‘How it is grown doesn't matter,as long as it's on the table’: Pesticide use,uncertainty and future aspirations

Agricultural pesticides are widely considered to be a crucial aspect of increasing food production, particularly in developing countries - despite concerns around their potentially harmful toxic effects. Based on 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2019, the author explores how smallholder farmers in a rural community in western Kenya face new pest infestations introduced through global trade networks and exacerbated by climate change. In response, they increasingly adopt agricultural pesticides against these threats to their harvests to secure their aspirations for the future as well as shorter-term livelihoods. The author argues that the farmers were ‘trying’: trying out new things, unsure of the outcome, to secure livelihoods, food and good health. They shared concerns about toxic exposure and the potential effects of increased pesticide use. Yet the uncertain status of pesticides as both poison and medicine, combined with divergent temporalities of risk and exposure, meant that economic considerations heavily shaped decisions around pesticide use at a household level.     

Maize as a nightmare: Food safety and toxicity in rural Kenya

This article discusses how Kenyan farmers engage with potentially toxigenic mould growing on the maize they produce, buy, process, consume and feed their animals. Aflatoxins, a group of mycotoxins produced by strains of Aspergillus flavus, can severely harm the livers of humans and animals, causing cancer, liver failure and death. Detection of the invisible, tasteless, and odourless toxins is only possible through expensive scientific testing, largely absent in rural Kenya. Yet local conceptions of aflatoxin focus on the visible mould in everyday food production and consumption practices. This includes constant inspection and separating mouldy kernels and grains during drying and storing to prevent the potentially present mould from spreading and to ensure food safety. This article investigates how practices like separating grains from maize kernels and inspecting the dried maize before grinding show how food is handled under constant, yet flawed, engagement with potential toxicity.     

Toxic residues of Senegal's peanut economy

Exported peanuts have been a key source of state revenue and rural incomes in Senegal since the early 20th century. Senegal has among the world's highest rates of liver cancer incidence. From the 1960s, aflatoxin - the toxic metabolite of fungal strains to which peanut plants are vulnerable - was suspected to be a cause of this cancer. Aflatoxin has since been classified and, in markets that import Senegalese peanuts, regulated as a carcinogen. This article situates aflatoxin toxicity amid the traces of Senegal's century-old peanut export economy. Examining how peanuts have transformed and inhabit soil, landscapes, buildings, food, bodies and aetiological knowledge, it suggests ways in which aflatoxin as well as uncertainty about its carcinogenicity might be cast as residues of a market-oriented economy.     

人文地理学视角下的国外饮食文化研究进展

随着人文地理学的文化转向,以及跨学科的研究趋势,有关饮食、饮食文化体系和饮食活动的研究成为了地理学的研究对象之一。人文地理学视角下国外饮食文化研究主要集中在饮食的象征意义、饮食的文化经济、饮食的文化政治以及饮食与认同的相关研究四个方面。而国外的饮食文化研究趋势主要表现在(1)强调饮食全球化和跨国现象及其带来的影响;(2)关注饮食的意义以及人、饮食、物质环境和社会之间关系的探讨;(3)从探讨饮食和饮食文化本身的地理学研究,转向对饮食空间问题的探讨。在此基础上,从人地关系、跨地方以及文化政治三个方面对人文地理学视角下国内饮食文化研究提出了展望。     

国外旅游者饮食消费研究述评

旅游者饮食消费作为一种基本的旅游活动之一,是国外旅游研究中重点关注的领域,并形成相当丰富的研究成果。文章在对国外有关旅游者饮食消费的文献进行梳理整理的基础上,从旅游者饮食消费与旅游目的地、旅游者饮食消费的影响因素、旅游者饮食体验三个方面对国外的研究进行回顾,并在旅游者饮食消费体验的分析与回顾的基础上提出旅游者的自我矛盾的理论模型;文章最后从三个方面对国内的未来研究提出展望,第一,强调旅游研究中的非视觉景观与体验;第二,关注全球化背景下旅游目的地饮食的生产与消费;第三,探讨旅游者饮食消费背后的社会文化含义。     

Pastoralism and Pottery Use: An Ethnoarchaeological Study in Samburu,Kenya

In Samburu, Kenya, ethnoarchaeological research reveals a deep and perhaps unexpected integration of pottery use into a mobile lifestyle centered on the herding of livestock. This paper examines the importance of pottery to Samburu survival, particularly for the preparation of bone soups, wild plants, and other foods during times of drought and food insecurity. These data raise new questions about how pottery and other household material culture may have influenced the origins and development of African pastoralism.     

