The Urban “Cultural Nexus of Power”： Intellectual Elites in Shanghai and Beijing, 1900-1937

In the decades before the full-scale war with Japan in 1937, a robust series of institutions connected the bourgeois with intellectuals （which included professionals and journalists, as well as academics） in Shanghai. Collectively, these institutions can be understood as forming an urban ＂cultural nexus of power＂ that allowed non-state actors to effectively control aspects of Shanghai＇s political life. This bourgeois-intellectual alliance was not inevitable; no similar bonds existed between these same two groups in Beijing. It was forged in Shanghai due to the city＇s unique historical position as a Treaty Port and its dynamic economy, which included an extensive structure of private higher education and a market-based publishing industry. Unlike the rural ＂cultural nexus of power＂ originally described by Prasenjit Duara, this urban nexus grew stronger during the political and economic changes of the early twentieth century. War and revolution in the 1930s and 1940s, however, destroyed the connections between the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals, ending the vibrant urban environment they had created.     

"一线两带"建设与关中城镇群的双向促进机制研究

如何提高关中城镇群竞争能力及区域经济发展活力.在分析“一线两带”建设和关中城镇群发展的现状后认为,高新技术产业和星火产业具有不同的产业形态,是从工业和农业两个层面实现关中区域经济一体化的重要支撑和发展动力.对于关中地区不同发展层面的城镇,宜采用不同的产业经济政策,促进关中城镇向组团式城镇群发展,为关中地区产业集群的发展和新的产业经济体系提供良好的发展平台.研究结论认为,要实现关中区域经济一体化,必须实现二元经济和二元社会的融合,需要建立产业协调机制、城市协调机制,构建区域内功能性组团式城市群,促进关中城乡经济一体化.“一线两带”建设与关中组团式城镇群建设,宜从产业集群和城镇两个层面进行整合,提升关中城市和经济社会的整体竞争能力.     

The Archaeology of the Gaucho <Emphasis Type="Italic">“Vago y Mal</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Italic">Entretenido”</Emphasis>

The purpose of this article is to explain and discuss the essential operational characteristics of the technology of power (sensu Foucault) perpetrated on the internal frontiers with the Indians in nineteenth-century Argentina. The conquest and colonization of the Pampas took shape in the establishment of military camp structures placed to create a defensive cordon, known as “the Indian frontier line.” These constructions were fortlets defended by gaucho cavalry squadrons (know as Blandengues during the Spanish period, and then Guardias Nacionales after Argentinean Independence). This process is known in Argentinean historiography as “the conquest of the desert.” This particular technology of power existed in this historical context and operated at every social level, impacting strongly on the lower classes that inhabited the incorrectly named “desert.” Its implementation in the military field enabled the existence of an array of micro-powers that surrounded the gaucho, called vago y malentretenido—“a vagrant and lingerer”—and their women's lives. The army as institution was the locus of various forms of coercion and old forms of punishment (such as the stakes, whipping, and public executions) most of which affected peasants, nonresidents, itinerant workers, and the rural youth. This schema was adopted in different areas: in the enrolment and discipline of the gaucho soldiers, in life in the fortlet-prisons, and in the ritualism of power. The alternative chosen by soldiers to evade this technology of power and the fortlet-panopticons was escape through desertion. The utility of those observations is demonstrated, because an important part of the area of research of historical archaeology that has developed with the greatest impetus in Argentina has taken fortlets as its subject of study.     

制约缺位：苏联政体的陷阱——陈独秀晚年对社会主义民主的思考

陈独秀晚年对前苏联的政治体制进行过冷峻的思考.他的结论是:斯大林的个人独裁,斯大林对民主的粗暴践踏,根本原因不在于他"个人心术特别坏",而在于政体存在严重弊端--最高统治者手中的权力缺乏起码的制约;是独裁制造就了独裁者,而绝非相反.陈独秀晚年对社会主义民主的思考,是独到的,具有前瞻性的.他明确地告诫人们:社会主义革命后建立的"民主政权",离真正的民主自由制度还差十万八千里;不吸收、借鉴资本主义时代的政治文明机制,不搭建权力分立、监督、制衡框架,不真正确立和完善民主选举、民主决策、言论自由等等具体的制度和程序,社会主义民主必然有其名而无其实,个人集权专断的悲剧便难免重演!陈独秀晚年的这些思考和见解,不仅在20世纪已经得到了验证,在刚刚迈入门槛的21世纪,依然具有现实的启示意义.     

