Settlement and land alienation in Western Australia: the shire of Denmark

The pattern of initial settlement in the Shire of Denmark in Western Australia is mapped using land registrations of the date of the first lease and first freehold grant. Settlement started near the main rivers before World War I and accelerated with Group Settlements of the 1920s. However, many Group settlers abandoned their land before 1940. Little development occurred until in-migration during the last 30 years. Local persistence of families was estimated from records of land tenure, rate books, electoral rolls, postal directories and interviews. The rate of persistence of families on each block varied considerably. Geographical expansion of holdings among successive generations of founding families reflects more general processes such as clone colonization in which, by mutual support and intra-family co-operation, families undertake short-distance migration to newly acquired—often abandoned—holdings. In this way, settlers have gradually created a continuously settled landscape in this once densely forested area of south-western Australia. Land alienation has occurred since 1900 in the study area of 217 surveyed lots, or ‘blocks’ which are, on average, 150 acres (70 hectares) in size. The geographical pattern of initial settlement comprised isolated sites, occupied in the wake of early lumbering, rather than a linear frontier.     

Planning for Culture in Urban Australia

This paper offers a selective overview and assessment of cultural planning in urban Australia from the perspective of a cultural geographer. It is argued that in theory cultural planning adopts a fluid and broad definition of culture similar to that used by contemporary cultural geographers. In practice, however, a narrow, material definition of culture is found in cultural plans, and the relations between cultural practices and place are construed unidimensionally.     

Challenges to Riverine Planning in Australia

Australia's riverine resources have been statutoralty unrecognised and unprotected and as a consequence seriously degraded by land use practices in many regions since European settlement There is now an urgent need to modify and manage river systems for increasingly complex and diverse water requirements. This is not easy. A framework of important components in a river management system shows the muti-faceted and complex nature of the biophysical and institutional environment     

Land-holding,participation in agriculture and short-term migration in rural India

ABSTRACT

We analyse a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2013 in order to provide evidence on how short-term migration is affected by household ownership of land and participation in agricultural activities. We estimate a recursive-bivariate-probit model recognising the simultaneity between short-term migration and the decision to operate the land. The results of the likelihood ratio test imply that it would be incorrect to ignore this simultaneity. Households with less than 1?ha of land and those leasing out land are more likely to have a short-term migrant. Households leaving their land fallow, a common occurrence in South Asia, are also more likely to have a short-term migrant. Moreover, the choice of crops and livestock farming has a significant role to play in the migration decision. Current initiatives to increase coverage of irrigation and facilitate access to formal finance could improve the livelihoods of small and marginal farmers, thereby reducing the probability of distress-related short-term migration.     

六安市农村土地整治成效及问题研究

<正>农村土地整治包括农用地整理和建设用地整理,其主要内容是对农村田、水、路、林、村进行综合整治,目的是提高土地利用率,有效增加耕地面积,同时全     

Populism and the development of traditional agriculture

Richards, Paul. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology and Food Production in West Africa. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. No frontmatter. 192 pp. including appendix, bibliography, and index. $22.50 cloth.

Marten, Gerald G., ed. Traditional Agriculture in Southeast Asia: A Human Ecology Perspective. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1986. xxvi + 358 pp. including figures and tables, chapter references, and index. $36.50 cloth.     

Divorce in early modern rural Japan: household and individual life course in northeastern villages, 1716-1870

Drawing data from the local population registers in two northeastern agricultural villages, this study examines the patterns and factors associated with divorce in preindustrial Japan. Divorce was easy and common during this period. More than two thirds of first marriages dissolved in divorce before individuals reached age fifty. Discrete-time event history analysis is applied to demonstrate how economic condition and household context influenced the likelihood of divorce for females. Risk of divorce was extremely high in the first three years and among uxorilocal marriages. Propensity of divorce increased upon economic stress in the community and among households of lower social status. Presence of parents, siblings, and children had strong bearings on marriage to continue.     

Top-down or bottom-up: rural settlement and raised field agriculture in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

Differing interpretations regarding the organization of past intensive farming are often distinguished as “top-down” or “bottom-up” perspectives. The development of intensive farming and its social organization are attributed to either nascent states and centralized governments or the incremental work of local communities or kin-based groups. We address the social organization of raised field farming in one region of the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andean altiplano, Bolivia. We evaluate past research in the Katari Valley, including our own, based on recent settlement survey, excavation, and a variety of analyses. Taking a long-term perspective covering 2500 years, we find that relations of production and rural organization changed greatly over time in relation to changing sociopolitical conditions. Local communities played dynamic roles in the development and organization of raised field farming, yet its intensification and ultimate recession were keyed to the consolidation and decline of the Tiwanaku state. We conclude that the top-down/bottom-up dichotomy is overdrawn. Local communities and their productive practices never operated in a political or economic vacuum but both shaped and were transfigured by regional processes of state formation, consolidation, and fragmentation.     

