Memory,ghosts and the good life: Sati in Theravada cultural contexts

Mindfulness in its English rendering brings together a mix of historical influences, from Zen to Romanticism to yoga. Still, the most central concept from which it draws is sati, a Theravada Buddhist Pali term first translated as mindfulness over 100 years ago. This article reports on the findings of an ethnographic investigation of sati in the Theravada-majority countries of Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, where the concept is widely used for a range of religious, therapeutic and colloquial ends. Based on interviews and questionnaires involving over 600 monks, psychiatrists and lay Buddhist practitioners, the article explores aspects of sati that are not often recognized (or recognized as much) in Western, secular mindfulness contexts. These qualities include attention to memory in present-moment awareness, the potency of supernatural engagements and a social-ethical orientation towards living well. Highlighting these qualities allows for a greater appreciation of cultural diversity within contemporary global mindfulness practices and suggests possibilities for further developing the global therapeutic potential of mindfulness.     

Mindfulness and culture

Mindfulness, an awareness training practice originating in Buddhism, is simultaneously championed as a mental health tool and critiqued as a form of neo-liberal subjugation in media representations. Here, anthropology is well positioned to contribute to and meaningfully alter these contemporary debates. Anthropologists' focus on the relationship between psychological categories and culturally embedded ethical practices offers a welcome corrective to celebratory or critical interpretive modes. Through an analysis of sensationalized media reports that ‘mindfulness can make you selfish!’, the authors argue that long-term qualitative research uncovers ways in which cultural values profoundly influence the effects of mindfulness. In doing so, they suggest the importance of continued ethnographic research into mindfulness and increased public attention to the connections between the culturally patterned ways that we think of our minds and what those minds come to be through mindfulness training.     

Collective mindfulness: Somatic attention to group and self in meditation practice in Israel

Mindfulness is commonly portrayed as a solitary practice in which one turns attention inward to notice feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise in the mind and body. Yet the training and practice of mindfulness often take place in a group setting, indicating that the process of turning inward is dependent on an intersubjective space. Based on an extended ethnography of Israelis who train in body-based mindfulness in the context of Vipassana meditation practice, we analyze collective mindfulness spaces, including group sittings, virtual group sittings and the use of mindfulness applications. We show that mindfulness offers a unique kind of togetherness. It opposes direct social engagement while still offering a supportive social space where others move from an audience to bodily co-dwellers. We track the tensions in replicating this form of togetherness in virtual settings, where, paradoxically, the physical distance ends up exposing people's social identities while still limiting embodied synchronization. We illustrate how the social spaces of mindfulness serve as liminoid sanctuaries beyond everyday social-interactive life, providing relief from the political and economic stress in which Israelis live.     

Political Theology,Democracy, and the Exception in the Egyptian Revolution

As the sixth anniversary of the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square passes, those uprisings and the events that followed continue pose important challenges not only for students of Middle Eastern and North African politics, but also for students of political theory and political theology. While scholars debate the extent to which the “Arab Spring” has amounted to a truly revolutionary turn of events, it is commonly accepted that the protests that swept the region were exceptional in their unanticipated and profound disruption of ordinary affairs. Under the influence of Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, “the exception” has become a key figure in contemporary reflections on political theology, but attention to events in Egypt suggests that the familiar figure of the exception has not yet been mined for all of its implications for democratic practice. Slipping below grand articulations of the exception as a moment of sovereign decision, or as the suspension of the law, this essay turns its attention to the minor, everyday, background patterns of exceptionality that accompany the emergence of democratic practices outside the purview of the sovereign state. I argue that there is an intimate connection between the forms of exceptionality produced by longstanding practices of Egyptian secularism, the forms of exceptionality peculiar to the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath, and the forms of exceptionality that both make and unmake democratic practices. My argument has three parts: first Egyptian secularism is a process that manages and transforms authorized forms of Islamic practice, while at the same time producing exceptional formations, of which the Muslim Brotherhood is a key example; second that revolutionary politics can be understood as a matter of opening and sustaining the kind of exceptional circumstances that attended the 2011 uprisings, and that this can be usefully framed as an open-ended process of conversion; third that democratic practice requires courting both kinds of exception, despite their challenges, ambivalences, and potential dangers.     