‘Cultivating the African’: Barclays DCO and the Decolonisation of Business Strategy in Kenya, 1950–78

While there is a great deal of recent research on the response of British business to decolonisation and a wide range of literature examining the alleged ‘neo-colonial’ relations between business and state in the post-colonial period, few studies of business attempt to straddle the awkward periodisation defined by the official hand-over of political responsibility. Barclays Bank DCO embarked on its decolonisation strategy in Kenya in anticipation of political and economic change and continued to follow that same strategy after the formal transfer of power from London to Nairobi. The article demonstrates the precise nexus of political and commercial reasons for Barclays’ approach in Kenya and outlines its successes and failures in responding to political and economic change in a newly emerging nation. In so doing, it emphasises that this particular British business, while not always in complete control of events on the ground, was more than a victim or beneficiary of circumstances about which it knew little and could do less. Rather, Barclays was an active participant in the process of decolonisation, reorganising and adapting its business model and employment structure to suit the times in Kenya.     

Globalization and the Changing Networks of Food Supply: The Importation of Fresh Horticultural Produce from Kenya into the UK

Set within the context of the global food supply system, this paper examines the growing trade in fresh horticultural produce between Kenya and the UK. The links between UK retailers and Kenyan producers are investigated using the concept of the marketing chain. Two major chains are identified - wholesale and supermarket – and, whilst having no direct investment in Kenya, it is the supermarkets who control production there, through intermediaries who ensure that standards of quality and presentation are met. Importers play a crucial role in facilitating this trade, acting as a vital link between farmers and exporters in Kenya and supermarkets in the UK. The need for quality and traceability dictates that contractual arrangements are made predominantly with large-scale farms using productivist farming methods. The irony is that it is post-productivist demands by 'new consumers' in the UK that are encouraging these productivist horticultural systems in Kenya.     

中国新石器时代早期文化遗存的新发现和新思考

本文依据中国新石器时代早期文化遗存的新发现,提出稻作农业的起源和早期发展形式是中心起源、边缘发展的看法,即稻作农业大约在公元前１００００年起源于自然食物来源充足的中国南方腹心地带,于公元前７０００年后发展于“富裕的食物采集文化”区边缘的两湖平原西部地区和钱塘江流域,并逐步向淮河流域推进。     

Indigènes after Indigènes: post-war France and its North African troops

This article focuses on North African soldiers who served in the French army of occupation in western Germany after its liberation in 1945. Taking as its starting point Rachid Bouchareb's 2006 film, Indigènes, the article contrasts claims the film made about the memorial exclusion of the colonial soldier with his surprising centrality to French accounts of their own military exploits. Using publications issued by the army for its internal readership and archival records of the military occupation's day-to-day activities, the author argues for a modified understanding of the French Republican notion of assimilation that is able to take account of the prolific representation of the North African soldier, and his accommodation, in Cold War Germany.     

深圳居民购物消费行为的时空间特征

本文以深圳居民消费行为问卷调查的第一手资料为基础,分不同类型商品总结出居民购物消费行为的频率特征、购物时段特征以及空间特征,提出了低等级商品购物的三圈层结构和高等级商品购物的扇形模式。本文还通过购物行为空间与居民属性的相关关系分析对居民购物消费空间予以解释。     

