How Civilized Were the Victorians?

Abstract

This article addresses the role of the ‘civilizing process’ in the historiography of the Victorian period. The author develops a critique of perspectives that deem the nineteenth century to be an era of discipline and self-restraint, arguing that these result from the hegemonic position of literary perspectives within Victorian Studies and their frequent reliance on Foucauldian-inspired techniques of discourse analysis. In response, he outlines and illustrates the potential for alternative research agendas and approaches that move away from representational sources in order that the Victorian period can be viewed in a new light. These include the study of vernacular photography, cultures of leisure, and the subcultures of groups where the importance of ‘nonverbal’ practices and the cultures inherent in bodily experiences are highlighted – forms of expression that reach beyond established discourse. It is argued that the failure of scholars of the Victorian period to consider this ‘nonverbal’ culture means that the theoretical frameworks of comprehension that currently characterize Victorian Studies are underdeveloped. The essay calls for Victorianists to broaden their theoretical perspectives, engage with new sources, and embrace new methodologies in order to enlarge our understanding of nineteenth-century culture.     

当代中国科普观的历史演进

科普观是一个时期人们关于科普内涵、功能、对象、任务等方面形成的基本态度和主流意识,受特定时期政治、经济、教育、科技文化诸因素的影响,对科普实践具有重要作用。本文以科普史料为基础,以科普四要素——科普语境、科普主体、科普内容和科普受众的特征分析为线索,对建国后我国科普观进行历史梳理。     

Reconceptualizing the Policy Subsystem: Integration with Complexity Theory and Social Network Analysis

The concept of the policy subsystem is an essential building block for several of the basic frameworks of policy process studies. Over time issues have become more complex, crossing subsystem boundaries, and so subsystems have escalated in their complexity as well. It is increasingly insufficient to study just one policy subsystem and so scholars have turned to studying boundary‐spanning regimes or policy networks. In this essay, we review the major contributions to developing the concept of a policy subsystem and trace its evolution into broader conceptualizations like issue and policy networks. We argue that the future for theories of the policy process is in more explicit integration of complexity theory and more effective modeling of subsystems with the utilization of social network analysis. In closing, we discuss the enduring nature of the concept of policy subsystems and highlight studies that continue using it in innovative ways.     

中国城镇化进程的科学思辨

城镇化推动了我国经济社会快速发展,并大大提高了居民的生活生产条件。然而,近十年来,我国城镇化却脱离了循序渐进的原则,出现了"冒进式"城镇化的现象。本文通过合理评价我国城镇化速度、正确对待我国城镇化进程、科学分析"冒进式"城镇化与空间失控的原因等几个方面的深刻阐述之后,提出了我国城镇化健康发展的规划策略。     

汉魏南北朝羽人图像考

本文把汉魏南北朝时期的羽人图像概括为五种类型,并对其时间、空间分布及分类特点进行了详细地分析考证,阐述了羽人图像的演变规律及其原因。     

Detecting the effects of selection and stochastic forces in archaeological assemblages

Detecting and diagnosing the causes of change through time in archaeological assemblages is a core enterprise of archaeology. Evolutionary approaches to this problem typically cast the causes of culture change as being either stochastic in origin, or arising from selection. Stochastic sources of change include random innovations, copying errors, drift and founder effects among dispersing groups. Selection is driven by differences in payoffs between cultural variants. Most efforts to identify these evolutionary forces in the archaeological record have relied on assessing how well the predictions from a neutral-stochastic model of cultural transmission fit a data set. Selection is inferred when the neutral-stochastic model fits poorly. A problem with this approach is that it does not test directly for the presence selection. Moreover, it does not account for the fact that both neutral-stochastic and selective forces can act at the same time on the same cultural variants. A different approach based on the Price Equation allows for the simultaneous measurement of selective and stochastic forces. This paper extends use of the Price Equation to the analysis of selective and stochastic forces operating on multiple artifact types within an assemblage. Ceramic data presented by Steele et al. (2010, Vol. 37(6): 1348–1358) from the Late Bronze Age Hittite site of Bo?azköy-Hattusa, Turkey, provide an opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of this model. The results suggest that selection is a dominant process driving the frequency evolution of different bowl rim types within the assemblage and that stochastic forces played little or no role. It is also clear, however, that we should be attentive to combinations of direct and indirect selective effects within assemblages consisting of multiple artifact types.