The past 20 years of modern Chinese social history

Modern Chinese social history has played an important role in the general revival of Chinese social history. This essay will provide an overview of the major achievements of past 20 years with particular emphasis upon the field of modern social history, the growth of regional social history, and the new research that draws upon field studies. It will also consider the recent debates on “re‐examining political history” and provide an introduction to new works in medical history and environmental/ecological history.     

Futures,intimacies, animisms: Unfinished anthropologies in the twenty-first century

This essay explores recent work in future-oriented anthropology that develops emancipatory, anticipatory, multi-modal, and participatory approaches. Through critiquing hegemonic assumptions in anthropology and in Western modernity, these works evoke both present complexity and future potentiality. Ultimately, the essay explores these works as redemptive strategies for an anthropology besieged by intolerance and authoritarianism while grappling with its colonialist underpinnings.     

A Decade of Treating Networks Seriously

In the years since O'Toole called for scholars to "[treat] network seriously," research has progressively improved our understanding of how organizations collaborate in the development and implementation of public policy. This essay reviews recent important texts in the area of policy networks. Together the works illustrate that the scholarship on network governance should move to documenting the diversity and dynamics of policy networks. The article concludes with a discussion of what these texts reveal about the most important standing questions in the study of networks and the methods that need to be brought to bear to investigate these systems.     

Historiographical perspectives on 1940s Futurism

The 1940s are undoubtedly the years most neglected by scholars of Futurism. This essay examines critical responses to the period over the last fifty years, considering how the failure to engage with it reflects a more general – and surprisingly persistent – belief that to all intents and purposes Futurism ended in 1915. It also notes how this phase has been considered beyond redemption, politically speaking, as a result of the movement's enduring support for Fascism in its most brutal and destructive years, and artistically substandard as a consequence of its readiness to produce works of explicit propaganda in an easily accessible, figurative vocabulary. However, the essay argues that the 1940s cannot truly be said to reveal a rupture in the ideology and art of Futurism – which had long celebrated war and violence, and which resists purely formalist interpretation. Moreover, this concluding period might even be said to have witnessed a reawakening of the movement's original visionary spirit, engendered by the fragmentation and collapse of both Mussolini's regime and the industrialized Italy celebrated by Futurist artists and poets for more than thirty years.     

The Demographics of Dystopia: The Muslim City in Asia’s Future

This essay argues that UN projected population growth will not only lead to more Muslims in Asia’s cities in a purely numerical sense, but also to more Muslim cities in a proportional and cultural sense through the continuation of existing trajectories of ‘de-cosmopolitanization’. Urban life will be deeply affected by this increasing shift from cities that are not merely majority Muslim, but are also increasingly Muslim in moral, social or political terms. Inevitably such changes will affect the lives of urban citizens, none more so than women. The essay then asks whether population growth will allow these cities to maintain their ‘globalizing’ trajectory of increasing interconnection. Having framed its analysis around the ‘hard’ outcomes of demographic change, the analysis then turns to ‘soft’ outcomes by tackling the question of the likely contours of the increasingly divergent versions of Islam produced by the competitive religious economies of the modern Asian city.     

Environmental Research and Education in US Geography

This article evaluates geography as an appropriate home for environmental education. First, it argues that many geographers have defined geography as a discipline with a major, if not primary, interest in human–environment interactions. Next, it reviews the recent statements by non-geographer, environmental scholars that, directly or indirectly, argue for strong participation by geographers in environmental science and sustainability studies. After a brief review of the status and the nature of environmental research programs and environmental curricula, the article offers reasons why more environmental education does not take place in geography. The lack of environmental education in the discipline and the conservative nature of the courses taught are attributed to geography's small size and low status and to the controversial nature of environmental issues in the United States. A broad definition of environmental education is used when searching for evidence of its existence or importance, but special attention is focused on courses or programs that incorporate sustainability or other topics that include a human dimension, in contrast with those that are confined to a narrow, natural-science or management conception.     

