From Organismic Biology as History and Philosophy to the History and Philosophy of Biology—the Work of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger in the German Context**

In this paper, I ask about the broader context of the history and philosophy of biology in the German-speaking world as the place in which Hans-Jörg Rheinberger began his work. Three German philosophical traditions—neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, and Lebensphilosophie—were interested in the developments and conceptual challenges of the life sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their reflections were taken up by life scientists under the terms theoretische Biologie (theoretical biology) and allgemeine Biologie (general biology), i. e., for theoretical and methodological reflections. They used historical and philosophical perspectives to develop vitalistic, organicist, or holistic approaches to life. In my paper, I argue that the resulting discourse did not come to an end in 1945. Increasingly detached from biological research, it formed an important context for the formation of the field of history and philosophy of biology. In Rheinberger's work, we can see the “Spalten” and “Fugen”—the continuities and discontinuities—that this tradition left there.     

Emblems and enigmas: Revisiting the ‘sword’ belt of Fernando de la Cerda

The belt of Fernando de la Cerda is on permanent display in the Museo de Telas Ricas, Burgos. Presently, scholars believe the belt dates from 1252–75, is of Hispano-Islamic work and was worn as a baldric. This article suggests that the belt is English, that it was commissioned by King Henry III and was worn around the waist. Henry gave the belt to the count of Champagne, Thibault II, during his first diplomatic visit to France. In turn, Thibault probably gave the belt to Fernando de la Cerda, the infante of Castile, in 1269, at Fernando’s wedding. The belt’s burial with the Castilian infante provides important evidence of the close familial and political relationships that linked the ruling dynasties of north-west Europe during the thirteenth century. Commissioned as a gift and richly decorated, the belt should be seen as an example of the aesthetic accomplishment of Henry III, his use of propaganda and political aspirations.     

A ROOTED SENSE OF PLACE IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Sense of place was investigated in an interpretive approach to examine how it develops; how it varies cross-culturally among modern and indigenous peoples; and how it develops among various contexts (home and environs, family, community, and culture). Individual and group interviews were conducted using questionnaires on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand (a rural, farm-based setting) with 270 residents from 1987 to 1989, with 80 out-migrants interviewed around New Zealand in 1989. The methodology was based on phenomenology, ethnography, and social surveys. Statistical analyses indicated the significance of residential status and social belonging toward the development of a sense of place. Contextual influences were found to be important from qualitative data, with traditional culture of primary importance to Maori. Both Maori and European-descent respondents with long-term residence expressed a rooted sense of place for Peninsula environs. These respondents were less residentially mobile and were often tied to the land through ancestry and/or family farms. Newcomers to the region were usually treated as outsiders (for decades). The Maori community was partially sustained by a social network that extended beyond the Peninsula. Maori sense of place was based more on their cosmology and culture, which rooted them to their tribal territory spiritually and emotionally. To counter an amoral, modernist hegemony and to move toward community sustainability, postmodernists need to consider the significance of developing a place-based ideology that links people to place through a rooted sense of place. À l'aide d'une méthode interprétative, le sentiment d'appartenance à un milieu a été étudié pour examiner la manière dont il se développe, ses variations interculturelles parmi les populations modernes et autochtones, de même que l'incidence de divers éléments, tels la résidence et son voisinage, la famille, la collectivité et la culture, sur son développement. Entre 1987 et 1989, des entretiens individuels et de groupes ont été menés, en utilisant des questionnaires, auprès de 270 résidants demeurant dans la péninsule de Banks, en Nouvelle-Zélande, et appartenant à un milieu rural essentiellement agricole. De plus, en 1989, 80 émigrants répartis sur le territoire de la Nouvelle-Zélande ont été également intervieés. Les études phénoménologiques, ethnographiques et sociales ont servi de méthode fondamentale. L'analyse statistique a révélé l'importance de la qualité de résidant et l'importance de l'appartenance sociale sur le développement du sentiment d'appartenance à un milieu. D'après les données qualitatives, l'influence environnementale est significative, et la culture traditionnelle est capitale chez les Maoris. Les répondants établis depuis longtemps, qu'ils soient de descendance européenne ou maorie, ont manifesté un sentiment profond d'appartenance à leur milieu, que représente la péninsule. Ces répondants étaient relativement stables du point de vue résidentiel et possédaient souvent une terre ancestrale ou une ferme familiale. Les nouveaux arrivants ont été habituellement traités comme des étrangers (pendant des décennies). La communauté maorie a été soutenue en partie par un réseau social qui s'est étendu au-delà de la péninsule. Chez ce peuple, le sentiment d'appartenance au milieu s'appuie davantage sur la cosmologie et la culture, ce qui crée des liens spirituels et affectifs entre ces gens et leur territoire tribal. Pour s'opposer à l'hégémonie amorale et moderniste, et pour s'orienter vers la viabilité des collectivités, les post-modernistes doivent se rendre compte de l'importance d'élaborer une idéologie axée sur le milieu qui lie les gens par un sentiment profond d'appartenance.     

