清末民初女性的赈灾实践及角色变迁

传统的民间赈灾活动中,虽然不乏女性的参与,但与男性相比不过凤毛麟角,寥若晨星。清末民初,女性在赈灾活动中的角色、规模、手段、观念等都发生了较大的变化。女界的赈灾实践为民初女性参政热潮奠定了良好的基础,也成为近代民间义赈发展壮大的一个重要标志。     

Ukrainianization,terror and famine: coverage in Lviv's Dilo and the nationalist press of the 1930s

This article looks at the press coverage of Ukrainianization, the Soviet terror, and the famine (Holodomor), particularly in the years 1932–33, focusing on the largest Ukrainian daily outside Soviet Ukraine, the Lviv Dilo. It compares this coverage to the reporting in the press of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). It argues that these two years were a turning point in political attitudes. Galician Ukrainians turned away from the Communist Party of Ukraine and support for the OUN began to grow. Ironically, the OUN had not led protests against the famine, but benefited from the lack of a strong response from European governments and international bodies. The article draws on a reading of the Ukrainian press of the 1930s, and on recent research by Polish and Ukrainian scholars.     

Wither the ‘development contract’? Historical conjunctures in Naomi Hossain’s The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success

This paper examines methodological avenues for a historical sociology of development through a close reading of Naomi Hossain’s recent book, The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success (2017). Hossain’s conjunctural perspective, the formative moment of Bangladesh in environmental catastrophe, war and famine in the 1970s, establishes a novel account of the country’s development trajectory. Contingencies of the moment and consequent political uncertainties committed an emergent national elite to a largely informal but substantive social compact against future crises of subsistence. The result was a specific, transnational power configuration rendering Bangladesh a test case for developmental interventions and the production of knowledge regarding them. Debates in critical development studies have often posited that such ‘elite commitment’ is a consequence and not so much a precondition for social improvement, brought about through struggles from ‘below.’ How might these positions be reconciled by shifting the temporal frames of reference? By rendering historical processes legible as conflicting and complementary interactions between different social forces and actors? How can such actors be envisaged without presuming their identities and interests as fixed or given, but rather, as shaping and being shaped by such processes? These questions motivate the immanent critique and reappraisal of Hossain’s timely work, highlighting its significance for dynamic analyses of historical capitalism today through the ‘universal particularities’ of the national case.     

“苏联1932—1933年饥荒”问题研究综述

苏联1932—1933年饥荒问题最早由在西方的乌克兰流亡者提出，上世纪80年代以前主要在西方国家进行研究，戈尔巴乔夫改革时期，这个问题在乌克兰被公开提出。苏联解体至今，乌克兰和俄罗斯学界以及政界就因饥荒死亡人数、饥荒发生的原因、斯大林对饥荒应负的责任等问题展开争论，从形式和内容上看，这既是一个学术问题，也是政治问题。     

辛酉湘西旱荒与湖南华洋筹赈会施赈路界争议

湘省辛酉春荒叠接旱荒,湘西灾重最甚。面对灾荒,洋干事们所把持的湖南华洋筹赈会干事会,对熊希龄、陈渠珍等西路各界请赈概予回绝。感受歧视的西路与在其影响下的中南两路,就中南两路的灾重与西路的烟苗情事灾县定等双重标准,赈款赈粮分等标准等问题,生起施赈公平性问题路界争议,代表三路利益的华洋评议会进而要求查干事会赈账,并在旅京湖南筹赈会和北京赈务处的干预下,干事会被迫裁减冗员与部分分权于评议会,改革荒政制度予以妥协。     

‘When we have nothing we all eat grass’: debt,donor dependence and the food crisis in Malawi, 2001 to 2003

