore, a component of Martin Noth’s hypothetical Deuteronomistic History. Rather, the pre-canonical scroll is best defined as an anthology, or “reader,” of fanciful stories about fallible nebi’im (prophets and kings) who find themselves in relationship with a fallible patron god. Ironically, because Kings was preserved as sacred literature, its god has been reconceptualized, against the plain sense of the text, as a reliable, just, and compassionate patron god.     

Information Retrieval in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of applying modern information retrieval techniques to the cultural heritage domain. Although the field of information retrieval is closely associated with computer science, it originally emerged from library science — also one of the main disciplines concerned with access to cultural heritage material. Hence we are, in a sense, exploring what happens if we bring these strands of research back together again. The article consists of three parts. In the first part, we explain the field of information retrieval and its multidisciplinary nature. In the second part, we discuss how and why the problem of providing access to cultural heritage can be cast naturally as an information retrieval problem. In the third and main part, we present a detailed case study of applying the modern information retrieval approach in practice within a museum.     

Cities of Heraclius

Abstract

The Hellenistic and Roman passion for founding, or renaming, Eastern cities in honour of their rulers abated only with the decline of urban life itself under the Byzantines, although it was never entirely forgotten. The last notable example seems to be the tragi-comic career of Tralles (Aydin) as Andronikopolis or Palaiologopolis in 1278–82. But the last emperor to have notably bestowed his (or his family's) name on cities with the old gusto seems to have been Heraclius. It was perhaps part of a recognizable pattern of traits—the complex naming of his sons, the family groups on his coins, the concern for his own title, the quest for the True Cross, and the style of his victory despatch from Nineveh—in which one may glimpse in Heraclius a relentless and self-conscious sense of dynasty and historicity.     

Not Quite an Insider—A Scottish Perspective on a Future Coronation

Abstract

Post devolution, Scotland is ‘a bit different’, but how does that relate to a coronation? A Scottish sense of exclusion from the English establishment's assumptions of UK dominance might be a way into developing forms that are more widely inclusive. In this article, two distinctively Scottish models—of sovereignty and of being a national church—are offered as bases for exploring the shape of a coronation that tries to express who we all are. The theological understanding of sovereignty which was a key contribution from the churches to the debate on devolution sees the sovereignty of God entrusted to the community of the realm, and entrusted by that community to whatever institutions they deem appropriate; this might be a starting point for planning a coronation. The self-understanding of the Church of Scotland as a national church cherishing its independence from state control and with less ‘stake’ in the monarchy might prompt a different church-state relationship to be expressed in a coronation.     

The Levite's Concubine: New Light on a Dark Story

Previous commentators accept that an adulterous wife dared return to her father's house and a benign husband sought to retrieve her, or they stipulate a unique meaning for the phrase . By understanding in a sense attested elsewhere in the Bible, this essay both resolves the crux of implausibility and obviates the need for singular translation. A close literary reading also presents a new interpretation of the entire chapter, demonstrating that the theme of Judges 19 is neither hospitality nor the abasement of women but Israel's Sodom-like abnegation of commitment and compassion down to that last stronghold of security—the family unit. Contrary to other feminist readings, this feminist interpretation reveals the biblical author's empathy toward the concubine, his contempt for the guilty, and his imposition of punishment on the wrongdoers.     

Chinese in Rabaul —1921 to 1942: Normal practices,or containing the yellow Peril? ∗

Abstract

Chinese men were brought to New Guinea initially by the German New Guinea Company as labourers on plantations. The climate, harsh working conditions and disease reduced their numbers drastically. The sporadic flow of labourers soon stopped, but Chinese were brought to New Guinea by the Company and — later — by the German Administration as artisans and domestic servants. Most returned to China but some remained to become small traders. Hard work and determination to succeed saw many become a threat to European, enterprises. The German and subsequently Australian Administrations were urged to restrict their entry and control their enterprises. At the same time European attitudes prevalent in Southeast Asian colonies were transplanted to New Guinea. Chinese were seen as desirable, if not essential, but were kept at a social level between local villagers and the colonisers. Their status was clearly shown when European, but not Chinese, women and children were evacuated at the threat of Japanese invasion. Many suffered unspeakable treatment by the Japanese and their abandonment by Australia rankled throughout the post‐war years.     

Between Utopia and Tradition: William Morris’s A Dream of John Ball

ABSTRACT

William Morris, author of the famous nineteenth-century utopian novel News from Nowhere, thought it both possible and desirable to develop a utopian vision that could be affirmed by many individuals. However, Morris also recognised that achieving such utopian unity was not easy. There is, at least potentially, something personal about utopian visions; they are shaped by idiosyncratic desires that cannot be shared. Through a reading of Morris’s A Dream of John Ball, I argue that Morris offers a temporal solution to the problem of utopian unity. The central characters in the text, medieval priest John Ball and a nineteenth-century socialist agitator, come to recognise their shared adherence to the same image of a new society. This is achieved through the mediation of tradition: Ball and the agitator overcome their differences by committing themselves to disappointed hopes elaborated in past struggles that have been handed down to the present. Morris’s articulation of utopia and tradition—the sense that visions of the future can be made shareable through reference to the past—offers the possibility of a transtemporal solidarity of utopians and the bringing together of the dreams of a plurality of individuals.     

