Bushfire catastrophe in Victoria,Australia: public record,accountability, commemoration,memorialization and heritage protection

In Australia, 7 February 2009 has become known as ‘Black Saturday’ because of the bushfire catastrophe that took 173 lives and devastated communities in the central parts of the State of Victoria. The paper considers how the 2009 fires have been recorded, how the issue of accountability has been dealt with, particularly in relation to the State and its agencies but also individual residents in the fire-devastated areas, and how bushfire deaths and other losses have been commemorated through remembrance events and museum collection projects and memorialized through the creation of new monuments and the protection of remaining physical structures as official heritage. Despite the major impact of bushfires on the State, to date few bushfire-related places have been protected. The former Cockatoo Kindergarten, which acted as a community refuge during an earlier catastrophic Victorian bushfire on Ash Wednesday, 16 February 1983, is an exception. Inscribed in 2012, the former kindergarten is the only bushfire-related place inscribed on the Victorian Heritage Register, in this case for its historical and social value as a place resonating with other communities affected by other bushfires and helping the broader Victorian public to come to terms with bushfire catastrophe. But, while bushfire commemoration activities and physical memorials, like those relating to war, help many societies remember individual and community pain and suffering, they can divert attention from the more fundamental questions of why they were there in the first place and what must be done to ensure the same catastrophe does not recur in the future. In this regard, the paper questions the oft-cited claim that bushfires are embedded in the Australian psyche, seeing links between the rhetoric around bushfire survival and Australian myth-making and nation-building.     

Queering the war dead: gold star families and the politics of estrangement

ABSTRACT

Contemporary practices of mourning individuals lost to war violence assert correct and incorrect practices of grieving. Successful practices will emphasize the heroism and the sacrifice of the war dead, centralizing the role of American values in the act of dying for one’s country. To not honor the war dead successfully is seen as a betrayal of their sacrifice and an ethical failure. Through a critical reading of Gold Star Families and the identity politics surrounding acts of mourning, I argue that the social norms acting as guideposts for processes of mourning over-determine relationships and identities in ways that perpetuate a violence that is seen as redemptive. Working towards alternatives to these practices, I argue that a queer relationality can disrupt the idealized constructions of redemptive violence constitutive to notions of successful mourning. A queering of the war dead refuses to allow mourning to be dismissed as unsuccessful if grieving is anything other than the assignment of war hero, patriot, or the solidification of an American identity for those killed by war violence. Ultimately, I argue that acts of queering the war dead have potential to challenge the proliferation of dominant practices that tie a militarized redemptive violence to normalized identities.     

论江桥之战标志着我国抗日战争的开始--纪念中国抗日战争胜利60周年

学术界在抗日战争开始的问题上一向存在着异议.本文以史实为根据既论证了江桥之战是当时黑龙江省政府所策划的有领导、有组织地正面抗击日本侵略的战争,并考证出其确实得到了中国政府的授权和支持而具有了民族抗战的性质;又重新评价了其在抗日战争的重要地位和作用,堪称中国抗战中局部抗战的第一战,因而标志着中国抗日战争的开始.同时,也澄清了作为新民主主义革命时期第三阶段的"抗日战争"和中国全面抗日战争与作为那场重大历史事件的"抗日战争"之不同内涵,也即所谓的新民主主义革命时期第三阶段和全面抗战阶段"八年"说与中国抗日战争持续时间多长是两个性质不同的问题,从而对"抗战八年"的说法提出了质疑和批评,并代之以"抗战十四年"的概念.最后的结论是江桥之战的爆发日就是中国抗战的开始之时.     

红毛国在廓尔喀战争中的影响分析

廓尔喀战争,亦称清廓战争第二次中尼战争,是巴勒布战争(即第一次中尼战争)的继续,乾隆十全武功中的最后一件,邓锐龄先生称之为“中华民族共同捍卫领土完整的正义的战争”。通过对18世纪以来清廷上下特别是乾隆对英国、英属印度殖民地的认知,以及廓尔喀战争期间当清廷接到在尼泊尔以南存在着红毛国(英属印度)的情报时所采取对策的分析,阐述红毛国(英属印度)因素对廓尔喀战争的影响,以揭示在东南海疆频频对中国发起挑战的殖民者出现在中国西藏的陆地边疆时,传统的朝贡体系是如何应对的。     

War remains: contributions of the Imperial War Graves Commission and the Australian War Records Section to material and national cultures of conflict and commemoration