青花瓷器产地判别研究

本项研究以江西省景德镇、云南省玉溪、建水、福建省平和的青花瓷器为主,结合香港清代碗窑以及德国、日本、泰国的现代青花瓷器,用能量色散X射线荧光（EDXRF）分析方法,在无损的情况下对其元素含量进行分析,得到了Ti、Mn、Fe、Co、Ni、Cu、Zn、Ga、Pb、Rb、Sr、Y、Zr13个元素的含量结果。用主成分分析方法对数据进行处理,利用第1主成分、第2主成分、第3主成分在三维座标系中绘制散点图,所得类群关系与已知情况完全相符。研究结果表明本文的研究方法可用于青花瓷器的产地判别。     

中国上古时期国家道路的几个特点

史前国家、准集权制国家、统一集权制国家是中国上古国家道路的三大阶段。截然有别的三个发展阶段背后的历史现象、社会制度、权力方式等方面有着深刻的联系。历史过程中的偶然因素与社会结构中的稳定内核使上古历史沿着一定的轨迹运行。东亚相对封闭的地理空间、中国东部沿海与内地文明的不平衡性、以及新石器时期的海侵等主要因素既促成以宗法血缘为基础的大一统国家观的早熟,又造成实现国家集权费时长久,并与浩繁的战争形成对照。     

Rural children’s role in buffering household poverty through ganyu (piecework) in Zambia

In Zambia, the ways in which social change intersects with rural livelihoods to increase children’s workload and commodify their labour are poorly understood. In this article, changing patterns of rural children’s work are seen as necessitated by their evolving household roles and contributions in an increasingly rural cash-based economy. Drawing on child-focused qualitative research in rural Lundazi district in Zambia, it is explored how children use a traditional labour practice called ‘ganyu’ (piecework) to ameliorate poverty. The infiltration of the cash-based economy, amplified by the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes, a predominantly adult-centred traditional informal socio-economic levelling mechanism of ganyu, and its evolution into more cash-oriented transactions increasingly involving children are discussed. Although ganyu has largely been seen as characterized by exploitative labour relations, the empirical findings from this research indicate the complex ways in which the practice is empowering children and their families. The resources accrued through ganyu are vital for both personal and household well-being. The findings of this study have important implications to rethink not only contentious issues of child labour but also dominant narratives of childhood that fail to take into account children’s lived experiences as situated in local, social, economic, and cultural contexts.     

‘Childhood is measured out by sounds and sights and smells,before the dark of reason grows’: children’s geographies at 12

This Keynote essay argues for a supplement to existing studies in children’s geographies, one that explores the potential of a non-child-centric children’s geography alert to the work done by the figure of ‘the child’ in all manner of worldly situations. Taking a cue from the poetry of John Betjeman, notably his 1960 Betjeman, J. 1960. Summoned by Bells. London: John Murray. [Google Scholar] Summoned by Bells, the essay considers both the intimate spaces of childhood – ones gauged by the immediacies of ‘sounds and sights and smells’ – and the challenges posed by a wider world raddled by adult preoccupations and abuses, those characterised by Betjeman as stemming from ‘the dark of reason’. The essay builds from this foundation to address the ‘darkness’ in two sets of Nazi children’s wartime geographies, as well as engaging with the complexities of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s claims, in the horizon of WWII, about the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’. Within the latter – and also, notably, in Adorno’s later writing – the figure of ‘the child’ surfaces as one miniscule crumb of hope, of experiencing and knowing the world otherwise, set against the face of adult Enlightenment’s seemingly inevitable decay. At the close, Adorno’s own brief dalliance with imagining a small slice of children’s geographies allows the essay to arc back towards its original claims, and to a renewed sense of why childhood ‘sounds and sights and smells’ continue to matter far beyond just the domain of geographers researching children.     

Digital technologies,children and young people's relationships and self-care

Children's and young people's access to and use of digital technologies have received increasing attention in recent years. While influential UK media commentators have often focused on associated risks, researchers have taken a less exclusively problem-focused approach. Children and young people's use of, for example, social media and computer games to extend the spaces available to them in which to maintain relationships, to experiment with social identities, and to engage in an ‘economy of dignity’, however fragile, have all been highlighted. This paper builds on this work to further consider the role of such resources, accessed primarily through computers and mobile phones, as means of caring for oneself or ‘self-care’. It draws on a qualitative study which employed visual and audial methods to explore the sense of belonging (or not) of young people who have been ‘looked after’ by others than their biological parents, often in less affluent circumstances.     

The Baptistry of Saint John in Florence: The Scientific Dating of the Timber Structure of the Dome

The construction of the Baptistry of Saint John has a debated and uncertain history; the hypothesis on its main construction phases may span from the Roman period to the 13th century, according to different authors. This uncertainty is mainly due to the lack of primary sources and certain dating issues. By combining dendrochronological analysis and radiocarbon dating, some light was shed on the building’s history. Open at least from 897, in 1059 Pope Nicholas II re-consecrated the baptistry after several renovations. Around that period, the octagonal dome was probably built by using chestnut beams to tie the structure together. The dendrochronological analysis dated the silver fir element to 1268. This element possibly represents a replacement coincident with the period, between 1270 and 1300, when a substantial part of the mosaics of the dome was positioned.