Showing papers in "Comparative Studies in Society and History in 1992"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a didactic skit aimed at convincing rural people that they should consult doctors for their health problems or should feed oral rehydration solution to children suffering from diarrhea.
Abstract: Nepal is a predominantly rural nation: Most people live in villages and make their living as subsistence farmers. The Nepalese government, assisted by international donor agencies, administers projects directed at improving the conditions of life for these rural people. Images of villages and village life accompany the promotion of development ideals. Radio Nepal has actors playing the part of villagers in didactic skits aimed at convincing rural people that they should consult doctors for their health problems or should feed oral rehydration solution to children suffering from diarrhea. Schoolbooks contain illustrations of village scenes and talk about village life as they inform children about development programs. When development policy makers plan programs, they discuss what villagers do, how they react, and what they think. Together, these images coalesce into a typical, generic village, turning all the villages of rural Nepal into the village.
603 citations
TL;DR: The authors discuss the relationship between the discourses of inclusion, humanitarianism, and equality which informed liberal policy at the turn of the century in colonial Southeast Asia and the exclusionary, discriminatory practices which were reactive to, coexisting with, and perhaps inherent in liberalism itself.
Abstract: This essay is concerned with the construction of colonial categories and national identities and with those people who ambiguously straddled, crossed, and threatened these imperial divides.1 It begins with a story about metissage (interracial unions) and the sorts of progeny to which it gave rise (referred to as metis, mixed bloods) in French Indochina at the turn of the century. It is a story with multiple versions about people whose cultural sensibilities, physical being, and political sentiments called into question the distinctions of difference which maintained the neat boundaries of colonial rule. Its plot and resolution defy the treatment of European nationalist impulses and colonial racist policies as discrete projects, since here it was in the conflation of racial category, sexual morality, cultural competence and national identity that the case was contested and politically charged. In a broader sense, it allows me to address one of the tensions of empire which this essay only begins to sketch: the relationship between the discourses of inclusion, humanitarianism, and equality which informed liberal policy at the turn of the century in colonial Southeast Asia and the exclusionary, discriminatory practices which were reactive to, coexistent with, and perhaps inherent in liberalism itself.2
397 citations
TL;DR: The post-Orientalist history of the Third World has become a paradigm for a new generation of historians and anthropologists as mentioned in this paper, and these directions have been most recently and sharply endorsed in Gyan Prakash's discussion, ‘Writing post-orientalist histories of the third world: Perspectives from Indian Historiography.
Abstract: Over the last decade, studies of ‘third world’ histories and cultures have come to draw to a very considerable extent upon the theoretical perspectives provided by poststructuralism and postmodernism. With the publication in 1978 of Edward Said's work, Orientalism, these perspectives—now fused and extended into a distinctive amalgam of cultural critique, Foucauldian approaches to power, engaged ‘politics of difference,’ and postmodernist emphases on the decentered and the heterogeneous—began to be appropriated in a major way for the study of non-European histories and cultures. Certainly in our own field of Indian colonial history, Said's characteristic blending of these themes has now become virtually a paradigm for a new generation of historians and anthropologists. These directions have been most recently and sharply endorsed in Gyan Prakash's discussion, ‘Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography.’
236 citations
TL;DR: The problem with Prakash, O'Hanlon and Washbrook's either/or logic has no place for the productive tension that the combination of Marxist and deconstructive approaches generates as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The problem with Prakash, O'Hanlon and Washbrook conclude, is that he tries to ride two horses at once—one Marxist, the other poststructuralist deconstructionist. ‘But one of these may not be a horse that brooks inconstant riders. …’ So, they say we must choose only one to ride on, not both because the two, in their view, have opposing trajectories. One advances historical understanding and progressive change, the other denies history and perpetuates a retrogressive status quo. Posed in this manner, the choices involve more than a dispute over which paradigm provides a better understanding of the histories of the third world and India. At stake is the writing of history as political practice, and the only safe bet, from their point of view, is Marxism (of their kind), not the endless deferral and nihilism of deconstruction and postmodernism. Having set up this opposition, O'Hanlon and Washbrook's either/or logic has no place for the productive tension that the combination of Marxist and deconstructive approaches generates. They are uncomfortable with those recent writings that employ Marxist categories to analyze patterns of inequalities and exploitation while also using deconstructive approaches to contend that Marxism is part of the history that institutionalized capitalist dominance—approaches which argue that although Marxism can rightfully claim that it historicizes the emergence of capitalism as a world force, it cannot disavow its history as a nineteenth-century European discourse that universalized the mode-of-production narrative.
