Counting them in,not out: Surveying Farm Women about Agricultural Leadership

This paper examines the efficacy of the survey method to investigate questions relating to women and agricultural leadership. I begin by reviewing the feminist critique of the survey using examples from the literature on farming women. I then describe two particular difficulties I encountered in surveying farm women about agricultural leadership in the Australian sugar industry. The first difficulty is the problem of constructing a sample of farm women using official data sources that is representative of the diversity of women in agriculture. The second difficulty is the impact that gendered agricultural identities may have on survey completion rates. The paper argues that, if we are to count farming women ‘in’, rather than ‘out’ when studying agricultural politics, we need to engage with methods which will be inclusive of the diversity of women in farming and which will also give consideration to the construction of gendered identities in agriculture.     

Understanding Local Leadership in Building the Capacity of Rural Communities in Australia

Current approaches to rural community development in Australia provide for limited government intervention. Such intervention is usually housed within programmes that seek to build the internal capacity of communities to achieve long term socio‐economic sustainability. A fundamental implementation strategy for capacity building has been developing local leadership. The underlying assumption of this approach is that good leadership will result in existing resources being mobilised for a more sustainable function and new resources attracted. What though is good leadership in terms of building the capacity of rural communities to develop sustainable socio‐economic futures? This paper compares the conceptualisation of leadership within rural development policies and leadership training programmes with the nature of local leadership as it exists in on‐ground community building projects. From an in‐depth review of the role and nature of local leadership within six Australian rural communities it was found that local leadership could result in improved adaptive capacity if the leadership is similar in nature to Burn's (1978 ) transformational model of leadership. Within policy, local leadership was most often conceptualised as being similar to this transformational model. However, rural leadership training programmes tended to conceptualise leadership as a top‐down process, similar to Burn's (1978 ) transactional model. While this study of leadership within rural communities revealed that transactional skills, as taught in leadership training programmes, were important for successful project management, such skills did not necessarily result in improved community adaptive capacity. It is suggested that, while transactional leadership can have an important role in influencing the development of rural communities, greater attention needs to be given to developing strategies to support transformational leadership.     

Unpacking the ‘Emergent Farmer’ Concept in Agrarian Reform: Evidence from Livestock Farmers in South Africa

South Africa has historically perpetuated a dual system of freehold commercial and communal subsistence farming. To bridge these extremes, agrarian reform policies have encouraged the creation of a class of ‘emergent’, commercially oriented farmers. However, these policies consider ‘emergent’ farmers as a homogeneous group of land reform beneficiaries, with limited appreciation of the class differences between them, and do little to support the rise of a ‘middle’ group of producers able to bridge that gap. This article uses a case study of livestock farmers in Eastern Cape Province to critique the ‘emergent farmer’ concept. The authors identify three broad categories of farmers within the emergent livestock sector: a large group who, despite having accessed private farms, remain effectively subsistence farmers; a smaller group of small/medium‐scale commercial producers who have communal farming origins and most closely approximate to ‘emergent’ farmers; and an elite group of large‐scale, fully commercialized farmers, whose emergence has been facilitated primarily by access to capital and a desire to invest in alternative business ventures. On this basis the authors suggest that current agrarian reform policies need considerable refocusing if they are to effectively facilitate the emergence of a ‘middle’ group of smallholder commercial farmers from communal systems.     

抗战时期陕甘宁边区代耕问题研究

抗日根据地的代耕是根据地政权实行的帮助没有劳动力或劳动力不足的抗工属和退伍军人代耕、代种、代管、代收的制度。在陕甘宁边区,它是诸多优抗措施中最中心的方式。边区政府颁布了一系列相关条例和细则,制定了代耕原则、代耕办法、代耕方式及加强代耕的组织领导和思想教育等措施。代耕的实施,对改善抗工属及退伍军人的生活,稳定军心,激励士气乃至抗战的胜利起到了重要作用。边区的代耕充分体现了统一战线的政治特征和全民性、长期性等时代特色。     

Cultural retaliation: the cultural policies of the ‘new’ Front National

This study examines the conception of culture and the cultural policies of the French Front National. Tracing the developments of the party’s cultural agenda before and after Marine Le Pen took over the leadership of the party from her father, I show how the Front National has adapted its discourse on cultural policy to its wider programmatic profile. In the context of a strategy of de-radicalisation promoted by Marine Le Pen, recent years have witnessed focussed efforts by the party leadership to professionalise and modernise the party’s cultural policy programme. However, the analysis of the party’s current cultural policy agenda reveals a remarkable continuity in the way the party leadership conceives of national culture and of what cultural policy should promote. This programmatic continuity becomes apparent in the analysis of the local cultural policies of municipalities won by the Front National in 2014. Exploring the cultural agendas of ten local governments with a Front National majority, I argue that the cultural policies of the Front National remain deeply rooted in a nativist understanding of culture and a dirigiste approach that wilfully excludes postcolonial minorities.     

