British Agriculture: Texts for the Zoo-Archaeologist

Abstract

This article provides a compendium of quotations from early British writers on agriculture which may be of interest to the zoo-archaeology of late Medieval and post-Medieval periods.     

EUROPEAN BRIEFING: The Transition to Environmental Agriculture in Europe: Learning Processes and Knowledge Networks

Environmental policies in agriculture have now been fully incorporated into policy throughout Europe both within and outside of the European Union. One of the cornerstones to the successful implementation of these policies is both the willingness and ability of farmers to implement them. Many actors influence both the formulation and implementation of such policies, from governments, through pressure groups and the agricultural knowledge networks (AKNs) in various countries, to farmers themselves. In assessing the principal objectives of all of these actors, it can be seen that none has environmental goals as their principal objective, and the development of policies is thus both difficult and a residual priority. This situation is likely to be ameliorated not through a focus on more effective policy instruments for agri-environmental polices, but through adjustments of administrative structures for both their development and in carrying them out.     

现代化后的日本农业:问题与对策

20世纪70年代,日本农业顺利完成了由传统到现代的决定性转变。日本农业在完成了现代化任务之后还面临着诸多“后现代”问题,主要表现为农产品自给率下降,农业结构性矛盾突出,农地经营规模难以扩大,农业补贴的财政负担沉重等,为此日本政府在农业立法、体制改革、粮食战略、比较优势和有机农业等方面采取了有效对策。     

From born to made: technology, biology and space

This paper is concerned with forging new links between geography and biology and technology by delivering a set of shocks to the meaning of accepted categories like 'nature' and 'technology'. To achieve these dual aims, the paper will double click on the icon 'intelligence'. 'Intelligence' prioritizes the active shaping of environments . It thereby allows space for the spaces of the world to themselves become a part of intelligibility and intellect as elements of distributed cognition and , as will become clear, pre-cognition. The paper argues that such a conception of sentience can provide a series of new perspectives, as well as a pressing ethical challenge.     

互助:谱写农业新篇章

为了顺利实现由传统农业向现代农业的跃进,近几年来,互助县狠抓了农业生产基地建设,顺天应市调整产业结构,因地制宜构建种植养殖区.一村一品一乡一业的农业发展新格局已初步形成.     

解决三农问题的指针--解读中共中央2004年1号文件

本文从解决“三农“问题的社会经济背景、思路和策略以及就这一问题的治标与治本等方面对中共中央2004年1号文件进行了解析,对全面、准确地理解这一文件有积极意义.     

The limited capacity of management to rescue UK defence policy: a review and a word of caution

Political and media attention in the UK is devoted to three interrelated aspects of defence: policy, the management of defence resources and military operations. This article argues that the 1998 Strategic Defence Review placed excessive reliance on anticipated improvements in the management of defence resources to render Labour's defence policies affordable. The field of attempted defence management improvements is surveyed and it is concluded that no final answers were generated on the key issues of the division of tasks among uniformed personnel, civil servants and the private sector, or on whether defence should be run largely on a capability basis or on single service lines. Given the demonstrated similarity between the government's concepts of the UK's role in the world in the Strategic Defence Review (1998) and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) (2010), there is a clear danger that the SDSR also relies too much on efficiency savings. By reference to the inherent complications of defence management and to three strands of management thought (complexity management, wicked problems and principal–agent theory), the article argues that some inefficiency will always be present. It suggests that the Clausewitzian concept of friction, accepted as pertinent to the area of military operations, might also be applied to efforts to generate military capability. It concludes that defence reviews should not be based on assumptions about efficiency savings and that students of international security and defence need to pay attention to both the volume of resources going into defence and the mechanisms by which they are managed.     

Reforming Cuban Agriculture

This article focuses on the two major reforms undertaken in the Cuban agricultural sector during 1993 and 1994: the re-organization of the state farm sector into worker-managed production co-operatives and the opening of free agricultural markets for above-plan production. It is argued that the Cuban agricultural sector is now characterized by multiple forms of organization of production and land tenure or a ‘mixed economy’, and that the two reforms have produced a turn-around in agricultural performance. Still, the macro-economic impact is likely to depend on a deepening of the reforms in two directions: the development of a free market in agricultural inputs and a reform of the food rationing system.     

