Humanities desk
< March 8	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 10 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 9[edit]

Is Alko a supermarket?[edit]

Someone recently added Alko to the template Template:Supermarkets in Finland. Is this right? I for myself can't see Alko as a supermarket as it is a government enterprise and not a commercial for-profit business. The Finnish law even prevents Alko from advertising its products. JIP | Talk 01:30, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Navigation templates are always a tough thing to hammer down, and aren't normally intended to be categorizations of any particular article. Based on the content of the template (including retail liquor stores and convenience stores), a better description might be "Retail food and drink in Finland". 69.174.144.79 (talk) 02:15, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Whether they're government-owned, allowed to advertise or for-profit is irrelevant. There are co-operative non-profit supermarkets too. What is relevant is what they sell. If (mostly) limited to alcoholic beverages, it's more like a liquor store than a supermarket. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:34, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alko is exclusively a liquor store. Well, Finnish law requires it to sell non-alcoholic drinks as well, but otherwise it's a liquor store. You won't find groceries, candy, electronics or household products in Alko. As by law only Alko is allowed to sell strong liquor, that's pretty much the only thing it does. JIP | Talk 11:04, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Based on your description, I would remove it from that template and any such categorization as a supermarket. It sounds almost exactly like what is, in the U.S., called ABC stores, where ABC stands for "Alcoholic Beverage Commission" or something similar (depending on the state). An ABC store is a state-run liquor store. --Jayron32 15:08, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Thank you, I have removed it from the template. JIP | Talk 15:27, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Xiongnu[edit]

What historians would be considered experts on the Xiongnu people? like their way of life and history and stuff like that? And what are the best books on the subject? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 00the0 (talk • contribs) 04:09, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The archaeologist Sergey S. Miniaev (Russian: Сергей С. Миняев; French: Serguei S. Minajev), not to be confused with TV-host Sergey Minaev, has published several studies on the Xiongnu. He is affiliated with the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, section Archaeology of Central Asia and Caucasus. --Lambiam 10:46, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Though not very up to date, Lev Gumilyov's first book was about the Xiongnu. It has been in print since 1960. Sergei Rudenko's book is out of print. Ghirla^-трёп- 17:36, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@00the0:, Thomas J. Barfield seems like the go-to guy:

The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
The Hsiung-nu Imperial Confederacy: Organization and Foreign Policy Journal of Asian Studies 41.1 (1981): 45–61.

Also works by Nicola Di Cosmo and

Psarras, Sophia-Karin. “Han and Xiongnu: A Reexamination of Cultural and Political Relations.” Monumenta Serica 51 (2003): 55–236.
Wallace, Leslie. “The Ends of the Earth: The Xiongnu Empire and Eastern Han Representations of the Afterlife from Shaanxi and Shanxi.” International Journal of Eurasian Studies 1 (2011): 232–258.

I think you'll find that most sources on the Xiongnu will be primarily on their relationship with the Han dynasty, or China as a whole. Part of this would be the superior interest in the Han empire, but its largely a result of so little being none about the Xiongnu in the first place. Aza24 (talk) 23:06, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]