Nabataean Dushārā (Dusares) — an overlooked cuirassed god

Abstract

This paper sheds new light on the images of the Nabataean god Dushārā on the coins of Roman Bostra under Commodus, Caracalla and Philip the Arab. It analyses and interprets for the first time iconographic details such as the god's cuirass, his Alexander-like hairstyle and the assimilation of his facial features to the emperor of the day on the coin obverses. This study argues that Dushārā's image is a late ad-hoc creation for a local Bostran context that did not travel far beyond the city. Alongside the anthropomorphic representation, Dushārā continued to be depicted and worshipped in the form of a betyl at Bostra, Petra and throughout the Roman province of Arabia.     

Heritage landscapes compared/contrasted,contested/interpreted,lost/won

The landscape concept plays a growing role in anthropology and archeology, especially for discussions of “heritage landscapes.” Landscape has long been a central theme in geography, but with democratized Geographic Information Systems (GIS), that theoretical legacy can be overlooked. Critical theory based on international examples shows that heritage landscape designation is socio-politically charged, with indigenous voices often drowned out by those of experts representing governments, international agencies, and industry. Study of North American archeological bison-kill sites as landscapes long predates “formally named landscape archeology”, but their protection and interpretation remain challenging. Involvement of indigenous people in heritage landscape preservation is inadequate and must be strengthened.     

The origin of the ancient Egyptian drink Shedeh revealed using LC/MS/MS

Ancient Egyptians were buried with the most precious food and drink as sustenance for their afterlife. One of these was Shedeh, the most valued and appreciated beverage in ancient Egypt. The botanic origin of Shedeh remains unclear as no mention of its raw material has survived. Some scholars have proposed that Shedeh was a pomegranate wine, while others, a grape wine. Presented here is the first ever analytical evidence of Shedeh's origin through the analysis of a sample of a residue from an extraordinarily well preserved Shedeh amphora from King Tutankhamun's collection. The previously developed LC/MS/MS wine markers method for archaeological samples was used and our results reveal Shedeh had a red grape origin.     

Post/neo/liberalism in relational perspective

Within a decade of the new millennium new left governments in many countries across Latin America developed new constitutions that bespeak a new, postneoliberal era, supplanting neoliberal hegemony. Debates about postneoliberalism-as-governance or as a discourse lack resolution. Drawing from Foucault's lecture series The Birth of Biopolitics, which engages the relation between neoliberalism and liberalism, as well as from his general analytic approach, we cast postneoliberalism, neoliberalism, and liberalism in relational terms relative to principles not time periods, and offer precision on how different discourses co-exist and become mutually entangled and politicized in the context of neoliberal practices. We reference points in our argument with empirical research in various Latin American contexts, and in the penultimate section we thread the argument through current dynamics in one context, Nicaragua. Although overall we concur with the critical literature about the neoliberal character of pink-tide governments in practice, in the final section we depart from the prevailing approach that focuses on formal government as the bellwether of change and conclude by drawing attention to prospects for postneoliberal practices in the microspaces of daily life. Drawing from Foucault's late scholarship on ethics and mindful of the longstanding role of informality in Latin American political economy, we clarify how postneoliberal values can materialize in everyday life while formal governmental actions and policies persist as neoliberal amid liberal, postneoliberal, as well as socialist discourses.     

Gas breakthrough experiments on pelitic rocks: comparative study with N2, CO2 and CH4

The capillary‐sealing efficiency of intermediate‐ to low‐permeable sedimentary rocks has been investigated by N₂, CO₂ and CH₄ breakthrough experiments on initially fully water‐saturated rocks of different lithological compositions. Differential gas pressures up to 20 MPa were imposed across samples of 10–20 mm thickness, and the decline of the differential pressures was monitored over time. Absolute (single‐phase) permeability coefficients (k_abs), determined by steady‐state fluid flow tests, ranged between 10^?22 and 10^?15 m². Maximum effective permeabilities to the gas phase k_eff(max), measured after gas breakthrough at maximum gas saturation, extended from 10^?26 to 10^?18 m². Because of re‐imbibition of water into the interconnected gas‐conducting pore system, the effective permeability to the gas phase decreases with decreasing differential (capillary) pressure. At the end of the breakthrough experiments, a residual pressure difference persists, indicating the shut‐off of the gas‐conducting pore system. These pressures, referred to as the ‘minimum capillary displacement pressures’ (P_d), ranged from 0.1 up to 6.7 MPa. Correlations were established between (i) absolute and effective permeability coefficients and (ii) effective or absolute permeability and capillary displacement pressure. Results indicate systematic differences in gas breakthrough behaviour of N₂, CO₂ and CH₄, reflecting differences in wettability and interfacial tension. Additionally, a simple dynamic model for gas leakage through a capillary seal is presented, taking into account the variation of effective permeability as a function of buoyancy pressure exerted by a gas column underneath the seal.     

