Manchester through the Ears

ABSTRACT

As part of a wider sensory ethnography on the development of place attachments and situated knowledge amongst international newcomers to a city (Manchester, England), this article tells the story of my collaboration with Phoebe, a student of acoustics from bandung, Indonesia. Using a participatory sensory ethnographic method, Phoebe was encouraged to devise her own contribution to my project, which was modeled around her own sensory preferences and technological expertise. Our work together took place over a period of 4–5 months and yielded a series of soundscape compositions and accompanying narrative texts, all of which conveyed Phoebe's newly acquired sound-based knowledge, or acoustemology, of Manchester. Using narrative textual accompaniments to her recordings, Phoebe ascribes qualities to her surroundings that overlap with her own personal qualities, in effect showing how much she blends with her new city. As Phoebe and I subsequently listened to and “talked over” her soundscape compositions, they evoked sound marks, or sensory memories, of the landscape, sounds and music that Phoebe left behind in Indonesia. these sound-elicited interviews added further layers of emplaced knowledge to both of our constructions of the city.     

Sonic Envelopes

ABSTRACT

This article examines ways in which an individual's experiences of spatial environments are informed by physical and psychic perceptions of sound. It explores how sonic images, memories, voices, spaces and events constitute “sonic envelopes.” These aesthetic figures are developed out of the late-nineteenth-century writings by the philosopher Henri Bergson and from contemporary audio-walks by the artist, Janet Cardiff. Each shows that sound, space and time are embodied in the individual's powers of sensory perception. Bergson and Cardiff's sonic envelopes may therefore enable reevaluations of the relationships between sound, space and time that connect the individual to his or her environment.     

Xun Zi’s Image across the Qin-Han Period: Three Types of Discourse on a “Great Confucian” and Their Significance in Intellectual History

Abstract

This article scrutinizes three texts about Xun Zi written during the Qin-Han period: the final part of “The Questions of Yao” in the Xunzi, a rebuttal by one of Xun Zi’s disciples of the idea that Xun Zi was inferior to Confucius; “Mencius and Xun Zi” by Sima Qian in his Records of the Grand Historian; and the Annotated Book of the Xunzi by Liu Xiang. We explore the images of Xun Zi as a great Confucian (大儒) that emerge from these texts, as well as their authors’ motives for writing. These texts are understood within three contexts: first, the self-identification of a Confucian; second, the dispute between Confucianism and Daoism; and lastly, the distinction between the classics and the annals and biographies. Due to their different discourse environments, Xun Zi’s great Confucian image project a different significance in each: in one, he is a model of action who can act in accordance with perfected morality; in another, he is a model of “private words,” who can counter the philosophers of his day and become the teacher of kings; and finally, he is a model of “official learning,” able to use his knowledge of the classics in practical statecraft and elucidate the kingly Way. Overall, these three texts represent three types of discourse on a great Confucian. At the same time, they also exhibit their writers’ consciousness of their times and their views of the genealogy of daotong, or transmission of the Way; hence their significance for intellectual history.     

试论费孝通的“乡寰视野”

本文根据费孝通的有关理论、观点提出“乡寰视野”、“劦业乡”两个概念，尝试以此来诠释费孝通关于中国城乡社会发展与世界经济之“休戚与共”的理论和实践活动。文章阐述了费孝通“乡寰视野”观的渊源、演进；从概念结构上解明“乡寰视野”中的“乡”和“寰”，以及“劦业乡”各自的内涵构成；通过对映衬费孝通“乡寰视野”历史意识的理论梳理，以及对费孝通晚年就“乡”“寰”关系问题所作阐述的把握，试图以更具综合性的视域对费孝通的这一重要思想作出较为系统的学理解释。文章最后指出，费孝通倡导“文化自觉”体现出了更为宽广、更为仁至的人文关怀的情愫。“乡寰视野”中的纯真的愿景，是“‘美好社会’的意念”。     

Acoustic Cocooning

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s, car manufacturers increasingly underline their cars' interior tranquility. Both this acoustic condition and the availability of car audio sets enable drivers to transform their car into a highly personal, controlled and relaxing sonic bubble.

Yet how could the car, once a noisy contraction, evolve into such a space for acoustic cocooning? This article studies the introduction of car radio and interior car sound design in Europe between the 1920s and the 1990s. The car radio's meaning shifted from an artifact that brought companionship to lonely drivers, to an instrument that helped drivers to mentally block out their fellows on the road. At the same time, listening to engine sounds changed from a drivers' skill to a practice drivers had to de-learn. Moreover, car sound construction shifted from reducing noise to creating target sounds for specific consumer groups.

