丝绸之路的象征符号——骆驼

被誉为”沙漠之舟”的骆驼,在北朝至唐代塑像、壁画中频频出现,通常由胡人牵引,满载货物、用具,它们的形态、组合、驮载的物品等,暗示着当时社会的变迁和人们观念的更新,其图像成为“丝绸之路”的象征符号。“胡人”与“骆驼载货”的组合反映出不同国家和地区的商品的交流、信仰观念的传播、不同的文明的碰撞融合,蕴育出了以“胡汉”相融为特色的唐文化。     

中国茶简史及其对外传播

茶位列世界三大无酒精饮料之首,发源于中国并由中国直接或间接传播至世界各地,是丝绸之路上的重要商品,饮茶以及由此发展出的茶文化更是丰富和提升了人类的生活品质,是中国对人类文明的重大贡献之一。对中国茶史及其对外贸易、传播的研究是一带一路历史研究的重要组成部分,透过这些研究可以证实中国茶及茶文化对世界茶文化兴起和发展的影响和推动作用。本工作结合相关文献及考古研究成果,介绍了我国在茶的历史发展、对外贸易、世界传播路径等方面研究的进展情况。这些总结将为其它相关研究工作的参与者提供参考。     

Sharing What Can Be Sold: Women Haus Maket Vendors in Port Moresby's Settlements

Dominant narratives of the economy, as well as policy discourses in Papua New Guinea (PNG), tend to separate the ‘formal’ from the ‘informal’ economy. Concurrently, there is a development policy emphasis on women's economic empowerment. In urban areas this has meant a policy focus on larger market places as sites where women need support for economic engagement. Within these policy discourses, one activity in urban areas usually relegated to the ‘informal’ economy is small home‐based market stalls, referred to in this paper as haus maket. Located at homes or on nearby roads, haus maket are prolific and available to the public, and as such provide a similar function to public market places as spaces to make money. This paper considers these public yet intimate spaces as sites where vendors, usually women, embody and lead contestations between money and moral value spheres. At a time when the policy emphasis is on the formal economy and larger market places in PNG, why do such small market places persist? The first aim of this paper is to establish the role of haus maket as a site where spheres of value intersect. Rather than being ‘informal’ and peripheral, I seek to foreground its centrality to the economy but also as a site where economic and social moral values conflate. The second aim of the paper is to examine the role of sharing as a form of transaction in its own right distinct from exchange as a transaction between two actors. Haus maket stalls are sites of sharing and of moral action and value where forms of value in the settlement are shaped and negotiated.     

Spaces of safety and more-than-safety in women’s refuges in England

Many women escaping domestic violence spend time in women’s refuges (shelters) whilst they deal with practical and emotional issues in a safe space. Such spaces are therefore an important place for women’s recovery and empowerment after abuse, but are also complex spaces of displacement. In the UK, there is a wide range of refuge providers, and different models of accommodation and support provision in refuges. Differences, such as those between refuges providing self-contained flats and those with communal facilities and communal activities, can provide very different experiences for the women and their children who live there. In addition, there have been shifts in the policy context of refuges, and increasingly individualistic models of service provision. This article explores women’s refuges as spaces of safety, and of more-than-safety, drawing on interviews with women in the Midlands, South Coast and London, and on participatory creative groupwork with women in the Midlands and South Coast. Refuge spaces require, but also enable, contact and encounter between women; and communal living and group processes can enable interaction and collaboration between women. The article draws on women’s words and images to exemplify these experiences, concluding that the safe spaces of women’s refuges can enable processes of more-than-safety. These collective processes begin to counteract the isolation of abuse and to help prepare women for their lives after the refuge.     

The Myth of Bondi's Black Sunday

On 6 February 1938, five bathers drowned while swimming between the flags at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. In surf lifesaving history, the day is known as Black Sunday. The dominant heroic narrative of Black Sunday highlights freak surf conditions and the gallantry, efficiency, and adeptness of Bondi's volunteer surf lifesavers. In this article I analyse this representation as a myth. Here I employ the French philosopher Roland Barthes' concept of myth, not as a falsehood, but as simplistic story, replete with silences and devoid of critical assessment. I argue that the myth of Black Sunday served the interests of Surf Life Saving Australia well in establishing its status as the country's premier safety service. However, the culture that underpinned that myth still persists with ongoing ramifications for risk assessment at the beach.     

