The Spatial Hierarchical Principle in the Evolution of Modern Local Government in Scotland

During the 7970s the structure of local government in Scotland was transformed from a traditional system based on counties and burghs to a nested spatial hierarchy of regions and districts. This reform represents the last stage of an evolutionary process, uniting the formerly separate rural and urban hierarchies of local government and administration. The city region was taken to be the guiding principle for reform, and the new regions were identified mainly on the basis of town hinterlands. Throughout all reforms there has been a tendency to concentrate local government functions at higher levels of authority.
Pendant les années 1970 la structure du gouvernement urbain et rural en Ecosse fut transformeé d'un système traditionnel de comptés et bourgs en une hiérarchie spatiale de régions et de districts. Une réforme récente qui unifie pour la première fois les échelons ruraux et urbains des administrations et des gouvernements locaux, représente la phase ultime d'une évolution vers cette hiérarchie. Cette réforme a été guidée par l'utilisation de la zone d'influence urbaine comme unité de base, et les nouvelles régions ont été identifiées surtout sur la base des aires tributaires des villes. Au cours des réformes il y avait une tendance è concentrer les fonctions du gouvernement local è des niveaux supérieurs d'autorité.     

IDLE LAND IN GRENADA: A REVIEW OF ITS CAUSES AND THE PRG'S APPROACH TO REDUCING THE PROBLEM

A chronic feature of Caribbean agriculture is the extent to which potential arable land lies idle. Some of this region's densely populated islands have more than one-third of their farmland in such a condition. Yet their populations have relied increasingly upon imported food for sustenance. During the 1970s this paradoxical situation was exemplified by Grenada, where possibly as much as 45 per cent of its farmland lay abandoned and imported food accounted for one-third of the national import bill. This paper first surveys the underlying factors accounting for idle land in this nation and then outlines the programs pursued by the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) to reduce waste of this basic resource and, thereby, to effect a more stable economy.
Dans la scène agraire caraibe on trouve constamment des terres dormantes qui pourraient ětre cultivées. Quelques les, des plus fortement peuplées de la région, ont plus du tiers de leurs terres ambles dans une telle condition. Toutefois, leurs habitants se fient de plus en plus sur la nourriture importée pour se soutenir. Cette situation paradoxale s'illustre par la Grenade, des années soixante-dix, où jusqu'a 45 pour-cent du terroir aurait été abandonné, en méme que la nourriture importée se payait du tiers du budget disponible pour défrayer toutes les importations requises dans ľle. Cette communication souligne ďabord les facteurs qui ont Créé cette situation en Grenade, et présente ensuite les grandes lignes des programmes adoptés, par le gouvernement révolutionnaire du peuple, pour couiger cette situation et pour diriger ľle vers une économie plus stable qu'au paravant.     

Fire and its roles in early hominid lifeways

Discovery of the uses and later the invention of fire-making are fundamental to humanity. Following reports over the last decade of traces of fire found on Lower Pleistocene archaeological sites in eastern Africa, the dating of the control of fire by hominids has become a controversial issue. In this paper we critically review the contexts and, in the light of a battery of archaeometric techniques, the nature of reported instances of fire from Koobi Fora and Chesowanja in Kenya, and from Gadeb and the Middle Awash in Ethiopia. We conclude with a discussion of the roles fire may have played in the lifeways of early Pleistocene savanna-living hominids.

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Résumé La découverte des usages du feu et ensuite de sa préparation est fondamentale pour l'humanité. Suite à des rapports au cours de la dernière décennie signalant des traces de feu relevées dans des sites archéologiques du Pléistocène inférieur dans l'est de l'Afrique, la datation du contrôle du feu par les hominiens est devenu une source de controverse. Dans cet article, nous révisons d'un oeil critique les contextes et la nature des cas de feu signalés à Koobi Fora et à Chesowanja au Kenya, et à Gadeb et dans l'Awash moyen en Éthiopie, à la lumière d'une suite de techniques archéometriques. Suit en conclusion une discussion sur les rôles qu'aurait pu jouer le feu dans les modes de vie des hominiens vivant dans les savannes du Pléistocène inférieur.

     

Day-to-day variations in nearshore bar patterns on a small sandy beach through a lunar tidal cycle

Nearshore water circulation and bar patterns at Coledale, New South Wales, were surveyed daily over thirty-six consecutive days, from 3 November to 8 December 1978, to identify sequences of changes that might occur in response to spring-to-spring tide cycles of fourteen days, changing barometric and wind conditions associated with the passage of anticyclonic weather systems across the coast, and day to day variation in the nearshore wave regime. During the survey the bar patterns tended to vary from transverse bars, through a composite arrangement incorporating longshore and transverse bars, to a longshore bar pattern as the tide changed from its spring to neap tide phase. However, this sequence was too brief to unequivocally establish variations in nearshore bar pattern that might be attributed to the fourteen day, spring-to-spring tide cycle. Nevertheless, morphologic changes occurring in response to wave regime fluctuation at Coledale were broadly in accord with studies from elsewhere by Dolan et al. (1979, 1982), and Clarke and Eliot (1982, 1983) in that bars and rips were systematically distributed along the beach. At Coledale, bars tended to relocate approximately 0.4 and 0.75 of the distance along the beach from its southern end. The preferred bar spacing closely matches hypothetical standing waves trapped between the headlands of the Coledale embayment. Temporally, the nearshore morphology is highly responsive to wave regime changes such that, as primary breaker heights decrease and remain below H_max=1.0m, the bar pattern changes from longshore through mixed to transverse bar patterns within three to five days. On one occasion the bar pattern switched from a longshore to a transverse bar pattern within twenty-four hours.     