101 citations
TL;DR: This article pointed out that an archaeology of discursive formation would have led to the very root of the massive colonization of language which began in the sixteenth century with the expansion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires.
Abstract: When George Balandier proposed his theoretical approach to a colonial situation, the colonization of language was not an issue that piqued the interest of scholars in history, sociology, economics, or anthropology, which were the primary disciplines targeted in his article. When some fifteen years later Michel Foucault underlined the social and historical significance of language (‘l'enonce*’) and discursive formation, the colonization of language was still not an issue to those attentive to the archaeology of knowledge. Such an archaeology, founded on the paradigmatic example generally understood as the Western tradition, overlooked the case history in which an archaeology of discursive formation would have led to the very root of the massive colonization of language which began in the sixteenth century with the expansion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires.
72 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between schooling, language, and knowledge has been examined in literate and non-literate societies as mentioned in this paper, focusing on knowledge acquired through the use of language, because language is the major medium for imparting knowledge in schools and for social reproduction in the larger society.
Abstract: The relationships among schooling, language, and knowledge—especially through the systematic comparison of the organization, form, function, and acquisition of institutionalized knowledge—in literate and nonliterate societies has hardly been examined. This essay attempts such an analysis, focusing on knowledge acquired through the use of language, because language is the major medium for imparting knowledge in schools and for social reproduction in the larger society, because knowledge acquired through the use of language is readily identifiable and testable, and because language is one of the major terms of the present analysis. The proposed elastic concept of schooling views schooling as a cover term for institutionalized learning in any society, literate or nonliterate. It thus questions the analytical adequacy of the received, Euro-American, concept of schooling as a unitary phenomenon based on the dual assumption that the school specializes in the transmission of literate knowledge and that literacy education is coterminous with formal education.
62 citations
TL;DR: The most prominent schemes in this respect are the Baker Plan of 1985, which suggested massive new credits for the most highly indebted developing countries, and the recently adopted Brady Plan, which proposes partial debt discounts and reductions in interest rates as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The settlement of the external debt of insolvent sovereign borrowers has become one of the most important issues in relations between the north and south since the outbreak of the global debt crisis in the early 1980s. For the past eight years representatives of governments and international organizations, bankers, and scientists have suggested several proposals and plans to solve the present debt crisis. The most prominent schemes in this respect are the Baker Plan of 1985, which suggested massive new credits for the most highly indebted developing countries, and the recently adopted Brady Plan, which proposes partial debt discounts and reductions in interest rates. Both of these debt settlement proposals were initiated by the United States and are supported by the other principal creditor countries. However, despite the ten years of crisis management, world leaders have not yet agreed upon a longterm solution to the current debt problems. In the history of the capitalist world economy, the current problems of coping with a global debt crisis do not represent a unique event. Rather, recent empirical studies demonstrate that sovereign borrowers have experienced many instances of debt-servicing difficulties during the past 150 years (Eichengreen and Portes 1986; White 1986; Eichengreen and Lindert 1989; Marichal 1989; Suter 1989).
61 citations
TL;DR: The Danish nationstate of today represents a rare situation of virtual identity between state, nation, and society, which is a more recent phenomenon than normally assumed in Denmark and abroad as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: From a cultural and historical-sociological perspective, the Danish nationstate of today represents a rare situation of virtual identity between state, nation, and society, which is a more recent phenomenon than normally assumed in Denmark and abroad. Though one of the oldest European monarchies, whose flag came ‘tumbling down from heaven in 1219’—ironically enough an event that happened in present-day Estonia—Denmark's present national identity is of recent vintage. Until 1814 the word, Denmark, denominated a typical European, plurinational or multinational, absolutist state, second only to such powers as France, Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and perhaps Prussia. The state had succeeded in reforming itself in a revolution from above in the late eighteenth century and ended as one of the few really “enlightened absolutisms” of the day (Horstboll and ostergard 1990; ostergard 1990). It consisted of four main parts and several subsidiaries in the North Atlantic Ocean, plus some colonies in Western Africa, India, and the West Indies. The main parts were the kingdoms of Denmark proper and Norway, plus the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. How this particular state came about need not bother us here.
