Choosing Not to Choose in Comparative Policy Research Design: The Case of the Research Network on Gender, Politics, and the State

This research note presents the research design for an in -progress comparative study on women's policy offices being conducted by the Research Network on Gender. Politics. and the State. The goal of this article is to examine how this project has been integrating a combined approach into its core research design. It argues that rather than conceptualizing the research design enterprise in terms of a zero-sum game, where a decision to use either quantitative or qualitative methodology compromises potential research findings, researchers may want to combine the strength of each approach in a single project.     

First report of theropods from the Tacuarembó Formation (Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous), Uruguay

Dinosaur remains from the lower part of the Tacuarembó Formation, Uruguay, consist of the isolated theropod teeth described here. This is the first record of this group in the Tacuarembó Formation and represents the oldest dinosaur remains from Uruguay.     

时间地理学的企划概念及其研究案例

企划是为完成任何意愿和目标而进行的一系列必要的简单或复杂的任务,即为达到某个个人或组织的长期或短期目标而实施的活动。企划研究旨在建立意图和实现之间的桥梁,从个体或组织主体意图的视角构建活动之间的关系,它不仅关注时空间行为的客观发生,还关注时空间行为的计划和时空间行为结果的影响反馈等主观方面。企划视角下的时间被看作将"未来"不断转换为"过去"的连续过程,一个完整的企划包括孕育计划、活动实现、影响反馈三个主要阶段,基于企划可以分析个体行为的闭环决策过程。个体企划与组织企划交织的情景分析有助于解释个体时空间行为以及个体企划与组织企划的关系。沃尔沃乌德瓦拉工厂"结构性变革"的案例为如何从组织企划与个体企划交织的视角探索组织管理变革及其综合效益评价提供了很好的启示。企划视角下的日常活动研究将极有可能推动时间地理学从主客观结合、能动被动结合的微观视角透视日常活动决策的黑箱,进而对时空间行为进行解释和预测,最终实现物质世界时空制约与人的时空意图的统一。     

‘China-ware in the skies’: overlapping identities in the ornamental use of plates in Uruguay

Abstract

This is the study of a church where tableware manufactured in Great Britain was used to decorate the façade in the early 19th century. An argument is made that this one surviving case points to a larger regional tradition, now lost, whose greatest exponent was Montevideo Cathedral, Uruguay. The hypothesis presented here is that the use of British plates in religious façades shortly before the South American Wars of Independence was part of a search for identity in a region trying to break away from Spain, and in the process of becoming a small republic between the two larger countries of Argentina and Brazil.     

Archaeology at the micro-scale: micromorphology and phytoliths at a Swahili stonetown

Geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical techniques are increasingly applied to the study of urban and domestic space. However, they are seldom performed as part of an integrative approach, where the soil and botanical micro-records are used together. This paper presents the preliminary results of ongoing research at Songo Mnara in Tanzania that combines customised intra-site soil macro- and micromorphological analyses, chemical analysis and the study of phytoliths. The research is part of a multidisciplinary project on the use of urban space in Swahili stonetowns. By eliciting multiple datasets from Songo Mnara, this paper illustrates the potential of integrating geoarchaeology and archaeobotany to investigate the use of space in urban contexts. The approach is a novelty within the context of Swahili archaeology and an emerging one in Africa.     

Citizen and government co-production of data: Analyzing the challenges to government adoption of VGI

With the recent rise of open government and open data initiatives, governments are increasingly adopting new approaches of citizen participation to support a more democratic, transparent, and inclusive government system. Among other forms of citizen participation, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is one approach to connecting citizens and government. Accepting VGI as a way to update government data or collect near-real-time information from citizens can create a partner-like relationship where citizens voluntarily contribute time and effort to support government actions. However, as a relatively new approach to citizen participation and data collection, VGI requires evaluation from the perspective of governments. This research investigates the challenges and opportunities that governments have found through the implementation of VGI projects. Results are drawn from interviews conducted with 19 government organizations, revealing organizational and technical challenges that limit the adoption of VGI. Organizational challenges are associated with government mindset, implementation, and project management, while technical challenges involve development of the system and quality of data. Given these challenges, we derive recommendations within the phases of project initiation, implementation, and expansion that can foster VGI adoption in government.     

