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用户名:姜白石 笔名:姜白石 地区: 上海-松江 行业:法学 |
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理性选择范式发展至今,已经深入影响了社会科学研究的所有领域。所谓“经济学帝国主义”的声势,大半也是拜理性选择理论(包括公共选择、社会选择、集体选择等等)的发展所赐。这个blog的意义只是记录下我的学习经验而已。
做一个小小的改版
(作者置顶)
Bin Laden message: 'I'm still here.'
from the January 20, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0120/p01s01-usfp.html Bin Laden message: 'I'm still here.'In new audiotape, the Al Qaeda leader both threatens the US and offers a kind of truce.By Howard LaFranchi and Faye Bowers WASHINGTON - A new audiotape of Osama bin Laden is designed to counter Western intelligence speculation that the Al Qaeda leader has been cornered or killed, terrorism experts say - and to raise jitters that America's most wanted is still planning terrorist attacks. "It proves two things," says Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit. "He's not dead. And despite all the things we say about him being isolated and alone, he can clearly dominate the international media when he wants to." As in the past, the Islamist radical is also believed to be sending a message as much to the Muslim world as to the United States. In a brief audiotape aired Thursday on Arab television station Al Jazeera, the speaker scoffs at claims that US antiterrorism measures are the reason no more attacks have hit the US since Sept. 11, 2001. Instead, the speaker says, further attacks are in preparation and "you will see them in your houses as soon as they are complete, God willing." In a new twist, the speaker refers to rising US public opinion against the war in Iraq and says, "We have no objection to responding to this with a long-term truce." In an April 2004 tape, bin Laden offered Europe a truce - a move some analysts saw at the time as an effort to exploit a divide among Western allies over Iraq and antiterrorist measures. In the same way, bin Laden might be trying to take advantage of what he sees as divisions in the US - although some analysts caution against reading more into the latest tape than a basic desire to reaffirm that the terrorist leader is alive and well. "He's saying that whatever measures we've taken, they have not affected him," says Judith Yaphe, a former CIA Middle East analyst now at the National Defense University in Washington. "He's got to reassure people that he's alive and well." Experts in South Asia, where bin Laden is assumed to remain in hiding, agree. "There has been this long discussion in the media - is Osama bin Laden alive, is he dead, why hasn't he spoken, et cetera? So this is probably a reaction to that," says Ahmed Rashid, author of "The Taliban" and a longtime observer of jihadist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of course, if the voice on the tape does turn out to be confirmed as bin Laden's, it does not necessarily prove that bin Laden is unaffected by US and other counterterrorism measures aimed at him and other Al Qaeda operatives. "It's extremely easy for him to get a message out like this," says Mr. Scheuer, the former US intelligence analyst. "It can be delivered from anywhere in the world" but still appear as though he is doing just fine. On a tape, he adds, "a pup tent can be made to look like a palace." Still, the tape holds particular messages - both to the US, in the form of an offered "truce," and to the Muslim world, Scheuer says. The truce offer is not unlike the overture bin Laden made to Europeans in April 2004, he says. "[The] Madrid [bombings] came first [in March 2004], then he offered the truce, and then there were the London bombings," Scheuer says. "So I think we have to take him at his word here." But then there is his message to Muslims. One goal is probably to reconfirm bin Laden's standing among Muslims as a leader. "This says, 'I am the equal of George Bush,' " Ms. Yaphe notes, in the sense of a global player able to make a decision with global impact. Other experts agree, noting that whatever Al Qaeda leaders may be trying to communicate to the US, they - like all wartime leaders - first and foremost are speaking to the homefront. "Their real message is meant for consumption by their followers and potential recruits," says Brian Jenkins, a terror expert at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif. "It says, No. 1, Osama bin Laden is still in charge. By his communications, by him saying he has been busy preparing operations ... his offer of a truce - all of these are an assertion of leadership." Beyond that, Mr. Jenkins adds, "It says he is in operational control," something that has been widely debated among analysts. "What [Bin Laden] is saying here is not only is he the leader, but that he also runs operations." Scheuer says the truce offer "is perfectly consonant with Islamic history. Muslim leaders from the Prophet to Saladin were ready to make a temporary [truce] with the infidels if they thought it would benefit Muslims." The point, he adds, is that "this will resonate very loudly in the Islamic world." In the tape, the speaker refers specifically to a truce to allow a rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. "What they would love, of course, is if we would just back out of Afghanistan and Iraq," Scheuer says, in part to allow the reestablishment of the Islamic caliphate to begin there. "For the caliphate to be built, they have to have a political state from which to start," he says. "That's why Al Qaeda valued the Taliban so much. Now they view Iraq in the