bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nutrient Foraging in Plants
Authors: Hodge Angela
Published: June 2013

Soils are physically the most complex of all environments, comprising solid, liquid, and gas phases, and vary considerably in their ability to supply nutrients. Plant roots acquire nutrients from the solution (liquid) phase but the equilibrium among these different phases controls the nutrients available, which also depends on the nutrient in question. Consequently, nutrients in soil are distributed in a non-uniform or heterogeneous manner. This heterogeneity occurs at a range of scales including those relevant to plant roots. Roots therefore have to respond to this heterogeneity or “patchiness” in resource supply in order to acquire nutrients essential for growth and normal metabolic function. This is aided by the modular structure of the root system, which enables flexibility in the spatial configuration of the root system (i.e., root system architecture) and plasticity in physiological and morphological responses. Most early studies focused on measuring the type and size of the observed response to nutrient heterogeneity with little consideration as to what this meant in terms of actual nutrient acquisition. Consequently, there is a vast literature on the various root responses by different plant species conducted under a wide range of environmental conditions but from which comparisons are difficult to make and the importance of the response obscure. More recently, investigative studies have moved toward more emphasis being placed upon the functional importance of the root response in terms of nutrient acquisition and, importantly, the environmental context in which that response is produced. This is an important shift in emphasis, as responses observed under ideal and often controlled conditions may not necessarily relate to those that actually occur in the natural environment. The majority of plant species also have additional means to forage their environment for resources including the formation of mycorrhizal symbiotic associations, while a smaller number of plant species can form symbiotic associations with nitrogen-fixing prokaryotes. Roots can also release substances into the soil that have a specific role to play in nutrient acquisition. Although plants can also forage for resources aboveground, resulting in plasticity in aboveground structures, the majority of plants acquire their nutrients from the soil environment: hence, this is the main focus of the text and resulting bibliography.
Agroecology
Authors: Cleveland David A.
Published: June 2013

In this article, “agroecology” is defined as a comprehensive perspective of agrifood systems including the relationships between the biophysical and sociocultural components and between agrifood systems and the larger biophysical and sociocultural context in which they are embedded. As such, agroecology includes the internal ecology of agroecosystems, their social and cultural components including nutrition and food sovereignty, crop genotype-by-environment interactions including those of transgenic crop varieties, and the positive (ecosystem services) and negative (ecosystems degradation) effects of agroecosystems on the larger environment, especially climate. This is a broad view of agroecology that does not limit the term to the traditional discipline of ecology applied to agricultural production systems. Although “agroecology” is often used to refer to a comprehensive scientific study of agrifood systems in general, it is also commonly used to refer to a perspective and related practice defined as an alternative to the mainstream industrial agriculture in terms of its underlying values and empirical assumptions—that is, as part of the sustainability revolution. Mainstream agriculture focuses on production efficiency in physical and economic terms—that is, output as quantity of harvested crop per unit of input such as land, labor, or nutrients or, in monetary terms, as revenue per unit of investment—and externalizes many negative effects. Agroecology defines efficiency much more broadly. Outputs include not only edible harvest, but also positive contributions to agroecosystem function such as soil structure, nutritional quality, and economic equity. Inputs include factors not part of production costs, such as sunlight, soil, and microbiota. In addition, agroecology attempts to internalize many factors commonly externalized by mainstream agriculture, including costs such as greenhouse gas emissions, water pollutants, malnutrition, and benefits such as biodiversity and other ecosystem services, as well as social benefits such as nutritional status and farmer and farmworker welfare. Thanks to Daniela Soleri, the editors, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this article.
Rabbinic Literature
Authors: Furstenberg Yair
Published: June 2013

