An oasis in a watery desert? Discourses on an industrial ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico Rigs‐to‐Reefs program

This article explores how in the years after 1980 a spectrum of historical actors came to see petroleum platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as a necessary part of the Gulf ecosystem and how such views affected platform removal policies. Through a discourse analysis of the Rigs‐to‐Reefs program, in which old offshore petroleum facilities were converted into artificial reefs, this article examines how actors presented to the public their notions of the relationship of the Gulf ecosystem with technological offshore structures. Through this case we see how ideas of technology and nature were mutually constructed via discourses and what affect that had on policies.     

The Regional Dimension of Russian Oil Production: Is a Sustained Recovery in Prospect?

An American geographer and prominent authority on oil and natural gas industries and resources of Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union presents a region-byregion account of Russia's oil production, tracing in considerable detail developments up to September 2006. The account, based on systematic and frequent field investigations since the early 1990s as well as interviews with key industry executives, covers reserves, output trends, ownership, investments, pipelines, and a variety of economic factors including exports to China. Addressing the question of whether sustained production recovery is possible, the author presents American and Russian scenarios projecting oil output through the year 2020. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 8 figures, 7 tables, 64 references.     

Transitions in China's Oil Economy, 1990-2010

A team of specialists on China's energy sector reviews a series of major transitions that have transformed that country's oil economy over the past two decades. These include, on the demand side, (a) the increasing role of oil in the economy as a whole vis-à-vis other major energy carriers (as incomes have risen and millions of households have purchased vehicles and have also traveled by air), and (b) an increasing emphasis on energy efficiency and carbon mitigation. On the supply side, several additional transitions are discussed, namely (1) the scaling up of output from the central and western regions as well as from offshore, as the major northeastern oil fields decline after several decades of very heavy production, (2) a shift from being a major oil exporter to the world's second-largest oil importer, (3) expansion and diversification in the number of sources from which China imports oil, (4) changes in the way imported oil enters the country (increasingly via pipelines from neighboring countries), and (5) with such heavy dependence on imports, the building of strategic petroleum reserves and an immensely enlarged refining capacity, intended to enhance the nation's oil security.     

From the savage to the imperial Indian: Identity quests in contemporary Mexico

This article explores some of the major themes through which a specific quest of identity in contemporary Mexico is undertaken. This quest of “mexicanhood” is based on a constant demand for symbols and shows the importance of Aztec culture as a pool of concepts from which a new philosophy keeps emerging. The increasing resurrection of the “Imperial Indian” has been supported by the arrival of messiahs, guides and interpreters of “pre‐hispanic thought”. The use of Zocaló (Mexico City Centre) plays a crucial part in this quest.     

Prosperity,power, and change: Modeling maize at Postclassic Xaltocan,Mexico

Documenting the relationship between agriculture and political economy occupies the center of much research and debate in anthropological archaeology. This study examines this issue by focusing on maize at Xaltocan, a Postclassic community located in the northern Basin of Mexico. We consider how different mechanisms of distribution, circulation, and production can influence maize variation. We analyze maize variability through time at Xaltocan and the community’s chinampa system and interpret patterns of variation in relation to its historical trajectory. This methodological and interpretive approach offers an innovative means to understand how agricultural practices transformed in relation to changing conditions of prosperity and power, especially the links between tribute, market exchange, conflict, and regional demography. Our study also speaks to broader, dichotomous perspectives that model the organization of agricultural systems, revealing that the strategies of both agriculturalists and the state often converge at local levels.     

油气地缘经济与中国油气安全

本文从地缘政治观念向地缘经济观念发展的观点出发,通过对全球油气中心随时空转移和变化的分析,着重阐述了冷战以后全球形成的\"石油心脏地带\"和\"内需求月形地带\"及\"外需求月形地块\"的油气地缘经济格局以及有关国家围绕争夺中亚油气资源和跨国运输通道构成的内外两个三角之间的油气地缘战略竞赛,在此基础上讨论了中国油气安全所面临的处境与应采取的对策。     

Institutionalization and change in cultural policy: CONACULTA and cultural policy in Mexico (1988–2006)

This paper analyses the process of institutionalization of Mexican cultural policy and its evolution after the political alternation of 2000. It demonstrates that since its institutionalization with the creation of the National Council for Culture and Arts in 1988, the objectives, definitions and bureaucratic organization of the cultural policy have not known important changes in the period studied (1988–2006). The inertia observed in Mexican cultural policy can be explained by the institutional structures’ constraints inherited from the Partido de la Revolución Institucional (The Party of the Institutionalized Revolution) and by the actors’ resistance to change.     