way they viewed Afghanistan." With the new tape surfacing on the heels of this week's CIA-directed attack on suspected Al Qaeda strongholds in Pakistani tribal areas, some observers speculate the tape may be an effort to establish Al Qaeda's operability after the attack. But Mr. Rashid says that is unlikely. "I don't see how he could have reacted so quickly to the recent Predator attack," he says, referring to the unmanned craft that was used to carry out the bombing. In any case, Rashid says information about the effects of the raid is so confused that it is looking less like a counterterrorist triumph even without bin Laden's input. "The problem is that the story in the media, as told by the Pakistani government, keeps changing so many times" he says. "The latest story is that they killed the son of [Ayman] Zawahiri [the Al Qaeda No. 2 leader], but in the villages they say it was all local people." In the future, he adds, "this could damage America's ability to say in the end, 'We got him.' " • Staff writer Scott Baldauf in New Delhi contributed to this report. A chronology of statements attributed to bin LadenArab television station Al Jazeera aired a new audio tape Thursday said to be from Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The last message from him was in December 2004. Following is a chronology of major statements attributed to Mr. Bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri in the past year or so. The statements were aired on Al Jazeera, via audio or video tapes, unless otherwise noted. Dec. 27, 2004: Bin Laden urges Iraqis to boycott January's elections, saying anyone who takes part is an "infidel." He praises attacks in Iraq by ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. 2005 Feb. 10: Mr. Zawahri says Iraqi elections held under foreign occupation are a sham. Feb 20: Zawahri says governments cannot stop Al Qaeda attacks, and the security of the West depends on respect for Islam and an end to aggression against Muslims. June 17: Zawahri says reform and the expulsion of "invaders" from Muslim states cannot happen peacefully. Reform must be based on Islamic law, and Muslim states should be free to govern themselves without interference or the presence of foreign troops, he says. Aug. 4: Zawahri warns Britons of more attacks. He also tells Britain and the US they will not have peace until they pull their troops out of Iraq and other Muslim nations. Sept. 19: Zawahri says Al Qaeda carried out the July 7 transit bombings in London to strike at "British arrogance." He denounces Britain for "the historical crime of setting up Israel and the continuing crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq." Oct 23: Zawahri urges Muslims to help Pakistan's earthquake victims though its government is a US "agent." He denounces Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. Dec 24: Zawahri praises the Taliban in an audio tape aired by Al Arabiya television, saying the Islamic movement still controls large parts of Afghanistan. 2006 Jan. 6: Zawahri says President Bush's plans to withdraw troops from Iraq meant Washington had been defeated by the Muslims. Jan. 19: Bin Laden warns that Al Qaeda is preparing new attacks inside the US, but says the group is open to a conditional truce with Americans. - Reuters |
哈佛关于“抄袭”的规条
Information Age? More like the New Middle Ages
《洛杉矶时报》2006年1月1日的一篇文章,作者Eric Jager, teaches medieval literature at UCLA and is the author of "The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France." 他的评论还是很有见地的,远比那些盲目乐观的现代主义或后现代主义者精彩。
IT'S ONLY 2006, and people have already dubbed this new century the Information Age, the Digital Age or the Connectivity Age. I have a more accurate name for the 21st century, and I encourage us all to start using it today: The New Middle Ages.
With the resurgence of legalized torture, rampant religious fanaticism, widespread poverty and illiteracy, the threat of mysterious plagues, fascination with magic and the occult and suspicion of science, what else would you call it?
Nearly 30 years ago, when Barbara Tuchman published her bestselling book, "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," her title hinted that we could catch our own reflection in the medieval past. We now live even further from the 14th century's disastrous wars, popular revolts, religious strife and epidemic plague — yet the mirror no longer seems so distant. Tuchman wrote her epochal book after the worst horrors of the last century, including an influenza pandemic that killed millions, two devastating world wars and the Holocaust but before AIDS, Ebola and now the avian flu raised the specter of modern plague, before the fall of communism unleashed civil war and genocide in the Balkans and before religious extremists seized power in Iran and Islamic terrorists began attacking Western cities, giving dangerous new life to medieval words like "crusade" and "jihad."
One of my students once wrote, "Medieval people were so ignorant, they had no idea they were living in the Middle Ages." He was partly right. Medieval people thought they lived in modern times — just as we think we do today. The word "modern" was actually coined by medieval people to distinguish themselves from the ancients. The Renaissance stole the label of modernity for itself and invented a prior "middle age" when classical civilization lay dormant, awaiting a glorious rebirth. The Enlightenment made the "barbaric" and "superstitious" Middle Ages seem even more obsolete.