58 citations
TL;DR: Colonial discourse, sometimes referred to in the singular, seems unmanageably vast and heterogeneous, for it must encompass not only the broad field of colonialism's relations and representations which constitutes or arises from the business of official rule, including administrative reports and censuses, but also the works of metropolitan literature and other forms of high culture which deploy images of the exotic or the primitive, paintings of unfamiliar landscapes, tourist guides, anthropological studies, and Oriental fabric designs as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Colonial discourse, sometimes referred to in the singular, seems unmanageably vast and heterogeneous, for it must encompass not only the broad field of colonialism's relations and representations which constitutes or arises from the business of official rule, including administrative reports and censuses, but also the works of metropolitan literature and other forms of high culture which deploy images of the exotic or the primitive, paintings of unfamiliar landscapes, tourist guides, anthropological studies, and Oriental fabric designs. Colonial discourse includes chinoiserie, Kim, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Camus' Algerian stories, Frans Post, and Indiana Jones, as well as the Vital Statistics of the Native Population for the Year 1887 and the annual reports from wherever.
53 citations
TL;DR: The adhesive label was originally conceived by the English postal reformer, Rowland Hill, as a convenience for illiterates who would not be able to write addresses on the official envelopes that he preferred as proof of prepayment as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Stamp collecting and industrial capitalism in the United States emerged simultaneously in the mid-nineteenth century. England issued the first government postage stamp in 1840, and other nations quickly adopted the idea. The United States printed its first official stamp in 1847, although it was preceded by the provisionals issued by local postmasters. Postage stamps were a product of the industrial revolution. The adoption of the prepaid penny post in England, while opposed by the General Post Office, was widely supported by large merchants who understood that a low-cost, single-rate system was vital to the communication demanded by an increasingly national market. The adhesive label was originally conceived by the English postal reformer, Rowland Hill, as a convenience for illiterates who would not be able to write addresses on the official envelopes that he preferred as proof of prepayment. Within a decade, almost every major nation in the world had borrowed this device, which became a symbol of the economic transformation of the nineteenth century. I would argue that the collecting of these tokens was a microcosmic performance of the system that created them. Stamp collectors took on many of the key roles of actors in the market economy and played out various conflicts embodied in the larger society in the philatelic arena.
36 citations
TL;DR: In one of the twenty lines it allocates to a description of Hungary, the nearly 300-page edition in 1877 of A Satchel Guide for the Vacation Tourist in Europe summarizes the architectural and aesthetic worth of the country's capital city for sightseeing American visitors by pronouncing that, in Budapest, "the churches and the public buildings are of no particular interest" as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In one of the twenty lines it allocates to a description of Hungary, the nearly 300-page edition in 1877 of A Satchel Guide for the Vacation Tourist in Europe summarizes the architectural and aesthetic worth of the country's capital city for sightseeing American visitors by pronouncing that, in Budapest, “the churches and the public buildings are of no particular interest” (Satchel 1877:194). Twenty years later, the 1897 edition of that same guidebook takes a more amiable but scarcely enthusiastic pitch, allowing that “some of the new public buildings are elegant in their way” (Satchel 1897:184). Twenty-seven years later—following a world war, two revolutions, and a foreign military occupation resulting in the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy—the presence of what has remained of Hungary is noted by an increase to eighty-one lines (Satchel 1924). Except for a one-sentence reference to a Danubian steamboat trip downstream from Pressburg (Bratislava, Pozsony), the entire description remains restricted to Budapest. Nearly two generations after the pronouncement of the disparaging opinion above, the 1924 text notices that Budapest's “picture at sunset is one of the most striking in Europe” (Satchel 1924:272) and that “it is not only the most considerable city of Hungary, but is probably to be numbered among the four most beautiful capitals of Europe” (1924:273).
TL;DR: In 1985, Leach made his first visit to the site of the temple of Diana at Nemi, some fifteen miles southeast of Rome as discussed by the authors, and called this visit a pilgrimage, for Nemi and the problems of its bizarre cult were the starting place for James Frazer's founding work of Social Anthropology.
Abstract: In 1985 Edmund Leach, well into retirement from his chair of Anthropology in Cambridge, made his first visit to the site of the temple of Diana at Nemi, some fifteen miles southeast of Rome.Leach called this visit a pilgrimage, for Nemi and the problems of its bizarre cult were the starting place for James Frazer's founding work of Social Anthropology, The Golden Bough. This was the spot that Frazer described in such lavish detail in his opening chapter: ‘the sylvan landscape [that] was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy.’ This was the setting for the problem that Frazer set out to solve: Why in Roman times could the priest-king of the sacred grove of Nemi (the so-called Rex Nemorensis) win his priestly office only by killing the previous incumbent; why would he himself lose it only through murder at the hands of his successor? For those who see Frazer's work as the start of anthropological study in its modern sense, the site and the cult of Nemi must hold a particular place: This colourful, but minor, backwater of Roman religion marks the source of the discipline of Social Anthropology.