Scratching beneath iconographic and textual clues: A reconsideration of the social hierarchy in the Dian culture of Southwestern China

The use of historical texts to interpret archaeological data is a common practice in Chinese archaeology. The selective use of archaeological material as evidential support to textual accounts can however project a limited view of ancient societies, where social behavior from distinct contexts are conflated to produce a single coherent narrative. This paper addresses this prevalent interpretational approach to the Dian polity, a Bronze Age culture located in southwestern China, through a systematic analysis of the mortuary evidence from four cemeteries. Results from the multivariate analysis are contrasted against the textual and iconographic materials to provide a more comprehensive understanding of Dian social organization and to demonstrate social patterning that challenges conceptions about the nature of Dian social hierarchy.     

Community Driven Development,Collective Action and Elite Capture in Indonesia

In response to the well documented limitations of top‐down, modernist and authoritarian approaches that have dominated development, practitioners and academics increasingly promote more community‐based approaches. The World Bank uses the term ‘community driven development’ to describe projects that increase a community's control over the development process. In an analysis of a community driven poverty alleviation project in Indonesia, this article examines the vulnerability of such an approach to elite capture. The expected relationships among a community's capacity for collective action, elite control over project decisions and elite capture of project benefits were not found. In cases where the project was controlled by elites, benefits continued to be delivered to the poor, and where power was the most evenly distributed, resource allocation to the poor was restricted. Communities where both non‐elites and elites participated in democratic self‐governance, however, did demonstrate an ability to redress elite capture when it occurred.     

Assessing the feasibility of identifying maize through the analysis of cross-shaped size and three-dimensional morphology of phytoliths in the grasslands of southeastern South America

This paper tests the feasibility of applying a technique developed by Piperno and Pearsall (Am. Antiquity 49 (1984) 361; Phytolith Analysis: An Archaelolgical and Geological Perspective, 1988, Academic Press: San Diego; Paleoethnobotany, 2000, Academic Press: San Diego) based on size and three-dimensional morphology criteria of cross-shaped phytoliths to identify maize in a previously unexplored region outside of the Neotropics; the grasslands of southeastern Uruguay. Because the area is dominated by subtropical Panicoid grasses that produce abundant cross-shaped phytoliths, intensive studies of the regional Panicoid grasses are needed to ensure that no wild taxa have phytoliths that are potentially confusable with maize. With this in mind, I carried out analysis of cross-shaped phytoliths in 35 Panicoid, 5 Oryzoid and 1 Bambusoid grasses, as well as on nine modern soil samples that belong to the most representative vegetation formations of the area. This study demonstrates that an application of multivariate (linear discriminant function) analysis together with qualitative and other assessments of cross-shaped phytolith assemblages as originally described by Piperno and Pearsall can be successfully used to distinguish the presence of maize in the grasslands of southeastern Uruguay. The technique provides a useful tool to trace the dispersal of maize into the southern cone of South America.     

The Transnationalisation of Competing State Projects: Carbon Offsetting and Development in Sumatra's Coastal Peat Swamps

Indonesia's peatlands can be considered as conflict arenas where different state projects and actors compete. The case presented here stands for a new conservation controversy. The Berbak Carbon Initiatives overlap with a settlement project, inducing struggles among different state apparatuses, transnational actors, and peasants. This article is based on a novel conceptual approach building on political ecology, politics of scale and state theory for investigating divergent and transnationalised state projects. Empirically we draw on qualitative research conducted in the province of Jambi, Sumatra. We argue that the territorial conflicts mirror the contradictory interests of different state apparatuses influenced by conservation‐oriented and development‐oriented actors in society but also by supra‐national planning institutions. In our case, the contestation becomes visible through inconsistent notions of development and property. We show how political change challenges the implementation of a forest carbon project, illustrating the high risks of mitigating climate change through offsetting.     

Mobilization,participation and partnership building in local development planning: Experience from local planning on women's conditions in six Norwegian communes

Six rural communes in Norway participated in a national project ‘Commune planning on women's conditions’ where participative methods were used to engage inhabitants in strategic planning for local development. The planning process was organized in stages, which corresponds with the basic stages of the strategic planning and management model. All six communes followed this process, which started with education and training in planning methods and processes in autumn 1989, both at national level (project leaders and project groups) and at bed level (local leaders: administrators, politicians, local organizations, etc.). This support was deemed to be significant for the planning process by approximately 50% of respondents who completed an evaluation questionaire. The training was followed by a broad mobilization of inhabitants where visions and strategies were formulated and selected. All projects produced a strategic plan on women's conditions and a 4‐year action programme, as expected. This process worked well in all communes, but the political and administrative engagement in mass meetings, in group work and in hearings was lower in Bremanger and Nesna than in the other four communes.     

