Ordinary Writing and Scribal Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Memory Books

This article is a study of the survival of scribal culture in nineteenth-century Spain in the form of the so-called ‘memory books’ (libros de memorias). I analyse their relationship with the educational developments of the period, as well as the material characteristics and the content of these texts, in order to define their typical features. These texts were the products of hybrid writing practices, in the sense that several elements were frequently superimposed on one another: economic news, personal, family and social events and even historical details. Hence the similarity between the memory books and other genres such as account books (libros de cuentas) and family books (libros de familia). Lastly, I will examine some nineteenth-century examples as epigones of a writing genre which had its origins in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

“One morning, while tidying up the bedroom, Rosa opened the drawer in the trunk where Cholo kept his papers. There she found the papers about the property and, in a corner, together with the Family Book and the social security booklet, the papers from the bank […]. And she was about to put it away when it occurred to her to take off the elastic band around the big folder which Cholo had kept from his time in Switzerland. There were things, names and so on that she didn’t understand, but in the middle there were also some of the cards she had sent from Aran.”1 1.?Manuel Rivas, En salvaje compañía (1994) (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1998), 100–101. View all notes     

Dynamic Trajectories,Adaptive Cycles,and Complexity in Culture Change

Trends in interdisciplinary research over the last two decades have opened new perspectives and pushed forward our understanding of how complex social systems function. This study explores several theories of social change that have emerged from increasingly interdisciplinary perspectives in combination with complexity theory. Resilience theory and related concepts of adaptive cycles and panarchy are now being applied extensively to the study of a variety of human social systems. However, there is still the need to further explore the implications of how human systems differ from the ecologies of other species. A case study drawn from early polity formation in Inner Asia is used to assess the effectiveness of differing approaches. Certain theoretical gaps are described and a series of concepts within a theory of dynamic trajectories are proposed that focus on high-level patterns of social change. The basic elements of the theory include dynamics of the scope and scale of polities, the probability space in which change occurs, and the strands or bundles of social and cultural characteristics that represent the substance of trajectory. As the trajectory patterns manifest, they envelop constraints and opportunities influencing future patterns. Agent-based models are used to illustrate aspects of the dynamic trajectory theory, especially economic decision-making within specific landscapes and control hierarchies in the context of competing polities. Rather than repeating cycles, the results reveal reorganization modes highlighting the significance of continuity and opportunity in social change.     

Negara Ubud: The Theatre‐state in Twenty‐first‐century Bali

In his book Negara: The Theatre‐state in Nineteenth‐century Bali (1980), Clifford Geertz argued that ceremonial display, rather than material power, was the real basis and indeed the purpose of pre‐colonial states in Bali, and by extension South East Asia. This article argues, on the basis of historical and ethnographic evidence from one of these kingdoms, that he was largely wrong about pre‐colonial Bali, but that, ironically and presciently, his model makes increasing sense in early twenty‐first century Bali. The article also discusses the reasons for this and finally suggests a more dynamic model based on Bourdieu’s metaphor of material and symbolic capital, which seeks to bring Geertz’s essentially static model to historical life.     

Travelling the Route from Designation to Local Action: The Case of the Underground Railroad Settlement in Buxton,Ontario, Canada

Canada’s Buxton Settlement National Historic Site is a striking illustration of the multi‐faceted conservation of a cultural landscape, from federal designation through to local action. Buxton is designated as a ‘continuing landscape’ distinguished by its establishment in 1849 as a 9,000 acre (3,600 ha) ¹ [1] Imperial measures are given first in reference to the historic resource because the measurements are historically significant. terminus for black fugitives travelling north along the so‐called Underground Railroad, escaping the tyranny of slavery in the USA. A social experiment, in the form of a block farming settlement, waited for them at the end of their journeys. Over the intervening years inevitable shifts in agricultural practice and property ownership have transformed this rather ordinary but strongly evocative heritage resource. This is a case common to many other significant cultural landscapes—the management of the inevitable evolution that comes with a landscape that continues. This agricultural landscape confronts many of the challenges that are the focus of heritage studies today: how to give local people a voice while coordinating conservation across multiple scales of government policy.     

