Changing Fire Management in the Pastoral Lands of Cape York Peninsula of northeast Australia, 1623 to 1996

Accounts of European explorers between 1623 and 1880 indicate that fires were lit by Aboriginal people on Cape York Peninsula in northeast Australia throughout the dry season (May–October). Diaries kept by three generations of pastoralists in the Musgrave area (1913–1952, 1953–1974 and 1976–1992) show that burning activities were largely confined to a two to six week period between May and early August. The timing of burning depended on the amount and date of cessation of wet season rainfall. More rarely, ‘storm‐burning’, burning under hot conditions within a few days of the first heavy rains of the wet season, was undertaken. Long‐term pastoralists felt a responsibility to use fire wisely and had a detailed knowledge of the role of fire in land management. Their decisions to burn were based on the extent of grass curing, and soil and weather conditions, all of which affected the extent of each burn. They used early dry season fires mainly to maintain forage and control cattle movements. Storm‐burns were reputed to control woody weeds, but were used infrequently because of difficulty in controlling their spread and uncertainty as to when the next rains would stimulate new grass growth.     

Insecurity and Pastoral Development in the Sahel

In this article it is argued that conventional agro-ecological and organizational concepts used in pastoral development are strongly biased towards the formulation and enforcement of norms. This leads development experts to attempts to control pastoralists and their herds. The policies and development interventions based on these assumptions have been largely unsuccessful. As a consequence attention for dryland areas and pastoral development has declined among researchers and development agencies. An important reason for this failure is the fundamental misfit between these normative concepts and the reality of dryland ecosystems and pastoral society. In order to show this, an alternative view on rangeland ecology and pastoral society is presented, supported by a case study of Fulbe pastoral society in dryland Central Mali. The authors argue that approaches to pastoral development must be revised in the direction of the dynamics inherent in the pastoral way of life.     

The Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa

In East Africa, as in many other regions, the initial shift from hunting and gathering to food production was a secondary process involving the introduction of species domesticated elsewhere. Specifically, the East African Neolithic, or Pastoral Neolithic, centered on herding livestock, some of which may have been domesticated in the Sahara and all of which were almost certainly imported from areas to the north. The development of the Pastoral Neolithic was lengthy and complex, having begun before 4000 B.P. and lasted until about 1300 B.P. Although detailed information on this segment of African prehistory is not abundant, data so far available reveal a succession of cultural transformations within the Pastoral Neolithic, such that it can be divided into early, evolved, and late stages, each exhibiting distinctive combinations of ceramic wares, lithic industries, and subsistence regimes. The transformations seem to have been fostered by both environmental change and population movements.     

Pastoral Power, Governmentality and Cultures of Order in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia

I deploy Michel Foucault's concepts of pastoral power and governmentality to investigate the material consequences of two very different visions of the governance of Native people in nineteenth-century British Columbia. This entails a consideration of these modalities of power, and of the usefulness of relocating them in a colonial context. But I also argue that the conceptions of order embedded within these two modalities of power bear the stamp of, and demonstrate, very distinctive cultural geographies.     

新形势下青海省农牧区改革发展的态势分析

积极推进农牧区改革发展,是全面建设小康社会和实现现代化的重大战略任务。本文围绕总体目标任务,应用态势分析方法,对新形势下青海省农牧区改革发展的内部条件和外部环境进行分析,提出了促进青海农牧区改革发展的策略。     

Joan Barfoot's Exit Lines and the Pastoral of Old Age

This article traces the way in which Canadian author Joan Barfoot's novel Exit Lines draws upon the pastoral tradition in its representation of old age. Pastoral literature has traditionally encoded ideologies of age, and it is the inclusion of pastoral tropes that structures Barfoot's participation in the discussion of population aging currently taking place across disciplines and in the popular media. Pastoral writing is characterized by an acceptance of vulnerability and loss, and this provides Barfoot with an effective counterpoint to a contemporary culture of “positive” aging founded on an ethic of bodily control that alternately stigmatizes and masks the existence of decline and dependency in late life. The novel questions the way in which the rhetoric of crisis that characterizes discussions of population aging threatens to generate resentment against the dependent elderly, whom the novel depicts as vulnerable to exploitation by those who stand to profit from this “crisis.”     

