Whales, Walruses, and Elephants: Artisans in Ivory, Baleen, and Other Skeletal Materials in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Hard animal tissues obtained from whales, walruses, and elephants are baleen, whale bone, walrus ivory, walrus baculum, and elephant ivory. Objects of these materials were manufactured by artisans in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. New archaeological and historical evidence show the import and importance if these materials. The importance of baleen is evident from historical sources. Whale bone and walrus penis bone were only used occasionally. The use of walrus ivory appeared to be of minor importance in comparison to elephant ivory. The Dutch elephant ivory trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is evident in historical and archaeological sources.     

Confucianism,Secularism, and Atheism in Bayle and Montesquieu

It should be hardly surprising to discover that eighteenth-century European perspectives of other cultures were shaped to a large extent by concerns internal to European political life. Objective or unprejudiced accounts of non-European cultures are rarely found among travellers, missionaries, and philosophers of the time. While the insights of Enlightenment political thinkers on the non-European world may shed little light on the cultures being commented upon, they are useful for assessing the nature of the Enlightenment's engagement with cultural traditions external to Europe. In particular, Enlightenment conceptions of China were extremely varied and reflective of the debates between Enlightenment thinkers, especially on the proper relation between religion and politics. I shall argue that Montesquieu's account of Confucianism in The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit des lois, first published in 1748) was in part influenced by his critique of Bayle's position on the role of religion in society as expounded in his Various Thoughts on the Comet (Pensées diverses sur la comète, published in 1682). While Montesquieu's account and assessment of Chinese thought and culture are “Eurocentric,” his evaluation of Confucianism nevertheless arises from a considered philosophical position on religion and politics.     

Divergence,Sensitivity, and Nonequilibrium in Ecosystems

Contemporary theoretical debate in ecology and biogeography is often focused on equilibrium vs. nonequilibrium behavior in ecosystems and on the nature and source of ecosystem dynamics. It is suggested that these debates be recast in terms of the way ecosystems develop and respond to disturbances, rather than in terms of concepts often imported from mathematics, physics, and other fields. Using nonlinear dynamical systems theory, it is shown that key theoretical implications can be cast in terms of geoecologically significant phenomenologies such as divergent evolution, sensitivity to initial conditions and small disturbances, historical contingency, and path dependence. Examples show these phenomena are widely observed in ecosystems. Ecological and biogeographical theory can be problematized from within geography and ecology rather than fuzzy, abstract concepts such as equilibrium, self‐organization, “balance of nature,” or chaos. Complexity, sensitivity, variability, nonsteady states, and other concepts often associated with nonequilibrium or complexity‐theory frameworks have manifestations that are evident in observable ecological phenomena, in addition to theory and models.     

Bodies,building and bricks: Women architects and builders in eight eco-communities in Argentina,Britain, Spain,Thailand and USA

Eco-building is a male domain where men are presumed to be better builders and designers, more men than women build and women find their design ideas and contributions to eco-building are belittled. This article suggests that a focus on bodies, embodiment and the ‘doing’ of building is a potentially productive way to move beyond current gender discrimination. This article makes three key interventions using empirical material from eight case studies of eco-communities in Britain, Thailand, Spain, the USA and Argentina. First, it uses a focus on eco-communities to illustrate the enduring persistence of gender divisions in architecture and building. Second, by using multi-site examples of eco-communities from diverse countries this article finds more commonalities than differences in gender discrimination across cultures and nationalities. Third, it outlines three spaces of opportunity through which more gender-neutral approaches are being developed in eco-building: (1) in challenging the need for ‘strong’ bodies, (2) by practising more embodied ways of building and (3) by making visible women's bodies in building. The ‘doing’ and manual aspect of eco-building is unfamiliar for many (not just women) and interviewees commented on the need to (re)learn how to be practical and to understand the physical possibilities (and limitations) of their bodies.     

Ethnicity,politics, and history in Mexico and Central America

Wilson, Richard. Maya Resurgence in Guatemala: Q'eqchi’ Experiences. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. xiv + 373 pp. including tables, figures, photographs, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography, and index. $32.95 cloth.

Frye, David. Indians into Mexicans: History and Identity in a Mexican Town. Austin; University of Texas Press, 1996. viii + 250 pp. including figures, photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $40.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Hale, Charles R. Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994. ix + 296 pp. including tables, figures, photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth.     

Literacy,authorship, and belief in medieval and renaissance Europe

Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530. Edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xxv + 293 pp., £37.50/$59.95 cloth.

Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance. By Andrew Hadfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvii + 261 pp., £35.00/$59.59 cloth.

Early Cambridge Theatres: College, University, and Town Stages, 1464–1720. By Alan H. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xiv + 179 pp., £35.00/$59.95 cloth.     

Warfare,political identities,and displacement in Spain and Colombia

This paper explores the causes of displacement during civil wars. Recent scholarship has shown that conventional civil wars – those in which forces are relatively balanced – and irregular civil wars – those in which one side is substantially stronger than the other – exhibit different patterns of violence. We hypothesize that, while the mode of violence differs, the form of displacement should be consistent across the wars: displacement is a tactic of war that armed groups use to conquer new territories. By expelling civilians associated with rivals, armed groups improve their odds of gaining control of contested territory. This implies that members of a group are targeted for displacement because of their identity and presumed loyalties. We test the theory using two fine-grained datasets on individuals displaced during a conventional civil war, in Spain (1936–1939), and an irregular civil war, in Colombia (1964–). In both cases, the war cleavage was ideological and reflected in national elections: the locations where political parties received support indicated which populations were sympathetic to rivals. In both civil wars, we observe higher levels of displacement in locations where more sympathizers of rival armed groups reside. The article is the first comparison to our knowledge of the sub-national dynamics of displacement within two different civil wars and it shows that the microfoundations of displacement are similar across types. Finally, the article explains macro-level differences with a coherent micro-level framework.