Groundnuts as ‘economic crop’ or ‘wife of the home’ in Northern Nyasaland

This paper examines points during the 1930s in which the colonial state in Nyasaland attempted and failed to bring groundnuts more into the colonial export economy. Nyasaland colonial officials, the Department of Agriculture, European export companies and the British Colonial Office attempted to establish the groundnut as an ‘economic crop’ for African smallholder farmers in the Northern Province of Nyasaland in the 1930s. Their failure was in part due to competing and conflicting interests: payment of hut taxes, reduction of millet production, improvement of food security, payment of railway costs, and reduction of migration. Farmers actively resisted colonial efforts to sell groundnuts to European buyers. The paper addresses the question: how can we understand the nature of colonial state power in relation to Nyasaland peasant agricultural practices in the 1930s? I argue that conflicting interests within the colonial state, as well as external constraints led to efforts to both stabilize and exploit the Nyasaland farmer in the Northern Province. These competing agendas helped lead to a failed effort at groundnut promotion. Colonial officials' actions were linked to ideas about gender, ethnicity and migration. Lack of colonial scientific knowledge about groundnuts, including their gendered role in the local food system contributed to the failure. The focus on groundnuts is a lens through which to understand the nature of colonial power in Nyasaland and the role of agricultural science in the colonial state. The paper contributes to broader discussions about multiple historical geographies of colonialism, the nature of African colonial states, and the relationship of African farmers to colonial states.     

Situating middle class identities: American college women of South Asian descent

This article explores the ways in which American college women of South Asian descent discuss their positioning as middle class. The article analyses participants' talk around class as evidence of embeddedness in American class discourses and a complex and contradictory scheme of identification that implicates other identities like gender, race and culture. Respondents often articulated class using the American Dream, where the social capital their parents immigrated with is left unexamined in favour of a narrative of ‘rags to riches’. Young women also used other constructs like ‘stability’, ‘race’ and ‘resources’ to make reference to class, but also to participate in an American discursive silence around it. Finally, the notion of a drive towards professionalism as an immigrant goal is examined, and it is suggested that this serves to further deflect discussions of class. This article synthesises theories of diaspora, ‘translocational positioning’ and habitus, and examines the production of American class discourse as a performance of an American middle class habitus.     

‘Rock-art’, ‘Animism’ and Two-way Thinking: Towards a Complementary Epistemology in the Understanding of Material Culture and ‘Rock-art’ of Hunting and Gathering People

In recent years, the concept of ‘animism’ has gained considerable popularity among archaeologists in exploring non-Western expressions of material culture. This development has also influenced recent academic approaches towards the study of ‘rock-art’ of people living as hunter and gatherers or in a hunting and gathering tradition. We argue here that attempts in this direction so far are generally compromised, because they fail to take Indigenous philosophies and intellectual contributions seriously. Any concern with Indigenous material expressions, including so-called rock-art, has to involve a critical re-assessment of academic discourse itself and a challenge to the primacy of Western scientific and literary, academic methodologies. With reference to the ‘rock-art’ and the world-view of the Ngarinyin (Kimberley, Northwest Australia), we present some preliminary thoughts for the development of an alternative interpretative framework, while offering a (much needed) legitimacy to another more balanced epistemology.     

The African Eve Effect in Science

The Matthew and Matilda Effects in science were coined in 1968 (Robert K. Merton) and in 1993 (Margaret W. Rossiter) respectively, as tools to analyse the reward systems of science. By proposing the African Eve Effect in science as a third effect, the original scope for analysis of these systems is broadened from the social structure of science to the anthropological dimension of science. Similarly, the ??psychosocial processes?? that were considered as affecting the reward systems (Merton, Science 159:56?C63, 1968) are extended to include discursive practices. The African Eve Effect refers to the scientific notion of the ??African Eve?? (or mitochondrial (mtDNA) Eve), a concept put forward by scientists to designate the genetic mother of all modern humans. Three discursive conventions constitute the African Eve Effect and together shape patterns of the distribution of recognition for scientific work: projecting imaginative geographies of otherness onto the frontiers of science; collecting, transporting and enframing material and ideas according to a Western epistemological order; and ??evolutionising?? nature and the human in science. The objective of this paper is to specify and illustrate an experimental tool for analysing the entanglement of the reward system in science with culturally fashioned imaginaries and agendas.     

The North Dvina river delta development over the Holocene: Geochronology and palaeoenvironment

In this paper, a detailed overview of the Holocene evolution of the North Dvina river (ND) delta (southern White Sea) is presented; it is based on radiocarbon dating, geomorphological and other field surveys, and plant macrofossil and palynological data. We have identified three main stages of the delta evolution: estuary erosional (Allerød — 5700 cal BC), lagoon or tidal-marsh (5700 cal BC — 3700 cal BC) and fan-delta accumulative (3700 cal BC — present). These stages are correlated with local climatic curves, sea level changes, glacioisostatic raise curve and Baltic Sea stages. A variety of landforms has been identified and dated within the delta. These results help to explain the spatial and temporal patterns in the prehistoric human occupation of this area.