近代山东村落社区结构的整合与分化

在近代山东农村,村落社区成员对土地、资金、村公产等物质资源和宗教、教育、村庄自卫等人资源的分配,必须通过各种社会组织才能得以进行,其中宗族组织起了统合血缘地缘关系及情感流向的关键作用。在村落社区以宗族组织为中心的社会结构整合过程中,会出现基于地权分配不均衡而产生的社会分化,这必然导致经济社会地位相近的村落成员组成某些特殊的社会组织,从而使村落社区结构在统合性中又产生一定的分异性。     

从突破部族社会桎梏的意义去认识周初变革——兼谈五种社会形态问题

周初的政治变革,打破了殷商时期以血缘纽带为依托的族邦方国结构,使中国历史从此走上了一条崭新的发展道路。它使生活于广大地域的人们开始突破狭小的、具有极强稳定性的族邦结构社会的桎梏,而形成了一种以语言文字、道德伦理和风俗习惯等文化认同为纽带的、强固紧密的精神凝聚力量,从而具有了不断向更高社会阶段发展的现实基础。     

Planting Roots,Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu

A contentious issue for Pacific Islanders, as well as researchers of the Pacific Islands, is ni-Vanuatu notions of ‘belonging’ to urban centres. Previous research in Vanuatu has shown that despite generations of people born and raised in Port Vila, the nation's capital, the urban centre is not generally perceived as a ‘place’ to which urban migrants can say they are from. For many, exclaiming that one is ‘from’ town is tantamount to admitting one has ‘no place’. This paper, based on fieldwork among a group of urban young men in Freswota, a residential community of Port Vila, argues that in contrast to this, Freswota young men are generating a new locative identity. Their urban community rather than their parents' home island places is emerging as their primary location of belonging and the source of their sense of self, personhood and social identification. As such, these young men are the urban autochthones of the country.     

The Political Aesthetics of Middle Class Housing in (not so) Neoliberal Mozambique

This article explores the social and material repercussions of middle class aspirations in a system that is still infused by socialist aesthetics in Maputo, Mozambique. We argue the activation of “middle classness” reproduces ingrained inequalities and boundaries. This is demonstrated through two ethnographic case studies of urban housing, long central to imaginaries of prosperity. First, fearing downward mobility, members of the upper middle class seek to embody a liberal ideology of “autonomy”, while simultaneously being dependent on state structures. Second, members of the lower middle class attempt to create enclaves to experiment with forms of privatisation normally only accessible to a privileged elite. Through this examination of the ways in which a spectrum of privileged urbanites attempts to secure their position in the face of a precarious future, the article outlines middle classness under contemporary capitalist conditions and how this is shaped by the legacies of the past.     

汉代的民间宴饮与乡里社会

在中国古代,宴饮活动承载着一定的政治、社会和文化的功能,对国家权力的建构和社会秩序的维系,起到某种微妙的作用。汉代民间的宴饮活动可以分为政治性、宗教性和生活性三种类型,对建构乡里社会的秩序结构、满足百姓的精神需求和人情需要、促进基层社会关系和家族内部关系的协调,具有重要的作用。民间宴饮成为透视乡里社会形态和特征的一个特别视窗。     

Advancing culture’s role in sustainable development: social change through cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the potential for cultural policy to shape sustainable development in the context of expectations arising from research and policy work on development. We use, as the basis of a critique, the categorisation of the relationship between culture and sustainable development proposed by a major study funded by the European Union, being emblematical of how researchers and policymakers understand this relationship. The critique highlights a need for multiscalar social change, towards revaluing relations with the natural world, and reforming social relations between producers and consumers. This paper locates cultural policy as an arm of governance, with the capacity to lead social change across several interdependent pathways (revaluing technological change; fostering an aesthetic appreciation and environmental ethical consciousness; and pro-social behaviour) alongside the development of more sophisticated governance frameworks. The paper further proposes that through (re)education, cultural policy can and should play a more active role in shaping social change.     

“Catching the Yellow Ghost”: A Case Study of Popular Religious Activities and Social Transformation in Rural North China

This article studies the relationship between local society and social change in rural north China from the late Qing dynasty to the People’s Republic of China period through the activity of “Zhuo huanggui” (literally, “Catching the Yellow Ghost”). “Catching the Yellow Ghost” is a ritual activity in Guyi village, Wu’an county, Hebei province. According to villagers there, “Catching the Yellow Ghost” has been celebrated since the late Qing dynasty. However, due to political pressures in the 1950s, it was not until the 1980s that “Catching the Yellow Ghost” began to be revitalized. Since that time, “Catching the Yellow Ghost” has gained rapid popularity and fame in north China. Through the lens of the “Catching the Yellow Ghost” ritual, this article explores social transformation in China from the late 19th to the early 21st century. By analyzing the continuity and discontinuity of “Catching the Yellow Ghost,” this article offers a new understanding of the relationship between local society and social change in rural north China.     

Of Makerspaces and Hacklabs: Emergence,Experiment and Ontological Theatre at the Edinburgh Hacklab,Scotland

This paper commences a geographical engagement with makerspaces, hacklabs, and other workshop spaces which form part of a broader ‘maker movement’. It examines the arts of inquiry and experimentation found at one such site, drawing on ethnographic field work at the Edinburgh Hacklab, and makes connections with emerging themes of interest to geographers, including creativity, experiment, art, and nonhuman agency. Putting standard innovation-driven narratives of makerspaces into question, attention is instead turned to the events of emergent experimentation and creativity taking place in these spaces. To this end, Andrew Pickering’s concept of ‘ontological theatre’, describing powerful focal instances of agential symmetry between humans and nonhumans, is engaged with, in order to understand the links between Hacklab activities and emergent and complex aspects of nonhuman agency.     

Power to the people: when culture works as a social catalyst in urban regeneration processes (and when it does not)

This article focuses upon the relationship between culture, urban regeneration schemes, and their impact on socio-cognitive assets – namely, social and human capital. It examines three major urban regeneration projects in the districts of Saint Michel (Montreal, Canada), Auburn (Sydney, Australia) and Bicocca (Milan, Italy), where culture has been invoked as a main transformational driver at the economic and socio-environmental levels, but with different approaches and results. Through comparative analysis, we develop a more general reflection on the social impact of culture-led urban transformation processes, questioning the actual role of cultural initiatives – particularly those related to the creation of new cultural facilities and the programming of big cultural flagship events – and participation as a means to improve the local social milieu. We find that a key role for social efficacy is played by projects’ capacity to elicit the commitment of residents through inclusive cultural participation, as opposed to instrumental top-down initiatives mainly addressing city and neighbourhood branding and real estate marketing purposes.