Cooperative Competition

This article focuses on the collision between the communal-based and individual-based business cultures within the merchant community of Pori. The conflict is analysed by examining divergent petitions, complaints, and statement letters written to and by various authorities at the local, provincial, and national levels during the first half of the 19th century. The case study concentrates on confrontations between a nobleman of Swedish origin, Frans Fredrik Wallenstråle (1771–1857), and members of the local merchant community. The article strives to explain how and why the merchant community and the members of the town council made every possible effort to prevent Wallenstråle from developing his business activities and participating in communal cooperation within the community. In contrast to earlier literature, this article does not concentrate on petitions, their rhetoric, or the interaction between individual and state authorities. It analyses petitions as historical sources that resulted from collisions between the communal, cooperative business culture and vested interests.     

“德性”：个体与社会和谐关系的伦理审视——基于对麦金太尔社群主义思想的一种理解

和谐社会的构建既需要作为主体的个体积极主动“各尽所能,各得其所”,同时又需要个体作为客体相互尊重、共同分配和享有社会发展的各项成果。社群主义的“德性”教育思想为和谐的个体与社会关系的构建开辟了一种重要视域,他们在修正“自由主义”思想过程中,提出重新倡导个体生存的集体的和社群的价值意义,并试图把“美德”作为整个社会生活价值体系的核心,使得“美德”成为导引人们实践的内在力量,不但成为个体成就人生的内在力量,也成为组成个体融入社会的一种和谐的内在力量。     

Frisonica libertas: Frisian freedom as an instance of medieval liberty

In the later Middle Ages the predominantly rural Frisian territories covering the coastal area between the Zuider Zee and the River Weser stood out by virtue of their anomalous position. One striking phenomenon in this area was the early breakdown of feudalism; another was the failure of sovereign rule to take root. A crucial development was how the resulting political vacuum was filled by communal institutions. This paper tries to explain this state of affairs, a situation the Frisians themselves referred to as ‘Frisian freedom’, in terms of the communalism thesis propounded by Peter Blickle. In summary, it can be said that the Frisian territories, at least while the communal institutions were in their prime, constitute an even more prototypical model of rural communalism than the founding cantons of the Swiss Confederation.     

The idea of freedom in the writings of non-Chalcedonian Christians in the fifth and sixth centuries

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Christians who had been deprived of the direct sponsorship of the state articulated their claims for political and religious freedom. I examine four cases from the fifth and sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran. Here I argue that Scriptural models provided an important reservoir of political ideas that could be used by clerics to undermine state authority, whether to underscore the conditional nature of Roman claims to authority or to deny an equality of religious freedom to non-Christian co-citizens.     

Coping with deviance: Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century

ABSTRACT. This article highlights two processes that shaped Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century. The first concerns the competition between different nation‐states and the nationalist visions these contests engendered. In a Europe dominated by the norm of the culturally and ethnically homogenous nation, the Swiss authorities, public intellectuals and various political representatives were desperate to display an image of national authenticity to the outside world. The result was a nationalism that combined voluntaristic and organic elements. In the second and main part of this article, the focus turns on citizenship; it is conceived not only as a social and legal institution, but also as a cognitive prism through which people defined their membership in the national community. Remarkably, the authority in granting national citizenship to foreign nationals remained firmly in the hands of the cantons and, above all, the Swiss municipalities. In practical terms, this meant that the Gemeinde provided the institutional and cognitive frame through which nationhood was primarily experienced, imagined and defined. While Switzerland represents a particularly strong case of a communalist polity, it should not be treated as unique. Instead, it should alert us to a potentially fertile yet little‐explored area of research: what might be called the communal embededdness of the national(ist) imagination.     

德国对日本近代地方自治的影响——以格奈斯特、莫塞和山县有朋的地方自治观为中心

日本近代地方自治制度是以德国、主要是普鲁士为模本建立的,那么德国究竟对日本近代地方自治产生了怎样的影响?本文主要通过对德国著名宪法与行政学者格奈斯特及其学生、协助日本近代地方自治立法的莫塞,以及日本近代"地方自治之父"山县有朋的地方自治观进行考察,分析其共同点与差异,从而总结出德国对日本近代地方自治的影响及日本近代地方自治的特点。