评德国新教传教士花之安的中国研究

花之安是19世纪德国新教传教士。1864—1899年,他在中国从事传教活动达35年之久。他以“文字传教”为工作重点,一方面用中文写作了若干宗教宣传品和介绍西方文化的读物;另一方面,他也有意识地研究中国,把中国的各方面情况和他自己的认识介绍到西方社会。然而花之安的研究工作主要是为传教服务的。由于宗教偏见和西方文化优越论的影响,花之安的中国观带有显著的帝国主义倾向,是西方列强征服中国的文化辅助工具。     

Mapping coexistence in Italy: Reshaping the cartographic feelings of the plural nation

Rarely considered from the perspective of ordinary citizens as opposed to institutional actors, national maps have been primarily deconstructed as abstract tools of power that express nationalist agendas. This paper offers an alternative examination of the map as a performative tool of national pluralism. In tune with the most recent conceptualizations of everyday forms of nationhood, I explore multiple creative auto-cartographies of Italy as experiential images for investigating the coexistence of several senses of nationhood and cultural diversity. To this end, I combine an inductive visual content analysis of nearly three hundred remappings of Italy, uploaded online by readers of a popular national newspaper, La Repubblica, with a visual semiotic reading of six samples. Here, the playful idea of remapping the nation becomes a catalyst to produce or resist a sense of belonging to the nation, while eliciting a wider spectrum of feelings with regard to internal and external perceived meaningful others. This paper concludes that the different ways in which ordinary people map the nation have to be taken seriously, as they show evidence that these readers absorb and decode, but also resist or challenge, different mainstream discourses regarding the idea of nationality, coexistence, and cultural diversity.     

EPISTEMIC WOUNDED ATTACHMENTS: RECOVERING DEFINITIONAL SUBJECTIVITY THROUGH COLONIAL LIBRARIES

Postcolonial theorizing on empires and subjects focuses on governance and infrastructure as relevant geographies of relation. However, when governance-driven knowledge production migrates from colony to metropole, what postcolonial subjectivity formations are recovered from colonial archives, particularly if these archives are structured by epistemic difference? We theorize a wounded attachment to a colonial library, or the construction of subjectivity through colonial archival recovery, as a means of transforming a colonial library of governance into an academic discipline. Through the case study of Sikh studies, a discipline originating out of colonial governance of Sikhs, we argue that epistemic difference is transformed into epistemic distancing as a tool by which scholars pursue legibility to the Euro-American academy. We contextualize the ongoing investment in measures of academic legibility (for example, objectivity, distance, and validity) as how area and region are tied to the production of universal knowledge; these measures result in the elision of embodied knowledge as a valid framework for intellectual pursuit.     

考古对象对考古学研究的影响——考古学反思之一

考古学与人类学、社会学、历史学等社会科学或人文科学一样,其总的研究对象都是人类社会。所不同的是,考古学研究的起点是古人活动遗留下来的遗迹和遗物(总称...     

Inter- and Transdisciplinarity in Urban-Environmental Research: A Subjective Inventory over Twenty Years

Abstract

The growing call for problem-oriented and practice-relevant research in the public and political debate has its origins in complex problems, for which society expects solutions. This call is echoed in parts of the science community and uses the key argument that complex real-world problems demand cooperation between science and society in terms of inter- and transdisciplinary research. Using the example of urban research at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, I sketch my experiences in developing scientific cooperation between researchers coming from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and by stakeholder involvement. The target is to deepen mutual understanding of the scientific challenges and to provide system solutions adequate to the societal context. After over twenty years of facing the need for collaboration among a variety of social and natural scientists as well as with relevant stakeholders, and recognizing its advantages and limits, the topic of inter- and transdisciplinarity has, finally, become mainstream in environmental research.     

Governing the future: science,policy and public participation in the construction of the long term in the Netherlands and Sweden

This paper is a historical study of two institutions devoted to the problem of the future – the Dutch WRR (the Scientific Council for Government) and the Swedish Secretariat for Futures Studies – both created in 1972. While there is a growing interest in the social sciences for prediction, future imaginaries and the governance of risk, few studies have examined historically the integration of the category of the ‘future’ or the ‘long term’ in political systems in the postwar years, a period in which this category took on specific meaning and importance. We suggest that governing the long-term posed fundamental problems to particular societal models of expertise, decision-making and public participation. We argue that the scientific and political claim to govern the future was fundamentally contested, and that social struggle around the role and content of predictive expertise determined how the long term was incorporated into different systems of knowledge production and policy-making.     

金山潜龙:流散书写中的华工囚禁叙事

论文从中国历史和文化的视角出发,将天使岛诗歌作为一部华人囚禁叙事重新加以解读。认为天使岛华工诗歌通过特殊的艺术手法和完整鲜明的思想立场构成了一部华人囚禁叙事。它在意识形态上表现出与美国清教徒囚禁叙事三个不同的特点:一是它的种族化民族主义诉求是历史的产物,其目的是构建一个抵抗种族迫害的有效话语武器;二是它强调集体救赎,并且认为个体救赎只有通过集体救赎方可实现;三是它主张凭借集体奋斗和人类自身之力获得拯救,彰显了一种与中国传统文化精神相契合的人文主义解放哲学。     

Changing children's geographies

This keynote explores the changing nature of children's geographies as an academic project. It proceeds in four parts. Part 1 considers the shift away from research on children's spatial cognition which envisaged the child in largely biological terms, and contemplates contemporary efforts to rework the nature/culture dualism. Part 2 traces the incorporation of new social studies of childhood into geography, emphasising the importance of children's voices, their positioning within axes of power, and the need for quantitative and qualitative methods. Part 3 explores how feminist research led to interest in parents, educators and other actors/institutions which shape, and are shaped by, children's lives. Part 4 ponders what children's geographies might add to, and learn from, broader interdisciplinary debates, and the benefits and pitfalls of research impact. The conclusion argues that a well-informed appreciation of sub-disciplinary history provides a strong vantage point from which to engage with new ways of thinking.     

SCHOLARSHIP AND PERIODIZATION

Davis argues that the familiar periodization dividing European history into medieval and modern phases disguises a claim to power as a historical fact. It justifies slavery and subjugation by projecting them onto the “feudal” Middle Ages and non‐European present, while hiding forms of slavery and subjugation practiced by “secular” modernity. Periodization thus furnishes one of the most durable conceptual foundations for the usurpation of liberty and the abuse of power. In part I, devoted to “feudalism,” Davis traces the legal, political, and colonial struggles behind the development of the concept of “feudal law” in early modern France and England and unravels just how that concept hides colonial oppression while justifying European sovereignty. In part II, devoted to “secularization,” she demonstrates the failure of twentieth‐century critics of “secularization” like Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, and Reinhart Koselleck to break out of the limits imposed by the medieval/modern periodization. Part II concludes with a look at conceptual alternatives in the writings of Amitav Ghosh and the Venerable Bede. Three limitations of this book are worth mentioning. It traces the political history hidden by the concept of “feudalism,” but does not trace the political history hidden by the concept of “religion.” It offers no answer to the question of how to break the link between scholarship and politics without ending up in a logical impasse or reinforcing the link. It does not address the possibility that answering this question may require breaking with the terms of professional historical inquiry. Perhaps the question could be answered in terms like those that led Wittgenstein to characterize his Philosophical Investigations as remarks on the natural history of human beings.