This article employs three forms of cultural analysis to understand these shifts: an “archeology of corporate culturology,” the symbolism of sound, and Gerhard schulze's theory on the experience society. Finally, by analyzing the rise of acoustic cocooning in the car, it aims to contribute to the study of “techno-cocooning”: the use of technology for creating sensory privacy.     

Signature Scents

ABSTRACT

Perfume critique is an underdeveloped academic field, and this includes considerations of perfume as a theme within other art forms such as literature. In this article, Angela Carter's Wise Children and Monika Fagerholm's Wonderful Women by the Sea are read alongside perfume blogs in order to analyze the significance of perfume references in the novels. It is demonstrated that the authors' choice of perfumes for their characters plays a crucial part in their characterization, especially in relation to the theme of identity change. Using Alfred Gell's analysis of perfume use as bound up with “the transcendence of the sweet life,” it is argued that female characters use perfume to become someone else, sometimes a past self. Furthermore, the use of perfume as a literary device in these novels is shown serve as the vehicle for a feminist critique of the division between “masculine” “high” and “feminine” “low” culture.     

Unruly Voices in the Museum

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the use of audio recordings and oral memory for the critical engagement with colonial pasts in ethnographic museums by focusing on the traveling exhibition What We See, curated by Anette Hoffmann (2009). Specifically, it draws on Jeffrey Feldman's notion of colonial “contact points,” i.e. material traces of colonial encounter, to highlight the exhibition's ability to convey and critique the sensory experience of colonial contact. In What We See, this colonial contact consisted in an anthropometric project conducted in South-West Africa, today's Namibia, in 1931, resulting in an archive of anthropometric measurements and photographs, life-casts, and phonographic recordings. The exhibition proposed an innovative way of reworking this archive by staging an intricate interplay between sound and sight, thereby disrupting conventional ocularcentric forms of display. However, this multisensory approach provoked highly divergent reactions at its various exhibition venues. This article argues that the divergent reactions in Cape Town, South Africa, and Vienna, Austria, were due to different levels of what Ann Stoler describes as “colonial aphasia”—that is the context-dependent difficulty of addressing disquieting colonial pasts and its sensory dimensions.     

古典学的人类学相关性:还原并反思地引申一种主张

近代人类学的奠基者曾高度重视借鉴古典学的研究成果。20世纪初，学科理念发生巨变。此后数十年间，古典学者继续借鉴人类学思想，而现代新人类学中重视古典学的学者却越来越少。20世纪60年代初，克拉克洪在其所著《论人类学与古典学的关系》一书中对这一变化表示喜忧参半。他乐见人类学思想渗入古典学，担忧人类学因减少汲取古典学的养分而丢失其本来的品质。克拉克洪指出，人类学的根基是人文与科学，此二者均为古希腊人的发明，现代新人类学要保持其品格，便有必要重返古希腊。鉴于克氏主张的重要性，本文力图对之加以还原，并在此基础上进行反思。本文认为，克拉克洪有规避西学人类学的神学关联及过度渲染古希腊特殊性的倾向，更存在以“文化”概念“消化”文野关联的问题。要扭转这类倾向，克服这类问题，应有选择地丰富古典旧人类学有关“中间环节”的看法。     

The Social as Heaven and Hell: Pierre Bourdieu's Philosophical Anthropology

Many authors have argued that all studies of socially specific modalities of human action and experience depend on some form of “philosophical anthropology”, i.e. on a set of general assumptions about what human beings are like, assumptions without which the very diagnoses of the cultural and historical variability of concrete agents' practices would become impossible. Bourdieu was sensitive to that argument and, especially in the later phase of his career, attempted to make explicit how his historical‐sociological investigations presupposed and, at the same time, contributed to the elaboration of an “idea of the human being”. The article reconstructs Bourdieu's philosophical anthropology, starting with his genetic sociology of symbolic power, conceived as a form of critical theory (latu sensu), and concluding with an account of the conditio humana in which recognition (“symbolic capital”) appears as both the fundamental existential goal through which human agents strive to confer meaning on their lives and the source of the endless symbolic competition that keeps society moving. The agonistic vision of the social universe that grounds his sociological studies returns in his philosophical anthropology under the guise of a singular synthesis between Durkheim's thesis that “Society is God” and Sartre's idea that “hell is other people”.     

