EDITORS' FOREWORD

Canadian federal energy policy since the early 1970s has run counter to the interests of the producing provinces. Federal policy has always been predicated upon two points: sufficient domestic supply and acceptable domestic prices. Until the early 1970s, federal policy had been complementary to that of both the producer and consumer provinces. Natural gas shortages in 1970 and 1971, the OPEC embargo, and the quadrupling of prices radically changed federal policy. Exports were no longer promoted, and the federal government undertook to protect Canada from the inflationary pressures of rising world energy costs. These policies have run counter to those of the energy producing provinces, particularly to those of Alberta.

While it would appear that producer-provinces would have sufficient leverage to insist upon their interests, the federal government has made good use of its direct and indirect powers to set the agenda. This suggests that the Trudeau government has begun a recentralization of federal prerogative in an area historically the preserve of the provinces. Because the government has largely been successful, a difference between federal governments and supranational organizations is suggested. In supranational organizations the power to veto is vested in the governments of the states-members; in an integrated federal state, that power resides in the central government.     

Women's history in Italy (nineteenth and twentieth centuries)

This essay surveys the development of women's history in Italy since its origins, examining the principal questions that have driven research and debate from the 1960s to the present, the ways in which women's history in other countries (notably the US) has been influential in Italy, the impact of women's history on other branches of historical research in Italy and its place — or rather lack of place ‐ in Italian universities.     

Reconsidering nationalism and feminism: the Kurdish political movement in Turkey

Feminist scholars have documented with reference to multiple empirical contexts that feminist claims within nationalist movements are often side‐lined, constructed as ‘inauthentic’ and frequently discredited for imitating supposedly western notions of gender‐based equality. Despite these historical precedents, some feminist scholars have pointed to the positive aspects of nationalist movements, which frequently open up spaces for gender‐based claims. Our research is based on the recognition that we cannot discuss and evaluate the fraught relationship in the abstract but that we need to look at the specific historical and empirical contexts and articulations of nationalism and feminism. The specific case study we draw from is the relationship between the Kurdish women's movement and the wider Kurdish political movement in Turkey. We are exploring the ways that the Kurdish movement in Turkey has politicised Kurdish women's rights activists and examine how Kurdish women activists have reacted to patriarchal tendencies within the Kurdish movement.     

Introduction: space,place and the geographies of women's caregiving work

The vast majority of caregivers, whether formal or informal, paid or unpaid, are women. Health care restructuring across the West, inspired by a shift from the welfare to neoliberal state, has greatly impacted caregiving. The idea for this collection arose as a result of a special paper session on the geographies of caregiving, held as part of the Association of American Geographers Meeting (Chicago, 2006). In hearing the papers presented, it became clear that geographers are engaged in interesting and innovative research in this area, much of which involves women's caregiving work in particular. As both unpaid informal family caregiving and paid formal practitioner-provided care are mainly addressed in this collection, they are briefly discussed in this editorial. This is followed by a discussion of the geographical contributions to the growing caregiving literature, which provides the foundation for an overview of ongoing and new research directions. The four articles that make up this special issue are then reviewed in brief. Finally, we identify issues that cut across all four articles, leading to a discussion of future research directions.     

1. DECENTERING HISTORY: LOCAL STORIES AND CULTURAL CROSSINGS IN A GLOBAL WORLD

This essay was first presented at the 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium in Bergen, Norway, where I, as the prize recipient, was asked to describe my work and its import for our period of globalization. The essay first traces the interconnected processes of “decentering” history in Western historiography in the half century after World War II: the move to working people and “subaltern classes”; to women and gender; to communities defined by ethnicity and race; to the study of non‐Western histories and world or global history, in which the European trajectory is only one of several models. Can the historian hold onto the subjects of “decentered” social and cultural history, often local and full of concrete detail, and still address the perspectives of global history? To suggest an answer to this question, I describe my own decentering path from work on sixteenth‐century artisans in the 1950s to recent research on non‐European figures such as the Muslim “Leo Africanus” (Hasan al‐Wazzan). I then offer two examples in which concrete cases can serve a global perspective. One is a comparison of the literary careers of Ibn Khaldun and Christine de Pizan in the scribal cultures on either side of the Mediterranean in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The other is the transmission and transformation of practices of divination, healing, and detection from Africa to the slave communities of Suriname in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.     

Bridewealth1 and the Autonomy of Women in Melanesia

Considering bridewealth in Melanesia from the angle of women's autonomy, in this introduction we review and analyse the various elements of this marriage practice that reveal its place in the symbolic, social and economic worlds of women. With an accent on social transformation, we discuss women's autonomy and agency in relation to the constraints that bridewealth puts on their lives, and on how they engage with it. Knowing what bridewealth is, and how the rules of reciprocity that it indexes obligate married women, the focus is on women's ability to act within these constraints or to redefine their contours, particularly with regards to economic and reproductive agency. The article, which serves also as the introduction for the special issue on bridewealth in the journal Oceania, discusses themes analysed in the collection, such as the moral prospects of bridewealth today, its relation to ‘capital’ in twenty-first century Oceania, the triad value/valuables/valuers, and the empowerment of women. It concludes with thoughts on gender inequality.     