Unearthing an Atlantean myth in Angkor: geoarchaeological investigation of the ‘underwater road’ crossing the Tonle Sap Lake,Cambodia

Of the many myths surrounding the medieval city of Angkor, Cambodia, one of the most obscure but pervasive is the existence of a road built across the Tonle Sap Lake. This road supposedly ran from the Angkorian ‘port’ at Phnom Krom to the temples situated in the Battambang district some 70 km southwest of capital. New geoarchaeological information demonstrates that the ‘road’ is actually a series of localised occurrences of authegenic calcite, which probably formed approximately 5500 years Before Present. Our results demystify this intractable Cambodian legend expand on the dynamic history of this important water body in mainland Southeast Asia.     

Beijing’s institutional-balancing strategies: rationales,implementation and efficacy

China has in recent years been actively engaged in multilateral diplomacy. From the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the One Belt, One Road initiative, Beijing is pursuing strategies and promoting norms that are viewed as concerted efforts by China to challenge some of the key institutional arrangements of the existing international order. This article seeks to discuss these contentious issues and assess the rationales, approaches and implications of Chinese diplomacy in initiating and promoting what can be considered as institutional-balancing strategies. The author suggests that the rationales behind these Chinese strategies have as much to do with Beijing’s shifting priorities and the need to address them as with reflecting a degree of dissatisfaction with existing multilateral institutions. And there are more marked differences in Chinese motivations and modalities in security arenas than in economic areas. However, it would be overstating Beijing’s intentions and capabilities if these China-sponsored initiatives are viewed as direct challenges to the existing international and regional orders.     

Politics of presence: women’s safety and respectability at night in Mumbai,India

This article focuses on women’s mobility in urban public space in Mumbai, India while working night shifts in outsourced call centres. The outsourced call centre industry is heralded as the beacon of modernity, and its entry was facilitated under a neoliberal political economy. This industry disproportionately employs women relative to India’s broader Information Technology sector, resulting in high numbers of women commuting at night. The state has reworked safety-centred policies for women working night shifts in call centres, which have been differentially implemented by companies. Expanding on this variegation, I sketch out the nightscape of transportation and mobility around outsourced call centres. This article analyses how women conceive of safety, as well as its interplay with convenience and considerations of respectability while making decisions about navigating urban public space at night. Women working in call centres find themselves in the crosshairs of narratives that demonize them as ‘bad women’ for being out on the street at night, while working in industries that specifically seek women willing to work in night shifts. Their navigation of this paradox exposes contradictions within the neoliberal modernization of Mumbai and the meaning of public safety for women who make this modernization possible through their labour.     

盆地东大路与四川“东大路经济带”的兴衰

唐宋时期,四川盆地形成南北二道,北道地位更高;南道地位相对较低,是东大路的前身。在明清四川盆地政治经济重心东移南迁的背景下,重庆成为与成都相当之一极,由此东大路逐渐定型与繁盛。明代东大路设立12个驿站,清代基本相承;沿线还设有大量铺递。东大路总里程为1000里左右,共10程,实际行走11—12天,西段往往借助沱江水路舟行。东大路定型于明初,初时多以“东南路”“川东路”“东路”相称。“东大路”之名形成于清末民初,它有联系两极、浅丘农业、丰沛水利、通江达海、界邻盐都等自然、人文优势,是四川盆地第一路,客观上形成“东大路经济带”。20世纪90年代以来“东大路经济带”地位下降,但“成渝双城经济圈”战略的提出又为古老的东大路振兴带来了机遇。     

三通三绝: 清朝使用“纳林道”研究

通过对北京和台北两地档案机构所藏满汉文档案的研读,可以发现从18世纪末到19世纪30年代,清朝曾分三个阶段将北疆伊犁军队通过中亚“纳林道”换防至南疆喀什噶尔,而非以往学者认为的“两阶段说”,清朝趁机巡查布鲁特边界,达到“寓巡边与换防之中”的双重效果。文章就清朝在三个阶段分别使用这条道路的缘起、换防过程与演变,及其放弃原因与最终影响等进行了详细讨论,并考证出今台北故宫博物院藏《进呈伊犁由那林河草地至喀什噶尔图说》实为道光七年九月十四日伊犁将军德英阿《复奏伊犁至喀什噶尔草地路径由》之所附“绘图贴说”。