White skin,black heart? 1 The politics of belonging and Native Title in Australia

This paper explores the ways in which local communities are articulating, negotiating and contesting relationships with place. It does this through a case study of place contestation in the Barmah-Millewa Forest, in south-eastern Australia. A Native Title Claim by the local indigenous community to land and inland waters was heard in the Australian Federal Court while this research was conducted. This has provided an avenue through which to explore the politics of place and identity in contemporary Australia. Recent theoretical discussions of place and identity and their manifestations in Australia are discussed in this paper. Through the case study, the paper demonstrates the complex and problematic ways in which place and identity can be constructed in Native Title Claims, and the intense and unsettling politics of claims to 'belonging' that result. It argues that whilst there is a need to recognize the desire for profound attachments to place of all Australians, we must be mindful of the political ramifications of the particular responses of local communities. The paper concludes that ongoing interdisciplinary and theoretically informed empirical research is necessary to understand the complex context of people-place relationships in settler societies.     

Unpacking Land Grabs: Subjects,Performances and the State in Ghana's ‘Small‐scale’ Gold Mining Sector

During the 2008 global financial crisis, gold‐backed reserves became a ‘safe haven’ for capital investment, causing gold prices to hit historic highs. Globally, small‐scale gold mining activities proliferated as prices climbed. Along the banks of Ghana's Offin River, abandoned, waterlogged mining pits now stretch for kilometres where agricultural and other land uses recently existed. While small‐scale mining is a right reserved for Ghanaian citizens, many mining sites are foreign‐operated and almost all go unremediated. There is thus a stark tension between Ghanaian minerals laws and environmental regulations and the ongoing transformation of rural landscapes. Based on 112 interviews and long‐term observation in Ghana since 2010, this article untangles the relationships and practices mediating ‘illegal’ foreign mining operations. Shifting subjectivities, performances and practices bring land grabbing into being as state actors weave together legal and extra‐legal domains to facilitate, and profit from, foreign mining. Other officials experience fear and frustration in the face of powerful mining interests, demonstrating the complex workings and conflicts between government actors and agencies. Detailing co‐productions between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ domains in official licensing procedures complicates understandings of the state and its role in foreign land grabbing, breaking down the ontological binaries — rational/irrational, official/unofficial — used to uphold an image of state legitimacy and cohesion. Finally, given the spatial extent of small‐scale mining deals and ensuing social and environmental transformations, the authors urge land‐grab scholars not to dismiss the importance of small‐scale deals alongside larger transactions.     

Umkomasia (megasporophyll): part 1 of a reassessment of Gondwana Triassic plant genera and a reclassification of some previously attributed

The genus Umkomasia, a megasporophyll, belonging to the pteridosperms (seed ferns) in the family Umkomasiaceae (Corystospermaceae), is reassessed comprehensively worldwide. All previous records are analysed. Certain fertile structures previously attributed are reclassified. Umkomasia is shown to be restricted to the Triassic of Gondwana where it is associated with the genus Pteruchus, a microsporophyll, and the genus Dicroidium, a vegetative leaf. It is well represented from Argentina, Australia and southern Africa where the Molteno Formation is by far the most comprehensively sampled with eight species described. Two specimens from the upper Permian of India attributed to Umkomasia are reclassified as cf. Arberiopsis sp. A whorled fertile structure from Antarctica, previously assigned to Umkomasia, is reclassified in a new genus as Axsmithia uniramia. Another compression fossil and the permineralized Umkomasia resinosa remain as valid records from Antarctica. The material described as Umkomasia from the Triassic of China is reclassified as Stenorachis asiatica. The Lower Jurassic record from Germany is placed in a new genus as Kirchmuellia franconica. The records of Umkomasia sp. from the Rhaetic of Germany are reclassified as cf. Kirchmuellia sp. and the single specimen from the Jurassic of Libya as genus et sp. indet. The Lower Cretaceous record from Mongolia has been reclassified by other researchers as Doylea mongolica. A pictorial key to Umkomasia species is provided, geographic and stratigraphic distributions are tabulated.     