殷淳《妇人集》及《妇人诗集》考论——兼与许云和《南朝妇人集考论》一文商榷

在诸史书目录志所著录的南朝共十部妇人集中,刘宋时殷淳撰《妇人集》与《妇人诗集》可以被认为是我国现存最早的女性作品总集,不仅开创了我国文学编纂史上撰辑女性总集的风气,并影响到从南朝梁至清代系列女性作品总集的编纂。《妇人集》的内容虽然只残存于《世说新语》、《太平御览》等书中,但已可见出撰者对待女性创作的肯定意识和前瞻心态,亦可见出汉魏六朝女性作者的文才文论与群体风貌。     

Urban Women and the Transformations of Braedpraes1 in Honiara2

In the capital city of the Solomon Islands, brideprice is often given to formalize the marriage of young couples from the island of Malaita. For the young wife, brideprice is a reminder that she is expected to work and produce children for the lineage of her husband, an obligation that is at times strongly impressed upon her by her in-laws. Data gathered in Honiara over the last 15 years, most recently in 2015–2016, show the emergence of a variety of patterns among Malaitan women living in Honiara regarding their productive and reproductive autonomy, and their role in brideprice. Beyond their diversity, what these data reveal, we argue, is that the interstitial cultural spaces created by the urbanization of social and economic relations afford young urban women the possibility of engaging with brideprice in a way that had not been possible until then. We demonstrate that, as members of an emerging new middle-class, these women seek (either in agreement with their husbands, or in spite of them) to transform the meaning of brideprice: while showing respect to their in-laws and to tradition, their goal is to gain greater control over their lives within the confines of brideprice sociality.     

Marriage-Related Exchanges and the Agency of Women among the Langalanga,Solomon Islands

This article examines the transformation of marriage-related exchanges and the agency of women among the Langalanga people in the Solomon Islands. The Langalanga perspective is distinctive because they have been the main producers of shell money in the region, and the persistence of bridewealth is important for their economic and cultural lives. Looking into the three essential components: kwatena (bridewealth), duuna (micro exchange network among new affinal kins), and launia (bridal dress), I discuss the roles women play in the process of marriage-related exchanges, with particular attention to the affective dimension. In recent years, it has become more popular to dress the bride in the expensive launia, and some Langalanga brides, who live in urban areas, have begun to take possession of the valuables, which contributes to their growing economic independence and autonomy. I argue that while marriage-related exchanges sometimes constrain the autonomy of women in Melanesia, the Langalanga case provides an alternative view.     

'Minutes of the Last Meeting Passed': The Huddersfield Women's Social and Political Union Minute Book January 1907-1909, a New Source for Suffrage History

The historiography of the militant suffrage campaign organizedby the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) between 1903and 1914 has made increasing use of local and regional studiesin an attempt to reassess the organization from the perspectiveof its grass roots membership. This approach has of necessityrelied on a variety of partial sources as no regional recordsof the WSPU survive. Therefore, the recent deposit of a minutebook for the Huddersfield branch is of great interest to suffragehistorians, even though the document only covers the earliestyears of the branch from 1907 to 1909. This article assessesthe value of the minute book as a source for writing suffragehistory. It discusses how the minutes add to our existing knowledgeof the militant campaign, particularly in understanding therelationship between national headquarters and regional branches,in appreciating the demands belonging to the WSPU made on itsmembers in terms of time, and in the importance of individualpersonal relationships in sustaining a successful suffrage campaign.The article also considers how local and regional historiesof the WSPU have been created without the benefit of minutebooks. Consequently it measures the new findings of the minutebook against the records available in other contemporary sources,such as local newspapers and the national suffrage press, todemonstrate how minute books are useful but ultimately not vitalin reinterpreting the WSPU from the branch level.     

The Archaeology of Slavery at the Van Cortlandt Plantation in the Bronx,New York

Excavations at the Van Cortlandt Mansion, the central structure of an eighteenth-century plantation located in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York, highlight the difficulty of using archaeological evidence to document the story of enslavement in early America. While the documents indicate the extent of the Van Cortlandts' involvement in the slave trade and in the reliance on enslaved labor to build and run their enterprise, the excavations carried out over several years have not yielded concomitant evidence.     

