RETHINKING THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF THE ARTS

The paper presents a critical discussion of the current debate over the social impacts of the arts in the UK. It argues that the accepted understanding of the terms of the debate is rooted in a number of assumptions and beliefs that are rarely questioned. The paper goes on to present the interim findings of a three‐year research project, which aims to rethink the social impact of the arts, with a view to determining how these impacts might be better understood. The desirability of a historical approach is articulated, and a classification of the claims made within the Western intellectual tradition for what the arts “do” to people is presented and discussed.     

LET MANY FLOWERS BLOOM

In this rich and sensible assessment of historians' practice and prospects, Allan Megill focuses on the obligation that historians have to support their accounts with evidence. He does this, first, by illustrating the difference between real and merely claimed evidence and, then, by giving an analysis of the underlying nature of evidence in historical accounts. Turning later to the question of how historians and their public should feel about diminishing unity (fragmentation) in historiography and the practices that generate it, Megill explains the sources of fragmentation and then argues that it doesn't matter whether historians are doing the same thing and/or doing it in the same way. What matters, rather, is whether they are doing interesting things and doing them well.     

历史事实与法律事实:司马光《资治通鉴考异》的方法、地位及其镜鉴

司马光《通鉴考异》方法最为直接的借鉴渊源,应为当时日益完备的"实录"纂修过程中的程序规则,其具体包括证实订伪、以常理进行推断、两存其说、参取、阙疑,可谓钱大昕等人"考异"的先驱和精神导师。历史事实和法律事实都是相对于客观事实而言的,中国古代考据学的发展和法律实践密切相关,法学中证据法规则与历史学中的考据法则存在极其相似的"底层语法规则"。     

Mano size,stable carbon isotope ratios,and macrobotanical remains as multiple lines of evidence of maize dependence in the American southwest

While the level of agricultural dependence affects many aspects of human adaptation, estimating levels of dependence on maize through traditional archaeological techniques is problematic. Here we compare various measurements of manos (e.g., grinding surface area), macrobotanical evidence of maize use, and human collagen stable carbon isotope values from six regions of the American Southwest, encompassing 16 phases, as a means of assessing the power and limits of each approach for considering agricultural dependence. The analysis of each data class is considered separately, taking into account formation processes and arguments linking data and inferences. Correlations among the three data classes suggest that mano area and maize ubiquity can be considered ordinal measures of agricultural dependence, but Southwestern stable carbon isotope data have the analytical potential only to discriminate between little or no maize use and substantial maize use. The formation processes and linking arguments associated with each method must be considered when multiple lines of evidence are integrated in order to make sound behavioral inferences. Our results suggest that there were at least three patterns in the adoption of farming in the Southwest: early substantial use followed by continuous increasing maize dependence, initial intensive dependence with little change in later periods, and a long period of minor use followed by substantial dependence.     

唐代的南北地理分界线及相关问题

我国的南北地理分界线,自来被认为在秦岭淮河一线。这条界线包含自然、政治、文化等多重意义,在环境变迁的背景中,这些不同层面的南北界线会发生不同步的推移。本文通过唐代的资料证明:当时行政体系中的南北分界位于秦岭淮河;唐人地理感知中的南北分界,西段仍在秦岭,而东段却在长江。由此可以引发对自然环境变迁的若干检讨。     

试论非法证据排除规则

非法取得的证据能否作为对被告人定罪的根据,是刑事证据中最为复杂的问题之一,也是刑事程序中最易发生价值冲突的问题.我国应借鉴世界先进经验,尽快确立和完善非法证据排除规则,以杜绝由非法取证而造成的冤案的发生.     

Policy for children and young people: What is the evidence and can we trust it?

