Experts,publics and the environment in the UK: twentieth-century translations

Prompted by contemporary concerns in the West over a global vision of nature and society at risk, this paper builds on recent studies of expertise within a broader public culture. By focusing on earlier episodes of social and political uncertainty, the paper argues that there is scope to extend such analysis in terms of historical geographies of specialist knowledge. The paper examines the formative years of British ecology, a discipline which from its beginnings in the wake of urban industrialism more than a century ago, was centrally concerned with the relations of human well-being and the environment. In exploring when, where and how an ecological expertise became defined, it shifts the focus from familiar milestones in the discipline's public recognition. By tracing the discursive and material practices of those who sought to identify and define ecology as a specialism, the paper illustrates the importance of groupings within and beyond accredited expertise in giving it meaning and purpose. In doing so it highlights the fragility and fluidity of the boundaries around ‘expertise’, and the significance of geographical context and connections in shaping its conduct and content. In terms of broader historical geographies, the paper suggests that while ‘expert’ cultures may be projected as giving greater public reassurance, the sense of certainty that this implies disguises complex processes in which the boundaries are imprecise between specialist and lay knowledge and between scientific and public spaces.     

Petztorme Women: Responding to Change in Lihir,Papua New Guinea

The goldmining project on Lihir Island in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, has brought dramatic socio‐economic changes. In this matrilineal society, while women's economic contributions were substantial, their political status was not. Women's participation in decision‐making about the mine has been restricted, mainly because men have excluded them. The mining company established a women's section that has supported the development of women's organizations and a range of economic development projects. The women's organizations provide the context for new political roles for women but have experienced many setbacks that are common in such groups across Papua New Guinea. Through the Lihir experience in the first five years of the mine, this paper examines the tensions and divided loyalties that constrain women's organizations and often lead to the failure of income‐generating women's projects in Papua New Guinea.     

Responding to the second ghetto: Chicago's Joe Smith and Sin Corner

World War Two and its aftermath transformed Chicago's African American community. The Great Migration entered a second and more intense phase as black migrants flooded into Northern cities. This massive relocation of Southern blacks resulted in the expansion and reformulation of Chicago's ghettoes on both the West and South Sides of the city. The question of a response to this Second Ghetto from African Americans themselves presents itself. White politicians, cultural elites and businessmen still controlled the city and could impose their will on its neighborhoods simply redrawing ghetto boundaries to reflect the new realities of the postwar era. The strange case of Joe Smith and Sin Corner sheds some light on black agency in the 1950s. The African American middle class had resources it commanded to try and protect itself from racial injustice. These resources, however, were based on class privileges not enjoyed by most in the African American community.     

Struggling to Save Cash: Seasonal Migration and Vulnerability in West Bengal,India

This article concerns an important but overlooked means by which able‐bodied poor people get hold of lump sums of cash in rural West Bengal: seasonal migration for agricultural wage work. Drawing on a regional study of four migration streams, our main focus here is on the struggle to secure this cash by landless households in just one of those streams, originating in Murshidabad District. Case studies are used to illustrate the importance for women in nuclear families of maintaining supportive networks of kin for periods when men are absent. A parallel analysis is made of the negotiations between male migrant workers and their employers, at labour markets, during the period of work, and afterwards. The article then briefly discusses some of the contrasting ways in which remittances are used by landless households and owners of very small plots of land, in the context of rapid ecological change, demographic pressure and growing inequality.     

A Critique of the Metaphysics of Ontological Poesis : Responding to Theology and the Political

Abstract

A common set of metaphysical assumptions inform the theological proposals of many contributors to Theology and the Political: The New Debate. Those assumptions are orientated toward grounding the possibility of genuine ontological creativity (poesis) in a particular construal of nature's mediation of the supernatural. Applying the claims of Bernard Lonergan's early work on grace and freedom to those assumptions, the argument is made that this position repeats the most fundamental flaws of the Bañezian position in the de Auxiliis controversy: namely, a basic confusion of form with act, which gives rise to the misguided assumption that a "third" (i.e., physical premotion, causal influx, sophia) must be posited to mediate divine grace to the world and within it. It is argued that this confusion reveals that a competitive understanding of the God/world relation is presumed in this proposal, which itself is the result of a failure to affirm the absolute and immediate dependence implied by the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.     

Gender collections: Three approaches to the subject

Frese, Pamela R. and John M. Coggeshall, eds. Transcending Boundaries: Multi‐Disciplinary Approaches to the Study of Gender. New York: Bergin and Garvey, 1991. xvi + 208 pp. including chapter references and index. $42.95 cloth, $15.95 paper.

Jolly, Margaret and Martha Macintyre, eds. Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. xii + 296 pp. including collected bibliography and index. $49.50 cloth.

Sanday, Peggy Reeves and Ruth Gallagher Goodenough, eds. Beyond the Second Sex: New Directions in the Anthropology of Gender. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. viii + 350 pp. including chapter references and indices. $36.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.     

Self-Citation in Archaeology: Age, Gender, Prestige, and the Self

Citation analyses in archaeology have detected prestige tactics, shifts in research agendas, and patterns of gender differentiation. This paper focuses on self-citation in archaeology and systematically analyzes the factors that affect rates of self-citation. Self-citation rates in archaeology are significantly higher than in socio-cultural anthropology but are average for a social science with interdisciplinary ties to the physical sciences. Self-citation correlates weakly with the gender of the citing author and the geographic and thematic focus of research, but correlates strongly with the age of the author. Additional analyses reveal partial evidence for the use of self-citation as a prestige tactic. The paper concludes with a discussion of citations to writers close to the author (mentors, friends).     

Gender,Race, and Rumours: Re-examining the 1943 Race Riots

Focusing on three riots of the World War II era – those of Beaumont (Texas), Detroit, and New York's Harlem – this essay examines the rumours that sparked these disturbances to uncover the gendered ideologies that underlie racial violence. In these rumour narratives, women appear as either rape victims or tortured mothers, while men appear as either depraved rapists or noble protectors. The deployment of these images helped forge a defensive collective identity that facilitated the outbreak of violence. Because racial and gender ideologies were intimately linked, the author argues, race riots must be analysed through the lens of gender in order to be fully understood.     

Valuing an Ancient Palaestra in the Centre of Athens: The Public,the Experts,and Aristotle

Abstract

This paper investigates the values assigned to the archaeological site widely known as ‘Lykeion’ of Aristotle’ — the famous ancient Greek philosopher — by experts and non-experts. The paper revolves around the premise that values should be holistically conceived as both the ‘what’ is valued and the ‘whys’ that drive the ‘whats’. Based on semi-structured interviews and quantitative questionnaires, the diverse values attributed by professionals, such as architects, archaeologists, or conservators, and the wider public will be unveiled. It will be demonstrated that values vary fundamentally not only between experts and non-experts but also within groups of experts. Furthermore, it will be argued that the conduct of in-depth research aimed at exploring experts’ and non-experts’ values and meanings, prior to interventions for the enhancement of any archaeological site, is vital for managing potential tensions and for offering an integrated interpretation strategy.     

Godliness,Sex and Propaganda: Gender in the Confessional Age

Books reviewed in this article: Kenneth Charlton, Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth–Century Print Culture Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Women and Religion in Early America 1600–1850: The Puritan and Evangelical Traditions Merry E. Wiesner–Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice