An Experiment in Political Communication: The British Columbia Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform

The British Columbian Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform comprised a representative group of 160 randomly selected voters who were empowered to review the Province's electoral system and to decide if change was needed. It first met in January 2004 and issued its final report in December of that year. The Assembly has since been hailed as a democratic invention and attracted worldwide interest as a remarkable experiment in deliberative democracy. Its Terms of Reference required that it consult British Columbians. It did so via a series of public hearings held across the Province, and by establishing a website to publicise its purpose and to obtain public input. Hence, the Citizens' Assembly provides a case study or natural experiment that permits the comparative assessment of two very different forms of political communication – one traditional and the other a form of ‘e-consultation’, relying on newer information and communications technology. Based on published sources, as well as interviews with former members of the Assembly, this paper investigates the public input the Assembly obtained, and considers whether ‘e-consultation’– as is often claimed – does allow citizens to genuinely contribute to the making of public policy.     

New ages for the post-Howiesons Poort,late and final Middle Stone Age at Sibudu,South Africa

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurements are reported for single grains of quartz from deposits within Sibudu rock shelter. Such measurements enable rejection of unrepresentative grains and application of the finite mixture and central age models to obtain the most reliable age estimates. Three types of single-grain equivalent dose (D_e) distributions were observed: one sample represented a single dose population, three samples indicated mixing between Iron Age (IA) and Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits, and 10 samples (in addition to the three mixed samples) showed scattered distributions. The latter type resulted from differences in the beta dose received by individual grains. For these samples, the beta doses were modelled and adjusted accordingly. Ages for the 14 samples collected from MSA deposits post-dating the Howiesons Poort (HP) resulted in three age clusters, which are stratigraphically consistent with the three informally named cultural phases at Sibudu: namely, the post-HP, late MSA and final MSA. Weighted mean ages of 58.5 ± 1.4 ka, 47.7 ± 1.4 ka and 38.6 ± 1.9 ka were calculated for these phases, respectively. The three phases were separated by two occupational hiatuses with durations of 10.8 ± 1.3 ka and 9.1 ± 3.6 ka. We hypothesise that the punctuated presence of humans at Sibudu was determined by large-scale fluctuations in climate during oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 3, which resulted in alternating wet and dry periods. Phases of occupation correspond to wet periods when fresh water was available in the Tongati River, whereas intervals of site abandonment correspond to dry periods when people were forced to migrate in search of a reliable source of fresh water. Where people migrated to, remains unresolved.     

How the Olmec used bitumen in ancient Mesoamerica

Bitumen, found in abundance in Mesoamerica’s southern Gulf Coast region in natural seeps and in many archeological contexts, is an important economic resource and exchange item that has received little consideration in Mesoamerica. Analyses of archeological, ethnoarcheological, and experimental data provide insights on the organization of bitumen processing activities, and the end product (archeological bitumen), which the Olmec (1200–400 BC) used in the production of many items. Archeological data are derived from investigations at El Remolino and Paso los Ortices— two Early Formative period levee sites in the San Lorenzo Olmec region. Our findings suggest that among the Olmec, bitumen processing was organized as a specialized activity, involving multiple production stages, but not necessarily elite involvement or control.     

