The ambiguity of reason

Levine, Donald N. The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. x + 248 pp. including figures, appendix, references, and index. $25.00 cloth.

Overing, Joanna, ed. Reason and Morality. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985. viii + 277 pp. including figures, chapter references and notes, name indèx, and subject index. $35.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.

Sperber, Dan. On Anthropological Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. viii + 107 pp. including notes, references, and index. $24.95 cloth; $8.95 paper.     

Rules to Live By: Agenda Control and the Partisan Use of Special Rules in the House

A great deal of research in the 1990s was devoted to exploring the consequences of the ceding of greater agenda control to the majority leadership in the House during the era of Democratic control. The intent of this article is to build on that earlier work to discuss the continuing consequences of strengthened parties for decision making from the 1990s onward. Specifically, we find that as the parties became increasingly homogenous over time, partisan conflict over special rules votes grew as well. After the 1970s reforms, with the Democratic majority more homogeneous and the leadership having more influence over committees, the content of legislation coming out of committees became steadily more satisfactory to the majority (and less so to the minority) over time. These expectations did not change with the advent of a Republican majority, and the subsequent results did not change either. The Gingrich and Hastert speakerships continued the trend of increasing levels of partisanship on rules votes and majority control of satisfactory committee outcomes. We also find that a switch back to Democratic control in 2006, did not lead to lower levels of partisanship. The data suggest that Democrats were just as successful, if not more so, in using rules to control the legislative agenda during the 110th Congress as the Republicans were in the 109th.     

1920年代旅苏华侨的悲惨遭遇及其原因

1920年代,苏联国家新立,财政经济极其困难.掠夺华侨财产成为苏联地方政府解决财政困难的重要手段之一.其主要手段包括以莫须有的罪名诈取华侨财产、发行毫无价值之公债、征收苛捐杂税以及使用各种行政手段直接没收财产.旅俄华侨受虐待的主要原因包括俄国社会传统的“黄祸”思维的影响、苏联政府处理涉侨事务的新思维以及旅苏侨界根深蒂固的矛盾.在这些因素的影响下,旅苏侨界被苏联政府“以华制华”的策略所压制,逐渐走向衰落.     

Benjamin Constant and the politics of reason

This paper makes a claim about Constant’s intellectual sources in order to throw additional light on the nature of his liberalism. It assesses Constant’s views against the background of a tradition of political rationalism. Constant both criticized and inherited that tradition. This paper shows how this process of critical re-appropriation occurred principally with two figures that had a particular significance for Constant: the very Francophile William Godwin and Nicolas de Condorcet. Constant resisted these authors’ desire to replace a consent-based decision-making model by a truth-based decision-making model, and condemned their tendency to enrol individual judgment at the service of a politics of truth. At the same time, Constant did not renounce completely to their dream of bringing certainty into politics. As this double-move shows, it is not clear to what extent Constant succeeded in distancing himself from this tradition of political rationalism in order to establish what I call a rationalist liberalism. This problematic intellectual lineage not only challenges received interpretations of Constant’s liberalism either in terms of ‘scepticism’ or ‘pluralism.’ It should also invite us to reconsider the widespread idea according to which the French liberal tradition had a common and exclusive source in Montesquieu.     

Evolutionary Biology and Human Nature: The Archaeology of Epigenetic Rules

MacNeish, Richards., Angel Garcia Cook, Luis G. Lumbreras, Robert K. Vierra, and Antoinette Nelkin‐Terner. The Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin, Peru: Excavations and Chronology. Volume II. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. xii + 279 pp. including figures, graphs, tables, references, index. $45.00 cloth.

MacNeish, Richard S., Robert K. Vierra, Antoinette Nelkin‐Temer, and Carl J. Phagan. The Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin, Peru: Nonceramic Artifacts. Volume III. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980. xii + 344 pp. including figures, graphs, tables, references, index. $45.00 cloth.

MacNeish, Richard S., Robert K. Vierra, Antoinette Nelkin‐Terner, Rochelle Lurie, and Angel Garcia Cook. The Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin, Peru: The Preceramic Way of Life. Volume IV. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983. x + 288 pp. including figures, graphs, tables, references, index. $45.00 cloth.     

Public-making in a pandemic: The role of street art in East African countries

Street artists around the world have been prominent in depicting issues concerning COVID-19, but the role of street art in public-making during the pandemic is unexplored. Despite burgeoning street art scenes in many African countries since the early 2000s, African street art is relatively neglected in critical street art scholarship. In response, this paper examines street art created during the pandemic in East African countries, principally Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, and explores the ways in which it is engaged in highly distinctive forms of public-making. Drawing primarily on qualitative online interviews with East African artists creating street art, and image analysis using online search tools, the paper argues that street art in urban areas is attempting to create knowledgeable publics through countering disinformation about the pandemic, to responsiblize publics through public health messaging and, through community activism, to build resilient publics. The paper concludes that street art is potentially an important tool in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic in East African countries due to the proximity, and mutual constitution of, creative practices and publics, which emerge from the embedding of street art within the social spaces of cities and everyday experiences of the pandemic.     

《桃花源记》以桃命篇论

陶渊明诗文喜用菊、松、柳等托物寄情,然在《桃花源记》一文中,却为何舍熟就辟,取桃与桃花意象来命题立意？对此,学术界讨论较少。本文将从民俗信仰和文学的比兴手法两大角度来讨论该问题。