Book review

Deborah Stevenson, Art and Organization: Making Australian Cultural Policy (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000) × + 213 pp, AUS$ 32.79     

Jerusalem 720-705 BCE. No Flood of Israelite Refugees

ABSTRACT

Beside the use of ???? in the priestly and poetic material of the Hebrew Bible the term appears several times in First Isaiah. While priestly authors used (verb and noun) only in reference to God as elementary part of his revelation, the meaning in Isa 1-10 and 13-23 differs frequently. ???? ap-pears with regard to God, persons and objects. in Isa 6; 8 and 10,5-34 the term names a phenomenon which is equivalent to the Mesopotamian melammu ?arruti. In Isa 5 and 10,1-4 it is used as expression for the visible image of a person or a nation. Finally in Isa 4,2-6 and 11,10-16 it represents mount Zion as place of God's revelation. Insofar the results of the motif critical investigation approves former redaction critical studies. In contrast to this in Isa 13-23 the term has an almost consistent meaning. In Isaiah's words to the nations it is used for the nation's actual condition and qualifies the situation as good or bad.     

Pascalian Suite. Elements of an Apologia

Abstract

This article considers the thought of Claude Lefort as a response to Leo Strauss. It compares their views on the task of political philosophy as such, and on its specific relation to modernity, religion, and democracy. For Strauss, the revival of political philosophy under modern conditions requires a return to its ancient roots. While Lefort agrees that such a restoration is necessary, he argues that this requires a departure from ancient thought: political philosophy must recognize modern democracy as a new kind of regime, independent of theologico-political norms.     

Réseaux huguenots et espace Européen (XVIe–XXIe siècle)

Among the examples of the «principle of circulation» in European space, the Huguenot phenomenon is one of the most significant cases, by its duration, four centuries, its scale and the diversity of its expressions. It begins as early as the XVI^th century with the persecution of the first French Protestants who start emigrating to Holland, confirms its dimension after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685: 200,000 French Protestants take refuge mainly in Switzerland, in the United Provinces, in the British Isles and in Protestant Germany, continuing to have connections with their co-religionists who remained inside the French Kingdom. Throughout the XVIII^th century, three networks, religious, cultural and economic, in constant interaction without superimposing themselves, define a Huguenot circularity which marks European space. During the XIX^th-century nationalisms, this circularity strongly weakens without completely disappearing, in particular among the French Huguenots. From World War II on, a reactivation based on memory occurs, which leads in France the Huguenot areas to receive many of Nazism's victims, then facilitates religious and cultural exchanges between Huguenots from France and from the «Refuge».     

The triangular model as an instrument for visualising and analysing residuality

Over the last thirty years, residuality has developed into a major research topic in archaeology. In these studies, several ways of visualising residuality have been proposed, facilitating the analyses of archaeological contexts. These all started from linear temporal concepts, though. In the present article, a new approach is proposed, which makes use of an extra dimension. This enables the inclusion of extra variables and, hence, a more balanced analysis of the contexts through their graphic representations. Archaeological contexts from recent excavations in Carthage are used to illustrate the potentials of the model and its application in the archaeological practise.     

The Political Ecology of Transition in Cambodia 1989–1999: War,Peace and Forest Exploitation

Over the last decade, forests have played an important role in the transition from war to peace in Cambodia. Forest exploitation financed the continuation of war beyond the Cold War and regional dynamics, yet it also stimulated co‐operation between conflicting parties. Timber represented a key stake in the rapacious transition from the (benign) socialism of the post‐Khmer Rouge period to (exclusionary) capitalism, thereby becoming the most politicized resource of a reconstruction process that has failed to be either as green or as democratic as the international community had hoped. This article explores the social networks and power politics shaping forest exploitation, with the aim of casting light on the politics of transition. It also scrutinizes the unintended consequences of the international community’s discourse of democracy, good governance, and sustainable development on forest access rights. The commodification of Cambodian forests is interpreted as a process of transforming nature into money through a political ecology of transition that legitimates an exclusionary form of capitalism.