http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/the-oldest-song-in-the-world.html

Lasu apreibinošo vielu izplatīšanas un lietošanas vēsturi. Nereti var secināt, ka "nav nekā jauna šajā pasaulē". Lūk, piemēram, smēķēšanas aizliegumi nav nekas jauns. Gluži pretēji, kad tabaka strauji izplatījās Eiropā un Āzijā 17.gs., tās lietošana ikdienā un saistītie paradumi itin nemaz netika uzņemti viennozīmīgi labvēlīgi:

"English smokers risked the disapproval of James I, who declaimed against the Stygian weed. Monarchs of more absolute sway meted out cruel punishments. Russian smokers suffered beatings and exile; snuff-takers had their noses torn off. Chinese smokers had their heads impaled on pikes. Turkish smokers under the reign of Ahmed I endured pipe stems thrust through their noses; Murad IV ordered them tortured to death. Priests who indulged in tobacco during Mass - one vomited up the Sacrament after dipping snuff - were threatened with excomunication. Added to fines, floggings, mutilations, and threats of death and damnation was the everyday obloquy of those who did not indulge. Tobacco, as its critics tirelessly pointed out, fouled the breath, stained the teeth, soiled the clothing, and brought forth streams of snot and spittle. Smoking also entailed the risk of fire, a mortal danger in a world of combustible dwellings." - Courthwright D., Forces of Habit.

Šķiet, ka 17.gs. iebildumi galvenokārt būs bijuši estētiski un saistīti ar ugunsdrošību. Interesanti, ka vienlaicīgi ar oficiālu nosodījumu, tabaka ļoti interesēja medicīnas profesijas pārstāvjus, kurus arī uztrauca tās nepārdomāts lietojums ikdienā. Šeit atkal var pieminēt, ka spriedze starp oficiāliem apreibinoso vielu lietojuma, izplatīšanas un ražošanas aizliegumiem un medicīnas interesēm pastāv arī šodien - ir apgrūtinati pētījumi, kas potenciāli var rezultēties efektīvākās ārstēšanas metodēs, pielietojot vielas, kas šobrīd ir aizliegtas.
Tiek uzskatīts, ka 18.gs. smēķēšana Eiropā mazinājusies, bet to atsver šņaucamās tabakas popularitātes pieaugums šajā periodā. Savukārt 19.gs. smēķēšana atkal kļūst plaši izplatīta, populāra un varētu teikt, modīga, kas turpinās arī 20.gs., līdz atkal esam nonākuši pie apjausmas, cik tas viss ir slikti. Loks noslēdzies.

In pictures: Secret disguises of the Stasi

Dear Russell

On the occasion of my visit to your School I left my only presentable brown hat in your anteroom. I wonder whether since then it has had the privilege of enclosing the only brains in England which I ungrudgingly regard better than mine; or whether it has been utilised in some of the juvenile experimentations in physics, technology, dramatic art, or prehistoric symbolism; or whether it naturally lapsed out of the anteroom.
If none of these events, or shall we rather call them hypotheses, holds good or took place, could you be so good as to bring it in a brown paper parcel or by some other concealed mode of transport to London and advise me on a post card where I could reclaim it? I am very sorry that my absentmindedness, which is characteristic of high intelligence, has exposed you to all the inconvenience incidental to the event.

Yours sincerely, B. Malinowski


Dear Malinowski

My secretary has found a presentable brown hat in my lobby which I presume is yours, indeed the mere sight of it reminds me of you. I am going to the School of Economics to give a lecture to the Students’ Union on Monday (17th), and unless my memory is as bad and my intelligence as good as yours, I will leave your hat with the porter at the School of Economics, telling him to give it to you on demand.

Yours sincerely, Bertrand Russell

Ir gadījies dzirdēt par "armchair anthropologist", ko varētu latviski tulkot kā kabineta, vai klubkrēsla antropologs. Slavenākais šeit droši vien būtu Marsels Mauss, kurš, neveicis praktiskus lauka pētījumus, deva nozīmīgu ieguldījumu etnoloģijā (antropoloģijas apakšnozarē, kas salīdzina dažādas kultūras un sabiedrības).
Šodien, klejojot interneta ārēs, uzgāju glītu fotogrāfiju ar kungu, sēžam ar fesku galvā un blakus papagaili būrī:


Hermann Vollrath Hilprecht in his study in Istanbul c. 1895 (unknown photographer). Digital print. Archives of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, USA.