A Response to Farrell

This article responds directly to an article published in this journal in February 2010 by Graham Farrell entitled ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: rational choice and harm reduction versus “cultural criminology” ’. (Farrell's article, in turn, was a rejoinder to my original 2007 article ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: rational choice theory versus the “culture of now” ’). In his article, Farrell sets out a case for the role of ‘harm reduction’ and rational choice theory as tools to reduce the contemporary crime problem, concluding that ‘Cultural criminology seems to offer little, if anything, useful to inform crime reduction efforts’. This article rejects this statement and offers a counter critique of the instrumental approach promoted by Farrell. Importantly, this response article is not intended as an outright critique of situational crime prevention per se, rather it is an assessment of Farrell's specific critical logic and the various shortcomings associated with his argument.     

The Positive and the Negative Method and the Spheres of Living: Some Thoughts on Feng Youlan’s Philosophical Method

冯友兰是中国当代最具方法论自觉的一位哲学家。他早年特别强调形上学概念命 题之不涉及内容的形式性意义, 对负的方法范围的界定亦嫌过狭, 这对理解正负方法 的统一内涵造成了一些理论困扰。晚年他据“具体共相”的观念反思其哲学系统, 在 肯定哲学概念范畴形式性的同时, 揭示了它作为把握实在的方式及其思想运动的“特 殊内容”, 实现了理智概念与直觉神秘间的相互包涵与融通。从冯友兰晚年的理论反 思反观其整个哲学系统, 可见其思想的前后一贯。其据具体共相思想对自己的哲学系 统及哲学本性所作新解, 亦是其整个哲学体系的题中应有之义。本此识度, 才能更好 地理解冯友兰哲学方法及其哲学的真精神, 从中获得对中国哲学和文化现代重建的智 慧启迪。

关键词: 冯友兰 正的方法 负的方法 人生境界

Among contemporary Chinese philosophers, Feng Youlan had the greatest degree of methodological self-awareness. In his earlier years, he especially emphasized the formalist meaning (not touching on content) of metaphysical concepts and propositions and defined the negative method too narrowly, leading to some theoretical confusion over the inherent unity of the two methods. In his later years, he employed the concept of the “concrete universal” to reflect on his philosophical system; while affirming the formalism of philosophical conceptual category, he revealed the “peculiar content” of the category as a means of grasping actuality and its intellectual movements, thus realizing the mutual accommodation of rationality and intuition (mystery). A review of Feng’s philosophical system in accordance with the theoretical reflections of his later years will indicate the consistency of his thought throughout his life. His new understanding of his own philosophical system and the nature of philosophy on the basis of the “concrete universal” was the logical outcome of his previous ideas. Only with this in mind will we be able to attain a better understanding of the methodology and true spirit of Feng’s philosophy and draw inspiration for the contemporary reconstruction of Chinese philosophy and culture.     

A Century of Korean Narrative in Chinese Literature

东亚睦邻关系源远流长,近百年来却遭到严峻的挑战。在民族国家的多事之秋,中国文学和中华民族一道承担苦难,思考出路,在关注自己启蒙、救亡、独立和振兴的同时,也关注对自己的命运发生过深刻影响的国际力量,对朝鲜半岛民族国家的关注和认知具有特殊的文化情感和命运体悟。一百多年来,中国文学对朝鲜的认知经历了四个阶段：以朝鲜的亡国为鉴镜,反省危机四伏的中国现状;引朝鲜人民为共同抗敌、休戚与共的战友;在南北朝鲜分裂的局面下,引北方为战友使南方处于缺席状态;在“华风”与“韩流”的互动中,把文学对韩国的认知推向穿透历史、牵连血性的深度。

关键词: 中国文学?朝鲜叙事?鉴镜?互动交流

The harmonious relationship among East Asian countries has a very long history. However, it has faced serious challenges in the past hundred years. In these eventful years for our nation, Chinese literature, like the Chinese people, has endured hardships and pondered ways of extricating the country from its malaise. In addition to being concerned over China's enlightenment, salvation, independence and rejuvenation, writers have also paid considerable attention to important international forces that had a strong influence on their country's fate. Concern over and understanding of the Korean nation had a particular emotional charge and relevance to their own fate. Over the course of a century, Chinese literature's awareness of Korea went through four stages. In the first, Korea's loss of independence served as a mirror of China's own dangerous position, menaced on all sides; in the second, the Korean people were seen as comrades‐in‐arms combating foreign foes; in the third, when the Korean Peninsula was divided, North Koreans continued to be regarded as comrades‐in‐arms while South Korea was not acknowledged; and in the final stage, amidst the interaction between “China style” and the “Korean wave,” Chinese literature's awareness of Korea expanded through a penetrating appreciation of Korean history involving deep ties of courage and uprightness.     

