Racisms compared: Fascist Italy and ultra-nationalist Japan

This article tries to compare the racisms of Fascist Italy and ultra-nationalist Japan as evidenced by foreign policy, attempting to categorize them into three dimensions: the inner logic of the nation state; the justification of expansionist foreign policies; and as an accelerator of cruelty in war. It also surveys Italo-Japanese relations by choosing some points of contact to scrutinize how different racisms reacted to each other.     

Social change and sexual mores: a comparison between pre‐20th‐century Norway and 20th‐century Botswana

This article compares pre‐20th‐century Norway and 20th‐century Botswana—two settings separated by time and space but sharing a sharp rise in non‐nuptial births. The comparison seeks to create a synergetic analytical effect by combining firsthand, experience‐near field data from Botswana with solid historical analyses of bastardy in Europe. This radical comparison provides a perspective that highlights the importance of treating “culture” not as a residual category, but as an integral part of everything social. This implies that there is a need not only for a proper sociocultural contextualization of localities, but also for an analysis of extra‐local power structures as fundamentally cultural, reflecting not only bureaucratic and political concerns but also values and existential perspectives.     

Comparing Communities—The Limits of Typology

Across the disciplines, communities and identities are usually classified into general categories, such as ethnic, tribal, territorial, civic, religious or political communities/identities. This may be useful in many instances to structure the field and highlight certain distinctive features. But, as this contribution will argue, such typologies do not provide a sound basis for comparison. This holds true both for intercultural and for interdisciplinary comparison. For instance, religion was configured rather differently in ancient Rome, late Antique Christianity and early Islam, and each of them differed fundamentally from our modern concept of religion (as opposed to a secular sphere). The same applies to ethnicity. Likewise, historians and social anthropologists (and even specific schools within the disciplines) operate with often rather differently configured concepts in this area. In fact, most actual communities are framed by more than one “vision of community”; they are rarely only ethnic, religious or political. Their shared frames of reference can be compared: for instance, ancestral lineages, supernatural origins, sacred places, shared history, tribal solidarities, legal practices, exchange networks or outside perceptions. Such frames of references of course overlap and typically create more than one level of identification. This contribution will take the example of the new peoples and powers that emerged after the end of the Roman Empire in the West (such as Goths, Franks and Anglo-Saxons). What shaped these communities, and how did ethnic, territorial, religious and political identifiers interact in the process?     

从二分到跨文化比较——西方的中西历史及史学比较述论

西方的中西历史及史学比较研究起源较早,是从宏观的历史文化比较发展来的。20世纪六七十年代以前,主要以宏观比较为主,并形成一般的理论模式。六七十年代,以个体的微观研究为主要特征,形成一个高潮。90年代至今是第二个高潮,以大的群体或项目为中心,出现了系统的比较,提出了新的比较理论,史学越来越成为比较的重点。西方的中西历史及史学比较理论,经历了从以近代西方为中心的东西二分法,到注重多元化的文明形态比较,再到不同文化的跨文化比较的几个发展阶段。这些变化是与学术和历史的变化密切相关的。     

Unlikely amazons: Brazilian indigenous gender constructs in a modern context

Feminist theory predicts that when traditional societies with egalitarian gender relations contact European state societies in which gender stratification exists, the traditional society will adopt the European gender construct. This rule may be modified in cases where the relations between the two types of society are modulated by interpretive processes which allow the state society to appropriate symbols of the indigenous culture for their own purposes, and the indigenous society to shape contact and change as they occur. This article describes how European contact transformed gender constructs among the Bakairí Indians of central Brazil, while accounting for the presence of an anomalous group of women who behave differently to the typical Indian woman. It explains how individual Bakairí, along with the support of key Brazilian institutions, have employed interpretively the early-contact indigenous version of the female gender role to authenticate the indigenous identity.     

归剑于鞘与再试新锋——鲁迅与森鸥外历史题材创作之比较

在同时具有最真实的理性色彩与最大的文学重创弯曲度的历史题材小说领域,鲁迅与森鸥外由于写作目的不同而体现出了社会批评意义上的差距,对现实的关怀、干涉程度与方法的不同也导致了文学风格上的差异。鲁迅始终坚持古为今用的立场,《故事新编》的风格较为统一,对史实的取舍与作家的虚构都服务于批判的主题;森鸥外则基于摆脱现实的目的而选择历史题材进行文学创作,其模糊的历史观导致了作品外部风格甚至内在主题上的矛盾。     

蒲耘龄与屈原悲剧比较论

蒲松龄对屈原悲剧的主动认同并通过撷取屈赋文句和凸现"狐死首丘"悲剧原型表达对屈原悲剧性的理解。相同的生存境遇沟通了原本孤立的个体悲剧,但在文本书写和情意表达上又有不同,包括娱忧与饮酒文字、悲情宣泄与转折结构、抑郁感伤与幻境描写以及取象、造境、文体样式等方面的差异,显示出不同的悲剧形态:屈原是崇高的壮美,蒲松龄是悲深的感伤。差异的原因包括时代意绪、地位悬殊、最后的结局、后人的接受态度以及生命力感的刚韧之别。     

郑注与汉代别家《论语注》之比较

通过汉代各家《论语》异文资料的详尽比勘,在文献记载基础上,我们认为郑注是杂糅三《论》而成的,而不属于单纯的某一《论》。郑注注重经典义理的阐发,注重礼仪制度的诠释,注重交代孔子言行发生的具体背景,同其他《论语》注相比,更有助于我们再现历史的孔子形象。     

The demographic impact of irrigation projects: a comparison of two case studies of the Ebro basin,Spain, 1900–2001

Water management and population issues have always been particularly important in Spain, a country historically characterized by severe environmental constraints on agricultural growth and intense rural depopulation. This paper evaluates whether irrigation projects in Spain over the course of the twentieth century have achieved one of their main objectives, which was to reduce rural population decline. This paper makes two contributions. First, we compare the evolution of population in two of the earliest and most ambitious irrigation projects in Spain, the Riegos del Alto Aragón (Upper Aragon Irrigation System) and the Canal de Aragón y Cataluña (Aragon and Catalonia Canal System), both located in the Ebro basin. Second, the time period of the study spans an entire century. This long-term approach is crucial if we accept that irrigation requires time to consolidate its effects and, therefore, its impact on population may be long delayed. We show that the evolution of population in each of the two projects has been substantially different. We also analyze the factors that have caused or prevented population growth. We argue that financial, economic and environmental limitations have been significant, but also that political and geographical factors have played a major role.