Representations as practices: producing a native space in Sarawak,Malaysia

The study looks at historical and contemporary representations of rural native communities in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Through the analysis of representations, the study underlines the production of a distinct space for native rural communities in Sarawak and highlights its material implications. The first part of the paper focuses on representations deployed by the colonial administrations to govern native populations of Sarawak. The consequences of specific representations that produced native territorial communities based on codified customs and ethnic presuppositions are identified. Second, the paper focuses on representations deployed to support a corporate agricultural development project on customary land referred to as the Konsep Baru. It demonstrates that these representations reify essential characteristics of the native space as it was produced by colonial regimes and position native rural communities in duality with modern society. In turn, the scrutiny of representations produced by native land rights advocates in response to problematic forms of rural development in Sarawak highlights the dualisms portrayed in specific accounts and stresses their links with colonial constructions of the native space. Overall the paper suggests ways to reflect on the implication of representations about native communities in Sarawak, as representations are intertwined with development practices.     

Whether Rain or Shine: Weather Regimes from a New Guinea Perspective

The climate of any region is of interest to those who live there, impinging as it inevitably does on their lives. This paper explores the interest evinced in the weather by some Wola speakers, living in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. It is an attempt at an ethno-meteorology, a scarcely researched but creditable field of enquiry. It compares and contrasts observations of the climate and records of the weather with local people's comments and thoughts on these phenomena. The paper covers both daily weather patterns and annual seasons, with a detailed investigation of rainfall patterns, cloud cover, wind and pressure, and temperature and humidity variations. It concludes on the management of climatic perturbations, notably infrequent frosts.     

Restoring Phineas Gage: a 150th retrospective

September 13 1998 marked the 150th anniversary of the accident to Phineas Gage, one of the most famous cases of survival after massive injury to the brain, and certainly the most famous case of personality change after brain damage. For this article a sample of the current literature about Gage was examined. It was found that although his case is mentioned in about 60% of introductory textbooks in psychology, there is a good deal of inaccuracy in what has been written about him. Similar inaccuracy was found in a smaller sampling of the psychiatric, medical, physiological, linguistic, and general neuroscientific literature. The main basis of the inaccuracies is an ignorance or disregard of what is contained in the primary sources about Gage, coupled with a tendency to attribute to him characteristics that belong to other cases of frontal damage. The errors and their bases are discussed in an endeavour to restore the picture of Gage to its original state. The paper includes an Appendix of verbatim quotations from the primary sources that can be compared with the later, inaccurate renditions.     

Establishing Connections,Restoring Relationships: Exploring the Historiography of Nursing in Britain

This paper provides a comparative historiographical framework within which to reconsider the history of nursing. It asks why nursing has remained largely sidelined within the history of medicine, while the latter has gained mainstream respectability in the wider field of historical research. Gender historians are challenged to look at the under‐explored aspects of nursing's history such as pre‐Nightingale nurses and nursing, and the multiple and international meanings of race, class and gender as experienced by this unique cohort of women and men. The paper draws upon key texts in the history of nursing and of medicine and includes a discussion about use of imagery within significant publications and what this says about intended readerships. It concludes that, unlike medicine, nursing professionals have to some extent hijacked the history of nursing, while the subject has been further hampered by Florence Nightingale's legacy and the subsequent emphasis on the professionalisation of nursing.     

Losing the Blanket,Building a Fence: Australian Anxiety and the End of Military Colonialism in Malaysia

From 1955 to 1988, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) maintained a large airbase in Northern Malaysia. For the first 15 years of its existence, RAAF Butterworth had a modest and incomplete perimeter fence. With the end of British military colonialism in Malaysia and Singapore following the implementation of the ‘East of Suez’ policy, the Australians became preoccupied with their physical security and the role of the perimeter fence. By exploring the adoption of practices of exclusion via physical barriers in the wake of British withdrawal, this paper argues that the changing psychological outlook of Australian military officials reflected broader Australian anxieties about their own sense of ‘Britishness’ and the nation’s place in a decolonising Asia. As the Australians lost their British ‘blanket’ they built a fence.     

马来西亚城市华人移民就业情况研究——基于2005年在马来西亚实地调查的分析

基于2005年在马来西亚吉隆坡和新山实地调查获得的资料,从城市移民在行业分布、职位、就业或经营途径、收入和政府经济政策等各个方面的情况,探讨了华人与马来人城市移民的不同遭遇,比较了华人移民在吉隆坡和新山这两个不同类型城市中的不同境遇。得出结论:城市新移民中马来人比华人获得了更多的政策扶持和发展机会,但华人比马来人拥有更多的投资方式和自己的企业,在城市中华人比马来人受访者的月收入要略高一些;在不同的领域,华人新移民在新山和在吉隆坡的就业或商业机会不同。     

盘庚迁殷年代考及大龟四版历法复原

文章试图通过复原甲骨文“大龟四版”上的历法,从而推算出盘庚迁殷和武王伐纣的年代,是对恢复商代历法研究的一次尝试。