William T. Cavanaugh and René Girard

Abstract

This article examines the argument of William T. Cavanaugh’s The Myth of Religious Violence in the light of the mimetic theory of the French-American cultural theorist Rene Girard. Though the two projects are significantly different I argue for their mutual compatibility. Each author is “apologetic” for the Christian revelation, though the presence of theology in “The Myth . . .” is muted or implicit, as in Walter Benjamin’s parable of the puppet and the dwarf. I argue for four areas of specific convergence between Cavanaugh and Girard, arising from a shared Augustinian, “two Cities” suspicion of the state, and their resistance to the secularising marginalisation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The notion of martyrdom as a “dramatic” performance is a further shared dimension. Finally, I argue that the apparent divergence of their approaches, between an anthropological thesis (Girard’s) and a historical one (Cavanaugh’s) is narrowed when we consider the later work of Girard and its examination of nineteenth century dynamics of escalation in warfare in his last book Battling to the End.     

Urban Sámi Identities in Scandinavia: Hybridities,Ambivalences and Cultural Innovation

One of the most significant social and cultural changes in the northern part of Scandinavia, as in other parts of the world, is urbanization. All over the northern region, towns and cities are growing, and a large portion of the indigenous population now lives in urban areas throughout all Scandinavian countries. Within these multicultural cities, urban Sámi communities are emerging and making claims to the cities. From a situation where migration from a Sámi core area to a city was associated with assimilation, an urban Sámi identity is now in the making. In this article, we discuss what seems to be the emergence of an urban Sámi culture. The article builds on findings from a study of urban Sámi and their expression of identity in three cities with the largest and fastest-growing Sámi populations in the region: Tromsø (Norway), Umeå (Sweden) and Rovaniemi (Finland). A main finding is the increasing recognition of their status as indigenous people and the growth in Sámi institutions in the cities. Another finding is an urban Sámi culture in the making, where new expressions of Sámi identity are given room to grow, but where we also find ambivalences and strong links and identifications to places in the Sámi core districts outside of the cities.     

论毛泽东农村包围城市战略的地理基础

中国革命是中国共产党及其领导下的人民和军队,在中国这块辽阔广袤的地理舞台上,演出的一幕打倒国内外反动派,解放和建立新中国为目标的胜利活剧。毛泽东明确指出:"中国革命斗争的胜利,要靠中国同志了解中国的国情"。又说:"认清中国的国情,乃是认清一切革命问题的基本根据"。     

城市体系规模结构预测方法应用研究——以内江市为例

本文利用城市体系规模分布模型对内江市城市体系分形特征及规模结构进行了分析预测,指出了内江城市体系发展规律及促进其快速发展规律及促进其快速发展的对策措施。     

Applying the H/V Method to Dense Cities. A Case Study of Valencia City

The aim of this study was to apply Nakamura's technique to Valencia city center, after some preliminary tests in Barcelona. Previous studies of Barcelona had measured periods in restrictive conditions and in various types of material ranging from very soft soil (with a predominant period of approximately 2 s) to rock (0.3 s), and under different measurement conditions. The Valencia city center measurements were taken by using the distance from buildings and car and pedestrian traffic to construct a measurement grid that was as regular as possible. We also estimated possible soil-structure interaction to detect potential vulnerability.     

The archaeological study of neighborhoods and districts in ancient cities

The spatial division of cities into residential zones is a universal feature of urban life from the earliest cities to the present. I propose a two-level classification of such zones that archaeologists can use to analyze preindustrial cities. Neighborhoods are small areas of intensive face-to-face social interaction, whereas districts are larger areas that serve as administrative units within cities. I review comparative historical data on neighborhoods and districts and outline archaeological methods for their identification and analysis. Illustrative cases are drawn from Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, and I conclude with a review of the major top-down and bottom-up social forces that generate and shape neighborhoods and districts in preindustrial cities.     

Leveraging city officials’ professional and social Identities to facilitate affordable housing

Housing affordability is an acute problem in many developed economies. It is rooted, inter alia, in a conflict of interests across levels of government. Policies that seek to increase the supply of housing and lower their purchase price are popular among the general electorate, yet local governments deploy urban planning regulations to restrict densification and development of affordable housing within their jurisdictions. Moves to address this conflict would benefit from unpacking city officials' policy preferences and their variation. This paper compares the positions of local-government politicians vs. those of unelected bureaucrats in Israeli cities, drawing on survey and interview data. Our findings confirm the conflicts of interest between levels of government even within Israel's unitary, centralized context. However, we show that career bureaucrats, given their relative freedom from electoral pressures and commitment to professional values, are more amenable to citizens' and central government's shared interest in densification and affordable housing. We also highlight city officials' place of residence—within vs. outside the city—and their social identification with citizens and residents as antecedents of their urban-planning preferences. We draw on these findings to delineate directions for more effective central–local government collaboration in seeking affordable housing solutions.     

The leitmotiv in the mathematical thought of Gerbert of Aurillac

The political transformation of Italian cities during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had a significant impact on the social fabric of those communities. This essay examines the effect of political change on the social order in urban Italy through a study of the response of lay confraternities in Bergamo to the demise of the commune and the rise of the Visconti signoria. We examine the administration, the civic commitments, and the charitable donations of the city's largest confraternity, the Misericordia Maggiore, from the late thirteenth century, when it was a close supporter of the commune, to the mid-fourteenth century, when the confraternity came increasingly to resemble the signorial regime. In its emulation of the social values of contemporary government, and its willingness to adapt to suit prevailing political structures, the Misericordia helped smooth the transition from commune to signoria for its membership and the community at large.     

读《商代都邑》浅识

春花飘香,得挚友王震中先生相赠新著《商代都邑》,不胜欣喜!细细掂量,篇幅宏大,分量不轻;匆匆翻过,满目珠玑,心旷神怡。遂每日抽暇读上几页,写下几笔,整理后聊充读书心得,愿与同好分享。一《商代都邑》的研究方法,值得赞赏。该书把历史学与考古学有机结合起来,是迄今所见把考古资料加以充分运用的史学著作之一。作者具有考古学专业背景,了解考古学的研究方法,熟悉考古学的学术动态,甚至     

Resistance and the City

The mass demonstrations that took place in 2011 in major cities worldwide, dubbed here Contemporary Metropolitan Protest (CMP), varied in terms of the issues tackled and the political efficacy attained, but featured similarities in style, mobilization patterns and the use of traditional and social media. The similarities explain the tendency among commentators and researchers to treat CMP as a coherent category. The variation, on the other hand, raises questions about conceptual and theoretical idioms used so far in the analysis of CMP. The article begins by scrutinizing “resistance”—an idiom introduced to anthropology in the 1980s to theorize peasant response to metropolitan policies—and its recent emergence in the depiction and analysis of CMP. Highlighting the strengths and limitations of the term, I use the rise and fall of CMP in Tel Aviv in 2011 and 2012 as an example of how the implicit logic of aggression and response, so central to earlier employment of the notion of resistance, can be hijacked by defensive regimes that seek to delegitimize and criminalize critique, thus forcing CMP to decline and implode.