LABOUR AND LANDSCAPES: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LANDESQUE CAPITAL IN NINETEENTH CENTURY TANGANYIKA

In a long‐term and global perspective irrigated and terraced landscapes, landesque capital, have often been assumed to be closely associated with hierarchical political systems. However, research is accumulating that shows how kinship‐based societies (including small chiefdoms) have also been responsible for constructing landesque capital without population pressure. We examine the political economy of landesque capital through the intersections of decentralized politics and regional economies. A crucial question guiding our research is why some kinship‐based societies chose to invest their labour in landesque capital while others did not. Our analysis is based on a detailed examination of four relatively densely populated communities in late pre‐colonial and early colonial Tanzania. By analysing labour processes as contingent and separate from political types of generalized economic systems over time we can identify the causal factors that direct labour and thus landscape formation as a process. The general conclusion of our investigation is that landesque investments occurred in cases where agriculture was the main source of long‐term wealth flow irrespective of whether or not hierarchical political systems were present. However, while this factor may be a necessary condition it is not a sufficient cause. In the cases we examined, the configurations of world‐systems connections and local social and economic circumstances combined to either produce investments in landesque capital or to pursue short‐term strategies of extraction.     

AN ASSESSMENT OF COPING WITH ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS IN NORTHERN ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES

Impressions of the north, its landscape, and people are drawn largely from public images, not personal experience, making misconceptions commonplace among non-residents. The objective of this research is to improve our understanding of how communities cope with flood hazards through an assessment of the complex integration of traditional knowledge, community evolution, and modern technologies. This intersection of forces could influence vulnerability to natural hazards and affect preparedness and response. Field investigations were conducted in Aklavik, N.W.T., Attawapiskat, Ontario, and Fort Hard, N.W.T. as case studies. Central to the research design are distinctions between perceptions, attitudes, and activities at three operational levels: individual; communal; governmental - and an appreciation of how these levels interrelate in response to flood hazards. The research findings confirm the crucial value of local environmental knowledge, identify the influence of changing social structures on community vulnerability, and underline the jurisdictionally integrated character of disaster response. Le plus souvent, les impressions du nord, de son paysage et de ses peuples sont le résultat ?images percues par le grand public et non pas ?expériences vécues, et de ce fait, les impressions erronëes sont assez fréquentes chez les non-résidents. ?objet de la présente recherche est deàmieux comprendre les solutions trouvées par les com-munautés face aux inondations et ce, en analysant toute la complexité de /‘intégration des connaissances traditionnelles, de ?évolution communautaire et des technologies modernes. Ce regroupement des forces pourrait avoir une influence sur la vulnérabilité face aux dangers naturels et sur ?état de préparation et la réaction. Des études de cas, on été mencés Aklavik, T.N.O., à Attawapiskat en Ontario et à Fort Hard, T.N.O. Les recherches sont structurés en distinguant les perceptions, les attitudes et les activité‘s à trois niveaux de fonctionnement, soit individuel, communautaire etgou-vernemental. Files analysent également ?interrelation de ces trois niveaux lorsqu'il est question ?une reponse a un risque ?inondation. Les resultats de la récherche confirmed ?importance primordiale des connaissances de ?environnement local, tout en identifiant /‘influence du changement des structures sociales sur la vulnérabilité des communautés. Enfin, elles soulignent le phénoméne de /‘intégration des jurisdictions vis à vis de la réaction aux sinistres.     

ON FUTURES AND ENDINGS: NARRATOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF CRISES*

The article examines the changing relationship of the present to the future from a narratological perspective. It argues that three dominant narrative schemas structure the contemporary experiences of temporality in the Western social imaginary: the modern crisis narrative, the apocalyptic narrative, and the chronic crisis narrative. In its first part, the article shows how the modern sense of crisis, which emerged in the late eighteenth century, sedimented into a powerful narrative template by knitting together the past, the present, and the future into a unified plot. The second part focuses on the resurgence of apocalyptic stories in the Western social imaginary and humanities discourse. The final part highlights the special contribution of aesthetics of precariousness to the Western imaginary of time and temporality. It argues that the “chronic crisis narrative” deflates the teleological narrative arc of the modern crisis paradigm while also shunning the end-time discourse of the apocalyptic narrative.     

LEVIATHAN AND KRAKEN: STATES,CORPORATIONS, AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

In our politico-philosophical bestiary, no monster has historically been more prominent than the Leviathan, the whale of the Book of Job, transformed by Hobbes, which has long been ubiquitous as a metaphor or as a signifier in all intellectual traditions touching upon the political. Like the state itself, we argue, the Leviathan has played an outsized role in the way we theorize and imagine relations of sovereignty in the world. This essay seeks to add a new hermeneutical creature to the bestiary: the Kraken. Said to be huge and to lurk in Norway's icy waters, the Kraken first emerged in the accounts of natural philosophers in the eighteenth century, at the very moment when political economy was becoming the premier science of governance in Europe. Leviathan is an emblem of a kind of state that no longer exists and has never existed, and it remains our most potent emblem of the state's reification, a relentlessly compelling figure that has long blinded historians to alternate sovereignties within, across, and outside the physical territories of states. From stateless financial capital to multinational corporations acting like states on the world stage, such forms of sovereignty are an essential feature of the global politics we are now living. These forms are not new, nor is their emblem: the Kraken.     

REGIONAL GROWTH IN THE SOVIET ECONOMY A MODEL AND ANALYSIS*

A multiregional econometric model of the Soviet economy is presented. It consists of 1,391 equations, with time-series information for 1965-1980. In conformity with the number of the country's republics, 15 input-output tables are incorporated. The discussion includes the methodological framework, the structure and equations, theoretical justification for the interaction between the econometric and input-output components, data and estimation, and forecasting results.     

NEGATIVE FEEDBACKS IN THE ECONOMY AND INDUSTRIAL LOCATION*

ABSTRACT. Incorporating regional asymmetry and negative feedbacks (congestion) in a model of economic geography and international trade shows that complete specialization of production at one location is unlikely. We identify an agglomerating force: the home market effect, and two spreading forces, competition for demand from immobile sectors of production and congestion. We demonstrate that negative feedbacks can explain the economic viability of small industrial regions observed in the real world. Simulations clarify the basic structure of the model.     

JUST WAIT UNTIL THERE'S A DROUGHT: MEDIATING ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES FOR URBAN GROWTH

Pro-development water managers from a southern Californian jurisdiction secured voter approval for importing water supplies by mediating a six year drought. Through reorganized water management structures, unsustainable technological practices, and “crisis” discourses, water managers overcame residents' historic resistance to imported water by defining it as insurance against a “natural” emergency, not a social mechanism for growth. The research suggests how the environmental crisis can advance development-oriented state agencies' hegemony. Given the otherwise general advocacy of environmentalism and “slow-growth in the empirical setting, water managers” success in overturning sustainable water development regimes reveals potential contradictions within the “environmentalist” landscape.