Neoliberalisation from the Ground Up: Insurgent Capital,Regional Struggle,and the Assetisation of Land

In this paper we argue that “assetisation” has been a central axis through which both neoliberalisation and financialisation have encroached in the post‐Fordist era. We focus on the mobilisation of land as a financial asset in northwest England's former industrial heartlands, offering an account of how property developer the Peel Group came to dominate the land and port infrastructure of the region through aggressive debt‐led expansion and, in particular, a hostile takeover of the Manchester Ship Canal for its land‐bank. In doing so, we illustrate how the capture of resources, especially land, by private corporations has shaped both substance and process of neoliberalisation from the ground up. By focusing on transformative struggles over land we contribute to research agendas attempting to understand the systemically dispossessive nature of assetisation, its relationship to fictitious capital formation, and the way such neoliberalising transformations are produced through grounded and situated socio‐spatial struggles.     

Adaptive strategies or ideological innovations? Interpreting sociopolitical developments in the Jequetepeque Valley of Peru during the Late Moche Period

Environmental perturbations and social unrest are thought to have led to the reconstitution of traditional belief systems and hierarchical political relations on Peru’s North Coast during the Late Moche Period (550–800 AD). Ideological transformations are thus commonly interpreted as adaptive or reactive responses to social, political, and ecological disruptions. Nevertheless, religious practices directly shaped the formation of alternative power structures and ecological systems on the North Coast during the Late Moche Period. This is especially evident in Late Moche Jequetepeque, which witnessed the proliferation of non-elite ceremonial sites and small-scale agricultural facilities throughout the rural hinterland of the valley. Moche-inspired ritual performances orchestrated in the countryside created distinctive new forms of political order which structured economic activities and ecological behavior. In this article, the Jequetepeque case study is mobilized to reassess normative interpretations of the role of religious ideology in cultural adaptation and sociopolitical realignment.     

明清时期瑶族向西南边疆及越南、老挝的迁徙

本文对明清时期的瑶族向西南边疆及越南、老挝等东南亚国家的迁徙进行了探讨。认为明清时期,由于封建统治阶级的政治压迫和经济剥削,以及刀耕火种游耕生产方式、自然灾害等方面的原因,瑶族被迫从湖南及湘粤桂边界大规模向西南边疆及东南亚一带迁徙,并由此而引起瑶族人口和其文化中心的转移,形成新的文化特征,瑶族亦由此而成为跨境民族。     

仪式与艺术的关系

仪式是人类学的一个重要范畴,也是人类精神生活中一种重要的活动,它具有象征特性、符号特性和场域特性,作为人类一套独特的话语,仪式是人类解决现实矛盾的一种超现实手段,仪式的这些特性与艺术有着惊人的相似之处。     

二里头文化陶礼器造型艺术研究

二里头文化陶礼器的造型艺术表现为简洁质朴的艺术风格,这与夏代礼制文化中"尚质"的审美倾向十分吻合。陶礼器的造型艺术由黄金比例、纹饰和仿生三种设计方法以体现陶器造型和装饰的简洁与抽象性,而三至四期动物造型装饰的增多则为商代青铜礼器的艺术形式奠定了基础。酒器和食器的器物造型构成了礼仪中行为与时间的观念,以及动与静的礼仪活动的日常行为规范。而高等级墓葬中的稀有陶器斗笠形器,其造型与古人对天的描述相同,它不仅代表了所葬之人的身份与职能,还是上层社会对天祭祀权力的象征。     

从秦府集团成员仕进状况看区域文化合流

本文结合南北朝至隋末区域文化合流的背景,考察隋末唐初秦府集团成员的仕进状况,其中包括人才类型、家庭政治背景、个体政治势力来源、进入秦府的渠道、个体政治活动空间,认识了以李世民为核心的秦府政治集团,利用争夺天下之机,逐步拓展政治空间,将各地各类精英人才吸纳到秦府集团里来。在此过程中,李世民集团有意识地编织原北周、北齐、南陈入杨隋政治势力后裔,并用关陇、山东、江左这三大政治文化区域人才所长,将他们化入到同一个文化熔炉里融冶,大大推进了区域文化合流的步伐,在中华民族文化融合史上写下了崭新的篇章。     

宁绍地区早期遗址群的量化分析

宁绍地区早期遗址群的时空变化是钱塘江以南聚落考古研究的重要课题。本文全面收集了这一地区的考古资料,着重从量化分析的角度,对距今7000～3000年间的遗址进行了考古地理学考察。在提取高分辨率年代序列的基础上,绘制出多幅遗址群分布地图,初步恢复性重建了宁绍平原考古时代的聚落群景观。     

Animate Objects: Shell Trumpets and Ritual Networks in the Greater Southwest

For over a millennium, shell trumpets have been an important part of Southwestern US ritual practice. We investigate the distribution of Southwestern shell trumpets, arguing that they are objects that are accorded animacy and can be used to track the history of different social networks. Using ethnohistoric and ethnographic documentation, at least two traditions of historically linked ritual practices are identified: one associated with serpent iconography and the other with curing, warfare, and sorcery. These two traditions represent enduring dispositions that link various regions of the Southwest through the introduction and adoption of ritual practices associated with migration and the transformation of late prehistoric societies.     

The value of empire: tenth-century Bulgaria between Magyars,Pechenegs and Byzantium

The article seeks to explain the connection between the migration of the Magyars and Pechenegs in central and south-east Europe, in the late ninth and early tenth century, and the conflict between Byzantium and Bulgaria during the same period. Through reference to anthropologists discussing the relations between nomadic and sedentary societies (Khazanov, Barfield), and historians studying medieval rituals (Buc, Althoff, Koziol), the article interprets the aggressive policy of the Bulgarian tsar Symeon as a consistent effort to displace Byzantium as major partner of the nomadic polities in the area. By subverting the principles of Byzantine diplomacy and political culture, Symeon turned his own kingdom into a society-structuring factor in the nomadic world. The article evaluates the very meaning of imperial claims not so much in legal terms, as an effort to guarantee Bulgaria’s sovereignty in a Byzantium-centred world, but in the real-time capacity of a ruler to make use of imperial symbols and act upon the dynamically changing conjuncture.     

Hosting the king: hospitality and the royal iter in tenth-century England

Traditional studies of royal itinerancy have depended on locating the king’s progress through his kingdom(s) as precisely as possible and it should therefore not surprise that the iter regis in pre-conquest England has received relatively little attention, since Anglo-Saxon diplomas only rarely record their date and place of issue, making the establishment of the royal itinerary all but impossible. However, more recent studies, particularly by German scholars, have moved away from the earlier attention to the concrete details of the royal iter and focus more on the effects of itinerancy as a method of rulership, viewing itinerancy as a central part of royal ritual. This study argues that if we investigate itinerancy in tenth-century England from this standpoint, we can throw new light onto the subject. Contemporary sources reveal that in England as in France and Germany the iter regis was of great importance, with symbolic acts of feasting and gift-giving accompanying royal visits. The attention given to these ritualised acts in contemporary sources suggests, moreover, that Anglo-Saxon kingship possessed an important ‘charismatic’ quality, which deserves further investigation.