Boekbesprekings/Book reviews

Abstract

The departure point of this article is the postmodern critique of my book, The Dead Will Arise. The object of the article is not however to defend either the book itself or the 'constructionist’ school of historiography to which it apparently belongs. The first part of the article seeks to clarify the epistemological basis on which constructionist historians claim the right to engage with and interpret the past. In the process of doing so, it establishes a conceptual framework capable of defining relevance in the context of post-democratic South African historiography. It argues that historians have a duty to prioritise the ‘scars’ and ‘pitfalls’ of South African history failing which they become mere lapdogs, decorative but irrelevant. It is further argued that, although historians have the right to study whatever they choose, there is something intrinsically wrong with institutional mechanisms which produce nothing but lapdogs, and that university history departments need to take more of a lead.     

NEITHER/NOR

An Atheism that is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought examines the advent of antihumanism as a cultural figure out of a network of intellectual crises in interwar and postwar France and ties this advent to the more general consequences of secularization in the modern age. Bracketing political judgments, and eschewing dialectical methods, Stefanos Geroulanos shows how the critique of humanism that emerged from disparate quarters of French intellectual life resulted in a series of negative positions that rendered the human void of any conceptual content and thereby unsuitable as a basis for future political action or philosophical investigation. In addition to basing his analysis on two rigorously sketched concepts of his own design, “antifoundational realism” and “negative anthropology,” Geroulanos deploys a striking use of conceptual irony to show how the critical efforts of his protagonists often led to theoretical cul‐de‐sacs and a heightened measure of existential despondency. The treatment of the emergence of antihumanism as a local phenomenon among a segment of French intellectuals nevertheless encounters problems when it abandons the terrain of historical argument for an engagement with broader metaphysical concerns. By participating in the discourse of its subjects, An Atheism that is Not Humanist finds its way into cul‐de‐sacs of its own, in which, for example, the ostensibly political bearing of efforts to transcend mere politics for broader considerations of the “theo‐political crisis of modernity” remains unclear. Finally, by accepting the terms of the phenomenological diagnosis of metaphysical crisis in the interwar years, the book compromises certain of its genealogical aspirations, especially with regard to the legacy of Third Republic idealism and the specific qualities of post‐phenomenological structuralism.     

Ethnography In/Of/As Open Systems1

Afton, Jean, David Fridtjof Halaas and Andrew E. Masich. Cheyenne Dog Soldiers: A Ledgerbook History of Coups and Combat. Niwot: The University Press of Colorado, 1987. xxxii + 400 pp. including illustrations, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography and index. $49.95 cloth.

Berlo, Janet C., ed. Plains Indian Drawings, 1865–1935: Pages from a Visual History. New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1997. 240 pp. including illustrations, bibliography and index. $60 cloth.     

福田康夫执政以来中日关系的发展与前景

自2007年9月底福田康夫担任日本首相以来,中日关系明显升温。主要表现在：两国军方的交流开启了新的篇章;福田首相2007年12月底访华。福田执政以来,日本政界最显著的变化是：执政党自民党和最大的在野党民主党在对华关系方面形成了良性的竞争。这种变化非常有利于改善中日关系。本文最后结合中日关系的最新动向指出：两国关系目前的升温,基础非常薄弱,福田个人发挥了决定性的作用。要修补靖国神社等问题对中日关系的伤害,还必须下慢功夫。     

Reviews/Comptes rendus

Book reviewed in this article:
The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise by DAVID N. LIVINGSTONE
Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development by JOHN FRIEDMANN
Development from Within: Survival in Rural Africa edited by D.R. FRASER TAYLOR and FIONA MACKENZIE
Les partenaires du développement face au défi du local sous la direction de CHRISTIANA GAGNON et JUAN-LUIS KLEIN
Human Geography by WILLIAM NORTON
Water Diversion and Export: Learning from the Canadian Experience by J.C. DAY and FRANK QUINN
To Build in a New Land: Ethnic Landscapes in North America edited by ALLEN G. NOBLE
Population Change in Canada: The Challenges of Policy Adaptation by RODERIC BEAUJOT
Community, Environment, and Health: Geographic Perspectives edited by M.V. HAYES, LESLIE T. FOSTER and HAROLD D. FOSTER     

REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Venture Capital: International Comparisons
People, Places, Patterns, Processes: Geographical Perspectives on the Canadian Past
Creating the Second Cold War: The Discourse of Politics
Industrial Dislocation: The Case of Global Shipbuilding
Choosing Canada's Capital: Conflict Resolution in a Parliamentary System
The New Era of Global Competition: State Policy and Market Power
Resource Management and Development
Recreational Tourism: A Social Science Perspective     

Aeroponic gardens and their magic: Plants/persons/ethics in suspension

Out of the fire bombed ruins and food deprivation of the Second World War came one innovator’s prototype for growing edible plants, suspended above earth and requiring a minimum of water. His aeroponic apparatus would later be referred to as The Genesis Machine, from the movie Star Trek II. This paper travels with roots in air into different spheres where the relations of persons, plants, and technology conspire to place future – growing into ethical suspension. The aim is to open questions for an anthropocenic future: Are plants ‘for’ persons or persons ‘for’ plants? Is it ethical to separate growing plants from earth/Earth and from earthlings? Where might ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘innovative eclecticism’ find a place in post-genomic discourse? And might a commitment to a dividual ethics guide lives in co-becoming to devise (as Latour recognizes in like terms) a scitech-diplomacy capable of resisting the programmatic pressures of new climatic regimes?     

Deconstructing/Reconstructing Ethnicity

Abstract. Ethnicity is here viewed as a continuum, varying widely in terms of salience, intensity and meaning, along which several types of ethnicity can be distinguished. Domination ethnicity is where a nation imposes monocultural control – it can be regarded as a form of ethnicity. Enclosure ethnicity has three variants – dormant ethnicity, cultural confinement, and inward-looking ethnicity. Competition ethnicity competes over resources of the state and development. Finally, optional ethnicity is of low intensity and is light, volitional and fluid, as in the case of ethnic entrepreneurs and symbolic ethnicity. What is considered as well are the dynamics of ethnicity, shifting from one mode to another. The politics of ethnicity is here taken up in terms of emancipation and domination. Perspectives on ethnicity are framed by the changing meanings of ethnicity over time. The final question concerns the endgames of ethnicity, or the paths of change of different types of ethnicity, and how each relates to ethnic conflict regulation.     

Reviews/Computers Rendus

Between the Summit and the Sea: Central Veracruz in the Nineteenth Century by Alfred H. Siemens,
Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries by Kenneth Nebenzahl
Chaos and Socio-Spatial Dynamics by D.S. DENDRRNOS and M. SONS, Applied Mathematical Series Volume 86
Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape by Michael Hough, Yale University Press
The Polar Regions: Geographical and Historical Data for Consideration in a Study of Claims to Sovereignty in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions by S.W. Boggs, William S. Hein & Co. Inc.
Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey Commission by Maria Tippett
Seeking New Horizons: A Perceptual Approach to Geographic Education by Henry W. Castner, McGill-Queen's University Press
The Making of the American Landscape edited by Michael P. Conzen, Unwin Hyman, Boston
Reflections and Visions: 25 Years of Geography at Waterloo edited by Richard Preston and Bruce Mitchell, Department of Geography Publications Series, No. 33,
The Soviet Scene: A Geographical Perspective by James H. Bater, Edward Arnold, London, 1989
The Soviet Union: A Systematic Geography (2nd edition) edited by Leslie Symons, Routledge, New York
Fire in the Rain: The Democratic Consequences of Chernobyl by peter Gould, John Hopkins University Press
Journal of a Barrenlander, W.H.B. Hoare, 1928–1929 edited by Sheila C. Thomson, Sheila C. Thomson
Field Experiments and Measurement Programs in Geomorphology edited by Olav Slaymaker, University of British Columbia Press
Conflicts of Interest: Canada and the Third World edited by Jamie Swift and Brian Tomlinson, Between The Lines
World Trends in Tourism and Recreation by Zbigniew Mieczkowski, American University Studies     