TL;DR: A Florentine merchant in the Portuguese capital reported troubling rumors that ‘certain vessels of white Christians’ had visited the port of Calicut on the Malabar coast only a couple of generations previously as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Shortly before Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon in September 1499 from his great voyage to India, a Florentine merchant in the Portuguese capital reported troubling rumors that ‘certain vessels of white Christians’ had visited the port of Calicut on the Malabar coast only a couple of generations previously. If true, this would mean that some other European power had beaten Portugal in its long search for a maritime route to the Indies. After speculating that the mysterious mariners were Germans (although ‘it seems to me that we should have some notice about them’) or Russians (‘if they have a port there’), the merchant concluded that ‘on the arrival of the captain [da Gama] we may learn who these people are.’
TL;DR: The history of women's work in English cheese dairying has implications for a broader historiographical question: When and why did women gradually disappear from many kinds of agricultural work in Western societies.
Abstract: English cheeses—Cheddar, Gloucester single or double, Cheshire, Stilton, and others—are familiar throughout the Anglo-American world, whether consumed after dinner in English homes or as key ingredients of American tex-mex or vegetarian cuisine. These famous cheeses originated long ago but in most cases reached a zenith in quantity and in reputation during the last century. Little is known about the history of English cheese dairying, despite its fame and its importance to agriculture past and present. Its economic background has received only slight attention, and its social history is almost entirely unexplored; yet clearly the social structure of English cheese dairying has historically exerted a major influence on the industry, because it traditionally depended upon a distinctive sexual division of labor. The history of women's work in English cheese dairying has implications for a broader historiographical question: When and why did women gradually disappear
from many kinds of agricultural work in Western societies?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a particularizing, contextualizing attitude among the remaining works on the welfare state under consideration here that sets them apart from earlier social scientific accounts, such as those of G0sta Esping-Andersen and his colleagues.
Abstract: ions of its universal features, are among the ways that history has long distinguished itself from the hard-core social sciences. It is precisely such a particularizing, contextualizing attitude among the remaining works on the welfare state under consideration here that sets them apart from earlier social scientific accounts. Take the intellectual development of G0sta Esping-Andersen as an example. Esping-Andersen is well known as one of the most supple and sophisticated formulators of the social democratic theory of the welfare state. He was among a group of scholars who first attacked the functionalist birds-eye approach to social policy that saw all nations passing through the crucible of industrialization or modernization and emerging willy-nilly as welfare states of one stripe or another. Esping-Andersen and his colleagues did not deny that all industrialized nations have social policies of some sort but argued that there were as many differences among them as similarities. The various degrees to which nations exerted themselves in social policy terms was due, they claimed, to their divergent political complexions. When the labor movement and the left was strong and well-organized (or, as in Castles's corollary, when the right was fragmented), social policy of a particularly generous and expansive nature could be implemented; elsewhere, the sort of residual and rudimentary social programs required for merely functional reasons were all that was possible. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.17 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 04:46:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
TL;DR: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Argentina and Canada experienced unprecedented economic growth, propelled by crops in the export sector, mainly cereals cultivated on the Argentine pampas and the Canadian prairies as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Argentina and Canada experienced unprecedented economic growth. In the period stretching from 1890 to 1914, Argentina and Canada played host to millions of migrating Europeans and became the largest borrowers on the world's capital markets. The infusion of foreign labour and capital helped to convert the empty grasslands into bread baskets for the world.The expansion was propelled by crops in the export sector, mainly cereals cultivated on the Argentine pampas and the Canadian prairies. By the early years of this century, wheat became the premier export for both countries, and eventually ranked among the world's top cereal exporters. After World War I, both countries combined to supply around 60 percent of the world's total wheat export trade.1 Argentina and Canada exemplified what was beneficial about export-led development.
TL;DR: This paper examined family division of wealth and social mobility in China and found that reproduction was not uniform across social strata and that classes tended to converge as the result of family division and the demographic processes underlying it.
