The specter of failure: rendering Afghan women as sites of precarity in empowerment regimes

This article analyzes how the category of “Afghan women” and discourses of precarity intersect within the women’s empowerment regime in Afghanistan. By examining an NGO that seeks to empower women through writing, I argue that staff members draw upon precarity as a go-to logic to describe the state of Afghan women writers’ successes under conditions of insecurity and limited communication. Specifically, it is writers’ desires to subvert their social orders and to carve out their own futures that staff members and writing coordinators frame as subject to potential destruction. While recent work has highlighted the importance of recognizing the precarious lifeworlds of vulnerable populations, this article points to the potential implications of a hyper-recognition of precarity – namely, the obscuring of the complexities of individual women’s past and present realities. Through analyzing the pedagogies of one empowerment NGO working with women in a post-9/11 Afghanistan, I show how the logic of precarity is concerned with the vulnerability of women’s desires and sentiments, rather than their material and political vulnerabilities. It is thus deeply inflected by a historically situated “common sense” about which potentialities and aspirations are inherent to Afghan women.     

Performance anxiety: women’s sexed bodies in Pakistan

The nexus of Islam, gender, race and violence has been keenly revisited in some post-9/11 scholarship. The concern over the racialized Muslim male body is justifiable in cases of rendition, torture and the kind of battlefields that mark the War on Terror. However, the sympathetic analysis of the tortured Muslim male body as a permanent and universally vulnerable imaginary has necessarily challenged the framing of sexual politics for Muslim contexts. This bid to shield the vulnerable Muslim male body from Islamophobia and imperialist violence forecloses the notion that Islamist patriarchy and politics can themselves be fundamentally violent in the post-9/11 moment and within the Muslim community. This obscures the range of routine, domestic and normative violent expressions observed by men in Muslim societies. This essay discusses two cases that illustrate the means and methods by which female bodies have been sexed by the narrative of the War on Terror in Pakistan. These cases highlight how the academic efforts that seek to rescue the racialized Muslim male body complicate the struggle of resisting (lay) female bodies.     

抗战大后方文化人的功用及其贡献

抗战时期,大后方文化人对抗日战争作出了不可忽视的贡献。文化人对抗战的贡献主要表现在三个方面:唤醒民族觉醒,宣传、动员民众参加民族解放斗争;实现文艺大众化的质的飞跃,创造繁荣的抗战文化;推动大后方的民主进程。当下文化人的重要作用更是越来越充分地显示了出来。     

作为一个过渡礼仪的两个庆典——对元旦与春节关系的表述

中国从步入现代民族国家的时候就引出在一个日历年里有两个新年庆典的问题。新的公历元旦与废弃的夏历元旦(春节)一直处在现代与传统、西方与本土、官方与民间的文化纠葛之中。在学术表述中,元旦和春节总是被看作分开的甚至对立、冲突的两个节日。从过渡礼仪的理论来看,从人们的生活经验来看,不管多少仪式,“过年”应该只是一个过渡礼仪。本文探讨如何把元旦与春节纳入一个关于年的过渡礼仪来认知,并在此基础上讨论这种对文化因素多来源的新年庆典进行再结构化的知识生产的社会意涵。     

王韬笔下的法国形象

作为晚清最早以个人身份访问法国的近代知识分子,王韬详细考察了法国的经济、军事、文化、教育等各个方面,在游记《漫游随录》中以细腻、生动而又深刻的文笔记载了在法国的所见所闻,把法国以真实可感的形象介绍到中国来,对当时国人了解法国大有帮助。在普法战争爆发、欧洲社会发生巨大变动的历史时刻,他及时撰写了《普法战纪》、《重订法国志略》报道战况,介绍法国普鲁士的历史地理情况,开阔国人的视野,为国人睁眼看世界提供了一面镜子,对当时渴望了解世界的中国知识分子产生了积极的影响。在当时的历史条件下,他当然承袭了前人对法国的—些看法,但是,由于他有游历法国的亲身经历和编纂法国志的经验,所以,他又极大地发展、推动当时国人对于法国的认识。      

