Critical development studies in the Anthropocene

In this short commentary, the ramifications of the Anthropocene for a broadly defined critical development studies are considered. The likely anthropogenic roots of increasing cyclonic intensity and associated impacts in the Pacific are drawn upon to propose four research agendas. The first focuses on how places are becoming connected through human‐induced changes to planetary systems. While direct causal relationships are difficult to draw, research efforts can highlight the disproportionate contributions particular development models, actors, and lifestyles are having on more distant socioecological systems. A second more conventional theme focuses on the uneven impacts of the Anthropocene on people and places, as well as on how development is practised and prioritised. A third theme explores how the Anthropocene can be used to retheorise development in creative and more‐than‐human ways, recognising non‐human agencies and the co‐production of development processes. A final agenda involves asking how critical development researchers can strategically use and repurpose the Anthropocene to pursue socially and environmentally progressive ends.     

Fitting Constrained Poisson Regression Models to Interurban Migration Flows

This paper demonstrates the effects of fitting singly and doubly constrained spatial interaction models using the Poisson regression approach. A large data set containing migration flows between labor market areas in Great Britain in 1970–71 is used. The results of fitting unconstrained, singly constrained, and doubly constrained models are compared with respect to goodness of fit and the interpretability of parameter estimates. The addition of other explanatory variables to the model is also explored.     

Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia

Interpretations of dog burials made by ancient foraging groups have tended to be based upon our own relationships with such animals and modern western cosmological and ontological concepts. Osteological studies of early dogs often focus only on issues of taxonomy, and as a result very little is known about these animals’ life histories. Eastern Siberia has produced many Holocene dog burials, but these are typically not well described and the explanatory frameworks provided for them are very underdeveloped. Here we examine in detail two Cis-Baikal canid burials, one of a wolf and the other a dog, both in large Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer cemeteries. We link the mortuary treatment of these animals to other cultural practices, particularly the treatment of the human dead, and broader patterns in Northern human-animal relationships. This interpretive model is combined with detailed osteobiographies for the canids and contextual information for these and other dogs and wolves from Middle Holocene Cis-Baikal. It is argued that canids here were understood and treated in a variety of ways. We suggest that some animals with unique histories were known as distinct persons with ‘souls’ and because of this at death required mortuary rites similar to those of their human counterparts.     

商前期青铜斝的制模工艺初步研究

制模是青铜铸造工艺的第一道工序,也是关键工艺之一,其重要性不言而喻。而文献记载的缺乏,考古实物资料的限制,严重影响了学界对陶模制作工艺的认识。近年来,我们通过对大量青铜实物的细致考察,发现大多青铜器上都有明确、整齐的范缝。为研究夏商之际的范铸技术,我们对商前期青铜斝进行了模拟制备,发现分型制模才是其制模工艺的主流,用此种工艺制模更加符合器物上的范铸特征。     

‘True British sailors’: a comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose

Bell et al. (2009) have recently published an isotopic investigation of the origins of 18 men whose remains were found in the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship, which sank in 1545. They conclude that a high proportion of the ship's crew were foreigners and that this may have contributed to confusion on board ship and the sinking of the vessel. We have re-evaluated the data of Bell et al. and conclude that only one of the 18 sailors demonstrably spent his childhood outside the British Isles.     

Smells like politics: planning and the inconvenient politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture

Intensive farming is an increasing part of Australian agriculture, including in the multi‐functional landscapes at the edges of Australian cities. The example of intensive “broiler” poultry production reveals the tensions that arise when sites of hyper‐productivity conflict with social change in rural areas. Planning processes for intensive farming in the Australian state of Victoria are predicated on stability and consensus: on assumed static and uncontroversial ideas of agriculture, its place, and the primacy of agricultural productivity. Yet concerns about the industrialisation of agriculture are live political issues at the local level, especially in dynamic peri‐urban locations. This paper explores the emergence of a politics of place outside the bounds of planning consensus through an analysis of planning appeals and associated media relating to planning permits for intensive poultry developments in Victoria over 2011–2016. We highlight tensions that exist in relation to technical planning assessments and categorisations used to assert farming as the orthodox use of rural land, especially when new forms of farming look and feel demonstrably different. Using Mouffe's problematising of the negation of antagonism and Rancière's notion of the risks of a false consensus democracy, we argue that planning processes for intensive farming illustrate critical issues in participatory planning. While ostensibly post‐political decision‐making narrows the politics of place and food systems to decisions about policing the boundaries and buffer distances placed around intensive poultry developments, alternative representations of rural life persist. The certainty offered by code‐based planning does not negate the ongoing (if inconvenient) politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture.     

The Fall of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk and the Revival of Impeachment in the Parliament of 1621

The revival of impeachment in 1621 has tended to be viewed exclusively through the prism of parliament. However, this article, which builds on the work of Professor Allen Horstman, suggests that a key factor in impeachment's revival was the dismissal of Lord Treasurer Suffolk for corruption in 1618. Suffolk's removal caused widespread disquiet, since it was assumed that senior officials held office for life. In order to silence these criticisms it proved necessary for the king not only to put Suffolk on trial but also to justify by precedent the lord treasurer's removal. This latter task was performed by the former lord chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, himself not long disgraced, whose researches in the medieval parliamentary record revealed the following year that errant crown ministers had hitherto been held to account by means of impeachment. Coke subsequently put this discovery to good effect when parliament met in 1621. Against the backdrop of mounting criticism against his hated rival, the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, Coke revealed the existence of impeachment to the house of commons, whose attention was then focused on finding a way to punish the monopolists, Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michell. In so doing, Coke not only aided the lower House, which had been struggling since 1610 to find a way of punishing non‐members, but also sought to settle an old score.     

Down Little Lon: An Introduction to the Casselden Place Archaeological Excavations, Melbourne

In 2002 Melbourne’s Casselden Place excavation provided a window into the urban past opened by an innovative relationship between the development industry, heritage consultancy and La Trobe University. The project demonstrated that with the support of consent authorities and the co-operation of the development industry, collaborations between the academic world and heritage consultants could be highly successful. The Casselden Place Project made a significant contribution to the ‘slum debate’ in Australia and delivered an enhanced understanding of the cultural, social and scientific significance of an inner-city block, and shed new light on a notorious chapter in the city’s history.