We now use the word "modern" as a compliment, not just for ourselves but also for our latest inventions. But human know-how changes at the speed of light compared with human nature. Has our collective virtue really increased since, say, 1348? Or have we confused technical upgrades with signs of moral progress? Terrorists and identity thieves take to computers with the same enthusiasm as teenagers and bond traders. Tools are only as good — in every sense — as those who use them.
Like our gadgets, we ourselves are only temporarily modern, and that label will be taken from us very soon. What sort of mirror will later generations find in us? The people of the future, looking back on our violent and benighted era, may decide to call us "medieval," so I suggest we just go ahead and accept that the New Middle Ages have begun.
中国软实力崛起
2006年1月1日的台湾《中央日报》发表小约瑟夫·S·奈的文章《中国软实力崛起》,《参考消息》迅速在今天予以转载。
奈从排出美国的东亚峰会和英国广播公司的民调显示中国的影响力属正面的民众认同高于美国这两件事情谈到:此两种情况对照即可明显看出,中国软实力崛起并与美国互为消长乃是一个必须迫切处理的问题。
文中所列举各项实例,似乎在他最近的文章中时常见到,不足为怪。不过如奈所言,中国的软实力有待成长之处仍多——大陆并无类似美国好莱坞的文化产业,而其大学的成就也远不及美国各大学。为美国建立大量软实力的非政府组织,在大陆付之阙如。大学一项,颇值赞同。NGOs问题,则值得玩味了。
“美国增加对亚洲软实力平衡的注意力,此其时矣。”天哪,老美考虑的过于长远了吧?
阿扁昨天又防毒了,不过和民进党立委在立法院提“反攻大陆”提案一样,玩笑而已。呵呵
新年开始新阅读
年复一年,总要余下许多事情没有完成,一本书从年尾读到年头,总算在新的一年开始的头一天完成了。可还有五本书摊在那里,多少却失去了继续读完的兴趣,索性就由它去吧。
新年里,开始新的阅读,看到一本闲书:刘建飞的《大博弈:中国的“太极”与美国的“拳击”》,就从它开始好了。
马小军:什么是中美关系的大局
美帝国的日子屈指可数——挪威政治学家加尔通访谈
亨廷顿又一次震撼世界:美国的出路在何方?


[《联合早报》文章]以和谐主义制服冲突主义(不错)
最近最大一笔的买书行为
早就听说《民主的经济理论》(Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy)中译本出版了,一直没有闲功夫去找,今天下午抽空到以前常去的一间小书店转了转,居然就找到了。这本书会迅速流行起来——尽管没有多少做政治学的中国学者会真的花功夫去读它。邓正来新拉起来的《中国书评》第二辑有张小劲的一篇论文,以政党竞争的空间模型为题,其实却是对这本书的评论,并没有涉及晚近的文献,足见这方面中国学者的研究还处于起步阶段。
顺便还找到了莫斯科维奇所写的《群氓的时代》(L'âge des Foules)以及勒庞的《革命心理学》,这是做群体心理方面的入门捷径,所以要好好研究一下。《乌合之众》早就看过,但没有深入想过这方面的问题,重头来过。另外买了本新译的S.E.Taylor, L.A.Peplau & D.O.Sears《社会心理学》(第十版),以备不时之需。
蒙森的《罗马史》第二、三卷也终被我凑齐了,第二卷是自罗马废除王政至意大利统一,第三卷是自统一意大利至征服迦太基和希腊诸国,可以补充些细节知识。
亨廷顿的书总是让人欲罢不能,那本《我们是谁?》太久了,跟老板说让他帮我再找一本。今天的收获是新近翻译的1981年的《失衡的承诺》,我不明白译者为什么要故意省略掉正标题而采用副标题(American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony)而且翻译的好像有点文不对题。不过翻到《著者序言》中亨廷顿本人所言:“追根溯源,本书发端于我年轻时一次束手无策的窘境(注意,又是一个奇怪的翻译,窘境当然是束手无策的)。1949年5月,我开始进入博士学位论文答辩(进入答辩,奇怪的搭配),塞缪尔·H·比尔教授用一种从容的眼神盯着我问道:‘亨廷顿先生,政治思想和政治体制的关系如何?’我当时未能回答这个问题,但从此以后我便一直抓住这个问题不放。”——说实话,这个问题也许恰恰是我现在所面对的,我能回答成什么样呢?
