从秦府集团成员仕进状况看区域文化合流

本文结合南北朝至隋末区域文化合流的背景,考察隋末唐初秦府集团成员的仕进状况,其中包括人才类型、家庭政治背景、个体政治势力来源、进入秦府的渠道、个体政治活动空间,认识了以李世民为核心的秦府政治集团,利用争夺天下之机,逐步拓展政治空间,将各地各类精英人才吸纳到秦府集团里来。在此过程中,李世民集团有意识地编织原北周、北齐、南陈入杨隋政治势力后裔,并用关陇、山东、江左这三大政治文化区域人才所长,将他们化入到同一个文化熔炉里融冶,大大推进了区域文化合流的步伐,在中华民族文化融合史上写下了崭新的篇章。     

南宋临安节日活动的时空结构研究

在城市地理学研究中,由于缺乏有关历史城市物理空间的基础性研究工作及受研究资料所限等原因,关于历史时期的城市居民生活空间方面的研究较少开展。本文选择南宋时期的临安作为城市空间研究对象,在全面梳理相关历史文献记载的基础上,尝试结合目前应用最广泛的功能分区法和时间地理学两种方法,对南宋临安节日活动空间进行剖析,揭示其城市节日活动的时空间结构特征。同时,文章还探讨了城市社会空间的形成机制,提出物理空间奠定了临安节日活动空间的基本格局、都城地位是临安节日活动空间形成的控制因素、城市经济主导了临安节日活动的空间分异过程等结论。     

广东洪兵围攻广州军事舆图考释之三——关于平洲的舆图及其档案

英国国家档案馆庋藏的清代咸丰年间广东洪兵围攻广州中文传统舆图,是蕴含着丰富历史信息的实录档案,尤其在相关文献记载未能存留或叙述不尽详细的情况下,更具有不可替代的史料价值。本文根据中国第一历史档案馆所藏档案及其他文献记载,对编号为F.O.931/1897的平洲舆图及相关文字档案,做了较为具体的考释。     

‘Islands within Islands?’ The Maldivian resort,between segregation and integration

Abstract

The Maldives resort islands are a type of tourist enclave subject to a dual form of borderization. The islands have an external border that coincides with each island’s coastline and with the limits of the private property of the resort; this border regulates the movement of tourists and locals. The islands also have an internal border that separates the outer edge of the island from the inner edge. The outer edge, which is supposed to represent the perfect landscape of the ‘tropical island,’ houses all of the tourist facilities, while the interior contains the structures dedicated to the metabolic activities of the resort. The frontline staff members and the tourists share the ‘dreamscape’ of the outer edge, whereas the maintenance workers live in the secluded space inside the island, where they are typically hidden from the sight of tourists by high walls, and their movement is usually restricted from staff designated areas to their location of work. For maintenance workers, these spaces, necessarily limited due to the small size of the coral islands, risk becoming ‘islands within islands.’ Recently, the Maldivian government has begun to promote projects and initiatives in support of territorial integration between the resorts and communities of neighboring islands. Thus, the outer limits of the resort islands are, today, more porous. Their internal borders, in contrast, remain very difficult to cross.     

China and the “culture and trade” debate: a holistic approach

ABSTRACT

Over the past century, the ‘culture and trade’ debate has constantly evolved, particularly in the wake of rapid and still accelerating technological and scientific advances. These changes, manifest in an increasing convergence of many new technologies and industries, meant that the strict separation of culture from trade by means, for instance, of general or special exceptions in international trade agreements, such as the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the 1988 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), can no longer be sustained. It means that in light of the emergence of oxymoronic concepts like ‘the cultural and creative industries’, the debate can no longer be framed along binary modes of thinking that oppose the liberalization of international trade and the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultures. Instead a more holistic approach seems to be needed, which appears to coincide with the approach taken by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which joined the WTO in 2001. The present paper examines the holistic approach by the PRC, which seeks to combine rather than separate culture and trade in its domestic, regional and global law and policymaking.     