Review of Three Recently Published Studies on the Mandaeans

This review deals with three major studies of the Mandaeans all published in 2002. Although each of the works utilizes earlier material, and indeed Drower's work dates back to 1937, their collective appearance marks something of a resurgence for Mandaean studies in the anglophone world. The review links these works to recent rapid changes for the Mandaeans, and indeed the development of substantial diaspora communities in Australia and elsewhere. The author also makes brief comment on the difficult questions of Mandaean identity and origin, and their relationship with Manichaeism.     

一个不该被忽视的重要视点——也谈川端康成的《花未眠》

川端康成的《花未眠》进入人教版高中语文课本,在见仁见智的阐释中唯独缺少的是未把这篇散文放在川端在日本战败后的系列作品中,特剐是没有从与日本古美术作品的关系来理解,而这恰恰是一个不可忽视的重要视点。     

Charcot in contemporary literature

Charcot and his medical observations remain an enduring topic of scientific study in neurology, but he is also the topic of modern literary works. This essay examines the depiction of Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) as a character in late-twentieth-century literature as an index of the contemporary nonmedical literary public's interest in neurology and Charcot. It focuses on three contemporary works that involve Charcot as a central figure with comparison between primary source documents and the rendered context, character development, and plot lines of these literary works. The two French novels [Slumbers of Indiscretion and Dr. Charcot of the Salpêtrière] and one American play [Augustine (Big Hysteria)] approach Charcot and neurology with differing levels of historical accuracy. All create a figure of authority, each with a different coloration of the balance between power and its abuse. Two focus almost exclusively on his work with hysteria and inaccurately amplify Charcot's concern with symbolic sexual conflict as the origin of hysteria and fictionalize more extensive interactions with Freud than historical documents support. The three works demonstrate that Charcot retains an enduring fascination with an enigmatic personality, a controversial career, and a pivotal role in the development of studies involving the brain and behavior. Neurologists should not look to these works as replacements for more seriously composed historical studies, but as enrichments anchored in the imaginative possibilities of Charcot and his fin de siècle era.     

近十年来生态环境变迁史研究综述

近十余年来,环境变迁史研究取得丰硕成果。人们从不同学科、不同视角展开广泛探讨,涉及到区域经济发展与环境变迁之关系、古代都城与生态环境之关系、动植物变迁与区域沙漠化、灾害与疾疫问题、气候变迁等方面,有力地推动了与环境变迁密切相关的中国生态环境史学研究在中国的形成和发展。     

Indigenous Professionalization: Transnational Social Reproduction in the Andes

Indigenous professionalization is occurring throughout Latin America at an increasing pace as new careers open up in social development. Under what is heralded as socially inclusive neoliberalism, a "development with identity" paradigm is producing new university courses focused on indigenous issues. Influenced by discourses of social and human capital and addressing intersections of multiculturalism and development, these courses mobilize and help shape definitions of indigeneity; they also create spaces where donors and indigenous activists contest and debate understandings of development. Operating in a range of institutions, indigenous professionalization courses are led by a small elite group of academics and practitioners who move between programs and countries. Students also move transnationally. We argue that these courses, their classrooms and their curricula are intent on understanding intercultural situations transnationally, galvanizing international funding and support from bilateral and multilateral agencies as well as local and state actors. The social reproduction of indigenous professionalization is therefore transnational, yet grounded. At times, indigenous professionalization is socially reproduced by jumping scale; at other times, it works through established social and spatial hierarchies. This essay examines how indigenous professionalization is socially reproduced as a contested process through which notions of "good" and "culturally appropriate" development are constituted and consolidated.     

Brugge–Zeebrugge The New Belgian Harbour on the North Sea

Abstract

The history and prosperity of the Belgian city of Bruges has always been dependent on the sea. The growth of sea-borne traffic and the increasing size of vessels in recent years demanded new facilities to enable Belgium to exploit the natural advantages arising from its location. The construction of such port facilities during the last decade has employed the latest techniques in design, construction and environmental impact assessments. Contracts for the port development were drawn up to provide limits for quality control, timing and general but strict pricing, while enabling amendments during the course of the project. Now nearing completion, the major dredging and construction works have suffered no delays and will provide the most modern facilities in Zeebrugge, the port of the future.     