The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective

This paper explores the materiality of social power relationally through study of social interactions with artifacts. Specifically, it is argued that acquisition of an artifact instantiates social power by imposing interactions on groups taking part in that artifact's life-history activities. We introduce the “performance-preference matrix,” an analytic tool for systematically studying the effects of such acquisition events on activity groups. The use of the performance-preference matrix is illustrated through an example: the acquisition of electric-arc lights for lighthouses in the 19th century. Suggestions are offered for analyzing culture-contact situations and for handling singularized artifacts such as heirlooms and monuments.

政治和法治的钟摆——以国家观念(文化)史为视角

法治是人类经过长期的探索,才得以确立政府应该负责的一种信念。历史上,法治从对宗教自由和公德心的承认发展而来。国家在认可个人的宗教自由和公德心的同时规定了对自身的基本限制。西方现代法治进一步延伸了宪法控制政府行为的观念。法律制定是国家权力的明显体现,而被制定的法律是国家政策转化为行动的中介并对整个政府行为均具有约束力。这意味着政府当局不能采取任何与议会或宪法相抵触的行动,意味着法律优先于任何的、所有的其他政府手段,受到立法机关法律的、政治的首要性的支持。借助国家观念史的演进历史来分析,可以说明政治和法治的钟摆始终是在回答为什么必须使用国家权力,然后才是如何防止权力的滥用(即权力守法)这两个问题所代表的倾向之间摆动。     

论权力寻租及其法律制约

权力寻租是当前社会产生腐败的主要原因之一。权力寻租有其产生的必然性,它严重危害国家和杜会,已成为当今世界政治中的一大顽症。制约权力寻租最有效的方法是法律制约,但是法律制约权力寻租还必须有合适的环境为支撑。     

Imperial power, gentry power and clan power: Western and Chinese cultural traditions in a comparative perspective

The differences between China and Western countries in human and physical environment has brought about two distinctive models of state. In the Chinese-style state of quasi-consanguinity, in which family and state have a similar structure, imperial power, gentry power, and clan power are the product of common ownership of consanguineous groups. The similarity in the structures of these three kinds of power derives from the fact that they are all restricted by the power of lineage generated from the self-sufficient small farmer economy, and must obey the conventions of ancestors which hold the benefits of the group as supreme. The relationship between these three kinds of power, is definitely not the one that is based on the division of power that is founded on individual private ownership in Western countries, where ‘public power’ and ‘individual private ownership’ are antithetic, but are three aspects of the patriarchal dictatorship that complement each other. Therefore, village rule in China and autonomy in the West are two totally different concepts, and gentry power is also not the ‘authorized power’ from the state. __________ Translated from the Journal of Tianjin Normal University, 2004: 1     

Russia's Energy Policy, 1992-2005

A team comprising a former Russian policymaker and American analysts of the current Russian energy policy examines the course of that policy and its limitations during the post-Soviet period. In the process, they critically analyze key problems in Russia's oil, gas, coal, and electricity sectors that represent a potential drag on growth of the entire Russian economy and at the very least call into question the sustainability of further increases in exports to the West. The authors explore in considerable depth and detail both the factors underlying the recent increase in government intervention in the energy sector and the likely consequences for domestic production, consumption, resource security, and critical exports. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 11 figures, 3 tables, 29 references.     

Factor Decomposition of Rural Income Inequalities in China

A Chinese geographer explores changes in inter-provincial rural income inequality in China since the late-1970s economic reforms by decomposing it into different component factors based on the Gini index (more specifically, into contributions by different income sources: wages, household operations, properties, and transfers). The influence of each factor on inequality changes is further decomposed into its structure effects and its real inequality effects. Quantitative analysis then makes it possible to determine the relative influence of each component on changes in rural provincial inequality over time.