The Politics of Knowledge: Anthropology and Māori Modernity in Mid-Twentieth-Century New Zealand

This article argues that growing confidence in anthropology as a tool for managing the adaptation of a resurgent Māori population to modernity shaped a “politics of knowledge” regarding New Zealand's indigenous people in the mid-twentieth century. We examine the relationship between anthropological discourse, state policy, and the Māori struggle to uphold traditional ways, through the prism of Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole's psycho-ethnographic study entitled Some Modern Māoris (Beaglehole, E., and P. Beaglehole. 1946. Some Modern Māoris. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research). This paper demonstrates that the study was the product of a nexus between concerns for Māori welfare, a perceived need for empirical research that could be applied to the “problem” of indigenous adjustment to contemporary conditions, and American philanthropy. For this reason, and as a detailed record of a small community when Māori society was on the cusp of post-Second World War transformations, we contend that the study deserves to be recovered from historical obscurity.     

The Anthropology of Islam as “AppliedAnthropology”

Thomas R. Berger. Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. Vols. 1 &; 2. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1977. xxvii +213 pp. and xxii+ 268 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography, and appendices. Each volume is $5.00 (paper) in Canada and $6.00 outside of Canada.

Johanna Brand. The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash. Toronto: James Lorimer &; Co., 1978. 171 pp. Illustrations, map, bibliography, chronology. $6.95, paper.

James Burke. Paper Tomahawks: From Red Tape to Red Power. Winnipeg: Queenston House, 1976. 406 pp. $2.95, paper.

Harold Cardinal. The Rebirth of Canada's Indians. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1977. 222 pp. $9.95 (cloth) and $4.95, paper.

Robin Fisher. Contact and Conflict: Indian‐European Relations in British Columbia, 1774–1890. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1977. xvii+ 250 pp. Illustrations, map, bibliography, and index. $18.00, cloth.

Cornelius J. Jaenen. Friend and Foe: Aspects of French‐Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto: McClelland &; Stewart, 1976. 207 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, and index. $10.00, cloth.

Martin O'Malley. The Past and Future Land: An Account of the Berger Inquiry Into the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1976. xiv +280 pp. Map and Index. $15.00, cloth, and $4.95, paper.

Frederick W. Rowe. Extinction: The Beothuks of Newfoundland. Toronto: McGraw‐Hill Ryerson, 1977. 166 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $10.95, cloth.

Joan Ryan. Wall of Words. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1979. 190 pp. $4.95, paper.

John Snow. These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places: The Story of the Stoney Indians. Toronto: Samuel Stevens, 1977. xiv + 185 pp. Illustrations, maps, references, appendix, and index. $12.95, cloth.

David H. Stymeist. Ethics and Indians: Social Relations in a Northwest Ontario Town. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1975. viii+ 98 pp. Tables and references. $8.95, cloth and $3.95, paper.

Peter Such. Vanished Peoples: The Archaic, Dorset and Beothuk People of Newfoundland. Toronto: NC Press, 1978. 94 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, glossary, index. $12.95, cloth and 55.95, paper.

Marc‐Adelard Tremblay, ed. Les facettes de l'identité Amérindienne ! The Patterns of “Amerindian” Identity. Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1976. xiv ‐ 317 pp. Bibliographies, panelists and sponsors. $16.50, paper.

Mel Watkins, ed. Dene Nation: The Colony Within. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977. xii+ 189 pp. Map and references. $4.95, paper.

George Woodcock. The Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1977. 223 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index. $17.95, cloth.     

Yellow fever? The political geography of Liberal voting in Great Britain

The rise of the Labour Party after World War I forced the Liberal Party in Britain back into the nonconformist and remote ‘Celtic Fringe’, where local identity and religion rather than class remained the dominant political cleavages. The party has struggled to break out of these Liberal ‘heartlands’ ever since. However, in the 1997 General Election the Liberal Democrats won a total of 46 constituencies, their best result since 1929, despite a fall in their national share of the vote. While historical voting patterns and the level of religious nonconformity can help explain the success in the traditional heartlands seats we must turn to contemporary reasons for why the party were able to make gains in areas of historical weakness. Bridging the credibility gap through success at the local level or in by-elections has been particularly vital for the party. Building on the understanding gained from qualitative interviews with the party elite and case studies in key constituencies, we analyze the basis of Liberal Democrat support in 1997. Models that include data on historical patterns, demographics and the local political context are found to be particularly successful in explaining the party’s support.     

