Continuity or Discontinuity in the Recent History of the Australian Labor Party?

Recent characterisations of the Australian Labor Party as a ‘cartel party’ suggest that there was, after the 1970s, a fundamental discontinuity in Labor's history. We assess this contention not only in terms of the ALP's policies but also the mechanisms which link it with different classes and social groups: Labor's electoral support, membership and local branches, the backgrounds of the Party's parliamentarians and leaders, the role of trade unions inside the ALP, and its sources of funding. While there have been some quantitative changes in these characteristics, we conclude that Labor remains, on balance, a ‘capitalist workers party.’     

Islands in a Sea of Change? Continuity and Abandonment in Dark Age Corinth and Thessaloniki

In the sixth century after Christ, the Greek cities of Corinth and Thessaloniki were both still centers of imperial Roman and nascent Christian administrations, ancient population centers protected by high fortification walls. But much of scholarship continues to portray Thessaloniki as a veritable island of civilization during the next two “dark” centuries, with cities of southern Greece like Corinth virtually abandoned after earthquakes, plague, and barbarian invasion. Yet recently historians are reading the few literary sources much more critically, and excavation is also slowly beginning to fill in this gap. Thus long-known evidence of urban continuity in Thessaloniki along with the fruits of some of these methodological advances can begin to provide a new model of Dark Age continuity and abandonment for Corinth and other ancient cities of Byzantine Greece.     

Modernization in Tibet: A Boon or a Bane for the Tibetans?

Thissoundsridiculous,butitisreallysomethingatissue.Intheworldtoday,therearepeoplewhoaredebatingonwhethermodernizationdriveshouldbecarriedinTibet.SomestandformodernizationinTibet.Theybolstertheirviewbyarguingthatsucheffortwillalsohelppromotedevelopmentoftraditionalcultureintheregion.However,therearealsopeoplewhowagtheirfingersatsucheffort,pointingoutthatitwillleadtodestructionoftradi-tionalculture.WhethermodernizationisgoodorbadtotheTibetansiscleartotheworldtoday.Inthisissue,wepublishFarmers…     

Gender and Export Manufacturing in the Philippines: Continuity or change in female employment? The case of the Mactan Export Processing Zone

This paper explores the bases of gendered recruitment and occupational segmentation in the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ), the Philippines. It examines the extent to which patterns of demand for specific types of female labour (in terms of age, marital status, education and so on) mirror those in EPZs in other parts of the developing world. Two important (and interrelated) variations in Mactan are the desire amongst employers to foster long-term loyalty among their workers, and the acceptance of married women with children in rank-and-file positions (if not in initial recruitment, at least once workers are in post). While not unknown in other countries, the relative distinctiveness of these patterns underlines the need to explore the diversity in export manufacturing operations in terms of the geographical origins of parent companies, the proximity of offshore sites to transnational corporation (TNC) headquarters, the type of items manufactured and the nature of production processes (including degrees of mechanisation and whether goods are subject to partial or complete assembly), relative wage levels in developing countries, and the specificity of gender roles and relations in different localities. Recognising that gender inequalities underpin female recruitment in export factories in Mactan, the article also explores how involvement in this work reaffirms and/or modifies disadvantage in the context of women's personal, home and working lives.     

(Homo)sex in the City Only? Finding Continuity and Change in the Gay Past

Books reviewed in this article: Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger (eds), Queering the Middle Ages John Howard, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History Stephen O. Murray, Homosexualities     

Embodying colonialism? Domination and resistence in nineteenth-century Ceylonese coffee plantations

This paper examines plantations as laboratories of modernity in the colonial tropics during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Plantations can be conceived of as modern technologies for the reconfiguration of space, tools, scientific instruments and other material resources, bringing together culturally heterogeneous populations, stripping them of their former social attachments and reconstituting them as workers through the use of space-time strategies of monitoring and control. I argue that coffee plantations in Ceylon were intended to be sites of what Henri Lefebvre has termed abstract space: the commodification and bureaucratisation of everyday life. As an ideal, abstract space requires the construction of ‘abstract bodies’ to conform to it. This ideal remained largely unattained, however. In the first part of the paper, the strategies and technologies adopted by British planters as they attempted to produce and regulate abstract space and bodies are examined. Disciplinarity as internalised control, was rarely achieved and consequently direct surveillance and the threat of physical force was applied. The second section explores the way in which the Tamil plantation workers countered the planters technologies of control by engaging in tactics of resistance. In the final section, the strategies planters adopted in order to oppose the workers' tactics and the middle space of Tamil overseers are examined.     