China's New Leaders: Perspectives on Geographic Trends and Realities

A senior American specialist on the geography of China examines several aspects of China's society, economy, regional organization, and geopolitical position in light of the change in the country's leadership at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. After a brief comparison of the incoming and retiring leadership groups in terms of backgrounds and past policy pronouncements (as well as discussing the challenge posed by corruption), the author proceeds to discuss a series of key social and regional development policies that may be subject to some degree of change under the new leadership, including hukou and the one-child policy. He then focuses on the 12th Five-Year Plan, which provides a broad outline of the new leadership's goals, and particularly its emphasis on balanced regional development (a commitment to further develop the interior of the country as well as to revitalize the old heavy industrial region, the Northeast). The author then turns to China's growing military (and particularly naval) power in connection with its increasing assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas as well as ability to project naval power across the Taiwan Strait and beyond into the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters.     

中共三代领导集体全球战略观的演变

建国以来 ,中共三代领导集体根据国际战略形势的变化发展 ,提出不同时期的全球战略思想 ,毛泽东依据世界格局的变化 ,提出了三个世界理论 ,并从战略高度及时调整了我国的内外政策 ;邓小平分析了当代世界格局的新变动 ,提出了和平与发展是时代主题的理论 ,进一步调整了中国的外交政策 ;江泽民分析了我国改革开放和现代化建设的新国际环境 ,提出了“争取一个长期的和平国际环境”的战略方针 ,开创了面向新世纪的外交新局面。从建国初期的“一边倒”战略到六七十年代的“一条线”战略 ,从“一条线”战略再到 80年代确立的不当头、不结盟的战略方针 ,中共三代领导集体的全球战略观有着内在的密切联系 ,即都始终坚持了独立自主和反对霸权主义 ,维护世界和平的原则立场。表明了中国共产党人深邃敏锐的世界历史眼光和对世界历史进程的自觉把握。     

The Genesis of Economic Cooperation in the Stories of Joseph: A Constitutional and Institutional Economic Reconstruction

Abstract

The paper analyzes in constitutional and institutional economic terms Joseph’s economic policies, such as changes to property rights arrangements for farming, the introduction of a barter tax on crop production, and the multi-layered bureaucratic hierarchies of Egypt. Utilizing Buchanan’s approach to constitutional economics, I argue that these policies lowered attack/defense costs as they arise, when a group attempts to escape from the natural distribution state (the “war of all”, as Hobbes called it). A key thesis is that this encouraged interacting parties, already on the grounds of selfinterested choice, to engage in societal contracting out of the “war of all,” thereby reaping mutual gains.

Complementary to this strand of analysis, I have drawn on other institutional economic concepts, particularly those that were introduced by Williamson, and by North and Weingast. The paper argues in this respect that Joseph’s policies credibly and more reliably guaranteed property rights, which in turn lowered transaction costs of the interacting parties, i.e. Egypt and Israel. This ultimately yielded mutual gains and high economic performance for the society depicted in Genesis. In this way, cooperation was generated in economic terms.     

From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action: exploring Poland's struggle with its Ukrainian minority (1944–89)*

ABSTRACT. The ambivalent attitude of Poland's communist leadership towards Poland's minorities – on the one hand violent and severely repressive, while on the other hand allowing for controlled liberties and offering protection – is the main focus of this article. In the mid‐1940s, Poland's new communist leadership proceeded to expel and deport millions of Germans, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians from their native territories. A decade later, the communist government adopted a policy that aimed at the reduction of discrimination and the creation of equal social and economic opportunities for the country's residual minority populations. This article explores the background of the wavering communist nationalities policies by focusing on Poland's Ukrainians. It demonstrates how the seemingly contradictory policies of ethnic cleansing and affirmative action were prompted by the same underlying political motivations.     