“中国模式”的时代演绎及其“冷战”、“后冷战”国际背景

中国改革开放的新时期,先后处于世界＂冷战＂、＂后冷战＂时代。中国审时度势,锐意改革进取,既为世界冷战的终结作出了历史性的贡献,同时也发展壮大国力,摒弃了旧有的＂中国模式＂理论话语。中国式改革使自己摆脱了苏东剧变引发的＂多米诺骨牌效应＂,由此也兴起了有关＂中国模式＂的初步探讨。尽管在＂后冷战＂时代,西方国家＂冷战思维＂阴魂不散,＂中国模式＂论的兴起仍凸显世界融解的信息。其与中国威胁论的交错杂糅,又凸显了国际背景的复杂艰辛。有鉴于此,中国学者有关＂中国模式＂的探讨更应注重与海外的学术博弈。     

试论邮政储金汇业局的经营活动

1937年对日全面抗战开始后,国民政府主张抗战与建设并重。在金融方面,对政策进行了一系列调整,在战前经济金融政策的基础上,国民政府制定实施了战时金融统制政策,在此过程中邮政储金汇业局的经营发生了深刻变化。作为四联总处下属的“四行二局”之一,邮政储金汇业局在战时的金融体系中占有举足轻重的地位。通过利用中国第二历史档案馆馆藏的邮政储金汇业局、四联总处等机构的资料,重点分析邮政储金汇业局在抗日战争时期的经营活动。这不仅有助于我们了解抗战时期国民政府经济金融政策实施的过程及成效,也可以清楚地认识到邮政储蓄在抗战金融体系中的地位和作用。     

Limites et pertinence de la guerre juste face au terrorisme et aux nouvelles guerres

This article aims to examine the pertinence as well as the limits of the just war theory in order to apprehend the ethical issues raised by contemporary forms of political violence. Terrorism is undoubtedly an extreme case of political violence that puts to the test the theoretical and practical relevance of jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles. From a sociological point of view, it appears necessary to understand contemporary terrorism within the historical evolution of armed conflicts and under the light of current research devoted to the concept of ‘new wars’. Although I will argue that just war theory does not sufficiently take into account current studies on the empirical features of contemporary wars, it is nonetheless possible to salvage the theoretical and practical relevance of just war theory in a more specified sense. From a philosophical point of view, the goal of this article is to confront the theoretical and practical relevance of just war theory with the current body of research in the field of the sociology of war in order to assess both its limitations and its potential scope.     

Nouvelles guerres justes,nouvelles guerres saintes

Holy wars and just wars are two distinct categories regarding their justification. The first claims that God himself commands and supports war or, at least, that God is the ultimate legitimization. On this side of the world, two types of holy war have existed: the crusade and the jihad. By contrast, the just war is justified by the need to deploy an awareness of uncertainty, because that war intends to be after all a prudent decision. The challenge is to class brutality under a moral action and to place war under both the criteria of legitimacy and a less inhumane violence. Totalitarianism of the twentieth century has continued holy war, even if religions have been replaced by justificatory idéologies. Today, the wars waged on behalf of human rights and under international law, such as the war in Kosovo, may be recognized as new'holy wars' conducted on behalf of an unwavering certainty: they are of a Manichean type; while a'just war' in the contemporary context is one that belongs to a particular decision, such as the American war in Iraq, and thus submitted to the uncertainty and debate, and assuming the consequences of the decision.     

论战争记忆与老舍创作的国家复仇意识

１９００年八国联军入侵北京时的战争经历对老舍的人生记忆具有决定性的影响。这种战争记忆在老舍的生活经验中不断被新的战争经历和海外生话所激活,从而奠定了老舍创作的“仇洋心理”,使老舍创作表现出复杂的国家复仇意识。国家复仇意识在某种意义上是老舍创作的核心意识。