Abortion law reforms in Colombia and Nicaragua: issue networks and opportunity contexts

This article analyses two instances of abortion law reform in Latin America. In 2006, after a decades-long impasse, the highly controversial issue of abortion came to dominate the political agenda when Colombia liberalized its abortion law and Nicaragua adopted a total ban on abortion. The article analyses the central actors in the reform processes, their strategies and the opportunity contexts. Drawing on Htun's (2003) framework, it examines why these processes concluded with opposing legislative outcomes. The authors argue for the need to understand the state as a non-unitary site of politics and policy, and for judicial processes to be seen as a key variable in facilitating gender policy reforms in Latin America. In addition, they argue that ‘windows of opportunity’ such as the timing of elections can be critically important in legislative change processes.     

Famines past, famine's future

Famine, like poverty, has always been with us. No region and no century has been immune. Its scars — economic, psychological and political — can long outlast its immediate impact on mortality and health. Famines are a hallmark of economic backwardness, and were thus more likely to occur in the pre-industrialized past. Yet the twentieth century suffered some of the most devastating ever recorded. That century also saw shifts in both the causes and symptoms of famine. This new century's famines have been "small" by historical standards, and the threat of major ones seemingly confined to ever-smaller pockets of the globe. Are these shifts a sign of hope for the future?     

Imagining the absent dead: rituals of bereavement and the place of the war dead in German women's art during the First World War

Drawing on women's visual responses to the First World War, this article examines female mourning in wartime Germany. The unprecedented death toll on the battlefronts, military burial practices and the physical distance from the remains of the war dead disrupted traditional rituals of bereavement, hindered closure and compounded women's grief on the home front. In response to these novel circumstances, a number of female artists used their images to reimagine funerary customs, overcome the separation from the fallen and express acute emotional distress. This article analyses three images produced during the conflict by the artists Katharina Heise, Martha Schrag and Sella Hasse, and places their work within the civilian experience of bereavement in war. By depicting the pain of loss, female artists contested the historical tradition of proud female mourning in German society and countered wartime codes of conduct that prohibited the public display of emotional pain in response to soldiers’ deaths. As a largely overlooked body of sources, women's art adds to our understanding of the tensions in wartime cultures of mourning that emerged between 1914 and 1918.     

Urine trouble: a social history of bedwetting and its regulation

Bedwetting has confounded the presumed boundaries of the human body, existing in a fluid space, between the normal and pathological, its treatment has demanded the application of a wide array of different technologies, each based on a distinct conception of the relationship between the body and personality, human organs and personal conduct. In tracing the social history of bedwetting and its regulation, this article examines the ontological assumptions underpinning the treatment of bedwetting and how they have changed over the past two centuries. Through the analysis of medical journals, newspaper articles and magazine advertisements, different topologies are identified which redefine the boundaries of the human body and its capacities. From 16th-century naturalism, in which the human body is subordinated to a cosmic totality, to the circumscribed space of 19th-century paediatrics and the expansive circuits of behavioural psychology and modern psychoanalysis, the body has become multiplied, differently enacted through the application of diverse technologies. It was be shown how coordinating the messy and divergent conceptions of the human body has posed an endemic problem for the human sciences, and how the enduring tension between object enactment and subject constitution is an expression of modern "baroque" subjectivity.     

关于多民族社区发展的思考——以乌鲁木齐市天山区为例

乌鲁木齐是一个多民族聚居的城市,全市每条街道都有少数民族居住。本文通过对乌鲁木齐市天山区这种由多民族居住的社区较多的区为例,探索少数民族聚居社区发展中的问题,对城市多民族社区的和谐构建提出针对性的建议,这样可以为多民族社区的发展提供参考,也可以为民族、社区和城市的共同发展提供有益的借鉴。     

简述在中国发现的拜占庭帝国金币及其仿制品

迄今为止在中国境内已经出土发现了36枚拜占庭帝国金币及其仿制品,这36枚所发现的拜占庭金币及其仿制品都是通过当时的丝绸之路流入,它们是当时东西方商品相互交易流通的必然产物,且根据它们的铸     

怀念同行与朋友刘大年教授

1999年12月28日,在长期患病后,中国名历史学家、中国社会科学院近代史研究所名誉所长、俄罗斯科学院外籍院士刘大年教授的心脏在85岁的时候停止了跳动。     

亚洲北部地区“水珠形”眼睛人面像岩画年代研究

"水珠形"眼睛的人面像岩画主要分布在中国北方、俄罗斯远东以及西伯利亚中南部地区。其产生于中国新石器时代文化早中期,经过若干发展阶段,并在新石器时代晚期向北境扩散。向东到达黑龙江下游和乌苏里江;向西通过外贝加尔、安加拉河到达叶尼塞河中游地区。西线人面像岩画的传播路线表明,在中西方的古代交通中,存在着一条比草原丝绸之路更为古老的森林岩画之路,其存在年代约为新石器时代晚期到铜石并用时代。     

从印度奔逃

一旦回到西方世界——回到那个只把“虚幻”看成抽象观念、而不把它当作一种蚀骨铭心的感受的西方文化中,我就发觉,印度精神悄悄地从我身边溜走了。在我的感觉中,它就像一个我永远无法完整表达、从此再也捕捉不回来的真理。     

史前加拿大安大略考

加拿大安大略省的史前阶段,分为3个时期:古印第安时期(公元前10000[?]～公元前7000年);阿尔凯克时期(Archaic)(公元前7000年～公元前1000年),伍德兰时期(Wood land)(公元前1000年始至与欧洲人接触时为止)。伍德兰时期又依次分为早期(碳—14年代测定为公元前1000年到公元前500年);中期(公元前500年到公元500年);晚期(公元500年到有史时期)。据考证,在最后一次冰期的最末或威斯康星期的某个期间,一些成群的狩猎者穿过联接西伯利亚