The Imperial (subsequently the Commonwealth) War Graves Commission (IWGC) was established in 1917 comprising member countries of the former British Empire. The organisation was charged with providing appropriate memorials to commemorate the Empire’s war dead, individually and equally, without regard for military rank, class or nationality. This was no easy task given the numbers of dead from multiple theatres of war, the variety and oftentimes competing demands of imperial and national war offices, and the uncertain aesthetics arising from individually attuned and publically oriented commemorative intentions. Equally caught up in the mix of agencies and design practices were hordes of war trophies, captured artillery and military relics retrieved from battlefields across Europe, items carefully catalogued and preserved by the British War Office (BWO) and offspring agencies to provide artefacts for building memorials in Commonwealth states. This paper describes the work of the IWGC during and immediately following the years of the First World War. It relates the Commission’s activities building war cemeteries in view of changing geopolitical circumstances and commemorative conventions. The paper highlights tensions that appeared in the near routine collection of trophies for memorials and war cemeteries between British imperial offices and those of dominions and former colonies, specifically the Australian War Records Section which gained independence from the BWO in May 1917. The paper examines the mutual engagement of war’s material culture with patterns of sentiment shaped by mass conflict, an engagement mediated by administrative practices of war and remembrance.     

Strange passages: carceral mobility and the liminal in the catastrophic history of American deportation

In the early twentieth century, the United States developed an integrated, continental deportation network based on rail travel. This new state apparatus would enable the restrictionists’ dream of immigration control and speed the elimination of those they deemed unfit for American life. It set a template for mass removal that would expand in the century to come. Scholars of immigrant detention and removal commonly employ Victor Turner’s concept of liminality to understand migrant experiences, but this paper suggests the need for an expanded theorization of the liminal as manifold rather than singular. Drawing on deportee case files and literature from the early twentieth century, this paper explores the complex, variegated and painful liminalities of the deportation journey. It argues that power affected deportees’ experience of space and time across different liminal zones and interprets the embodied catastrophe of deportation for migrant communities. If traumatic experiences reconfigure the meaning of time into a ‘before’ and ‘after’, deportation was an ongoing catastrophe that offered little sense of completion.     

生态民族学的当代价值

本文主要探讨了理性与非理性、自然生态与民族生境的意义与关系,对文化生态和本土生态知识进行了较为详细地阐述,指出即使在科学技术高度发展的今天,在生态灾变救治的终极目标上仍然需要依靠特定生态背景下特定文化共同体的这本土性知识。     

试析回族妇女的抗日活动

回族妇女抗战活动是中国人民抗日战争和世界反法西斯战争的重要组成部分.本文从民族学、女性学的视角阐述了1937-1945年回族妇女的抗战活动,力求为抗日战争研究和回族妇女研究提供一定的参考.     

中国共产党少数民族宗教政策的形成和发展--中国共产党民族纲领政策形成和发展研究之十六

中国共产党在第二次国内革命战争时期明确提出了对少数民族的宗教政策,在红军长征时期丰富和发展了这一政策.在抗日战争和解放战争时期,党非常重视宗教工作.新中国建立以来,党对少数民族的宗教政策在曲折中发展.进入90年代以后,党的宗教理论和宗教政策有了新的发展.     

藏族传统生计与黄河源区生态安全——基于青海省玛多县的考察

近年来,不合理的资源利用方式冲击了黄河源区生态系统的脆弱环节,引发了该地区一系列的生态灾变。本文以黄河源区第一县——青海省玛多县为个案,采用生态学和人类学相结合的视角,对其生态环境和藏族居民的传统生计进行了考察,指出藏族传统生计能够有效规避当地生态系统的脆弱环节,实现了生态环境高效利用与精心维护的兼容。从根本上解决黄河源区的生态安全问题,应当重视藏族传统生计的保护、发掘和利用。     

甲午战争中“后清流”提出的御敌方略初探

甲午战争中,作为当时清廷中一股重要政治力量,后清流积极鼓动对日作战,并提出了一系列御敌方略,其中包括:进攻和防御策略、军队建设策略、后勤与保障策略及马关签约时期的迁都与日进行持久战的主张.通过分析后清流提出的具体战略战术,将有助于我们对其进行合理的评价.     

