Crisis attack: Impromptu ethnography in the Greek maelstom (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Assailed by mounting debt and increasing economic distress, Greece today is also the target of media representations that emphasize violence and disorder. Michael Herzfeld – who was mugged and tear‐gassed in Athens this past July – argues that these representations are misleading and indeed are part of the problem they seek to explain. The structural violence of an insistent barrage of negative media coverage as well as that of international financial pressures undermines a previously stable and relatively crime‐free country, encouraging new forms – including police and popular racism, physical violence at demonstrations, and acts of petty crime – of what had once been a largely codified and ritualized idiom of aggression. While many Greeks do feel that debts should be paid, increasing economic desperation fuels a different view, and one that can best be interpreted in light of the social values that anthropologists have long studied in Greece: that the country's creditors are violating their own obligations toward Greece and thus deserve to face both default on the massive debt and the public hostility of the Greek people.     

中日早期招商局借款考

1877年前后,中日之间曾经有过一次鲜为人知的轮船招商局借款交涉。为筹集收购旗昌轮船公司的款项,招商局会办朱其诏曾经向日本探询借款之事,日本也派人到上海与其谈判。双方虽然有过几次会谈,但在抵押品、利息等问题上存在分歧。此议最终由于种种原因而不了了之。然而这次短暂的谈判却非常特殊,它不仅是招商局的首次对外借款交涉,还是近代中国的首批实业借款交涉之一,在近代中日经济关系史上也具有重要意义。     

Regulating interpersonal debt in the bishop's court of Carpentras: litigation,litigators and the court, 1486 and 1487

Using notarial records, this article explains who sued whom at the bishop's court at Carpentras, why they did so and how the court managed people and their debt disputes. In 1486 and 1487, creditors pursued 240 suits over unpaid loans (about three-quarters of the court's business). Litigants spanned the social spectrum and included both Christians and Jews, suggesting that the court was well embedded in the local economy. This diversity, as well as the predominance of ‘horizontal lending’, matches regional trends. Drawing upon anecdotal evidence and quantitative work, the court's procedures, functions and appeal are explained. Since most loans were made orally, proving their existence was difficult. Cases rarely reached rulings and creditors could not expect from ecclesiastical judges the coercive innovations adopted by secular courts. Yet, this church court was a popular forum to authenticate debts, pressure debtors into confession and encourage peaceful, private concords.     

Debt Cancellation in the Classical and Hellenistic Poleis: Between Demagogy and Crisis Management

Abstract

This article discusses the way the ancient Greeks dealt with public and private debts, focusing on one specific aspect: debt cancellation. On the one hand, ancient Greeks were aware of the risks entailed in debt relief as a tool for fuelling civic strife: sources describe it as a demagogic or even criminal action often in association with the political agenda of tyrants. On the other hand, however, Greeks knew well also the benefic effects of debt cancellation in coping with financial and political crisis. In late accounts of archaic history, debt relief is the solution to civic strife and the foundation act of political order. Some public decrees of the Hellenistic period attest debt relief as a communal decision of the polis, dictated by the necessity of preventing or solving ongoing or imminent crises. This second meaning and purpose of debt cancellation should perhaps urge us to reconsider from a different perspective the “politics of debt” in today’s Europe.     

Towards Hume – the discourse on the liberty of the press in the age of Walpole*

The liberty of the press became one of the main topics of public debate in the 1720s and 1730s in response to Walpole’s restrictive press policy. This debate was carried on mainly in newspapers such as the Craftsman and the London Journal. Country and Court writers did not limit their discussions to legal questions, but conducted a lively debate about what press freedom actually was, and what role the press should have in political life. Among other things, they discussed to what extent it was appropriate for the press to take on an anti-governmental role. This debate is important, not least because it is a foil for one of the ‘classical’ eighteenth-century texts on the problem of press freedom, David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Liberty of the Press’. The debate reveals to what extent, and in what respects, Hume was breaking new ground in this essay.     

Global Liquidity,the Private Sector and Debt Sustainability in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This article analyses the effect of changes in international financial markets on the debt dynamics in sub‐Saharan Africa in recent years. A key development is the rise of the private sector as both a lender and a borrower in African debt markets, a process that is associated with the growing integration of the region into global financial markets. The article argues that the Debt Sustainability Framework of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank has taken some steps to account for this growth of private sector, cross‐border debt, but such steps still fall short of what is needed. A full appreciation of the importance of private debt implies, first, that debt sustainability in sub‐Saharan Africa be understood in the context of countries’ integration in global financial markets and the global liquidity cycles that characterize those markets and, second, that the interplay between private and public debt be monitored in order to provide a fuller picture of the impact of private sector debt on fiscal sustainability.     

