‘Bloodhounds as Detectives’

ABSTRACT

This article explores the nineteenth-century origins of the sniffer dog in one of the most notorious homicide investigations in British history, focusing on Scotland Yard's attempts to use the reputed olfactory powers of pure-bred English bloodhounds in the hunt for London's East End serial murderer Jack the Ripper in 1888. This episode has been historiographically overlooked in part because the dogs were never actually deployed. However, the failure to unleash dogs on the Ripper's trail turns out to be critically significant, opening up a space through which the historical contingencies and social meanings of dog-breeding and training practices can be explored and scrutinized. As a crime-solving tool, utilized for the purpose of investigating metropolitan crime, canine detection posed distinct problems. Proponents of bloodhound detection had to contend with various cultural, material and practical challenges, in order to guarantee the canines as reliable hunters in an environment that was contaminated by slum odour.     

南非高校合并:成效与经验

自20世纪90年代中期以来的南非高校合并,是摆脱了种族隔离制度的新南非改造其整个高等教育体系最重要的手段,在很大程度上改变了南非高等教育的面貌。南非的高校合并是在政府的主导下进行的,具有很强的计划性。充分调研,反复论证;政府推动,因势利导;就近归并,稳定重点;形式明确,深度融合,是南非高校合并获得成功的基本经验。     

学术乃天下之公器——哈佛燕京图书馆馆长郑炯文访谈

2019年7月22日,南京大学谢欢博士对哈佛燕京图书馆馆长郑炯文先生就北美东亚图书馆发展相关问题进行访谈。东亚图书馆肇始于欧洲,起源于传教士对文史哲印刷文献的专题收集,与汉学发展紧密相关;美国东亚图书馆在第二次世界大战后取得了快速的发展,如今美国已成为西方世界东亚研究的中心。华人图书馆员是北美东亚图书馆从业人员中非常重要的群体,三代华人图书馆员各具专长,为北美东亚图书馆发展做出了贡献。郑炯文先生自担任哈佛燕京图书馆馆长以来,主要致力于以下三方面工作:①整理裘开明、吴文津担任馆长期间收集的文献;②开放馆藏,将哈佛燕京图书馆的资源面向全世界学者开放;③推动中美图书馆员交流合作项目。     

浅析战后东亚经济崛起的主要推动力——基于政府制度安排的视角

战后东亚地区的经济实现了快速崛起,而对于其背后的推动力却有着不同的解释。通过选取制度经济学中关于政府制度安排这一视角综合分析,东亚地区经济增长的主要推动力并非来自物质资本的投入和人力资本的扩张这些表面性因素推动,而是来自深层次的制度性因素的推动。从东亚各国、地区的历史文化背景和社会现实状况综合分析,东亚地区的经济之所以能够实现一种有魅力的增长,其主要原因就是选择了市场经济的二元调节机制这一制度安排,使政府充分发挥了促进经济有效率增长的积极作用。未来东亚地区的经济若要继续保持这一增长趋势,必须要坚持和不断完善这一制度安排。     

Gender,dialogue and discursive psychology: a pilot sexuality intervention with South African High-School learners

Good-quality sexuality education can be effective in reducing sexual health risks, but may also be disconnected from the lived realities of learners’ lives and reinforce gendered stereotypes. In line with the trend towards ‘empowerment’ in and through sexuality education, we implemented a pilot sexuality intervention with Grade 10 participants following a rigorous consultation process. Nine weekly group dialogues were held with 11 participants, with 2 follow-up sessions the next year. Freirian principles of critical consciousness and dialogical pedagogy, infused with discursive psychological understandings, were used to foreground gendered/sexual norms and to provide recognition for participants in a variety of gendered and sexual subject positions. Sessions were recorded, the facilitator kept a diary, and participants were asked to evaluate the intervention. The dialogical format of the group generated curiosity and engagement, and some participants took up a ‘responsible’ sexual subject position in a reflexive manner. A partial normalisation of some ‘hidden’ aspects of sex was enabled, and critical consciousness around some gendered inequities was promoted. We argue, first, that it is not so much sexuality education that young people need, but sexuality dialogues, and second, that a discursive psychology framework provides a nuanced and fruitful dimension to Freirean inspired ‘empowerment’ sexuality interventions.     

