The Indo‐European mirror: Monotheism and polytheism (J.G. Herder,E. Renan,A. Pictet,F.M. Müller and R.F. Grau)

Some authors assigned the Indo‐Europeans a mirror‐like role which allowed them to understand their own position with respect to contemporary Christian values. After dealing briefly with the writings of J.G. Herder, I shall evoke a certain number of questions which oriented the research of E. Renan, F.M. Müller, A. Pictet and R.F. Grau. The works of the latter authors expounded fabulous genealogies, organizing them into explanatory systems that radically opposed Hebrew monotheists to Indo‐European polytheists. Thus, depending on whether they had used the Semites or the Indo‐Europeans as their starting‐point, they concluded that monotheism or polytheism, respectively, was the archaic source of human thought. The goal on their horizon was a ressuscitated West, forever in the forefront of progress, often simultaneously Christian and scientific. If this type of historiographic analysis is urgently needed at the present time, its purpose is not to provide a grid for distinguishing “truth”; from “falsehood,”; but rather to grasp a set of scholarly traditions within its own channels of transmission.     

Notions in Nationalism

Abstract. The French Revolution and the Romantic Movement subscribed to a common objective, the reintegration of a fractured society. That required establishing the peculiar identity of each nation, its origins and extent – all defined in cultural and psychological rather than, as hitherto, in juridical terms. This shift turned nationalism into a system and in doing so conferred new meanings on the vocabulary of politics. Derived from philosophers and philologists, the changes were conveyed to the people at large by historians through the educational system. They thus fixed the meanings in the public consciousness and underwrote the legitimacy of the national mission.     

EXURBANIZATION AS A COMPONENT OF MIGRATION: A CASE STUDY IN OXFORD COUNTY, ONTARIO

In this paper exurbanization is regarded as a process involving the movement of a household from an urban area to another location beyond the contiguously built-up urban region but within its extensive commuting field. The primary definitive feature is that one or more persons within the household retains regular employment ties with the urban area. Although various influences on the inter-and intra-urban migration of households have been considered extensively in the migration literature (Clark 1982), exurbanization has yet to be placed in the context of this literature and examined with similar rigour. The issue, to paraphrase Rossi and Shlay (1982), is not just why households move, but why they choose to move where they do - that is, why have some become exurbanite households?     

International Heritage Tourism in Rwanda: Paving Over the Past at the Musanze Caves

Through a case study of the Musanze Caves, this paper describes the impact of Rwanda’s heritage tourism industry on archaeological resources. The paper outlines Rwanda’s tourism industry and describes how it privileges ‘natural heritage’ above ‘cultural heritage’, a situation which is negatively impacting upon archaeological sites such as the Musanze Caves. To create the Musanze Caves tourism experience there has been significant non-archaeological excavation and construction in the caves, which has damaged regionally significant archaeological remains that date from 1000 CE to the present. Furthermore, the Musanze Caves tourism experience does not incorporate extant archaeological information into the presented narrative, which is instead based on ‘natural heritage’ and adventure tourism. This situation is damaging rare resources that might help construct new historical narratives to replace untenable colonial and pre-genocide ones, and is generally unhelpful in communicating the knowledge that we do have about the region’s history.     

Narrativisme et philosophie spéculative de l’histoire

Over the last few decades, such important philosophers as Walter B. Gallie, Arthur Danto, Louis Mink, Hayden White and Paul Ric?ur have drawn attention to the role of narrative in history. After evoking the theses of these authors, this paper pays special attention to the works of David Carr which contend that historical action as such has a narrative structure. The paper discusses the consequences of such a «narrativism» and takes sides in the debate on this question which has been waged in part by William Dray and Noël Carroll. It is claimed that a «realistic» thesis on these matters might tend to generate the revival of a kind of speculative philosophy of history, which naturally would raise various questions concerning both political and historical analysis.