新文化史、微观史和大众文化史——西方有关成果及其对中国史研究的影响

西方史学界正在发生着一个转向,新文化史、微观史、大众文化史研究的发展便是这个转向的重要标志之一.这个演讲将就这个转向的重要成果进行简要的介绍,并评述其对中国史研究的影响.演讲分四个部分,首先介绍西方新文化史和微观史学;然后概述中国史研究的有关成果;第三部分以我自己最近的研究课题为例,来看目前西方史学的这个新趋势对我自己学术发展的影响;最后,我还将就新文化史、微观史、大众文化史研究与中国史研究的若干问题提出我的一些思考.     

Banal and everyday (inter)nationalism: French and Italian anarchist exiles in London, 1870s–1914

This article explores the anarchists' multilayered theoretical and practical engagement with the concepts and performance of nations, nationalism and national belonging, by applying the frameworks of banal nationalism (understood as an ideology) and everyday nationhood (the daily practices in which nation and nationhood are enacted) as analytical categories, to investigate the Italian and French anarchist exile groups in London between 1870 and 1914. Adopting these theoretical categories proves fruitful in probing the anarchists' perception and enactment of the idea of nation and national belonging, contributing to the literature on the relationship between pre-1914 socialist movements and (inter)nationalism and highlighting the specificity of anarchism therein. Using Fox and Miller-Idriss's four categories of everyday nationhood, we show that while the anarchists explicitly subverted the everyday performance of nationhood, redeploying it along internationalist lines, some forms of attachment to the national did endure and were in fact not always contradictory with anarchist internationalism. Looking at the exilic rituals of this intensely diasporic group thus complicates the simplistic but still pervasive view of a monolithic ideological internationalism and rejection of the national on the part of anarchists.     

The site of Al-Qurainiyah: Topography and phases of an early Islamic coastal settlement on Failaka Island

This paper presents the latest finds from the early Islamic site of Al-Qurainiyah on Failaka Island, Kuwait. Trenches opened to the west of the main late Islamic village led to the identification of residential buildings and a workshop located along the shoreline, while the pottery assemblage suggests a permanent occupation from at least the seventh century CE to the early ninth century CE. The last two years of excavations allowed us to uncover archaeological contexts that seem to indicate a previous occupation, dating to the late Hellenistic period (second century BC). The long-term occupation, strategic position of the settlement facing a wide and well-sheltered lagoon, as well as the installation of a stable settlement in the same period of Al-Qusur—the main early Islamic site of the island—seem to suggest the interpretation of Al-Qurainiyah as a landing place used both in the early Islamic period and beforehand.     

民国时期甘肃民勤传统水利秩序的瓦解与“恢复”

本文以清代民国时期民勤"渠坝"关系为切入点,以数起"水案"为主线,复原了1920-1949年民勤传统水利秩序的转折过程。20世纪20-30年代,民勤传统"渠坝"体制已经因内部的"湖坝斗争""移丘户"问题而濒于瓦解,传统水规形同虚设,水利处于失序状态。1944-1949年国民政府和民勤地方政府试图建立政府主导的新型农田水利体系,促进农业发展。但这一过程未能解决"湖坝"对立与"移丘户"问题,当地民众重拾"传统水规"对抗这些新的水利政策,被重新强化的传统"水规"沿用至20世纪50年代。民国时期在河西走廊的水利建设缺乏改造传统水利秩序的针对性措施,政府力量仅依靠工程技术无法实现现代农田水利体系的建立,也难以真正提升区域经济。     

GOVERNMENT QUALITY AND THE ECONOMIC RETURNS OF TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT IN EUROPEAN REGIONS

Transport infrastructure investment is a cornerstone of growth‐promoting strategies. However, the link between infrastructure investment and economic performance remains unclear. This may be a consequence of overlooking the role of government institutions. This paper assesses the connection between regional quality of government and the returns of different types of road infrastructure in the regions of the European Union. The results unveil the influence of regional quality of government on the economic returns of transport infrastructure. In weak institutional contexts, investment in motorways—the preferred option by governments—yields significantly lower returns than the more humble secondary road. Government institutions also affect the returns of transport maintenance investment.     

Subjectification in Times of Indebtedness and Neoliberal/Austerity Urbanism

How can we analyse the (re)emergence of squatting in relation to the current housing crisis in Italy? Centred on the case of Rome, the paper theorizes this return as resulting from processes of subjectification in the housing sector linked to the raising of indebtedness as a main dispositif of capitalism under neoliberal/austerity urbanism agendas. The political economy‐oriented literature on neoliberal/austerity urbanism is bridged with the post‐Marxist approach of Maurizio Lazzarato. Debt is seen as the archetype of social relations, shaping and controlling subjectivities, making the “work on yourself” essential to the reproduction of (indebted) society. However, given the circular nature of power, indebtedness can be generative of new processes of subjectification aimed at subverting the same power relation. In this sense, the paper operationalizes the conceptualization of Foucauldian subjectification recently proposed by Judith Revel, emphasizing how subjectification always results from (1) an action/gesture and (2) a consequent deconstruction of the identity.     

Archaeometric Study of Volcanic Lithic Objects from The Longola (Poggiomarino) Protohistoric Site,Southern Italy: Regional Versus Extra‐Regional Provenance

The Longola protohistoric village (spanning from the late Middle Bronze Age to the sixth century bc ) is a perifluvial settlement located in the Sarno River floodplain to the north‐east of Pompeii (southern Italy) and east of the Somma‐Vesuvius volcano. A great abundance of artefacts have been found at Longola and in the neighbouring areas, including a variety of volcanic stone objects, mainly related to building and to the manufacture of ordinary tools and instruments. The aim of our work is to characterize lithic objects (lava pebbles and millstones) and to understand their geological provenance by petrographic and geochemical studies. Compositions of millstone samples (porphyritic phonolitic tephrites) and of a set of pebbles (mainly phonolitic tephrites, leucite–shoshonites and trachytes) are compatible with the Somma‐Vesuvius magmas erupted before 8 ka bp . For the trachyte lithics, an additional source from the Accademia lava dome (Phlegrean Fields) cannot be ruled out. Among the pebble samples, a rhyolite and a poorly evolved trachyte clearly lie outside the compositional variation of the Somma‐Vesuvius and other volcanoes of the Naples area (e.g., Ischia and the Phlegrean Fields) and emphasize an extra‐regional provenance. Ponza Island is the best candidate for the provenance of the above two outlier samples.     

Microstoria,Pacific History,and the Question of Scale: Two or Three Things That We Should Know About Them

This article is prompted by the recent debate on the so-called crisis in the humanities, and the related call for historians to change direction by returning to history of the longue durée. While pointing out that the ‘crisis’ is more influenced by the changing political economy of the tertiary education sector than by specific historiographical practices, I suggest that small-scale analysis remains compatible with global history approaches. Articulating a parallel examination of Pacific historiography and the Italian variant of microhistory, the article argues that the latter provides fertile stimuli for Pacific history. In particular, I maintain that integrating social analysis can serve to counterbalance the over-emphasis on cultural aspects found in much Pacific historiography.