另外还搜罗到了张星烺先生编注的《中西交通史料汇编》、张岱年的《中国哲学史方法论发凡》、王尔敏的《晚清政治思想史论》、苏双碧的《浪中记事》以及龙登高的《江南市场史》、宇文所安的《他山的石头记》、Herbert Fingarette的《孔子:即凡而圣》、Joseph E. Stiglitz的《社会主义向何处去》。还有两本博弈论的书和两本方法论的书。最近可以密集阅读一段时间了。
A Medieval Sociology of International Relations
A Medieval Sociology of International Relations
(author unknown)
The plethora of different camps and schools in international relations can be intimidating to the beginning student. What with realists, liberals, constructivists, quantitative analysts, formal theorists, etc. it is often difficult to keep straight who is who, what they do, and what their relations to each other are. Careful analysis reveals, however, certain patterns within the discipline that resemble other social milieus in earlier historical eras. In particular, the social structure of medieval
The Nobility
The nobles in international relations are the elite scholars at the top universities, typically on the East Coast, but with some outliers such as Chicago and Berkeley. Like their medieval counterparts, the nobles of the IR field have few useful skills and do very little that can be characterized as work. Much of their life is spent in social activity. As the medieval nobles could spend entire weeks at jousting tournaments, today's nobles spend inordinate amounts of time going to seminars, workshops, conferences, invited lectures, not to mention lunches, sherry hours, honorary dinners, and buffets. They organize edited volumes, participate in edited volumes organized by their friends, and review edited volumes for presses. The life of the nobility is a constant round of intense social interaction, and they train for it from early graduate school by attending parties on a regular basis.
The most important function of the nobility, however, is paradigmatic war. As the nobles of old viewed armed combat as their central raison d'Ítre, the nobles of international relations view inter-paradigmatic conflict as their main calling. These modern bellatores group together in feudally organized camps, called paradigms, which typically are led by a charismatic elder peer of the realm. This Duke or Earl possesses many fiefs to distribute to loyal followers for services they render in battle, and maintains households of graduate student retainers in the castle keep that perform the necessary services needed to keep the house running.
These lucky pages also learn the use of the essential tools they will need to succeed in combat, including the Polemic, the Diatribe, the Magisterial Pronouncement, the Tendentious Case Study, the Testy Reply, the Condescending Retort, and the Sweeping Unfalsifiable Claim. The pages also learn the social graces and decencies of chivalrous conduct, including the proper use of the pipe in gesturing, and the correct color for suede elbow patches on tweed jackets.
Two of the oldest paradigms are Realism and Liberalism. These groups have done battle since time immemorial and typically focus on material factors, fighting over office space, funding, post-docs etc. While Realists emphasize the role of anarchy in preventing cooperation and leading to conflict, Liberals argue that it is possible to cooperate under anarchy,especially over the issue of fighting Realists. A more recently formed paradigm, Constructivism, emphasizes the non-material or spiritual side of combat, much as the chivalric knightly orders such as the Templars and Hospitalers rejected worldly ties to focus on fighting the Saracens.
The nobles, then, form the peak of society. Their dominance of the field is almost unchallenged. The other strata of society can only look on and envy them.
The Peasants
The peasants of the international relations world are the quantitative methods scholars. Like the laboratores of old, the life of the quantitative scholar consists of much work and little reward. Grubbing about in the fields gathering data under the hot sun, painstakingly assembling data-sets in the barn, and then going through all the tedious work involved in grinding the data into flour and baking it into something edible, these scholars are familiar with toil. Tied as they are to the land, they lack vision and typically eke out their subsistence livelihoods at lesser ranked universities, publishing their paltry findings in non-prestigious journals that no one but other peasants reads.
Given their slender means, they are constantly in danger of famine at tenure time, and even if they manage to acquire a modest holding they can be wiped out by floods of better methods or sudden shifts in market demands from journal editors. One of the few sources of pleasure for the peasants are the annual folk festivals, or conferences that specialize in quantitative IR. Here the quantitative scholar can relax among his own kind, quaff a tankard of mead, and temporarily forget the existence of nobles and their overweening privilege.
A ray of hope for the peasant is the possibility of revolution. Usually these peasant revolts are met by the nobility with merciless and successful repression, but in one corner of the map a rebellion seems to have achieved some limited success. The democratic peace literature arose in the peasant community, and matured as a folk wisdom, but was later turned into a means of mobilizing in solidarity against aristocratic oppression. The nobles fought back of course, but for once their heavy cavalry was repulsed by the Swiss pike bearing democratic peace researchers. It is still too early to tell whether this is a temporary aberration, or whether this heralds a new era when the life of the peasant will improve at the expense of the ancient feudal nobility.
