“Imagining community” in Soviet Kazakhstan. An historical analysis of narrative on nationalism in Kazakh-Soviet literature

Although much attention has been paid to national construction in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia, the field of literary and cultural analysis of the origins of current national symbols and texts in this region is yet not fully acknowledged and discovered. This article tries to shed light onto the literary construction of an ethnic identity and its historical background in Soviet Kazakhstan and its influence on the post-Soviet ideology in this multicultural country. In doing so it investigates the ways and the time when most of the important historical epics were “re-written,” brought back by the Kazakh writers and intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century. The importance of investigating this period and this phenomenon is twofold. First, it provides further contribution to the Soviet creation of binary approaches to the formation of ethnic identities and the continuous attack on local nationalisms. Following the arguments of some scholars in the field (e.g. [Adams, Laura. 1999. “Invention, Institutionalization and Renewal in Uzbekistan's National Culture.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 2; Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity and Power. London: Routledge]) this asserts that the local cultural elites found ways of bargaining and re-structuring such identity contributing to its “localization” through the usage of pre-Soviet and pre-Russian historical symbols. In a way, they were able to construct their own “imagined community” and resistance to the past and existing (according to them) colonialism within the given framework of Kazakh-Soviet literature. Secondly, the historicity that became a leitmotif of most important literary works and later on a main focus of national ideology in post-Soviet Kazakhstan must be viewed not just as an instrument of legitimation in this post-colonial state but also as a strong continuity of cultural and ethnic identity lines. The very fact that a detailed and continued genealogy of Kazakh medieval tribes and rulers was the main focus of major works by such famous Kazakh writers as Mukhtar Auezov or Ilyas Yessenberlin demonstrates the importance of the “continuity” and kinship and family lines for Kazakhs. The paper raises the questions of how national and elitist these movements were before the independence and how the further post-independent projects of using and re-establishing these links and continuity formed more questions than answers for the nation-builders in independent Kazakhstan.     

党的十八大对探索中国特色社会主义规律的历史性贡献

中国特色社会主义规律是党的十八大报告提出的一个重大命题,标志我们党对中国特色社会主义的认识和实践提升到了一个自觉探索、把握和运用规律的高度。     

菲律宾精英家族政治的历史演进分析

菲律宾政治带有浓厚的精英家族特色,精英家族政治的起源可追溯到前殖民时期,历经西班牙殖民时期、民族独立革命时期、美国殖民时期、两党民主时期和马科斯独裁时期。在历史演进过程中,一方面,精英家族政治权力由地方向中央延伸并最终垄断国家政治权力;另一方面,精英家族政治所依赖的经济基础从较单一的农业向多样化的工商业发展。可以判断,长期存在的精英家族政治是菲律宾依然相当落后的一个重要原因。     

A critical analysis of the NBC news special “six days plus twenty years: A dream is dying”

The July 1, 1987 NBC News documentary on Israel's occupation of the West Bank neglected the context of the occupation, failing to give any historical perspective on the Israeli‐Palestinian dispute. The nature of the Palestinian opposition— characterized by intransigence and violence—was virtually ignored by NBC. The unbalanced coverage of the conflict served only to confuse the viewer and distort the salient issues involved.     

When one might not see the wood for the trees: the ‘historical turn’ in democratization studies,critical junctures,and cross-case comparisons

In a 2010 special issue of Comparative Political Studies, Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt introduced a new, historically oriented research agenda to the study of democratization. This agenda challenged an older, ‘classical’ tradition, inaugurated by Barrington Moore, by emphasizing diffusion, non-class structures and, most importantly, contingent choices of actors during critical junctures. In this article, I identify two problematical aspects of Capoccia and Ziblatt's intervention. First, methodologically, I argue that the focus on contingency and actors' choices in individual cases is worth little in the absence of controlled comparisons. Second, and empirically, I show that it is very difficult to see how unconstrained choices during critical junctures might have brought into existence such a systematical variation as that encountered in the case of European democratization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On this basis, I issue a warning against accepting the new research agenda across-the-board, arguing that this would have detrimental consequences for comparative historical analysis of regime change.     

劳役制度的历史嬗变及人文思考

劳役制度是统治集团凭借国家强制力为后盾,在拘束、限制犯人人身自由的基础上,强制犯人进行劳役,形成的制度.该制度作为一项重要的监狱管理制度,历经了一个由产生、发展到逐步完善的过程,具有丰富的内涵及特征.探讨劳役制度,对劳动教育改造人犯,有着重要的借鉴价值和现实指导意义.     

关于中国传统法律文化及其全球化的几点思考

文化与法律文化是一般与特殊的关系.成文法典化、公法化是中国传统法律文化的根本特质,而儒家文化则构成了中国传统文化的精神内核.中国传统法律文化经历了固守、学习、迷信、融合等四个不同的演进阶段.面对全球化法律文化浪潮的冲击,当下我国应理性建构新的、顺应时代的、并具有中国传统法律文化特色的新法律文化.     

Paying the levy: Taxable wealth in Bridgetown,Barbados, 1680–1715

Differential fertility can be attributed to economic and cultural factors, but the family also plays an important role. Fertility behavior may be transmitted from parents to children through heritable dispositions or via socialization. Previous research has shown, however, that the expression of genetic effects depends on the interplay with the environment. In this article we take a long-term view and examine how the different mechanisms shifted over time and across social and local contexts on the basis of a large-scale database containing 100 thousand sibling pairs born between 1810 and 1870 in the Dutch province of Zeeland, a society undergoing demographic transition and industrialization. Corroborating earlier research, we find a significant increase in the expression of heritabilities and a fading of social influence for women born after the 1840s, who started their reproductive careers during the historical fertility decline in this region. Our study points out that the ‘social control’ of fertility was particularly reduced for women born in towns, women originating from the urban or rural laboring classes, and women from communities with a relatively liberal religious climate. Our findings are in line with research emphasizing the important role played by women in decision-making processes around childbearing, and could indicate the conditions that enhanced women's position in household bargaining during the historical fertility decline.     

Tracking individuals and households: longitudinal features of Danseong household register data

Household registers, which were compiled every three years and contained a variety of demographic information, are invaluable sources with which to investigate family and demographic behaviors of historical populations in Korea, especially during the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Linking three sets of household registers that covered the area of Danseong from 1780 to 1786, in this study we examine longitudinal features of Korean household registers. We assess the degree of attrition over six years at both individual and household level, and identify social and demographic characteristics associated with attrition. Our investigation shows a considerable degree of attrition of individuals and households over six years which is significantly associated with the social status of individuals and the household heads. We supplement the analysis of exits with the analysis of new entrances, which shows that in each year of register a substantial number of individuals, comparable to the size of individuals and households lost, were newly added. Those who newly entered the registers are very similar in their characteristics to those who exited the registers. We discuss the implications of our findings for studies that rely on Korean household registers to examine family and demographic behaviors of historical populations in Korea and East Asia.     

中缅边界问题解决的历史过程(1954-1961)

1949年10月新中国成立时,中缅边界存在"三段未决的问题",分别是北段尖高山以北的未定界问题、中段猛卯三角地①的"永租"问题和南段"1941年线"问题。1954年至1961年,经过反复沟通和多次谈判,中缅两国最终和平解决了边界问题。根据其特点,中缅边界问题解决的历史过程可划分为提出问题、初步交换意见、直接谈判和签订条约4个阶段。