近代中国的新史学及其流变

清季以来,新史学成为中国学人不断追求的至高境界,可是对于新史学的理解和取径却各不相同。为了后来居上,此前的新史学也往往被当作不破不立的对象。在不断趋新的过程中,中国史学的形式根本改观,但要拿出超越旧史学的代表作,却并不容易。创新的前提是温故,首先要掌握史学的基本与大体,超越中西新旧,避免盲人摸象,防止以偏为新,才不至于欲辟蹊径而蹈覆辙,甚至南辕北辙。     

Social Signaling and the Organization of Small-Scale Society: The Case of Contact-Era New Guinea

Small-scale society furnishes the bread and butter of archeological research. Yet our understanding of what these communities did and how they achieved their purpose is still rudimentary. Using the ethnography of contact-era New Guinea, this paper presents a “social signaling” model of small-scale social systems that archeologists may find useful for contextualizing and interpreting the material record of these societies. It proposes that the organization of small-scale society was oriented, among other goals, towards biological and social reproduction, subsistence optimization, and military defense. To advance these multiple collective interests, however, these communities had to deal with three problems: an optimality problem, a conflict-of-interest problem, and a free-rider problem. The optimality problem was solved with a modular (or segmented) social structure, the conflict-of-interest problem by a process of social signaling, and these two solutions together operated to resolve the free-rider problems they created. In addition to explaining the structure and function of small-scale societies, the model provides a unified framework that can account for the ceremonial behaviors, core cultural conceptions, and leadership forms that these societies generated.

Beyond the sacred language: on the liberal evolution of Hebrew in Jewish nationality

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to shed light on the evolution of the Jewish national language and to discuss the ways in which the cultural trends in Zionism constantly left room for the creative imagination of its adherents, and functioned in such a way as to erode its sacred dimension, thereby promoting a discourse focusing on the individual. My claim is that the Hebrew language case study may reflect the importance not only of national revisionist accounts for our understanding of the Zionist movement, but also the need for an approach that saves a place for truly creative aspects of civic engagement, and recognises the Israeli nation as one asserting, besides its ethnic ties also patriotic nexuses. Special attention will be given to the phenomenon of Hebrew poetry written by women in the 1920s as a platform from which to examine the unique meaning and evolution of language within the Jewish national movement.     

Devolution and Parliamentary Representation: The Case of the Scotland and Wales Bill, 1976–7

For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westminster in the face of asymmetric devolution that would carve out parliament's remit in some, but not all, parts of the UK. These questions bedevilled Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century and have been a recurrent feature of debate following New Labour's devolution programme in the late 1990s, culminating in the adoption of a system of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ by the house of commons in October 2015. This article looks at this issue through the lens of the ill‐fated Scotland and Wales Bill introduced by the Callaghan government in 1976. It explores the roots of the bill and how, and why, the idea of referring the question of territorial representation, post‐devolution, to a Speaker's conference, came to secure the initial support of cabinet as the best answer to this problem, and why the government swiftly changed its mind. Parliamentary statecraft considerations served to push a Speaker's conference onto the institutional agenda, before ultimately dooming it to failure.     

Social Movements,Political Elites and Political Opportunity Structures: The Case of the Woman Suffrage Movement from 1890-1920

Many contemporary theories of party leadership derive their concepts from organization theory and economic theories of rational choice. They stress the institutional contexts that shape leadership possibilities and the relationship between members (principals) and leaders (agents) in shaping leadership decisions. Both the macro (institutional context) and micro (principal-agent) theories assume that the main role of party leaders is to marshal majority support for legislation on which the party takes a position. Focussing on party position legislation, however, provides only a partial view of party leadership. This article expands this perspective by considering the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform bill, in which party leaders avoided taking a clear policy stand and pursued other interests instead. In broadening the assumptions inherent in organization theory to include behavior beyond taking party policy stands, we uncover leadership roles that are missed by those who adopt the policy-centered approach. Applying other organization theory concepts, we broaden principal-agent theories by explaining divergent leadership roles in the consideration of non-party position legislation as behavior that is typical for legislative leadership. We conclude that the nature of non-party position legislation provides party leaders a greater latitude to diverge from their expected party leadership roles and to behave according to their different strategic situations, district and state interests, philosophies, and personalities.     

Through Hell and High Water: New Orleans, August 29-September 15, 2005

Abstract: In October of 2005 the Historic New Orleans Collectioninitiated an oral history project entitled "Through Hell andHigh Water: New Orleans, August 29–September 15, 2005."The intent of the project was to capture the stories of firstresponders who worked in the New Orleans metropolitan area duringthe storm and the weeks that followed. The interview processhas been linked with the after-action studies done by some ofthe local first-responding agencies and has provided a much-neededoutlet for first responders. To date over three hundred subjectshave been interviewed, and our work thus far has shown us thattop-down methods of documentation do not work with an eventlike Katrina. The almost total loss of communications made itimpossible for high-ranking members of the different agenciesto control or even know what lower-ranking members were doing.As a result it will be necessary to cast a wide net in our documentationeffort.