Villages that Never Were: The Museum Village as a Heritage Genre

Villages of relocated buildings now constitute a phenomenon of the world’s repertoire of heritage. They go by a multitude of names depending on particular inflection: open air museum, folk museum, living history museum, heritage village, museum village and so forth. ¹ [1] On the range of villages, see Thompson, ‘The Social Significance of Folk Museums’; Marshall, ‘Folklife and the Rise of American Folk Museums’; Leon and Piatt, ‘Living History Museums’; Shafernich, ‘On‐site Museums, Open‐air Museums, Museum Villages and Living History Museums’; Moolman, ‘Site Museums’; de Jong, ‘Approaches and Concepts’; Chappell, ‘Open‐air Museums’; Corbin, ‘Representations of an Imagined Past’. This paper reviews the context of the form of the genre’s manifestation in Australia, where it is often known as the ‘pioneer village’. They are the fruit of a populist vision of national history which celebrates white rural settlement as its central theme. In practice, the villages manifest a deep commitment to collecting and saving old buildings as the meaningful construction of a favourite historical identity. But the generation that established Australia’s villages has been overtaken. Today, the intersection of museum villages with the managerialist pressures of local economy enhancement and modern professional standards of heritage management challenge most villages’ survival.     

“氏族封建”说与先秦社会形态再思考

晁福林先生在"中国无奴隶社会论"主导下,提出了夏、商"氏族封建"说及在此基础上构建"有中国特色社会形态理论"。由于学术界对有关夏商时期若干重大理论问题理解和判断颇相悬殊,再加上其所借用的"长时段"理论,难免造成"封建制"三段论标尺不一,所谓"有中国特色的社会形态理论"体系尚待学术界深入推敲。"无奴学派理论"能否成为先秦社会形态研究的最后定论,如何统一"无奴学派"对中国古代社会形态认识上的分歧,对学术界早期社会形态理论的研究成果应采取什么样的态度,这都是目前中国学术界应继续关注和持续探讨的关键性学术难题。     

Understanding Prehistoric Lithic Raw Material Selection: Application of a Gravity Model

Provenance studies can tell us which sources of lithic raw material were used in the past, but can they tell us why? After all, many factors can have entered into a person’s choice to use one source rather than another. Those factors can be grouped into two categories, the geologic/geographic characteristics of the source itself (quality, abundance, size of pieces, etc.), and the human factors (direction of travel, time available, social restrictions, etc.). This paper demonstrates how the geologic/geographic characteristics can be quantified and calculated together to give one value, the attractiveness of the source, which can then be used in a gravity model approach to predict which sources ‘should’ have been used more than others. Deviations from the predicted pattern point to situations where the human factors were of greater or lesser importance. The values are also used to delineate geographical areas within which particular sources would be likely to be used (‘areas of influence’), which gives us a useful new way of understanding the landscape within which the prehistoric group lived.     

DISCIPLINE,PHILOSOPHY, AND HISTORY

Gorman proposes to investigate historical practice under the rubric of a philosophy of disciplines. Such philosophy must first “recover historically” the self‐constitution of the discipline in order then to appraise its procedures for warranting claims. Gorman's concept of discipline would have profited from consulting the substantial body of empirical research and theory regarding disciplinarity, and his “historical recovery” of the discipline of history leaves a lot to be desired. These insufficiencies vitiate the interesting arguments he has to offer concerning the question of the truth‐claims of whole historical accounts. A better reconstruction of disciplinarity might also have provided him with stronger rejoinders to the postmodern challenge to historical practice that he sees himself called to rebut.     