Objects and interactivity: A conflict or a collaboration?

The rapid growth in the number of hands‐on centres has led to fears of museums being taken over by interactive exhibits. These are expensive to develop and maintain, causing a problem for traditional museums faced with ever‐expanding collections and diminishing resources. This article considers whether objects and interactive exhibits are inevitably in conflict or whether they can coexist in harmony. The implications for future developments at the Science Museum in London are considered in detail.

The authors conclude that, far from conflicting with traditional museum functions, interactive exhibits and new technologies will help to ensure that museums are able to compete in an increasingly complex marketplace. Their vision of the interactive gallery of the future incorporates exhibits which enhance understanding of artefacts. In short, the objective will be to ensure that visitors interacting with ‘hands‐on’ exhibits will take away ‘minds‐on’ understanding of the museum as a whole.     

Location or dis-location? Towards a conceptualization of people and place in the care-giving experience

Over the last two decades we have seen an increased interest in informal care within both political and academic communities in the UK. This has stemmed in large part from an increased emphasis on the home-space as the preferred site of care provision and a resultant increase in the complexity of the care-giving relationship. The explicitly spatial dimensions of this caring relationship, however, are vastly under-researched. This paper represents one attempt to redress the gap by examining the importance of place, and its conceptualization, in the care of frail older people. In doing so, the paper focuses, firstly, on the spatial manifestation of care at various scales, identifying some of the processes behind variations in the care-giving experience and, secondly, using the example of dementia care, it considers how Auge´'s concepts of anthropological place and non-space, when applied to domestic and institutional care settings, can facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the importance of people and place in the construction and delivery of care to frail older people.     

Development and Differentiation in the Post-Independence Era: Continuity or Change in ARDA-Sanyati Irrigation in Zimbabwe (1980–1990)

Abstract

The Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA), formerly known as the Tribal Trust Land Development Corporation (TILCOR), is a state agency which manages all the settler or outgrower schemes adjacent to its estates. In Sanyati, the colonial government endeavoured to secure the plotholders on the Gowe Irrigation Scheme but after independence emphasis was on making Gowe a ‘self-provisioning’ asset. With reference to Gowe-Sanyati, this paper explores development and differentiation processes in an attempt to discern elements of continuity or change in ARDA-Sanyati irrigation. The reactions of the Gowe irrigators to state policies that proscribed accumulation are a manifestation of the tension which was informed by Rhodesian-era evictions and resettlements. In pursuance of accumulation the plotholding households in Gowe were reluctant to perpetually serve as a labour repository of the main irrigation estate.

Government interventionist policies in the Sanyati schemes are examined. The paper argues that the availability of technical, financial and other resources after independence contributed to the cotton boom and an intensified commercialisation drive which gave rise to greater forms of differentiation compared with the colonial period. In addition, the paper analyses the tenuous or fragile relationships between the plotholders and the estate. The major bone of contention was the inadequacy of the plots allocated to the farmers and the highly detested lease agreement which hindered accumulation. Inconsistencies with people's aspirations after independence led to a ‘crisis of expectations’ among those who believed independence would bring more land and no charge (land rent) for utilising the land. Although various charges impoverished the growers, the paper argues that poverty did not preclude differentiation as distinct categories of resource-rich and resource-poor plotholders emerged in the post-independence era.     

A meal on the hoof or wealth in the kraal? Stable isotopes at Kgaswe and Taukome in eastern Botswana

Iron Age sites associated with the Toutswe tradition in Eastern Botswana date between CE 700–1300 and share a variety of settlement patterns, economic features and material culture. The presence of domestic fauna, settlement structures and concentrations of vitrified dung provide archaeological evidence for herding economies. However, due to factors of preservation and past retrieval techniques, evidence for plant remains is still somewhat limited for the Toutswe sites in Botswana. Additionally, archaeological remains such as flora, fauna and material culture often provide only indirect evidence for their contributions to diet. This study provides new evidence for the diet of individuals from the Toutswe tradition. Given the large numbers of animal remains and residues at Toutswe sites, the expectation is that animal domesticates were also an integral part of the diet. Stable isotopic analysis of human remains indicates that even though domestic cattle and sheep occur in great abundance at Toutswe sites, their contribution to the diet may be minimal. The main source of protein for individuals at Kgaswe and Taukome comes from C4 plants such as sorghum and millet and to a lesser extent, animal products. The practice of maintaining large domestic herds for economic and social reasons rather than for primary subsistence in southern Africa today may have its roots in the Iron Age populations of the region. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.