Indian Lands,Environmental Policy and Military Geopolitics in the Development of the Brazilian Amazon: The Case of the Yanomami

This article examines the realignments of the developmentalist discourse and strategy of the Brazilian military for the Amazon during the civilian government of the ‘New Republic’ (1985–90). It focuses on a case study, i.e. the official expropriation of the lands of the Yanomami Indians in the states of Roraima and Amazonas along the Brazil/Venezueta border. The analysis brings to light how, during this period, the military aimed at neutralizing both the pressure of environmental NGOs on Brazil's international creditors and the emergent democratization of decisions on land use in Amazônia. It shows how such attempts involved manipulating environmental legislation and ecological rhetoric in order to perpetuate military hegemony over the development of Amazônia to the benefit of mining interests. Finally, the paper traces the roots of these man?uvres to a geopolitical and economical model for Amazonian integration still inspired by the national security doctrine drawn up in the 1950s and 1960s by the Escola Superior de Guerra.     

New Dimensions in Infrastructure Evaluation: The Case of Non-Technical Issues in Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems

Traditional infrastructure evaluation focuses primarily on technical criteria, such as the completion of a designated, interconnected system of facilities or a particular project's capacity to reduce costs borne by suppliers or end users. In the contemporary policymaking environment, however, nontechnical criteria are often of great importance in determining the success or failure of a particular infrastructure enterprise. Institutional considerations, for example, can often delay the implementation of a project or undermine its effectiveness. This paper examines the importance of non-technical criteria in infrastructure evaluation through a case study of the implementation of a major highway investment program in advanced communication and control technologies, known as intelligent vehicle -highway systems (IVHS). The case study focuses on the role of institutional issues as well as environmental issues, in the implementation of IVHS in the US. surface transportation system. The case emphasizes, first, the significance of institutional and environmental issues, and second, mechanisms for evaluating these issues in the context of a major infrastructure investment program.     

Property Rights for Biodiversity Conservation and Development: Extractive Reserves in the Brazilian Amazon

Many of the world's most valuable biodiverse areas are successfully managed by indigenous communities, often under peculiar property rights structures. In many cases, these communities are economically disadvantaged, even by local standards. But can particular local property rights regimes which are ecologically successful also allow communities to compete productively in market economies? The extractive reserves of the Brazilian Amazon offer an opportunity for investigating the connections between property rights, conservation and development in the context of tropical forests. This article aims to analyse whether the existing property rights in these reserves — an idiosyncratic mixture of public, collective and private property rights — can support the explicit development aim of a competitive, yet sustainable, exploitation of the area's natural resources. The analysis identifies three promising development paths open to extractive reserves, but points to a fundamental contradiction between the static structure of the property rights system and the dynamic nature of two of these paths. The current design of internal property rights fails to take into account the broader economic context in which reserves must generate a viable revenue stream. If extractive reserves are expected to develop without reliance on external aid, then changes to the property rights structure both inside and outside the extractive reserves have to be explicitly considered.     

Beyond Typology: Looking for Processes and Diversity in the Study of Lithic Technology in the Brazilian Amazon

This article describes how the lithic industries of the Amazon have been studied in Brazilian archaeology, and presents a historical record of research in the region. The article then attempts to analyze the reasons for the relative paucity of work on this research theme. The record includes studies of lithic industries related to the presence of pottery-using (ceramist) groups as well as those related to occupation of areas by hunter–gatherers. It points to different factors that have contributed to the type and quantity of information currently available, notably the issues of changing environmental conditions relating to site preservation and visibility that necessarily interface with the disciplinary history of archaeology within the Amazon Basin region. The paper seeks to highlight the issues that have dominated the research field, contextualizing them and redefining them in order to indicate future prospects for work in relation to the lithic industries of the macro-region.     

National Factor Markets and the Macroeconomic Context for Environmental Destruction in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper discusses Amazonian agricultural development with emphasis on the interrelations between regional conditions and the economic context represented by the national economy. The extreme abundance of land relative to complementary factors, together with the position of the region as a price taker in both factor and output markets, create the conditions for environmentally destructive expansion of cultivation at the extensive margin. It is argued that policies to promote a more ecologically sensitive pattern of development must take into account these links with the larger Brazilian economy and society as well as conditions within the region itself.     

Population Trends in a Contested Pseudo-State: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh

A U.S. population geographer specializing in the former Soviet Union surveys the results of an October 2005 census conducted in a contested pseudo-state known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). Data from the enumeration provide the first credible information about recent population characteristics, including nationality composition and migration from the war-torn republic. The data make it possible to ascertain the crude magnitudes of population losses in the republic's constituent rayons as well as changes resulting from deaths and expulsion of ethnic Armenians and/or Azerbaijanis. Changes documented since the last (1989) Soviet census in the region indicate that the current republic's population differs quite dramatically from that of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of Azerbaijan, complicating efforts to broker a lasting peace agreement between the pseudostate's two neighbors. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, O18, R23, 1 figure, 1 table, 36 references.     

The Growth of the Evaluation Tree in the Policy Analysis Forest: Recent Developments in Evaluation

The practice and profession of evaluation is continually evolving. From its early origin in the Great Society years of the 1960s, through its golden years of the 1970s, its transformation under the fiscal conservatism of the Reagan era in the 1980s, and in its maturation during the performance and results era of the 1990s, the field of evaluation continues to evolve in response to broader trends in society. This article examines recent developments and trends in the practice and profession of evaluation. Structured around the evaluation theory tree, the presentation of these developments elaborates on the three main branches of evaluation: methods, use, and valuing. The concluding discussion briefly addresses the central role of evaluation—and other types of knowledge production—in providing actionable evidence for use in public policy and program decision making.     

In Search of Causality: A Regional Approach to Urban Growth in Eighteenth-century England

The simple equation of industrialisation and urbanisation contains much truth: recent national surveys confirm that rapid coal-based industrial growth spawned massive urban development in Britain. And yet at the local level a wide diversity of growth experiences reflect a complex and overlapping nexus of growth stimuli which defy attempts at generalisation. In taking a regional perspective, this paper seeks to occupy a productive middle ground in this ongoing debate. Placing urban growth in north-west England into its real economic and geographical context, it recognises the complexities of urban growth but transcends the narrowness of the particular. In so doing, it challenges some of the certainties of industrial urbanisation, emphasising instead the importance of rural industry, urban commercial functions and inter-place linkages. Most fundamentally, it argues for a more nuanced understanding of the geography of causality.     

中世纪西欧庄园人口变动与商业复兴基础的形成

中世纪西欧商业复兴产生的社会基础在于庄园的内部发展和变动。庄园缓慢的进步导致了人口的增长,人口增长的压力造成了庄园内部的变动。开拓荒地和新庄园的建立,增加了西欧的产品数量,同时也造成了人口的流动,使得原来封闭的庄园出现了松动,为商业复兴提供了物质和人力基础;商人阶层的出现并不是突兀的,也不是从一开始就作为庄园的对立面出现的。他们继承了早期商业交往的形式,商品交往仍然以补充庄园之不足为目的,而且他们在社会中没有地位,但是他们确确实实成了一个新的阶层,并成为职业性商人,为成熟的城市商人的出现蓄积了基础。     

The Territorial Expansion of American Cities and their Population Growth

The significance of territorial expansion of American cities in the growth of their population from one census to another is analyzed. The number of cities making annexations during intercensal periods has been steadily increasing since World War II. The trend is particularly pronounced in the South and West because of intensive industrialization and, in the case of the West, in-migration. In the North, annexation is often blocked by the presence of incorporated places in the urban fringe surrounding the central city. Some Northern cities have in fact lost population in the 1950–1960 period despite an expansion of their city limits.     

