A Political History of Nagriamel on Santo,Vanuatu

ABSTRACT This article relates the political history of the Nagriamel movement on Santo, Vanuatu, and tries to account for its traditionalist excesses by reference to biographical aspects of its charismatic leader Jimmy Stevens. Stevens was the main architect in the unification of the ‘dak bus pipol’ (communities living in the island's remote interior) under a form of custom (kastom) he himself partially devised. This review of the life of this unusual character, who started as a ‘boy’ serving his colonial masters and became an ‘island king’, a self‐proclaimed ‘Prince’ of ‘Santo Custom’, and of the way he exploited the nativist assertions of his indigenous supporters, will also provide an opportunity to take a fresh look at the troubled period surrounding Independence in the Republic of Vanuatu.     

Historicizing Edai Siabo: a Contemporary Argument about the Pre‐colonial Past among the Motu‐Koita of Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT In the 1970s the Motu‐Koita, traditional inhabitants of what is now the National Capital District of Papua New Guinea, inaugurated a yearly cultural festival thematically based on traditional coastal trading voyages known as hiri. Contestation over the location and commercialization of the festival in the capital city developed in the new century as one distant village claimed to ‘own’ the hiri. The Motu‐Koita view of their past and their identity has been affected by their encounter with Christianity, colonialism and its aftermath, and the rhetoric of the villagers’ claims drew on criteria of authenticity, cultural purity, and exclusiveness which are arguably contemporary rather than ‘traditional’. This article reviews Motu‐Koita history, the story of the origin of the hiri, and the local politics of the cultural festival. It attempts to understand the way the past, which was formerly mythopoeically invoked, is being historicized and thereby fixed in new local discourses of cultural and heritage rights and ownership, as Melanesians come to terms with the effects of global processes on their traditions and other resources.     

Cultural Performance and the Reconstruction of Tradition among the Bunun of Taiwan

ABSTRACT This article aims to understand the meanings and impact of the reconstruction of tradition and the objectification of culture among the Bunun, an Austronesian‐speaking indigenous people of Taiwan. It situates the revival of tradition in the contexts of state appropriation and the development of ethnic tourism, and shows how the Bunun attempt to control their relationship with the state and the dominant society by reconstituting tradition in the present. The culturally specific ways in which the Bunun sustain local identity and sociality by reproducing their concept of personhood are highlighted. In doing so, I seek to move the analysis beyond the use of reified tradition as a political and identity symbol to address the broader theoretical concern of understanding tradition as a culturally specific mode of change.     

The Historical Tradition and Mission of Chinese Archaeology

Chinese President Xi Jinping, gave an important speech describing the great achievements and significance of Chinese archaeology, pointing out the way forward for the development of Chinese archaeology in the new era. By reviewing the century-long history of Chinese archaeology, its historical tradition and the mission of the times are distinctive. Since 1949, under the guidance of archaeological culture theory and regional systems and cultural types theory, Chinese archaeology has made a series of significant achievements and taken up the mission of the times in inheriting historical traditions and exploring major issues including the origins of Chinese civilization. The current development of Chinese archaeology should further the historical tradition of Chinese archaeology under the guidance of the spirit of Xi Jinping’s speech. From a longitudinal perspective, Chinese archaeology should strengthen the research on the origin of Chinese civilization and its characteristics, development trajectory, major landmark achievements, and the way of civilization inheritance after its formation, especially to strengthen the exploration of how the“5,000-year continuous unity” was formed after the unification of the Qin and Han dynasties. From a horizontal perspective, with the Belt and Road Initiative as the main thread, we should continue to strengthen archaeological research on cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, advocate mutual appreciation of civilizations, tell the Chinese story well, and contribute Chinese historical wisdom and experience to the world. On the whole, we should strengthen the theoretical construction and ability training of archaeology, strive to build Chinese archaeology with salient Chinese features, style, and ethos, and realize the historical mission of the new era of the Centennial“Chinese Dream.”     

Joseph Levenson and the possibility for a dialogic history

In contrast to the criticism that his work represents a Euro-centric view of China, we argue that Joseph Levenson’s understanding of China involves a third dimension – Judaism – at the level of his historical perspective and methodology. Built on in-depth analysis of Levenson’s work, in particular his Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, as well as his unfinished yet profound writings on Judaism and Jewish history, we find that his understanding of Jewish tradition plays a crucial role in his analysis of the history of modern China. We argue that what Levenson practiced was a historical methodology that we name “dialogic history.” We believe that dialogic history provides us a potential answer to the question of how we can understand another culture without being imperialists, essentialists, or Orientalists. Dialogic history is also history in action because when this kind of dialogue is conducted, a new space can be created in which history is no longer a one-sided monologue.     

