Thomas Graham Brown (1882–1965): Behind the Scenes at the Cardiff Institute of Physiology

Thomas Graham Brown undertook seminal experiments on the neural control of locomotion between 1910 and 1915. Although elected to the Royal Society in 1927, his locomotion research was largely ignored until the 1960s when it was championed and extended by the distinguished neuroscientist, Anders Lundberg. Puzzlingly, Graham Brown's published research stopped in the 1920s and he became renowned as a mountaineer. In this article, we review his life and multifaceted career, including his active neurological service in WWI. We outline events behind the scenes during his tenure at Cardiff's Institute of Physiology in Wales, UK, including an interview with his technician, Terrence J. Surman, who worked in this institute for over half a century.     

On Classic Maya political economies

Lowland Maya political economies are cosmopolitical economies, with “authoritative resources”—knowledge (“symbolic capital”), especially astro-calendrical knowledge, and ostensible control of time—evolving as the basis for Classic wealth, power, and dynastic legitimacy. Within a system of rotating geopolitical capitals, elite economic activities of production, consumption, and distribution were directed toward control of luxury goods and ritual performances emphasizing privileged interactions with the cosmos and ancestors. Examples include a “ritual mode of production” focused in a palace economy, consumption manifest in lavish public rituals and feasting, and goods circulating through tribute and periodic markets. In the dispersed lowland Maya settlement system, this decentralized economy retained some features more characteristic of stateless societies.     

Youth,gender and livelihoods in West Africa: Perspectives from Ghana and the Gambia

In this paper we report on preliminary fieldwork conducted in Ghana and The Gambia on the interrelationships among youth, gender and livelihoods. We examine how policy in developing countries, typically characterised as related to child labour or education, needs to emphasise the linkage across processes that affect young people. We argue that policy will be improved if young people are given voice to express how work, education, social networks, and culturally-bound notions of responsibility are linked and how they perceive the opportunities and constraints on their ‘life chances’.     

Crown corporations and co-operatives as coping mechanisms in regional economic development

This paper focuses attention on two types of businesses, Crown corporations and co-operatives, that have long been associated with attempted solutions to regional economic developmental problems in Canada. The paper argues that co-operatives and Crown corporations can be viewed as coping mechanisms that attempt to make up for shortcomings in Canada's market-based economic system. Consistent with this perspective, the case study of co-operatives and Crown corporations finds that, taken as a single group, these firms are more spatially dispersed than their privately held and publicly traded counterparts at both the Canadian national level and the regional level in Saskatchewan. The study also shows that, taken separately, Crown corporations are highly concentrated within Saskatchewan, while co-operatives are dispersed across the province. A possible explanation for this behaviour, warranting further research, is that Crown corporations in Saskatchewan encourage development provincially by linking with global and national business networks in their respective industries, while co-operatives in Saskatchewan largely focus on facilitating economic development opportunities at a local level across the many smaller town- and city-centred regions of the province. The paper discusses the meaning of these and other findings for regional economic development efforts in Saskatchewan and Canada.     

Recent ceramic analysis: 1. Function,style, and origins

The recent literature on ceramic analysis, which has grown dramatically over the last 8 years, is reviewed in two articles. In this first article attention focuses on studies of function and use, stylistic analyses, and pottery origins. Functional analysis has been the most rapidly expanding segment of the field, particularly experimental, ethnoarchaeological, and residue analysis approaches. Stylistic analyses seem to be in a lull, following increasing dissatisfaction with information theory approaches. Questions of pottery origins are enjoying renewed interest and are briefly surveyed here. The second of the two articles will survey compositional investigations, pottery production, and approaches to ceramic theory. Both reviews close with observations on current directions in ceramic studies.     

The decision to emigrate: a study in diffusion

The authors examine the extent to which the decision to emigrate can be thought of as an innovation spreading across time and space. A methodology is developed based on aggregated data and is used to examine nineteenth-century emigration from the Upper Dalarna region of west central Sweden     

The Politics of Carbon Market Design: Rethinking the Techno‐politics and Post‐politics of Climate Change

Carbon markets have provided fertile ground for research on the changing nature of political contestation. MacKenzie locates a “techno‐politics” of carbon markets that creates new possibilities for a “politics of market design”. In contrast, Swyngedouw argues carbon markets are part of a “post‐political” shift that narrows potential pathways through “depoliticisation”. This article engages with these debates by examining three recent attempts to reform the ailing European Union Emissions Trading System: restricting industrial gas offsets, backloading allowance auctions and the 2030 climate and energy package. It conceptualises the respective episodes as contests over the reach, force and priority of value determinations in climate policy, emphasising the contradictory imperatives facing states on each issue. The outcomes of contestation between industry groups and environmental organisations—real but limited reforms and a consolidation of the carbon market over alternatives—demonstrate the constraints facing technocratic campaigning and the ongoing politicisation of climate change.     

现代美国艺术博物馆及其观众

二十多年来,美国艺术类博物馆一直致力于找寻不同的方法,如测试展览标牌以及文字书写,增添展厅内外电脑互动的使用,以及开展创作日志、诗歌等的参与性艺术活动,以了解公众与艺术间的关联,并提升博物馆创设的游客体验.丹佛艺术博物馆、克利夫兰艺术博物馆以及底特律艺术馆等由博物馆员工和评估专家一起开展观众研究,调查观众和各项活动,考...     

Early Construction of a Maya Sacred Landscape: The Sector Y “E-Group” of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ (Petén,Guatemala)

The southern lowland Maya city of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ exhibits an atypical gridded layout imposed in the Middle Preclassic period (800–400 b.c.). Sector Y, in the monumental core, consists of a two-part sub-structural platform with an “E-Group” quasi-astronomical architectural complex (Platform Y1) and a deep natural depression or fosa, Fosa Y (Platform Y2). Earliest construction began with bedrock leveling, probably around 1100–1000 b.c., followed by late Terminal Early Preclassic and transitional Terminal Early to early Middle Preclassic building, subsequent massive Middle Preclassic rebuilding, and Late Preclassic enlargement. Excavations in Sector Y provide evidence of the early phases of construction of a sacred landscape proposed to have been based on a mythical creation-crocodile’s back. More broadly, this work contributes to studies of early societal complexity and urbanization in the Maya lowlands, in Mesoamerica, and beyond.