Engaging with place: artists,site-specificity and the Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail

This paper traces the creative processes employed by artists participating in the 2004 Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail and examines relationships between place, art and site-specificity. The Trail is a popular, temporary annual local arts event that invites international artists, students and community art groups to create and exhibit site-sensitive sculpture within Hardcastle Crags in Yorkshire, England. We consider some of the multiple ways in which artists mediate relationships between ‘site’ and artwork. We connect geographical concepts of place that highlight location, locale and sense of place, with mobile understandings of site as porous and flowing. The paper positions geographical research of art, opening out art and site in a non-urban environment through comparative discussion of concepts of ‘place’ and three ‘paradigms’ in site-specific art (phenomenological, social/institutional and discursive, Kwon 2002 Kwon, M. 2002. One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Three elements of site-specificity – histories, natures, interactions – are then explored through fourteen artists' creative practices and our documentation of the installation of their artwork in the Trail. We highlight the juxtaposition of ‘sites’ within the Trail, the over-lapping of ‘paradigms’ within individual artworks, and transitory aspects of ‘site’ to suggest that ‘time’ holds great significance in understanding site-specificity, place and art outdoors.     

The difference that place makes to methodology: uncovering the ‘lived space’ of young people's spatial practices

While it has been argued that conventional methodological resources are incapable of effectively representing ‘everyday social practice’ (see Latham 2003 Latham, A. 2003. Research, performance, and doing human geography: Some reflections on the diary-photograph, diary-interview method. Environment and Planning A, 35: 1993–2017. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar], Environment and Planning A, 35, 1993), this paper posits that a consideration of the ‘where’ of methodology can go some way to taking social practices seriously. Drawing on research into young people's spatial practices, conventional interview techniques were adopted in a range of different sites: a classroom, a school store-cupboard, and in teenage ‘hang outs’. Through discussion of these emplaced techniques, the paper demonstrates the difference the where of method makes to research. It will argue that, if harnessed appropriately, emplaced methodology can enhance social science's capacity to access the range of intelligences that constitute everyday social practice.     

2. ONCE AGAIN,WITH MORE FEELING

This book summarizes in a compact volume Runciman's arguments to comparative sociologists that their discipline belongs under the theoretical umbrella of neo‐Darwinian selectionism. In his view, heritable variation and competitive selection govern cultural and social as well as biological evolution. Runciman makes a strong case for the usefulness of selectionism, but two of the theory's central features are problematic: his choice of units of selection; and the notion that culture can be distinguished from society historically as well as analytically. No one friendly to the basic project would argue against the need for hypotheses about units that undergo selection, but arguments can be made, also on pragmatic grounds, that he has chosen the wrong kinds of units. Runciman's learning and wisdom show to good effect in the book's fundamental approach: in the overall human story, the biological, cultural, and social coevolve. The quickly accumulating evidence of evolutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology, and neuroscience strongly supports the hypothesis that there is a biological basis for a great deal of human behavior, and also that sociocultural evolution modifies genes. History, in this way of thinking, is like a “braided stream” of unpredictably mutating, blending, and coevolving biological, cultural, and social processes. The old Darwinian image of branching fails to capture the complexity of evolutionary processes in biology, culture, and society. Runciman outlines a unified bio‐social science relying upon information theory. If his program were carried out consistently it would relegate to a non‐scientific level the traditional historical narratives about “carriers” or “vehicles”. The scientific‐explanatory level would instead feature replicators. Gametheory strategies play a prominent role in the selectionist picture. The emphasis on units of information stored in human brains or in exosomatic brain prostheses pushes neuroscience and information theory to the fore. An argument for the analytic‐heuristic value of “memes” and “practices” should be weighed against the value of other hypothetical units undergoing selection in a sociocultural evolutionary approach.     

Ways of Knowing in Anthropology: Alexandre Chayanov and the Perils of “Dutiful Empiricism”

For nearly four decades, anthropologists have grappled with the empirical and theoretical implications of the work of the Russian economist Alexandre Chayanov. At the centre of Chayanov’s theory is the premise that the internal dynamics of peasant societies, principally in terms of the ratio of workers to consumers, is the prime determinant of domestic productive intensity. Anthropologists have tested Chayanov’s thesis in a wide variety of ethnographic and historical settings, utilizing a number of methodological approaches. The purpose of this article is to examine the wider theoretical implications of Chayanov’s approach as it has been used in anthropology, especially in terms of the role of empiricism in ethnographic inquiry. The argument presented here is that an overly zealous devotion to “dutiful empiricism”, to use Geertz’s (1961 Geertz, C. 1961. “Studies in peasant life: community and society”. Biennial Review of Anthropology, 2: 1–41.  [Google Scholar]: 18) term, is apt to limit anthropology’s epistemological usefulness.     

