Computer dating in the 1970s: Dateline and the making of the modern British single

The British matchmaking industry expanded sharply after 1970. This article focuses on the formative years of its most successful representative, the computer dating agency Dateline. Through attention to Dateline’s marketing in the late 1970s, I explore the ways in which new vocabularies of ‘scientific’ expertise were used to forge a ‘modern’ romantic sensibility. After setting Dateline’s success in the context social–sexual change, I explore its two main claims to authority—the computer and the empirical insights of psychology—suggesting that the invitation to embrace but also to control fate foreshadowed the pressures facing singles into the twenty-first century.     

The Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy and the Post-War Consensus

The post-war settlement among the policy elite is central to much historical literature. This article considers the rise and fall of the idea of ‘industrial democracy’, and its relationship to this settlement. The elite failed to respond coherently to claims for workplace democracy. The notion that politicians could work with ‘the unions’ and ‘industry’ was shown to be deficient. The unions contained numerous views, many hostile to industrial democracy in the form proposed by Bullock and the TUC. Industry was almost uniformly antagonistic. The notion of consensus ostensibly underpinned the attempts of Labour and Conservative politicians to progress this issue. In truth, this was a curious approach. The debate over Bullock was, at root, an argument over whether the owners of capital should cede some of their power in favour of organised labour. There was never likely to be agreement on this. The inconclusive debate over Bullock ultimately showed how fragile the consensus was. The political elite could not forever smooth over underlying disagreements between capital and labour, or between groups of workers with differing interests.     

地缘政治学理论、方法与九十年代的地缘政治学

本文介绍了地缘政治学家关于地缘政治学学科的不同定义;探讨了不同层次地缘政治学研究的核心概念和研究方法论,分析了长期存在的学科内涵争论;探索了九十年代地缘政治学新的研究领域和发展方向:旨在推动我国地理学家参与国家和全球的地缘政治,地缘战略研究,繁荣和发展我国人文地理学的学科体系。     

张衡地动仪的发明、失传与历史继承

地动仪的发明和失传存在深厚的社会背景.悬挂物对地震的良好反应是诞生科学思想的物质基础.地动仪是对天然验震器的发展,张衡不仅在利用物体惯性测震上,也在检测和记录地震微弱信号上有技术创新,成功测到公元134年12月13日陇西地震.天诫观念把自然现象与社会问题混为一谈,导致张衡晚年和地动仪的悲剧.仪器可能失传于东汉末年,当时发生了洛阳大火、毁铜铸钱、京师搬迁、人口剧减和灵台被毁等极端严重的社会混乱.张衡的科学思想和实践对现代地震学的起步发挥过思想启迪作用.对地动仪的研究需要开展科学实验,学术观点的统一只能建立在科学实验的基础上.     

匈奴饰牌类型辨析

饰牌是匈奴物质文化遗存的典型代表之一,主要作带扣、腰带饰、马具饰、首饰配件和"古玩"等五种用途.以装饰母题作为分类依据将匈奴饰牌划分为动物纹、人物活动纹、几何纹三型.战国到西汉时期是匈奴饰牌发展最鼎盛的时期.饰牌同时并存多种形制,并因题材选取的不同形成各自的系列.饰牌由原来的单一品种向系列化发展,创作母题从自然领域转向社会生活领域.     

再谈三线建设的评价问题

20世纪六七十年代进行的三线建设,虽已过去几十年了,但对它的评价依然存在颇多争议。对三线建设作出分析评价,确非易事,很大程度上归因于其特殊性。有鉴于此,有必要提出三线建设二重性这一命题,即它既是旨在应对战争危险的特殊政治行为,又是谋求改善生产力布局的一般经济行为。由于战争没有绝对确实性,只有相对确实性,因此政府的经济行为并不总是取决于经济学原则,还要考虑社会政治的要求。与此同时,评价三线建设得失时,还要面对其经济分析的特殊因素和难以避免的模糊性。总之,三线建设得失相比,得是长期起作用的因素,是国家战略利益所系;失是得的必要代价,从根本上说是外部敌对势力强加给中国人的,也是暂时的,终归会得到补偿。     

Railways as a Factor of Change in the Distribution of Population in Spain, 1900–1970

Abstract

The central focus of this work is to test a new methodology to measure the impact of the railway on the distribution of population, in this case in Spain. To achieve this, it was necessary to previously integrate data relating to population and railway lines into a geographical information system. The result was a spatial database that includes population data from homogeneous census series obtained for the municipal scale and the evolution of the railway network in service at corresponding points in time. This allowed the authors to apply spatial-temporal analysis. By so doing, this work constitutes an analysis of a new methodology, as they used exploratory spatial data analysis and geographically weighted regression to detect spatial patterns and estimate the influence of the railway and distance from the coast on population change. The results obtained show that the influence of the railway was very pronounced in some areas, while in others it was just one of the factors that could explain major changes in population distribution.     

Guy Vanderhaeghe’s Notes Towards the “Big Book” of His Generation: Man Descending in the Sociopolitical Context of the 1960s and 1970s

Guy Vanderhaeghe’s historical novels starting with The Englishman’s Boy (1996) have been widely discussed and celebrated in academic books and journals, but his first collection of stories, Man Descending (1982), has been largely neglected by the academic critics. An examination of sociopolitical references, with a special focus on gender and masculinity, in a coherent group of these stories (“The Watcher,” “Drummer,” Cages,” “Man Descending,” and “Sam, Soren and Ed”), reveals a writerly personality that, while acutely sensitive to contemporary social and political developments, and itself deeply implicated in these trends, nevertheless stands uncomfortably apart from and assumes a critical attitude toward the prevailing, generally progressive, sociopolitical trends of the 1960s and 1970s. In the last story of Man Descending, the protagonist-narrator Ed emerges as an aspiring thirty-year-old author who has attempted, but could not finish, two novels of his society and times, and these early stories constitute Vanderhaeghe’s own notes toward a never fully realized “Big Book” of his generation of Saskatchewan men, born in the early 1950s, coming to young adulthood in the socially and politically transformative 1960s and 1970s, and surviving into an embattled early manhood in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time, as it is depicted in these stories, in which the aspirations of 1960s progressivism were hardening into a conformist sociopolitical orthodoxy.     

《1973年的弹子球》的孪生性——村上春树小说艺术论之一

《1973年的弹子球》是村上春树的“青春三部曲”的第二部,问世以来被批评界视为“过渡性”作品予以忽略。本文以作家的写作背景和文本为中心,认为这部作品是日本战后一代的生活经历的凝聚与提炼,从而构成了对形象内心世界的递进式的探索,在主题与艺术手法上均系《且听风吟》的姊妹篇。     

“扬州书信”所见“青溪旧屋”刘氏著作刊行考略

扬州"青溪旧屋"刘氏家族是自清嘉庆至民国时期数代相传的书香世家,其学术影响贯通中外。最近,古城扬州发现的数十通民国时期书信,内容涉及刘氏家族著作的出版发行情况,为研究其著作的传播与影响提供了鲜为人知的资料,也为后人了解和研究当时的图书出版事业提供了第一手鲜活的资料。