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Historical Reconstruction (historical + reconstruction)
Selected AbstractsLong-term land-cover changes in the Belgian Ardennes (1775,1929): model-based reconstruction vs. historical mapsGLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY, Issue 7 2002C. C. Petit Abstract Understanding long-term human-environment interactions requires historical reconstruction of past land-cover changes. The objective of this study is to reconstruct past land-use and land-cover changes in a rural municipality of the Belgian Ardennes over the last 250 years. Two approaches were compared. The first approach produced backward projections based on a mechanistic model which computes the demand for different land uses under the assumption of an equilibrium between the production and consumption of resources. The second approach involved using a series of historical maps to extract directly land-use areas. A stochastic Markov chain model was also used to project backward missing land-cover data in the time series. The consistency between the results obtained with the different approaches suggests that land-use area can be successfully reconstructed on the basis of the mechanistic model, under conditions of a subsistence farming system and a closed economy. Land-use/cover changes in the Belgian Ardennes from 1775 to 1929 were more driven by the interventionist measures of the Belgian government and by technological progress than by the ,pressure' of the growing population and livestock. Thanks to agricultural intensification, a decrease in land under human use was supporting increasing human and livestock populations from 1846 to 1880. Reforestation has accelerated since the mid-19th century. This case study illustrates the highly dynamic and non-linear character of land-use change trajectories over long time periods and their strong interactions with the history of societies. [source] 1. NARRATIVE FORM AND HISTORICAL SENSATION: ON SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER'S THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION,HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2009ALON CONFINO ABSTRACT Saul Friedländer's magnum opus, The Years of Extermination, has been received worldwide as an exemplary work of history. Yet it was written by a historian who in the last two decades has strenuously asserted the limits of Holocaust representation. At the center of this essay is a problem of historical writing: how to write a historical narrative of the Holocaust that both offers explanations of the unfolding events and also suggests that the most powerful sensation about those events, at the time and since, is that they are beyond words. I explore Friedländer's crafting of such a narrative by considering, first, the role of his attempt in The Years of Extermination to explain the Holocaust and, second, the narrative form of the book. The book is best seen, I argue, not primarily as a work of explanation but as a vast narrative that places an explanation of the Holocaust within a specific form of describing that goes beyond the boundaries of the historical discipline as it is usually practiced. This form of describing goes beyond the almost positivist attachment to facts that dominates current Holocaust historiography. By using Jewish individual testimonies that are interspersed in the chronological history of the extermination, Friedländer creates a narrative based on ruptures and breaks, devices we associate with works of fiction, and that historians do not usually use. The result is an arresting narrative, which I interpret by using Johan Huizinga's notion of historical sensation. Friedländer sees this narrative form as specific to the Holocaust. I view this commingling of irreducible reality and the possibility of art as a required sensibility that belongs to all historical understanding. And in this respect, The Years of Extermination only lays bare more clearly in the case of the Holocaust what is an essential element in all historical reconstruction. [source] Theologizing the Human Jesus: An Ancient (and Modern) Approach to Christology ReassessedINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 2 2001Ivor Davidson Many contemporary Christologies, while paying lip-service to the primacy of the human Jesus, devote little attention to the theological status of his humanity. They may be deflected from this task by such factors as preference for experienced-based symbol; the fragmentation of biblical studies and dogmatics; the imperatives of contextual hermeneutics; and the preoccupation with methodology rather than substance. But the human Jesus is only theologically meaningful when viewed on a larger canvas than that of either idealist metaphysics or historical reconstruction. The classical doctrines of the anhypostasis and enhypostasis of Jesus' humanity offer a still useful way of highlighting the primacy of grace, and, contrary to common caricature, do not undermine the density of his human experience. Such an account needs to be supplemented, however, with a robust pneumatology in order to specify the relevance of the human Jesus for revelation, salvation, anthropology, ethics and eschatology. [source] The Representation of Guayaquil's Sexual Past: Historicizing the EnchaquiradosJOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2002O. Hugo Benavides The article assesses the role played by the enchaquirados in the historical reconstruction of Guayaquil's sexual past. In this regard, the alternative reading of this pre-Hispanic homosexual harem of boys questions the city's traditionally heterosexist history; however, rather than simply blaming official historiography and pretending to offer some new historical truth, the present contribution looks to interrogate the inherent problematics of historical hermeneutics. Through this critical evaluation of the enchaquirados legacy, I offer