The Consequences of Early Food Production: Three Recent Contributions

This essay reviews three books on food production, including the emergence, spread, and strategies of agriculture. As a group, the books draw on ethnographic, linguistic, archaeological, and biological anthropological approaches and sources of evidence. Combining multiple sources of evidence and theoretical approaches—even when these compete with one another or appear to conflict—provides the safest answers to anthropological questions on the consequences of the shift from foraging to agriculture.     

Ambivalent solidarities: Food governance reconfigurations in Croatia and Italy

The authors compare the solidarity practices of farmers and food activists in Croatia and Italy in order to highlight the unintended consequences of mutual support initiatives and how these may reinforce disengagement from governance. Two ethnographic case studies from Istria (Croatia) and Lombardy (northern Italy) show self-reliant ways of organizing mutual support networks among, respectively, Istrian winemakers and Lombard Solidarity Purchase Groups. They both challenge the top-down regulatory governance of food systems, with the former organizing forms of economic and logistic mutual support to bypass strictures and faults of the Croatian fiscal and agricultural aid system and the latter self-certifying organic crops to avoid the costs and arbitrariness of bureaucratic procedures for organic certification. Both highlight the discourse and practice of morality in food procurement and the ambivalence of the concept and practice of ‘solidarity’.     

RESIDENTS' EVALUATIVE STRUCTURES OF NORTHERN MANITOBA MINING COMMUNITIES

The effects of community differences on place evaluation are examined with reference to residents' evaluations of two contrasting northern Manitoba mining towns: Thompson and Leaf Rapids. An adapted form of repertory grid technique is employed to reveal residents' cognitive structures, while a multidimensional scaling technique is used to uncover the underlying basis of place preference. The findings disclose important differences between the evaluative dimensions employed to assess the two communities. Although these differences appear to be largely context specific, it is proposed that 'size' and 'location' may represent common super-ordinate dimensions used in the evaluation of northern mining towns.
En se servant de deux villes septentrionales du Manitoba, Thompson et Leaf Rapids, deja remarquables par leurs contrastes naturels, on examine, sur une base comparative, les différences manifestées par les habitants, quand ils évaluent leur propre communauté. On utilise une forme modifiée de la technique de réseau répertorial pour révéler les structures cognitives des habitants, et on emploie aussi une technique d'étalonnage à plusieurs dimensions pour découvrir les critères de base qui déterminent les préférences exprimées à l'égard d'un endroit. les résultats de l'enquete demontrent des divergences importantes entre les critères qui se révèlent dans l'évaluation de chaque communauté. Bien que les divergences ont l'apparence d'ětre produites par des environnements spécifiques, on suggère que la grandeur relative d'une communauté et sa situation géographique peuvent représenter des critères communs utilisés dans l'évaluation d'un centre minier septentrional, par ses habitants.     

Health hazards of floods: hospital admissions for Lismore

Severe unprecedented flooding of unprepared and inexperienced communities adversely affects community health, but the effect of severe flooding on well-prepared and experienced communities is less certain. An answer was sought for the New South Wales coastal town of Lismore. Parts are flooded every year with the last major flood occurring in 1974. Hospital admission and death certificates were analysed for the years before and after that flood. Using this data and information from an earlier survey two types of analysis were undertaken: a comparison of mortality and hospital admissions before and after the flood; and a comparison of health effects between different levels of flooding, including residents whose properties were located outside the flood plain. Although the flood did not appear to increase the number of hospital admissions or deaths, the ratio of male to female admissions showed a significant change. For those severely flooded, male admissions doubled while female admissions halved. Analysis of the data in relation to flood risk showed that for both pre-and post-flood periods hospital admissions were closely related to the degree of flood risk. Those whose dwellings were subject to a metre or more offloodwater over floor level are twice as likely to be admitted to hospital as residents of the flood free areas.