Prostitution,Sex Work and Violence: Discursive and Political Contexts for Five Texts on Paid Sex, 1987–2001

This article deals with the trope of the victimised, female body in feminist debates on the selling of sexual services. The notion of ‘violence’ is central to the construction of a key axis of the debates. The article explores these issues by discussing five recent and historical feminist works on prostitution/sex work, and touches on works which address methodological issues of gathering information on an activity which is, by definition, illicit, stigmatised and socio‐politically marginalised. The essay brings out several tensions in the framing of the present debates, especially regarding the varied contexts of ‘the West’ and the ‘non‐West’, as well as issues of macropolitical change, including economic globalisation. It concludes with the ways in which the texts serve to disaggregate the concepts of ‘sex work’ and ‘violence’.     

Sexual Morality in 1960s West Germany

This essay investigates the relationship between the sexualrevolution of the 1960s in West Germany and the short and long-termlegacies of the Third Reich. It offers a challenge to conventionalperspectives on the sexual politics of Nazism and thus alsoon the complicated combination of continuities and rupturesin sexual politics that marked the transition from the end ofWorld War II into the more conservative sexual culture of the1950s. The essay then turns to the multiple factors that triggeredthe sexual liberalization of the 1960s. Rejecting as too simplisticthe long-held assumption that rising economic standards explainthe liberalizing trends, the essay also charts how, in waysdistinctively West German, the sexual liberalization that occurredin the course of the 1960s was morally legitimated. The essayexamines the changing interpretations of the Third Reich thatemerged in the course of the 1960s and how these were deployedin battles over sexuality. Although recognizing the dramatictransformations in young people's sexual practices and viewsin particular, the essay stresses as well that sexual liberalizationwas not only the result of New Left student activism but ratherrequired engaged activism also from older liberals; the sexualrevolution was carried by a very broad social base, involvingmembers of all generations and a broad spectrum of politicalpersuasions. Special attention is also paid to the importantrole of liberalizing processes within the Christian churchesin helping to justify the loosening of popular mores.     

Gender and Sanctity in the Middle Ages

This review essay examines recent trends and developments in the study of medieval sanctity and gender, looking at the range of approaches which have been and are being taken by both historians and literary scholars to a wide variety of hagiographic texts. Two recent studies of medieval hagiography are reviewed, John Kitchen, Saints' Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography and the collection Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters edited by Catherine Mooney. These works are representative of differing approaches to the issue of male authors' representations of female sanctity and concomitant issues of gender ideology.     

Dialogue with the Dead: Sebald,Creatureliness, and the Philosophy of Mere Life

The idea of a “dialogue with the dead” strikes us by turns as both impossible and intriguing. Yet, what can be really meant by it is far from clear. This essay attempts to explore this idea in the work of novelist W. G. Sebald. It examines the scope and the meaning of such an interchange in his works and connects this theme to his wider explorations of “creaturely life.” It also links this particular dimension of Sebald's notion of “creaturely” or “bare” life with some of the other major treatments of the same theme in recent literature and philosophy.     

社会变革与学术流派:当代英国马克思主义史学渊源综论

以霍布斯鲍姆和汤晋森等人为代表的英国马克思主义史学派,是20世纪国际史学中重要的一个史学派别。在社会变革与学术流派间相互关系的总体框架下,从学派形成的历史条件及学派发展的国际思潮背景着眼,可以清楚地看到英国马克思主义史学渊源的大体脉络。该学派形成与发展的重要学术前提,在于西方新史学与马克思主义史学之间的交互作用和互动机制,而学派奠立及其学术创新的背景层级,则依赖于当时国内外的社会政治、社会心理思潮和学术文化机制等重要社会环境资源。另外,英国传统史学理论与方法论体系对英国马克思主义历史学产生了至关重要的影响。     

台湾现阶段大力扶持海外侨教的措施与借鉴

针对近年来祖国大陆海外华文教育快速发展带来的挑战 ,台湾当局在延续其历年经验性做法的基础上 ,以满足海外侨教现实需要为目标 ,注重以创新思维拓展侨教工作 ,采取各种更加灵活和有力的措施 ,多方面多渠道地扶持海外侨教工作。本文分析了台湾现阶段扶持海外侨教的主要措施 ,论述了其可资借鉴与参考之处。