Archaeological Views of Aztec Culture

To understand Aztec society most scholars have relied heavily on the rich and abundant documents written during the 16th and 17th centuries. But new archaeological fieldwork is yielding data that supplement the documents; it offers new insights into Aztec society that contribute to comparative studies of complex societies. Publications from 1989 to 1997 emphasize (1) chronologies based on archaeological evidence rather than texts; (2) the origins of the Aztecs and the nature of the preimperial period; (3) developmental sequences and internal organization of individual sites and polities; (4) the economies of households, communities, and regions; and (5) the impact of the Aztec empire on subject regions.     

试析九十年代墨西哥的投资环境与经济发展

吸引外国投资是发展中国家加快经济发展的重要途径之一。黑西哥利用本国的区位优势,扩大市场开放、改善投资环境,吸收大量的外国投资,促进了经济的较快发展。本文剖析了墨西哥的投资环境,以及吸引外资取得的成就,并指出吸收外资中存在的问题。     

From Crime to Coercion: Policing Dissent in Abeokuta,Nigeria, 1900–1940

Indirect rule figured prominently in Nigeria’s colonial administration, but historians understand more about the abstract tenets of this administrative strategy than they do about its everyday implementation. This article investigates the early history of the Native Authority Police Force in the town of Abeokuta in order to trace a larger move towards coercive forms of administration in the early twentieth century. In this period the police in Abeokuta developed from a primarily civil force tasked with managing crime in the rapidly growing town, into a political implement of the colonial government. It became critical in preserving the authority of both the local traditional ruler and the colonial administration behind him. In Abeokuta, this transition was largely precipitated by the 1918 Adubi War and the period of increased surveillance that followed it. This created new responsibilities and powers for the police, expanding their role in Abeokuta’s administration and raising their stock in the colonial administrative hierarchy.     

Between Horror and Obscene Beauty: The Passion of Photojournalism during the War on Drugs in Mexico (2006–2012)

This article examines a group of photographs bearing a strong violent content that were published in print and digital media as part of the coverage of the ‘war against drugs’ in Mexico: an armed conflict initiated by the central government in December 2006. This military action was the first step in a process of militarization affecting several states, in which an attempt was made to dismantle territorial pacts between cartels, to control the illegal traffic in drugs and, supposedly, to put an end to the use and production of drugs among the population. This war gave rise to one of the bloodiest episodes of contemporary Mexico in which drug cartels reproduced and invented new methods of torture that were used not only upon the gunmen of rival cartels but also on a significant number of civilians. In the coverage of these events, not all photojournalists reacted to this upsurge in violence in a ‘sensationalist’ manner; several set out to produce images from unusual points of view. In particular, I shall analyze how certain images represent violence in a tense relationship with artistic iconography, upsetting parameters of horror and beauty in the public sphere.     

Origin and Collapse of Complex Societies in Oaxaca (Mexico): Evaluating the Era from 1965 to the Present

I summarize recent archaeological work in Oaxaca, Mexico, with a focus on questions central to world prehistory: the origin and collapse of complex societies. Monte Albán was the capital of an emerging civilization in the southern highlands of Mexico during the second half of the first millennium B.C. Soon after the foundation of the ancient city, there is evidence for state formation and a political expansion into regions outside the Valley of Oaxaca. Centuries later, Monte Albán went into decline, giving way to the competing small polities found throughout Oaxaca at the time of the Spanish conquest. Since the late 1960s, our knowledge of these changes has been transformed by study of Oaxaca's pre–Monte Albán past, regional settlement surveys, and processual model building. Evolutionary and historical perspectives allow for significant refinement of current debates surrounding the rise and fall of complex societies in Oaxaca.     

Characterization of archaeological obsidians from Lagartero, Chiapas Mexico by PIXE

Obsidian samples from the archaeological site of Lagartero, Chiapas, Mexico and other samples from Mexican and Guatemalan sources were analyzed by proton induced X-ray emission. Statistical treatments such as principal-component analyses were applied to the data set. Obsidians from Lagartero were identified as coming from two obsidian sources in Guatemala and one in Mexico, thus indicating that there was contact between people of Lagartero and other Mayans or Mesoamericans.     

