Ordinary Emergency: Drones,Police, and Geographies of Legal Terror

This paper brings into conversation two ostensibly disparate geographies of state violence: the routine police surveillance and killing of members of the “dangerous classes” in the United States, an issue that is in no way new but nevertheless has gained increased attention over the last year with the Black Lives Matter movement; and the targeted drone strikes against “terrorist suspects” in the “war on terror”. By laying side by side the “war drone” and domestic police power, it becomes readily apparent that despite ostensible differences—foreign vs. domestic, war vs. peace, exceptional vs. normal, military vs. police, legal vs. extralegal—the unmanning of state violence gains much of its political and legal force from the language and categories that have long animated the routine policing of domestic territory. The paper calls for taking the violence of police power more seriously than many drone commentators have.     

穆斯林的流动与中国新移民——马来西亚回族流动个案研究

论文分不同时期阐述了中国穆斯林移民马来西亚的历史,通过实证调研数据突出了穆斯林跨国流动与穆斯林世界的教育和贸易之间的密切联系,并对"侨乡"流动模式和"回族"流动模式进行了分析比较。认为有关华人移民的研究主要局限于地理(侨乡移民)或阶级(苦力、企业家或学生移民)方面。这些研究隐含一个不言而喻、理所当然的假设,即中国的移民都是汉族,少数民族被封闭在偏远的边疆地区,因而是不流动的。但研究显示,自1978年起,中国穆斯林少数民族无论是在跨境迁移——这在维吾尔族和哈萨克族等穆斯林少数民族中尤为突出,还是在远程的跨国迁移——在回族中尤其明显,都具有异常高的流动性。回族穆斯林少数民族的生活穿梭于中国民族国家和跨国穆斯林世界之间。宗教在回族穆斯林流动决策和流动模式中有重要作用。     

Decorated prehistoric pottery from Castello di Annone (Piedmont,Italy): archaeometric study and pilot comparison with coeval analogous finds

Prehistoric pottery decorated with incisions or impressions filled with white and seldom coloured inlays is well documented in the archaeological literature, but the related in-depth archaeometric studies are sporadic. 43 decorated ceramic shards, dating from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, and an Iron Age fibula from the archaeological site of Castello di Annone (Piedmont, North-Western Italy) were analysed with FTIR, Raman and XRPD for characterization of the ornamental pigments forming these inlays. Few white components were used as fillers, namely talc and bone ash (hydroxyapatite – Bone White), often as a mixture and seldom accompanied by other pigments (i.e. kaolinite and presumably secondary calcite). Comparison with freshly-heated biogenic hydroxyapatite proved that ancient Bone White pigment was calcined at about 900 °C. Such a process was kept separate from pottery firing as these white mixtures show absence of talc degradation by-products and sporadic presence of kaolinite, implying these ceramics were decorated only after firing in furnace. Actual presence of fluorapatite in bone ash could allow dating with the Fluorine Method, but lack of fluorine detection with SEM-EDS causes such an attempt to be impracticable so far. A pilot comparative study with a restricted but representative group (11) of coeval finds from other sites of Piedmont suggests that while recurrence of talc prevails in Castello di Annone from the Neolithic throughout the Bronze age, massive use of bone ash (Bone White) becomes widespread in the close Iron Age settlements, possibly consequent to a more efficient handling of its production technology.     

Andrew Jackson Downing and the Tyranny of Taste

The following essay examines the published writing of Andrew Jackson Downing, the early nineteenth century architect and landscape gardener. As the most popular writer and commentator on house and landscape design of his time Downing profoundly shaped – both literally and metaphorically – the social and geographical environment of the emergent middle class. Relating his writing to the promotion of a shared nationalism as embodied in the landscape painting of the Hudson River School, the essay assesses Downing's drive to order by seeing it as a response to the general violence and disorder of the antebellum American city and demonstrates that the defining logic of Downing's project was the universalization of bourgeois taste, uniting the mutually legitimating discourses of privacy, consumption and self‐control.     