西方社会空间视角下的郊区化研究及其启示

作为一种分散型城市化,郊区化始于20世纪20年代,盛于二战后的发达国家。西方早期的郊区化研究主要集中在郊区化的发展浪潮,郊区化的界定方法、发展机制、后果和政府调控等方面,90年代所提出的"新郊区化"概念将郊区化与边缘城市、郊区次级就业中心的发展联系在一起。21世纪以来,社会空间成为西方郊区化研究者最关注的话题。本文基于近年西方学者关于郊区化研究的最新文献,从郊区化与居住空间重构、郊区化与住房选择和分异、郊区化与居民通勤行为、郊区化与居民生活空间、郊区化的社会影响等方面总结了西方学者在社会空间视角下的郊区化研究方面所取得的研究成果。然后,分析了西方研究议题转变和研究方法创新对中国郊区化研究所带来的启示。最后,从研究视角拓展、定性方法应用、微观机理探讨、多重互动模式建构等方面对未来中国郊区化的研究进行展望。     

Arrival: Anthropology in Hollywood

The recent Hollywood science fiction film Arrival features as its main character a linguist who explicitly references the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis and linguistic relativism. Unusually for a mainstream film, Arrival presents the insights of linguistic anthropology as a key to the human‐alien encounter and combines these concerns with other key anthropological insights, particularly in relation to notions of time and the embodied nature of writing/drawing. In this article, the author argues that the film can be useful in thinking about anthropological debates on ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of Sapir‐Whorf and suggests that a careful parsing of the anthropological concepts drawn on in the film provides food for thought about the possible usefulness of popular fictional concoctions for thinking through contemporary issues in anthropology and conveying them to a wider audience.     

Beyond the universalized home: identity intersectionalities in western Kenyan students' production of place

Globally, while defined roles within the home based on gender and age are widely acknowledged, knowledge of the ways in which these roles take shape is largely unknown, particularly outside of Western structures. Using Kenya as a site of analysis, and student responses to images of various types of houses found in their textbook, this research will demonstrate that students' conceptualizations of home reveal extensive dissonance with the metanarrative of the gendered home. In doing so, this study attempts to address both the dearth of research exploring the production of home in non-Western environments and the potential continuum of meaning that may exist between people and home by analyzing the ways in which primary students in western Kenya produce and negotiate images of home with their lived realities. Ultimately, the goal of this analysis is to reveal the delicate negotiation students participate in when producing personal ideas of home as well as their perceptions of home for other people in their community, while also demonstrating that though the home may be gendered, it is also viewed through any number of additional cultural lenses.     

Just Farming? Neoliberal Subjectivities and Agricultural Livelihoods among Educated Youth in Kenya

Given the precariousness of graduate employment in most African countries, coupled with intersecting challenges of food insecurity, urbanization and population growth, educated youth are increasingly being encouraged to seek alternative livelihood opportunities in agriculture — a sector traditionally associated with the uneducated rural poor but which has received considerable developmental attention. This article examines how and with what impacts educated youth in Kenya construct and perform new identities as farmers, distinct from the stigmatized smallholder farmers and in keeping with their status as elite, urbanized, social change makers. By developing the concepts of neoliberal youth subjectivities and opportunity space, and examining their life and work histories, the article analyses how educated young farmers construct themselves as productive and socially respectable through different and locally understood neoliberal subjectivities. The author argues that the performances of educated youth who identify themselves as diversified selves, as members of the elite, and as social change makers challenge the normative notions of protracted youth‐hood and, instead, illuminate the neoliberal lives of these young people, facilitated by a liberalized economy and their social positioning in society.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 1. February 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 1 Front cover Greece‐German relations The Prussian goose‐step survives in Greek official ceremonies as part of the ‘traditional’ display by the famed Evzones, or presidential guards – a relic of the German‐derived monarchy and its militaristic traditions. It is combined here with a male costume popular in the European parts of the Ottoman Empire, especially among Albanians and Greeks, and nowadays associated in popular imagination with the Greek War of Independence (1821–1833). German cultural influence still lingers in Greece, most visibly in the remnants of 19th‐century neoclassical architecture in Athens and other cities. The brutal Nazi occupation of Greece and Germany's role in Greece's current economic turmoil together represent another side of a tormented historical relationship between the two countries and their peoples. In an essay of which Part I appears in this issue, Michael Herzfeld argues that the mutual stereotyping by Greeks and Germans – a habit deeply rooted in these complex interactions – has become a major cause of Greece's difficulties, perpetuating its ‘crypto‐colonial’ status within the European Union. He suggests that the only possibility for escaping this destructive downward spiral is through a determined attempt to stop the stereotyping, and argues that anthropology could play an important role in that reversal of accumulated hurt and mutual distrust. Back cover FOOD POVERTY IN THE UK If, as Lévi‐Strauss suggested, food is bon à penser, how can an anthropologist interpret a lack of food in a highly developed society? Can an anthropological lens illuminate either the recent rise in food insecurity in the UK or the exponential growth of food banks? In this issue, Pat Caplan reflects on her current fieldwork on these topics in north London and west Wales. She focuses particularly on food banks, making use of interviews and participant observation with clients, trustees and volunteers, as well as local and national media reports. The author poses a series of questions: firstly, she considers who needs food aid and why, which involves a consideration of insecure employment and low wages, as well as changes to the benefit regime which have adversely impacted on food bank clients. Secondly, she discusses who provides food aid and how, by considering those giving to and running food banks and other types of organization, including their motivations for getting involved. Thirdly, she asks what kind of solution food aid offers to an apparently growing problem. Does this form of charity merely depoliticize the arguments? Finally and most importantly, she asks what this tells us about the society in which we live, about the state and its policies and the public discourse around such issues. She notes that there are many well‐honed anthropological concepts which can be brought to bear on these issues, including gifting and reciprocity, shame and stigma, entitlements and blame. Finally, a consideration of voluntarism raises important questions about rights and entitlement, including the state's compliance with the international covenants to which it has signed up.     