Rank and file participation in politics in late-medieval Genoa: the commune’s submission to the French in 1396

At the end of Doge Antoniotto Adorno’s last term of office (Sept. 1394-Nov. 1396) the republic of Genoa submitted to the king of France. Before taking this radical step, the doge repeatedly sounded public opinion in the course of no less than ten diversely attended assemblies. The fortunate survival of the proceedings in the French National Archives allows an assessment of the extent and character of participation in this protracted process. In addition to records of addresses delivered by the doge and other citizens, these documents contain detailed rosters of hundreds of participants, listed by class and often also by party affiliation. Using this vast quantity of material, I propose to study here the evolution of public opinion vis-à-vis this proposition within Genoa’s social classes and political parties. At the end I shall argue that, despite the large number of citizens consulted, it was not mainly the consent of the majority that the doge was seeking, but that of his close collaborators and political supporters.     

The complexity of aspiration: the role of hope and habitus in shaping working-class young people’s aspirations to higher education

In this paper, I explore how working-class young people in Leicester hope and plan for their futures as they consider the possibility of attending university. I respond to Pimlott-Wilson’s [2011. “The Role of Familial Habitus in Shaping Children’s Views of Their Future Employment.” Children’s Geographies 9 (1): 111–118] call for further research to investigate how individual dispositions and habitus affect how young people hope and aspire towards the future. I do this in three ways. First, I empirically test Webb’s [2007. “Modes of Hoping.” History of the Human Sciences 20 (3): 65–83] hope theory to understand how aspirations are formed on an individual and societal level. In doing so, I critically question what is understood by the term ‘aspiration’. This allows me to question what it means for young people to ‘raise aspirations’ towards university. Second, I explore how a spatial analysis can contribute towards an understanding of how habitus, hope and aspirations interlock to shape young people’s futures. Third, I argue that hope can be regarded as a form of capital which in turn influences habitus.     

‘What makes one an Israeli?’ Negotiating identities in everyday representations of ‘Israeliness’*

Abstract. This paper examines the construction of a sense of Israeli identity which is not deducible from the public political discourse. It analyses common verbal representations of ‘being an Israeli person’, namely, what people in contemporary Israeli culture repeatedly say about Israelis, and how they position themselves vis‐à‐vis the commonsensical agreements they exchange, assuming that the massive use of such clichés in certain contexts creates a discursive routine that has ‘a life of its own’, through which people constantly negotiate their self‐images and their sense of belonging. It investigates the ways these representations create solidarity or demarcation and how such current popular representations relate to canonical veteran images of Israeli identity, notably that of the pre‐state ‘Native Israeli’ (Sabra) archetype. The analysis is based on 295 anonymous open responses to the question ‘What makes one an Israeli?’ published weekly in the Weekend Supplement of Maariv, the second largest newspaper in Israel, between 1996 and 1998. The analysis has led to the following observations: (1) Instead of the most expected grand ideological (ethnic, national, religious, etc.) issues of conflict, the responses reveal a ‘pursuit of culturedness’, using an implied scale of mastering good manners and possessing a ‘genuine culture’ which form the dominant parameter of judging the ‘Israeli person’. (2) A tension between mainstream and marginalised groups is shaped by a ‘chase and flight’ dynamic of embracing and rejecting the mythological Sabra image (in asymmetry with these groups' assumed political stances), which image is believed to be a symbol of the once hegemonic veteran elite. (3) This tension paradoxically contributes to the persistence of the canonical image of the Sabra that is currently delegitimised by much intellectual discourse.     

Beyond Bodies: Aspects of the Politicisation of Exchange in the South-West Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Different exchanges offer varying potential for transactors to gain prestige in Anganen, Southern Highlands (PNG). The central argument is that this variation — what I call politicisation — is in part linked with how bodies are variously appropriated as the premise upon which exchange is undertaken. The least prestigious for individual actors are collective prestations in which wealth acts as direct substitution for persons and their bodies. At the other extreme is ceremonial pork distribution where individual prestige is directly measurable in terms of a man's own endeavours. This event is ‘beyond bodies’ and centres the transactor as the sole, focal individual. In between lie warfare compensations where bodies still create debt, but the focus shifts from the female associated body such as the bride to male associated bodies as when allies compensate slain warriors' agnates. The second most prestigious event is ‘moka’ in which the ‘body’ is metaphorised in the Anganen names of its sequence together with aspects of performance. Here wealth does not substitute for the body but rather creates debt. These varying ‘body logics’ can be seen to lie at the heart of the politicisation in their interrelations with other indices of prestige such as individual autonomy or finance for provisioning. I conclude by suggesting the way bodies are variously appropriated may be a useful comparative base for Highlands political economies more generally.     

