Thirty years of science studies: knowledge,society and the political

This article explores the last 30 years of science studies. It presents what the author takes to be some of the main questions raised in this field, the solutions most of its practitioners advocated, and what informed their intellectual and political attitudes. It tries to place the social studies of knowledge in a broader perspective, linking it to parallel changes in anthropology, sociology and history, and it questions its relations to social change on the one hand, and to the political on the other. It closes with a critique of some, often dominant, attitudes in the STS field.     

The intellectual origins of Leninism, 1977

This essay is a general introduction to the special number on recent research on Atlantic history. While the topics here presented are diverse, most focusing on the first French Empire, particularly in North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the authors share several common themes: (1) In Africa and the Americas, they seek to view the question of the Empire as a series of contested, temporary, and uncertain alliances and collaborations, in which negotiation rather than submission was most often the basis of power relations; (2) In the realm of political economy in theory and practice, the authors refuse pre-established notions of an Atlantic “community” of commodities and merchants functioning within an Atlantic “system.” Instead, they focus on closed networks of merchants functioning within the dynamics of merchant capitalism. (3) The authors seek alternatives to traditional approaches focusing on the nation-state and its institutions. Instead, they examine communities and regions in the Atlantic that include social elites, such as, merchants, the nobility, the gentry, and intellectuals, as well as neglected native peoples and forgotten spaces such as Africa.     

Baudelaire's literary criticism

In the current debate on republicanism the relationship between republicanism and democracy is an aspect whose historical dimension has thus far hardly been investigated. It offers instead also the chance to clear up ambiguities on the opposition between republicanism and liberalism. In this sense, recent research on the radical Enlightenment, on the link between economics and politics, by a new reading of physiocracy as political discourse, and on the foundations of political representation represent some of the most important advances made by historical research over the last few years. This essay wishes to trace these results back to a long line of research on a modern republicanism that had already been investigated many decades ago by a historian of the Enlightenment interested in republican tradition, Franco Venturi, the author of Settecento riformatore and of Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment, to which John Pocock dedicated the first volume of his recent Barbarism and Religion. By means of a successful integration of three recent essays by John Israel on the uniqueness of Dutch republican discourse, by Richard Whatmore on the economic roots of French republicanism and by Nadia Urbinati on the foundations of representative democracy in Condorcet, it is possible to isolate the characteristics of a democratic republicanism. Among the various threads that have been followed up, the theme of equality has surfaced in various ways in the search for the characteristics of modern republicanism. These highlight the idea of the emergence in the early modern age of an European political culture and of a democratic and egalitarian republicanism that was encouraged by the contribution from various national situations within which it forged its identity, against the model of an Atlantic republicanism.     

Colonialism,corporeality and character: Methodist missions and the refashioning of bodies in the pacific

Today, dramatic improvements in transportation and social communications are forging dense transnational networks. People, cultures and societies that were previously isolated from one another are now coming into regular contact. This abolition of temporal and spatial constraints affects both the social and cultural spheres: globalization provides a common context that attenuates differences among ways of life. After reviewing the major social theories on cultural globalization, this article focuses on religions within cultural globalization and describes the similarities between Islam and other major religious traditions, as they interplay with globalization.     

Evaluating effects of chemical weathering and surface contamination on the in situ provenance analysis of building stones in the Cuzco region of Peru with portable XRF

As the only type of instrument capable of determining artifact geochemistry in a wide variety of settings, portable X-Ray Fluorescence (PXRF) may be frequently utilized as probably the best option for collecting data when removal of objects in part or in whole is unfeasible. However, using PXRF in circumstances where sample selection and preparation diverge from standards developed for lab-based instrumentation requires assessing the impact of new and potentially limiting factors to establish the validity of the method in these new contexts. Here we examine the effects of surface contamination and chemical weathering on the ability to assess provenance of igneous building stones used in the Cuzco region of Peru. Surface contamination was assessed through comparing low-impact cleaning methods on diorite and andesite blocks, and weathering was examined by comparing weathered vs. fresh surfaces of samples from two andesite quarries. In general, the lightest elements were most impacted by contamination and weathering while measurements of many of the heavier elements commonly used in provenance studies were relatively unaffected. Concentrations of Pb and Zn were problematic in the urban context of Cuzco because of pollution. Ability to determine provenance of building stones within those limitations (i.e., the validity of this application of PXRF) was demonstrated in a preliminary study by comparing measurements from uncleaned, exposed building stones in the region to fresh quarry samples.     