Abstract: The authors examine family division of wealth and social mobility in China. They investigate "the experience of three north China villages surveyed by Japanese researchers in the 1930s and assess this evidence in view of other information on landholding patterns. Our findings amplify and confirm the insights of scholars who have argued that division fragments largeholdings. We offer empirical evidence that reproduction was not uniform across social strata and that classes tended to converge as the result of family division and the demographic processes underlying it." (EXCERPT)
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined spatiotemporal variation in literacy in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico during the period from 1890 to 1980, using tax and voting lists from the nineteenth century and census responses from 1990 to 1980.
Abstract: The object of this essay has been to help examine spatiotemporal variation in literacy. The research reported here centered on the Valley of Oaxaca, an agricultural region in southern Mexico, during the period from 1890 to 1980. The data consist of a systematic compilation of tax and voting lists from the nineteenth century, census responses from 1890 to 1980, community ethnographies, published histories and biographies, and government reports. Attending to both the spatial and the temporal scales of events and causes was methodologically important for this research.
TL;DR: In this paper, it was pointed out that the categories through which anthropology constructs descriptions and analyses of the social discourses and practices of non-Western peoples are themselves participants in a network of relations of knowledge and power.
Abstract: Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, it has been difficult for anthropology to avoid the fact that its own discourse is ever entangled in a whole Western archive. What became clear, of course, was that the categories through which anthropology constructs descriptions and analyses of the social discourses and practices of non-Western peoples are themselves participants in a network of relations of knowledge and power. Interestingly enough, however, whereas the general import of this Foucauldian thesis has now been quickly assimilated, its challenge has hardly been taken up in terms of tracing out the lines of formation of specific anthropological, or, let us say, anthropologized, concepts.
TL;DR: For instance, the operation of societal power is generally focused on women's bodies and bodily processes, and women, according to a widespread (and controversial) paradigm, are grounded in nature by virtue of the dictates of their bodies: menstruation, pregnancy, birth.
Abstract: Ideologies of reproduction are social facts, collective representations, of the dramatic ways in which human beings construct and appropriate gender for the imaging of social reality. Such symbolic universes are often centered on the body (Foucault 1980; Martin 1989; Turner 1984; Douglas 1973). As a template of cultural signification, the body becomes a model through which the social order can be apprehended. For instance, gender hierarchies are sometimes envisioned by means of an anatomical or physiological paradigm (Needham 1973; Hugh-Jones 1979; Theweleit 1987). However, the operation of societal power is generally focused on women's bodies and bodily processes. Women, according to a widespread (and controversial) paradigm, are grounded in nature by virtue of the dictates of their bodies: menstruation, pregnancy, birth (Levi-Strauss 1966, 1969; Ortner 1974; Ardener 1975; Mac-Cormack and Strathern 1986).
TL;DR: For a long time now, people have pondered the ambiguity, at least in English, of "history": the records men make, the record men write as discussed by the authors, and these are beginning to correspond.
Abstract: For a long time now, people have pondered the ambiguity, at least in English, of ‘history’: the records men make, the records men write. In modern Chinese history, these are beginning to correspond. Revolutionary spirits like the famous writer Lu Hsun (1881–1936) felt that the old high culture was dead, and they resented being instructed, as it seemed, to rest quietly, uttering platitudes in silk-fan attitudes. They wanted to create (and destroy): to make-their own history, not to be politically stricken by forces from abroad, or culturally sterile at home, their past frozen solid in the present. The revolution they helped to foster in a cosmopolitan spirit—against the world to join the world, against their past to keep it theirs, but past—may be interpreted, in cultural terms, as a long striving to make their museums themselves.
TL;DR: The most crucial problem confronting historians of early modern Europe is the question of how to explain the causes and nature of numerous rebellions by the elites during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The most crucial problem confronting historians of early modern Europe is the nature of absolutism and its relationship to society. At the center of scholarly debate have been the questions of the social and economic bases of absolutism. What determined whether state policies could be successfully implemented? Were rulers dependent on the nobility, and did they therefore act in its interest; or did they achieve independence from the dominant class by supporting the interests of a new bourgeoisie or by balancing interests between the two groups? Closely related to these concerns is the problem of how to explain the causes and nature of the numerous rebellions by the elites during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
TL;DR: This paper studied the dynamics of Mesopotamian family life, more specifically intergenerational conflict, a topic barely touched upon by scholars in the field, focusing on the legal and economic aspects of family history.