The Priests
Like medieval priests, or oratores, the formal theorists in international relations claim special access to divine knowledge, available not through observation of the corrupt and impure world but though revelation and contemplation of the perfection of the divinity. Highly respectful of learning and abstract debate, the high formal theorists do no work whatsoever, other than to study the sacred dogma and refine ever more minutely the laws and teachings of the Holy Theory. Their debates on such arcane questions as, "How many angels can dance on the head of a subgame perfect equilibrium?" can get quite heated, but remain largely incomprehensible and irrelevant to the laity. Their function is to reveal the will of God to the lesser mortals, and to guide them in walking the correct path towards rational choice.
The oratores maintain and add to the sacred body of scripture and like their medieval counterparts, employ a rarefied language unavailable to the laity, Latin in the old days, formal theory today. This conveniently makes it difficult for the laity to question the guidance given or interpret the sacred texts for themselves. Also like their priestly forebears, today's oratores. depend on the patronage of the nobility for their livelihood and in turn lend legitimation to their order. While the priests justified social stratification as the will of God, rational choice scholars lend support to the nobles by taking the vague self-serving verbal utterances that pass for theory among the aristocrats and formalizing them in game theoretic terms, lending them the sanction of Holy Theory. In exchange for this service, selected priests and monastic orders are endowed with sumptuous abbeys and bishoprics at the elite universities. Of course not every man of God is so lucky, many a wandering mendicant friar ekes out a sad existence selling clumsily faked fragments of the true Theorem to credulous peasants. While there is a mutual relation of support between the bellatores and oratores, there is also some rivalry and mutual contempt.
Indeed the reluctance of the formal theorists to fight wholeheartedly for any of the paradigms only confirms the nobility in their belief that the formal theorists are cowardly and lacking in virility. For their part, the priests look on the nobility as undereducated and deficient in proper piety towards Rational Choice Theory and his ministers on earth, as well as being excessively rude and belligerent.
As these examples indicate, the medieval world is a rich source of insight into the social structure of modern international relations scholarship. The medieval bellatores, laboratores, and oratores find their counterparts in the discipline as we know it today. It will be interesting to see if the forces of change in the medieval world, fairs and the increase of trade, improvements in navigation, etc. will have a corrosive effect on the social hierarchy of IR, as they did in the medieval period. This question must be left for future research.
http://www.gotterdammerung.org/humor/medieval-ir.html
关于《文明的冲突》一书的问答
谨向这位发问的同学致谢,出于尊重,姑且隐去姓名……
问:
亨廷顿《文明的冲突》这本书,读完之后开始觉得还好,能读懂,现在开始写论文[书评]发现了很多问题。首先他强调了文明之间的差异,说明了现今各文明的状况,但他直接就过渡到冲突去了,没有给出一个明确的逻辑来。
我仔细想了想,认为亨廷顿这本书的前提就是文明之间的冲突是必然的,只要摆明文明之间的差异,加上前提而得出文明之间准确说西方与非西方的文明冲突就是必然的。
我要写的论题是中国威胁论,我曾就此问题请教过您,您说只要写好文明这块就好,我想还是儒家文明的好写一些,您说只要摆明文明之间差异,套上亨廷顿的逻辑,如果有冲突则就有威胁,但是我现在是一点逻辑都没看到,他在谈西方与东方时,只说西方的衰败,东方的崛起,而文明之间的差异是事实现状,就得出了文明的冲突的结论。我看到了他些原因哪一部分,它讲的是历史学、政治学、人口学三部分地结合,但他重点放在伊斯兰教,我又觉得中国没有一个像西方一样的宗教,不能套用。所以不得以想请您帮忙分析一下。本来我都想驳斥亨廷顿的前提了。
答:
显然你思考的比较深入了,很好。不过我还是给你一些提示,而非具体的答案可能对你自己更有帮助:
一、作者理论恢宏,所以内容十分丰富多彩,尤其前面的五章,多半会让人如坠云里雾里。这是因为作者的雄心在于重构国际政治分析的范式。
二、你所关心的问题,其实作者做了一个比较清楚的逻辑说明,具体在第六章之中专门讲到“为什么文化共性促进人们之间的合作和凝聚力,而文化的差异却加剧分裂和冲突”。但这一部分也的的确确是存在因果颠倒的奇妙现象的。
三、全书的关键之处在于第八章到第十一章,或者说这是作者在前面的理论部分之后的“应用”部分,那么显然与你所关心的中国威胁论最有牵连的是第八章和第十一章两部分,你可以联系前面的内容作进一步思考。
一篇奇妙的拍马屁文章
一些中文新书简讯(续)