The Spirituality of Reading

Reading is an activity that can provide persons with the opportunity to experience the transcendent. Reading can become an act of intimacy when the reader is engrossed in a self-forgetrul way. Reading enables us to see the world as others see it. Readingregular reading-is not easy, it takes prepxation. It can enlarge our sensitivity toward others. Spirituality is about what we do with our life, about what we do with our freedom. Reading can engage our spirituality.     

Suburbs' Growing Problems May Lead to Cities' Salvation

ABSTRACT

It has been said that there must be a breakdown before there can be a breakthrough. If true, America's suburbs might lead the way toward city renewal. Because problems know no boundaries, suburbs are now facing what cities have known for decades. Growth and change eventually cause pain. The author, with insight from a political thinker and worker, suggests that this might bring suburbs and cities together in a joint partnership.     

PERIODICALS,THE BOOK TRADE AND THE ‘BOURGEOIS PUBLIC SPHERE’

Despite recent assertions about the new prospects opened up by the literary periodicals which emerged in the years immediately following the expiry in 1695 of the Licensing of Print Act, it is apparent that, right through to the 1740s, writing for the stage remained the best prospect for a writer hoping to make a living by the pen. We should therefore be cautious before we make sweeping generalizations either about the profits to be made out of periodical publication or the expanding opportunities they presented for professional writers, let alone about the role of the periodical essays of Addison and Steele in the emergence of ‘a bourgeois public sphere’ in which hierarchy was suspended, and which was accessible to all. Despite The Spectator's advocacy of polite rational exchange, historical consideration of the periodical press at this time reveals a high degree of political partisanship.     

A FORGE OF CONSENSUS

The Spanish transition to democracy constituted an exceptional journalistic period which started with the death of the dictator Franco in 1975 and finished in 1978, the year in which a new democratic Constitution, currently in force, was approved by referendum. During those years, the Spanish political system changed radically from a dictatorship to a full democracy similar to the democracies enjoyed by Western European countries. This article proves the hypothesis that the majority of newspapers supported the main guidelines of political reform and the strategy of consensus led firstly by the francoist reformist elite and by the opposition political parties afterwards. The research method is a content analysis focused on the introduction of democratic values in newspaper editorials and applied to twelve newspaper titles which covered the ideological spectrum within the Spanish journalistic scene. This piece of research could be likewise considered as a contribution to the particular histories of the analysed dailies during those critical years.     

《论衡》与东汉初年豪强政治

王充以“疚虚妄”的战斗精神批判汉代儒生们主张的“天人感应”、“谶纬迷信”,并且权衡是非、确立标准。《论衡》集中反映了东汉初年儒生们的学风,对于认识当时的思想帮助很大。王充在《论衡》中将个人遭遇归于“命”,没有触碰到东汉初年豪强政治的实质性问题。     

对绿色政治在生态现代化建设中所起作用的思考

绿色政治和生态现代化都是产生于大规模的环境破坏导致环境危机加剧的背景中。二者虽有所不同,但其共同关注点都是环境与人类的关系。绿色政治内部虽由不同派别构成,但“价值正义”与“关系构建”是其共有的课题。绿色政治对生态现代化的积极帮助作用：绿色政治“价值正义”的理念为生态现代化建设提供了价值牵引;绿色政治实践过程中的“关系构建”为生态现代化建设提供了现实支撑。     

PERFORMATIVITY,CORPOREALITY AND THE POLITICS OF SHIP DISPOSAL

This paper provides a posthumanist performative reading of spaces of disposal as sites of economic activity. Its empirical focus is ship breaking, as practices and political techniques. Drawing on the work of Donald Mackenzie, Karen Barad and Jane Bennett, it frames ship disposal as a boundary-making intervention in the world and as part of the demolition assemblage. The paper challenges the oppositional politics that characterise international debate about ship disposal. Through an articulation of the academic register and literary narrative, the paper develops a material politics of ship disposal which draws connections, rather than making distinctions, between labouring bodies in different parts of the world. It reconfigures ship disposal through a material politics that centres the proximate intimacy of human bodies, demolition technologies and vital inorganic materials, highlighting the importance of shared corporeal vulnerabilities, a biopolitics of occupational health and a material politics of globalisation where the long distance associations are temporal, of a ‘now’ and future-past ‘then’.     

Mixed Doubles: Political Hegemony,Urban Entrepreneurialism and the Australian Open Tennis Championships

The National Tennis Centre in Melbourne, Australia, occupies a symbolic role in the repositioning of a once ‘rust-belt’ city as a place for ‘footloose’ capital and tourism. This paper explores the decisions that have been made by successive Victorian state governments between 1984 and 1998 to construct and upgrade the National Tennis Centre. Thematic content analysis of three daily newspapers, and one monthly tennis magazine, was undertaken to map political decisions and accompanying public discussion surrounding the foundation and upgrades of the National Tennis Centre. Successive state governments, representing both the left and right side of politics, have adopted an urban entrepreneurial approach to development and economic regeneration of Melbourne since the early 1980s. Targeting sport as a competitive advantage, significant public investments have been made to ‘sell’ this product to consumers identified as citizens and tourists. Worthy of note, and of particular concern, is the limited consultation with important interest groups, particularly environmentalists and the citizenry, when creating an elite sporting entertainment centre.     

Monarchy,Socialism and Modern Capitalism: Hungary's Participation in Three London Olympic Games

Olympic sport is a double-edged sword. It has the potential to bring nations together and to transmit values, but it can also demonstrate international political tensions and conflicting national structural characteristics. As part of the International Olympic Movement from the very beginning, Hungary is one of the few nations to have taken part in the (Summer) Olympic Games in London for the third time. The Olympic presence of Hungary has been almost continuous in spite of the significant transformations of its state ideology, sport structures and political background. In 1908, within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Hungarian Kingdom endeavoured to demonstrate its autonomy and courage with its memorable Olympic successes in London. A People's Republic was being formed in Hungary at the time of the second London Olympic Games in 1948. The socialist ideology and the self-display of socialist–communist ambitions characterised the preparation and the participation of the Hungarian athletes. Hungary is celebrating the year of its third London Games with a democratic system in the background, built up from 1989, and a new Constitution adopted in 2011. Furthermore, the Hungarian Sport Act was renewed in 2012, due to which the Hungarian Olympic Committee has gained increased power, which might provide new ways of solving the financial problems within Hungarian elite sport.     

The International Anti-Doping Movement and UNESCO: A Historical Case Study

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) played a major role in the development of contemporary anti-doping policy. Throughout its existence, and especially since the 1970s, UNESCO has viewed sport as an educational tool. Though it acknowledged the unique problems that drug use in sport presented, UNESCO was reticent to take a leading role in creating and enacting global policy regarding the issue. However, UNESCO eventually came to endorse the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2005 when its member nations adopted the International Convention against Doping in Sport. UNESCO's shift in attitude is explained through the application of institutional isomorphism, an organisational theory that explains the tendency of organisations in a given area or industry to become more similar over time.