Winning back more than words? Power,discourse and quarrying on the Niagara Escarpment

This paper explores the controversy and public hearing on the proposed extension of the largest limestone quarry in Canada, operated by Dufferin Aggregates at Milton, Ontario. The quarry constitutes an important source of construction material for the nearby Greater Toronto Area. However, the quarry is protected by the provincial Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act and located inside the UNESCO-designated Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve. The proposal has therefore attracted considerable opposition from the public institution charged with its protection, the Niagara Escarpment Commission, as well as environmental groups and local residents. To make sense of the tensions, conflicts and outcome of the Dufferin case, we consult and apply several critical literatures. We see the conflict as part of a transformation of the countryside from a space of production to a space of consumption, where there is a shift in emphasis from resource extractive to scenic and ecological landscape values, and the displacement of productive classes, farmers and workers, in favour of a service class of professionals and retirees. Within this transformation, we identify a 'power geometry' of actor networks of different coalition groups that form allegiances and engage in struggles at different geographic scales. These actor networks operate within the set frames of a dominant development discourse and a popular environmentalist discourse that both include and exclude other ways of seeing and managing the escarpment.     

Apparent and actual disease landscapes. Some reflections on the geographical definition of health and disease

Like geographical analysis in general, medical geography is based on the assumption that location is the first clue to causal analysis. Against a background of two empirical studies, one dealing with a group of ALS cases and the other with a group of leukaemia cases, this paper argues that it is insufficient to define disease occurrence in spatial terms, referring to patients' places of residence at the time of onset. Since exposure and effect are related to both time and place, geographical studies of ill health in modern society are complicated by high mobility, long periods of latency and environmental change which might cause a distortion between cause and effect. Therefore a different approach is required.     

A Self-triggered Device to Catch Elk as Early as the Neolithic: A Study from an Archaeological and Ethnological Point of View

The paper deals with equipment and methods used by Stone Age man in hunting elk in the extensive woodlands of interior Norrland, northern Sweden. The prevailing division into active hunting and trapping is applied. Ethnological source material is used to exemplify various ways of hunting elk. The methods discussed are: (1) active hunting on skis in winter, (2) driving the animal into an enclosure on bare ground, (3) catching in a pitfall, (4) snaring, and (5) trapping by a self-triggered spear/arrow. A rock carving at Na¨mforsen, Ångermanland, northern Sweden, is evidence that a self-triggered device to catch elk with a spear or arrow was in use even in the Neolithic. It is generally known that the elk was a very important prey for Stone Age man in the forests of Norrland. This is evident from figural portrayals and food remains alike. It is easy to suspect other uses for elk, but they are difficult to prove. Occasionally, however, parts of tools made from elk antler and bone have been found.     

Readers and responses to George Sandys' A Relation of a Iourney begun An: Dom: 1610 (1615): Early English Books Online (EEBO) and the history of reading

This paper will discuss Early English Books Online (EEBO) as a tool for locating and researching contemporary references and responses to historical texts and authors, specifically George Sandys' A Relation of a Iourney begun An: Dom: 1610 (1615). It will focus upon two main themes. The first is methodological and will discuss the nature of EEBO and the possibilities and limitations it presents for this kind of historical research. The second turns to a case study of seventeenth-century responses to, and readings of, the Relation and shows how references found through EEBO can both broaden the context within which we view this work and alter our interpretation and understanding of it.     

NO DISCORD,OR, AN AREA WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT POLITICAL STAKES?

The aim of this paper is to give a broad sketch of the Swedish cultural policy discourse during the twentieth century, with special reference to the specific features of Swedish history, notably the hegemony of the social democratic Folkhem period from the 1930s to the 1980s. The discourse may be divided into four different periods. Each of these periods, in various respects, goes back to the ideas behind the Folkhem. The paper argues that the discourse still shows the same logic even after the downfall of the Folkhem model in the 1980s. The regulative principle being that there no longer exists, from the 1950s, any competitive concept of culture to the conventional aesthetic concept of high culture.