Politics and Public Policy

Abstract

Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others has been widely praised as the first German film to confront the horrors of the East German communist regime. But the film's politics may be ambiguous. As critical as it is of East Germany, it does not offer a ringing endorsement of West Germany. For example, the film's playwright-hero seems to have artistic problems in the West, just as he did in the East. The film's equivocal attitude toward communism is epitomized by its apparently positive view of the Marxist author Bertolt Brecht. This essay compares The Lives of Others with Brecht's play The Good Person of Szechwan in an effort to understand Donnersmarck's attitude toward his East German predecessor and what it means for his larger view of communism and its relation to art.     

‘The Next Wave of Italians Has Come to America’: Italian Investments and Business in the United States, 1980-2013

Abstract

This article examines the economic and socio-cultural impact of Italian investments and business in the United Stated from the 1980s onwards. It investigates flows, networks and ideas that have cut national boundaries and politically-defined spaces. The article argues that the last three decades of Italian investments and business in the USA have re-defined the symbolic space held by Italy and Italians in the American imagination. It also argues that the distinctive Italian contribution to the American business environment lies in the so-called ‘fourth capitalism’ and in the family business aspects of Italian Capitalism.     

论学习西方运动与20世纪初中国社会思潮

20世纪初的社会思潮突出反映了近代中国在学习西方进程中的不断进步。首先,将学习西方物质明与发展资本主义经济,挽救民族危亡,做了逻辑的联系。其次,开始了对西方制度化的学习,并伴以选择、改造、批判的理性态度。第三,在对自己民族与化反省的基础上,将对西方化的学习推进到观念意识层面,提出了人的近代化问题。     

用羧甲基纤维素封护法加固龙门石窟擂鼓台南洞一尊宝冠佛像的研究

龙门石窟擂鼓台南洞部分佛像风化开裂严重,为了有效地保护这些佛像,探讨微裂隙造像加固封护的方法,采用羧甲基纤维素封护法对其中一尊开裂严重的宝冠佛像进行了试验性加固。结果表明,用这种材料进行封护不仅能够满足微裂隙造像加固的需要,而且操作简便,安全性好,是一种可行的加固封护方法。     

西部民族地区信息传播问题研究

在长期的历史发展过程中,各民族文化在相互交流、相互影响、相互渗透中具有一定的共性。但是,西部民族地区民族构成的多元性、民族分布的多样性、民族内涵的特殊性以及民族文化的丰富性等特点,决定了大众传播在西部民族地区须以多元的形式向多民族、多文化背景、多地区的受众跨地域传播。对此,笔者着重通过对西部民族地区信息传播的特征、现状的考察和分析,以从中找出克服传播障碍和传播隔阂的科学方法,为推动民族地区社会的健康发展提供一些有益的参考。     

论西部地区人才资源的开发

人才资源开发是西部地区获取竞争优势的重要工具。如何加快西部地区人才资源开发,是西部实现追赶型、跨越式发展过程中的重大问题。西部地区要实现经济的高速增长,必须加快人才资源开发、提高人口的基本素质和劳动技能,从而提高人力的直接生产力和劳动生产率,促进经济增长和国民收入提高。     

From stone to metal: New perspectives on the later prehistory of West Africa

Earlier views saw West Africa as culturally stagnant through much of the Holocene until stimulus or intervention from north of the Sahara transformed Iron Age societies. Evidence accumulating over the past 15 years suggests that stone-using societies from 10,000 to 3000 B.P. were far more diverse than previously thought. Against an increasingly detailed record of Holocene climate change, the complexity of local adaptation and change is becoming better understood. Although a strong case currently exists for the introduction of copper and iron to West Africa from the north in the mid-first millennium B.C., the subsequent development of metallurgy was strongly innovative in different parts of the subcontinent. Soon after the advent of metals, a dramatic increase in archaeological evidence for social stratification and hierarchical political structures indicates the emergence of societies markedly more complex than anything currently documented in the Late Stone Age. The best-documented examples come from the Middle Niger region and the Nigerian forest. In these areas, earlier diffusionist models in which complexity originated outside West Africa have yielded to evidence that indigenous processes were instrumental in this transformation. Trade, ideology, climate shifts, and indirect influences from North Africa, including the introduction of the domesticated horse to the Sahelian grasslands, are identified as factors essential to an understanding of these processes.     

Containers and mobility in West Africa

In West Africa, containment practices have long been localized in their production, moulded by environmental forces, and scaled to the human body. In the twentieth century, fossil fuels have changed how people keep and carry things. But newer technologies have tended to alter, rather than eliminate, older forms of storage.     

汉代画像石“献食进浆”图像探讨

"献食进浆"图像由"正中端坐者""执串珠状物者"和"进浆者"组成。通过对这一画像组合的分类探讨,可以推知"正中端坐者"为西王母/东王公,"执串珠状物者""进浆者"为西王母的侍从,"串珠状物"为烤肉串,"浆"为酒;A类画像组合描述的应是西王母仙境的生活状态,而B类则是西王母"允人升仙"的场景。     

Using historically informed archaeology: Seventeenth and eighteenth century Hueda/European interaction on the coast of Bénin

The period of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and European colonies is relatively well documented compared with the historic records of many regions of precolonial Africa. However, this documentation necessarily presents a perspective distilled through European eyes. This paper suggests a methodology influenced byAnnales history for critically analyzing documentary sources in conjunction with a critical interpretation of archaeological remains. Archaeological evidence from recent excavations at the site of Savi, capital of the Hueda kingdom, is contrasted with documentary evidence, facilitating an interpretation of motivations guiding Hueda interaction with European traders and structuring their spatial relationship.