Of kimchi and coffee: globalisation,transnationalism and familiarity in culinary consumption

This paper discusses the culinary consumption choices of South Korean international students in Auckland, New Zealand as a route to re-considering the transnational production of familiarity. In particular, this study questions the extent to which culinary consumption by transnational migrants is always an intentional declaration of ‘group loyalties’ or about the re-production of local or national identities. Drawing on research with students this paper illustrates that while some aspects of the familiarity enacted in culinary consumption appear to be ‘local’, in the sense that they are encoded as ‘Korean’, other aspects appear to represent forms of ‘global’ familiarity. Hence, it is argued that culinary consumption in transnational worlds can also more subtly represent an effort to recreate familiarity through reference to characteristics of everyday life before migration that may include what appear to be both global and local products. Such familiarity is then not necessarily about group loyalties or identities but rather an example of the importance of practical know how and familiar sensations in feelings of belonging and attachment.     

The Concept of Corruption in J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment

SUMMARY

In the scholarship on the concept of political corruption, one frequently encounters the lamentation that the manner in which the concept is deployed in liberal modernity is insufficiently attuned to the richer sense in which the term was employed in the ‘civic humanist’ tradition. In these lamentations, the usual point of reference is J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment, a work that made corruption the central term of art in a political language stretching from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century and beyond. Certainly there is something quite attractive today about the ‘Machiavellian’ inflection of the term—our era is replete with the very things the protagonists of Pocock's story decried: debt, dependency, oligarchy, standing armies and the diminution of civic duties. But to what extent is Pocock's classic text a reliable guide for those studying the concept of corruption? This article suggests that Pocock uses the term in an excessively capacious manner, which both weakens his book's utility for understanding eighteenth-century political thought and undermines its power as a foundation for political critique by civic-minded anti-corruption reformers.     

Van Gulik's The Lore of the Chinese Lute Revisited*

In this article I propose a critical examination of van Gulik's The Lore of the Chinese Lute (LCL) in respect to its bibliographical sources and consequent aesthetic contentions. Despite being arguably the first academic monograph on the ideology of qin and historically a major non-Chinese source for the study of qin in general, the LCL does not represent van Gulik's mature thinking on qin. The LCL is limited by objective circumstances surrounding its writing and flaws in van Gulik's bibliographical engagement. His study of the musicology of Yueji on the basis of inaccurate translation and a neglect of the Neo-Confucian reading of Yueji, his hypothesis of Daoist dominance and Buddhist or Indian influence in the practice of qin with mistaken evidence, his skepticism of the truth of the literati tradition with fundamental bibliographical flaws, all require reconsideration. The current lacuna in the critical investigation of the LCL not only urges contemporary researchers to continue where van Gulik left off, but also calls for new research projects on qin and Chinese literati music in general.     

From foodways to intangible heritage: a case study of Chinese culinary resource,retail and recipe in Hong Kong

Chinese foodways is a complex mix of regional elements including a wide range of ingredients and culinary skills, and is considered a system of knowledge not only inherited from the past but also determined by socio-political changes in different eras. Even though great differences can be found between northern and southern ingredients and culinary skills, there are common characteristics shared among cuisines in various regions through internal migration as well as importation of ingredients and cooking skills. Apart from studying Chinese foodways as regional traditions in the historical context, we should look at it as intangible heritage from the socio-political perspectives regarding the current debate on cultural preservation. In this article, I aim to investigate Chinese foodways related to heritage preservation focusing on culinary resource in agricultural and cultivation system, wholesale/retail trade network and family recipe, in order to have a better understanding of food heritage in the fast-changing Hong Kong society. With the three cases provided, I would draw attention to the paradox of defining heritage for preservation and the dilemma of whether we should preserve traditional foodways that have been modified for market interest as they are discredited for loss of authenticity.     

Esoteric Tangles

Abstract

I attempt here a very general reply to the preceding sixteen essays by addressing the broad, structural constraints of my book, from which many of the particular problems raised in the essays flow. Philosophy Between the Lines is an effort to give a very sweeping account—theoretically and historically—of a phenomenon that is, in many respects, highly particularized and situation specific. The characteristic sin of the book is overgeneralization or simplification. In the present essay I attempt a brief and partial clarification, primarily by selecting one main theme of the book—defensive esotericism—and redescribing it from a more localized and fine-grained perspective.