Britishness or Englishness? The Historical Problem of National Identity in Britain

Abstract. The dominant ‘modernisation’ perspective on the nature of nations and national identities characterises these phenomena as purely modern artefacts which function as sociological cement for complex industrial societies. In opposition, Anthony D. Smith has elaborated an ‘ethno-symbolist’ framework which posits the possibility of pre-modern antecedents to modern national identities. According to Smith, modern states which have been able to establish their official cultures on the ethnicity of a demographically dominant and cohesive ethnic core are likely to be more stable than states that are divided by the rival histories and traditions of competing ethno-national communities. This paper evaluates Smith's ethno-symbolist thesis by applying his work on the relationship between states and ethnic cores to the historical example of Britain. What is Britishness? Is it just a transnational state patriotism, or is it a secondary form of national identity constructed largely in English terms?     

Traditional Retail Markets: The New Gentrification Frontier?

This paper presents traditional retail markets in the UK caught between a narrative of decline and revival, on the edge of a gentrification frontier. Traditional indoor and outdoor markets have become somewhat residual in many British cities but essential for many low‐income citizens that rely on their affordability. At the same time, the market is being reinvented for a wealthier type of customer interested more in local, environmentally friendly, ethical and “authentic” shopping experience. We take the case of Kirkgate Market in Leeds, the largest of its kind in Britain to analyse the process of disinvestment by the local authority, displacement of traders and customers and rebranding of the market for a new wealthier customer base. The paper is based on an action‐research project on which one of the authors is involved alongside traders and other campaigners to defend the public nature of Kirkgate Market in Leeds.     

Anthropology and statistics?

van Vark, G. N. and W. W. Howells, eds. Multivariate Statistical Methods in Physical Anthropology. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1984. x 4‐ 433 pp. including illustrations, references, and subject index. $61.00 cloth.

De Meur, Gisele, ed. New Trends in Mathematical Anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. xx + 315 pp. including illustrations and references. $39.95 cloth.     

The New Republicanism Without Religion?

The past decades have witnessed a harvest of new books and articles exploring the modern republican tradition and its relevance for contemporary political theory. Members of this movement present the tradition as an alternative to both political liberalism and communitarianism and offer its unique conception of liberty (“freedom from domination”) as a distinct third option beyond the “positive” and “negative” varieties famously identified by Isaiah Berlin. Yet in recovering this view of liberty, civic republicans have neglected the essential role that religion plays in the modern republican tradition. This omission represents not only a serious deviation from the tradition, but, what is more, it fundamentally weakens civic republicanism’s capacity for theorizing and achieving political liberty at the level of institutional life. In the modern republican tradition, religion has been understood to undergird republican liberty both in terms of shaping the morals, customs, and habits of citizens and in providing normative authority for the value of liberty over domination. In this essay, I offer a counter-narration of the modern republican tradition that gives religion its due and challenges civic republicans to recognize the central role that religion has played, and should continue to play, in theorizing and promoting republican liberty.     

The City's Continuous Cycle of Consumption: Towards a New Definition of the Power Over Time?

In postmodern societies, the power over time is exercised not only through norms and laws—the traditional devices of a modern state—but also through the production of systems of desire and need. In some cases, the role of pleasure as an instrument of command is far stronger than that of pain and coercion. Consumption is a very important area in which this kind of power over time is active. The reduction in the length of the production cycle in driving sectors of capitalist economies induces the acceleration of exchange and consumption. Thus, striking transformations in the ways goods are circulated occur, resulting in increasingly rapid movements of consumers. The city is a concrete manifestation of the centrality of consumption in contemporary society, a great container and distributor of commodities, services and images that is increasingly becoming a focal point for a range of "nonplaces" functional to mass consumption.     

The New Nature of Things? Canada's Conservative Government and the Design of the New Environmental Subject

Since coming to power in 2006, Canada's government under Stephen Harper has worked to recalibrate federal regulatory, legislative and economic development frameworks as they overlap in the littoral zone of the environment. We argue that Harper's Conservative government is pursuing a totalizing strategy in reconfiguring the desired Canadian environmental subject. This strategy approaches an integrated design that eclipses the incremental strategic options most Canadian federal governments have understood themselves to be constrained by. This design's basic features include the discursive strategies employed to collapse “the environment” into a singular resource extraction paradigm, a programmatic concentration of power to the executive branch of the Canadian government, and a classical conservative ideology that associates environmental regulation and management with dominion over and improvement of national territory, to the exclusion of other frames and relations. We query the articulation of consent and certainty in relation to the environment and extractive economies in Canada.