The Fluidity of the ‘Farming Ladder’: The Experience of the Duffin Family,Yorkshire, 1870-1950

This article examines the nuances of the ‘farming ladder’ through a case study of the Duffin farming family. It explores the circumstances in which they flourished and faltered; the internal and external determinants affecting their ability to maintain a grip on the ‘farming ladder’; and the fluidity of the ladder. Drawing upon the personal archive of the family and complementary sources, the variable position of the family on the ‘farming ladder’ as they progress from agricultural labourers to farmers and then back to labourers is charted within wider historical and geographical frameworks. The social and spatial relationships forged are identified as being particularly important in the operation of the ‘farming ladder’.     

The role of the internet in removing the ‘shackles of the saleroom’: Anytime,anyplace, anything,anywhere

Abstract

The alliance of the internet with the antiquities industry has seen the market grow at an unprecedented rate. E-commerce has facilitated an increase in flexibility and access to the market, which has encouraged an influx of new people to the trade. Anyone can now buy and sell antiquities.

The expansion and extension of the market has created new threats to our cultural heritage. Indeed, my research suggests that this has had a significant impact on the organisation, extent and intensity of site destruction. Furthermore, the increased demand for artefacts has led to the proliferation of fakes, increasingly obvious with the widely circulated images on the world wide web. Consequently we are faced with a progressively more confused and fragmentary archaeological record, challenging efforts to piece together the past.

All assessments of the future must accept that the e-market is vast, that it remains largely unsupervised, and that it is impossible to police. Evidence suggests that the illicit trade is filtering into the cyber-sphere, which provides an ideal means of placing material onto the market quickly and quietly. The extent of this unwelcome development is unknown and remains difficult to assess. What is certain is that action needs to be taken if the ‘Age of Technology’ is not to consume the present as well as the past.     

The Baha'is and the Constitutional Revolution: The Case of Sari,Mazandaran, 1906–1913

Accounts of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran have tended to ignore the role of the Baha'is in that event. This paper looks at the case of Sari, capital of Mazandaran province, where the Baha'is of the city played a major part in initiating the move towards Constitutionalism and in educating people about the reforms envisaged and about the modern world. They also led the way in carrying out some of these reforms. In particular, the Baha'is established the first modern schools in the town. In this process, they were opposed by the Muslim ‘ulama in the town, who equated Constitutionalism and the Baha'i Faith, and persecuted the Baha'is of the town relentlessly for both reasons, leading eventually to the killing of five of the leading Baha'is of Sari in 1913. A brief account is also given of the attitude of the Baha'i leader ‘Abdu'l-Baha (1844–1921) towards the Constitutional Movement and the role of the Baha'is in it. This paper follows the events of the seven years 1906–13 in Sari and describes seven swings of the pendulum of power in the town alternating between the Baha'is and Constitutionalists on the one hand and the ‘ulama and the royalist forces supporting Muhammad ‘Ali Shah on the other. It points out that the neglect of the Baha'i aspect of these events by historians has led to a failure to account adequately for some of the events of these years.     

Fixing the territory,a turning point: The paradoxes of the Wichí maps of the Argentine Chaco

Indigenous mapping is a powerful political tool for long-marginalized populations to create visibility and establish land claims. In the case of Argentina, a country that was built on a denial of the presence of Indigenous peoples in the national territory, the emergence of these maps stemming from participatory processes coincided with the recognition of these communities' territorial rights in 1994. However, this mapping of Indigenous territories freezes extremely dynamic and complex socio-spatial realities just as it inflects their representations. In this paper, I reassess the weight and the role that Indigenous cartographic representations play in the evolution of these populations' spatial capital. Paradoxically, they give rise to more contradictions than they clarify. These paradoxes demonstrate the varied relationships different generations maintain with their territory, just as they concern its structure and its cartographic form. Therefore, based on the case of the Wichí of the Argentinian Chaco, this paper contributes to the understanding of contemporary issues of indigeneity by adopting a critical approach to Indigenous cartography. Whereas in Argentina cartographic knowledge is undergoing a process of decolonization, this does not apply to the legal system or to society as a whole.     