Reforms,Globalization, and Urban Growth in China: The Case of Hangzhou

Chinese cities have experienced unprecedented growth and restructuring during the reform period. This study by two geographers examines the rapid growth of urban population in the relatively typical large city of Hangzhou (one of China's historical capitals), and investigates underlying factors by highlighting the significance of reforms and globalization in the growth of Chinese cities. The authors also discuss problems that Hangzhou (currently with ca. 4 million inhabitants) faces in coping with rapid urban growth and restructuring. They argue that "control" and "management" approaches to urban growth have limitations in China's transitional cities, and that the gradual process of reform is incompatible with the nature of urban planning in China. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, O20, R23. 4 figures, 44 references.     

俄国婚姻和人口再生产模式的转型

俄国的婚姻和人口再生产模式与西欧相差甚远,东正教居民的人口观,尤其是农民的人口行为直接影响了俄国人口再生产并在一定程度上制约了人口模式的转型,19世纪60年代以前,俄国人口再生产是“粗放型”的,高结婚率、高出生率和高死亡率,人口寿命短,自然增长缓慢,1861年后,俄国人口再生产模式略有进步,但相当缓慢。俄国人口再生产模式转型的快慢对其人口进程和城市化进程产生了重要影响。     

Information Provision and Individual Behavior: A Case Study of Voting at an English General Election

A basic premise of much work in behavioral geography is that spatial variations in decision making reflect the geography of information availability. Within this context, more attention has been paid to the behavior than to the provision of information. In this paper, both the supply of relevant information and its impact are modeled and analyzed, using the 1983 general election in England as a case study. Variations in campaign spending on information are identified, related to the party's standing in a constituency, and these variations are shown to have been related to the electoral outcome.     

Domestic Spaces as Public Places: An Ethnoarchaeological Case Study of Houses, Gender, and Politics in the Ecuadorian Amazon

In an ethnoarchaeological case study, we take a gendered perspective on the house as a locus of political life in Conambo, a village of about 200 Achuar- and Quichua-speaking peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In this small-scale society, women and men engage actively in political practice in independent yet complementary ways, and the domestic context is a place where political life is conducted on a daily basis. In this article, the house is examined as a politicized context at three scales of materiality: the organization of settlement in the community, the spatial relationships in the house, and the scale of painted designs on pottery bowls used in the house. At each scale, we identify material correlates of women's and men's participation. Our goal is to bring attention to potential archaeological correlates of women's political involvement in past societies, to question assumptions about women's political lives and domestic spaces, and to expand the ways in which anthropological archaeology may contribute to understanding cross-cultural variation in women's and men's domains of power.     

The population of the Amazon basin in 1492: a view from the Ecuadorian headwaters

"Recent archaeological, ethnohistorical and ecological evidence has begun to challenge the view that 'civilizations' failed to develop in the Amazon basin due to limitations of the tropical forest environment. As a result, estimates of the native population in 1492 have become an issue of debate. These estimates are evaluated in the light of the ethnohistorical research on the Ecuadorian headwaters. Estimates are considered by examining estimated habitat densities, the impact of Old World diseases and contemporary evidence for native cultures. The study is based on documents found in archives in Quito, Seville, Madrid and Rome. It is suggested that the population of the Amazon basin in 1492 probably exceeded 5 million but that expectations of substantially higher populations appear unfounded."     

Unofficial Road Building in the Amazon: Socioeconomic and Biophysical Explanations

Roads have manifold social and environmental impacts, including regional development, social conflicts and habitat fragmentation. ‘Road ecology’ has emerged as an approach to evaluate the various ecological and hydrological impacts of roads. This article aims to complement road ecology by examining the socio‐spatial processes of road building itself. Focusing on the Brazilian Amazon, a heavily‐studied context due to forest fragmentation by roads, the authors consider non‐state social actors who build ‘unofficial roads’ for the purpose of gaining access to natural resources to support livelihoods and community development. They examine four case studies of roads with distinct histories in order to explain the socio‐spatial processes behind road building in terms of profit maximization, land tenure claims, co‐operative and conflictive political ecologies, and constraints as well as opportunities afforded by the biophysical environment. The study cases illustrate the need for a multi‐pronged theoretical approach to understanding road building, and call for more attention to the role of non‐state actors in road construction.