Isotopic values of diet of Blastocerus dichotomus (marsh deer) in Paraná Basin,South America

The marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus, Illiger, 1815) is the largest contemporary South American deer, and its habitat includes the floodplains and wetlands of eastern South America. Throughout the Holocene these deer were widely used by indigenous societies, from the southern banks of the Amazon River to the Río de la Plata River, and from the Andean foothills to the Atlantic Ocean. However, despite the enormous ecological and archaeological importance of this ungulate in the region, our knowledge of the isotopic values of their diet is almost nonexistent. This paper is the first systematic approach to the study of the isotopic values of this mammal's diet, using archaeological and present-day samples from interconnected watersheds of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers in east-central Argentina. The results obtained from 24 measurements indicate an average value of ?21.09 ± 1.46‰ in δ¹³C collagen, with a low coefficient of variation (6.92%). The data indicate a marked preference for consumption of plants with a C₃ photosynthetic pathway. Most of the observed variability in the isotopic values corresponds to the period 900–1430 ¹⁴C years BP, a time range during which the values show higher consumption of C₄ plants. This it could be related with a period where temperature and associated humidity increased, synchronous in the area with the Medieval Climate Anomaly.     

An extremely large saber-tooth cat skull from Uruguay (late Pleistocene–early Holocene,Dolores Formation): body size and paleobiological implications

Abstract

Among the three recognized species of Smilodon, S. populator is the largest in size and has the widest distribution across South America. The present contribution describes an almost complete skull assigned to the aforementioned felid. The material was recovered from sediments of the Dolores Formation (Lujanian Stage/Age) from the southern part of Uruguay. This specimen is remarkable for its unusual craniodental measurements, indicating that it is one of the largest known specimens of the genus. Estimates of body mass indicate that this individual weighed over 400?kg. In addition, maximum prey size estimation greatly surpasses 1 t and approach nearly 3 t. Based on this, aspects of the paleobiology and paleoecology of S. populator are discussed. Undoubtedly, this kind of carnivorous mammal was at the top of the food chain, with clear adaptations for feeding upon the largest available herbivores, which potentially includes several megafaunal mammal species found in South America during the late Pleistocene.

Aldo Manzuetti [aldomanzuetti@adinet.com.uy], Facultad de Ciencias (UdelaR), Iguá 4225, CP 11400, Montevideo, Uruguay; Daniel Perea [perea@fcien.edu.uy], Facultad de Ciencias (UdelaR), Iguá 4225, CP 11400, Montevideo, Uruguay; Washington Jones [wawijo@yahoo.com.ar], Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, 25 de Mayo 582, CP 11000, Montevideo, Uruguay; Martín Ubilla [ubilla@fcien.edu.uy], Facultad de Ciencias (UdelaR), Iguá 4225, CP 11400, Montevideo, Uruguay; Andrés Rinderknecht [apaleorinder@yahoo.com], Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, 25 de Mayo 582, CP 11000, Montevideo, Uruguay.     

Film production incentives,employment transformation and domestic expenditure in South Africa: visualizing subsidy effectiveness

In 2004 the South African Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) introduced a Film and Television Production Rebate Programme. In order to qualify for the rebate, certain criteria have to be met including success in job creation and skills development within the industry, alongside a particular focus on the percentage of ‘historically disadvantaged individuals’ employed. This study sets out the issues associated with evaluating success in meeting these various criteria and is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study to apply multi-criteria visualization techniques to inform the evaluation of public subsidy effectiveness. The ‘PROMETHEE’ method is applied and apart from presenting project performance in a visually intuitive manner, the approach helps to clarify patterns of relative success, show where policy objectives are competing, and to identify project exemplars for more efficiently guiding future public support in the sector.     