Reviews / Comptes rendus

Book reviewed in this article:
Homeplace: the Making of the Canadian Dwelling over Three Centuries by Peter Ennals and Deryck W. Holdsworth
Making Capitalism in China: the Taiwan Connection by You-tien Hsing
Immigration and Australian Cities by Ian Burnley, Peter Murphy and Robert Fagan
The California Cauldron: Immigration and the Fortunes of Local Communities by William A.V. Clark
Migration and Development: a Global Perspective by Ronald Skeldon
The Rural Landscape by John Fraser Hart
Cities of Difference edited by Ruth Fincher and Jane M. Jacobs     

REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS

Global Environmental Issues: A Climatological Approach by DAVID D. KEMP, Routledge, London and New York
Resource Analysis Research in Developing Countries: The Experience of Ontario Geographers edited by PAUL F. WILKINSON and WILLIAM C. FOUND
Planned to Death: The Annihilation of a Place Called Howdendyke by J. DOUGLAS PORTEOUS, University of Toronto Press
Industrial Location: Principles and Policies 2nd ed by KEITH CHAPMAN and DAVID F. WALKER, Basil Blackwell Ltd.
Geographic Information Systems: The Microcomputer and Modern Cartography edited by D.R. FRASER TAYLOR
Devolution and Constitutional Development in the Canadian North edited by GURSTON DACKS     

REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Book reviewed in this article:
The Soil Resoztrces of Tropical Africa , a Symposium of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom, edited by R. P. Moss
Uses of the Seas , edited by EDMUND A. GULLION
Topographia Germaniae , by M attaeus M erian     

Review articles/Besprekingsartikels

Abstract

Swiss missionary Henri Alexandre Junod has been widely recognised for his extensive entomological, botanical, linguistic and anthropological contributions regarding southern Africa. However, shortly after publishing his most acclaimed work, The Life of a South African Tribe, Junod wrote a little-studied novel, Zidji: étude de m?urs sud-africaines, in which he endeavoured to give a detailed portrayal of South African Society. Interestingly, he chose fiction as the best vehicle for conveying what he saw as the 'truth' of the situation. As the only novel written by Junod this is a unique piece of writing in relation to his other work and its study shows that it is essential to an understanding of Junod. In Zidji he attempts to give a complete picture of South African society at the beginning of the twentieth century by recounting a black convert's experiences of what Junod considered to be the three main influences acting upon black society of the time, that is, tribal life (paganism), the mission station (Christianity) and white society (civilisation). By considering his depiction of South Africa, in particular his presentation of 'civilisation', further light is shed on his sentiments and perspective of the missionary encounter, social change and race relations in South Africa.     

Reviews/Comptes Rendus

Book reviewed in this article:
Atlas of American Women
The Women's Atlas of the United States
Women in the World: An International Atlas
Canada and the World: An Atlas Resource
Gillman of Tanganyika 1882–1946: The life and Work of a Pioneer Geographer
Crime, Space and Society
River Channels: Environment and Process
The Uncertainty Business: Risks and Opportunities in Weather and Climate
International Capitalism and Industrial Restructuring: A Critical Analysis     

Global / globalizing cities

Along with the rise in research on globalization, the concept of globalization has become a subject to a more critical scrutiny. While majority agree that it represents a serious challenge to the state-centrist assumptions of most previous social science, doubts about its newness, inevitability and epoch-making qualities are also being raised. Others argue that the globalization literature neglects issues of social regulation by the nation-state, while some critics view it as a discourse drawn upon to legitimize particular political and economic agendas. Debates focus on metropolitan manifestations and impacts. Moving from this background, the paper presents three sociospatial urban configurations that have emerged in the literature. Alongside attempts at identifying globalizing cities and transnational urban networks as new theoretical subjects, another significant vein in the literature focuses on the complex forces of globalization and the production of new urban spaces in these cities. In addition, economic conceptions of globalization is now being pushed beyond adding sociocultural or sociopolitical dimensions and argue instead for the need to theorize globalization as a discursive formation. The global city as a discursive category conjures up imaginary concepts of high modernity, megadevelopment, 21st century urbanity. However, it is noted that the way forward is to focus on the distinctive ways in which urban actors engage in specific processes of economic and social reflexivity. There exists an urgent task for theorizations of the global city, which weave together historical, economic, cultural, sociopolitical and discursive dimensions.