略论冷战后美国的国际安全理论

冷战结束后,为维持"一超"霸权地位,美国的国际安全理论与实践发生了巨大的变化。在理论上,"终结主义范式"理论、"文明冲突范式"理论和"霸权稳定范式"理论在美国政府的决策上占据了主导地位。这些理论鼓吹大国之间和"民主"国家之间的冲突已经结束,现在的冲突,是异质文化与西方文化的"文明冲突"。为了国际安全,需要改造异质文化,消除"暴政",推行"民主"。为此,美国可以"先发制人",对"威胁"其国际安全的国家或其他行为体进行军事打击,以"结束世界上的暴政"。这些理论导致了美国的对外干涉、战争和冲突。这充分证明,在冷战结束后,不仅非传统安全因素威胁着国际安全,美国霸权主义更威胁着国际安全,需要充分揭露和批判。     

‘No One Knows What He is Until He is Told’: Audience and Personhood in a Colonial African Diary

ABSTRACT

This article explores questions of audience and personhood in the diary of Akinpelu Obisesan, a Yoruba man who lived in colonial Nigeria. In particular, it examines how Obisesan wrote between the genres of autobiography and biography so as to generate a sphere for self-fashioning in the colonial context. After introducing Obisesan and exploring briefly the relationship between autobiography, diary writing and the self, I show how Obisesan’s diary narrated a deeply relational form of personhood, which he both generated as a writer and consumed as a reader. The article analyses this narrative, exploring how Obisesan constituted various real and imagined audiences for his diary, while simultaneously claiming his privacy and ‘archiving himself’ into a tin trunk. In the final section of the article, I present a close reading of sections of the 1927 diary, to show how, when writing his diary, Obisesan projected multiple audiences into his text. He used these audiences as a foil for enhancing his own sense of self, thus constituting his personhood and legitimating his precarious social position in colonial society.     

New research on the Holocene settlement and environment of the Chad Basin in Nigeria

Recent investigations of three archaeological sites in the Nigerian part of the Chad Basin during the Holocene reveal key stages in the cultural development and environmental history of that region. At Dufuna, a dugout boat was dated to around 6000 BC, making it the oldest known boat in Africa and one of the oldest in the world. Boats may thus have contributed to the mobility of the population of the southern edge of the Sahara 8000 years ago and, thereby, to the cultural homogeneity of this period. The pottery site at Konduga is around a thousand years younger than Dufuna but still belongs to the time of Mega-Chad. The site is on the Bama Ridge, an old shoreline. Its pottery, decorated in the Saharan tradition, belongs to the earliest ceramic phase of the West African Later Stone Age, long before the beginnings of food production. Although this site was probably settled by pioneers advancing into a largely flooded landscape along the slightly raised shoreline, the human occupation of the area previously covered by Mega-Chad began along a broad front around 2000 BC. Archaeological and palaeoecological finds from two settlement mounds at Gajiganna are described as case studies for this phase, which predates the well-known site of Daima.

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Résumé Les résultats présentés proviennent de recherches récentes sur trois sites archéologiques, dont chacun représente un épisode clé du développement culturel et de l'histoire environnementale du Bassin nigérian du Tchad au cours de l'Holocène. A Dufuna, la découverte d'une pirogue monoxyle, datée d'environ 6000 ans BC, constitue le témoignage le plus ancien d'une embarcation en Afrique et l'un des plus ancien dans le monde. Ce moyen de transport indique la mobilité des populations de la marge sud du Sahara à l'Holocène inférieur et moyen; ce qui a dû contribuer à l'homogénéité culturelle de cette période. Le site à poterie de Konduga est le plus jeune d'un millénaire que Dufuna, mais appartient à l'époque du Méga-Tchad. Le site est installé sur une ancienne ligne de rivage, la Bama Ridge. Sa poterie, décorée selon la tradition saharienne, appartient à la plus ancienne phase à céramique du Later Stone Age ouest-africain, bien avant le début d'une production alimentaire. Vu que ce site ne devait étre occupé que par des pionniers aventurés dans un paysage largement amphibie à la faveur d'un mince cordon émergé, la colonisation de l'espace antérieurement couvert par le Méga-Tchad, débute le long d'un large front vers 2000 ans BC.Les trouvailles archéologiques et paléoécologiques de deux tertres anthropiques à Gajiganna sont décrites commes études de cas illustrant cette phase, qui précède celle du célèbre site de Daima.