A past and a future for diversification on farms? Some evidence from large-scale,commercial farms in South East England

Diversification has been identified as a common response to the agricultural crisis of the 1980s and to the changing ethos of agricultural policy in the closing decade of the twentieth century. In particular, farmers operating large-scale farms have been prominent in adopting this approach, just as they were innovative across a range of farming practices in the expansion and modernisation of their agricultural production in earlier decades. Can we identify serial diversifiers within this sector of the farming community, who are disposed to react in an entrepreneurial fashion to the changing fortunes of agriculture? The paper draws on results from a survey of large-scale commercial farmers in South East England and, by examining the sequence in which various forms of diversification were adopted, identifies a temporal pattern as farmers responded to the fluctuating fortunes of the agricultural industry over the past thirty years. But has the potential for diversification been exhausted? The paper also considers future prospects for diversification within the large-scale, commercially oriented sector of the agricultural industry.     

Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch Colonial Cape of Good Hope, South Africa: A History of Local Production and Typology of Products

Coarse earthenware production at the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Cape settlement began shortly after the Company established its mercantile entrepôt on the shores of Table Bay in 1652. Made by European Company potters, these vessels reproduced the forms of the homeland in the raw materials of the colony. A history of VOC pottery manufacture and a typological examination of the products illustrates how the global movements of mercantile capitalism combined with the local circumstances of the Cape settlement to create a material form reminiscent of Europe, but purely colonial in the dynamics of its production and use.     

英国民族国家形成的政治动因——中世纪权力要素剖析

英国民族国家的形成是多种因素互动的结果。从权力政治学的角度考察英国民族国家形成的政治动因,可以发现,中世纪王权在权力政治发展中的演变历程正是英国民族国家形成的积累过程。英国民族国家形成的政治动因主要来自两个方面的作用:一是国家原则对封建原则的消解;二是以王权为代表的世俗权力与教会权力的冲突与斗争。在这两方面作用的互动过程中,王权在国家原则的制约下巩固与发展起来,为英国民族国家的形成创造了决定性的历史条件。     

Animal Disease Challenges to the Emergence of Pastoralism in Sub-Saharan Africa

Despite the antiquity of domestic cattle in the Sahara-Sahel, archaeological evidence from two sub-Saharan regions indicates that the first pastoralist colonization of sub-Saharan Africa may not have proceeded so smoothly as modern appearances suggest. The first appearance of cattle-based economies seems to have been delayed by as much as a thousand years after the first appearance of small stock, in both eastern and southern Africa. This article reviews the relevant archaeological evidence and argues that the lag in successful introduction of cattle stems from new animal diseases encountered by pastoral colonists entering biogeographic zones south of the Sahel. Diseases that are often fatal to cattle, including wildebeest-derived malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF), East Coast fever (ECF), foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), and Rift Valley fever (RVF), as well as trypanosomiasis, are described as probable barriers to the early entry of cattle-based economies into these regions.Malgré l'antiquité des animaux domestiques dans le Sahara-Sahel, les données archéologique de deux régions subsahariennes indiquent que les premières colonisations pastoraux des zones au sud du Sahel ne se propagèrent pas aussi promptement que suggèrent les apparences actuelles. En l'Afrique orientale et en l'Afrique du sud, l'apparition d'économies basées sur l'élevage des gros bovins paraît être retardée de quelque mille ans par rapport à l'apparition des petits ruminants domestiques dans ces mêmes régions. L'article recense les données archéologiques pertinentes et propose que le délai de l'introduction effective des gros bovins fût causée par des nouvelles maladies vétérinaires rencontrées par les premiers colonisateurs pastoraux entrant dans les zones biogéographiques au sud du Sahel. Des maladies fréquemment fatales aux gros bovins, telle que le coryza gangreneux, la thèleriose, la fièvre aphteuse, l'arbovirus des Bunyaviridae, aussi bien que la trypanosomiase, sont proposées comme des obstacles probables à la diffusion des économies à gros bovins dans ces régions.     

Archaeocyaths from Yorke Peninsula,South Australia and archaeocyathan Early Cambrian zonation

Zhuravlev, A. Yu., & Gravestock, D. I., 1994:03:28. Archaeayaths from Yorke Peninsula, South Australia and archaeocyathan Early Cambrian zonation. Alcheringa 18, 1–54. ISSN 0311-5518.

Two assemblages of archaeocyaths are documented from Lower Cambrian outcrops and drillholes on Yorke Peninsula. South Australia. The older assemblage (11 species) occurs in the uppermost Kulpara Formation and conformably overlying basal Parara Limestone, and is equivalent to Lower Faunal Assemblage II in the Flinders Ranges. The younger assemblage (28 species plus Acanthhcyathus and Rodiocyathus) occurs in the Koolywurtie Member near the top of the Parara Limestone. Equivalent taxa are widespread in the Flinders Ranges, western New South Wales and Antarctica. Archaeocyathan distribution is now sufficiently well known to propose three assemblage zones and two informal assemblages for regional correlation. No new taxa have been added, but Erugatocyathus scutatus (Hill) and Pycnoidocyathus latiloculatus (Hill), hitherto known only from Antarctica, are found in the upper assemblage on Yorke Peninsula. Irregular archaeocyathan systematics are discussed, the ontogeny of Archaeopharetra irregularis (Tylor) clarified, and Kruseicnema Debrenne. Gravestock & Zhuravlev, represented by K. gracilis (Gordon), is fully described.     

Japan’s strategic interests in the South China Sea: beyond the horizon?

Japan has a national interest in the South China Sea issue. Although its direct commitment is ultimately limited in a material sense due to a lack of military capabilities, as well as political and constitutional constraints on the Self-Defense Force, Japan has maintained its firm stance to uphold international maritime rules and norms, and nurtured strong diplomatic relations and conducted maritime capacity-building programs with the South-East Asian states, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. These actions contribute to consolidating the rule of law at sea and provide those claimant states an opportunity to withstand pressures from China. Given the Trump administration’s unclear South China Sea policy and South-East Asia’s strategic uncertainty, Japan is becoming a key player in maintaining regional maritime stability in East Asia through diplomacy.     

Regional spaces, spaces of regionalism: territory, insurgent politics and the English question

Amid the globalization of economic life and a myriad of powerful challenges to Westphalian traditions of political statehood, it is now routinely contended that regions are 'in resurgence'. Nonetheless, much of the debate on this purported regional renaissance is bedevilled by confusion over what scholars and activists mean by regions and an analogous mystification as to why some regions are 'successful', 'lagging' or 'different'. Our paper aims to instil some coherence to this debate by distinguishing between what we term regional spaces and spaces of regionalism . It then draws on this distinction to explore the institutionalization of England's South West region, highlighting some tensions which prevail over its economic future, its political representation, its territorial shape and cultural vernacular. In undertaking this, we demonstrate how the formation of any given regional map is reflective – and indeed constitutive – of an unevenly developing, often overlapping and superimposing mosaic of economic practices, political mobilizations, cultural performances and institutional accomplishments. This prompts us to question the currently fashionable inclination to fully jettison a scalar and/or territorial approach to the theory and practice of spatiality in favour of relational/topological/non-territorial approaches.