Religion and Politics in Australia

Abstract

The relationship between religion and politics in Australia has in the past been conditioned by the peculiarities of Australian history. Traditionally religion was related to issues of moral reformation and sectarianism. Changes in Australia over the past forty years have changed this relationship as the public role of religion has waned. In recent times there has been somewhat of a religious comeback in Australian public life. This has been related to a new style of Christian politics, the presence of two strong Church leaders, Cardinal George Pell and Archbishop Peter Jensen, the presence of Islam, the election of a committed Christian Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister and the continuing importance of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) as a civil religion.     

Challenging Orthodoxies: Understanding Poverty in Pastoral Areas of East Africa

Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable attention from a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities, academics, activists and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there is surprisingly little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of poverty among one of the continent's most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic remoteness, and market integration. It argues that current poverty debates ‘homogenize’ the concept of ‘pastoralist’ by failing to acknowledge the diverse livelihoods and wealth differentiation that fall under the term. The article concludes that what is not needed is another development label (stereotype) that equates pastoralism with poverty, thereby empowering outside interests to transform rather than strengthen pastoral livelihoods.     

Modern Trend Found in Traditional Lives in Rural/Pastoral Areas

ＺＨＡＧＡＲＴｈｅＴｉｂｅｔａｎｆａｒｍｅｒｓａｎｄｈｅｒｄｅｒｓｆｏｕｇｈｔｔｅｎａｃｉｏｕｓｌｙａｇａｉｎｓｔｐｏｖｅｒｔｙｉｎｔｈｅｐａｓｔ．Ａｌｏｎｇｓｉｄｅｗｉｔｈｓｏｃｉａｌｐｒｏｇｒｅｓｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒｉｚｅｄｂｙｉｍｐｒｏｖｅｄｆａ...     

柴尔德在澳大利亚

著名考古学家柴尔德为考古学所作出的巨大贡献,今天到底意味着什么?为了寻求这个问题的答案,英国考古协会和史前学会1992年5月在伦敦大学的考古研究所联合召开了纪念柴尔德诞辰100周年讨论会。100多名国际知名学者出席了会议,他们从多个角度对柴尔德的思想进行了深入的研究,并取得了丰硕的成果。会议主持人大卫·哈维斯把会议上发表的论文整理成集,定名为《柴尔德的考古学》(The archaeology of V.Gordon Childe)。马尔瓦尼这篇被收录其中的文章对柴尔德1892～1922年在澳大利亚的经历以及此对他以后的思想的影响进行了深入研究。     

Landscape and Gentrification: The Picturesque and Pastoral in 1980s New York Cinema

In this article I discuss 1980s New York cinema through the conceptual lens of landscape, drawing in particular on the interconnected but separate traditions of the pastoral and the picturesque. While the former mode of representing landscape is idealizing (the shepherd/nymph‐motif), the latter with its origins in the period of the enclosures of the English countryside tends to aestheticize poverty and dispossession. This distinction can productively be deployed in relation to tensions between glamorization and exploitation in 1980s New York cinema, which often dealt with the themes of rent, eviction, and unemployment in postindustrial settings. Focusing in particular on Downtown 81 (Edo Bertoglio, 1981/2000) and Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985), I argue that the current nostalgia for a pre‐gentrified and less regulated New York in popular culture is dependent on these idealizing and aestheticizing tendencies insofar that they conceal or prettify some of the darker aspects of the period.     

Property Rights and the Environment in Pastoral China: Evidence from the Field

It is widely perceived that the degradation of China’s rangelands has accelerated since the introduction of rural reforms in the late 1970s. The popular explanation for this phenomenon has been that a ‘tragedy of the commons’ exists, as privately‐owned livestock are being grazed on ‘common’ land. Since the passing of the Rangeland Law in 1985, Chinese pastoral tenure policy has emphasized the establishment of individual household tenure as a necessary condition for improving incentives for sustainable rangeland management. Yet household tenure has yet to be effectively established in many pastoral regions. The first objective of this article is to describe pastoral tenure arrangements in northern Xinjiang‐Uygur Autonomous Region. Its second objective is to explain pastoral tenure arrangements, particularly the observed persistence of collective action. It is argued that there is no ‘tragedy of the commons’ and that it is characteristics of rangeland resources and the social environment that give rise to the particular types of institutional arrangements found.     

Australia in Asia

Anthony Milner (ed). Australia in Asia. Comparing Cultures. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Anthony Milner and Mary Quilty (eds). Australia in Asia. Communities of Thought. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Anthony Milner and Mary Quilty (eds). Australia in Asia. Episodes. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998.