Biopower, genetics and livestock breeding: (re)constituting animal populations and heterogeneous biosocial collectivities

Genetic techniques have become increasingly prevalent in livestock breeding, associated with new types of knowledge-practice and changes in the institutional and geographical relationships related to animal husbandry. This paper examines the value of Foucault's concept of 'biopower' to theorising livestock breeding and the implications of the rise of genetic knowledge-practices in agriculture, developing the concept to apply to nonhuman animals and to situations where humans and nonhuman animals are co-constituted through particular knowledge-practices and corporeal meetings. It focuses on the idea of 'population' as a central component of biopower, and relates this to conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Reacting to the inherent humanism of Foucault's outlining of biopower, the paper argues for its relevance in relation to nonhuman populations, and for heterogeneous conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Drawing on research with UK beef cattle and sheep breed societies, the paper explores how, in practice, populations are constructed in relation to the production of particular sorts of truths concerning, and particular modes of intervention in, the lives of nonhuman animals. It explores how heterogeneous biosocial collectivities are constituted around these interventions. The emergence of genetic techniques is shown to transform the processes constituting populations and heterogeneous biosocial collectivities, and this is discussed in terms of a new inflection of agricultural biopower associated with novel interventions in the lives of livestock animals.     

pXRF: a study of inter-instrument performance

Integrating portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instrumentation into archaeological investigations has generated as much interest as skepticism because several characteristics of the technique limit analytical accuracy and precision. This paper seeks to explore inter-instrument performance in order to assess the potential pXRF instrumentation has in examining the elemental composition of lithic raw materials. Two pXRF instruments, Delta and Omega models both manufactured by Olympus Innov-X Systems, were utilized to obtain the trace element signatures of five fine-grained volcanic sources and four obsidian sources in the Great Basin. We compared the two portable instruments to a wavelength-dispersive instrument extensively calibrated with geologic standards and to a commercial benchtop energy-dispersive system. Our results suggest that the relationships between the data produced by these different instruments are complex, and as we look to the future of pXRF use in archaeological analysis we argue that that the same strict protocols applied in laboratory-based XRF analyses, involving instrument calibration, evaluation of inter-instrument performance, and comparison to accepted geologic standards, need to be applied in pXRF analysis.     

Engendering New Netherland: Implications for Interpreting Early Colonial Societies

Here, we study the Algonquian and Iroquoian women who lived in settlements surrounding the Dutch colony of New Netherland, in today’s northeastern United States. We begin by examining their roles in the colony and find that their lives did not fall into the pattern of servitude, concubinage, culture-brokering, and intermarriage that many have seen as the fate of Native or African women in other colonial societies. Instead, these women were, by and large, independent agents and followed their own indigenous customs as they interacted with Europeans. We then go on to explore how this new revisionist view of their actions affects archaeological interpretations of their households and the households of the Europeans as well. We further point out how the role of Native women in New Netherland was influenced in part by the presence and absence of other groups of women—both European and African—there.     

路易斯·宾福德访谈

伦福儒问:让我们从过去谈起,先谈谈你早年的生活吧。宾福德答:我在弗吉尼亚州诺福克(Norfolk)上的高中,大部分学校时光都是在海边度过的。我对学校不是很有兴趣,倒是更愿意逮麝鼠,在海边泥滩上闲逛。     

THE HAPPINESS‐REDUCING COSTS OF NOISE POLLUTION*

ABSTRACT This analysis examines the costs of everyday residential noise pollution using a series of “happiness regressions.” We control for both the possibility that an unobservable characteristic may cause omitted variable bias, as well as for the possibility of endogeneity bias if “effort” is not adequately taken into account. We find perceived noise pollution to exert a negative and highly significant effect on happiness. We then calculate the required income transfer to compensate for the noise and find the costs of noise pollution to be on the order of €172 per month per household.     

Making Distinctions: The Contribution of Hector Landouzy to Differential Diagnosis in Relation to Hysteria and Epilepsy

Hector Landouzy (1818-1864) is known for his Traité Complet de l'Hystérie (1846), which was crowned by the Académie de Médecine, but this work is not given much importance in historical accounts. It deserves more attention because it was more than an orthodox statement about the nature of hysteria. In the context of the diagnostic confusion between epilepsy and hysteria, it introduced a method of presenting criteria to facilitate diagnosis. An examination of French authors on epilepsy and hysteria in the second half of the nineteenth century suggests that this method probably set the example which was to be followed by later clinicians, including Charcot at the Salpêtrière.     

Forms without Substance or Synchronism? Attempts to Define Culture and Civilisation in Early Twentieth-Century Romania

This article discusses attempts to define culture and civilisation in early twentieth-century Romania on the basis of two fundamental Romanian models of development: the theory of forms without substance and the theory of synchronism. The former is studied here primarily in relation to the views of Titu Maiorescu (1840–1917) and Constantin Radulescu-Motru (1868–1957) and the latter in relation to the views of Eugen Lovinescu (1881–1943). While the theory of forms without substance asserts a would-be ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ development of Romanian culture and civilisation, the theory of synchronism proposes a development according to the ‘spirit of the age’ and the ‘law of simulation-stimulation’. In the present study, these opposed models of development are observed in relation to the general tendencies towards a pronounced critical spirit and towards discussing cultural vs. structural changes or culture vs. power in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe. The Romanian models of development are also studied on the background of wider European discussions on Enlightenment and modernism, historicism, conservatism and liberalism, German vs. French influence and nationalist vs. cosmopolitan attitudes.