The Physical-Geographic Regionalization of the Ukrainian SSR for Agricultural Purposes

A program of research is proposed to determine the optimal regionalization of production and consumption of industrial output. The author proposes a regionalization of the most common industries by major zones (covering two or three regions), and a basic division of the USSR into two major economic zones (West and East) designed to reduce irrational long hauls between them.     

Geographic Aspects of Population Aging in the Russian Federation

An American demographer specializing in the former USSR and Russia examines the demographic aspects of aging and the age structure of Russia's population across its regions, covering urban versus rural areas, and ethnic homelands versus non-ethnic (Russian) regions. The paper also assesses the implications of aging for Russia's pension and electoral systems, by examining regional differences in the real value of pensions and the emergence of a rather durable, conservative "red belt" strongly correlated with older, more agrarian, and rural populations. A final section examines the future of aging in Russia using recent population projections by Goskomstat Rossii demographers. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J10, J11, J14. 10 figures, 2 tables, 39 references.     

法国农业经济政策的历史考察

中古晚期以来,法国政府农业经济政策包括赋税政策,经历了重视、解放、保护、补贴农业的过程。中间虽时有逆转,但基本趋势没有改变。现在的法国是一个高度发达的现代化工业国家,农业在国民经济中所占比重不大,尽管如此,法国政府仍然重视农业的基础地位,厉行惠农政策。法国现代化过程中的农业经济政策经验,对于发展中国家的经济建设具有重要的借鉴意义。     

Land Use in Western Australia: the Need for Change

The need for changes in land use has become more evident from analysis of continued declining trends in land and water resource quality. Land use change in this sense refers to changing existing resource management techniques towards ecologically sustainable development. For example, planting cleared areas towards natural water balance, creating better microclimates and improving soil stability. This paper examines existing land and water legislation and the role and scope of government and the community in achieving changes to traditional resource management including reference to economic and biophysical aspects.     

An Ongoing Tradition: The Use of Russian Metal Dishware in Ob Ugrian Rites

The article focuses on foreign elements in the traditional cultures of northwestern Siberia. The sources of this study are silver and copper saucers mostly bearing representations of hunting scenes, which were manufactured by Russian craftsmen in the 18th–19th centuries for the needs of alien ethnic groups. Ways in which the saucers were used in Ob Ugrian rituals are described along with the specific features and attributions of these objects. The use of Russian metal dishware is viewed in the context of the long cultural tradition of using metal vessels, made in other ethnic environments (Iran, western Central Asia, Volga Bulgaria, Kama region, etc.) as well as in the religious and ritual practices of the Khanty and Mansi.     

土地产权的变革与英国农业革命

英国农业革命是英国由传统的农业社会迈向工业文明的桥梁,它以土地产权的变革为基础,经历了大约三百年的时间,使农业劳动生产率得以大幅度提高,在其世界工场地位确立的同时,农业也达到了前所未有的辉煌程度。     

Old Wine in New Bottles: The Utility of Data Reanalysis in the Social Sciences

Abstract

The authors reconstruct processes of ethnic identification among residents of rural northeast China from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth through an analysis of naming behavior. They apply discrete-time event-history techniques to individual life histories compiled from longitudinal, nominative household-register data from state farms in what is now Liaoning Province to identify the individual and household circumstances associated with the adaptation of Han or Manchu names, focusing on the role of heredity and status. Ethnic identification in late imperial northeast China was potentially fluid. Many residents were descended from migrants from Shandong who became hereditary tenants on state land administered by a system of Manchu government known as the Eight Banners. As banner people, or qiren, these residents could legitimately claim to be Manchu. As descendants of Shandong migrants, they could also claim to be Han. They could express their choice of ethnic identity through their choice of names not just for their children but also for themselves. Names not only express ethnic self-identification, but their registration by state authorities in the analyzed data also implies official recognition and legitimacy. The authors' results demonstrate that ethnic identity was not hereditary but subject to individual and family choice.     

The Use of the Tree of Logical Possibilities in the Construction and Control of Physical Geographic Classifications

The principle of tree diagrams is applied to the classification of physical-geographic objects. Starting with a tree of logical possibilities, the author first eliminates logically possible classes that do not occur in any real situation, and then eliminates factually possible classes that do not occur in a particular regional setting. The technique, which is said to insure complete, logically consistent and, at the same time, legible classifications, is illustrated with a classification of the intermontane basins of the Stanovoy upland of Siberia. Out of a total of 1344 logically possible classes, 24 are found to be realized in the given regional setting.     

