Reply to comments on trade,towns and states: A reconsideration of early medieval economics

The aim of this paper is to discuss a specific group of stamped gold foils with human representation from the late Scandinavian Iron Age (AD 550/600–800) from the perspective of size. The article argues that the framed gold foils embed sophisticated and multi-layered transformations that capture and echo basic principles of northern cosmology and belief systems related to Odin as the god for kings and his ability as a seer.     

Prony et babbage: apercus sur l'histoire de la division du travail mental∗

Hobbes and Hume on the imagination can initiate a discussion of empiricism in the 17th and 18th centuries: here, however, it provides the opportunity to focus on Kant's attempt to overcome the limits of their sense originating, naturalist ethics. I argue the general point that Kant's response to his predecessors, both empiricist and non-empiricists, is to modify their focus on nature without falling into skepticism; indeed, his speculative metaphysics also is a response to classical ontological metaphysics. Kant by providing two realms or perspectives, a natural and a noumenal, avoids many difficulties resulting from Hobbes and Hume's starting point in sense leading to imagination and a non-normative reason. Yet, challenged by Herder and the romantics, he uses a sort of residual view of the imagination in relation to the freedom of the noumenal, which results in difficulties for his speculative, noumenal metaphysics.     

El laberinto espacio-temporal en dos relatos de El llano en llamas de Juan Rulfo

The pattern of Latin American Boom criticism developed by Donald L. Shaw established that Juan Rulfo's protagonists are universal, not regional. In this interpretative mode, espoused by Graciela B. Coulson and others, Rulfo's characters are viewed as powerless to alter their own destinies. Humans are dominated and doomed by the hostile natural world that surrounds them. However, through a detailed analysis of Rulfo's technique and the internal and external structure of two of Rulfo's short stories in El llano en llamas—“No oyes ladrar a los perros” and “Es que somos muy pobres”—a new theoretical framework emerges for the study of Rulfo's work. In these two stories, Rulfo imagines the llano as a space that individuals control through their personal choices and actions. This article proposes, therefore, that Rulfo's protagonists are not victims of their environment, but rather the perpetrators of its violence.     

Moses' Cushite Wife echoes Hosea's Woman of Harlotries: Exposure of Unfaithfulness in the Wilderness

ABSTRACT

This paper suggests that Numbers 12 implies that the Cushite woman whom Moses marries is an immoral woman and that Moses' marriage with her is based on an implicit divine command which echoes the one God gives Hosea when exhorting him to marry a woman of harlotries. In both cases God wants the prophetic protagonist to experience infidelity, thus enabling him to experience what God feels like when Israel acts unfaithfully to Him. However, after experiencing the unfaithfulness of the Israelites in the narrative of the scouts Moses himself demonstrates unfaithfulness in Meribah. Moses' inability to respond appropriately to Israel's unfaithfulness at Baal-peor, an incident mentioned in Hos 9,10, reflects his inability to contend with the Israelites in the manner of Hosea.     

川陕古道两“韩溪”考辨

梳理和考辨入蜀古道“金牛道”上和“米仓道”上的两个以“萧何追韩信至此”而得名的“韩溪”,论证“米仓道”上的“韩溪”得名于萧韩故事更接近史实。     

巴基斯坦国家构建进程的多维阐释

现代巴基斯坦的历史线索纷繁复杂,以国家构建的视角对其进行考察是一种可尝试的研究路径。认识巴基斯坦的国家构建进程,需要从三组结构性矛盾切入:一是国家认同与非国家认同的矛盾,二是军人干政倾向与民主诉求的矛盾,三是世俗主义与宗教化的矛盾。三组矛盾可追溯到巴基斯坦国家建立时期乃至更久远的历史,并嵌入巴基斯坦的社会环境和地缘环境之中。每一组矛盾都会对另外两组矛盾造成影响,影响方式可分为"逻辑关联型"和"现实策略型"两类。三组矛盾可分别归纳为国家认同、政体、国体三个维度,它们共同构成巴基斯坦国家构建的立体图景。巴基斯坦的国家构建本质上是一个价值性问题,三组矛盾都是围绕着"把巴基斯坦建成一个什么样的国家"这一命题展开。     

Nationalism and anti-ethno-politics: why ‘Chinese Development’ failed at Myanmar’s Myitsone Dam

In 2011, the Burmese military-backed government stunned global audiences by unilaterally suspending the construction of the Myitsone Dam, the cornerstone of China’s largest hydropower project abroad. This prominent failure of China’s “Going Out” investment strategy reverberated globally. Both Western and Chinese accounts frame the event as a pivotal moment in Myanmar’s celebrated reform process, the cooling of China–Myanmar relations, and US–China geopolitical rivalry in the Asia-Pacific. However, my ethnographic field and media research from 2010 to 2015 reveals that the mega-project’s failure does not originally stem from inter-state geopolitics or contested economics and ecology. Through chronological narration, I show how the Myitsone Dam is primarily the casualty of a distinctly ethno-political causality, whereby three nationalisms clashed and the replication of China’s “anti-ethno-political” model of development failed. Though no monolithic Chinese state directs “Chinese Development” overseas, individual Chinese entrepreneurs nonetheless draw from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) anti-political and state-centric paradigm when facing foreign social worlds. In the particular case of Myitsone, Chinese proponents drew from PRC’s state-nationalist heuristics of “national minorities and state-led development” and “Western anti-China conspiracy,” when facing Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin and Burman nationalisms. State ideological subjectivities of these developers seemed to blind them to the weakness in their own anti-ethno-political strategies, even when those collapsed publicly. I conclude that the Myitsone Dam’s construction will likely not be restarted, despite the hydropower company’s efforts. The Myitsone case also exemplifies how China’s previous historical entanglements in its neighboring regions uniquely disrupt the progress of “Going-Out” in Asia.     

“闯关东”精神的文化内涵及其价值

"闯关东"精神孕育于长达三百年之久的"闯关东"运动中,是中国东北地域文化的重要组成部分,是中华民族精神文化中不可或缺的宝贵财富。自强不息的抗争精神、艰苦奋斗的拼搏精神、自力更生的创业精神、携手并进的民族精神构成了"闯关东"精神丰富的文化内涵,具有极其珍贵的历史价值和现实意义。     

West European Countries and Their Foreign Policy in the Views of the Russian Liberals of Mid-to-Late Nineteenth Century

The article analyses the perception of the mid-to-late nineteenth-century Russian liberals of the West European states and their foreign policy of the time towards Russia. The article discloses the main features and differences in assessing the West and Russia as its part. It allows to reveal such features in Russian liberalism as common provisions and values typical of world liberal theory and a number of special features which resulted in developing different schools of liberal movement in Russia. The article underlines that the range of liberal ideas varied from selective borrowing of some elements of the western political system to their complete adaptation in Russia. The article focuses on the opinion of a number of national-oriented Russian liberals of the time who put forward a priority task to modernize the country, to implement liberal reforms, but not to strengthen its foreign policy power which, according to them, prevents improving well-being of the people and social stabilization.

The study allows to define a main vector of the ideological pursuit of the Russian liberals, the part of whom tried to enroot the liberal ideas in the backward peasant country.