The literary activity of the rabbis of antiquity, the formers of what has come to be known as “Rabbinic Judaism,” spans from the destruction of the Second Temple (70 ce) to the Moslem conquest. Law and ritual, alongside Bible exegesis, homilies, and stories, are all woven together in a set of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, generally representing the teachings of a closely knit group of rabbinic figures of Palestine and Babylonia. This rabbinic literature, also known as Talmudic literature, served as an authoritative foundation for all aspects of Jewish life and self- identity in the following generations. Because of the lack of external historical witnesses to rabbinic activity throughout the period, the culture, religion, and history of this influential group can be described on the basis of these anonymous and collective works only. Consequently, the story of this movement (if the rabbis are justifiably to be collectively labeled thus) is first and foremost a story of textual evolution: the amalgamation of oral traditions, the crystallization of separate texts, and their mutual relationship and transmission. In speaking of rabbinic Judaism, one refers first and foremost to study practices, transmission, and exegesis among these scholarly circles. At the same time, by disassembling this collective literature to its individual components, scholars have managed to reveal major legal and religious developments that reflect rabbinic responses to the rabbis’ changing social, political, and cultural environment. Different contexts echoed throughout different branches of rabbinic literature: Second Temple Judaism in the earliest layers; Roman authority in 2nd-century Tannaitic literature; the challenge of Christianity in the 3rd and 4th centuries; and the infiltration of Persian culture into Babylonian academies. Following the inevitable move outward from text to context, this article starts with a survey of rabbinic literary corpora. Next, it presents reading strategies for uncovering the original background and functions of these texts, and characterizes the rabbinic study culture that shaped them. Finally, one emerges from textual insularity to evaluate the status of the rabbis within Jewish society of antiquity, and their position in relation to the broader cultural environment.
Belgian Colonial Rule
Authors: Stanard Matthew G.
Published: June 2013

Central Africa’s long history witnessed growing connections to the wider world as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and then increasing activity by East African Swahili traders and Europeans in the 1800s. Strictly speaking, the official period of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo began in 1908 and lasted until 1960, when the Congo achieved its independence. But Belgian involvement began earlier. In 1885, the United States and European states—including Belgium—recognized King Leopold II of Belgium as the sovereign of a huge state roughly contiguous with the Congo River basin called the État Indépendant du Congo, or the EIC. (Leopold II’s colony is generally called the Congo Free State in English. One sees the French term État Libre du Congo and the Dutch terms Onafhankelijke Staat Congo and Onafhankelijke Kongostaat much less frequently.) Although Leopold’s rule (1885–1908) was in many ways an international endeavor, it became increasingly Belgian over time, as the white colonial population became majority Belgian. African populations in many areas of the EIC suffered atrocities at the hands of European and African colonial agents because of Leopold II’s approach of extracting natural resources by force. Missionary and other documentation of this suffering prompted a humanitarian campaign, foreign criticism, and finally Belgian reproaches. In an unfolding of events that was anything but inevitable, Leopold ceded his colony to Belgium in 1908, after which Belgium ruled it as a colony known as the Congo Belge (Belgian Congo) until 1960. As with all colonies in Africa (with the exception of quasi-independent Liberia, under heavy US influence), the Belgian Congo was a European creation, and its borders and indeed very existence did not reflect African interests nor native ethnic, linguistic, economic, or other groups. Belgians never completely ruled all of their huge colony, but over time they intensified their administration, enacted reforms, and introduced European medical practices, Christianity, the French language, and much else. After World War I, Belgians gained Ruanda-Urundi, which Belgium governed not as the League of Nations mandate that it was but rather like another colony. In 1960, Congolese realized their independence, creating the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was renamed Zaire during the period 1971–1997. (It is today increasingly common to drop the definite article “the” before “Congo,” as in “Democratic Republic of Congo.” This article generally retains the definite article, reflecting historical nomenclature.) The dividing of what follows into the Congo Free State period, the Belgian Congo period, and the postcolonial period is somewhat arbitrary: even though 1908 and 1960 were milestones, the situation changed primarily in a juridical fashion in those years, and in important ways there was more continuity than change.
Botswana (Bechuanaland)
Authors: Holm John D.
Published: June 2013

Botswana became independent in 1966. Previously, it was a protectorate of the United Kingdom, which ruled the territory from the South African town of Mafeking (now Mafikeng). Called Bechuanaland, the protectorate was established in 1885. It brought together eight Tswana ethnic groups of varying size, some other smaller Bantu groups such as the Bayei, the Hambukushu, and the Bahero, and a collection of hunter-gatherer communities, often collectively called the San, Basarwa, or Bushmen. This mix of ethnicities has coexisted in varying degrees of conflict and cooperation on the Kalahari Desert and adjoining low-rainfall savannah regions for between five hundred and around thousand years. Botswana is of particular interest to scholars for a number of reasons. It has shown remarkable progress relative to most African countries in terms of democracy, economic development, and education. Additionally, the government and people have addressed extensively, if not always successfully, a number of important development issues including corruption, conservation, social justice, HIV/AIDS, and rights of indigenous peoples. The literature examining these myriad of state-initiated social programs has been of relatively high quality and extensive, especially for a country of slightly more than 2.2 million people. Overall writing on Botswana can be divided into two parts. One is the colonial and immediate postcolonial period (1950s through mid-1980s) when European and American authors produced most of the important writing. Starting in the late 1980s, a growing number of Botswana intellectuals began to complete their graduate education and begin scholarly careers. They inevitably developed different perspectives from those of their outsider predecessors. A significant number of these new voices are on the faculty of the University of Botswana where they have considerable financial support relative to most African universities to the north. A number of the local scholars have engaged in serious and long-term research projects. The university has also offered a modicum of political protection so that staff members can put forward arguments at odds with the government’s vision and policies. The result is an expanded range of points of view on development issues, international and local, than is found in many African countries.
Informal Economy
Authors: Andoh Nana-Yaw , Murray Martin J.
Published: June 2013