Gender,migration, mobility and transnationalism

In reviewing the expanding body of work on the linkages between gender, mobility, migration and transnationalism in Gender, Place and Culture over the last decade, this article highlights three significant contributions. First, through critical engagement with transnationalism studies, the journal has produced a sophisticated and variegated strand of work on gender politics and multiple forms of migration and mobility. In this article, we focus primarily on mobility in terms of human movement across national borders, rural–urban migration, as well as the ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ that inform the embodied experiences of being here and there simultaneously as iterated in transnationalism studies [L. Basch, N.G. Schiller, and C.S. Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. London: Routledge, 1994]. A second area of strength lies in the coalescence of work providing insights into the connections between social reproduction in a globalising world and intimate forms of global mobility and migration. A third highlight relates to the mutually constitutive relationship between the construction of masculinities and masculinist ideologies, on the one hand, and migration, mobility and transnationalism, on the other. The article concludes with a discussion of two more embryonic areas which merit further development in the journal: the first concerns the social and geographical (im)mobilities implied in cross-border reproductive care1^1. CBRC is what Payne (2013 Payne, J.2013. “Reproduction in Transition: Cross-Border Egg Donation, Biodesirability and New Reproductive Subjectivities on the European Fertility Market.” Gender, Place and Culture, doi:10.1080/0966369X.2013.832656. [Google Scholar]) attributes to the rapid development and spread of assisted reproductive technologies that have given rise to a global market for human eggs, sperm and surrogates. and the global mobility and assemblage of body parts, while the second relates to the distinctive role that feminist geographers interested in migrations and mobilities can play in working collaboratively and transnationally across different worlds.     

The politics of area conservation in Cairo

The historic core of the Arab‐Islamic city has always played an integral role in the formation of the identity of the contemporary Arab city. It serves as the reference for the city’s character. This is especially so in Cairo, where historic quarters still act as the city’s most influential social and cultural source of inspiration. Today, many forces of neglect and deterioration have diminished this role. While attempts have been launched to confront this situation, they have focused mainly on restoring the historic city of Cairo, itself a World Heritage Site. This paper probes the actual reasons for the deterioration of the historic core of Cairo, as well as those that dominate the current efforts for revitalisation. In these processes it is the political dimension that is the most influential in the decision‐making affecting the proposed urban changes in historic Cairo.1 The present inquiry was supported by a workshop organised by the author to examine the attitude of the professionals representing different organisations involved in conservation in historic Cairo. This workshop was held on 12 and 13 September 2001 at the Italian Archaeological Centre in Cairo as part of the empirical work of the author’s PhD research.      

Marginalized Potters and Ceramic Compositional Groups: Neutron Activation Analysis of Contemporary Pottery from Tigray,Northern Highland Ethiopia

The study presents the results of neutron activation analysis (NAA) of contemporary pottery from Tigray Regional State, northern highland Ethiopia. This is the first regional-scale study of ceramic composition of Tigray’s pottery and is part of an ethnoarchaeological study of the material and social contexts of pottery production and consumption in Tigray’s Eastern (Misraqawi), Central (Mehakelegnaw), and North-western (Semien Mi’irabawi) zones. The analysis identifies clear compositional groups with strong regional patterns, an encouraging result for the use of NAA to study Tigray’s ancient pottery trade. Significantly, the study further contributes to discussions of how mutually constituted social identities of potters and consumers affect compositional patterning in the distribution of pottery in market networks.     