Stable isotope analysis of Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations from Aktopraklık,northern Anatolia

This paper presents the results of stable isotope (carbon and nitrogen) analysis of human and faunal remains from the site of Aktoprakl?k, one of the earliest farming sites in the Eastern Marmara region of Northwest Anatolia. Excavations at this site have shown that occupation occurs from the middle of the 7th millennium BC through to the middle of the 6th millennium BC. The earliest Neolithic activity at this location occurs at the settlement site of Aktoprakl?k C. Since 2004 a number of Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic burials have been recovered from the settlement areas and an Early Chalcolithic cemetery (Aktoprakl?k B and A respectively). To date a total of 60 individuals have been recovered from Aktoprakl?k, 23 of which (20 adults [10 males, 8 females and 2 indet adults] and 3 children below ca. 12 years of age) form the basis of the current isotope study. In addition, 14 faunal samples from cattle, pig, sheep/goat and fallow deer are included in the analysis in order to facilitate a consideration of trophic level shifts and to interpret the ¹³C data. The data represents the first isotopic study of a farming community from this region of Anatolia. This region is important to our understanding of the north-westwards transmission of farming into Europe from the Near East, and as such Aktoprakl?k represents a key site for studying the diet of farmers at the transition to agriculture. The close clustering of isotope values overall indicates homogeneity in subsistence practices for this farming population. Interestingly, the isotope values indicate a general focus on C₃ terrestrial resources at Aktoprakl?k, despite the close proximity of both freshwater and marine environments where alternative resources could have been procured.     

Geographical Preplanning Studies of Economic Complexes in the South of Krasnoyarsk Kray

The planning of the Sayan economic complex, a major development region in the South of Krasnoyarsk Kray, is found to have focused mainly on the use of local resources without adequately considering the complex interplay of man-nature relationships. In particular, little work has been done on problems of landscape ecology, including a determination of landscape budgets and of the ecological functioning of geosystems. The results of relevant investigations are presented, focusing on the present distribution of production and settlement within the study region, the natural landscape and forest use, land and agroclimatic resources, types of farming and levels of farm equipment, and some aspects of human ecology. The study region is found to suffer from excessive concentration of production and settlement in the center of the Minusinsk Basin, a net out-migration exceeding natural increase of population, and an extensive type of farming that is less economical than the dairy economy and truck produce required for a growing urban population.     

Prehistoric farming in the mfolozi and hluhluwe valleys of Southeast Africa: an archaeo-botanical survey

The Mfolozi and Hluhluwe Valleys of southeastern Africa are representative of a sub-tropical biome and have archaeological evidence for farming settlement spanning more than 1500 years. By collecting information on soils and plant communities within the same sample frame as archaeological data, the relative importance of environmental and anthropomorphic influences can be assessed. It is argued that, although climate and soils have determined the overall distribution of plant communities, human land use has had a considerable effect on the composition of both woodland and grassland. The nature of this interaction between man and environment provides inferential data on prehistoric economies and also aids the formulation of conservation policies in protected areas.     

西海固区域文化与可持续发展研究

西海固地区是贫困民族地区。文章认为西海固地区区域文化具有农耕文化和牧业文化交错过渡性,伊斯兰宗教文化的主导性,区域文化的封闭性和落后性以及生育文化的独特性等特征。文章详细分析了区域文化对区域摆脱贫困和区域可持续发展的影响,并提出了加快区域文化建设,实现区域可持续发展的基本对策。     

Brazilian cultural policies during the workers’ party governments: challenges for the development of cultural citizenship

ABSTRACT

The presidential elections that brought the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT) to federal power represented a new moment for Brazil with the implementation of democratic, inclusive and sovereign policies. In the area of culture, the Ministry of Culture reclaimed a leadership role for the State and developed public policies with the critical participation of civil society. During the administrations of presidents Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, culture finally reached a new level. This article seeks to determine to what extent the cultural policies undertaken by these administrations promoted cultural citizenship. Based on a study of the course of cultural policies in the country, we argue that despite a conceptual and ideological orientation in this direction, the Ministry was unable to surpass certain barriers and overcome longstanding problems.     

Coalition-building in Portuguese Spatial Planning: Is There a Southern European Context?

This paper aims to discuss institutional capacity building in spatial planning focussing on two experiences of public policy in Portugal involving institutional cooperation. These experiences reveal the importance of factors associated with the roles of the central state and local political leadership in the way integrated tools of urban and territorial policy are implemented. They also show that the capacity to mobilize local agents is mitigated by the deep-rooted presence of highly personalized institutional ties, reflecting a relational model that is particularly characteristic of Portuguese society. We will conclude that territorial policies may be jeopardized when these policies are centred mainly upon the mobilization of local agents. In fact, these two case-studies, as well as similar experiences in Italy, suggest that, in southern Europe, two other aspects are central for the definition of territorial policies on the inter-municipal and local scales: the influence of the state, and the role of political leadership at local level.     