Naturalism and its political dangers: Jakob Thomasius against Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. A study and the translation of Thomasius’ text

ABSTRACT

Jakob Thomasius was a well-known professor who in 1670 chose to address a new anonymous text in a faculty lecture. The text was Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (TTP). Five years earlier, Thomasius had attacked libertine philosophers in two other faculty lectures, and now explicitly links those lectures with this critique of the TTP. This article examines the argumentative strategy and structure of Thomasius’ 1670 lecture, in the light of those 1665 lectures, to see what it was that upset the Leipzig professor. Thomasius’ text is a rarity in that it aims to critique the TTP primarily on political grounds, not religious, but this sees Thomasius’ fear of naturalism assume strongly political tones of fear of faction. This article assesses Thomasius’ version of moderate censorship, the link he draws between Hobbes and innovation, his debt to Comenius, and the coherence of his defence of moderate Lutheranism. This article also provides a translation of Thomasius’ heretofore untranslated text.     

The reception of Gall’s organology in early-nineteenth-century Vilnius

Much has been written about the development and reception of Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) ideas in Western Europe. There has been little coverage, however, of how his Schädellehre or organology was received in Eastern Europe. With this in mind, we examined the transmission and acceptance/rejection of Gall’s doctrine in Vilnius (now Lithuania). We shall focus on what two prominent professors at Vilnius University felt about organology. The first of these men was Andrew Sniadecki (1768–1838), who published an article on Gall’s system in the journal Dziennik Wileński in 1805. The second is his contemporary, Joseph Frank (1771–1842), who wrote about the doctrine in his memoirs and published an article on phrenology in the journal Bibliotheca Italiana in 1839. Both Frank and Sniadecki had previously worked in Vienna’s hospitals, where they became acquainted with Gall and his system, but they formed different opinions. Sniadecki explained the doctrine not only to students and doctors but also to the general public in Vilnius, believing the new science had merit. Frank, in contrast, attempted to prove the futility of cranioscopy. Briefer mention will be made of the assessments of Johann Peter Frank (1745–1821) and Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827), two other physicians who overlapped Gall in Vienna and went to Vilnius afterward. Additionally, we shall bring up how a rich collection of human skulls was used for teaching purposes at Vilnius University, and how students were encouraged to mark the organs on crania using Gall’s system. Though organology in Vilnius, as in many other places, was always controversial, it was taught at the university, accepted by many medical professionals, and discussed by an inquisitive public.     

The ‘China model’ and the global crisis: from Friedrich List to a Chinese mode of governance?

The global financial crisis reinvigorated ongoing debates over whether China has its own distinct and separate ‘model’ of political economy and/or development. There is much that connects this Chinese model with previous systems of national political economies; partly in terms of specific policy preferences, but also in terms of shared basic conceptions of the distribution of power in the global order. Like these previous systems, China has come to stand as an example of an alternative to following dominant (neo‐)liberal models of development. In this respect, what the China model is not and what China does not stand for might be more important than what it actually is and what it does stand for. However, the idea of a coherent and unique Chinese model has considerable purchase, and is both informed by and also feeds into considerations of China's uniqueness and difference from the norms, ideas and philosophies that dominate the rest of the world.     

A new Early Permian bivalve fauna from the Río Genoa Formation,Patagonia, Chubut Province,Argentina

Fourteen Bivalvia species are described from the Lower Permian Río Genoa Formation, exposed in the southern Tepuel-Genoa Basin (Chubut Province, Argentina), of which one, Fletcheripecten genoensis, is new. The studied specimens are well preserved, retaining fine details of the ornament and shell morphology. Palaeotaxodonta is represented by two species of Nuculopsis and four species of Phestia; Pteriomorphia by five species in five genera; and Heteroconchia by three informal species. Most of the species recorded also occur in the northern part of Tepuel-Genoa Basin and allow demarcation of new and distinct marine intervals in the Río Genoa Formation, which was classically interpreted to represent continental deposits. The bivalve fauna confirms a Cisuralian (Early Permian) age for the Río Genoa Formation and offers potential for improved regional and global correlations.     

