'Creating a Place to Belong': Girls' and Boys' Hut-building as a Site for Understanding Discourses on Childhood and Generational Relations in a Norwegian Community

The empirical focus of this article is children's huts as a particular place for constructions of identities and peer relations among children in a Norwegian local community. Building huts can be seen as children's construction of special places during childhood. Often these places are seen as secret places, reflecting a separate 'children's culture' developed within a particular microcosm. I argue that the social practices developed among girls and boys are related in complex ways to local cultural practices and the construction of gendered generational relations in the community. The title 'Creating a place to belong' refers not only to children's attachment to particular physical places, but also to children's place within a field of age-related as well as inter-generational relations.     

LOCAL CHANGES IN LINGUISTIC BALANCE IN THE BILINGUAL ZONE: FRANCOPHONES DE L'ONTARIO ET ANGLOPHONES DU QUÉBEC

The issue of minority populations and linguistic change for anglophone and francophone groups in Quebec and Ontario is very important, affecting relationships between the groups and individual perceptions of social power. This paper begins an analysis of linguistic change in the transition or contact zone of bilingualism along the Quebec-Ontario border in the period 1961-86. Written in both languages, it describes changes in absolute numbers and percentage share of the total population of the minority group, anglophones in Quebec and francophones in Ontario. It defines regions of change, and, combining the two measures in a series of graphs, shows levels of change at the local level.
La géographie des populations anglophone et francophone àľintérieur de la zone de transition que constituent ľEst ontarien et le Sud du Québec a sensiblement changé au cours des derniers trente ans. Cet article, rédigé dans les deux langues, décrit ces changements àľéchelle locale sur la base de la comparaison des donnees sur la langue maternelle des recensements del 961 et de 1986. Ľétude identifie les municipalités où les changements dans les nombres au sein des populations minoritaires ont été les plus significatifs ainsi que celles ù ces changements ont le plus affecté le rapport minorité-majorité. Elle met en lumière certains profils de changement et décrit les caractères ethno-linguistiques et géographiques des localités qui en sont représentatives. Elle permet, enfin, de comparer ľévolution des populations franco-ontarienne et anglo-québécoise & ľéchelle locale.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews in this Article: Jim Obelkevich, Lyndal Roper, Raphael Samuel, eds, Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy. John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Susan Mosher Stuard, ed, Women in Medieval History and Historiography. Bronislaw Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris, transl. Jean Birrell. Sara Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Alice Browne, The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind. Helen Callaway, Gender, Culture and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria. Claudia Knapman, White Women in Fiji 1835-1930: The Ruin of Empire?…. Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915-38. Susan M. Reverby, Ordered to Care: the Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850-1945. Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence. Helena Whitbread, ed, I Know My Own Heart. The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791-1840 Zuzanna Shonfield, The Precariously Privileged. A Professional Family in Victorian London. Tierl Thompson, ed, Dear Girl. The Diaries and Letters of Two Working Women 1897-1917. Yamila Azize, La Mujer en la Lucha (The Woman in Struggle) (2nd revised ed.).     

THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE: ENGLISH OBSERVATION OF IRISH SOCIAL CUSTOMS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

In seventeenth-century cheap print on supernatural themes, the reader is often struck by gaps, silences, and things that do not quite add up. The article explores ways of reading between the lines to expose and perhaps make sense of these discontinuities. It asks what cultural work is performed by the supernatural in such texts, and speculates on the uses served by ghosts, fairies and demons both in the self-representation of subaltern, often female, individuals and in the textual strategies of the pamphlet writers.     

Emprise et déprise de l'agriculture sur le territoire de l'est de l'Ontario de 1826 à 2006: la dimension environnementale

Agricultural land‐cover changes in Eastern Ontario from 1826 to 2006: environmental effects. Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (SDG) counties, Eastern Ontario, are among the first areas in Ontario to welcome settlers. In 1784, they established themselves in a forested land where wetlands are very important. Today, a large part of the wetlands has disappeared, but the landscape is wooded, masking the radical changes that took place over the course of the last two centuries. Analysis of census data from 1826 to 2006 allows the reconstruction of the history of land‐cover changes. It reveals the nature and rates of change for which a first analysis is presented. Four periods are identified. First, agriculture conquers the land and establishes its dominance. A plateau is reached in 1891 as agriculture maintains its supremacy until 1941. Then, as fast as agriculture invaded land, it fades away until 1986 when agricultural land‐cover stops shrinking. The opening of forest for cultivation was relatively slow in SDG because of biophysical and socio‐economical conditions associated with an absence of growth of agricultural population. Deforestation and wetland drainage led to a degradation of agricultural life but resulted in consideration of the environment in agriculture. Today, wooded and agricultural land covers are more balanced and environmental effects less acute.     

Highlighting the Need and Potential for Use of Interdisciplinary Science in Adaptive Environmental Management: The Case of Endangered Upland Swamps in the Blue Mountains,NSW, Australia

The Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, including the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park, is arguably one of Australia's most highly valued and iconic wilderness areas. Common to this region are upland swamps (formally ‘temperate highland peat swamps on sandstone’), which play a vital hydrological role at the headwaters of the river catchments, as well as providing the habitat for an array of flora and fauna species. This paper involves an interdisciplinary examination into the need and potential for adaptive management in the Blue Mountains. It uses geomorphic (physical) knowledge of swamp condition and social data about the volunteers who rehabilitate them. Research involved using the River Styles river condition framework across 47 swamps and questionnaires and interviews with local rehabilitation volunteers. It is proposed that there is a need and a potential to combine geomorphic understanding with further engagement of community volunteers in order to enable an interdisciplinary approach to adaptive management. Such an approach could result in the effective environmental management of upland swamps in the Blue Mountains.     

The influence of betterment discourses on Canadian Aboriginal peoples in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Based on government archival sources, fieldwork and the historical perspectives, experiences and oral histories of Aboriginal peoples, this paper argues that late nineteenth and early twentieth century Indian policy, and more specifically the File Hills farm colony, was deeply influenced by betterment discourses. The presumption of this discourse was that Aboriginal peoples, who clearly were not vanishing as promised, could be transformed into something approaching white settlers by reshaping, controlling, and managing their environments, both private and public, and by altering their genetics and morals. While the betterment discourse and the File Hills colony have each been the focus of research, no one to our knowledge has focused on the importance of betterment thought in the establishment and application of Indian policy and its significance for the File Hills colony.     

“The Old Vexed Question:” Divergent Attitudes and Practices in the Sacred Music of Early Ballarat

When gold was discovered at Ballarat in 1851, the peaceful pastoral community was transformed into a rough mining camp. People from all parts of the world came in search of wealth, bringing with them a diversity of cultural and spiritual affiliations. As the musical life of the various denominational groups developed according to specific doctrinal principles and local influences, strong opinions were expressed in the community regarding the place of music in worship. This article looks at the developments in sacred music during the two decades that saw Ballarat transformed into a major city. The strong differences in discourse and practice that were evident between and within particular religious groups form a background for reflecting upon contemporary perceptions of the function of music in worship.