Generally speaking, the term “informality” refers to practices that take place outside official regulation and formal state sanction. Urban informality—especially in the spheres of housing and work—has long served as a touchstone in debates in urban studies and has long been a focal point in scholarly research about livelihoods and income generation, poverty, social exclusion and marginalization, land rights, and self-provisioned shelter. Despite its indispensability for understanding how those without formal employment “get by” in urban settings, how urban dwellers “house themselves,” and how governance systems evolve outside of state regulation, informality remains a notoriously slippery term that defies simple classification. Until recently, conventional scholarly research and writing primarily structured debates on formality and informality along the dichotomous divisions between regular/irregular, regulated/unregulated, visible/invisible, or legal/illegal distinctions, where state regulation and the law defined what was formal, and everything outside of this terrain constituted “informality.” Yet in the early twenty-first century, a growing number of scholars have challenged this conventional conception of informality and formality as opposing or even mutually exclusive domains of social practice. These scholars have suggested that formality and informality should be understood as markers along a continuum rather than polar opposite end-points.
Cultural Landscape
Authors: Keough Sara Beth
Published: June 2013

The cultural landscape, the imprint of people and groups on the land, has long been of interest to geographers. The practice of “reading” and interpreting the landscape can prove difficult because most people are not used to taking a critical look at what they see. Geographers such as Carl Sauer and Peirce Lewis believe that most of our marks on the land could be considered unconscious or subliminal. More recently, however, landscape scholars such as Don Mitchell have proposed that human action on the land is quite purposeful and controlling in an effort to convey particular messages. The initial 20th-century Sauerian approach to landscape studies focused mostly on description of rural areas and was centered around cultural products (artifacts), rather than the processes that created those products. The social movements of 1960s and 1970s, however, brought about a change in the way geographers studied the landscape because of the highly urbanized nature of society. Scholars realized that urban areas now held as many or more clues to modernizing culture as did rural ones. It was also during this time that representational cultural geography emerged in an era where sign, symbol, and meaning in the landscape and the processes of cultural landscape creation became important considerations. Furthermore, the study of cultural landscapes was deemed an interdisciplinary pursuit. The post-1960s era was also the beginning of the cultural turn away from positivist empiricism. Beginning in the mid- to late 1990s, cultural geography experienced another shift, this time toward nonrepresentational approaches to studying people and place. This shift emphasized the importance of practices and experiences rather than things and called for a consideration of social reproduction and context in the process of landscape analysis. Scholars who criticized the nonrepresentational approach for assuming experiences could be isolated from images proposed the rerepresentational approach, where things, theories, and experiences are all considered equally. These shifts, however, were anything but seamless. Each shift came with arguments contesting new ideas and rethinking old ones. Today, scholars of the cultural landscape consider both the theories of landscape creation, the physical objects in the landscape, and how issues of power, inequality, and social justice play out in the landscape. Furthermore, it is assumed that one cannot study the cultural landscape without considering how humans have shaped the land and the neo-environmentalist approach that considers how the environment impacts people.
Geographical Intelligence
Authors: Crampton Jeremy W.
Published: June 2013

