“Gone to work to America”: Irish step-migration through south Wales in the 1860s and 1870s

Why did the Irish-born population of Wales decline so sharply in the decade 1861–1870? This paper argues that during the 1850s and 1860s, large numbers of Irish men and women travelled to south Wales in order to finance emigration to the USA. Using the US Federal Census, this paper shows how Irish step-migration through Wales led principally to the Pennsylvania coalfields. This type of migration is termed the Knight’s-move: a sideways move from agriculture into heavy industry, in order to advance forward across the Atlantic. The Knight’s-move challenges previous assumptions about immigration into the south Wales coalfield during the nineteenth century.     

Cruel Pessimism and Waiting for Belonging: Towards a Global Political Economy of Affect

Recent theorizations of affect have focused largely on Western historical, political and aesthetic contexts to distinguish between affect and emotion. Notably, these interventions offer new imaginaries to reinvigorate analysis of politics in the face of shrinking possibilities. However, much of this literature views affect as autonomous from emotion, while overlooking the political history of development and the differentiated relation to affect under colonial capitalism in other historical contexts. This paper studies subaltern engagement in activist performance in India to address these issues. It thinks through Lauren Berlant's account of the aesthetic genre and affective structure of cruel optimism, and her focus on historical contexts where people have recently lost the vision of a good life. By contrast, focusing on the historical present of those born into a pervasive and intractable sense of marginality and insecurity, I ask: what is the subject's relation to affect and activism in contexts where the loss of vision of a good life is not new under neoliberalism, but rather, reworks long-standing violence and inclusion/exclusion of colonial capitalism and nation-state histories. I argue that it is useful to understand Berlant's ‘materialist context for affect theory’ in light of uneven global histories of colonialism, development and neoliberalism. The affective experience of time is different across different spaces. As such, this paper contributes a global materialist context for affect theory, by focusing on activist theatre by a tribe called Chhara, designated ‘born criminals’ by British colonial law – a status legally denotified in 1952, but that is practically still effective in postcolonial India. Competing affective structures – sentimental optimism, cruel pessimism, betrayal and ordinary regard – shape and are shaped by Chhara negotiations with branded criminality. Ultimately, for the postcolonial subject, surviving in the neoliberal present involves vacillating among competing affective structures, only some of which generate sustained political critique.     

Career Pathways into Retirement in the UK: Linking Older Women's Pasts to the Present

Understanding of how women's experiences in retirement are shaped by their pre‐retirement lives is limited. In this paper we utilize an innovative mix of measures to examine the link between career histories and expectations and experiences of retirement. Analysis of timeline data capturing the long working lives of a sample of older women identifies five different pathways into retirement. We explore these trajectories in detail to determine how they are shaped and their links to different outcomes in later life. The analysis shows how different career histories unfold and how they shape expectations and experiences of retirement. Long, professional career pathways leave women feeling enabled in retirement, women following more fragmented pathways are more constrained, and some trajectories, including pathways involving transitions into professional careers in later life, can leave older women financially and emotionally vulnerable in older age.     

Theorizing the social: Émile Durkheim's theory of force and energy

This paper offers a new interpretation of Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) as the basis for reconsidering the Tarde–Durkheim debate of 1903 and the distinctions between a theory of social force and a theory of social assemblage. Resisting traditional interpretations of Durkheim's scientism, this essay traces how concepts of force and energy are centrally developed in Elementary Forms to draw new lines between epistemology to ontology for twentieth-century theory. I argue that Durkheim develops an ‘energetic epistemology’ that conceives of the human capacity for shared meaning as a product of invested energy in the form of continually enacted and evolving material practice, thought, and attention. According to Durkheim, when a member of a collective perceives a god or feels belief, he or she actually perceives the accumulated energy of on-going creation and maintenance of objects and ideas by members of a collective. Sacred objects, images, and ideas bear the trace of collective energy the more they are carefully crafted, maintained in spaces that are specially arranged, and written into behavioural codes. This reading of Durkheim allows us to consider him in a lineage of social constructivists and, particularly, in relation to Ludwik Fleck, who has been largely confined to different theoretical discussions when his contributions to sociology have been acknowledged at all. By reconsidering Durkheim, we have occasion to rethink his sociology and understand how he redrew the lines between thought and action, between epistemology and ontology, through the material framework of energy and force.     

