During the Mao era, China's museums served an explicit and uniform propaganda function, underlining official Party history, eulogizing revolutionary heroes, and contributing to nation building and ...socialist construction. With the implementation of the post-Mao modernization program in the late 1970s and 1980s and the advent of globalization and market reforms in the 1990s, China underwent a radical social and economic transformation that has led to a vastly more heterogeneous culture and polity. Yet China is dominated by a single Leninist party that continues to rely heavily on its revolutionary heritage to generate political legitimacy. With its messages of collectivism, self-sacrifice, and class struggle, that heritage is increasingly at odds with Chinese society and with the state's own neoliberal ideology of rapid-paced development, glorification of the market, and entrepreneurship. In this ambiguous political environment, museums and their curators must negotiate between revolutionary ideology and new kinds of historical narratives that reflect and highlight a neoliberal present.InExhibiting the Past, Kirk Denton analyzes types of museums and exhibitionary spaces, from revolutionary history museums, military museums, and memorials to martyrs to museums dedicated to literature, ethnic minorities, and local history. He discusses red tourism-a state sponsored program developed in 2003 as a new form of patriotic education designed to make revolutionary history come alive-and urban planning exhibition halls, which project utopian visions of China's future that are rooted in new conceptions of the past. Denton's method is narratological in the sense that he analyzes the stories museums tell about the past and the political and ideological implications of those stories. Focusing on "official" exhibitionary culture rather than alternative or counter memory, Denton reinserts the state back into the discussion of postsocialist culture because of its centrality to that culture and to show that state discourse in China is neither monolithic nor unchanging. The book considers the variety of ways state museums are responding to the dramatic social, technological, and cultural changes China has experienced over the past three decades.
Is Chávez Populist? Hawkins, Kirk A.
Comparative political studies,
08/2009, Letnik:
42, Številka:
8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article pushes forward our understanding of populism by developing one of the more underappreciated definitions of populism, populism as discourse. It does so by creating a quantitative measure ...of populist discourse suitable for cross-country and historical analysis. The article starts by laying out the discursive definition of populism in the context of existing definitions. It then operationalizes this definition through a holistic grading of speeches by current chief executives and a few historical figures. The result is a data set of elite-level populist discourse in more than 40 current and past governments from a variety of countries across the world, with special focus on Latin America. This measurement has high reliability comparable to standard human-coded content analysis, compares well to common understandings of actual cases of populism, and is a reasonably efficient technique even in small samples.
Ultraviolet‐B light (UV‐B) is one environmental signal perceived by plants that affects the flavonoid pathway and influences the levels of anthocyanins, flavonols, and proanthocyanidins. To ...understand the mechanisms underlying UV exposure, apple trees were grown under spectral filters that altered transmission of solar UV light. Fruit analysis showed that UV induced changes in physiology, metabolism, and gene expression levels during development over a season. These changes were sustained after storage. Under low UV, ripening was delayed, fruit size decreased, and anthocyanin and flavonols were reduced. Expression analysis showed changes in response to UV light levels for genes in the regulation and biosynthesis of anthocyanin and flavonols. Transcription of flavonol synthase (FLS), ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL 5 (HY5), MYB10, and MYB22 were down‐regulated throughout fruit development under reduced UV. Functional testing showed that the FLS promoter was activated by HY5, and this response was enhanced by the presence of MYB22. The MYB22 promoter can also be activated by the anthocyanin regulator, MYB10. As ambient levels of UV light vary around the globe, this study has implications for future crop production, the quality of which can be determined by the response to UV.
In this manuscript, we examined the mechanisms underlying UV exposure of apple trees grown under spectral filters that altered transmission of solar UV light. The experiment was conducted in the orchard so that we could examine relevant effects. Fruit analysis showed that UV induced changes in physiology, metabolism, and gene expression levels during development. The most fundamental of these changes was a severe reduction in fruit size under restricted UV exposure. Many of these UV‐induced changes were sustained well after harvest. Expression and functional analysis showed changes in genes involved in the regulation and biosynthesis of anthocyanin and flavonols. This study has implications for future crop production, the quality of which can be determined by the response to UV. We feel that this work is directly relevant to the readers of PC&E.
Populism is best understood as a Manichaean world view linked to a characteristic language or discourse. Chavismo, the movement that sustains Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, is a paradigmatic instance of ...populism. Using a novel, cross-country dataset on populist discourse, combined with extensive data from within Venezuela and across other countries, this book demonstrates that populist movements can be understood as responses to widespread corruption and economic crisis. The book analyzes the Bolivarian Circles and government missions in Venezuela, revealing how populist ideas influence political organization and policy. The analysis provides important insight into the nature of populism, including its causes and consequences, and addresses broader questions about the role of ideas in politics.
We present a benchmark investigation on the O-H bond dissociation enthalpies (BDEs) and ionization potential (IP) for gallic acid (GA), a widely known polyphenolic antioxidant. These properties were ...determined in the gas-phase and in water through the use of density functional theory (DFT), second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2), coupled-cluster with single and double excitations (CCSD), and coupled-cluster with single and double excitations as well as perturbative inclusion of triples (CCSD(T)). The 6-311++G(df,p), cc-pVDZ, aug-cc-pVDZ, cc-pVTZ, and aug-cc-pVTZ basis sets were used. Regarding DFT functionals, the M06-2X provided the best agreement for the BDEs when compared to the corresponding CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVTZ results; M06-2X was also found to be the most suitable for probing the IP for the protonated forms of GA while LC-ωPBE was the most reliable in the case of deprotonated GA. Given that these properties represent important descriptors for examining mechanisms related to the antioxidant potential of a given polyphenol, we hope that the present work can serve as a guide for computational chemists venturing in the field.