Pursuing Moral Governance

A millennium ago in Northern Song (960–1127) China, Emperor Huizong initiated the “Eight Virtues of Conduct” in order to recruit morally upright officials. In place of the candidates’ skills in literary composition and understanding of the Confucian classics, this scheme adopted candidates’ moral virtues as their major criterion of selection. This paper analyzes how this scheme was implemented. It also shows that the rejection of certain genuinely virtuous nominees and the recruitment of some candidates who had exhibited objectionable conduct somehow compromised the emperor’s ideal. This analysis is followed by a discussion of the political and social implications of the scheme. Instead of perceiving this promotion channel as a means for Huizong and Chief Councilor Cai Jing to eliminate dissidents and install ideological conformity, the author argues that the scheme was an initiative of the emperor to counter the chief councilor’s dominance and alleviate factional conflicts. The final section examines the extent to which this scheme facilitated social mobility in the Song dynasty.     

Appeasing the Spirits Along the ‘Highway of Horror’: Civic Life in Wartime Republic of Vietnam

During the Easter Offensive hundreds of Republic of Vietnam soldiers and civilians were killed while fleeing Qu?ng Tr? city along Highway One, earning this stretch of the road the name ‘the Highway of Horrors’ [??i L? Kinh Hoàng]. This article examines this understudied event and the efforts of ordinary people, particularly the staff of the daily newspaper Sóng Th?n, to collect and bury the corpses left on the highway. In focusing on this humanitarian endeavour, it highlights the spiritual consequences of mass death, people’s agency in countering the violence of the Vietnam War, and the dynamism of South Vietnam’s civil society.     

International intangible cultural heritage policy in the neighbourhood: an assessment and case study of Indonesia

UNESCO’s heritage policies are one of the most extensive global drivers of landscape and cultural transformation and investment. In response to complaints about Western and object-focussed bias in World Heritage, a push within UNESCO generated a new convention and a new category of heritage: intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Maligned by academic critics, it has nonetheless been an incredibly widespread program internationally with over 170 states signed up to its convention and subject to its obligations. This article provides an assessment of the geographical reach and impact of UNESCO’s ICH program, and, through a case study in Indonesia, analysis of its most successful (according to the Indonesian Directorate of Culture) program for the production of batik cloth. Through the case study, I assess the impact of the ICH policy in Indonesia at different levels and for different groups, the scales it has enabled, and its impact on historical batik landscapes.     

“But He Could Not Warm Himself”: Sexual Innuendo and the Place of 1 Kgs 1,1-4

Springing off recent articles by Richard Hess and Russell Meek, this essay argues for the collaboration of vv. 1b and 4 to suggest that 1 Kgs 1,1-4 is concerned with discussing David’s impotency. In light of this physiological development, David’s attendants embarked on a search for a virgin. The Sumerian folktale “The Old Man and the Young Girl” may provide illumination for such an endeavor as it testifies to a perception that young women could rejuvenate impotent men. As for Adonijah’s pursuit of the throne, one can interpret a causative, albeit it implicit, relationship between 1,1-4 and vv. 5ff. David’s impotence rendered him unable to fulfill certain diplomatic duties, which had been a hallmark of his reign and rise to power. Such a development cast a shadow over the future of the administration, and ultimately, these four verses establish a sense of irony that will be revisited periodically throughout the history.     

New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the ‘new’ and the ‘regional’

Turkey’s regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.     

Towards a molecular agenda for the Left

In his talk, communications scholar and cultural critic Alejandro Kaufman analyses some of the contradictions in which the Latin American progressive projects became entangled in a context dominated by the ‘happy totalitarianism’ of consumption and the spectacle as a seemingly irreducible contemporary order of being on a global scale. The great challenge for the Left, he suggests, is to move away from a representationalist paradigm of the struggle for power and towards a politics of molecular interventions on the level of lived experience.     

Introduction: not a normal election: roots and consequences

The March 2018 Italian general elections can be described as a historic turning point, another watershed moment in the turbulent history of contemporary Italian politics. After a stormy and complex legislative term, characterized by a variety of institutional and political phenomena, Italy has faced one of the most important electoral challenges since the return of democracy in the mid-1940s. After examining the major political events that led to the latest general elections, this introductory article presents and analyses the rules, the actors and the outcomes of the electoral contest that has seen the victory of two anti-establishment parties: the Five Star Movement and the League. In the concluding section, the article discusses the potential tensions that may emerge from the clash between the populist attitude of the new governing parties and the constitutional constraints of a liberal democratic regime.     

Living on the Edge? Transformation of a Marginal Pleistocene Landscape Into a Settlement Area in the Northeastern Part of the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

This paper will examine settlement location during the Iron Age in the northeast part of the Netherlands, an area shaped by Pleistocene geology. In recent years, a number of Late Iron Age/Early Roman settlements situated on the low lying slopes of sand ridges and nearby stream ridges revealed traces of an earlier Iron Age occupation. Palynological data revealed that this part of the landscape was used by humans before it was transformed into an area of settlement. An analysis of excavation data from two key sites at Denekamp-De Borchert and Groningen-Helpermaar, as well as other known sites, lead to the conclusion that the transformation of ‘peripheral landscapes’ into permanent settlement locations was preceded by a phase of arable cultivation which left no trace of permanent habitation. It is also suggested that the impact of human behaviour on the natural landscape in the Early and Middle Iron Age was much bigger than previously anticipated. When excavating this type of settlement areas dating to the Late Iron Age, archaeologists must be aware that only of a small group of archaeological features exist. The proposed model for the choice of settlement location may be more widespread, because of similarities in landscape between the study area presented here and other landscapes in Northwest-Europe (e.g. parts of Germany and Denmark).