Paradoxes,Protests and the Mujeres de Negro of Northern Mexico

On November 25, 2002, thousands of people marched through the streets of Mexico City and demanded, in the name of social justice, an end to the violence against women in northern Mexico. ‘Ni Una Más’ (not one more) was their chant and is also the name of their social justice campaign. Their words referred to the hundreds of women and girls who have died violent and brutal deaths in northern Mexico and to the several hundred more who have disappeared over the last ten years. These Ni Una Más marchers, many working with human rights and feminist organizations in Mexico, are protesting against the political disregard and lack of accountability, at all levels of government, in relation to this surging violence against women. And the symbolic leaders of their movement are the Mujeres de Negro (women wearing black), who are based in Chihuahua City. In this article, I examine how the Mujeres de Negro demonstrate how feminist politics so often plays upon the negotiation of spatial paradoxes in order to open new arenas for women's political agency. For while the Mujeres de Negro of northern Mexico are galvanizing an international human rights movement that is challenging political elites, they are also reinforcing many of the traditional prohibitions against women's access to politics and the public sphere. And I explore how the Mujeres de Negro devise a spatial strategy for navigating this paradox in an increasingly dangerous political environment.     

Integrating isotopes and documentary evidence: dietary patterns in a late medieval and early modern mining community,Sweden

This study explores the relationship between dietary patterns and social structure in a pre-industrial mining community in Salberget, Sweden c. 1470 to 1600 A.D. using a combination of different research approaches and tools, including archaeology, osteology, bone chemistry and history. The correlation between demographic criteria (sex and age) and archaeological variables (burial type and burial location) shows that Salberget was a highly stratified community. Group diets were investigated through analyses of stable isotopes (carbon, δ ¹³C, and nitrogen, δ ¹⁵N) of bone collagen from a sub-sample of individuals buried at the site (n = 67), interpreted alongside data from human dental lesions and deficiencies, animal bone waste and information on eating habits extracted from the extensive historical documents regarding mining activities at Salberget. These integrated analyses provide a clear association between social status and diet and confirm that social status, and to a lesser extent sex, gender and age, likely governed food choice and opportunity in this diverse community.     

Mormon History,Text, Colour,and Rites

Mormonism's growth from its 1830 inception to its 2005 near twelve million world membership, has not only initiated a debate over whether, perhaps, it is likely to become the next world‐religion after Islam, ¹ 1 Stark, Rodney , “The Rise of a New World Faith,” Review of Religious Research 26 (1984 ): 18 – 27 .
but has, in recent decades, also witnessed the publication of numerous books that help foster an interest in what is already becoming a distinctive field of study. Though none of the four books reviewed here constitutes an introductory overview, ² 2 For which see, Thomas O'Dea, The Mormons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); Jan Shipps, The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985); Douglas J. Davies, Introduction to Mormonism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
each introduces a set of major issues within contemporary Mormon studies and engages, respectively, with faith‐related attitudes to historical material, the Book of Mormon, the changing status of black males in the church, and Freemasonry's impact on Mormonism's origin.     

Mother Scorpion: Women’s Politics and Affinal Relations among the Miskitu and other “Brideservice Societies”

This article is concerned with modelling the logic of social processes and cultural representations that inform “politics and gender in simple societies” (Collier and Rosaldo 1981 Collier, J. F. and Rosaldo, M. Z. 1981. “Politics and Gender in Simple Societies”. In Sexual Meanings, Edited by: Ortner, S. and Whitehead, H. New York: Cambridge University Press.  [Google Scholar]), and considers the well‐known ideal type presented by Collier and Rosaldo in which particular gendered practices and ideas are organized around a style of marriage commonly termed “brideservice”. These authors’ modelling of the cultural logic of so‐called “brideservice societies” provides in many ways a satisfyingly coherent analysis of this institution that offers considerable predictive power, but it remains in some respects a partial account neglecting important aspects of older women’s political motivations and representations and the role of these women in the context of corporate groups. I consider here ethnographic materials from the Miskitu of eastern Nicaragua, amongst whom brideservice is widely practiced, to highlight some limitations with Collier and Rosaldo’s ideal type, arguing that their model should be modified to accommodate these limitations.