Geographical intelligence is the product arising from the collection, processing, analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of geographical information, concepts, and theories about foreign or domestic entities or geographical areas. Its historical origins are probably as old as the first dispute or conflict, and it refers to intelligence with geographical content (e.g., area or country reports) and to the use of geographical technologies such as mapping, remote sensing, geographic information systems, and geosurveillance. Contemporary geospatial intelligence is known in the United States as GEOINT, defined in Title 10 USC §467 as “exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the earth.” GEOINT is more specific and technology-oriented than geographical intelligence. Geographical intelligence in the United States is a critical component of the intelligence community (IC), most notably the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. It is used for threat detection and assessment, informing national security policy, support for military and covert actions, and occasionally for humanitarian relief. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, the United States developed superior technical capabilities to acquire imagery intelligence (IMINT) from airborne and satellite platforms such as the covert “Keyhole” spy satellite system and unmanned aerial vehicles (or “drones”). In recent years, this effort, which captures the physical terrain, is increasingly supplemented by intelligence about the “human terrain” (e.g., social values, kinship networks, or ethnicity). This has meant an increased role for human geography concepts and information. It has attracted concern, however, that it is reductive (e.g., to enemies and “good guys”) and that it involves non-IC members such as academics and contractors. Geographical intelligence is often but not always classified. Proponents of open government advocate less classification. Classified IMINT and GEOINT are occasionally leaked or can be known in general terms. Furthermore, the capacity for nongovernment actors to acquire GEOINT is blurring the line between official and unofficial geographical intelligence. Commercial entities such as DigitalGlobe supply the IC with imagery through a program called EnhancedView. Off-the-shelf drones and “balloon-mapping” now allow cheap do-it-yourself remote sensing and mapping. Mobile technologies and devices increasingly require quality digital mapping products and services. These developments, along with funding challenges after ten years of budget increases following 9/11, may significantly alter the geographical intelligence landscape. Although geographic intelligence is worldwide in scope, due to limitations in material and other reasons, this article focuses on the United States.
Natural Hazards and Risk
Authors: Tiefenbacher John P.
Published: June 2013

Natural hazards are processes that occur in nature that threaten the safety, health, and economic interests of human beings. People have often regarded the natural processes as the causes of their losses or the sources of imminent threat. The most dramatic of these events are either geomorphologic processes (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and others) or meteorological processes (hurricanes, tornados, river floods, and others), and these attract widespread attention, but occasionally some derive from complex processes (wildfires, coastal inundation, and other climate change exacerbated processes) or are merely more subtle because they develop slowly or incur slowly appearing changes (such as in droughts, freeze events, infestations [by animals or plants], or disease outbreaks). The likelihood that a particular type of event will occur in a specific location is called risk, and this probability will influence the potential for human exposure in occupied landscapes. The populating of “risky” landscapes creates the hazard, which exists only when human interests are threatened. In this way, “hazard” reflects a measurement of the potential for loss. If humans and their valuables are not present (i.e., potentially exposed to a hazardous event), there is no hazard (statistically speaking). Geographers’ interest in hazard, beyond understanding geophysical processes, stems from the recognition of the importance of human processes (economic, political, sociological, psychological, and others) in the creation and response to hazardous circumstances. The adoption of the “human ecology” perspective (originating in the discipline of sociology) in the 1920s by Harlan Barrows and others established a tradition of analysis of the interaction of physical and human processes. Gilbert White’s scholarship, beginning in the 1940s, opened the policy realm to rational management of human processes and our relationships to the geographies of natural processes. Since then, the geographic perspective of hazards has diversified in a number of ways. Not only has the literature expanded in terms of the sources of hazard but also in terms of critical evaluation of the deeper causes behind the decisions that increase hazard. The past forty years of scholarship have employed increasingly sophisticated social, political, economic, and philosophical models to understand why people are driven to live in places and in ways that increase the likelihood that they will be impacted by detrimental conditions. In geography, in particular, geographic information science and geospatial technologies have enhanced efforts to understand and reduce hazard.
Geography and Ethics
Authors: Hay Iain , Dickens Luke
Published: June 2013

Ethics traditionally involves systematic intellectual deliberations on morality. Increasingly since the early 1980s geography has embraced the conceptual and practical relationships between ethics and the discipline. Geographers have, for example, taken up careful examination of the moral significance of concepts such as place, location, proximity, and distance and engaged in foundational debates regarding the pursuit of social and spatial justice. Conceptual work has also included examination of the moral relations between self/other that a long tradition of cosmopolitan ethical thought necessarily calls into question; and between human and natural worlds looking, for example, at environmental caretaking for future generations. Among the more applied ethical issues taken up in the discipline are the ethics of mapping the social and physical world and, more recently, grappling with the ever more complex ethical implications of working with and on new spatial and digital technologies. This article reviews major resources for much of this conceptual and practical work in geography and builds generally on the work of scholars in the field as well as more directly upon the helpful and thoughtful comments of Clive Barnett (University of Exeter), Mark Israel (Murdoch University), and Jeff Popke (East Carolina University) as well as two anonymous referees.
The Needham Question
Authors: Sivin Nathan
Published: June 2013