(Re)Inhabiting awareness: geography and mindfulness

This paper opens up a dialogue between mindfulness and the discipline of geography. As a meditative practice that cultivates ‘present-centred non-judgmental awareness’, we claim that the practices and insights of mindfulness have important implications for various forms of geographical enquiry. This paper argues that mindfulness can inform geographical practices in relation to epistemology and methodology, and contribute towards geographically informed critical psychological theory and action. More specifically, we claim that mindfulness could offer a practice-based context to support the study of affects, extend the application of psychoanalytical geographical methods beyond the therapeutic, and contribute to emerging geographical studies of behavioural power and empowerment. This analysis explores these sites of interaction through a series of reflections on the Mindfulness, Behaviour Change and Engagement in Public Policy programme that was developed and delivered by the authors. This more-than-therapeutic mindfulness programme has been delivered to approximately 47 civil servants working in the UK Government.     

Ireland in the imperial imagination: British nationalism and the Anglo-Irish Treaty

ABSTRACT

The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921 was a watershed moment in modern Irish history. In addition to copper-fastening the partition of the island, the agreement catalysed the bifurcation of revolutionary Sinn Féin and set in train the processes that culminated, ultimately, in the outbreak of a bitter Civil War the following June. The events that led to the Treaty and the debates on it in Dáil Éireann have received extensive treatment from historians. However, scholars have paid far less attention to the impact of the Treaty on British politics; in particular, they have neglected to explore how the concession of limited Irish self-government impacted Britain’s national self-image at a time of crucial imperial adjustment following the Great War. This article will examine the range of arguments proffered for and against the Treaty in the House of Commons and the House of Lords and suggest that Parliamentary opposition to the settlement was underpinned by a sense of imperial-national feeling, one guided by an attitude of conscious superiority to non-British elements that can be understood productively as a form of British nationalism.     

A mindful shift: an opportunity for mindfulness-driven tourism in a post-pandemic world

Abstract

Many see the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point for tourism, a chance to reflect on the pressing environmental and socio-economic concerns of the industry, and an opportunity to pinpoint a more desirable direction. However, for tourism to revive as a less impactful and more meaningful industry, more mindful consumers are needed to take factual benefits from the gravity of the current situation. Mindfulness as a practice of bringing a certain quality of attention to moment-by-moment experiences has become an important asset for individuals to cope with the problems of modern life. It is even seen as a significant driver of lifestyle change in Western societies, resulting in an increasing number of more conscious consumers and mindfulness-driven products and services. The COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call and opportunity for the tourism industry to embrace the mindfulness movement, trusting in its capacity to reflect on the current problems and to pave a new way forward towards more compassionate and meaningful tourism for both hosts and guests.     

论东汉党锢的缘起与党人失败原因

东汉末年的党锢之祸是中国历史上第一次大规模的党争,历来受到研究者的关注,然题中仍不乏剩义。本文主要考察党锢的缘起及党人集团失败的原因。笔者认为党人集团的失败绝非偶然,至少有三方面的原因值得总结。其一,把宦官作为败坏东汉政权唯一的罪魁祸首有失公允;其二,清流官员欲尽除宦官的计划得不到最高统治者的支持,且他们的过激言论招致皇帝的震怒;其三,党人集团中缺少雄才大略的领袖,在关键时刻优柔寡断,致使功败垂成。     

Control and Abandonment: The Power of Surveillance on Refugees in Italy,During and After the Mare Nostrum Operation

Migrants' daily arrivals to Italy's southern coasts and continuous shipwrecks in the Mediterranean have captured international media attention, producing a fixation on the scene of landing and a deliberate marginalization of what happens to migrants and refugees after the moment of landing. This paper aims to refocus analytical attention on the lives of asylum seekers after landing in Europe, breaking through the institutional silence that is cast upon the infrastructure of the camp, the logic of assistance and the bureaucratic waiting zone asylum seekers are stuck in. By documenting political changes in European and national policies, the paper reflects on the forms of institutional control and abandonment refugees are subjected to once they land in Italy, and are housed in the governmental camps and extraordinary structures which arose at the time of the Mare Nostrum Operation where strict discipline, carelessness, uncertainty and confusion intertwine.     

