Introduction to Small Finds,Big Implications: The Cultural Meaning of the Littlest Artifacts

Why do the smallest artifacts found during the excavation of a site elicit the most visceral response from those who find them and study them? Is it because they are portable items that can be tied to people, such as coins, smoking pipes, and children’s toys, or is it because often they are visually appealing? While the range of small finds discussed in this collection will be diverse, the contributors all share a passion for deriving cultural meaning from the context in which they were found. It will be proven that small finds can have big implications when an anthropological framework is employed during analysis.     

Iranian Zoroastrians in Canada: Balancing Religious and Cultural Identities

Canada, now the number-one destination for Iranian migrants, is home to one of the world's most dynamic Zoroastrian communities, in which Iranians are increasingly represented and are playing ever more visible roles in maintaining and transforming the tradition. While exile has in some ways reunited Iranian and Parsi (South Asian) Zoroastrians after more than 1,000 years of separation, cultural and in some cases religious differences mean that they continue largely to live in separate spheres even while sharing their places of worship. Iranian Zoroastrians in Canada participate in some social settings as Iranians, in others as Zoroastrians, and in still others as Canadians, but to a large extent they remain a community unto themselves separate from these other three. Even so, their generally progressive interpretations of Zoroastrianism are having an influence on Parsi communities worldwide as well as on Zoroastrians in Iran, and being often recognized as “original Iranians” they are playing important roles in promoting awareness of Iranian culture within the broader community.     

Mapping Value in a ‘Green’ Commodity Frontier: Revisiting Commodity Chain Analysis

Analysis of commodity chains has provided important insights on how power, resource and market access mediate the distribution of benefits and risks. Given this analytical potential, Commodity Chain Analysis (CCA) is now being applied to the study of biofuels and carbon markets to gain systematic insight into the circumstances, relationships and transformations involved in their production and exchange. By building on and adapting this approach to three distinct case studies (biofuels in Madagascar and forest carbon in Cambodia and Laos), this article contributes new insights on the emergence of value within market environmentalism. The analysis highlights methodological challenges in applying CCA to commodified forms of nature, and the significance of knowledge and value negotiations. All three cases illustrate that it remains highly uncertain whether or not market exchange can ultimately be realized. As in the case of traditional commodities, pre‐existing conditions of power and access shape modes of production and network configuration. Parallel and intersecting commodity networks (e.g. for land and timber) also require us to think beyond the traditional single‐commodity focus. Thus, the authors call for an expanded analytical focus in applying CCA to non‐material ‘green’ commodities which places greater emphasis on value negotiations and connections within new ‘commodity frontiers’.     

国家文化公园:理论溯源、现实问题与制度探索

"十三五"以来,我国文化遗产保护事业进入新阶段,但是文化遗产管理体系复杂、多头管理、权责不明等问题一直未得到解决.因此,国家文化公园建设过程中,应首先理顺国家文化公园与既有遗产保护体系之间的逻辑与关系,建立以重大文化遗产为主体的国家文化公园体系;以保护传承为首要目标,构建统一规范高效的国家文化公园管理体制;突出国家代表...     

大传统与小传统——白蛇故事的三期型变

民间故事流传主要是口耳相传,由于记忆的局限性,如果不求助于文字文献就很难发现其变化的历史线索。然而在传统社会文字却主要掌握在官方系统,搜集整理民间故事的专业人士被称为稗官,西汉班固《汉书·艺文志》,“小说家者流,盖出于稗官。街谈巷语,道听途说者之所造也”。余嘉锡的《小说家出于稗官说》里认为,稗官是士人,“士传民语”,下情上达,沟通之用。     

青海文化的特点与区域文化冠名问题研究

在漫长历史进程中积累起来的青海地方文化,凝聚着高原各族人民奋发向上、自强不息的民族精神,对于推动本地区经济和社会发展有着巨大的作用。在新的历史条件下,探寻青海文化产生和发展的背景,对青海区域文化的内涵进行重新审视和定位,明确解决其正式冠名问题,已经成为青海文化发展过程中一个亟需解决的重大课题。     

An Island Divided: Politicised Landscapes,Modern Borders,and Shifting Identities

Abstract

This paper looks critically at the division of Cyprus into North and South (the politically unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus respectively) and will consider how this physical division emphasised and further developed a divided identity based on 'ethnic' differences (and the development of the 'other') between the two major populations—Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The Green Line is just one of several recent manifestations in the landscape of social contestations between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. This paper outlines how the Green Line has structured the lives of people in relation to the ways that they conceptualise their environment, the past and, importantly, the 'other' side. Further, it addresses how this division, this physical line across the landscape, impacts upon the social landscape as it defines and reinforces identity through the processes of memory and forgetting.     