The “Needham Question” or “Needham Problem,” also misleadingly called “the Needham Paradox,” refers to the guiding question behind Joseph Needham’s (b. 1900–d. 1995) massive Science and Civilisation in China, as well as his many other publications. As he phrased it, “the essential problem [is] why modern science had not developed in Chinese civilization (or Indian) but only in Europe.” He went on to consider another quite different question, equally important, and centered his historical research on it: “why, between the first century bc and the fifteenth century ad, Chinese civilization was much more efficient than occidental in applying human natural knowledge to practical human needs” (p. 190 of The Grand Titration [Needham 1969], cited under Basic Works by Needham). To seek answers, he compiled what Europeans had learned over three hundred years about science, medicine, and technology in China. Substantial original investigations by Needham and his several collaborators, of whom the best known were Lu Gwei-djen (Guizhen), Wang Ling, and Ho Peng Yoke (Bingyu), expanded and added depth to the picture, and Needham’s interpretations of the results gave it coherence.
One Country, Two Systems
Authors: Cheng Joseph
Published: June 2013

Deng Xiaoping (b. 1903–d. 1997) secured power and launched a policy program of economic reforms and an opening to the external world at the end of 1978. He also initiated a peace offensive toward Taiwan, and had to face a new challenge in China’s Hong Kong policy. In January 1979, the Chinese authorities announced a nine-point proposal for solving the Taiwan issue and guaranteed that after reunification, the existing economic and social systems, as well as the way of life, would remain unchanged. Subsequently, the new Constitution of the People’s Republic of China promulgated in December 1982 contains a new provision; Article 31 states, “The state may establish special administrative regions (SAR) when necessary” (available online). In March 1979, Sir Murray MacLehose (b. 1917–d. 2000), then Governor of Hong Kong, visited Beijing. He met Deng Xiaoping and formally raised “the New Territories lease” question. Chinese leaders gradually began to understand that the Hong Kong future issue could no longer be delayed. The view of recovery gained a distinct edge; Liao Chengzhi (b. 1908–d. 1983), head of the newly established Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council, was given the responsibility of planning for the recovery of the territory. In April 1981, he proposed the “one country, two systems” model policy, which demonstrated the Chinese leadership’s liberation in thinking at that time. The leadership was eager to show the world that China could govern Hong Kong better than the British colonial administration; it wanted the Hong Kong model to have a significant demonstration effect on Taiwan. The policy played a key role in maintaining the confidence of Hong Kong people, and facilitated Chinese leaders’ success in the Sino-British negotiations on the territory’s future. In the decade and a half since Hong Kong’s return to China, the “one country, two systems” model has been working quite well. Stability and prosperity have been maintained; the rule of law and the freedoms enjoyed by the people have been largely intact. Hong Kong’s relative international economic competitiveness has been in slow decline, and the economy has become increasingly dependent on that of Mainland China.
The Chinese Communist Party to 1949
Authors: Saich Tony , Hearst Nancy
Published: June 2013

There is a vast array of materials available to assist in the study of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before 1949. In China this is aided by the presence of a large number of officially employed researchers at party research centers and related archives. To earn their keep, these researchers have to put out publications. Availability of materials was boosted by the start of reforms in 1978 and preparations for the 1981 official party history. Given that, especially in the early years of reform, when expression of personal opinions could be dangerous, many of the released publications were documentary collections or chronologies. These came in several different varieties, based on either historical periods, particular events, or the lives of key individuals. These materials were complemented by memoirs of key figures who wanted to ensure that their version of history was in the public eye. This makes selection very difficult. Some of the works that follow are a must for students and scholars; others are personal favorites of the compilers and should be treated as exemplary of the types and varieties of sources that are available for the study of the CCP before 1949. More recently, materials from China have allowed researchers to conduct more detailed research on the social and economic transformations wrought by CCP presence and the difficulties the party had in maintaining local support. This has meant that, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we have seen fewer monographs that attempt to paint the broader picture of the sweep of the CCP revolution. Instead, there are many fine-grained analyses of particular events or CCP activities in specific locales that reveal the extremely complex and multifaceted nature of the Chinese revolution.
Medieval Economic Revolution
Authors: Deng Kent G.
Published: June 2013