Australian liberalism and corporatism

George Brandis, Tom Harley and Don Markwell (eds), Liberals face the Future: Essays on Australian Liberalism, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 386, $14.99 (paper) and Katharine West, The Revolution in Australian Politics, Melbourne, Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 116, $4.95 (paper).

John Rickard, H.B. Higgins: the rebel as judge. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.350. $29.95 (cloth).

Stuart Macintyre, Militant: the life and times of Paddy Troy, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.225. $19.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper).

Alan Metcalfe, In Their Own Right: The Rise to Power of Joh's Nationals, St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1984, pp.268. $20.00 (cloth)

Peter Love. Labour and the Money Power: Australian Labour Populism 1890–1950, Melbourne University Press, 1984, pp.240. $9.95 (paper).

L.F. Crisp, George Houston Reid: Federation Father; Federal Failure? Canberra, ANU, 1979; The Later Australian Federation Movement 1883–1901: Outline and Bibliography, 1979; George Richard Dibbs: Premier of New South Wales, Prophet of Unification, 1980; Federation Prophets Without Honour: A.B. Piddington, Tom Price, H.B.Higgins, 1980; The Unrelenting Penance of Federalist Isaac Isaacs, 1897–1947, 1981; Charles Cameron Kingston: Radical Federationist, 1984.

Philip Toyne and Daniel Vachon, Growing Up the Country: The Pitjantjatjara struggle for their land, Melbourne, Penguin Books and McPhee Gribble, 1984, pp.157. $6.95 (paper)

Jim Kemeny, The Great Australian Nightmare, Melbourne, Georgian House, 1983, pp. 130. $14.95 (paper).

Peter Sekuless, The Lobbyists, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp. 145. $14.95 (paper).

Jennifer Aldred (ed.), Industrial Confrontation, Sydney, Allen and Unwin and Australian Institute‐of Political Science, 1984, pp.111. $15.95 (cloth), $7.95 (paper).

Glenn Withers (ed.), Bigger or Smaller Government? Papers from the sixth symposium of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 1982, Canberra, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 1983, pp. ix, 115. $8.50 (paper)

Commonwealth Grants Commission, Equity in Diversity: Fifty Years of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1983, pp. 180. $15.60 (cloth), $9.90 (paper).

Robin Walker, Under Fire: A History of Tobacco Smoking in Australia, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, pp. 155. $19.50 (cloth).1

Hugh Saddler, Energy in Australia: Politics and Economics, Sydney, Allen and Unwin,1981, pp.205. $7.95 (paper)

Brian Kennedy, A Tale of Two Mining Cities: Johannesburg and Broken Hill 1885–1925, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1984, pp. 146. $25.00 (cloth)

Basile Kerblay, Modern Soviet Society, London, Methuen, 1983, pp.321. $37.50 (cloth), $23.95 (paper).

Gary Littlejohn, A Sociology ofthe Soviet Union, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp.286. $16.95 (paper).

Talal Asad and Roger Owen (eds), Sociology of “Developing Societies”: The Middle East, London, Macmillan, 1983, pp.264. $11.95 (paper).

Richard Mulgan, Democracy and Power in New Zealand: a study of New Zealand politics, Auckland, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp.171. $A12.99 (paper)

Rex Mortimer, Stubborn Survivors, ed. H. Feith and R. Tiffen, Monash Papers on South East Asia No. 10, 1984, pp.xvii, 180. $6.00 (paper).

Philip Lowe and Jane Goyder, Environmental Groups in Politics, London, Allen and Unwin, 1983, pp. 208. $18.95 (paper)

John Surrey (ed.), The Urban Transportation of Irradiated Fuel, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 336. $14.95 (paper)

Ian Hancock, White Liberals, Moderates and Radicals in Rhodesia 1953–1980, London and Sydney, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.230. $31.95 (cloth).

Peter Hain, Political Trials in Britain, London, Allen Lane, 1984. pp 318. $29.95 (cloth).

Anthony Hyman, Afghanistan Under Soviet Domination, 1964–1983, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 235. $18.95 (paper).

Ivor Crewe and Anthony Fox, British Parliamentary Constituencies: A Statistical Compendium, London, Faber and Faber, 1984, pp.397. $67.95 (cloth).

Frederick C. Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China: From a Charismatic Mao to the Politics of Succession, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp.167. $21.95 (paper)

John Wong, The Political Economy of China's Changing Relations with Southeast Asia, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp.246. $14.95 (paper)

Adrian Leftwich (ed.), What is Politics? The Activity and its Study, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp. 172. $25.00 (cloth), $11.95 (paper).

Ted Benton, The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and his Influence, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 259. $14.95 (paper).

Ben Fine, Marx's Capital, London, Macmillan, second edition, 1984, pp. 87. $9.95 (paper).

Stefan Collini, Donald Winch and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth‐Century Intellectual History, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 385. $25.00 (paper).

William W. Bostock, Approaches to Political Explanation, Melbourne, RDI Press, 1983, pp.123. $9.00 (paper).

Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment, London, Methuen, 1983, pp. 199. $17.95 (paper).

John F. Wilson, The Politics of Moderation: An Interpretation of Plato's Republic, New York, University of America Press, 1984, pp.213. $12.25 (U.S.) (paper).

Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, trans. P.J. Rhodes, Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 198. $6.95 (paper).

Carol O'Donnell, The Basis of the Bargain: Gender, Schooling and Jobs, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1984, pp.186. $19.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper).

Dorothy H. Broom (ed.), Unfinished Business: Social Justice for Women in Australia, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1984, pp.213. $24.95 (cloth), $10.95 (paper).

S. Fabian and M. Loh, The Changemakers: Ten Significant Australian Women. Milton, Jacaranda Press, 1983, pp. 190. $14.25 (paper).