Partisan Identification and Attitudes to Big Versus Small Government in Australia: Evidence from the ISSP

In Australian politics, Labor has traditionally been thought of as the party of big government and the Liberals the party of small government. Drawing from evidence from the 1985, 1990, 1996 and 2007 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) Role of Government surveys, this article examines public opinion in relation to the role of government and how public attitudes towards government differ according to party identification. It is reasonable to expect that Labor Party identifiers would be more supportive of big government, but there is little empirical evidence to support this expectation. This article shows that citizens' attitudes still accord with the Labor–Liberal/big–small government dichotomy and shows partisan identification to have an enduring effect on attitudes towards the role of government, net of other factors.     

Big Game and Small Prey: Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic Economy from Valencia (Spain)

This study analyzes the faunal assemblages corresponding to the Middle and Upper Paleolithic and the Early Epipaleolithic for the central Spanish Mediterranean Region dated from between 135,000 and 9,000 B.P. To interpret these data, we employ a zooarchaeological and paleoeconomic perspective. Human large and small game hunting systems are analyzed through the identification of the origins of faunal assemblages, bone breackage patterns, and prey selection patterns. Our study shows that hunting systems changed significantly through time, which may be related to the characteristics of the Mediterranean ecosystem and, above all, to cultural changes.     

Englishmen,Scots and Marchers: National and Local Identities in Thomas Gray's Scalacronica

Abstract

The abortive Wakefield Plot of March 1541 against Henry VIII was followed by a massive — and armed — royal progress to the North that summer. Historians have, however, tended to see the progress as being more concerned with a projected meeting between Henry and James V of Scotland at York. This article re-examines both the Wakefield Plot and the progress. It argues the Plot did indeed present great danger to Henry VIII. It was well planned, involved unprecedented inter-class collaboration, and envisaged a bloody conflict to overthrow the 'tyrant' Henry. It also envisaged aid from the Scots, with whom the conspirators may have had links. The Plot is set in the context of serious discontent about taxation in early 1541, and severe local economic problems in Yorkshire. The progress bound the northern elites to the King through a succession of choreographed supplications from the northern gentry and yeomen. Despite serious fears that the progress might meet trouble in the North, it succeeded in pacifying the region. Meanwhile, the possibility of a meeting with James at York emerged only during the progress, and James's failure to appear was of little importance in the slide to war between England and Scotland in 1542.     

Review Article: Nationalisms,National Identities and Nation States: Gendered Perspectives

Books reviewed in this article: Nira Yuval‐Davis, Gender & Nation Lois West (ed.), Feminist Nationalism Rick Wilford and Robert L. Miller (eds.), Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition Cynthia Cockburn, The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict     

Identities in the making: conservation,gender and race in the Maya Biosphere Reserve,Guatemala

This article examines how the daily discourses, practices, and performances of conservation projects are instrumental in mapping ways of life that are gendered and racialized. With the goal of bringing a feminist approach to the study of conservation, I present an ethnographic account of identities‐in‐the‐making in three conservation encounters in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a protected area in northern Guatemala. In the first two encounters, I examine the ways in which gender and race are constituted in the relations between the Women’s Group for the Rescue of Itza’ Medicinal Plants and a United States‐based international environmental non‐governmental organization. The third encounter highlights the relations between the Women’s Group and myself, the researcher, to analyze how social‐science, through methods such as ethnography, is also implicated in (re)configuring social identities.     

Policy Networks in Complex Governance Subsystems: Observing and Comparing Hyperlink,Media, and Partnership Networks

Methods for observing policy networks have not kept up with the development of new network analytic techniques required to understand governance in complex settings. We compare three unobtrusive methods for observing policy networks based on hyperlinks between policy actor web sites, on media reports, and on public policy partnerships. Observations of one complex local water policy arena with all three methods provide a comparison of the general as well as actor‐specific network characteristics in the three observed networks. The core network of actors observed by all methods has similar network level statistics, highly correlated relationships measured by Quadratic Assignment Procedures models, and the same significant network microstructures as measured by Exponential Random Graph Models. The full networks including actors observed by any method also exhibit similar actor‐level characteristics, although the correlations across networks are stronger for bridging capital measures than for bonding capital measures, and each method has different apparent biases. Once biases are accounted for, similarities suggest that these methods may provide useful proxies for each other and for other relationships that are more difficult or impossible to measure, particularly when combined to offset each method's biases. If so, they can extend the range of policy networks observable with limited resources across space and time.     

科学建构非物质文化遗产理论体系——非物质文化遗产相关概念和若干专业问题的再思考

民众对非物质文化遗产的认识越来越深入,但是概念及若干专业问题还有待厘清。非物质文化遗产没有"缓冲区",不具"唯一性"而具"游移性",非物质文化遗产中"文化空间"与作为非物质文化遗产组成部分的"一般场所"是不相同的概念,遗产的评定不受"生源地"所限。保护"非物质文化遗产"的规范性文件中使用"代表性"或"代表作"有其立法用意,非物质文化遗产法与知识产权法保护的客体(对象)既有相同点也存在区别,而"非物质文化遗产"与"非物质文化遗产产品"也是完全不一样的概念。