制度视角下的海外侨胞回国参加政协会议机制：历史、现状与发展

论文介绍了海外侨胞回国参加政协会议机制的历史演变,具体分析了1984年以来各地政协在组织海外侨胞回国参加政协会议机制方面的总体情况和影响开展此项工作的重要因素、具体实施的主导形式以及制度化的内在必要性。得出以下结论：地区经济发展基础是邀请海外侨胞回国参加政协会议制度的积极因素,但不是决定因素;在现行制度框架下,作为列席代表的形式比较符合实际;在国家层面特别是全国政协可以考虑对各地邀请海外侨胞回国参加政协活动进行制度化规范。     

A Review of “The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government,” and “Adam Smith as Theologian”

Abstract

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has asserted in several writings that present-day democratic governing institutions fail to incorporate beliefs about the common good and deliberation. However, objections can be raised against MacIntyre's characterization based on research from a new field in political science, Deliberative Democracy. Empirical research in that field shows that the common good and deliberation still do have a place in the United States Congress. It also shows that what James Madison argued at the founding of the country still holds, that representative deliberative bodies aid in transforming arguments for private goods into arguments for the common good; they refine and enlarge the public views.     

Resistance,Charity, and Rebirth in Roberto Rossellini's Rome,Open City

Abstract

With its use of contemporary events, location shots, and a plot that mixes comedy, tragedy, and passion play, Roberto Rossellini's 1945 film Rome, Open City founded the movement known as “Italian Neo-Realism.” The film vividly presents the Christian teaching on the relation between religion and politics. Rossellini asserts that a Christian Europe can be reconstructed only on a foundation of charity rather than hate, vengeance, or even justified punishment for Nazi crimes. It is not on the basis of tales of resistance that Italians and Europeans can be reborn, Rossellini argues, but on the basis of the Christian command to “love your enemies.” European rebirth means the installation of a moral order that makes parenthood feasible and respectable. By reflecting on Rossellini's masterpiece, I examine the triumph and the tragedy of the Christian Democratic Europe that Rome, Open City foretold and helped to found.     

The 2006 election: more than ever,a Berlusconi-centred campaign

Abstract

The article offers a review of the most salient events of the 2006 electoral campaigns. It argues that with exception of 1994, the recent 2006 electoral campaign has been more focused on Berlusconi than the previous campaigns. As a matter of fact, Berlusconi, trailing in the polls, made all possible efforts to set the campaign agenda. He resorted to a massive overexposure of himself on the television stage and gave rise to a number of ‘media events’ that have dominated the electoral narratives, like the Vicenza speech at the Confindustria conventions and his final announcement of abolishing the municipal tax on homeowners. All that was not enough to gain re-election, but his frantic campaign activity allowed him to re-acquire a clear leadership of the House of Liberties, which had been previously challenged by his own coalition partners. The article analyses also the Berlusconi – Prodi debates, and the reasons why electoral debates promise to become a fixed feature of the Italian politics.     

The Democratic Party and the restructuring of the Italian party system

Abstract

Out of a quickly performed merger between the Left Democrats and the Daisy, a new party has made its appearance in Italy: the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico – PD). In the summer of 2007 three candidates, Walter Veltroni, Rosy Bindi and Enrico Letta campaigned in order to convince sympathizers and supporters of that, yet non-existing party, that they were worthy of the office of Secretary of the PD. The election of Veltroni contributed to the already existing tensions within the centre-left governmental coalition that led to the demise of Prodi's government and to early elections. In April 2008, though receiving 33 per cent of the vote, the Democratic Party suffered a serious defeat. This article explores the reasons of the defeat and analyses its consequences on the restructuring of the Italian party system and the future of the Italian political system. Unless the Democratic Party is capable of finding an adequate organizational model and of expanding its electoral support beyond the areas of the traditional entrenchment of the former Communist party, the centre-right seems destined to guide Italian politics for some time to come.