The best of times,the worst of times: Community-sector advocacy in the age of ‘compacts’

The recent introduction of written ‘compacts’ between government and community services organisations (CSOs) in Australia offers the promise of meaningful co-production of policy. However, recent research has highlighted that many in the community sector continue to perceive that there are significant constraints on their capacity to engage in advocacy. This paper examines the impact of the current governance regimes on the Australian community sector and explores the dimensions of these perceived constraints. The paper argues that both government and community sectors must make concessions and adjustments. Governments must accept that the use of contracting monopolies to stifle advocacy has weakened their capacity to deliver responsive services, while community organisations must accept that new governance regimes require new modes of participation in the policy process.     

The Game: Or, ‘the making of migration’ along the Balkan Route

‘The Game’ is how many refugees describe their attempts to informally travel to Western Europe via the so-called Balkan Route. This article conceptualises The Game as a spatial tactic implemented by refugees as a response to the impossibility of legally entering the EU and as a gray area in the governance of informal migrant mobilities. It does so by engaging with the recent literature on the Balkan Route to analyse how The Game has been performed and ‘managed’ in Serbia, a key ‘buffer state’ along this corridor. Drawing from Tazzioli's work on ‘The Making of Migration’, and in particular on her understanding of refugee forced mobility as a form of ‘migrant management’ on the part of the authorities, this article shows how the ambivalent connotations of The Game reveal the troubling configurations of EU border politics and of its formal and informal geopolitical arrangements. At the same time, it argues that the practices related to The Game ultimately reflect the extraordinary determination of the refugees in creating new itineraries, spatial interstices, invisible networks and ‘holes in the border walls’ that allow them, despite all the difficulties, to challenge such border politics. We conclude by proposing to understand The Game as part of the biopolitics of migration and by suggesting that it represents a powerful manifestation of the condition (and the field of possibility) of thousands of refugees along the Balkan Route today.     

Socialists: The end of the line?

Melchior, E., Le PS, du projet au pouvoir (Editions de l'Atelier/Editions Ouvrières, 1993), 358pp., 135F., ISBN 2 7082 30522

Chevènement, J.‐P., Le Temps des citoyens (Editions du Rocher, 1993), 447pp., 39F., ISBN 2 268 01557 2     

The writings of Ademar of Chabannes,the Peace of 994, and the ‘Terrors of the Year 1000’

The belief that apocalyptic expectations existed at the turn of the first millennium is no longer widely held, even though some recent scholars have suggested they did. This paper seeks to confirm the notion that, at least in the monastic milieu, belief that the Last Judgement was imminent did exist in the decades around the year 1000. To support this argument, this paper will examine the writings of the monk, Ademar of Chabannes. In his work of history and the sermons he wrote near the end of his life, Ademar reveals his own eschatological mentality. His history, it will be argued, contains numerous accounts of prodigies and signs that indicated Ademar and his contemporaries thought that they were living in the Last Days. Ademar's apocalypticism is revealed even more fully in his sermons, which were organised along the lines of salvation history. His account in the sermons of the Peace of God council of 994, which also appears in the history, clearly demonstrates his eschatological sensibility. His record of this council, written over 30 years after the event, it will be argued, is apocalyptic in both form and content. The structure of his account is arranged in the tradition of apocalyptic literature, and the events he records are described in language drawn from the Revelation of John and the book of Isaiah. Ademar also drew on the idea of the refreshment of the saints found in the writings of Jerome and of Bede in his explanation of the events of 994. Ademar's writings, therefore, reveal the existence of apocalyptic expectations at the turn of the first millennium.     

Remembering the “Queen City of the West”: The Untapped Archaeological Resources of Indianola, Texas

Though its life was quite brief (1844–1886), the now-forgotten Gulf Coast port of Indianola, Texas, played a pivotal role in the settlement of the Southwest. This flourishing metropolis was ravaged by an 1875 hurricane, then completely destroyed by an even fiercer storm in 1886. Initial investigations have revealed vestiges of the wharves, a substantial debris field, and two important shipwrecks, proving the site's tremendous archaeological potential. Because of its unique place in Texas and U.S. maritime history, the former Queen City of the West merits further study.     