Italy at War 1935–2005: Report on the 2005 ASMI Annual Conference,Edinburgh, 25–26 November

‘Addiopizzo’ (Goodbye protection money) is a grassroots anti-mafia movement based in Palermo that stresses the individual consumer's responsibility for maintaining the Sicilian mafia's pizzo system. If you purchase products from a business that pays the pizzo you are indirectly supporting the mafia. By encouraging Palermitans to buy from ‘pizzo-free’ businesses, Addiopizzo uses the purchasing power of the consumer to fight organised crime. The community of ‘pizzo-free’ businesses is small but steadily growing whilst the number of critical consumers pledging to buy their products appears to have peaked. This article aims to investigate the reasons why consumers may be reluctant to support ‘pizzo-free’ businesses by asking those who have already made public their decision to do so. Whilst critical consumers cannot fully explain why the majority of Palermo's citizens continue to tolerate the pizzo system their attitudes towards them do highlight differences that may help to account for wider non-participation in Addiopizzo's campaign.     

“Don’t call me a Cajun!”: race and representation in Louisiana’s Acadiana region

In southwestern Louisiana, the public sphere is dominated by the image of the Cajuns, presented as a hardy, likable people who have overcome significant obstacles since their arrival as Acadians in the late eighteenth century. Across the cultural region designated “Acadiana,” which comprises 22 counties, nearly 30% of the population is black (or Creole, mixed-race peoples generally identifying as black). Contributions of non-whites to the region’s history are usually not incorporated into the public historical narrative, and the erasure of these groups’ influences on the state’s cultural “gumbo” has profound symbolic and material consequences. Black/Creole residents note that much of their culture – primarily music and foodways – has been repackaged as Cajun or subsumed under the Cajun label and that they are unable to take advantage of the benefits that Creole-oriented tourism could bring to a region in which half of the counties are designated “black high poverty parishes.” Using mixed methods, including interviews, archival analysis, and census data, this paper explores the social, political, and economic consequences of the domination of Cajuns in the south Louisiana memorial and representational landscape and argues that commemorative silences in what Alderman et al. have called the “memorial arena” perpetuate a hegemonic social order.     

The character of a global transport infrastructure: Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days

Jules Verne’s Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, serialized in 1872 and published in English in 1874 as Around the World in Eighty Days, displays through its hero the character, in both senses of the term, of the new global public transport system that had transformed long-distance travel in the nineteenth century. Verne’s fiction imagines the community defined by this system in three particular elements: A high-speed public transport network creates a community of people by extending their synchronic collective sense of ongoing separate simultaneous activity and, collaterally, unifies them historically as contemporaries defined by the current mode, form and speed of their transport network; it creates this community of people irrespective of the individual purposes for which they use the transport system; and individuals comprehend this networked community by projecting an omniscient-like perspective through which they imagine themselves and others as circulating bodies in it.     

Peeing under surveillance: bathrooms,gender policing,and hate violence

The experiences of trans and gender non-conforming people in public restrooms confirms what feminist scholars have been saying for decades: public space is not a neutral space, rather it is where power is enacted. In this intervention, I extend Foucault’s analysis of docile bodies to gender, suggesting that sex-segregated bathrooms are technologies of disciplinary power, upholding the gender binary by forcing people to choose between men’s and women’s rooms. The resulting lack of safe access to public restrooms is an everyday reality for those who fall outside of gender binary norms. Faced with a built environment that denies their existence and facilitates gender policing, I argue that trans and gender non-conforming people sometimes engage in situational docility. Bodies are adjusted to comply with the cardinal rule of gender – to be readable at a glance – which is often due to safety concerns. Changing the structure of bathrooms to be gender inclusive and/or neutral may decrease gender policing in bathrooms and the need for this situational docility, allowing trans and gender non-conforming people to pee in peace.     

面对被侵略的共同体认——晚清经济民族主义思潮发生缘由蠡测

赔款、外债造成的晚清财政负担最终转嫁到国民身上,洋货与洋企的肆虐使民众利益进一步受损,国人共同的维权诉求愈来愈强,从而在公司制框架之下,演绎了资本联合,共赴国难的历史活剧。从根本上讲,晚清经济民族主义是国人感受民族危机的结果,而不是"想象的共同体"。