The Unseamed Picture: Conflicting Narratives of Women in the Modern European Past

This article is about the tension between the grand narrative of modern European women's history and the micro‐study of a particular place and experience. Adopting a perspective far removed from the metropolitan heart of Europe forces one to think differently about the prime motors of change and the chronology of that change. I ask how we can write meaningful and recognisable histories which simultaneously are recognisable to those whose voices are represented and which also contribute to the (re)writing of the bigger picture. I conclude that an alternative history can only emerge from a historical practice which privileges a social memory crafted around narratives of women whose sense of the past included themselves.     

Policy Narratives and Policy Processes

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has influenced a generation of policy scholars with its emphasis on causal drivers, testable hypotheses, and falsification. Until recently, the role of policy narratives has been largely neglected in ACF literature partially because much of that work has operated outside of traditional social science principles, such as falsification. Yet emerging literature under the rubric of Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) demonstrates how the role of policy narratives in policy processes is studied using the same rigorous social science standards initially set forth by Paul A. Sabatier. The NPF identifies theories specifying narrative elements and strategies that are likely useful to ACF researchers as classes of variables that have yet to be integrated. Examining this proposition, we provide seven hypotheses related to critical ACF concepts including advocacy coalitions and policy beliefs, policy learning, public opinion, and strategy. Our goal is to stay within the scientific, theoretical, and methodological tradition of the ACF and show how NPF's empirical, hypotheses, and causal driven work on policy narratives identifies theories applicable to ACF research while also offering an independent framework capable of explaining the policy process through the power of policy narratives. In doing so, we believe both ACF and NPF scholarship can contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the policy process.     

在国家叙事与地方叙事之间——英国北约克郡乡村博物馆实践

作为工业化程度较低的非都市郡,英国北约克郡保存着完好的乡村景观和历史建筑。自19世纪,英国便出现乡村生活的博物馆化,在保护乡村景观的同时也致力于收藏、保存乡村记忆。北约克郡乡村博物馆的产生和发展植根于英国社会和文化情境。乡村博物馆实践不仅是国家价值的体现,也是调节社会结构和社会关系的重要机制。在国家话语体系内界定"乡村"的同时,也承担起塑造地方感和地方认同。反观我国乡村博物馆,其实践以20世纪90年代的生态博物馆建设为肇始,秉承对村落景观进行整体性保护的理念。然而,在具体建设中仍然面临激发村落居民文化自觉性,建立有效的运营、管理机制的挑战。     

迈向新世纪的民间叙事研究--第13届国际民间叙事研究会大会综述

国际民间叙事研究会(ISFNR)第十三届大会于2001年7月16日至20日在澳大利亚墨尔本市举行。墨尔本大会是该会40余年历史上第一次在南半球举行的大会,由当地的维多利亚民间生活协会(Victoria Folklife Association)具体组织筹办。墨尔本是世界上最大的多元文化城市之一,在过去的50年里,有来自208个国家和地区、操151种语言的150余万移民定居在墨尔本为首府的维多利亚州,丰富多彩的当地和异域的民俗文化,给参会学者留下了深刻的印象。     

表演理论与民间叙事研究

民间叙事(Folk Narrative),是指在不同集团的人们当中流传的、对一个或一个以上事件的叙述,与一般叙事不同的是,它们主要是通过口头来进行交流(所以有时又被称为“口头叙事”,Oral Narrative),而且往往以众多异文形式存在。民间叙事范围广泛,包含着许多种叙事文类(Genres),其中既包括比较传统的文类,像神话、民间传说、民间故事(狭义)、笑话、史诗、叙事歌谣等等,另外也包括现代日益受到学者们关注的个人叙事(personalnarrative)、都市传说(urbanlegend)、奇闻逸事(anecdote)等。民间叙事不仅一直是民俗学、民间文艺学领域里最受关注的研究内容之一,而且还常常引起诸多文艺学家、人类学家、语言学家、心理学家、历史学家等的浓厚探索兴趣。     

Young People's Narratives of Rural-Urban Difference

Although recent research by geographers interested in children and young people has examined young people's experiences in a range of both 'rural' and 'urban' environments, the significance of narratives of rural-urban difference for young people's identities has received comparatively little attention. This paper draws on theories of narrative identity to explore how narratives of rural-urban difference (and, in particular, the cultural hierarchies created and reinforced by these narratives) are significant for the construction of young people's identities. Using empirical material drawn from two separate studies in the USA, one from a mid-sized Sunbelt city and one from rural northern Vermont, the paper examines ways in which narratives of rural-urban difference are significant for young people's senses of self, processes of 'othering', and the constitution of local youth cultures.     

Narratives of climate change: introduction

This paper introduces a special feature on narratives of climate change, containing papers by Richard Hamblyn, Sverker Sörlin, Michael Bravo and Diana Liverman. The feature reflects the rising cultural profile of climate change in the public sphere, as represented, for example, by Al Gore's documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, and art exhibitions devoted to the subject.     

Pain,Personhood and the Collective: Dalit Life Narratives

Dalit life narratives have gained prominence in the last two decades in line with the increasing visibility of Dalits in the Indian public sphere and their vociferous demands for a more just political and social order. This can be productively situated not just in the contemporary global context of the proliferation of narratives and testimonios of human rights violations in other parts of the world, but also in the context of an emerging conversation on the nature of “Dalit personhood” in the Indian public sphere, a category infinitely more complex than legal subjectivity and abstract citizenship. The Dalit narratives analysed here are rich illustrations of this double movement: they witness on behalf of a suffering community and keep alive the singular, non-universal nature of Dalit pain through an aesthetic that is not wholly translatable into the lexicon of rights and justice. By invoking the historical and rhetorical force of two prose fictional genres, the Bildungsroman and the picaresque, the analysis has sought to recast the testimonio less as a proxy for the legal witnessing and amelioration of Dalit pain than as a rich and expressive medium of Dalit personhood. This way of reading Dalit lives accords India's ex-untouchables a stature beyond that of victims at the mercy of the capricious sentimentality of upper-caste solidarity.     

Forgetting the Past

Based on arguments developed more fully in the author's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (2006), this article urges historians of women and gender to develop a richer appreciation of the distant past. The article uses data from recent conferences and journals to demonstrate that our field is now overly focused on the modern era, and especially the last century. Then, in the spirit of encouraging further discussion and debate, the article lays out some reasons for this contemporary tilt, some ways we might right the balance and some benefits of doing just that.     

Constructing the Past

Ronald L. Grimes. Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. 281 pp. $16.50.     

草原往事

生命,像一首悠扬的歌,每一个音符都是一个细节;又像一条蜿蜒的河,每一朵浪花都是一个故事;更像一棵婆娑的树,每一枚落叶都是一段往事。尽管,我的人生算不上精彩和丰盈,但也有一些经历弥足珍贵,至今记忆犹新。