Rethinking suburban development in Australia: a Melbourne case study

This article considers suburban development in Australia through the lens of its second largest city, Melbourne. Contemporary urban policies have focussed on the low densities within Australia's capitals and tried to achieve sustainability through urban consolidation policies. The article argues that these policies are often based on a distorted understanding of the relationship between housing markets and labour markets in Australia's large metropolises. The analysis of suburban development in Melbourne shows that suburban development involves complex links between changes in housing and job location and that urban sustainability policy needs to include actions designed to change the distribution of employment as well as the location and density of housing. The article shows that the vast spread of the Melbourne population masks closely linked regional labour and housing markets.     

Local government perceptions of water related issues in rural Australia

Water supply has long been regarded as a limiting resource in the further development of Australia. Active management has been necessary in both more densely settled areas and in areas of moderate settlement density but low rainfall such as the Murray-Darling system. The recently released Water 2000 Report details current knowledge about the quality and distribution of these resources. Following on from this Report this article presents perceived problems with water quantity and quality (in particular, salinisation) obtained from a survey sent to rural local governments in late 1982. The survey requested information on the relevance of twenty-two land use issues, known from earlier work to be representative of common concerns throughout Australia. Public perceptions were remarkably similar to the results of the Water 2000 Report. Water quantity/quality and salinisation issues were the sixth and seventh most commonly cited issues throughout Australia, but were of much greater concern in specific areas. Tasmanian local governments reported major problems of water supply, those in southwest Western Australia exhibited a very high level of concern with dry land salinisation, local governments in the Murray-Darling Drainage Division reported concern with salinisation, droughts, floods and general water quality, while local governments in the Gulf of Carpentaria Drainage Division consistently cited flooding as being a major problem. Information from surveys such as this, and others where the respondents are the end-users, need to be combined with expert opinion in order to increase the effectiveness of the management of our water resources.     

Cabeza de Vaca's land of maize: an assessment of its agriculture

The inhabitants of eastern Sonora were reported by the Spaniards to be more populous and culturally more advanced than other groups in northern México and the southern portion of the American Southwest at the time of Spanish contact. They were also reported to have possessed a well developed agricultural complex. In spite of their achievements, the ancient people of this region have been the subject of few studies because of perceived data limitations. Although they are sparse, data are sufficient to reconstruct the agricultural base. Historical documentations, archaeological remains, and ethnographic analogs indicate that these people relied on a variety of cultivars and agricultural techniques. In addition to dry farming maize, beans, and squash, they also double cropped and irrigated through intricate canal systems. With such elaborate practices and techniques, enough was produced to feed a population of nearly 100,000 and to support a culture that was the only one in the region to be at its zenith when the Spaniards arrived.     

Geographies of mediation: Market development and the rural broker in Maharashtra, India

This paper explicates the role of community-level intermediaries in post-liberalized economic sectors. Focusing on nascent commercial markets for improved, smokeless cookstoves in southwestern Maharashtra, I describe how development is encountered by three analytic groups – artisans, female stove users and NGO field officers. This study highlights patterns of strategic intermediary action, or forms of brokering, used to negotiate the commercialization process for individuals involved in the fabrication, distribution and use of improved cookstoves. A close analysis of the mediating agent can strengthen theories on how individuals and communities encounter sector privatization and state retrenchment. This study reveals a diverse set of brokering activities and actors, and shows how intermediaries combine tasks associated with traditional conceptions of the political fixer and market broker by working within and between groups of market, village and state operatives to transform market supply chains. Mediating agents coordinate counter regulating activities within civil society in the absence of heavy state intervention and play a crucial role in activating and connecting community interests to latent neoliberal state resources.     

甲午陆战与晚清陆军军事教育的发展

甲午陆战的失败是晚清陆军军事教育的重要转折点.由于汲取了甲午陆战失败的教训,陆军军事教育得到了空前的重视,无论是陆军军事学堂的数量还是教育人数都得到了飞速的发展,促进了中国军事教育近代化的发展.     

Strategic planning for multicommunity rural development: Insights from Northern Ireland

This paper examines progress being made in the sphere of community‐led rural development in Northern Ireland. Multicommunity development practice carried out by the authors using a transactive model of strategic planning is reported. This case study is located in the borderlands of Ireland, in an area where contested traditions of culture and political allegiance are deeply rooted. The analysis explores, inter alia, the tensions associated with community group formation, the difficulties in winning consensus and how these problems were addressed, the origin and selection of projects, and the first steps towards implementation. By way of conclusion a number of key issues of arguably wider interest are identified: engaging in strategic planning, supporting multicommunity activity and forging new partnership arrangements.