some needed insight into the nature of historical production in Ecuador and into the pervasive limitations of all historical production in post-colonial contexts, particularly Latin American ones. In this manner, the article looks to place the production of Guayaquil's past and its reigning masculinity discourse) in an ever changing discourse in which elements of colonial relationships, race, and regional geography play a vitally determining factor, and are constantly re-determined themselves in the process. [source] Textual analysis of retired nurses' oral historiesNURSING INQUIRY, Issue 4 2007Barbra Mann Wall This paper considers the use of textual analysis of oral histories as a method for historians of nursing. Fifty-three oral histories of retired nurses in midwestern USA were analyzed for the purpose of historical reconstruction of past education experiences in nursing. Textual analysis was used to determine how nurses made sense of their educational experiences, and it involved gathering data, analyzing the information, and using a different method of interpreting the data. Although the participants responded to specific questions, the oral histories in this study are more than mere answers to the researchers' queries. The participants' memories are narratives that are the joint product of both the historian and the participant. As such, the oral history becomes a text to be stored along with other primary sources for future historians' use. The research also suggests decentering oral histories from an exclusively academic agenda and focusing more on what the participants choose to remember and why they make those choices. [source] Critical Remembrance and Eschatological Hope in Edward Schillebeeckx's Theology of Suffering for OthersTHE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 1 2003Elizabeth K. TillarArticle first published online: 9 OCT 200 Biblical prototypes of suffering for others , the eschatological prophet and messianic high priest , are correlated in the present article with Edward Schillebeeckx's examination of two vital concepts to provide the basis for a critical praxis: anamnesis, or the critical remembrance of history, and eschatological hope. The dialectical opposites of anamnesis and hope, which Schillebeeckx deems crucial for solidarity with suffering and its alleviation, are embodied by the prototypical scriptural figures. Indeed, critical remembrance and hope are intrinsic to the images of Jesus as the ,suffering righteous one' and the eschatological messianic high priest in Schillebeeckx's theology of suffering for others. Both the images and the critical concepts prove essential in his historical reconstruction of the eschatological communities, religious figures, and symbols in Hebrews and 1 Peter, among other New Testament documents. Schillebeeckx's discernment of hope as an eschatological concept is predicated on the transformation of the history of suffering into a constructive and critical force. He understands Jesus' preaching about the coming kingdom of God as a message of hope that emerges from Jesus' consciousness of the contrast between the history of suffering and his experience of God as Abba. Schillebeeckx's exegesis of biblical passages , taken from the Beatitudes, narratives of Jesus' forgiveness of sins, and stories of his table fellowship , lays the foundation for the development of hope as the antidote to suffering and as a presentiment of eschatological salvation. He proposes that the transformation of failure and suffering into a critical and constructive force is Jesus' eschatological legacy to the world and a model for the suffering servants of any age. Moreover, Schillebeeckx's dialectical understanding of remembered history and hope attests to his deep engagement with the Frankfurt School of social critical theory. In his later work (published during the 1970s and 1980s), such critical ideas serve to cultivate an eschatological sensibility and an ethical praxis, made possible by grace mediated through voluntary suffering. [source] Between memory and destiny: Repetition,THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 2 2007NORBERTO CARLOS MARUCCO This essay focuses mainly on the topic of repetition (agieren),on its metapsychological, clinical, and technical conceptions. It contains a core problem, that is, the question of the represented, the nonrepresented, and the unrepresentable in the psyche. This problem, in turn, brings to light the dialectical relation between drive and object and its specific articulation with the traumatic. The author attributes special significance to its clinical expression as ,destiny'. He points out a shift in the theory of the cure from recollection and the unveiling of unconscious desire, to the possibility of understanding ,pure' repetition, which would constitute the very essence of the drive. The author highlights three types of repetition, namely, ,representative' (oedipal) repetition, the repetition of the ,nonrepresented' (narcissistic), which may gain representation, and that of the ,unrepresentable' (sensory impressions, ,lived experiences from primal times,',prelinguistic signifiers,',ungovernable mnemic traces'). The concept-the metaphor-drive embryo brings the author close to the question of the archaic in psychoanalysis, where the repetition in the act would express itself. ,Another unconscious' would zealously conceal the entombed (verschüttet) that we are not yet able to describe-the ,innermost' rather than the ,buried' (untergegangen) or the ,annihilated' (zugrunde gegangen)-through a mechanism whose way of expression is repetition in the act. With ,Constructions in analysis' as its starting point, this paper suggests a different technical implementation from that of the Freudian construction; its main material is what emerges in the present of the transference as the repetition of ,something' lacking as history. The memory of the analytic