Eland and Therianthropes in Southern African Rock Art: When Is a Person an Animal?

The interpretation of part human part animal figures is critical to the understanding of southern African rock paintings, as is the meaning ascribed to the many depictions of eland. The conventional view is that these image patterns derive from the essentially shamanistic character of the art. Here I argue that the conflation of human and animal is a far more pervasive component of southern African hunter-gatherer expressive culture and relates to the central significance of hunting in organizing man–animal and male–female relations. The eland too plays a key role in these relations. In the western Cape rock paintings the influence of this extended hunting metaphor in informing image choice appears to be paramount.L'interpretation des figures a la fois humaines et animales est fondamentale afin de comprendre les peintures rupestres sud-africaines. II en est de pour la signification des representations attribuees de l'elan. L'idee conventionnelle veut que les sujets de ces representations proviennent du caractere chamanique de l'art. Je defends ici l'idee que le melange de l'humain et de l'animal est un element nettement plus rependu de la culture expressive sud-africaine des chasseurs-cueilleurs et releve de l'organisation des relations animal/homme et homme/femme dans l'idee centrale de la chasse. L'elan joue egalemnet un role clef dans ces relations. Dans les peintures rupestres de l'Ouest du Cap, l'influence de cette metaphore elargie dans le choix d'images informatives (ayant du sens) parait etre essentielle.     

Legislation as an Instrument in South African Heritage Management: Is It Effective?

Abstract

Heritage management and cultural legislation have always existed in the African continent, even before the days of written laws. However, it is often perceived that it was with the 'taking over' of the continent that civilization and heritage legislation were first implemented. The 'new' legislation did not recognize the indigenous means of management and ignored the fact that heritage sites have existed long prior to the scramble for the continent. The first enacted legislation in South Africa was distinctively biased towards the Bushmen heritage. I argue that this was probably because it was not politically problematic as Bushmen were considered to be a dying nation with a culture going 'extinct'. Having legislation that promoted the heritage of the people you were colonizing might not have been strategically correct. Legislation over the years moved away from the 'Bushmen culture' to protecting colonial heritage sites. Whilst the post-colonial heritage legislation has improved on the previous legislation — as can be shown by its success in courts — there are still areas of concern. I find the whole heritage framework represented by the legislation to still be clearly non-African, with a top-down approach that has not much respect for African culture, especially the values that clash with Eurocentric ones. I conclude that indeed there has been significant progress made with legislation over the years, from 1911 to 1999 when the current legislation was promulgated. However, a lack of proactive measures from within heritage management, as well as external factors, are still a stumbling block to a successful implementation of heritage legislation and as a result heritage is still threatened.     

Feminist Activism and the Politics of Reform: When and Why Do States Respond to Demands for Gender Equality Policies?

Under what conditions is gender equality policy advocacy successful? This article examines a segment of the largely quantitative comparative political science literature that seeks to answer this question. Recent scholarship emphasizes such factors as the strength of women's movements and the forms of opposition to which their policy demands give rise. However, one consequence of this approach is that the role of strategic choices made by feminist policy advocates is underestimated in explaining their successes. The article argues that understanding variation in the outcomes achieved by women's rights advocates requires close attention to the strategic capacity of policy entrepreneurs, assessed in terms of three inter‐related activities: (1) ‘framing’ policy demands; (2) forming and managing civic alliances; and (3) engaging with state entities without compromising organizational autonomy.     

What “Is” Territorial Cohesion? What Does It “Do”?: Essentialist Versus Pragmatic Approaches to Using Concepts

The question, “what is territorial cohesion” has reverberated through European spatial policy since the publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective in 1999. Over the last 10 years, the European Spatial Policy Observation Network (ESPON) has made many efforts to define and measure the concept of “territorial cohesion”. Many such attempts assume that a policy concept must be defined in order to be “operationalized”. Or, in other words, that we must determine what the concept is before we can determine what it can or should do. This paper challenges this assumption in two parts. In the first, I review a number of ESPON projects to show how complex and uncertain these essentialist definitions have become. In the second, I analyse a number of national, regional and local government responses to the 2008 Green paper. I show that, whilst a clear and coherent definition has not been established, this concept is already operationalized in different policy frameworks. Bringing this together, I argue that users of such concepts ought to approach the issue differently, through a pragmatic line of enquiry: one that asks what territorial cohesion does, what it might do and how it might affect what other concepts, practices and materials do.     

Negotiated Agreements,Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industry in the Salar de Atacama,Chile: When Is an Agreement More than a Contract?

While acknowledging advances in legal recognition of Indigenous rights, much of the research literature positions negotiated agreements between Indigenous peoples and corporations simply as ‘neoliberal technology’ that gives the appearance of Indigenous consent while allowing exploitation to continue. This analysis is flawed in considering agreements as discrete, stand-alone phenomena. It ignores the possibility that Indigenous peoples may use agreements as part of broader strategies to achieve control over extractive industry activity and to secure a share of ‘development’ benefits — strategies that involve selective engagement with the state. This article supports its argument by locating an agreement between the Chilean lithium mining company, Albemarle, and the Council of Atacameño Peoples within a broad and sustained strategy by Atacameño people to address the negative impacts of mining in the Salar de Atacama, Chile, while securing its economic benefits. This strategy includes using the agreement to voice Atacameño territorial claims and environmental concerns to the state, and to insist that the state lives up to its responsibilities. The analysis leads to a fuller appreciation of the agency exercised by Indigenous peoples in dealing with the sustained expansion of extractive activity on their territories, and a more nuanced understanding of negotiated agreements between Indigenous peoples and mining corporations and between Indigenous people and the state.