唯物史观与实验主义——民国学界关于中国经济史研究方法的探索

关于中国经济史的研究方法,民国学界存在两种基本认识,一派信从唯物史观,是为"理论派";一派接近实验主义,是为"材料派"。最初理论派高调亮相并占压倒性优势,材料派也浮出水面但声势不显。后来为矫社会史论战之弊,实验主义开始抬头,至《食货》创刊而居于主导地位。经过《食货》上的辩论,两派达成基本共识,在理论与材料之间执两而用中,最终将经济史研究引入正轨。这一结局的出现得益于《食货》上已建立起一种学者间正常的对话交流机制。     

知识、权力与学科的合分——以浙大史地学系为中心(1936—1949)

1936—1949年浙江大学史地学系的组建与存废,无疑是民国学科史上较为特殊而重要的事件。受现代知识学科化和专业化的影响,彼时各大学多将历史学系与地理学系分置。竺可桢、张其昀则秉持"史地合一"的通才教育观,创建史地学系,下设史学与地学二组,既造就史学与地学的专门人才,又特重二者的关联,以达专精与通识之间的平衡。浙江大学史地学系不仅在组织结构、课程安排及学术活动等领域独树一帜,还培养了大量史学及地学方面的通才与专才。它的创建与存在是竺、张二人成功掌控了学术机关与思想资源后,贯彻其理念的必然产物。在1949年的政权更替中,竺、张二人相继离开浙江大学,最终导致历史学、地理学分离。浙江大学史地学系的意义,是在西方现代学科体系的影响之下,中国学界有识者面对现代学科体系冲击的一种创新与坚守。     

中国史学史研究的国际视野

乔治忠认为,中国史学史学科体系的建设具有不同的构成层次,界定其学术任务和研究内容,展现学科性质的板块式逻辑结构,明晰学术研究的切入点,是独立学科地位能够成立的基础;探研中国传统史学发展的主导线索,划分中国史学的发展阶段,是在深入研究条件下的整体性把握。罗炳良认为,中国史学史的学科体系渐臻成熟,中国史学史研究也应当拓宽学术领域,促进史学史的内涵和体系不断深入和完善;要实现这个目标,至关重要的是加强史学思潮和史学批评范畴两个领域的研究。钱茂伟认为,需要用新的视角来研究史学史,一是用史学范型观照传统史学的发展历程,二是用国家与社会关系视角观照史学的发展历程;特别要重视研究民间史学,注重小历史的书写研究。朱政惠认为,中国史学史研究要放到国际中国史学史、东西方史学研究和交流的大环境中考察,从历史的纵向考察和横向的比较中探寻中国史学史研究的新方向。     

历史书写与记忆塑造(下)——古腾堡在近代中国

三清末民初编译、书写的西洋历史书籍及有关文类,虽然一般都称道古腾堡印刷术的贡献,将古腾堡印刷术与中国印刷术进行对比,但并没有将古腾堡印刷术导源于中国,尽管个别人曾将火药、罗盘这两大发明归于中国西传。然而,这样的历史书写模式并没有一以贯之。特别是在20世纪     

近现代中国画论与民族精神之考释

从新文化运动到抗日战争爆发之前,关于中国画的论争成为一个突出的文化景观。各种派别的论者对于绘画整体功能的认识相当一致,并不约而同地将其上升到国家、民族复兴的高度。抗日战争时期,各画种都为民族救亡作出了积极贡献,文艺家们的画学思想中关于民族复兴、民族精神的倡导更加鲜明有力。当代关于中国画体现民族精神的提法与近现代史一脉相承,并融入了民族文化复兴的主流。     

关于精神生活史研究的若干问题

以满足人的精神需求为特征的培育、影响人的心理、意志、情绪和心境的各种活动的历史,即是人类的精神生活史。精神生活史的研究内容,应该包括信仰生活、文化生活、礼仪活动、娱乐生活、社会交往活动等五个方面。开展精神生活史研究,有着重要的现实意义和学术价值。