The Herculaneum Conservation Project: Introduction

Abstract

This short text places the archaeological site of Herculaneum, Italy and the Herculaneum Conservation Project in context, and introduces the volume of articles on this subject. The author outlines the importance of the site, and the public/private partnership that was launched in order to tackle the problems of decay there.     

Race,Space, and Nature: An Introduction and Critique

In this essay we put forth nested arguments about the way that racialization remains a powerful force in contemporary society, contending that intersections with space and nature offer important lessons about the (de)construction of race. We argue that the pernicious character traits of racial constructs develop through spatial practices and intersect with ideas about “nature” and belonging. We trace these concepts through recent conversations in geography and environmental studies, and we call for a persistent, critical, and prominent engagement with racialization in the spatial social sciences. Finally, we introduce the papers that constitute this symposium, which engages these questions from a range of perspectives and across a variety of landscapes. We hope to spur the conversation about “race and geography”, broadly conceived, beyond studies conceptualized around race alone. We are hopeful that this work, and the larger body of work it contributes to, travels beyond academic conversations to engage broader social justice debates about the “nature” of racial inequality—to ultimately participate in its dismantlement.     

Archaeology, Memory and Oral Tradition: An Introduction

This paper serves as an introduction to this special edition of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology on the theme of archaeology, memory and oral history. Recent approaches to oral history and memory destabilise existing grand narratives and confront some of the epistemological assumptions underpinning scientific archaeology. Here we discuss recent approaches to memory and explore their impact on historical archaeology, including the challenges that forms of oral and social memory present to a field traditionally defined by the relationship between material culture and text. We then review a number of themes addressed by the articles in this volume.     

The North Atlantic Population Project: Progress and Prospects

The North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP) is a massive database of historical census microdata from European and North American countries. The backbone of the project is the unique collection of completely digitized censuses providing information on the entire enumerated populations of each country. In addition, for some countries, the NAPP includes sample data from surrounding census years. In this article, the authors provide a brief history of the project, describe their progress to data and plans for the future, and discuss some potential implications of this unique data resource for social and economic research.     

Aboriginal Histories,Aboriginal Myths: An Introduction

The article reopens the issue of the supposed absence of historical consciousness among traditionally oriented Aborigines, and reviews Hill's and Turner's attempts to define the difference between myth and history. It then discusses some narratives of colonisation from Western New South Wales, and re-analyses some Aboriginal stories about Captain Cook.     

Historiography: An Introduction

This introduction precedes the four papers given in October 2000 in Copenhagen on analysing problems in the history of the neurosciences. The term historiography can be defined in different ways but means the study, and not simply the writing, of history. Although it goes back two millenia, it is a rapidly developing field as illustrated by the subsequent contributions.     

Feminist Mobilization,Claims Making and Policy Change: An Introduction

More than two decades after the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, gender equality policies have not delivered in the ways envisaged. This special cluster of articles seeks to understand why. Women's mobilization and feminist activism was central to the Beijing process and the advocacy that followed, yet their influence on policy processes seems constrained in the current context of global political and economic changes. The articles in this cluster explore the negotiations between different actors, institutions and discourses — and the tensions and contradictions therein — as explanations for why certain domains of women's rights remain at the margins of political agendas and others receive more attention. Specifically, why have women's labour rights and the demands of the unpaid care economy failed to gain policy traction? The articles point to the importance of political practice, which includes the ‘framing’ of policy demands as compelling narratives, engagement with state entities and the forming and managing of alliances. There are trade‐offs inherent in each of these elements, for example, between transformative gender equality objectives and the pragmatic impulse to frame claims in less politically and socially threatening ways. Further, in a context of increasing globalization, mobilization is required at multiple levels — from the local to the transnational. The articles thus seek to deepen our understanding of how policy change for women's rights occurs.     

The Urban Order: An Introduction to Cities, Culture, and Power

Book reviewed in this article:
The Golden Age Illusion: Rethinking Postwar Capitalism by MICHAEL J. WEBBER and DAVID L. RIGBY, Guilford Press, New York and London
Climate Change 1995 - The Science of Climate Change: Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change edited by J.T. HOUGHTON, L.G. MEIRA FILHO, B.A. CALLANDER, N. HARRIS, A. KATTENBERG, and K. MASKELL, Cambridge University Press,
Climate Change 1995 - Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical Analyses: Contribution of Working Group II to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change edited by R.T. WATSON, M.C. ZINYOWERA, and R.H. MOSS
Climate Change 1995 - Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change: Contribution of Working Group III to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change edited by J.P. BRUCE, H. LEE, and E.F. HAITES
'As Their Natural Resources Fail': Native Peoples and the Economic History of Northern Manitoba, 1870–1930 by FRANK TOUGH, UBC Press, Vancouver
Atlas historique du Québec: le pays laurentien au XIX^e siècle - les morphologies de base par SERGE COURVILLE, JEAN-CLAUDE ROBERT et NORMAND SÉGUIN
Gender, Work, and Space by SUSAN HANSON and GERALDINE PRATT, Routledge, London and New York, 1995
The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape by Michael Bunce, Routledge, London and New York, 1994     

Gender and the Human: An Introduction

This forum offers critical perspectives on the intersection between gender and the politics of the human. The three articles that comprise it showcase dilemmas that have produced an impasse in feminist politics, as well as the possibilities that feminist analysis offers for rethinking the politics of humanity. The introduction traces the historical intertwining of gender and the human, beginning with the paradox of Enlightenment universalism and female exclusion that launched modern western feminism. It considers both the resilience of this dominant framework of feminist analysis and the limitations it has produced. By examining both the implications of the juridical focus on women's inclusion and rights, and the significance of gender and the body for new forms of modern state power particularly in colonial and post‐colonial contexts, it seeks to sustain new feminist interrogations of the modern politics of the human.