Unintended effects of technology on climate change adaptation: an historical analysis of water conflicts below Andean Glaciers

Climate change adaptation measures can generate long-term unintended consequences, as this paper demonstrates through an empirical case study of water conflicts at Lake Parón in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range. This decade-long struggle culminated in 2008 when a coalition of local groups (stakeholders) from the Cruz de Mayo and Caraz communities in the Callejón de Huaylas seized control of the Lake Parón reservoir from a private multinational corporation, Duke Energy. This clash over Parón’s water in the Llullán and Santa River watersheds emerged much earlier than climatic-hydrologic models had predicted, and it occurred, this paper argues, largely because of previously successful climate adaptation measures. The drainage tunnel and floodgates originally installed at Parón in the 1980s to prevent a climate-related outburst flood led to unintended or perverse outcomes because these technological artifacts subsequently allowed a diversity of stakeholders—including rural subsistence farmers, urban residents, national park officials, tourism promoters, the state energy company Electroperú, and Duke Energy—to manage water differently depending on their priorities and the existing governance structures. Neoliberal reforms that altered state-society-environment relations in Peru played a key role in these changing stakeholder power dynamics that were reflected in the management of water infrastructure at Parón. Examining this water conflict that emerged from the unintended effects of climate adaptation demonstrates not only how technology and society are mutually constitutive, but also why the politics of technologies must be considered more carefully in the analysis of social-ecological systems, hydro-social cycles, and climate change adaptation.     

Encountering soviet geography: oral histories of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945–1991

This paper considers the history of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945–1991, presenting material from a research project which has included thirty-two oral history interviews. Oral history is an especially fruitful research methodology in this context due to the distinct issues of formality and informality involved in researching the Soviet bloc. After discussing the nature of the subdiscipline and the Cold War context, including the role of the British state in shaping the field, the paper considers the role of formal academic meetings and exchanges, and the place of unofficial spaces of encounter in the formation of an intellectual culture. The paper concludes by reflecting on the merits of oral history in studies of the production of geographical knowledge.     

Embodied encounters between humans and gators

Animal geographies have complicated our understanding of human/nonhuman animal relationships by positioning other animals as recipients of human culture and, more recently, by applying theories of embodiment to illustrate the co-constitution of human–animal worlds. This paper addresses human–alligator relationships in Louisiana by illustrating the history and culture of alligator hide production alongside an analysis of human–alligator encounters through tourism. Alligators have played all sorts of instrumental and symbolic roles in the Atchafalaya River Basin where populations here have been managed as a corollary to the exotic hide industry. More recently, gators have been positioned as the star attractions on swamp tours. Guides, tourists, and alligators share encounters where the nonhumans are anthropomorphized and empowered to shape human perceptions of other bodies. By jumping out of the water for food or simply allowing the tourists' gaze, alligators are positioned both as an exotic body and as a capable agent in the experience of space. Guides take part in hybridizing the two groups of actors by individuating gators, enticing them to interact with tourists and negotiating the fears of gators and tourists alike to produce what they see as a mutually beneficial experience. These encounters allow for meaningful interactions between distinct yet similar bodies and highlight the animals' power to influence people.     

Book reviews

Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999). Pp.xii + 516. $29.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 8028 3872 3.

David L. Dykstra, The Shifting Balance of Power: American‐British Diplomacy in North America, 1842–1848 (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1999). Pp.xxxiv + 247. $39.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 7618 1316 2.

Kathryn Teresa Long, The Revival of 1857–58: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Pp.x + 256. $45.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 1951 1293 8.

David Williams, Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998). Pp.xiv + 288. $34.95 (hardback). ISBN 0 8203 2033.

Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998). Pp.xvi 4–180. $24.95 (hardback). ISBN 0 8203 2046 3.

Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds., Religion and the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Pp.xiii + 422. $55.00 (hardback); $24.95 (paperback). ISBNs 0 1951 2128 7 and 0 1951 2129 5.

Daniel E. Sutherland, ed., Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999). Pp.250. $32.00 (hardback); $20 (paperback). ISBN 1 5572 8549 7; ISBN 1 5572 8550 0.     

Collective Trauma and the Evolution of Nehru's Worldview: Uncovering the Roots of Nehruvian Non-Alignment

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Nehruvian non-alignment often assumes an artificial continuity between Jawaharlal Nehru's pre-independence thinking and post-independence decision, as India's prime minister, to pursue a policy of rejecting any international blocs or military alliances. This article demonstrates that, in fact, the ideas that constituted Nehruvian non-alignment were largely absent from Nehru's pre-independence thought – during the decades before India's independence Nehru articulated a strong willingness to cede India's sovereignty to international groupings for idealistic aims. To explain Nehru's shift from idealistic internationalist to professed internationalist but de facto isolationist with regard to alliances and blocs, I advocate a first-image, constructivist approach which considers the impact of collective trauma on Nehru's worldview. Drawing upon a novel, synthesized approach to theorizing collective trauma's impact on national identity, this article argues that the collective trauma Nehru witnessed and experienced during the decades before Indian independence profoundly impacted his trust in international institutions and views on representational diplomacy. In turn, this trauma affected his interpretation of various ideational and strategic considerations, contributing to the formulation of Nehruvian non-alignment.     

British National Dailies and the Outbreak of War in 1914

The intention of this article is to cover a clear gap in the present literature with regards to the First World War, exploring the British National Press and their portrayal of how Britain entered the conflict. Themes explored include: the reaction of the press to the Archduke's assassination; the impact of foreign embassies on press reporting; predictions of the Austrian Ultimatum; reporting in the final days of peace; and finally the continuous and at times controversial link between politicians and the press, a particularly topical issue at present.     

Two new cowries (Gastropoda: Cypraeidae) from the middle Miocene of South Australia

Yates, A.M., December, 2008. Two new cowries (Gastropoda: Cypraeidae) from the middle Miocene of South Australia. Alcheringa 32, 353–364. ISSN 0311-5518.

The South Australian specimens of the cypraeids Umbilia leptorhyncha (McCoy, 1877) and Lyncina (Austrocypraea) contusa (McCoy, 1877) are re-examined. Umbilia caepa sp. nov. differs from U. leptorhyncha in its smaller size, more strongly pyriform shape, weaker and less extensive apertural dentition, plate-like columellar margin of the posterior canal and more extensive basal flanges. True U. leptorhyncha is also recorded from the Cadell Formation of South Australia, demonstrating that the two species were sympatric in the Murray Basin. The specimens originally referred to Cypraea contusa var. from the Cadell Formation have had a confusing taxonomic history and they are here named as a new species Lyncina (Austrocypraea) cadella sp. nov. The new species differs from true L. (A.) contusa in its smaller size, less extensive malleations of the dorsal surface, fewer apertural teeth and a projecting internal margin of the fossula. These two new species boost a small but growing list of species that were endemic to the Murray Basin during the middle Miocene.