Foraging–Farming Transitions in Island Southeast Asia

The origins of agriculture have been debated by archaeologists for most of the discipline’s history, no more so than in Island Southeast Asia. The orthodox view is that Neolithic farmers spread south by sea from mainland China to Taiwan and thence to Island Southeast Asia, taking with them a new material culture and domestic rice and pigs and speaking the precursor of the Austronesian languages that are spoken in the region today. Opponents of this ‘farming/language dispersal’ theory have proposed models of acculturation, in which foragers acquired new material culture and food resources by trading with farmers. However, new work in archaeology, palaeoecology, palynology and anthropology, especially in Borneo, and in genetics and linguistics for the region as a whole, is suggesting that foraging/farming transitions in Southeast Asia were far more complex than either of these opposing ‘grand narratives’ of discontinuity (population colonisation) or continuity (acculturation) allows. Through the course of the Early/Mid-Holocene new material culture, technologies and foods were variously taken up, promoted or resisted in order to provision changes in the social and ideological constitution of societies. Whilst new readings of the data for foraging–farming transitions in the region vary, a consensus is emerging that it is more useful to focus on how materials and modes of life were used to underwrite changes in social networks than to seek to explain the archaeological record in terms of migrating farmers or acculturating foragers.     

Peace with Hamas? The Transforming Potential of Political Participation

One of the unresolved dilemmas in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process is whether peace is possible without, or feasible with, Hamas. This article seeks to explain why Israeli policies have thus far failed and why inclusion of Hamas in the peace process is more likely to produce a lasting peace. Using data drawn from interviews, fieldwork and surveys, and theoretical perspectives from peace, terrorism and social movement studies, the article analyses the evolution Hamas has undergone since its inception and how changes in its leadership, onstituency and political culture have affected the movement's attitudes towards peace and compromise.     

Socialism with Chinese characteristics: China and the theory of the initial stage of socialism

The development of Chinese thinking on social ism is traced through from the recognition in the 1950s that it was at an early stage, transi tional to a higher, developed form. The theory of the initial stage in recent years is seen as giving some theoretical content to the concept often employed by Deng Xiaoping of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, although Deng has avoided its use. It is argued that the theory of the initial stage does provide some doctrinal underpinning for a range of practical and pragmatic policies not otherwise seen as particularly socialist in their nature. At the same time the theory seeks to assure domestic and foreign groups involved in current economic reform measures that these policies have a solid grounding in theory and will not be reversed on a whim by either this or some subsequent leadership group.     

Official land disposal policies and European settlement in southern Africa 1860–1960

Land disposal by southern African administrations to European settlers between 1860 and 1960 was pursued on a more extensive scale than in the previous two centuries. This reflected the increased ability of local governments to seize land occupied by the indigenes. African land rights received scant attention as most of the sub-continent was taken by conquest, thereby offering governments the opportunity to settle Europeans upon the land. By 1860 the local European settler communities had achieved control over their own land policies, which were framed under political pressure from the rapidly growing rural European population. Land settlement policies were, however, severely constrained by existing practices, which emphasized extensive pastoral farming to the detriment of the development of crop farming and plantation agriculture.     

The Nice Musical Chairs Model: Exploring the Role of Competition and Cooperation Between Farming and Herding in the Formation of Land Use Patterns in Arid Afro-Eurasia

Following a strictly theory-building approach, we developed an agent-based simulation model, the Nice Musical Chairs model, to represent the competition between groups of stakeholders of farming and herding activities in the arid Afro-Eurasia. The model deepens the questions raised by the results of our former model, the Musical Chairs model, and further introduces three socio-economic mechanisms, which modulate the behavior and performance of stakeholders and their groups. First, we define land use pairing as the awarding, regarding productivity, of any direct cooperation between farming and herding within a group. Second, group management is modeled as the prerogative of a group leadership to manage stakeholders to pursue a particular proportion between farming and herding. Third, we introduce restricted access to pasture as the engagement in territorial control of rangelands in opposition to an open access regime. An exhaustive exploration of scenarios and parameters placed the control over rangelands as the most significant factor in the formation of land use patterns, followed by land use management. While the effect of land use pairing is mild in comparison, it is still a significant factor in group selection and thus in the persistence of particular land use patterns in the long run.