反思与前瞻:中国近代社会史研究的再出发

中国近代社会史复兴四十多年来,成绩令人瞩目。与此同时,日益突出的新老问题,比如近代社会史的贯通性问题、思想理论缺失问题、宏观研究不足问题、区域的代表性问题、脱离时代中心话题的问题,以及过度恋慕地方文献的问题等,正在成为困囿社会史继续前进的桎梏,应当引起学界重视。当前社会史处在与时代同步伐的关键节点上,从事近代社会史的学人十分有必要秉持“长时段”“总体史”和“整体史”的史观,重新审视这些问题,思考探索近代社会史研究再出发的诸种可能性。     

Utopianism and urban change in Perreymond's plans for the rebuilding of Paris

This paper examines the utopian scheme for Paris put forward by Fourierist engineer Perreymond in the Revue Générale de l'Architecture et des Travaux Publics (1840–1890). The plan is placed in the context of both nineteenth-century utopian conceptions of society, as well as the wider discussions of the urban fabric of Paris. Particular attention is paid to Perreymond's ideals and their influence as a specific moment in planning. This is followed by an examination of why this plan was destined to remain on paper whilst a similar scheme – that of Baron Haussmann – became concrete ten years later.     

Heir Not Apparent: Douglas Hailsham,the Role of the House of Lords,and the Succession to the Conservative Leadership 1928–31*

The moment that Lord Curzon was passed over and Stanley Baldwin succeeded Andrew Bonar Law as prime minister in 1923 is generally regarded as a turning point in British political history. From this time it appeared that members of the house of lords were barred from leading political parties and becoming prime minister. In an age of mass democracy it was deemed unacceptable for the premier to reside in an unelected and largely emasculated chamber. This understanding is seemingly confirmed by the career of the Conservative politician, Douglas Hogg, 1st Viscount Hailsham. Notwithstanding a late entry into political life, he was regarded as a potential successor to Baldwin. His acceptance of a peerage to become lord chancellor in 1928 has been seen as the moment when Hailsham's claims to lead the Conservative party ended. But although Hailsham never became Conservative leader, his experience undermines the suggestion that peers were unable to lead political parties in inter‐war Britain. Despite his position in the Lords, his chances of succeeding Baldwin never vanished. The crisis in Baldwin's leadership after the loss of the 1929 general election and the lack of a suitable successor in the Commons created the circumstances in which leadership from the Lords by a man of Hailsham's ability could be contemplated. Hailsham's continuing prominence within the Conservative ranks and specifically his contributions to the party during the years 1929–31, together with the thoughts of high‐ranking Conservative contemporaries, make it clear that he very nearly emerged as Baldwin's successor at this time.     

“I am ripe for man”: Gendered Time in Thomas Heywood’s An Emblematicall Dialogue (1637)

In Thomas Heywood’s Emblematicall Dialogue (1637), “Two modest Virgins, of unequall time” discuss love and marriage, focusing on the crucial moment when the maid makes her transition from maid to wife. As the meaning of each naked emblem and of the dialogue form as a whole is revealed through the passing moments of the argument so is the meaning of this moment in time which the maid faces. Cultural and biological imperatives construct time for the maid and become the ground of the debate and of her choices at this pivotal moment which will determine her success or failure as a woman in seventeenth-century England.     

Suffering another’s sin: proxy penance in the thirteenth century

Proxy penance – where one person completed penance for another person, who received the benefit – had a long history in medieval Europe, despite the lack of scholarly interest in the subject. This article examines one moment in this long history when proxy penance was debated by theologians and practised by individuals at the same time. By juxtaposing two discourses – the theoretical and the practical – a comprehensive image of proxy penance is stitched together. Particular attention is paid not only to the historical contexts out of which proxy penance emanated but also to the specific ways that individuals and groups experienced proxy activity. This research broadens the scholarly conversation about medieval penance, situates female spirituality in a new framework and places proxy penance within the context of larger theological and social innovations.     

On the polarity and continuing currents in unusually large lightning flashes deduced from ELF events

An analysis of ELF events has enabled the magnitude and duration of the continuing currents in 274 unusually large lightning flashes to be estimated. An exponential decay model of the variation of the current moment of the source lightning stroke with time was fitted to the measured spectra using an optimisation algorithm. Of the events analysed, 212 were of positive polarity (i.e. the initial polarity of the electric field was positive) and 62 were negative. The average magnitude of the peak current moment for positive events was 5.1 × 10⁷ Am with a standard deviation of 3.2 × 10⁷ Am while that for negative events was 2.9 × 10⁷ Am with a standard deviation of 0.6 × 10⁷ Am. The average time constant T of our data set is 32 ms with a standard deviation of 6 ms for positive events and 26 ms with a standard deviation of 5 ms for negative events. Positive events are therefore associated with somewhat larger and more variable current moments and slightly longer continuing currents. We believe that these positive events are most likely to be produced by positive cloud to ground lightning.     

