Behaviour as a thing

This article reflects on issues arising from attempts to treat behaviour as an object of scientific and social scientific study. It examines what happens when behaviour is taken as a thing, an object of concern, modification and enquiry. At the heart of the notion of behaviour, this article argues, lies a fundamental ambiguity. The concept’s power, but also its elusiveness, lies in its ability to tack back and forth between two visions: on the one hand behaviour as materialized, objectified action, regular, repetitive and rule-bound, and on the other behaviour as a placeholder, a word to index something we do not yet know or understand. Those are two ways of being a ‘thing’.     

永恒的文明──洛阳文物精品陈列设计与构思

《永恒的文明──洛阳文物精品陈列》是洛阳博物馆新近推出的又一精品力作,并喜获殊荣。本文从内容的构思、艺术形式的设计等方面,对该陈列进行较为全面的分析和论述。     

The New View of Makeup and the Consumption of Cosmetics among the Women of Shanghai in the Modern Age

Under the pressure of the national crisis in modern China, millennia-old traditional concepts have been broken and adjusted, and new trends and ideas have emerged in large numbers. In order to defeat local cosmetics, from the moment they entered China foreign cosmetics companies attacked the traditional Chinese cosmetics of eyebrow pigment (dai), lip pigment (gong), rouge (zhi), and face powder (fen). Corresponding to the enlightenment ideas of the early twentieth century, women could no longer pursue beauty in a way that harmed their bodies. In the movement to liberate women’s bodies in the 1920s, radical intellectuals developed a severe criticism of the bad habits of using corsets and applying powder, and the concept of “healthy beauty” came into being. However, in the context of the development of the women’s liberation movement and the respect for women’s consumer rights, the healthy beauty theory failed to suppress women’s consumption of beauty products, and “natural beauty” and “artificial beauty” ultimately coexisted in lifestyles of women in the modern era of Shanghai.     

Operationalizing a contested concept: indicators of territorial cohesion

European territorial policies increasingly refer to broad goals such as sustainability, well-being and cohesion. For their operationalization as political goals, there is a need to create indicators. But how can an indicator be meaningful in relation to a complex concept that is not well defined? If the creation of an indicator is primarily aimed at quantifying a concept and making it more operational, in the case of a contested concept (such as territorial cohesion), the process of building indicators also helps stabilize it, allowing a potential decontestation. A participatory constructivist approach – as used by the ESPON project Indicators for Territorial Cohesion (INTERCO) – is considered to be the most suitable for building indicators of contested concepts. While ensuring computability of the indicators, it allows more flexibility and reconciles the different meanings of the concept in order to stabilize it. Ultimately, the validity of indicators of contested concepts lies in pragmatic criteria: usability, usefulness and use.     

Prefiguring the State

Merging means and ends, prefigurative politics perform life as it is wished‐for, both to experience better practice and to advance change. This paper contributes to prefigurative thinking in three ways. It explores what it might mean to prefigure the state as a concept; takes its inspiration from a historical episode rather than imagined time ahead; and addresses what, if anything, prefigurative conceptions can do when practiced. Central to my discussion is the plural state—taking shape as micro, city, regional, national and global formations. Plural state thinking makes room for divergent kinds of states but does not necessarily foreground progressive ones. Thus, to explore in more detail a transformative left conception of the state, discussion turns to 1980s British municipal radicalism. Taking up this adventurous episode in governing as a “thinking tool”, an imaginary of the state as horizontal, everyday, activist and stewardly emerges.     

秦汉政治史观的演变历程

秦汉时期共有三种主要的政治史观：以五行相胜原则运转的五德终始说、以五行相生原则运转的汉为尧后说,以及董仲舒所创三统说。秦到汉武帝时,五行相胜的五德终始说占政治史观的主流,汉昭帝以后则被五行相生的政治史观代替,董仲舒创立的三统说在汉武帝时形成,此后便和五行相生政治史观平行发展。这三种政治史观都与阴阳五行有密切关联,并对秦汉乃至以后两千余年封建社会产生深远影响。     

解说:源起、概念、研究内容和方法

解说是旅游休闲研究中相当重要的一个概念,但关于解说的研究却只是近50年以来的事情。从20世纪60年代至今,解说研究经历了形成期、寻找最佳媒介期、探求正当性阶段,到1990年代初期初步走向成熟。目前,国际上的解说研究借助更多社会学和心理学理论,以及应用社会科学如营销、消费行为、应用行为分析及教育分析方法等,通过理性行为理论、计划行为理论、规范焦点理论、阐述可能性模式、基模理论、防御动机理论以及其他认知和社会认知理论得到理论架构,并逐渐走向成熟。与此相应,解说的理论研究在国内大陆尚未得到应有的重视,研究水平也与国际上存在较大的差距。本文从文献综述的角度,梳理了国际解说研究的最新进展,对解说的源起、概念、研究内容和方法等问题进行了探讨,并针对我国解说研究的现状分析了我国解说研究发展的前景,通过研究发现,我国的解说研究主要集中在台湾地区,研究的案例地选择较单一,对解说效果的评估缺乏定量的评估等等,另外也看到中国大陆地区,有关解说研究的论文曾逐年增多的态势,解说研究在中国也会越来越得到重视,解说也会被用到旅游的各个方面。     

生态旅游概念内涵、原则与演进

生态旅游是21世纪国际旅游业发展的主导形式,自1980年正式提出后迅速在学术界和实业界引起了巨大的反响。本文着重分析了生态旅游的概念由来、体系构成和要素内涵,并对其发展演进进行了深入的研究,探讨了在可持续思想下生态旅游的提升,以及对旅游业健康发展的作用。     

ATTRIBUTION OF CONCEPTS AND PROBLEMS WITH ANACHRONISM1

Many long‐standing debates about anachronistic concept‐attributions derive from an essentialist understanding of concepts that is often difficult to sustain for metaphysical or epistemological reasons. The intentionalist alternative to essentialism elaborated in this article successfully clarifies and avoids many standard problems with anachronism.     

Talk to the hand: strategic spatial planning as persuasive storytelling of the Loop City*

The paper analyses how the spatial vision of the Loop City for the Øresund Region has played an important persuasive role in legitimizing and mobilizing local and national political support for a light rail link along the outer ring road in the Greater Copenhagen Area. The paper discusses the persuasive power of spatial concepts and supportive storylines in bringing transport infrastructure projects onto the national policy agenda. In conclusion, the paper calls for critical attention to the rationalities underpinning practices of persuasive storytelling in contemporary strategic spatial planning.