This article explores the alternative music scene in Debrecen, Hungary’s second largest town, in the first decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It describes the conditions of its emergence, highlighting the influence of western music and new wave DIY subculture that served as a catalyst in the identity formation of its participants, both musicians and audiences. It argues that in contrast with the politicized rock of the Budapest underground, the international dimension served as a founding element of scene-formation in Debrecen. The aesthetic cosmopolitanism was achieved through translating the affective packages and anti-mainstream sentiments of new wave music into the local context. This research is based on conversations with prominent members of the scene, and offers several case studies of Debrecen bands. It includes song lyrics to illustrate the cosmopolitan dimension of bands and records arising from the scene. It draws on the studies of subcultures, translocality and cosmopolitanism.
Chayanov, outside of his theoretical analysis of how peasant households are distinctive for being at once a production and a consumption unit and the multiple implications of that fact, has made two other major theoretical contributions, one making clear that peasant economies observe the logic of "differential optimums" rather than the simple logic of economies of scale and the other having to do with the need for co-operatives for "vertical integration" of small peasant economies in order to preserve for the peasants more of the value of their products in the BIG MARKET. The former can be readily observed in the "new agriculture revolution" of the Chinese economy in the past few decades; the latter can be readily seen in the striking modernization of the "East Asian" (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and the Taiwan area) economies since 1945. China's annual "Number One Documents" about agriculture of the past two decades have shown how the country first mistakenly tried to imitate the simple scale-economy logic of the United States and then shifted since 2018 toward a new emphasis on the peasants as the principal agents of agricultural development and peasant villages as the basic unit for agricultural co-ops. Those have been the basis for new advances as well as for reinterpretations and modifications of Chayanov's two major theoretical visions.
Poverty and inequality are two historical issues that have straddled the entire human civilization.An ideal society characterized by common prosperity has always been the core pursuit of great thinkers of all times.Modem capitalism has created unprecedented material wealth and provided the possibility for human society as a whole to get out of poverty.However,this economic system based on private ownership has its inherent limita-tions,which makes it impossible to bring human society fundamentally out of the historical predicament of in-equality.The Chinese approach to common prosperity,rooted in the socialist economic foundation,has not only succeeded in lifting a population of 1.4 billion out of poverty,but also shed a light of hope on the historical co-nundrum of inequality;hence its double penetration of common prosperity.As we are in the new phase of devel-opment,our policy for common prosperity should work on highlighting people-orientation in common prosperi-ty,consolidating government responsibility for common prosperity,pooling together social resources,and build-ing a flexible wealth-driven mechanism.
As a scholar who introduced the concept of"local knowledge"to Chinese readers quite early,the au-thor starts with his personal experience and proceeds to show the co-related generation,transformation and dis-semination of knowledge through a micro case in academic history.Next,the author analyses the concept of"lo-cal knowledge"through three dimensions,namely,human knowledge production,interpretive anthropology,and the cultural study of law.The hidden normative nuances and the pertinent issue of relativism will also be touched upon.In the final part,the author uses two examples to discuss the application of the concept in the Chi-nese context,and argues that the journey of the concept has raised a series of complicated questions and that un-derstanding who uses the concept and why and how the concept is used should be the first step in the course of reflecting on the concept.
Min jian(literally"among people")set the stage for the Chinese revolution in the 20th century.In par-ticular,it largely shaped the CPC's concept of"people".In order to understand how this has come about,it is necessary to examine the modern evolution of the concept of min jian.As an endogenous category of the Chinese intellectual tradition,min jian has maintained its definition stability from ancient times to the present,so much so that its microscopic and internal variations have been ignored.The modern transformation of the category of min jian has gone on two levels.First,the delineation and definition of the collective min has evolved from the tradi-tional"people"to the modem nationals and citizens,and further to the common or average people in the 1920s.Second,in terms of the spatial attributes of min,"locality"has been considered as the living space for modem people,and with the crisis of state and social arrangements,rural and border areas have gradually become im-portant spaces for min jian.In the convergence of the above factors,"Go to the people"movement took place around the May Fourth Movement,and the themes contained in it provided the preconditions for the CPC's con-ception of"people".