Colonial Geography and Masculinity in Eric Dutton's Kenya Mountain

Eric Dutton's Kenya Mountain, (1929) tells the story of an unsuccessful attempt to climb Mount Kenya in the 1920s. In this article, the author concentrates on a close, contextualized reading of the book as a contribution to critical feminist geographical understanding of colonial discourse at a later point in the colonial timeline than has been commonly analyzed in studies of British colonial geographies and travel literature. Dutton's discursive tactics in the text reveal the inextricable relations between a gendered and enframed sense of landscape and colonial rule. The book also is a window onto the ambivalences and contradictions within British colonial ideology in Africa in the interwar years. In particular, Dutton's struggle with hegemonic masculinity and his complex relationships with the African men on the climb are interrogated as manifestations of broader ambiguities in Britain's African empire. These points of emphasis in this reading of the book emerge from recent feminist and progressive analyses of gender, colonial geography and adventure writing.     

On exposure,vulnerability and violence: Spatial distribution of risk factors for climate change and violent conflict across Kenya and Uganda

Recent studies discuss the link between climate change and violent conflict, especially for East Africa. While there is extensive literature on the question whether climate change increases the risk of violent conflict onset, not much is known about where a climate-conflict link is most likely to be found. We address this question by analyzing the spatial distribution of the factors commonly associated with a high exposure and vulnerability to climate change, and a high risk of violent conflict onset in Kenya and Uganda. Drawing on recent literature and quantitative data for the period 1998–2008, we develop various specifications of a composite risk index (CRI) with a spatial resolution of half a degree for Kenya and Uganda in the year 2008. A quantitative comparison with conflict data for the year 2008 provides support for the composite risk index. Finally, the composite risk index is contrasted with the findings of three qualitative case studies, which provide mixed support for the index and help to identify its strengths and weaknesses as well as conceptual needs for further quantitative studies on climate change and violent conflict.     

亳都地望考

有关亳都地望 ,古今主要有西亳说、南亳说、北亳说、杜亳说、垣亳说及郑亳说等六种说法 ,本文结合文献材料和考古学材料 ,并吸收前人的研究成果 ,对诸亳说一一加以考证 ,最后认定郑州商城为汤之亳都。     

论王先谦的《五洲地理志略》

《五洲地理志略》是王先谦晚年在学术研究方向转变之后所撰的一本比较成熟的史地学著作。作者以传播、普及中外历史地理知识为宗旨,向人们介绍西方史地学知识,并且将忧国意识与传统的史学方法融入撰写内容之中。作者对中外相关书籍认真比较后,广搜博采,严密考订,尤其关注于新近出现的人文地理大事件。作者重视探讨救亡途径,故而该书的撰述还体现出经世思想与忧患意识的时代特征。