论雍正诗歌中的重农思想

清朝的康、雍、乾三代都非常关心并着力解决农业发展问题,而能够在较短的时间内取得重大成就,应属雍正。他在位虽然只有13年,但在解决农业发展问题上所取得的成就,从某种意义上来说．胜过其父、其子。雍正不仅是一位有作为的皇帝,而且还是一位学家和诗人。在他的诗歌中有关农业题材的诗占有很大比重．内容无所不包。处处体现出他重农、劝农、爱农,以农为本的思想,这种思想成为他诗歌创作和治国理民的主题歌、主旋律。     

农业的全球化：大米贸易的警示

近年来 ,全球化问题是国际和国内社会科学许多领域讨论得最热烈的话题之一。占统治地位的观点认为 :全球化和世界体系是从近代开始的 ,这一体系以西欧资本主义为中心 ,向边缘地区、次边缘地区发散 ;或者 ,资本主义世界体系把世界划分为主宰国家和附属国家 ,等等。总之 ,这种观点认为 ,世界体系的中心是欧洲和北美。贡德·弗兰克的《白银资本》对这一占统治地位的观点提出挑战 ,认为整体的世界体系不是从资本主义开始的 ,它在很早以前就存在了 ;它不是存在五百年 ,而是五千年。他通过研究 1 6 40年的世界史 ,特别是围绕白银资本在一些国家所产生的作用 ,认为那个时候 ,世界体系的中心不是在西方 ,而是在东方。无独有偶 ,现任美国农业历史学会主席彼得·考克莱尼斯也对这一传统观点提出了挑战 ,但是 ,他论点的提出是建立在更有充分论据的基础上。他赞同《共产党宣言》中马克思和恩格斯关于资本主义对全球一体化产生了积极作用的观点 ,但是 ,他进一步认为 ,全球化是一个非常复杂的问题。他通过对世界一体化大米市场形成历史的考察 ,提出 :全球化问题不是一个新问题 ,它已有很长的历史 ;今天工业和服务业的全球化似乎是重复和再现很久以前农业全球化的现象 ;而且 ,全球化进程中国家对国家的影响不是单方向的     

Agriculture and community in Chaco Canyon: Revisiting Pueblo Alto

The Bonito Phase (ca. AD 860–1140) in Chaco Canyon is widely recognized as one of the primary sources of information about emergent social complexity in prehispanic North America. Large masonry buildings called “great houses,” such as Pueblo Bonito, are iconic symbols of the rapid rise of a powerful society based on the ability to harness labor to prolonged construction projects. It is clear that the political forces at work during the Bonito Phase had an agricultural foundation, presumably in the financing of construction through food surpluses, but the actual nature of farming in Chaco is surprisingly opaque to archaeologists. Indeed, many researchers have concluded that farming in Chaco Canyon was too constrained by poor soils to have supported the dynamic developments associated with the massive stone structures and extensive trade systems of the Bonito Phase. The popular perspective that Chaco was mysterious or enigmatic is largely a response to this view of the canyon as agriculturally marginal. In this study we argue that a predictive model of potential agricultural productivity that includes other portions of the canyon besides the floodplain indicates that Chaco was not marginal for farming. The results of this analysis suggest that great house communities may have been sited to control local production zones and that some great houses may have been linked to others in order to manage multiple agricultural areas.     

Between the sword and the wall: Spain's limited options for Catalan secessionism

We propose a game theoretical model to assess the capacity of Catalonia to become a recognised, independent country with at least a de facto European Union (EU) membership. Support for Catalan independence has been increasing for reasons pertaining to identity and economics. Spain can avoid a vote for independence by effectively ‘buying‐out’ a proportion of the Catalan electorate with a funding agreement favourable to Catalonia. If, given the current economic circumstances, the buying‐out strategy is too expensive, a pro‐independence vote is likely to pass. Our model predicts an agreement in which Spain and the EU accommodate Catalan independence in exchange for Catalonia taking a share of the Spanish debt. If Spain and the EU do not accommodate, Spain becomes insolvent, which in turn destabilises the EU. The current economic woes of Spain and the EU both contribute to the desire for Catalan independence and make it possible.     

From innovation to use: Ten eclectic theses on the historiography of technology

Abstract

The paper argues that most (Anglo‐Saxon) historiography of technology, including recent sociologically‐oriented work, is concerned with innovation rather than technology, and that there has been an unfortunate conflation between the two. Distinguishing innovation from use allows an engagement between the history of technology and history more generally, and is essential to the investigation of questions concerned with gender, race, and class in the history of technology. Moreover a focus on use allows us to make better sense of such terms as “technological determinism”. The history of innovation, while interesting and important, cannot address many issues which should be central to the history of technology, and cannot answer many of the questions historians of technology pretend to ask. A history of technology‐in‐use does so and, at the same time, opens up new areas for investigation, including the history of maintenance, repair and remodelling, as well as further developing accounts of innovation based on use. The paper deals largely with modern technology, and draws on a number of different, and all too often disjointed, traditions of thinking about the role of technology in history.