Australian reactions to Britain's declining presence in Southeast Asia, 1955–63

This article examines Australia's long-held doubts about Britain's willingness and ability to maintain a significant military presence in Southeast Asia, where Australia's main strategic interests lay. The article argues that Australian concerns long predated the Wilson government's attempt to disengage from east of Suez in the mid-1960s. In doing so, it shows that the Menzies government had since the mid-1950s become increasingly concerned about Britain's resolve and capacity to station substantial forces in the region. In illustrating the extent to which policy-makers in Canberra became suspicious of British long-term strategic aims in Southeast Asia, this article reveals some interesting aspects of the changing nature of Anglo-Australian relations in the post-war period.     

"The Experts Taught Us All We Know": Professionalisation and Knowledge in Nepalese Community Forestry

Environmentalist concerns over the state of Nepal's "fragile forests" resulted in the establishment of Community Forestry projects. These community‐based projects are partnerships between the state and community user groups that invest user groups with a great deal of control over their forests. Project implementation, however, begins with the assumption that users have little prior knowledge of forest management and need to be taught modern silviculture. I examine the extent to which different community members embrace notions of professional forestry materially and symbolically. The development of written management plans, the need for careful accounting records and the promotion of silviculturally based management strategies by District Forest Officers serve to (re)inscribe differences between users based on education and literacy. Which users embrace these discourses and practices and for what purposes lends insight into the workings of neoliberalism and how it is implicated in the reconfiguring of social and power relations within localities and, in this case, the consequences of this for ecological change. It is argued that the promotion of expert knowledge and professional practices in Community Forestry is often used as a somewhat contradictory vehicle for educated elites to retain control over forest management, thus undermining some of the key objectives of the program.     

Fleshing out the geographies of social movements: Colombia's Pacific coast black communities and the ‘aquatic space’

The intersections between the concepts of space, place and resistance have recently received increasing attention from geographers dedicated to the study of social movements. Space and place are not merely seen as providing a physical background for mobilisations but as mutually constitutive of social movement agency. Yet, critics of theoretical frameworks drawn up by geographers have often rightly pointed to the lack of convincing empirical evidence presented in their support.This paper addresses these critiques by offering a theoretically informed and empirically grounded account of recent mobilisations by the social movement of black communities in the Pacific coast region of Colombia. Drawing on both the objective aspects of place and the subjective feelings that are derived from living in a place, I will show how these mechanisms have impacted on the specific spatial organising forms adopted by black communities. In particular, I will propose the concept of ‘aquatic space’ as a set of spatialised social relationships among Afro-Colombians, and show how these concrete everyday geographies have been drawn upon by black communities in the establishment of community councils along river basins.The paper argues that to make a strong point for more spatially sensitive analyses of social movements, geographers have to sustain their theoretical frameworks with concrete empirical data that not only illustrate spatial processes at play, but also convincingly demonstrate their very embeddedness in social practice. I thus argue for a strong consideration of ethnographies as a privileged research methodology to flesh out the geographies of social movements.     

Abject citizenship – rethinking exclusion and inclusion: participation,criminality and community at a small town youth centre

This article discusses the complex and contradictory nature of ‘abject citizenship’ as it is experienced by teenagers from a small town youth centre. Lines between inclusion and exclusion are blurred by these resilient youth as they re-appropriate central and accepted spaces as well as marginalized spaces to destabilize the categories of insider and outsider. This snapshot ethnography demonstrates how these young disadvantaged citizens create uneasiness for those who enjoy full citizenship and turn experiences of rejection into experiences of empowerment and belonging for the abject.     

The Critical Edition of the Medieval Waldensian Sermons

Early Waldensian literature is an outstanding source for the study of the Waldensian movement, as it is a rare direct testimony of a dissident medieval religious movement. One of the most important genres of that literature is represented by the as yet unpublished collection of about two hundred sermons, which is one of the main sources for the reconstruction of Waldensian preaching. The critical edition of this important corpus is the aim of a research group led by Luciana Borghi Cedrini (Professor of Romance Philology at the University of Turin). Established at the beginning of the millennium by the publishing house Claudiana in Turin, together with the Waldensian Studies Society and the Waldensian Church, the project is expected to be active at least until 2018 and it is officially supported by the Waldensian Faculty of Theology of Rome.     

A microarchaeological approach for the study of pits

Abstract

The study of the technology underlying pre-industrial storage structures has an interest from an anthropological and archaeological perspective, in terms of the evolution of key cultural and cognitive capabilities, often related to the transition to food production.

Microarchaeological techniques offer a unique perspective on the study of pre-industrial storing technologies. In this work, examples are presented from two archaeological contexts in different climatic and socio-ecological situations during the Holocene in S Asia and SW Europe. Microarchaeological techniques used in this study include micromorphology, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and phytolith analyses. The comparative study of two pits highlights key aspects of the decision-making process involved in technological solutions of storage: ? The choice of a location for the construction of a given storage facility is highly affected by contextual climatic, microclimatic, soil and bioturbative factors

? The time taken to consume stored foodstuffs seems to affect technological investment as much as the intrinsic conservation requirements of the stored taxa

? The use of fire to hygienise pits implies that such structures were not conceived for single use

? Pre-industrial storage systems can be seen as modular structures, which components (e.g. topographical location, sediment type, lining type, hygienisation techniques and cover) can be recombined to improve storage performance for different climatic settings and foodstuffs.