Sacrament and Oath: A Theological-Political Displacement

This article pays attention to the historical displacement of the meaning of the word sacramentum at the moment in which theological reflection appropriates the civil meaning. By addressing this historical displacement, the present article reflects not only on the theological-political character of oaths, but also on the complex inventive character of political theology. In fact, that kind of appropriation involves multiple transferences of meanings from one realm to another – the political and the religious, what is constitutive of the theological-political approach. Attempting to grasp the topic, this article first examines the Biblical meanings of oath, covenant and sacrament; second, it looks at the meaning of sacramentum in the classical Roman tradition; and, finally, it recovers the meaning of sacrament in Tertullian, who is primarily responsible for the coinage of the term for theological reflection.     

TO THE PLANETARIUM—THERE IS STILL TIME!

This review essay examines James McFarland's Constellation: Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin in the Now‐Time of History, which stages a comparative reading of the two thinkers’ works and argues that they shared a resistance to the conventions of nineteenth‐century historicism as well as a desire to attend not to causation as a force in history but rather to the importance of each individual “present.” Benjamin's term “dialectics at a standstill” is a formulation only a reader of Nietzsche could have produced, as McFarland ably demonstrates. This review essay also delves into Benjamin's own use of the “constellation” motif, identifying complexities McFarland leaves out of his account. Influenced by Nietzsche's own uses of astronomical and astrological motifs, Benjamin employed the image of the constellation as a symbol not only for temporality (say, of the time it takes for starlight to reach our planet). He also used it to examine our transforming relationship with the cosmos and with nature most broadly, and, in the famous “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” he used it as a figure for the proper relationship historians should establish between their own period and the past; this is what yields an understanding of the present moment as the Jetztzeit, the “time of the now” enjoying its own dignity beyond any causal relationship with the future it may have. However, and as this review essay suggests, Benjamin's uses of the constellation image, and of images of stars, telescopes, and planetariums more generally, were highly ambivalent. They can serve as indices of his shifting views of modernity and of his desire that modern experience, seemingly condemned to alienation, might be redeemed.     

中国八大都市区管治阶段的判定

中国正处于都市区化带动城市化发展的新城市时代,这种新的城市化发展状况要求我们关注大都市区的管治,而大都市区发展状况也与治理有着相当程度的关联。在借助城市流模型对目前中国大陆地区存在的八大都市区集聚扩散分析的基础上,通过关注各个大都市区非政府部门的发育状况,尝试性地分析了这些大都市区管治所处的阶段,并对国外大都市区研究进行总结,认为优化城市体系结构、加强非政府组织的建设、完善公民参与机制是提高我国大都市区管治效益的关键。     

The origin of the Racist Laws under fascism. Aproblem of historiography

Abstract

Why did the fascist regime adopt racial laws in the 1930s? The laws were aimed first atnon-Europeans and people of mixed race in the colonies, and then at the Jews. This article reviews recent studies on the racial laws, which took a variety of forms, within which the specificity of the anti-Semitic legislation has to be acknowledged even though the legislation against the Jews came at much the same time as the other racial legislation. Were these laws an attempt to imitate Nazi Germany, and hence in some form an off-shoot of foreign policy? Or were there seeds of racism already present in Italian politics and society that found fulfillment in the racial laws? These issues have for some time been the subject of major debate, in which different historiographical traditions have come into conflict, while attention has been drawn to the need to counter attempts to blame others for what remains the responsibility ofItalians.     

Travail, redistribution et construction des espaces économiques (XIe–XVe siècle)

Although a popular topic among historians for most of the XX^th century, the expansion of the European medieval economy has recently fallen out of favour. This paper seeks to bring attention back to this subject, at an important moment of the construction of a global European economy, by replacing it in a long term perspective, from the XI^th to the XV^th century, and by analysing its own process of economic development and growth trends. Particular attention is devoted to the social processes developed for the promotion of worker groups and productive activities, which made possible the intensification of labour that is remunerated by a complex set of mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth, which are among the most original creations of medieval societies.