Gender Inequality in Asset Ownership in Latin America: Female Owners vs Household Heads

Most studies that incorporate a gender dimension into the study of poverty or other development outcomes focus on the sex of the household head. This article argues that a headship analysis gives only a partial view of gender inequality since it does not take into account the position of women within male‐headed households. Drawing primarily on the Living Standard Measurement Studies for Latin America and the Caribbean, the authors present baseline indicators of the degree of gender inequality in asset ownership for the eleven countries in the region that have collected individual‐level data on asset ownership. Disaggregated data on asset ownership within households suggest that the distribution of property by gender is more equitable than a headship analysis alone would imply. But the degree of gender inequality also varies according to the specific asset and among countries. Further comparative work on asset ownership requires attention to the marital regimes governing property rights in marriage. Finally, the authors suggest how household surveys could be improved by standardizing the collection of individual‐level asset data across countries.     

Dietary change in Fijian prehistory: isotopic analyses of human and animal skeletal material

We examine evidence for prehistoric diet in the Fiji Islands through the analysis of stable isotope ratios (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) for 26 samples of human and animal bones from various archaeological sites, time periods, and local environments. The oldest individuals in this study, dating to about 2700 BP and living on the small island of Waya, consumed a predominantly marine-based diet. Subsequent populations on this island showed reduced consumption of marine resources, with greater reliance on terrestrial ones, throughout the cultural sequence. In contrast, populations of humans and pigs living inland on Viti Levu, the largest island, relied on terrestrial resources since at least 1500 BP. Thus, our results suggest that human and pig diets throughout Fijian prehistory relied variably on marine or terrestrial resources, and this distinction is largely a product of geography. This finding and our analyses provide a model for understanding ancient diets in Remote Oceania.     

Conventions of climate change: constructions of danger and the dispossession of the atmosphere

Climate change has emerged as one of the key issues of the early years of the twenty-first century, bringing together concerns about human relations to nature, the responsibility of rich nations to poorer, the links from local activities to global conditions, and the obligations of present to future generations. This paper focuses on three key ‘narratives’ that are enshrined in international climate policy – asserting that ‘dangerous climate change’ is to be avoided; that the responsibility for climate change is common but differentiated; and that the market (in the form of carbon trading) is the best way to reduce the danger. The goal of the paper is to analyse the origins of these narratives, the power relations they reflect and promote, and some of the concepts and images used to support them, including those of climate determinism, climate stabilisation, ‘burning embers’, ‘tipping points’, Global Warming Potentials, targets and timetables, and carbon credits. I argue that by choosing the market solution of trading carbon we have created a new and surreal commodity, unfairly allocated pollution rights to nation states based on 1990 emission levels, and established a new set north–south relations and carbon transactions in the name of sustainable development.     

Konflikte zwischen Freizeitnutzung und Naturschutzinteressen

In den zurückliegenden Jahren standen die Konflikte, die sich aus den gegensätzlichen Anforderungen von Naturschutz und Freizeitnutzung ergeben, immer häufiger im Fokus des wissenschaftlichen Interesses. Dabei ist es durchaus nicht so, daß der Naturschutz auf der einen Seite und die Freizeitnutzung auf der anderen Seite prinzipiell unvereinbare Gegensätze darstellen. Theoretisch lassen sich naturverbundene Freizeitbeschäftigungen wie etwa Spazierengehen oder Wandern, Lauf-, Rad- oder Reitsport durchaus mit den Anforderungen des Naturschutzes vereinbaren. Praktisch funktioniert dies nur, wenn alle Beteiligten sich an die bestehenden Schutzbestimmungen halten. Leider ist das in der Praxis nicht immer der Fall. Infolgedessen kommt es zu Konflikten, obwohl beide Parteien, Naturschützer und Freizeitnutzer im Grunde ein gemeinsames Interesse haben, nämlich die Erhaltung von natürlichen und naturnahen Räumen.