In China’s historical context, the term “medieval” was unmistakably borrowed from European history in as late as the twentieth century. It has, however, remained questionable whether this Eurocentric unilinear logic really ever conveniently suited China. Even so, a serious historian may still make do with the term to capture what was going on in China from the Sui until the early Ming, from 581 to c. 1500 across a span close to a millennium, or anything in between. The beginning was marked by the construction of the Grand Canal, over one thousand miles long, during the Sui (581–618), which linked for the first time China’s three major river systems, and hence the three most productive regions, together: the Yellow, Huai, and Yangzi valleys. During the early Ming, China maintained an undisputed first-class sea power in the world. It was a period when private education, secular literature, meritocratic bureaucracy, novel technology and new production, degrees and commercialization, urbanization, and so forth reached an unprecedented height on the East Asian mainland. During this long period, the importance of Tang-Song growth and development loomed large. So much so, the Song period was coined in the 1980s by the world economic historian Eric L. Jones, in his book The European Miracle, as the first recorded intensive growth in Eurasian history. However, the term “revolution” was first used by Shiba Yoshinobu (斯波義信), the Japanese historian of China, to describe commercial growth under the Song, in his 1970 monograph Commerce and Society in SungChina. In reality, what happed was not just economic. It was a wide range of new achievements in institutions, science and technology, production, and market exchanges. Most unfortunately, however, Song growth and development, remarkable as it was, was brutally interrupted by the invading Mongols in the thirteenth century, who ran sociopolitical and economic systems that were distinctively different from those of the Song. The Mongol rule of China was very short, but the damage was done. Although during the following Ming period (1368–1644) some residual effects of the Song revolution were still detectable, it was marked by a quite different growth trajectory along the line of physiocracy. China’s medieval economic revolution never repeated itself. Such turns and twists in China’s fortunes through history underlie the Great Divergence debate.
Yuan Dynasty
Authors: Robinson David
Published: June 2013

The Yuan dynasty sits awkwardly in Eurasian history. The dynastic name, Yuan, is Chinese, as is the practice of naming dynastic houses not by the leading family’s surname but by the place where the regime began or, as was the case with the Yuan, a term that carried auspicious meaning. In the case of East Asia, dynasty also calls to mind a package of political institutions and conventions (including a dominant role for the emperor; a highly articulated bureaucracy; written law codes regulating political, commercial, and family life; a court with extensive and minutely described rituals; a capital with a grand palace) and a well-developed political philosophy that explained the place of the Son of Heaven in the cosmos, and the interaction among the realms of man, nature, social life, and much more. Thus, one approach to the Yuan period has been to view it in the longer span of Chinese history. Yet, the rulers of the Yuan dynasty were Mongol conquerors whose family, the Chinggisids (descendants of Chinggis khan), subjugated much of Eurasia. Although Mongols had conquered much of northern China in the mid-13th century, the Yuan dynasty was not established until 1271. It is generally used to describe China under Mongol rule, but equating the Yuan dynasty with China is both factually inaccurate and highly misleading because Mongolian (or, more broadly, steppe) traditions of rulership and governance differed importantly from those of earlier and later Chinese dynasties. Much recent Japanese scholarship thus uses the term “Great Yuan ulus” (Mongolian for nation) rather than dynasty to highlight such differences.
Calligraphy
Authors: McNair Amy
Published: June 2013