Abstract: Recent years have brought a proliferation of studies on the family on such topics as household composition, marriage patterns, childbearing practices, and life-cycle transitions. Scholars in ancient near eastern studies have contributed mainly to the legal and economic aspects of family history. Frequently the work done has centered on philological questions. The cuneiform data on the Mesopotamian family, accidental and all too often limited, is spread over a period of some three thousand years. Nevertheless it is time to broaden the focus despite the inherent problems. In this essay, I treat the question of the dynamics of Mesopotamian family life, more specifically intergenerational conflict, a topic barely touched upon by scholars in the field.
TL;DR: Maclntyre as mentioned in this paper argued that some languages or conceptual schemes might be partially untranslatable, but this did not necessarily preclude commensurability, drawing upon the example of the sixteenth-century Zuni Indian and Spanish colonial frontier.
Abstract: Maclntyre sought to raise a series of crucial questions in an address before the Eighty-First Annual Meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. What is the best way to evaluate two competing languages, conceptual schemes, or cultural approaches to being in the world? May conceptual schemes or theoretical languages be so radically different as to be fully incommensurable, that is, incapable of intertranslation or meaningful comparison?2 Maclntyre, drawing upon the example of the sixteenthcentury Zuni Indian and Spanish colonial frontier, contended that some languages or conceptual schemes might well be partially untranslatable, but this did not necessarily preclude commensurability. His remarks suggest additional questions, namely, what does constitute a frontier situation? What is involved in the symbolic differentiation of one conceptual scheme, one interpretive group—one culture—from another? We might recognize here the familiar problem of boundary construction, the social process of creating a common group identity that marks it as different from others.3
TL;DR: The authors compare the work and authority relations in Chinese and Soviet factories in the 1960s and 1970s, and compare the differing variables that coalesced to form distinctive patterns of labor relations in these two countries during those years are more clearly understood.
Abstract: Recent dramatic changes in the social and political organization of Eastern Europe and what was the Soviet Union have led to a widespread reformulation of certain generic terms that have long plagued comparative scholarship. Similarly, with the destruction of the monolithic Berlin Wall has come the imperative to deconstruct monolithic terms, such as communism or traditionalism, which have often obfuscated difference and negated geographical and historical specificity. In this essay, and in the spirit of laying to rest the ghost of the ideal type, I compare the work and authority relations in Chinese and Soviet factories in the 1960s and 1970s. When the differing variables that coalesced to form distinctive patterns of labor relations in these two countries during those years are more clearly understood, it will be possible to discuss the current patterns of change with greater accuracy. In addition, when the essentially structuralist constraints of an overarching communist type are loosened, it is also possible to reintroduce actors into the dialectic and to enrich the comparison with finer social and historical detail. Recent scholarship on work authority in Chinese industry has focused on a distinctive tradition of labor relations perceived and presented by many Western academics as undisputably communist in method and style. Andrew Walder, for example, distinguishes this tradition from earlier models of totalitarian control and group theory by stressing the positive incentives offered for political loyalty. More important, he claims that this demand for political loyalty has created a system of reciprocity in which management and workers are bound to each other. The leadership must cultivate and reward loyal individuals or "activists", while conversely, those same individuals must exchange political loyalty for the economic goods offered by the factory leadership. According to Walder, activists play a key role in the communist factory organization. He categorizes them as generally young, with strong connections to Party organizations. They are closely linked to the factory leadership and eager to perform extra duties and difficult or menial work without pay. Their political loyalty is complete and vociferous, and they are ready and
TL;DR: The history of sexuality these days is, well, sexy as discussed by the authors, and the last decade has witnessed a virtual explosion of scholarship in the field, including the inauguration of a new scholarly periodical devoted specifically to the topic.
Abstract: The history of sexuality these days is, well, sexy. The last decade has witnessed a virtual explosion of scholarship in the field, including the inauguration of a new scholarly periodical devoted specifically to the topic.2 Despite all the excitement, however, it remains unclear just what the history of sexuality can and should be. Both Robert Padgug and David Halperin have suggested that the very notion of sexuality as a category of historical analysis is, if not misconceived, at least highly suspect.3 Sexuality, they argue, is a modern concept whose implicit assumptions about the self and its erotic attractions are foreign to the belief systems of many historical cultures, Western and non-Western. For one thing, the very notion of sexuality implies its existence as an essential and separate domain of our personal and physical identities, an understanding of the self Padgug claims did not exist in precapitalist economies. Moreover, the concept of sexuality differentiates between sexual identity and gender identity-a distinction, Halperin contends,