“This Remarkable Piece of Antiquity”: Epic Conventions in Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus; or,Swellfoot the Tyrant

ABSTRACT

Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant has recently begun to gain the concerted attention of critics, who have noted the play’s signature blend of low and high, of ephemeral, late Regency politics with the classic genres of Sophoclean tragedy, Aristophanic comedy, and mock epic. But Austin Warren’s famous and widely accepted definition of mock epic as “not mockery of the epic but elegantly affectionate homage, offered by a writer who finds [the serious epic] irrelevant to his age” does not describe Shelley’s earnest goal of immediate political reform in authoring Swellfoot. Instead, the play evinces Shelley’s unique, conscious reconfiguration of four conventions characteristic of the high, classical epic: the “prosperous breeze”; the epic simile; katabasis or descent into the underworld; and divine intervention. I argue that Shelley’s comic adaptation of these epic conventions reflects his serious aim of helping effect reform through Swellfoot and embodies his absorption of the concept of Shakespeare’s history plays as an experimental hybrid of dramatic forms with epic subjects, gained during his earlier reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Though the immediate suppression of Swellfoot prevented its relevance in its own historical moment, it comprises a singular hybrid of Aristophanic satire and Sophoclean tragedy with high epic conventions, while ironically also identifying Shelley as a proponent of the French neoclassical theory of the epic’s consciously didactic purpose propounded by Le Bossu.     

The cultivation of Communist cadres during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression

During the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made great progress in its cultivation of cadres. The favorable environment of the National United Front made it possible for the CCP to successfully train a large number of cadres with intellectual backgrounds while continuously using and promoting those who came from worker or peasant backgrounds. By so doing, the CCP raised the quality of its cadres. The CCP’s cultivation of its cadres during the War of Resistance was a systematic undertaking, with interrelated and mutually reinforcing components of education, training, examination, criticism, and self-criticism. Based on cadre self-consciousness and training, a regularized yet not rigid process of cadre cultivation was established. During the same period, the CCP also launched a rectification campaign (Zhengfeng yundong) to further unify and transform the Party. This important movement also left a deep mark on the cultivation of Communist cadres.     

Cultural revitalisation after catastrophe: the Qiang culture in A’er

The culture of the Qiang ethnic minority in Western China has been threatened by assimilation with the majority culture, and many Qiang no longer take part in traditional ceremonies or use their cultural skills and knowledge. The devastating 2008 earthquake in Sichuan killed a 10th of the Qiang population and destroyed monuments, houses and villages. The Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Centre (CHP), a citizen volunteer non-governmental organisation, launched a project to help a Qiang village named A’er preserve its intangible and tangible cultural heritage. This paper describes the damage that was done and the needs of the Qiang people in the remote village of A’er, which is generally considered one of the last major repositories of traditional Qiang culture. The A’er people, despite their desperate situation, were determined to save their cultural heritage. The CHP team, working with them, provided necessary instruments and methods for recording. The Qiang people of A’er village themselves decided what they would record and produced an introduction to the A’er Qiang culture named ‘The A’er Archive’ and an elementary conversation booklet over which A’er villagers explicitly maintained copyright.     

The spaces of UK students’ unions: extending the critical geographies of the university campus

This article seeks to further our knowledge of the university campus by focusing on one particular aspect of most UK campuses: the students’ union. UK students’ unions have rarely been the subject of scholarly attention, despite them now occupying an important place within the higher education landscape. Nevertheless, in this paper we draw on a UK-wide study of students’ unions to explore, firstly, the role played by the buildings of the students’ union and, secondly, the ways in which aspects of the university’s campus influence union activity. We pay particular attention to the expansion of the university campus, in many institutions, from a single site to multiple sites, both within the UK and overseas. We contend that a focus on the materiality of the students’ union and the level of union activity (or inactivity) across various campus spaces can illustrate the values, ideologies and power relations that dominate contemporary British higher education.