How do Local Institutions Mediate Market and Population Pressures on Resources? Forest Panchayats in Kumaon,India

This article addresses one of the most controversial issues in resource management: how do population and market pressures affect resource use? After examining some shortcomings in several major approaches to the issue, the authors use structural equation analysis to decipher the relative and reciprocal influence of population pressures, markets, and institutional arrangements on forest use in the Kumaon Himalaya in India. By deploying an approach which investigates comparatively the effects of these factors, the article attempts to find a way out of the stultifying positions that participants in the debate on overpopulation and environmental change are forced to adopt. The results presented in the second half of the article are especially interesting, showing that local institutions created by the state play a critical role in mediating the influence of structural and socio-economic variables. The findings thus possess significant implications for all who are interested in co-management of renewable resources by the state and the community.     

How many bones make five? The art and science of guesstimation in archaeozoology

Six faunal statistics are described and assessed by means of simulation. Of these, the ‘probable number of individuals’ (PNI) methods, which include the Lincoln and Krantz indices, are shown to perform remarkably well. The assumptions of these PNI procedures are given and circumstances under which PNI methods can be employed are described. Palaeoeconomic methods occupy a middle ground between classical statistical theory and experimental archaeology, hence the use of the term ‘guesstimation’: this ground is explored and it is shown that these methods can have a considerable bearing on the interpretation of taphonomic and ‘spatial’ (intra-stratum) regularities. Promising avenues for future research are indicated.     

How Would Jesus Vote? The Churches and the Election of the Rudd Government

The Coalition's clear victory over Labor at the 2004 federal election after prominent campaigning by conservative church-based groups – along with the election to the Senate of a member of the Family First party – seemed to many commentators to confirm the growing power of a ‘Religious Right’ in Australia. This paper argues that two features of the 2007 federal election campaign are impossible to square with the rise of the Religious Right thesis. First, Labor won in 2007 without shifting its leadership, policies or electoral strategy to suit the Christian Right. Second, the contributions of church groups to the 2007 election campaign were not dominated by a single perspective but covered a wide range of issues and expressed competing views on key policy issues. This pluralism allowed Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party and even the Greens room to present themselves favourably to significant groups of Christian voters. The 2007 election suggests that, rather than being dominated by a hegemonic Christian Right, church involvement in Australian electoral politics is pluralistic in character.     

"How" Does the Bible Mean? The Bible and Dalit Liberation in India

Abstract

This essay analyses the role of the Bible in Dalit liberation in a context where Dalit theology, despite being increasingly recognized as an academic theology, hasn't been effective practically in either sustaining the Dalits in their struggles for liberation or in challenging the perpetuation of caste discrimination within the Indian churches. In the light of the Dalits' own reception of the Bible as a potential source of Dalit liberation the essay critically revisits some of the defining biblical paradigms articulated by Dalit theologians, using as its epistemological tool the tensions between "epic" and "emic" forms of theological conceptualizations, in order to identify the reasons for the lacunae between Dalit theology and its practical viability for Dalit liberation. In the light of this analysis the essay explores and offers the synoptic healing stories as a viable biblical paradigm which can animate the Dalit struggles for liberation and thus enhance the practical efficacy of Dalit liberation.     

How is a political public space made? – The birth of Tiananmen Square and the May Fourth Movement

With the specific case of the birth of Tiananmen Square in Beijing during the May Fourth Movement in 1919, this paper tries to give an answer to the more general question of how a political public space is made. It argues, (1) the transformation of the spatial order of Beijing made possible the formation of new modes of collective political action in republican Beijing. (2) The different kinds of action of the people led to the production of a number of political public spaces. (3) The demonstration staged on May 4, 1919 was vital in converting the empty space in front of Tianan Gate into a public space of political significance, which was then named Tiananmen Square. Borrowing from Arendt's conception of the public space and people's political action, this paper contends that the political action of people was most important in breaking through the control of the government and opening up political public spaces. With the historical geographical case of the Square, this paper assesses the “end of public space” position that has become widely accepted in academic debate.     

How to justify a crusade? The conquest of Livonia and new crusade rhetoric in the early thirteenth century

This article addresses the issue of how it was possible to justify a crusade to a region, such as the eastern shore of the Baltic, where there were no sacred shrines to protect or Christian lands to reconquer. Adopting a pluralist perspective of crusades, it argues that the Livonian crusade of the early thirteenth century offers some interesting clues to the new developments of crusading ideology. Conceiving of the conquest and conversion of Livonia as a crusade, albeit not quite equal to the liberation of Jerusalem, its initiators and apologists employed legal and rhetorical devices to justify the occupation of a region under the auspices of a crusade. This article examines these strategies through the medium of contemporary chronicles and papal letters.     

How Enlightened Can a Monk Be? The Efforts of Eighteenth‐Century German Benedictines to Reform Monastery and Church

This article investigates how German Benedictines in the eighteenth century tried to reform monastic life and Catholic theology by adopting various aspects of Enlightenment lifestyle and thought. It demonstrates the intellectual diversity that existed in this religious order and the order's intensive dialogue with contemporary culture.     

The Library is on Fire,Now What? Assessing the Damage and How to Approach It: A Case Study from the Chesapeake Bay

ABSTRACT

The Longwood Institute of Archaeology conducted the Vulnerability, Potential and Condition (VPC) assessment of shoreline archaeological sites along 1990 km (1237 miles) of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. VPC assessment involves a three-pronged approach that includes (1) the assessment of site vulnerability due to changing shorelines using an analytical package called Analysing Moving Boundaries Using R – AMBUR, (2) the assessment of potential shoreline site locations through predictive modelling using Weights of Evidence – WofE – analysis, and (3) the assessment of current conditions of known sites through direct observation. Vulnerability assessment results indicated that 49% of site shorelines in the project area are moving landward. Potential assessment located high-probability site locations with an 83% efficiency. Condition assessment, conducted using standard field protocols, provided feedback of the sites’ current conditions. The intended outcome of this method is to provide resource managers with information needed to make informed, data-driven management decisions.     

The Neolithic refrigerator on a Friday night: How many people are coming to dinner and just what should I do with the slimy veggies in the back of the fridge?

Abstract

The prehistoric development of food storage represents a major evolutionary transition, one potentially more important than the initial domestication of plants. Researchers, however, have yet to really deal with some of the critical practical questions related to the materiality of food storage and decision-making. Drawing upon experimental research this paper seeks to identify and model some of the critical interconnections between anticipated food loss due to spoilage, storage decision-making and the need for people to store food for multiple years. Building on this foundation, and echoing ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological and archaeological research, this study argues that the concept of storage and surplus is underdeveloped and that in many cases the storage practices of prehistoric sedentary people do not reflect a food surplus so much as normal storage. Turning to a case study of changing Near Eastern Neolithic grain storage practices, this research argues that from the Natufian through Neolithic periods people increasingly relied upon cultivated domesticated plants and food storage. This required people to expand their use of pre-existing technology, such as plaster for lining storage features, to store sufficient amounts of food to overcome seasonal shortages, potential crop failures and minimise food spoilage due to a range of biological agents. Tracking shifts through time, the results of this study suggest that it is only with increased scale of food storage in the later stages of the Neolithic that we may see a materialization of a food surplus.