Spaces of Utopia and Dystopia: Landscaping the Contemporary City

Some of the most recent literature within urban studies gives the distinct impression that the contemporary city now constitutes an intensely uneven patchwork of utopian and dystopian spaces that are, to all intents and purposes, physically proximate but institutionally estranged. For instance, so–called edge cities (Garreau, 1991) have been heralded as a new Eden for the information age. Meanwhile tenderly manicured urban villages, gated estates and fashionably gentrified inner–city enclaves are all being furiously marketed as idyllic landscapes to ensure a variety of lifestyle fantasies. Such lifestyles are offered additional expression beyond the home, as renaissance sites in many downtowns afford city stakeholders the pleasurable freedoms one might ordinarily associate with urban civic life. None–the–less, strict assurances are given about how these privatized domiciliary and commercialized 'public' spaces are suitably excluded from the real and imagined threats of another fiercely hostile, dystopian environment 'out there'. This is captured in a number of (largely US) perspectives which warn of a 'fortified' or 'revanchist' urban landscape, characterized by mounting social and political unrest and pockmarked with marginal interstices: derelict industrial sites, concentrated hyperghettos, and peripheral shanty towns where the poor and the homeless are increasingly shunted. Our paper offers a review of some key debates in urban geography, planning and urban politics in order to examine this patchwork–quilt urbanism, In doing so, it seeks to uncover some of the key processes through which contemporary urban landscapes of utopia and dystopia come to exist in the way they do.     

Wearing Illkarash: Narratives of Image,Identity and Change among Maasai Labour Migrants in Tanzania

Tanzania Maasai began large‐scale urban labour migration in the mid‐1990s, impelled by livestock losses from disease, drought and land alienation. Although they were readily hired in cities as night watchmen and security guards, many urban citizens expressed condescending views of the migrants, typifying them as ‘unmodern’, and as curious young warriors who were lazy, naive, drunk and dirty. Interviews with about 200 Maasai proved these discursive characterizations to be largely incorrect. Although the State has tried over the last century to ‘develop’ and settle semi‐nomadic pastoralists, the Maasai image is widely used as part of an instrumentalist agenda, to advertise items from telephones to tourism. Lacking political or social capital, the migrants manipulate and reinforce Maasai identity by continuing to wear traditional garments (illkarash), and by engaging in practices that emphasize their difference from the ‘WaSwahili’, bolster cohesion and solidarity among themselves, and increase their chances of urban employment.     

Book reviews

The Persian Gulf: Iran's Role. By Rouhollah K. Ramazani. Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1972. 157 pp. $7.50.

Patrick J. Hurley and American Foreign Policy. By Russell D. Buhite. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973. 342 pp. $14.50.     

Book reviews

PARTY LEADERSHIP AND REVOLUTIONARY POWER IN CHINA. John Wilson Lewis (ed.) Cambridge University Press, 1970. viii, 422 pp. 25s.

CONFLICT ANALYSIS. Michael Nicholson. English Universities Press, 1971. viii, 168 pp. £1.45 (29s.).

PHILIPPINE NATIONALISM. EXTERNAL CHALLENGE AND FILIPINO RESPONSE, 1565–1946. Usha Mahajani. University of Queensland Press, 1970. xv, 530 pp. $12.00.

THE SIEGE OF THE PEKING LEGATIONS: A DIARY. Lancelot Giles. With introduction: CHINESE ANTI‐FOREIGNISM AND THE BOXER UPRISING. L. R. Marchant (ed.). University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, Western Australia, 1970. xxvii, 212 pp. $9.60.

MICROSTATES AND MICRONESIA: PROBLEMS OF AMERICA'S PACIFIC ISLANDS AND OTHER MINUTE TERRITORIES. Stanley A. de Smith. New York University Press, 1970. 193 pp. $7.50.

NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA: FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1970s. Bruce Brown (ed.). Price Milbum, Wellington, for the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1970. 91 pp. $1.50.

LANG AND SOCIALISM. Robert Cooksey. Australian National University Press, 1970. xiii, 96 pp. $2.50.

THE ARMY IN PAPUA‐NEW GUINEA. Robert J. O'Neill. Australian National University Press, 1970. 31 pp. $1.50.

A HISTORY OF MALAYA. J. Kennedy. Macmillan Student Editions, London, 1970. xi, 364 pp. $3.40.

LENIN'S CHILDHOOD. Isaac Deutscher. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1970. 67 pp. $4.25 hard cover.

SELECTED LETTERS OF HUBERT MURRAY. Francis West (ed.). Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1970. 255 pp. $6.50.