process offers a historical diachrony whereby a temporality freed from repetition and utterly unique might unfold in the analysis. This diachrony would no longer be the historical reconstruction of material truth, but the construction of something new. The author briefly introduces some aspects of his conception of the psyche and of therapeutic work in terms of what he has designated as psychic zones. These zones are associated with various modes of becoming unconscious, and they coexist with different degrees of prevalence according to the psychopathology. Yet each of them will emerge with unique features in different moments of every analysis, determining both the analyst's positions and the very conditions of the analytic field. The zone of the death drive and of repetition is at the center of this essay. ,Pure' repetition expresses a time halted by the constant reiteration of an atemporal present. In this case, the ,royal road' for the expression of ,that' unconscious will be the act. The analyst's presence and his own drive wager will be pivotal to provide a last attempt at binding that will allow the creation of the lost ,psychic fabric' and the construction, in a conjectural way, of some sort of ,history' that may unravel the entombed (verschüttet) elements that, in these patients' case, come to the surface in the act. The analysand's ,pure' repetition touches, resonates with something of the new unconscious of the analyst. All of this leads the author to underline once again the value of the analyst's self-analysis and reanalysis in searching for connections and especially in differentiating between what belongs to the analyst and what belongs to the analysand. A certain degree of unbinding ensures the preservation of something ungraspable that protects one from the other's appropriation. [source] The Sources and Fortunes of Piranesi's Archaeological IllustrationsART HISTORY, Issue 4 2002Susan M. Dixon Susan M. Dixon earned her doctorate from Cornell University in 1991 with a dissertation on the archaeological publications of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. She studies the history of pre,scientific archaeology, from Pirro Ligorio to Piranesi, with a particular focus on illustration as a means to convey historical knowledge. She has published on this subject in a variety of venues, and is beginning a book,length manuscript on the subject. In 1995,96, she was awarded a J. Paul Getty post,doctoral fellowship to study the Accademia degli Arcadi, a society founded in 1690 primarily to restore good taste in literature, and its successes and failures in bringing about the reform of Italian society and architecture. She has written a book entitled The Bosco Parrasio: Performance and Perfectibility in the Garden of the Arcadians, which focuses on their garden meeting place as a breeding ground for a utopian society. Dr Dixon teaches art history at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720,1778) developed a way of representing the archaeological past by using the multi,informational image, an engraved illustration which appears to be a composite of various drawings, on various surfaces, and employing various modes of representation, scale and detail. The cartographic tradition, particularly maps from sixteenth,century Europe, offer a precedent for this type of illustration. Piranesi found theoretical underpinnings for it in contemporary discussions about the workings of the human memory, which was identified as a viable tool for those pursuing historical knowledge. His illustrations make visible the processes of memory on an assemblage of archaeological information, and they were a means to historical reconstruction. Archaeologists of the generation after Piranesi did not use the multi,informational image as the science of archaeology underwent a sea change at the end of the century. However, some compilers of travel literature, in particular Jean,Laurent,Pierre HoÃ,el, author and illustrator of Voyage pittoresque des isles de Sicile, de Malte, et de Lipari, found the format suitable to their purposes. Like Piranesi's, Hoüel's multi,informational images reveal the hand of the artist on the information he had diligently collected and ordered; Hoüel's picturesque illustrations of the southern Italian islands' people and places are self,consciously subjective. The format also makes apparent what was so appealing to many a voyager ,the apparent survival of the past in the culture of the present. [source] Jesus and the eye: New Testament miracles of visionACTA OPHTHALMOLOGICA, Issue 6 2005Ahmad M. Mansour Abstract. Purpose:,To compile and appraise the accounts of the miracles of vision in the New Testament. Methods:,We carried out a critical analysis of the compilation of ocular miracles using past medical knowledge and historical reconstruction based on the accounts of the apostles and of various historians living in the first three centuries ad. Results:,Three blind adult male beggars residing on three different street locations were described. Two had previously had good vision that had declined over a long time and the third had been born blind. The manifestations of the ocular diseases in these cases were meagre, precluding any precise diagnosis. The healing methodology did not rely on physical examination, detailed history, or the use of medicines. Jesus' tools consisted of spitting, touching, praying and the use of words. Visual outcome reported as a complete cure was realized in all three incidents. Conclusions:,The accounts of miracles in the Gospels appear to be historically reliable, yet subject to different interpretations: faith in the miracle (the Christian perspective); sorcery (the Jewish perspective); mythology (the atheist perspective), and scientifically possible human action by a charismatic, compassionate, knowledgeable man (the scientific perspective: psychotherapy or suggestion). [source] | |||||||||||||