稻作农业起源研究中的植物考古学

早期稻作农业是植物考古学的一个研究热点。本文首先厘清了农业、栽培和驯化等稻作农业发展中的常用术语。进而对区分野生稻与驯化稻,即反映“半驯化”特征的几个指标包括基盘、谷粒尺寸和植硅石分别展开讨论。文章结合我们对现代野生稻和栽培稻的测量数据以及田螺山的工作,引用了国内外诸多考古实例和最新的分子学证据,证据表明上述几个指标在某些程度上多少可以作为性状来判断驯化稻是否已经出现,但是随着农业景观概念的提出,耕地杂草群落作为农田系统研究的证据．为稻作农业出现和发展研究展开了新视野。     

The Role and Significance of Objective (Mathematical) Methods in Geographic Research

A staff member of Leningrad University's Cartography Department reviews the introduction of quantitative methods into geography and offers a classification of physical and mathematical models used in geography. The increasing use of objective methods, including physical and chemical techniques, is expected inevitably to affect the nature of geography as a scientific discipline, just as the use of aerial photography changed the theory and practice of topographic mapping.     

Borrowing of Land,Security of Tenure and Sustainable Land Use in Burkina Faso

Lack of formal security of land tenure is often cited as a constraint for participatory land management programmes which try to motivate African farmers to grow trees and to realize other improvements in their fields in order to control soil erosion. According to this approach, the borrowing of land would represent an insecure form of land tenure hindering sustainable land use. However, on the basis of a case study in Burkina Faso, this article demonstrates that this is not necessarily so: borrowing arrangements may play a part in avoiding local overload of the carrying capacity and in an efficient distribution of village lands among the farming units. Furthermore, borrowing does not hinder some major intensification techniques of land use which are currently being applied in Burkina Faso. Legal interventions which aim to increase security of tenure and to create favourable conditions for sustainable land use may in fact have the opposite effect.     

Maps of Interrelations and their Application in Geographic Research

The basic problem of statistical indicators of the degree of correspondence between geographic phenomena is that they are not sufficiently differentiated from place to place. There is a need for special maps of interrelations showing the correspondence of spatial distribution of two or more related phenomena. Five techniques are proposed: (1) The delimitation of regions distinguished by varying degrees of correspondence; (2) the compilation of cartograms of interrelations; (3) the compilation of maps of isocorrelates; (4) the compilation of maps of deviation from a regression; (5) the compilation of contour-entropy maps. The author thus expands on the 1957 paper of Robinson and Bryson on a method for describing quantitatively the correspondence of geographical distributions.     

The Structure of Uncultivated Wilderness: Land Use Beyond the Extensive Margin

This paper presents an agent-based model of shifting cultivation that explains patterns of land use and forest structure beyond the extensive margin of agriculture. The anthropological literature is first examined in order to specify key aspects of farming group preferences vis-a-vis food requirements. Two existing theories of shifting cultivation are then addressed to motivate the present formulation, which integrates household production theory and the concept of optimal rotation originating in the forestry literature. It is argued that the cycling of secondary vegetation by shifting cultivators represents a form of rotation analogous to the foresters' case. The model developed explains the empirical observation that individual agents use multiple rotation ages, and it does so for the nonmarket case, which is consistent with the institutional environment of many indigenous peoples and colonists. The paper concludes with an application to the problem of rural violence in Brazil and with suggestions for extending the framework to the policy arena of global change.     

抗战文学研究的概况与问题

本文评价抗战文学的价值及其历史地位,回顾抗战文学研究的历史与现状,在此基础之上,指出抗战文学研究中存在的主要问题,一是对抗战文学的价值估量不足,二是对正面战场题材关注不够,三是研究视野尚嫌狭窄,四是比较框架有待建立。作者认为,在宽广的视野上以历史主义态度重新考察抗战文学,一定会大有可为。抗战文学研究的深入,不仅会推进对中国现代文学史的全面把握,而且有助于丰富世人对于抗日战争历史的认识。     

The Role of Geographers in Work on a Land Cadaster and on an Agricultural Evaluation of Lands

Geographers have been in the forefront of the campaign to institute a full-fledged land cadastre and economic land-evaluation program in the Soviet Union. Although a State Register of Landholdings was adopted in 1955, it is concerned mainly with the distribution of lands among land-holdings and the composition of agricultural lands (crop land, hay meadows, pastures, etc.) within landholdings. A full fledged cadastral and evaluation program would seek to evaluate land in terms of quality and productivity. In view of the interdisciplinary character of the work, geographers are viewed as most suitable participants.     

Land Use Patterns in Central Asia. Step 1: The Musical Chairs Model

Herding and farming coexisted in Central Asia for several thousand years as main options of preindustrial economic production. The relationship between people practicing different variants of these modes of subsistence is known to have been dynamic. Among the many possible explanations, we explore this dynamic by modeling mechanisms that connect aggregate decisions to land use patterns. Within the framework of the SimulPast project, we show here the results from step 1 of our modeling program: the Musical Chairs Model. This abstract agent-based model describes a mechanism of competition for land use between farming and herding. The aim is the exploration of how mobility, intensity, and interdependence of activities can influence land use pattern. After performing a set of experiments within the framework of this model, we compare the implications of each condition for the corroboration of specific land use patterns. Some historical and archaeological implications are also discussed. We suggest that the overall extension of farming in oases can be explained by the competition for land use between farming and herding, assuming that it develops with little or no interference of climatic, geographical, and historical contingencies.