刘震寰王连芳领导的渤海回民支队

1937年7月卢沟桥事变爆发,日本帝国主义发动全面侵华战争,中华民族面临着严峻的考验。中国共产党及时提出建立抗日民族统一战线、以民族革命战争驱逐日本帝国主义出中国的主张。全国各族人民面对日军对国土的践踏和对中国人民的屠杀,结成广泛的统一战线,共同反对日军的侵略,广大回族同胞也积极团结和行动起来,建立自己的武装开展抗日斗争,成为全国抗日力量的重要组成部分,为打败日本侵略者、争取中华民族的解放作出了贡献,谱写了现代史上回族人民的光辉诗篇。本文对刘震寰、王连芳领导的渤海回民支队的创建、发展和战斗经历作了简单的介绍。     

World War II or Great Patriotic War remembrance? Crafting the nation in commemorative speeches of Ukrainian presidents

In post-Soviet Ukraine, the remembrance of World War II has been one of the key factors in the state-led construction of national identity. This analysis of commemorative speeches on the occasion of Victory Day in Ukraine demonstrates how the presidents of Ukraine attempt to present the war as a national Ukrainian experience, and to produce a feeling of national belonging among Ukrainians who may have had various experiences of the war. By referring to World War II, the speeches portray the war as a common experience of Ukraine and Western European countries, whereas by referring to the Great Patriotic War they depict the war as a common heritage of Ukraine and post-Soviet countries. Such interpretation of the war is visible in the presidential speeches through the use of linguistic means, discursive strategies, and interdiscursivity.     

Community and Individual in the Aftermath of War: Perspectives from African Philosophy

Wartime violence and exile challenge not only individual lives and realities of community, but also the prevalent conceptualisations of these in anthropology and African philosophy. Based on the findings from research carried out in Uganda among young men who fled from war in Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and who try to survive in the capital city Kampala as so-called urban refugees, the article argues that the concept of community would benefit from renewed critical reflection, and that the individual should be granted a more prominent theoretical place in both disciplines.     

回族在抗日战争中的历史贡献

本文概述了抗日战争时期不同党派、不同领域、不同阶层的回族人民,在反对日本帝国主义侵略,争取中华民族解放的斗争中所作出的巨大贡献。     

The Effects of War on the Chechen National Identity Construction

Since the end of the first war in 1996, the definition of the Chechen national identity has been at stake in a top-level competition. I argue that four main trends – the separatists, the radical Islamists, the traditionalists and the pro-Russians – are in competition. Each of them produces its own narrative, based on a specific rendering of history. Using a constructivist approach, I address the influence of an all-out war context on social interactions, self-perception and categorisation by the others. I then examine the narratives in competition. I finally show how history and traditions have become political weapons in the struggle for power and legitimacy by opposing self-proclaimed elites promoted by wars.     

清代藏新蒙边疆城市发展滞后原因探析

清代中国内陆边疆西藏、新疆、蒙古地区城市出现较快发展,但相比内地的城市发展仍然滞后和缓慢。脆弱的自然地理环境、频发的自然灾害、社会动乱与内外战争、落后的经济基础、人口、思想观念等都是造成藏、新、蒙边疆城市发展滞后和缓慢的原因。当前,制约内陆边疆地区城市发展的各种因素已经发生了较大的改变,部分因素却仍然存在,成为今天制约藏、新、蒙内陆边疆地区城市化的因素,因而从历史的角度进行深入探析有着重要的现实意义。     

Authority,discourse and the construction of victimhood

ABSTRACT

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru has been a fundamental tool in the healing of the nation in the aftermath of the brutal period of war and authoritarian rule in the 80s and 90s. This paper explores the authority of the TRC to produce coherent and representative narratives for the so-called voiceless, marginalised victims of that violence. The complex relationship between the power and the production of victimhood led Asháninka victims of the violence to appropriate discursive narratives of violence. Such an appropriation local project of empowerment. Victimhood, this defined, provides these groups with the authority required for inclusion in the state and ultimately a manifestation of future goals.     

Remember the Alcazar! The creation of nationalist myths in the Spanish Civil War: The writings of Robert Brasillach

This article analyses the process of the construction of nationalist myths in the writings of French writer Robert Brasillach on the Spanish Civil War. Brasillach consistently presented the war through romanticised images that he intended to become nationalist myths. In particular, he built into his work a set of markers pointing to medieval epic poetry, which he thought embodied the Spanish – and French – national character. Brasillach envisioned a three-part process wherein myths mobilise the masses and inspire an elite to carry out new acts of heroism, which are then repackaged and presented, through commemoration, as new mythic images. Finally, individuals integrate these mythic images with their own memories, thus placing their lives within the national tradition.     

冷战后世界族际冲突的特点、原因及其消除

冷战后,族际冲突已成为世界冲突的主要形式,并且表现出新的特点:主体的多样化;范围的全球化;以极端民族主义为核心,宗教极端思潮为纽带,恐怖活动为手段。它的兴起,可以从冷战结束的效应、国家生存能力的增强、政府的政策、外部介入、政治和经济资源享有的不均衡、文化冲突等几个方面寻找原因。在新的世纪,国际社会必须高度重视解决民族问题,努力消除族际冲突。