The Economic Degeneration of Masculinity in Rafael Chirbes's En la orilla

Rafael Chirbes's En la orilla has been proclaimed as “la novela de la crisis,” and it has garnered an impressive amount of distinction in the short length of time since its publication in May 2013. It was voted the 2013 novel of the year by readers of El País, and in January 2014 it won the Premio Francisco Umbral, as well as reaching its fifth edition. Unsparingly critical, En la orilla forms an integral part of the cultural requestioning of social values in the wake of the Spanish crisis, “la literatura de la crisis,” which stresses the human and material consequences of the suspension of human values stemming from the social endorsement of market imperialism. En la orilla thematizes the corrosion of moral character during Spain's economic boom, in its multiple forms, such as selfishness, disregard for the elderly, and arrant mercenariness, while also fictionalizing neoliberal Spain's exclusion of immigrants and the poor. Integral to Chiribes's historically contextualized critique of the recession, and the object of my study, is a perceptive vision of the historical degeneration of masculinity from the Second Republic, 1931–1936, to the present day. This article will first provide a brief overview of “la literatura de la crisis,” while the second part illumines the economic and ideological distortion of the father–son relationship in this novel.     

闽台财政改革与各方权力纠葛--雍正朝台湾县知县周钟蠧案解析

雍正三年,台湾县知县周钟蠧被控贪污,由于牵涉到闽台财政改革的大背景,此案引起了雍正皇帝的高度关注,并演变为震动闽台官场的一桩大案,涉案人等都被卷入了皇权与地方官员博弈的大漩涡。案件的审理过程,伴随着闽台财政改革的全过程,从清查仓谷亏空,到耗羡归公和养廉银制度化的最终完成。透过考察周钟蠧案,闽台地区财政改革的过程得以完整呈现。在皇权的强势施压下,闽省官员提出的耗羡归公方案显得仓促而草率。     

甲午战争前后东亚海权与海防的较量及其影响

一场甲午战争,使东亚海权格局剧变,由此构成中日两国命运变化的历史拐点。战前,中日两国面对西方殖民扩张的相同遭遇,展开了近30年的海军现代化建设,并在互为敌手的竞争中日益凸显于以英国为主导的东亚海权格局之中。然而,不同的战略选择决定了不同的命运,甲午战争用血与火诠释了海权与海防的本质区别及其决定性影响。正因为战败后的中国已完全置身于东亚海权格局之外,再次陷入有海无防的境地,导致海权得以坐大的日本推行"大陆政策"更加有恃无恐,在列强瓜分中国的狂潮中走上独霸东亚之路。     

1900年上海及江南的恐慌--兼论“东南互保”的社会氛围

义和团运动时期的北方战事,给包括租界在内的上海及江南民众日常经济生活带来巨大恐慌。身处纷乱的惊惧不安和经济萧条的切实威胁,社会各界普遍企望北方战事早日平息,不致蔓延到南方,这种社会心理氛围,是"东南互保"得以产生和推行的重要原因。     

The case of Asialink’s arts residency program: towards a critical cosmopolitan approach to cultural diplomacy

This paper explores the ways in which one of Australia’s cultural diplomacy initiatives aimed at bringing Australia closer to Asia – the Asialink Arts Residency Program – may provide valuable insights for reimagining cultural diplomacy with a revised understanding of the national interest that reflects the increasingly transnational realities of the contemporary world. Drawing on extensive data gained from interviews and an online survey, the author found that program participants are engaging in exceptionally complex and at times unintended activities, and that policy concerns, such as positive image projection abroad, are rarely high on the residents’ list of priorities. However, these experiences are of particular value for the national interest, in ways not yet formulated by or included in existing cultural diplomacy discourses. With the findings in mind, the author takes a critical cosmopolitan approach to reconceptualising cultural diplomacy.     

