The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”: China's modern trauma

This paper examines and analyses the causes and consequences of the Cultural Revolution in China. This great twentieth century Chinese trauma cannot be detached from Mao as a person. He was its initiator and – as a charismatic leader – stood above the people and the party, and in the consciousness of the majority of the people was perceived as a great, compelling leader. This paper traces the historical setting, the causes, the process and the consequences of this tremendous political and social movement. In addition, the role of Mao and the concepts of his followers are scrutinized. Finally, the issue of whether or not the Cultural Revolution should be classified as a “revolution” is discussed.     

Wuming: an underground art group during the Cultural Revolution

The Wuming painting group opened its first public exhibition in Beijing in 1979. The hundreds of small paintings exhibited were accumulated through years of clandestine art practice stretching back to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. This article traces the history of the Wuming group and its art – describing the social identities of the artists, exploring the historical context of the group's formation, reconstructing the underground art and cultural activities, and contextualizing the group's artistic innovations. The history of this underground art group addresses larger debates over Chinese modernity, and over the interpretation of the history of the Cultural Revolution in today's global context.     

Positioning in the Cold War – Swedish and Danish History Textbooks and the Totalitarianism Doctrine. Historical Cultures in Comparison

The Nordic countries Sweden and Denmark have a long and intertwined history. The Second World War, though, formed different experiences in the two countries that led to diverging paths in the Cold War. Denmark became a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while Sweden stayed non-aligned. Thus, it can be assumed that Denmark was more likely to adopt Western foreign policies and doctrines than Sweden. Or was it? On a programmatic political level this may have been the case, but what about cultural perceptions developed in Swedish and Danish ‘minds of men’? Is there a tension between les évenéments and les longues durées?

The underlying assumption in this article is that there is a contradiction and a tension between the programmatic political level and historically-inherited enemy images, and that this tension may be studied through the concept of totalitarianism and its position in the historical cultures of Sweden and Denmark in the post-war era. The totalitarianism doctrine was one of the main ideological weapons during the Cold War, serving as a basis for the Truman doctrine. It implies that Nazism and Soviet communism shared common features and may be subsumed under the same label. But would a Dane find it reasonable to view the Red Army, which belonged to the Allies which liberated his or her country, as of ‘the same kind’ as the German occupants? And would it make sense to a Swede to stay neutral to Soviet Russia, the historical enemy? The one who for a Swede is ‘the other’ might for a Dane appear as a historical ally.

The empirical sources are history textbooks for senior secondary school students, studied as artefacts of national historical cultures.     

‘A Puppet,Even Though He Probably Doesn't Know So’: Racial Identity and the Eisenhower Administration's Encounter with Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab Nationalist Movement

This article demonstrates that US beliefs concerning racial identity guided the Eisenhower administration's encounter with Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Arab nationalism during the 1950s. It establishes that US texts propagated certain racial-identity assumptions about Arab peoples. The most important of these included the assertions that Arab peoples were irrational and easily manipulated or deceived. Policy-makers utilised these beliefs to explain and contextualise Arab actions, especially those of Egypt and its Arab nationalist government. Officials within the Eisenhower administration believed that Arab irrationality prompted Egyptian leaders to adopt a neutralist position in the cold war. The assumption that Arabs were susceptible to deception and manipulation convinced policy-makers that this position was unacceptable. The Soviets would ultimately, they believed, prey upon Arab manipulability and subjugate Egypt, the Arab nationalist movement, and the entire Middle East. These concerns made the Eisenhower administration's decision to contain Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the Arab nationalist movement seem logical and necessary.     

Cultural fingerprints – the legacy of cultural values in the current cultural policy agenda in Germany

This paper explores the historical roots of cultural values as a prerequisite for German cultural policy. With reference to current investigations of the social impact of the arts, the analysis is based within the framework of the history of ideas and focuses on three concepts: the common base of culture, nation of culture and culture as a state aim. The author argues that the transformative positive powers of culture are linked in a complex system of historically grown intellectual alliances while directing current policy thinking. As a consequence the positive impact of culture in society is strengthened over time and remains unquestioned by actors in the cultural sector.     

The juridification of nightlife and alternative culture: two UK case studies

Nightlife, the night‐time economy and ‘alternative’ culture have been a source of academic contestation over recent years, with differing views as to the direction and meaning of the contemporary drift of law and policy that serve to regulate this area of social and cultural life. Further, there have so far been few attempts to theorise the nature of change. This article aims to highlight some key theoretical underpinnings that can facilitate an understanding of the kinds of regulatory innovation that pervade nightlife and alternative cultural forms. Using two case studies – free or alternative festivals and Form 696 – it specifically draws on the concepts of disciplinary power and juridification as a way of theorising both the acceleration of regulatory forms and its impact on the production of alternative culture.     

Clarifying the critical in critical heritage studies

This paper considers the term critical in the unfolding formulation of critical heritage studies. It argues for a shift in emphasis from the subject of our effort to the object of attention, in other words focusing primarily on the critical issues that face the world today, the larger issues that bear upon and extend outwards from heritage. To that end, the paper presents two key directions. It suggests much is to be gained from tackling the uneasy relationship that currently exists between social science and humanities-based approaches to heritage and the professional conservation sector oriented by a scientistic materialism. Second, there is a need for heritage studies to account for its relationship to today’s regional and global transformations by developing post-western understandings of culture, history and heritage and the socio-political forces that actualise them.     

论东林学派高攀龙与孙慎行性善论中的道教因素

东林学派站在纠正阳明后学流弊的立场上,反对性无善无恶说.东林学派的重要学者高攀龙与孙慎行都主张性善说,而援引道教中的善恶果报与忠孝成仙思想为他们性善说作补充.两人思想中的道教因素,与吴会地域的道教文化影响,以及当时的政局和残酷的政治纷争有关.     

Visual anthropology and sensory ethnography in contemporary Sardinia: a film of a different kind

Lorenzo Valerio (1810–1865), though a key figure in Piedmontese and Italian politics, a newspaper editor of note and a leading light of both the Associazione Agraria and the Associazione Italo-Slava, has not been accorded in recent years the attention he merits. With the publication, however, of the first four volumes of his correspondence,? ?Lorenzo Valerio, Carteggio (1825–1865), four volumes, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Turin 1991–2003, assembled by Luigi Firpo, Guido Quazza and Franco Venturi, with vol. 1 (1825–1841) edited by Luigi Firpo and Adriano Viarengo, and vol. II (1842–1847), vol. III (1848) and vol. IV (1849) edited by Adriano Viarengo. it is now possible to map more precisely Valerio's activities and influence, in Risorgimento Italy and far beyond it. These letters provide their principal editor, Adriano Viarengo, with the opportunity to review a number of crucial historiographical questions in Risorgimento scholarship, among them, the nature of moderate hegemony, the political vision of the Sinistra subalpina, and the complex relations between Italian patriots and Slav Romantic nationalists active within the Austrian Empire. This article is designed both to portray Valerio and his world, and to reflect upon the contribution Viarengo has made, whether in his introductions to the correspondence or in his ancillary essays, to the study of the Risorgimento.

‘…?a good enough sort, but neither fish nor fowl?…’

Giuseppe Mazzini [Letter, 6 March 1851, to his mother]