In a range of settings in health, education, social care, housing and justice, policy makers are urged to make decisions based on research evidence. At present, those seeking sound research evidence to underpin interventions with children and young people will frequently find the evidence cupboard disappointingly bare. This article signposts resources pointing to networks producing research evidence for policy and practice, and discusses drivers and obstacles to the use of research evidence in policy. The authors highlight the importance of synthesising different kinds of evidence in order for practice, policy and end point research users to have greater confidence in interventions in the lives of children and young people.     

Legal geographies and ecological invisibility: The environmental myopia of evidence

This study shows how legal evidentiary rules intended to make trials fair also enable biodiversity loss, even in courts charged with environmental protection. The common law is premised on two types of rules. The first, substantive laws, set rules for how society should function—obstructing and punishing some behaviours while enabling and rewarding others. In contrast, procedural laws are intended to level the playing field when there is a dispute over substantive rules during litigation. This case study concerns a routine environmental dispute over land development in Sydney, Australia. It demonstrates how, by enabling courts to determine what evidence will and will not be considered, procedural rules and practices drive substantive outcomes by rendering certain places, dynamics, and connections visible and capable of judicial action while obscuring others. Specifically, the court’s efforts to use evidentiary tools to make litigation more efficient drove substantive outcomes in two ways. First, work to narrow evidence to address factual disputes also narrowed the court’s geographic scale of analysis to the property boundaries of the site, thus obscuring broader threats to a critically endangered ecological community. Second, these procedural evidentiary decisions drove substantive outcomes undermining biodiversity protection, while concealing their inherently substantive nature. Combined with the tendency of the court to use procedural informality to promote compromise between the parties, and a broader juridical treatment of intact ecological communities as species that can largely be moved at will, the evidentiary rules enabled an environmentally focused court to enable the victory of development over species protection.     

THE ENDURING PUBLIC STRUGGLE TO CONSTRUCT,CONTROL, AND CHALLENGE HISTORICAL MEMORIES

Sumit Guha's History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000 develops important arguments about the public significance of historical knowledge and the essential role of historians in public life. All societies need collective memories to sustain their cultural identities, as Guha shows in this wide‐ranging account of how such memories have been constructed in South Asian societies since the thirteenth century. The knowledge of historical experts is increasingly challenged or derided by contemporary social groups and political activists, who circulate their own historical narratives via new networks of communication. Political uses of historical knowledge are not new, however, as Guha shows in detailed accounts of how Hindu, Muslim, and British imperial regimes all used historical narratives to justify their own power. He also explains how other social groups challenged official historical narratives with their own popular stories about the past. This book contributes to recent work in global intellectual history by comparing similarities in the historical practices of premodern Europe and South Asia, discussing the cross‐cultural exchanges in colonial‐era institutions, and describing postcolonial challenges to European ideas. Guha thus offers an insightful analysis of how social and political forces influence and respond to the cloistered institutions that produce historical knowledge and construct collective memories. He concludes that evidence‐based historical narratives must be continually defended amid current public assaults on historical knowledge in both South Asia and the United States. More generally, Guha's book suggests the need for ongoing analysis of how public events, social conflicts, and new communication systems can reshape or discredit the work of historical experts.     

Contested archaeological approaches to mass grave exhumations in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Within the last 50 years, present day Zimbabwe, (Figure 1), formerly Rhodesia, a Southern African country, has gone through various pogroms resulting in the death of over 50,000 people in total both within and outside the country. The massacres consist of the Liberation War (1966–1979); political violence characterized by every election since 1980; the Matabeleland Democide (1982–1987); and the diamond conflict in Marange, Eastern Zimbabwe (2006–2018). These various episodes of violence have produced a myriad of human body depositional sites which include mine shafts, mass graves at schools and hospitals, burials at detention centres, pit latrines, and caves. This paper will analyse the disagreements and antagonism between professional archaeologists and vernacular exhumers that emerged during various limited exhumation of mass graves within the country. The paper will conclude by offering avenues of approaches to mass graves exhumation as the material evidence might in future, subject to judicial inquiries, contribute towards truth telling and peace and reconciliation.