Reconstructing Culture in Historical Explanation: Narratives as Cultural Structure and Practice

The problem of how to access and deploy the explanatory power of culture in historical accounts has long remained vexing. A recent approach, combining and transcending the "culture as structure"/"culture as practice" divide among social historians, puts explanatory focus on the recursivity of meaning, agency, and structure in historical transformation. This article argues that meaning construction is at the nexus of culture, social structure, and social action, and must be the explicit target of investigation into the cultural dimension of historical explanation. Through an empirical analysis of political alliance during the Irish Land War, 1879–1882, I demonstrate that historians can uncover meaning construction by analyzing the symbolic structures and practices of narrative discourse.     

论历史叙述中的理解与解释

在实际生活中，人们往往要解释自己或他人已经历史化了的行为，因此回避不了历史叙述，它成了人类社会实践中的必要组成部分。当人们在不同程度上作为一位历史叙述者，通过理解个体自身的历史或生存情境，阐发自己的存在与实践目的，即进行历史叙述时，他已经置身于一个历史叙述的循环之中。历史叙述循环从现象上分为两个阶段，其一是叙述前的准备阶段，即阅读与历史理解阶段；其二是叙述阶段，即叙述与历史解释阶段。     

城市历史文化研究中几个理论性问题的刍荛之见

城市之历史文化,是城市发展之重要资源。本文就当前城市历史文化研究中几个重要但研究又较为薄弱的理论问题,即研究城市历史文化的意义与作用、关于历史城市之界定,城市历史文化研究的主要内容进行了阐述,提出了具体见解;以期深入推进城市历史文化之理论性与实证性研究工作。     

Cultural Meanings and Cultural Structures in Historical Explanation

One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: (1) cultural meanings as contents of signification (however theorized) that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and (2) cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning-formation, as well as in other ways that transcend specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined.     

浅释伏尔泰的进步史观

伏尔泰是启蒙运动的领袖,在理性主义启蒙的时代背景与进步观念的影响下,形成其进步史观.他深信社会是进步发展的,历史进步本身的动力来自理性与科学的指导,人类一定会在理性的指引下战胜愚昧,开创美好的未来.其进步史观对当时后世产生深远影响.     

南京博物院开展手语讲解的几点思考

博物馆开展手语讲解表达的不仅仅是文物历史知识,更传递着社会对残疾人群的关爱。     

影视史学的思考

影视史学在现代科技发展和历史学本身变革的交相催产下 ,它呱呱坠地 ,蹒跚走来。影视史学不仅仅是历史方法上的摸索和创新 ,还对长期以来的历史思维、历史认识等传统概念产生影响 ,许多方面牵连到了史学上许多基本的理论问题。本文试图对影视究竟能在多大程度上用来“写”历史作出初步探讨 ,并对其本身的优势和局限性作一论析。     

新中国成立后历史考证学的新境界

在1949年以前业已取得很大成就的20世纪中国历史考证学,进入新中国以后,由于一批原先熟悉严密考证方法的史学家接受了唯物史观的指导,他们做到既发扬广搜史料、互相参证的优良传统,又能把握历史演进的大势,由表及里,探求历史事件之间的联系和发展演变的趋势,达到对历史本质的认识,因而使历史考证学达到了新的境界。他们的卓越成就为20世纪中国史学谱写了出色的篇章,留给我们许多重要的启示。     

Some Thoughts on the Subject of Historical Geography

A geographical historical geography, concerned with the history of development of the landscape, is distinguished from the historian's historical geography, dealing with the geography of countries and regions in the past and the history of development of cities and transport routes. The aim of the geographer's approach to historical geography is to characterize changes in the natural environment during historical times, to map landscapes from the point of view of their evolution and to classify and regionalize them on the basis of genetic principles. For this purpose, historical geography is to be distinguished from paleogeography, which should be limited to evolution of the landscape in prehistoric times.     

Human Ecology in India Some Historical Perspectives

Abstract

Before the spread of extensive settled cultivation, the Indian subcontinent would have been inhabited by territorial hunter–gatherers and shifting cultivators with cultural traditions of prudent resource use. The disruption of closed material cycles by export of agricultural produce to centres of non-agricultural population would have weakened these traditions. Indeed, the fire-based sacrificial ritual and extensive agricultural settlements might have catalysed the destruction of forests and wildlife and the suppression of tribal peoples during the agricultural colonization of the Gangetic plains. Buddhism, Jainism and later the Hindu sects may have been responses to the need for a reassertion of ecological prudence once the more fertile lands were brought under cultivation. British rule radically changed the focus of the country's resource use pattern from production of a variety of biological resources for local consumption to the production of a few commodities largely for export. The resulting ecological squeeze was accompanied by disastrous famines and epidemics between the 1860s and the 1920s. The counterflows to tracts of intensive agriculture have reduced such disasters since independence. However, these are quite inadequate to balance the state-subsidized outflows of resources from rural hinterlands. These imbalances have triggered serious environmental degradation and tremendous overcrowding of the niche of agricultural labour and marginal cultivator all over the country.     

评《民间俗信与科学文化》

《民间俗信与科学文化》这本书,一看题目就觉得新鲜,而且难度很大,如何认识许多人不敢贴近的这个问题,到公开直面这个问题,是需要很大的学术胆量的。中国民俗学自五四运动产生以来,《民间俗信与科学文化》这本书是第一本敢于将民间俗信与科学文化并列在一起的一本书。     

建党前夕马克思主义传播的历史解释方法——对《马克思还原》的分析与解读

中国共产党建立前夕的马克思主义传播,一方面需要尽快确立马克思主义作为政党指导思想的地位,以便用于中国革命实践;一方面由于对马克思主义和中国国情的认识尚不深刻,存在着不同的解释.历史批判和比较的方法成为主要的解释工具,其结果正宗马克思主义必须通过还原历史来判定,理论教条又反过来规范对于历史的解释.历史解释方法是马克思主义在中国传播的重要特征,值得进一步深入研究.     

历史视野下的台湾海峡文化圈

海峡文化圈是历史上汉族文化南下开发东南地区的过程中,与当地闽越文化相结合,应对海峡地区特定的自然地理条件的挑战而逐步形成的一个区域文化单元。它具有多维的空间内涵和突出的文化特征;在引进和创新科技、促合经济文化互动和整合区域内部文化差异方面,表现出很强的活力。在当代社会历史条件下重构海峡文化圈,有着深刻的历史必然性。     

Historical Archaeology of Indigenous Culture Change in Mesoamerica

This essay outlines recent archaeological research on post-Columbian (c. A.D. 1500–1925) indigenous sites in Mexico and Central America. Historical archaeology is a growing field in Mesoamerica, and over the last 20 years investigations of native culture change have increased, especially in rural areas. Contemporary research contributes new insights on indigenous responses to Spanish colonization over a long period. This work also is reassessing chronologies and examining the diversity of indigenous behavior from late preconquest to historic times. Indigenous adaptations to culture contact and social change are characterized by three general stages: conquest, colonization, and independence. Although I do draw on other regions, the focus of the article is the Maya area and Central America, where more investigations have taken place.     

大汶口文化“”符号新解

分析新石器时代大汶口文化遗址出土的陶尊上刻划符号“”,结合仰韶文化庙底沟类型彩陶鸟纹的演变、良渚文化玉器上刻划的鸟纹图像,大汶口文化陶尊上刻划的符号“”应是鸟的简化和变形,是巫师借用来沟通天地的巫术符号。