Habermas's Theological Turn?

Since the turn of the millennium Jürgen Habermas's contributions to social and political theory have been increasingly turning toward matters of religious and theological relevance. This article weighs up the import and coherence of Habermas's recent reflections on religious belief and its relationship to reason and modernity in Western philosophical culture. At the forefront of the analysis stands Habermas's conception of appropriate “limits” and “boundaries” between the domains of knowledge and faith and the possibility and desirability of a process of “discursive translation” of contents of religious language into forms of secularized, universalizing moral argument. The article defends the thesis that Habermas's project of a rapprochement between contents of religious language and norms of scientific thinking founders on its attempt to reconcile too many different, conceptually centrifugal tendencies. However, these difficulties and inconsistencies in Habermas's recent thinking remain instructive and ought to continue to engage the interest of scholars concerned today with the question of how far the philosophy of the social sciences can and cannot accommodate commitments to theism in the practice of research.     

Assembling the dance: reggae sound system practices in the United Kingdom and France

Reggae sound systems are assemblages of speakers, record decks, and amplifiers that permit sound to be reproduced at very powerful levels. Sound systems crews, alongside an extended affinity group, build their own systems and organize and engineer the space of the dance. Interviews with crews from the United Kingdom and France reveal differences in how they each draw from the history of Jamaican musical experimentation when making spaces to collectively immerse the crew and crowd in sound. Yet in both cases, their approach to sound design communicates a commitment to inclusivity, maintaining an emphasis on the “vibe,” which progressively alters participants’ somatic experience and perceptions. In contrast to “dancehall” in Jamaica, such sound systems disrupt understandings of a “standard” setup that reinforces hierarchical relationships between performers and audience. Crews also downplay the visual aspects of the “dance” and dancing and are consciously non-consumerist. Thus, different crews’ histories and associations alter how they enact, feel, and understand similar conventions.     

Kurt Lewin's Leadership Studies and His Legacy to Social Psychology: Is There Nothing as Practical as a Good Theory?

This paper re‐examines Kurt Lewin's classic leadership studies, using them as a concrete example to explore his wider legacy to social psychology. Lewin distinguished between advanced “Galileian” science, which was based on analysing particular examples, and backward “Aristotelian” science, which used statistical analyses. Close examination of the way Lewin wrote about the leadership studies reveals that he used the sort of binary, value‐laden concepts that he criticised as “Aristotelian”. Such concepts, especially those of “democracy” and “autocracy”, affected the way that he analysed the results and the ways that later social scientists have understood, and misunderstood, the studies. It is argued that Lewin's famous motto—“there is nothing as practical as a good theory”—is too simple to fit the tensions between the leadership studies and his own views of what counts as good theory.     

China's Pro-Poor Growth: Measurement and Implications

ABSTRACT. Pro-poor growth has been the preeminent strategic framework of the international development community because it describes relationships between growth, inequality, and poverty. Assessing whether economic growth and income distributional changes are “pro-poor” has important policy implications and has become increasingly widespread in academic and policy societies. The article aims to measure the pro-poor growth in rural China from 1989 to 2009 through analyzing the household survey data collected by the China Health and Nutrition Survey. Among the main findings, from 1989 to 2006, China's economic growth in rural areas was relatively weakly pro-poor and poverty reduction mainly relied on the “trickle-down effect” of economic growth. However, since 2006, both the “trickle-down effect” of growth and changes in income distribution have reduced poverty. During this period, Chinese economic growth was pro-poor. Research on pro-poor growth based on more comprehensive data is urgently needed to advise policymakers to make relevant policies.     

The aesthetic life of artificial flavors

Abstract

Artificiality is usually understood as that which is man-made and is in contraposition to the natural. The term itself is increasingly recognized as a negative pole, while the label of “natural” is exploited as guarantee of healthiness in marketing food campaigns. This article takes issue with the natural/artificial debate by emphasizing the aesthetic side of artificial flavorings – chemical substances designed to alter or enhance the taste of processed foods. Here, I reconsider the conception of artificiality as a poor imitation of nature and instead underline the link between technology and aesthetics, by examining the practice of flavorists. Through ethnographic detail I call for moving the synthetic out of the “inauthentic” and argue that the attempt to mimic natural flavors through synthesis is not only an act of imitation and resemblance (as critics exclusively contend) but can also be thought as an act of representation and interpretation (as my fieldwork illuminates).