New materialisms and children’s outdoor environments: murmurative diffractions

ABSTRACT

This article draws on new materialisms to highlight children’s sensitivity to the agency of nonhuman materials. Working with data fragments from an ongoing project investigating children’s relationship with their outdoor environments, the article uses the figure of murmuration in a diffractive analysis approach to reveal materialdiscursive intra-actions. In doing so, the article highlights an ingrained tendency to focus on the human whilst overlooking the material. Attentiveness to the agency of all matter, human and nonhuman, has significant implications for early childhood geographies, research and pedagogy as it shines a light on the intra-active nature of the world. This offers new possibilities but also calls attention to the relations of responsibilities inherent in a world where all matter is vibrant and agential.     

Behaviour and attitude: the Theatre Talks method as audience development

This article analyses the result of an audience development project based on the method known as ‘Theatre Talks’, which places emphasis on the experience of theatrical events rather than on marketing or communication tools. This approach also questions some of the fundamental understandings of audience development, mainly the division between product-led and target-led audience development as they are conceived by Kawashima. The analysis of the results of the Theatre Talks project is based on an analytical framework combining Kawashima’s typology of audience development methods with Sheth and Frazier’s point about looking at attitude as well as behaviour when approaching both attenders and non-attenders. Within this frame, the article demonstrates how the Theatre Talks method can succeed in challenging the way in which very different groups of participants experience theatre.     

Making the Dead Visible: Problems and Solutions for “Big” Picture Approaches to the Past,and Dealing with Large “Mortuary” Datasets

There can be few “bigger” questions than the nature and development of human experience and self-awareness and few better ways to study it than through the changing treatment of the dead over time. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the ‘Invisible Dead’ project (Durham University) is exploring diachronic changes in mortuary practices across two regions: Britain and the Levant. In doing so, it uses archaeology as a way to approach fundamental questions about the human condition. This paper explores the principal difficulties faced during the construction of a database for this project and their wider relevance for the development of robust and successful methods for the study of large “mortuary” datasets in the future. It discusses the issues and biases identified within the mortuary record and how the project has sought to mitigate some of these. By adopting a flexible and ultimately expandable approach to data entry and analysis, value can be added to legacy datasets and “grey” literature, allowing us to make comparisons between regions which are both geographically and chronologically distinct.     

Intense Paradoxes of Memory: Researching Moral Questions About Remembering the Socialist Past

In 2007 two researchers embarked upon a project on the “social construction of the socialist past in eastern Germany”. The project sought to explore how the socialist past is remembered today, and the moral ambiguities condensed in memories. This is particularly relevant in eastern Germany, where debates about how to interpret the socialist past continue to strive. However, it soon became apparent that doing such an ethnographic project is no easy task. Both researchers became sucked into the debates they sought to explore, including the question of who people had been during GDR (German Democratic Republic, former East Germany) times and whether this mattered. Using the ethnographic self as a resource, this article explores the ethics of complicity or detachment in fieldwork situations where the researcher was invited to make judgements. It argues that ethnographers need to address the question of value‐judgements openly in their fieldwork, since they form an intrinsic part of all our humanity.     

Short Note: Provenancing of Pottery— The Need for an Integrated Approach?

The method of chemical provenance determination of pottery is described as a very useful tool, which gives reliable results in most cases, if it is applied correctly and to its full power. Therefore, it is claimed that additional petrographic analysis, the so‐called ‘integrated approach’, should not be considered as a must for each project, but is only needed in cases in which the chemical approach leaves questions to be answered.     

Georges Perec’s experimental fieldwork; Perecquian fieldwork

This paper traces key themes in contemporary experimental fieldwork – explorations of ordinary places by artists, writers, activists, enthusiasts, students and researchers – to the works of Georges Perec. Preoccupations of this work – including playfulness, attention to the ordinary, and writing as a fieldwork practice – are all anticipated and elaborated in Perec’s oeuvre, where they converge around an ‘essayistic’ approach. Exhibiting these traits, some contemporary fieldwork is more convincingly Perecquian than psychogeographical or Situationist, despite the tendency to identify it with the latter. Through Perec, it is therefore possible to bring contemporary experimental fieldwork into focus, identifying a coherence and sense of project within it, while speaking to the question of what it means and could mean to conduct fieldwork experimentally. Particular attention is paid in this paper to Perec’s most accomplished and sustained field texts, both of which have been translated into English: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (2010, from 1975 original in French) and Species of Spaces (1999/1974).