Worker Housing in the Vermont Copper Belt: Improving Life and Industry Through Paternalism and Resistance

During the mid-nineteenth century, east-central Vermont supported two major copper mines and their associated villages. In order to wrest thousands of tons of copper from the earth these mines, the Elizabeth and Ely mines, hired and housed thousands of miners, laborers, and their families. Both mines pursued the same resource in the same environment during the same period, but the Ely Mine developed a centralized village, while the Elizabeth Mine housed its workers in isolated housing clusters. The causes of these differences in worker housing can be traced to differences in scale, setting, and managerial philosophy, and can be analyzed within the larger historical context of Improvement and the larger ethnographic context of paternalism in mining communities.     

A Play of Three Suitors: A Neglected Middle Dutch Version of the “Entrapped Suitors” Story (ATU 1730)

The wide diffusion of the “Entrapped Suitors” story-type has often been observed: examples are found in a remarkable number of literatures, ranging from English, French and Greek in the West, to Persian, Arabic and Kashmiri in the East. However, a text of this type that is often overlooked is the Middle Dutch play Een Speel Van Drie Minners (“A Play of Three Suitors”). This is despite the fact that it represents a highly idiosyncratic variation on the story, as it replaces the central moral with something more scabrous. We offer here a comprehensive discussion of this singular text and its narrative form, with an English verse-translation appended.     

Multiple Optima in Hoabinhian flaked stone artefact palaeoeconomics and palaeoecology at two archaeological sites in Northwest Thailand

High resolution analyses of flaked stone artefact technology coupled with palaeoecological reconstruction from oxygen isotope analyses of freshwater shells from two rockshelter in the highlands of Northwest Thailand are described. Previously undocumented scales of technological variation are observed in response to environmental variation across the prehistoric landscape and through time. Three models of human behavioural ecology are used to test predictions about how foragers adapted their stone artefact technology to variation in climatic conditions and proximity to stone resources. These models are found to be problematic and are modified by including multiple optima that reflect the specific ecological conditions under consideration.     

Revisionism Reconsidered: 'Property-owning Democracy' and Egalitarian Strategy in Post-War Britain

Revisionist socialists of the 1950s and 1960s are typicallydepicted as advocates of the ‘Keynesian welfare state’route to economic equality. This article argues that this isan oversimplification: while the revisionists supported thewelfare state, they also aimed to promote equality by redistributingprivate property and expanding social ownership, endorsing anegalitarian version of a ‘property-owning democracy’.The article first discusses the political ideals and calculationsthat motivated the revisionists’ interest in this modelof egalitarian strategy and then examines in turn the threemutually reinforcing strands of policy that this goal generated:greater progressive taxation of wealth; measures to diffuseprivate property ownership and access to marketable skills;and the expansion of novel forms of social ownership.     

Questioning the credibility and capacity of community‐based resource management

This paper reviews and critiques a potential innovation in resource and environmental management as a means of stimulating further research and refinement. Given the perceived limitations of top‐down, centralized management of natural resources, calls for the devolution of authority for local resources to local communities have increasingly been expressed. Proponents of community‐based resource management argue that, situating decision‐making closer to the place of resource use and subjecting decision‐makers to the repercussions of their decisions creates the potential for more flexible and prudent resource management. Further, by empowering communities to develop their own strategies for local economic development, greater community stability may be achieved. However, neither of these potentials will be realized if the credibility and capacity of communities are assumed rather than interrogated. These hypothesized contingent conditions of effective community‐based resource management are described and illustrated based on two examples in western Canada in which communities have been empowered to determine the use of local resources: the siting of a hazardous‐waste treatment facility near the town of Swan Hills, Alberta; and the development of the Community Forest Pilot Project in British Columbia. These examples raise a series of concerns and questions that suggest a need for further, in‐depth investigation. Ultimately, by identifying barriers to effective community‐based resource management, a more refined model of this potentially innovative approach can be fostered. Cette dissertation étudie et critique une innovation potentielle quant à la gestion de l’environnement et des ressources dans le but de stimuler des recherches plus approfondies et d’affiner les résultats. Étant donné les limitations perçues d’une gestion centralisée et descendante des ressources naturelles, on demande de plus en plus fréquemment que les collectivités locales soient responsables de la gestion des ressources locales. Les partisans d’une gestion des ressources par les collectivités avancent qu’en rapprochant la prise de décision du lieu d’utilisation des ressources et en soumettant les décideurs aux répercussions de leurs décisions, on favorise potentiellement une gestion plus souple et plus prudente des ressources. De plus, en habilitant les collectivités à déterminer leurs propres stratégies de développement économique local, une plus grande stabilité des collectivités est possible. Toutefois, ni l’un ni l’autre de ces potentiels ne seront réalisés si l’on admet sans les mettre en question la crédibilité et la capacité de gestion de ces collectivités. Ces conditions contingentes d’une gestion efficace des ressources par les collectivités sont décrites et illustrées par deux exemples provenant de l’Ouest du Canada, où les communautés ont toute discrétion quant à l’utilisation des ressources locales : l’implantation d’un centre de traitement des déchets dangereux près de la ville de Swan Hills, dans l’Alberta, et l’exécution du Community Forest Pilot Project (projet pilote de forêt domaniale) en Colombie britannique. Ces exemples soulèvent une série de questions et de préoccupations qui suggèrent le besoin de nouvelles recherches plus approfondies. En fin de compte, en identifiant ce qui s’oppose à une gestion efficace des ressources par les collectivités, on pourra stimuler l’élaboration d’un modèle plus perfectionné de cette démarche potentiellement innovante.