TEACHING OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS: FOUR MOTIFS OF LEGAL CHANGE FROM EARLY MODERN EUROPE

In the past millennium, there have been thousands of polities in Europe and millions of laws. This article contributes to efforts by historians and sociologists to make some sense of this sprawl by constructing common types of law and legal change. Such types constitute distinctive patterns by which historical actors change names, ideas, and applications of rules of law under various circumstances. Three classic forms of change, namely legislation, mutation of custom, and judge‐made law, were described by Max Weber. To Weber's model I add four new types or motifs of change, which I dub legal deeds, voice‐supersession, legal fictions, and anthropological expansion. The major advance of the four motifs is that they each combine what could be called a semantic and a social view of legal change. That is, they take seriously the fact that law is often bound in a self‐conscious tradition of thought and practice. But each motif of change is also characterized by a typified social configuration of legal operators and legal subjects, who apply competing ideas to one another in distinctive ways. The paradigm of law in which the four motifs are embedded is evolutionary, pluralist, and liberal in that it posits creative social organization by multiple, independent, interacting individuals in society, weaving cumulative, complex orders. This theory makes several significant scholarly interventions. First, it attempts to reconcile outstanding semantic and social theories of legal change. Second, it historicizes legal pluralism while giving evolutionary theory a healthy dose of contingency. Third, the four motifs should also be serviceable to intellectual historians as tools for describing how historical actors interact with traditions generally. Tradition need not be viewed as conservative or even overwhelmingly static. This paradigm may help historians and social scientists assess how the force of the status quo balances against the power of individuals to innovate.     

Township/Village Administration from the Late Qing to the Warlord Period

In ancient China, formal government institutions stretched to the county level. This system witnessed a radical transformation during the late Qing and the Warlord period, with various types of township/village administrations mushrooming in many places across the country to meet the requirements of institutional reform and the demands for modernization in local regions. These township/village administrations can be divided into two types: one is the newborn township/village administration in the late Qing dynasty, and the other is the township/village or quasi-administration that evolved from the old localized Xiangdi (local administrative system). Functionally, the former can be further divided into two kinds, the monofunctional township/village administration, which might include education, or police and security, and the multifunctional administration. The latter falls into three categories: some were new-model administrations directly translated from the old rural Xiangdi system; some were subdivisions of the neonatal administration composed of the old local Xiangdi system; and still, others basically reserved the intrinsic property and function of the old Xiangdi system. As political entities, township/village administrations of this era can be further differentiated into those bordering on “self-government” and those lingering under “the official system.” Township/village administration at this time mostly consisted of a standing body, with their personnel, who enjoyed the status of professional civil servants, set up by legal proceedings. Government outlay was sponsored by public finance or tax income, and it assumed all kinds of modern administrative functions, basically of a modern character. Meanwhile, of course, it retained much of its traditional flavor in actual operation. All in all, the birth of this form of township/village administration constituted an important dimension of the modernization of China’s local administration system. Translated from Beijing Normal University Journal (Social Sciences), Vol. 2, 2004, by Sun Yue     

论中国当代法治建设与法制传统的冲突问题

分析我国法治建设中存在的问题,就会发现其根源于中国法制传统中固有的法律意识、法律文化、法律思想的综合体在发挥非制度性的消极影响。这些影响与现代法治建设之间产生了人治传统与法治精神之间的冲突、法制的传统道德与法治建设中的法律冲突、革命传统与法治的保守精神相冲突、传统的恶法意识与法治建设的良法要求相冲突、统治工具论法观念与公平正义法观念之间的冲突等。理清这些冲突并寻求解决冲突的良策,是推进法治建设中需要研究和解决的重要问题。     

Between Utopia and Tradition: William Morris’s A Dream of John Ball

ABSTRACT

William Morris, author of the famous nineteenth-century utopian novel News from Nowhere, thought it both possible and desirable to develop a utopian vision that could be affirmed by many individuals. However, Morris also recognised that achieving such utopian unity was not easy. There is, at least potentially, something personal about utopian visions; they are shaped by idiosyncratic desires that cannot be shared. Through a reading of Morris’s A Dream of John Ball, I argue that Morris offers a temporal solution to the problem of utopian unity. The central characters in the text, medieval priest John Ball and a nineteenth-century socialist agitator, come to recognise their shared adherence to the same image of a new society. This is achieved through the mediation of tradition: Ball and the agitator overcome their differences by committing themselves to disappointed hopes elaborated in past struggles that have been handed down to the present. Morris’s articulation of utopia and tradition—the sense that visions of the future can be made shareable through reference to the past—offers the possibility of a transtemporal solidarity of utopians and the bringing together of the dreams of a plurality of individuals.