The German-trained Hermann Vollrath Hilprecht was Professor of Assyriology at Penn. He claimed to be too delicate to carry out actual excavations (complaining about the bugs, beggars and his colleagues) so oversaw the Nippur site from a desk in Istanbul, and later from Philadelphia. He nonetheless took credit for ten years’ worth of finds at the site. Ultimately accused of faking work and stealing artifacts, Hilprecht was forced to resign his professorship.

Kā izrādās, var būt arī kabineta arheologs. Un grūti noliegt, ka kaut kas pievilcīgs tajā tomēr ir: "claimed to be too delicate to carry out actual excavations (complaining about the bugs, beggars and his colleagues)".

No: Middle East Cuts

"The principle based on experience that history is made by the victors in the short run, may be maintained over a middle-range span, but never controlled for a long time, can easily be proven. Our last series of examples involving long-term reinterpretations of the past can testify to this. The structural change of Thucydides' archaeology; divine providence; Machiavellian patterns of behavior; interests, constants, or trends determined by socioeconomic factors - acting human beings can react in some way to all these long-term pregivens, but the pregivens themselves more or less elude their control. It cannot be in the primary interest of the victors to thematize these. Their history has a short-term perspective and is focused on those series of events that, through their own efforts, brought them victory. And when they lay claim to long-term trends, such as divine providence, or a teleological path to the nation-state, real socialism, or liberty, to legitimize their victory historically, this leads very easily to deformations of the view of the past. Think of Guizot's history of civilization, or Droysen's Prussian history, both of which are difficult to sustain even in the face of a textually immanent ideology critique. The historian who is on the side of the victor is prone to interpret short-term successes from the perspective of a continuous, long-term teleology ex post facto.
This does not apply to the vanquished. The first primary experience is that everything happened differently from how it was planned or hoped. If they reflect methodologically at all, they face a greater burden of proof to explain why something happened in this and not the anticipated way. From this, a search for middle- or long-range reasons might be initiated to frame and perhaps explain the chance event of the unique surprise. It is thus an attractive hypothesis that precisely from the unique gains in experience imposed upon them spring insights of lasting duration and, consequently, of greater explanatory power. If history is made in the short run by victors, historical gains in knowledge stem in the long run from the vanquished."

 - Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History

Stjuarts Hols (Stuart Hall) par koloniālismu un identitāti, ko, manuprāt, zināmā mērā var attiecināt arī uz LV vēsturi un identitātes jautājumiem tās kontekstā:

"If you understand your history and if you don't have some originary conception of your own culture as really always the same, as been throbbing away there since the tribal past, went underground during colonialism, is now coming back just as it was. If you don't have that conception of history, you see the degree to which who you are now and what your society is, it has been made and remade, and has been remade again by forces which are essentially global. Which are outside of you in some fundamental way."

Skatīties interviju: Stuart Hall - Cosmopolitanism

"Typical of those rationalities of government that consider themselves 'liberal' is the simultaneous delimitation of the sphere of the political by reference to the right of other domains - the market, civil society and the family being the three most commonly deployed - and the invention of a range of techniques that would try to act on events in these domains without breaching their autonomy. It is for this reason that knowledges and forms of expertise concerning the internal characteristics of the domains to be governed assume particular importance in liberal strategies and programmes of rule, for these domains are not to be 'dominated' by rule, but must be known, understood and related to in such a way that events within them - productivity and conditions of trade, the activities of civil associations, ways of rearing children and organizing conjugal relations and financial support within household - support, and do not oppose, political objectives. [...] Perhaps one could say that the general strategic field of all those programmes of government that regard themselves as liberal has been defined by the problem of how free individuals can be governed such that they enact their freedom appropriately."

- Nikolas Rose, Identity, Genealogy, History

Dažiem vajadzētu iepazīties ar šo nostādni: Presentism

"There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of caste, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress."

- United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs, Measures for the Economic Development of Underdeveloped Countries, 1951