The Legacy of Isaac Schapera (1905–2003)

'I would like to be remembered – although I am sure that I will not be – as the equivalent, to the Tswana, of what Pepys is to English ethnography.' Isaac Schapera interviewed by Jean and John Comaroff, 1988     

Rigging the Pepper Wreck. Part 2—Sails.

Discovered in 1993 at the mouth of the Tagus River, the SJB2 shipwreck—or Pepper Wreck—was tentatively identified as the Portuguese Indiaman Nossa Senhora dos Mártires , lost there on its return voyage from Cochin, in India, on 15 September 1606. Its archaeological excavation led to a tentative reconstruction of the hull, based in contemporary texts on shipbuilding. Further analysis of these texts allowed us to propose a reconstruction of the rigging.
© 2008 The Author     

Island Biocultural Assemblages — The Case of Kinmen Island

ABSTRACT A growing mass of research contributes to our understanding of how biological and cultural diversity are related in complex and important ways. This paper presents an assembling process of biodiversity and cultural diversity on an island, Kin‐men (Quemoy), based on 1600 years of its environmental history. The study shows that the island's biocultural assemblages are a result both of external relations with the island's surrounding environment and internal relations within the island's changing human ecology. Distant political powers and economic forces are the two major external influences that have affected the flow of natural and cultural elements to and from the island, while ‘screening effects’ and ‘isolation effects’ are two factors that explain internal interactions. The island's biocultural assembling processes reveal that the openness of the island facilitates increase in the diversity of biocultural elements, while its less disturbed isolated condition fosters natural succession and co‐evolution. The study suggests that biocultural assemblages and the associated processes of co‐evolution and nature–society interactions are accomplished through the intermittent opportunities purposively provided by or inadvertently found in the openings and closures of boundaries, setting the scene for both boundary crossings and bounded shelter, by intent or chance.     

PROFITS, CRISES AND INDUSTRIAL CHANGE 2: THE EXPERIENCE OF CANADA 1950—1981

The paper measures the rate of profit and its components in Canadian manufacturing for 1950 - 1981. The rate of profit has been reduced by rises in the real wage and the technical composition of capital, partially offset by a devaluation in the means of production and a reduction in turnover times. The value of labour power and therefore the rate of exploitation have not changed. The rate of profit has consistently fallen throughout the period. These results are consistent with a theory that the falling rate of profit is endogenous to capitalism.