The Burial of the Dead: the British Army on the Western Front, 1914–18

Abstract

This article examines the ‘war culture’ that developed within the British Army with regard to death and burial on the Western Front. Soldiers on the battle?elds responded to the presence of death and the bodies of the dead through a speci?c framework that was used to understand this perverse and violent landscape. This drew upon pre-war practices and emphasized the physicality of the corpse in the desire to ensure a ‘decent’ burial for a ‘pal’.     

The Modernization of Iran and the Development of the Persian Carpet Industry: The Neo-Classical Era in the Persian Carpet Industry, 1925–45

The two decades, 1925–45, witnessed a dramatic transformation and revitalization of the Persian carpet industry in response to developments in Iranian governance, society and economy. Two historical watersheds were covered by that period, notably the replacement of the Qajar dynasty by a modernizing administration under Reza Shah Pahlavi, and the subsequent wartime occupation of Iran jointly by the Soviet Union and Great Britain. It was during those two decades that Iran acquired a centralized system of government and the beginnings of a modern industrial base. The accompanying social transformation brought about the emergence of new classes of administrators and managers who constituted the dominant elite of the Reza Shah era. This twin process of centralization and modernization had a telling impact on Iranian culture and the arts, including the carpet arts.     

The challenge of the spaceship: Arthur C. Clarke and the history of the future, 1930–1970

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 essay on ‘The Challenge of the Spaceship’ was one of the founding manifestoes of the Space Age, and helped to establish him as the West’s leading techno-prophet. Restating his ideas in subsequent factual and fictional works, Clarke successfully propagated the belief that man’s destiny lay in space and that the process was already underway. On the surface Clarke’s oeuvre offers a classic astrofuturist model of progress as technology-driven, but on closer examination it also incorporates a more pessimistic, historically based strand of philosophy, British rather than American. This essay traces the genesis of Clarke’s early work and the influence upon him of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the moral philosophers Olaf Stapledon and C.S. Lewis. Toynbee was essentially a Christian pessimist who believed that western civilization was on the way out; his long historical perspectives were an important source of inspiration for Clarke, leading him to a cyclical rather than a simply progressive model of history which contemplated both the beginning and the end of civilizations. The concerns of Stapledon and Lewis with grand narratives of decline and redemption were also influences on Clarke. All this needs to be understood in relation to both the European experience of World War I and to the coming of the atomic bomb, the latter a profound influence on Clarke’s generation. Such perspectives gave European astroculture a more modulated vision of the human future in space than the technologically based astrofuturism which dominated in the USA.     

Studies in the Politics of Environmental Protection: The Historical Roots of the British Clean Air Act, 1956: III. The Ripening of Public Opinion, 1898–1952

Abstract

This is the last of three articles about the campaign to abate smoke in the cities of England which began early in the 19th century and culminated in the Clean Air Act 1956. It describes the third sustained wave of activity by lobbies for smoke abatement and the way the public conscience was raised to a level which made it practicable to bring in laws to control domestic as well as industrial smoke. The impediments to this evolution of public opinion were (a) social: the Englishman's sentimental attachment to an inefficient and wasteful way to heat and cook in his home; (b) technological: the practical difficulties in producing a solid smokeless fuel which could be used in an open grate; and (c) administrative: the difficulties in enforcing laws against smoke when smoke could be neither defined nor measured with the precision necessary in a court of law.     

A Decade of Design: The Global Invention of the Kanga, 1876–1886

This article examines the early development of printed and manufactured cotton kanga textiles, worn popularly throughout East Africa by women as wrappers. Using archival, pictorial and object collections, I suggest that the decade from 1876 to 1886 was crucial for design. The bold colour and graphics of East African women’s cloth printing, Indonesian batik motifs, European-printed handkerchief-style borders and the inclusion of text combined by 1886 to form the now standard composition of kanga cloth.