Calligraphy is the art of writing characters with a brush and ink. Yet, the word “calligraphy,” from the Greek kalligraphía (beautiful writing), is something of a mistranslation of the Chinese term shufa (書法), which means “model writing,” or writing that is good enough to serve as a model. Calligraphy has no referent in nature, so all writing is modeled on that of another. Traditional calligraphers were less interested in mere beauty than in the ability of the gesture and the line to create images of aesthetic power and movement and in the paramount issue of upon whose writing they were modeling theirs. The precise moment Chinese characters were born is unknown, but a fully developed system was in use by c. 1200 bce, as seen on scripts on the incised oracle bones (jiaguwen甲骨文) and inscriptions cast into ritual bronze vessels (guwen古文) of the Shang dynasty. Over the next millennium, five major script types evolved. The archaic scripts gave way to the “large” seal script (zhuan篆) of the Zhou dynasty and the “small” seal script of the Qin. In Qin the clerical script (li隸) came into being and flourished during the succeeding Han, whereas by the end of the 2nd century the modern script types of regular (kai楷 or zhen真), running (xing行), and cursive (cao草) all had developed. Seal and clerical were relegated to decorative and monumental functions until they were revived as antiquarian modes in later times. Although mythic names are associated with the creation of each script type, there were no signed works of calligraphy until the Han dynasty. Since that time, when it began to be seen as expressive of its writer’s personality and character, calligraphy has been accorded the supreme position among the arts. Calligraphers could practice their art purely for their own pleasure or self-expression, or their work could be done for payment or in exchange for goods and services. Calligraphy had a rich tradition until the 20th century, and after China’s turmoil ended in the late 1970s, the amateur scene burgeoned again. In the late 20th century, Chinese calligraphy made a place for itself in the international art world, particularly through the incorporation of nonsense characters in multimedia installations. Critical texts that assessed famous calligraphers appeared in the 4th century, and histories of calligraphy have been written continually from the 5th century to the early 21st century. Japanese scholars have produced excellent research in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and researchers in the West have been writing on calligraphy history since the 1970s.
New Social Classes, 1895–1949
Authors: Howard Joshua H.
Published: June 2013

The ability of foreign enterprises to establish factories in China after the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 accelerated industrialization and as a consequence proletarianization, by which numerous workers without resources entered a class relationship by selling their labor power to survive. It was, however, during the economic boom years of World War I and its aftermath and during the New Culture Movement with the introduction of socialism that new urban social forces—the bourgeoisie and working class—emerged and radical intellectuals applied the concept of social class to their analysis of society and revolution. The increasingly politicized and often-militant quality of the labor movement between 1919 and 1927 led Jean Chesneaux (Chesneaux 1968, cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) to argue, in Marxist terms, that a class-conscious proletariat under the ideological guidance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had arisen in reaction to the forces of imperialist oppression and exploitation. Although most social historians of the republican era concur that social classes in their objective form had emerged by the 1920s, they disagree on whether workers constituted a subjective “class for itself.” Scholars influenced by the new labor history school, with its emphasis on community and culture, find the complexity of the social composition and social dynamics of the working class to have obstructed the process of class formation. Despite positing workers’ own historical agency, these scholars underscore how segmented labor markets, workers’ particularistic ties and strong sense of regional identity, and gender divisions impeded class consciousness. Consequently, questions over workers’ politics and the nature of the labor movement have become controversial. Elizabeth J. Perry (Perry 1993, cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) interprets labor divisions based on skill, provenance, and gender as encouraging rather than debilitating labor activism. Other studies emphasize how anti-imperialism fueled the 1920s labor movement, with class taking a subservient role to nationalism. In a related issue, the relationship between workers and the CCP has sparked debate. Whereas Chesneaux emphasized that a class-conscious proletariat served as the social basis for the Communist revolution, others have challenged the CCP’s ideological supremacy and leadership over the labor movement and have focused on contradictions between Communists (largely drawn from the intelligentsia) and workers. Although these studies focus on Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Canton from 1919 to 1927, scholarship on Chongqing’s class formation during the 1940s analyzes both objective and subjective features of social class and contributes to an ongoing debate about the origins of the post-1949 work unit (danwei单位) system.
Consumer Society
Authors: Wu Yanrui
Published: June 2013

Since the economic reforms beginning in 1978 and the “open door” policy that followed, consumer society in China has attracted the attention of academia. Before that, under Maoist socialism, consumerism was ideologically regarded as bourgeois and was generally suppressed. Individuals’ preferences gave way to the state providing subsistence living standards (food rationing, free housing, and so on). Since 1978, under the slogan of “getting rich is glorious,” tens of millions of Chinese households have become affluent. Chinese consumers now wish to satisfy their individual wants and have the means to do so. In addition, with expanded international trade, communications, and tourism, Chinese consumers are well informed and have access not only to local products but also to well-known international brands. As a result, household consumption is booming and consumerism has become fashionable. Within a short period of time a consumer society emerged in the world’s most populous nation, in what is generally regarded as a consumer revolution in China. With the Chinese economy now the second largest in the world, and anticipated to overtake the United States in the near future, China’s consumer society is reshaping the country and has a global influence.
The Marketing System in Pre-Modern China
Authors: Shiue Carol H.
Published: June 2013