In 2002, Malawi faced a devastating food crisis, an event in which hundreds of people died of hunger, while over a thousand succumbed to a country-wide cholera epidemic. By June of that year, over 3.2 million people needed emergency food aid, one-third of Malawi's population. This article assesses the crisis through the lens of donor–government relations. Beginning with the restructuring of the agricultural sector under a World Bank-sponsored structural adjustment programme, a process that discouraged food production by small-holder farmers, the article explains how the Malawian government's reliance on external sources of funding, and its deteriorating relations with key international creditors, rendered it impotent in the face of the oncoming crisis. Having sold its strategic grain reserve (SGR) to service mounting debts, the government could not rein in a food price spiral that peaked in March 2002. Allegations of financial irregularities surrounding the sale of the SGR served to make matters worse. The United States, Britain, Denmark and the European Union cancelled direct development funding and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank suspended Malawi from the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. With limited access to credit, the Government of Malawi could neither re-stock its food reserves nor fund emergency imports in time to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. Relief aid was further delayed by disagreements between the government and key donors and aid agencies regarding genetically modified (GM) food. While accepting Amartya Sen's basic entitlements framework – the 2002 crisis was one of pricing and access rather than absolute shortages of food – the article posits the following theoretical argument: in the context of highly indebted poor countries, it is a government's relationship with its principal donors and creditors that determines the outcome of food crises by shaping the policy responses available both leading up to and during the event.     

'Shovelling out your paupers': The British State and Irish Famine Migration 1846-50

Gray considers the determinants of British policy towards emigration (and particularly towards state-assisted 'colonization') from Ireland during the Great Famine of 184-50. He surveys the idea of 'colonization' as advocated by Charles Buller in 1843, and its varying appeal (changing over time) in Ireland, Britain and the settlement colonies of the British empire. He also considers the issue in the light of pro- and anti-Malthusian interpretations of Irish population pressure, and the emergence of the alternative idea of 'internal colonization'. Gray argues that the failure of the state to adopt an emigration policy in 1846-50 as part of its response to the Famine was the consequence of a combination of anti-Irish prejudice in Britain and the colonies (which was sharpened by the arrival of large numbers of economic refugees in 1847 and the political conspiracies of 1848), and the prevalence of an economic doctrine that prioritized the need for Irish self-help and moral transformation over state assistance. He traces the debate over colonization within the Whig government headed by Lord John Russell, and concludes that some form of assisted emigration was a feasible policy measure, and that its rejection had adverse consequences in terms of additional famine mortality.     

Food security as a political issue: the 2009 elections in Malawi

African electorates are expected to use non-evaluative rationales, like patronage and ethnicity, when casting their vote. In famine-struck countries like Malawi it is however worthwhile to investigate how a salient political issue like food security influences voters’ decisions. At the turn of the millennium Malawi went through a series of famines. In 2005 the government changed its famine prevention strategy and started to subsidise fertilisers. The fertiliser programme was a political success and is used to explain the outcome of the 2009 elections. Although this explanation seems plausible, such analyses should be grounded in thorough analyses of the origin and implementation of the food policy. Through archival studies and fieldwork, this study reveals the importance of the opposition in changing the food policy and the politics of the implementation process. Hence, even if food security increased ahead of the 2009 elections, the election cannot be interpreted as a ‘national referendum’ on the incumbent's fertiliser programme.     

明朝救荒立法述略

自然灾害的出现 ,直接造成生产的衰竭、社会的动荡以及统治政权的不稳定 ,中国历史上的封建中央集权国家不得不运用各方面的力量 ,与自然灾害抗争 ,明朝在抗灾救荒方面功效显著 ,尤其是救荒立法上为后世提供了许多可借鉴的经验。     

Of diet and profit: on the question of subsistence crises in nineteenth-century Iran

This article enquires into the socioeconomic causes of recurrent food scarcity in the nineteenth-century Middle East. Focusing on Iran as a case study, the paper shows that certain categories involved in the production and distribution of grain engaged in profiteering schemes and thereby contributed to the making of food shortage in urban settings. The most important of these groups were the government officials, the landed classes, and the grain merchants. The local bakers were also involved, but they did not have as decisive a role as the other groups. In showing how these categories engaged in market manipulation, the paper contends that food scarcity cannot be explained without a proper understanding of the commercialization of grain and the economic integration of the Middle East in the nineteenth century.