Conserving Rainforest 4: aural geographies and ephemerality

Works of installation sound art are inherently spatial. Documentation of this form, which dates from the 1950s, involves an engagement with diverse histories of geographical knowledge and oral-historical methodology. David Tudor's Rainforest 4 (1973) is a performed sculptural sound installation which remains the best-known of his pieces. Its durability—when most other of his works remain unperformed, partly because they are too hermetic to decipher or depend on unavailable technologies—belies its “score” which consists of a simple diagram and a few words. Oral history, formal and informal, is not only key to understanding the history of the piece, but is integral to its performance. This paper explores some historical geographies of Rainforest 4 and the aesthetic of ephemerality in live electronic music, for which documentation of performance is secondary. In examining the paradoxes of Rainforest 4's conservation, we explore Tudor's engagement with particular notions of nature and spirituality as well as the social hierarchies and conservative impulse which keep the piece alive.     

浅论孔子的人性观

历年来,对孔子人性思想的研究,往往从善恶的角度去立论。其实,统观《论语》全书,孔子并未言明人性是善还是恶,而是从人本质属性的角度去理解的,即人的自然欲求性。同时,在自然欲求性的基础上,孔子的人性还兼有引人向善的意义。孔子提倡在自然欲求性的基础上,通过学习和良好习俗的熏染,达到引人向善的目的,从而实现自然之性向道德之性的升华。     

宋代的自然观察:审美、解释与观测兴趣的发达

本文以地理学为核心,从知识兴趣的角度对宋代的自然观察及其解释方法进行了考察,发现在宋代学者中,不仅以山水游赏为目的的审美性自然观十分发达,更积极地观察、观测各种自然地理现象。尤为突出的是,在当时的学者中间,从客观的角度探索自然并解释自然并非个别案例,而具有一定的普遍性。另外,甚至有部分学者抛开形而上的讨论,积极地对长期观测的自然现象进行归纳总结,表现出了浓厚的经验实证思想。虽然这表明当时的自然知识累积与发展出现了新的方向,但是它们并没有得到突破性的发展,其主要原因或在于这些新的因素并没有能够真正地改变儒学知识分子认识自然的基本方式。     

马克思对实现“两个和解”的探讨

“两个和解”就是人与自然的和解和人与人的和解。在马克思看来,物质生活资料的生产和再生产是人与自然和人与人之间关系的基础。在物质生活资料的生产基础上的人与自然之间的物质变换,是实现“两个和解”的内在机制,扬弃资本主义私有制,由“自由人联合体”共同占有生产资料是实现“两个和解”的根本路径。     

The 2013 ANTIPODE AAG Lecture The Environment Making State: Territory,Nature, and Value

My argument is that the state is fundamental to the value form because it delivers the use values of non‐human nature to the process of capital accumulation. Capital cannot, and historically does not, capture non‐human nature without the participation of the state. The state delivers the utilities of extra‐human nature to the accumulation process by creating property regimes, physical infrastructure, and scientific knowledge. As such, the state is a crucial under‐theorized political membrane in the ecological metabolism of capitalism and the value form. The capitalist states inherently environmental qualities are rooted in its fundamentally territorial qualities. Where are the utilities of non‐human nature found? On the surface of the earth. What institutions ultimately control the surface of the earth? Territorially defined national states. The example of state formation in the early years of the United States is used to illustrate these ideas.     

Life-Philosophical Anthropology as the Missing Third: On Peter Gordon's Continental Divide

Summary

Though Peter Gordon mentioned philosophical anthropology in his book Continental Divide, he has not yet realized how it works independently from Cassirer's and Heidegger's prejudices. The whole argument between them before, in and after Davos (1929) raged around the status of philosophical anthropology: How do the spiritualisation of life and the enlivening of the spirit come about? This was not just the central question for philosophical anthropology founded by Max Scheler, but also in Wilhelm Dilthey's life philosophy, which was systematized by Georg Misch. Cassirer and Heidegger shared three shortcomings with respect to the Life-philosophical Anthropology. Neither had a philosophy of nature or a philosophy of sociaty or a philosophy of history. The insight into the unfathomability of humans (Misch) is given a political edge in Helmuth Plessner's book Power and Human Nature (1931). Elevating it to the principle of democratic equality with respect to the worth of all cultures one opens up the potential for a form of civil competition that might supersede ethnocentric wars.     

Brave New World? Ruminations on Race in the Twenty‐first Century

What if we “renovated” race as a concept to reflect new configurations, possibilities and disruptions? In this essay, I consider how we might “do” race differently in our theorizing and praxis by interrogating the framings and the language we use to understand and engage race in all its permutations. I encourage us to see “informal moments of intervention” in the public sphere as resilience central to informing our theory. By engaging multiple sites of production and placing our intellectual and creative selves at the center of those relationships, we can potentially uncover/discover/recover race as an emergent concept that more accurately depicts and articulates where and who we are in the present.     

Race,Space, and Nature: An Introduction and Critique

In this essay we put forth nested arguments about the way that racialization remains a powerful force in contemporary society, contending that intersections with space and nature offer important lessons about the (de)construction of race. We argue that the pernicious character traits of racial constructs develop through spatial practices and intersect with ideas about “nature” and belonging. We trace these concepts through recent conversations in geography and environmental studies, and we call for a persistent, critical, and prominent engagement with racialization in the spatial social sciences. Finally, we introduce the papers that constitute this symposium, which engages these questions from a range of perspectives and across a variety of landscapes. We hope to spur the conversation about “race and geography”, broadly conceived, beyond studies conceptualized around race alone. We are hopeful that this work, and the larger body of work it contributes to, travels beyond academic conversations to engage broader social justice debates about the “nature” of racial inequality—to ultimately participate in its dismantlement.     

明清以来晋南山麓平原地带的水利与社会——基于龙祠周边的考察

晋南山麓平原地带存在着两种类型的地表水资源：流量稳定的泉水和季节性的洪流。在龙祠周边,龙子祠泉是最重要的泉水资源,经过千余年的开发,于明代末年形成较为稳定的渠道系统和灌溉区域。在渠系建设和运行过程中,面对发源于山间的洪流,引泉灌区通过避、堵、疏三种技术手段加以防治,并用规范化的制度体系予以保障。被引泉灌区视为隐患的洪流...     

论文明对待自然

人类必须文明地对待自然,应坚持平等对待自然、与自然和谐相处这样两个原则。平等对待的原则是为了保护自然万物的生存权利;和谐相处的原则是为了确立人与自然的和谐关系。坚持这两条原则是人类生存和可持续发展的基本要求,是人类总结经验教训后的必然选择。