The idea that people can improve their welfare by trading can be found in the late Ming work of the high-ranking official Qiu Jun (1420–1495) in an oft-cited text called Daxue yanyi bu (Supplement to the Exposition on the Great Learning), which was presented to the emperor in 1487. Qiu Jun starts by explaining that a market is “a central place where people whose conditions of livelihood allow them to produce more of one thing and less of another met to exchange their surplus with those whose different conditions of livelihood provided them with different surpluses and lacks.” Modern economics textbooks have a very similar description of markets. A “market” denotes a time and place where people have agreed to meet to buy or sell goods or services through money or barter. Markets are important for increasing the immediate welfare of the buyer and seller. Descriptive histories of markets in China also provide us with a sense of whether trade is voluntary or controlled, and who is controlling the market; both are important for understanding changes in market efficiency over time. This bibliography surveys studies on the market in China, spanning the period from the Tang dynasty to the Republican period, focusing on commodity markets rather than factor markets (e.g., labor markets or land markets). Over the past several decades, researchers have accumulated increasing evidence of the nature and the function of markets in China, their scope, and the efficiency of marketplace transactions in comparison to other advanced areas of the world as of the mid-18th century. One of the key implications that has emerged from this research is that despite the presence of an autocratic state, markets were functioning relatively well in China in the premodern period. More recently researchers are starting also to come to a better understanding of China’s role in the world economy in history, and, more controversially, the impact of Western imperialism on China’s integration with global markets from the 19th century to today.
Population Dynamics in Pre-Modern China
Authors: Zhao Zhongwei
Published: June 2013

China constituted one of the earliest civilizations in the world. During most of the past two millennia, China was also one of the most advanced economies and the home of around a quarter of the world’s population. By the start of the first millennium, the Chinese population was already about sixty million. In the next two thousand years, China’s population growth and economic development significantly influenced the world’s population changes and history. Partly for these reasons, in the study of population and social history, China’s historical population growth, demographic regimes, marriage patterns, and household formation systems are frequently used as examples in the discussion of population changes, microsocial structure, and their relationships with natural resources and economic development in past times. Population changes were one of the key components of Chinese history. The size and density of the population, the rise and fall of fertility and mortality, and the increase and decrease of population movements were not only related to demographic factors such as age structure. They were also strongly affected by political and economic conditions, social institutions and cultural traditions, and natural and social environments. Therefore, studies of demographic history, those conducted recently in particular, often shed new light on economic, political, social, and environmental changes in the past. This bibliography, through reviewing major works published in Chinese and English, provides an introduction to China’s main historical population data sources, major research questions, and debates in the study of Chinese population history. It also introduces recent advances in Chinese historical demography and important research findings made by these developments.
Ming Dynasty
Authors: Robinson David
Published: June 2013

Relative to other time periods in Chinese history, modern scholarly research came late to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), which was often held in ill odor. The charges against the Ming were legion: its rulers were vicious autocrats; it wasted its technological lead over the rest of the globe; it myopically turned inward just when western Europe began its Age of Discovery; the state and a complacent literati elite allowed the “sprouts of capitalism” to wither before they could bloom; and, finally, Ming’s incompetence led to a foreign occupation that lasted into the 20th century. Focusing on the humanist tradition, much post–World War II Western scholarship, in contrast, saw much that merited exploration—the place of the individual in society, the growth of vernacular literature and theater, and fascinating developments in art, thought, and belief. Although Chinese and Japanese scholars shared such interests, they devoted greater attention to socioeconomic developments such as a growing commercial economy, increasingly commoditized economic relations, urbanization, and regional and even national market integration. For those interested in long-term socioeconomic and intellectual trends, whether socioeconomic or intellectual questions, dynastic divisions seemed artificial and superficial. Thus many cast the Ming as one half, often the humbler half, of the Ming-Qing period, stretching from the 14th to 19th centuries. More recently, some scholars have instead argued that the early 12th to early 15th centuries constituted a distinct historical epoch, the “Song-Yuan-Ming transition.” Yet others see the Ming, like Muscovite Rus, the Timurids, and the Ottomans, as one among many successor states to the Mongol Empire, highlighting synchronic ties across Eurasia over diachronic continuity with previous dynasties. Such contending conceptualizations result both from divergent research foci and from the lack of consensus about the wider significance of the Ming period in Chinese and global history.