China’s Evolving Policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under Xi Jinping

Despite international pressure to condemn North Korea (DPRK), China’s successive leaderships have dealt carefully with Pyongyang, especially vis-à-vis its nuclear weapons program. This moderate stance reflects the two countries’ decades-long relationship, summarised in the Chinese idiom that Pyongyang and Beijing are “as close as lips and teeth”. Nevertheless, the DPRK’s third nuclear test in February 2013 raised enormous challenges for the new Xi Jinping leadership to maintain the previous DPRK policy focused on the status quo and stability on the Korean Peninsula. China’s attitudes and policies towards the DPRK after the provocative third test signified a possible reorientation of Beijing’s DPRK policy. This generated repercussions in the countries concerned and prompted debates among experts. This article asks how these events should be understood and what their implications are for the Xi leadership’s policy on the DPRK, the stability of the Korean Peninsula, and Northeast Asia. Given China’s competitive relations with other major powers, we conclude that the Xi leadership will not abandon the DPRK; indeed it will reinforce the policy of strengthening China’s influence over it. Nonetheless one aspect of doing so will involve China opening up to other – cooperative, multilateral – approaches to reinforcing stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.     

Whatever Happened to the Mother? A New Look at the Old Problem of the Mother's Brother in Three New Guinea Societies: Gimi,Daribi, and Iatmul

Kinship systems cannot be analysed as straightforward translations of the ‘facts of nature’ when those facts are limited to the production of a child by a heterosexual couple. Based upon analyses of three New Guinea societies (Gimi, Daribi, and Iatmul), I suggest that kinship systems take account – often by denying – certain ‘facts’ of human reproduction when those facts are extended beyond coitus and parturition to include both the very long period of infantile dependence upon one significant caregiver (always the mother in the societies in question and nearly universally) and the subsequent requirement for the child to be extracted from a dyadic maternal universe. Separation from mother is as critical to the survival and development of the individual as is the original prolonged and intense attachment to her. The question, then, is not whether indigenous peoples accurately understand coitus and conception – they do – but rather the ways in which they manipulate that knowledge in rules and rites of kinship in order to manage the growth and development of a child long after parturition. Rules of kinship and social relations neither ignore nor exist apart from theories of procreation as many anthropologists now claim. Rather, it is precisely because theories of procreation indicate and idealise the flow of bodily substance during coitus and pregnancy that they serve as organisational premises for social relations. The fact that kinship is a symbolic construction does not mean that it is wholly ideological nor, like a language, free to vary in ways that are arbitrary and unconnected to the ‘facts of life’ as Westerners understand them. Even when interlocutors openly deny such understanding and knowledge, especially of the male role in coitus and conception, evidence to the contrary is abundantly provided in myth, ritual, and indigenous theories of procreation. What kinship systems often do show, however, is a strategic denial of the role of the mother who, upon deeper understanding of indigenous concepts of procreation, turns out to be a ‘sterile vessel’ or without substantial contribution to her child. I illustrate this premise by extending earlier analyses of Gimi kinship and reexamining certain materials on neighbouring Daribi provided by Roy Wagner and on Iatmul peoples of the Sepik River as originally described in Naven by Gregory Bateson eighty years ago.     

维新之艰难兮，公缔其始--纪念李端棻上《请推广学校折》一百二十周年

1896年,李端棻上《推广学校折》,面对当时我国“时事多艰,需才孔亟”的现状,通观全局,统筹兼顾,进行了切中时弊的分析,主张“自京师以及各省府州县皆设学堂”;提出了一整套富有革新意义而又切实可行的发展新教育的方案,而且为光绪帝采纳,成为戊戌维新的主要内容之一,并较快地付诸实行,推动了我国教育走向近代化。     

The Future of Utopia

The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society’s future is secular is in need of serious reconsideration. This paper argues that religion does not melt away but rather morphs into modern forms of aspiration, speculation, and contention. Religion is therefore crucial to social inquiry into the nature of the urban. The paper argues that in Asia the Christian modern is close to the secular modern with fragments of rational planning and calculation in constant interplay with fragments of the magic of speculative modernity. Both communism and market capitalism are ideological cousins of Christian millenarianism. In a comparison of India, China, and Singapore it argues that the Christian form of modernity has been much better able to penetrate and coalesce with Sinic civilizational traditions than with Indic civilizational traditions.