Gender,craft labour and the creative sector

This paper responds to a resurgence of interest in craft labour as an integral aspect of policy generation in the creative sector. It highlights the local, and industrial, cultural, and political histories and processes that create divisions and distinctions within craft economies. Drawing on research with designer makers in Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, the paper demonstrates how gender infuses the responses of policy actors in their regeneration plans for the local economy. It notes the significance of local meanings of craft and how this leads to misrecognition and devaluation. It also illustrates how the economic importance of designer makers is diminished within a policy environment that has had a long-standing focus on large-scale manufacturing. This leaves designer makers occupying a role that is predominantly focused on their symbolic and decorative value. This bodes ill for cultural policy reformulation that is based on the economic significance of flexible specialisation within small-scale, networked businesses.     

Sappho’s “Brothers Poem”: An Interpretation

This article explores the overall meaning of Sappho's “Brothers' Poem” by elucidating its web of interwoven verbal repetitions. “The gods”, Sappho seems to say, “reward those who have moderate wishes, think in longer time frames by trying to exploit all their resources and understand the law of natural alternation, regulated by Zeus, by bringing about an even more spectacular reversal of fortune”.     

Los adioses (1954) de Juan Carlos Onetti: procedimientos para alcanzar la sugerencia y el énfasis en el significado como nouvelle

Based on a presentation of the production of nouvelles in Hispanic America and its current study, in which the permanent academic and critical interest in Juan Carlos Onetti's Los adioses (1954) stands, this article raises and discusses the procedures used by the author to achieve a narrative that by its nature of nouvelle refuses the explicit in exchange for the suggestion. Among such procedures are the character of the narrator, the ellipsis, and a language of conjecture and doubt. With all of those procedures Onetti builds an open and multiple text in which his major emphasis during the writing process lies in the development of the meaning of the text, instead of just narrating the story, as proposed by Henry James in various prefaces to his nouvelles.     

Repertoires of national boundaries in France and Germany—within‐country cleavages and their political consequences

This article analyses how members of the majority population in France and Germany define membership in the nation and how they relate to the various civic, cultural, or ethnic visions of national belonging available in the cultural repertoires of historical models, institutional arrangements, and elite discourses. To scrutinize within‐country differences in the configurations of the symbolic boundaries of national belonging, this article applies cluster analysis techniques for each country separately using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Overall, the results suggest that people choose and arrange different criteria from cultural repertoires, resulting in various configurations of national boundaries. Furthermore, the number and types of symbolic boundaries used are decisive for explaining restrictive and hostile attitudes towards immigrants. Contrary to the civic and ethnic historical models, the national boundary configurations display very similar patterns across the two countries, especially attesting to the considerable process of liberalization of citizenship regulations in Germany.     

西周时期周天子拥有土地法权的意义

在西周土地关系问题上,周天子作为全国最高的统治者,其土地所有权无疑是最重要的一环。周天子所拥有的土地法权具有非常重要的实际意义,成为西周推行其他各项政策和制度的前提,体现并维护着周天子作为天下共主的地位和权利。     

对旅游卫星账户涵义和特点的深层思考

旅游卫星账户是当前联合国和世界旅游组织等国际机构所积极推广的一种测度旅游业经济影响的方法体系。本文从卫星账户相关背景和发展进程的梳理入手,从概念、总量、分类、表式等方面分析了旅游卫星账户的丰富涵义。在此基础上,文章从两个角度对旅游卫星账户所具备的特点和优势进行了深入剖析：其一为基本特点,包括统一“旅游”相关概念、从需求和供给双重角度描述旅游活动、对包价旅游产品进行“净估价”核算等;其二为统计特点,包括对旅游活动的全面统计和特殊统计、对“增加值”的统计和旅游消费的行业分类统计等。准确理解这些涵义和特点是我国启动旅游卫星账户工程的前提和基础。     

Taking Southern African Ceramic Studies into the Twenty-First Century: A Zimbabwean Perspective

I advocate in this contribution the need to emphasize the social milieu of pottery production, use, and distribution as a means of gaining a meaningful understanding of the significance of ceramics from archaeological contexts. Je préconise dans cette contribution le besoin de souligner le milieu social de la production, de l'emploi et de la distribution de poteries en tant que moyens de gagner une compréhension sérieuse de l'importance de céramiques venant de contextes archéologiques.     

Late Pleistocene Technology at Rose Cottage Cave: A Search for Modern Behavior in an MSA Context

Recent excavations at Rose Cottage Cave, located in the Free State, South Africa, have revealed both a transitional assemblage, dated to ca. 20,000 bp, and a final Middle Stone Age (MSA) assemblage, dated to ca. 28,000 bp. Preliminary analysis of these assemblages was undertaken to determine if the current European model of a cultural revolution for the emergence of the Upper Palaeolithic can be applied to the southern African evidence. Examination of these assemblages revealed that differences occurred between the transition in Europe and that in southern Africa in both the chronology of the transition and the degree to which this complete cultural package is linked to the emergence of Late Stone Age (LSA) technology. The methods of lithic production, the chronology of the MSA/LSA transition, and the associated behavioral characteristics were examined and results indicated that the technological change which occurred during the MSA/LSA transition was not a dramatic innovation in technology but, rather, a shift in the emphasis of production from a level of technology already in place and demonstrate a level of continuity between the MSA and the LSA. As a gradual occurrence, the MSA/LSA transition does not seem to fit the time frame for the European Upper Palaeolithic; it both occurs at a later period and takes longer to transpire. In addition, the origins of symbolic use of lithics appear to lie within the MSA, indicating that a more complex set of behavioral adaptation was occurring in the late Pleistocene in southern Africa, and that the MSA/LSA transition in this region does not adequately conform to the model of a revolutionary shift in behavior and technology that is proposed for the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe     

Placing the View from Nowhere: Historical and Sociological Problems in the Location of Science

Over the past two decades broadly geographical sensibilities have become prominent in the academic study of science. An account is given of tensions in science studies between transcendentalist conceptions of truth and emerging localist perspectives on the making, meaning and evaluation of scientific knowledge. The efficient spread of scientific knowledge is not a phenomenon that argues against the applicability of geographical sensibilities towards science but actually calls for an even more vigorous project in the geography of knowledge.     

试论中国史前玉器寓意性功能的演变

在中国古玉发展的历程中,史前是一个极为重要的时期,正是从这一时期开始了几千年来中国古玉与人们思想意识相结合的历史,也就是在中国玉器发展史上从自然美过渡到寓意美的阶段.从目前的考古资料来看,史前古玉在同一时期有其发展的统一性,以及不同时期上发展的连续性.也就是说,在同一时期,虽然非理性的表达方式各有不同,玉器里所积淀的社会观念和意识即理性的内容却是基本一致的.据此,史前玉器寓意性功能的发展可以分为三个阶段：史前玉器寓意性功能发展的滥觞期、玉神灵崇拜寓意性功能阶段、玉“神人”崇拜寓意美阶段.