Book-hunters and Book-huntresses: Gender and Cultures of Antiquarian Book Collecting in Britain,c. 1880–1900

The late-nineteenth century saw private book collecting gain a renewed respectability and cultural cachet as a leisure pursuit for the upper- and middle classes. This paper examines representations of collectors in the literature belonging to a new genre of writing which emerged for the ‘book-hunter’: a late-Victorian variant of the book-collecting passion which could encompass aesthetes and antiquarians as well as aspiring amateurs of more moderate means. It will show how, during the 1880s and 1890s, this particular type of collecting practice was used rhetorically in a range of printed material to venerate ‘gentlemanly’ book-buying, in contrast to feminine forms of engagement with old books in particular. In spite of women's comparative lack of advantage in the market for antiquarian editions, however, I argue that such a critique would not have been articulated so forcefully had women not been taking a determined interest in rare books. Evidence from central London booksellers during this period suggests that a variety of women were making antiquarian collections of their own. Male bibliophiles who denigrated female book-buyers in the periodical press were attempting to partially invent a homosocial tradition of collecting in order to distance their own pursuit from what they saw as the more emasculating elements of modern consumerism. This was a response not just to developments in contemporary print culture, but also to the growing appreciation of second-hand goods of all kinds among affluent female consumers with aesthetic and literary tastes shaped independently of male judgments.     

Book reviews

RODERICK STACKELBERG. Idealism Debased: From Völkisch Ideology to National Socialism. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1981. Pp. XIII, 202, 3 plates. $18 (US). Reviewed by Lawrence D. Stokes

JEROME CH'EN. China and the West: Society and Culture 1815–1937. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Pp. 488. $25.90 (Can.) Reviewed by David P. Barrett

FREDERICK W. MARKS ill. Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. Pp. xiv, 247. $15.00 (US). Reviewed by Raymond A. Esthus

CRAIG L. SYMONDS. Navalists and Antinavalists: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785–1827. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980. Pp. 252. $17.50 (US). Reviewed by Reginald C. Stuart

BERNARD RANSOM, Connolly's Marxism, London: Pluto, 1980. Pp. 126. Reviewed by Desmond Bowen

THOMAS A. BAILEY and PAUL B. RYAN, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared War. London: Collier Macmillan, 1979. Pp. 302. £7.45. Reviewed by Ronald W. Pruessen

M.A. HICKS, False, Fleeting, Perjur'd Clarence; George, Duke of Clarence, 1449–1478. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, and Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Humanities Press, 1980. Pp. 270. $22.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert Tittler

MURIEL ATKIN, Russia and Iran, 1780–1828. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980. Pp. xii, 216. $20 (US). Reviewed by M.E. Yapp

J.K. FEDOROWICZ. England's Baltic Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century: A Study in Anglo-Polish Commerical Diplomacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Pp. XIII, 334. $35 (US). Reviewed by David S. Macmillan

MICHAEL CROWDER. Colonial West Africa: Collected Essays. London: Frank Cass, 1978. Pp. 341. $28.50 (US). Reviewed by John Flint

PETER GRAF KIELMANSEGG. Deutschland und der erste Weltkrieg. 2. Auflage. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980. Pp. XI, 755. Reviewed by Henry Cord Meyer

PIOTR S. WANDYCZ. The United States and Poland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pp. XVI, 465. $28.50 (US). Reviewed by Stanislaw Bobr-Tylingo

FREDERICK COOPER. From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Colonial Kenya, 1890–7925. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Pp. xi, 328. $25 (US). Reviewed by Mike Mason

DONALD E. QUELLER. Medieval Diplomacy and the Fourth Crusade. London: Variorum Reprints, 1980. Pp. 322. £22. Reviewed by Bernice M. Kacznski

CHRISTINE MOSS HELMS. The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia: Evolution of Political Identity. London: Croom Helm, &; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Pp. 313. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Ray L. Cleveland

CHRISTOPHER H.D. HOWARD, editor. The Diary of Edward Goschen, 1900–1914. London: Royal Historical Society (Camden Fourth Series, Vol. 25), 1980. Pp. xn, 315. £10. Reviewed by Briton C. Busch     

"Dead or Banished": A Comparative Reading of the Stories of King Oedipus and King David

The rise and fall of two of the most famous legendary kings, Oedipus and David, seem to bear great resemblance to each other. This is especially the case in the central narrative of Sophocles' Oedipus the King and the Second Book of Samuel where the kings are usurped by a close relative upon the intercession of a violent third party. The article argues that the stories are based on conventions of the rise and fall of a sacred king who restores order to a violent and “plagued” kingdom. It proposes a comparative reading of the texts, in conjunction with an anthropological reading in accordance with the insights of Rene Girard. This will provide not only a way of reading these ancient texts but also give insight into the perspective of and reality referred to in the texts. This is to read the text with appreciation of the dynamics of text and reader through the anthropological perspective opened up by the recognition of the victim.