韩国祭祀活动考察

韩国的祭祀活动具有多样性特点,从时间上看有的固定日期,有的则不固定日期;从空间上看,有的在城市或重要的遗址中,有的在家庙,有的则在乡村或神灵活生地;从规模上看,有国家主导的王室祭祀,也有民间家庙祭和灵物祭;从祭祀的目的看,王室祭祀重视政治权威,民间家庙祭祀重视血缘秩序,普遍存在的灵物祭祀强调区域性的消灾保平安功能。     

Conceptualizing an East Asian popular culture

Since the 1980s, popular cultural products have criss‐crossed the national borders of East Asian countries, enabling a discursive construction of an ‘East Asian Popular Culture’ as an object of analysis. The present essay is a preliminary attempt to provide some conceptual and analytic shape to this object, delineated by its three constitutive elements of production, distribution and consumption. Each East Asian location participates in different and unequal levels in each of these component processes. Production can either be located entirely in a single geographic location or, alternatively, each of the necessary constituent sub‐processes can be executed from different locations; preference for either arrangement tends to reflect the relative dominance of the production location in exporting its finished products. Consumption and thus consumers are geographically located within cultural spaces in which they are embedded. Meanings and viewing pleasures are generated within the local cultures of specific audience. Conceptually, among the several possible consumption positions, the one in which an audience watches an imported programme is most intriguing. In this viewing position, differences between the cultures of the location of consumption and that of the production location become most apparent. The audience member has to bring his or her own cultural context to bear on the content of the imported product and read it accordingly. In this sense, the cultural product may be said to have crossed a ‘cultural’ boundary, beyond the simple fact of its having been exported/imported into a different location as an economic activity. Such an audience position requires the consumer to transcend his or her grounded nationality to forge abstract identification with the foreign characters on screen, a foreignness that is, in turn, potentially reabsorbed into an idea of (East) ‘Asia’; a potential ‘East Asian identity’, emerging from consumption of popular cultural products, is thus imaginable.     

“Happy Seoul for foreigners”: scenes from multicultural life in South Korea

Abstract

Since the mid-2000s, multiculturalism has become a prominent buzzword in South Korea as the nation, which was founded on the myth of a single bloodline, tries to come to terms with its growing foreign population. This article looks at the figure of the industrial migrant worker who, despite being ignored by the mainstream media, has appeared in a handful of independently produced Korean films, including three—Bandhobi (2009 Bandhobi [???]. 2009. Directed by Shin Dong-il. Seoul: IndieStory Inc. [Google Scholar]), Hello, Stranger (2007 Hello Stranger [?? ?? ???]. 2007. Directed by Kim Dong-hyun. Seoul: IndieStory Inc. Host and Guest [???]. 2005. Directed by Shin Dong-il. Seoul: LJ Film. [Google Scholar]), Where Is Ronny? (2008 Where Is Ronny? [??? ???]. 2008. Directed by Sim Sang-kook. Seoul: JinJin Pictures. [Google Scholar])—that will be discussed here in detail. These films, as I will show, not only provide an alternative perspective on immigrant life in Seoul and other parts of the country, which is more often than not represented through the privileged world of the Western “expat,” but also reveal the underlying tensions and contradictions in Korea's approach to multiculturalism as it tries to regulate diversity through the fiat of legislative policy while ignoring the moral and political choices confronting its citizens as they decide whether or not to befriend the other.     

Skills for inclusive growth in South Africa: Promising tides amidst perilous waters

Skills development is critical to South Africa's development. It has been argued that South Africa's twin post-Apartheid challenges, poverty and unemployment requires a level of skills development not undertaken before (0300 and 0045). The creation of a separate ministry, the department of higher education and training (DHET), which has incorporated institutional entities from former Ministries of Education and Labour has engendered an expectation for the realisation of a co-ordinated and integrated post school education and training system. The establishment of this entity for the first time anticipates a coherent response to the education, training and skills development challenges faced by the country. The initial anticipation that this development will provide the basis for a coherent post-school education, training and skills development system, that is responsive to national development encapsulated by the notion of inclusive growth, have waned somewhat. In an attempt to link education and labour market more deliberately, it attempts to respond to both the education and labour market constituencies for greater synergy. The reality of success of a new institutional structure, within a wider structure embedded in the older pre-merged configuration, has proved more difficult than anticipated. The notion of ‘policy as boundary object’ is considered a critical missing element in the current re-positioning and the changed political circumstances represent a golden moment to do things differently. This paper explores the current structural re-configuration, as it has, and is likely to, impact on the skills development provisioning in the country. In particular, it focuses on the impact of current developments on the delivery of intermediate level skills, and the likely role of the beleaguered public FET Colleges (FETCs) in this regard. Whilst it is accepted that the current development is new and unlikely to have a track record, the current context is critically evaluated in terms of the potentials and challenges identified against the empirical experience of ten years of skills development in the country.     

南社作家陈匪石的词与词学理论

陈匪石是为数不多的南京籍南社作家。他不仅在词的创作上极负盛名，而且精于词学理论。他所撰的《宋词举》，奠定了他在近代古典学研究领域里的学术地位。