Inequality and American institutions: The end of innocence

Alan Howard. Ain't No Big Thing: Coping Strategies in a Hawaiian‐American Community. An East‐West Center Book. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1974. xxv +311 pp. Tables, figures, bibliography, appendices, references, and index. $10.00.

Donald V. Kurtz. The Politics of a Poverty Habitat. Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1973. xxiv + 243 pp. Figures, tables, appendix, bibliography, and index. $12.50.     

Leopards and Invisible Calculators: Violent Incorporation,Political Theology,and Kafka’s “Leopards in the Temple”

ABSTRACT

This essay reads Kafka’s aphorism “The Leopards in the Temple” together with some of the concerns of political theology to think about visibility and agency, the sacred and the profane, the violence of incorporation, and the field of political theology itself. Methodologically, it brings literary studies and political theology into richer engagement without consuming one into the other, either as mere illustration or as gloss. The condensed power of Kafka’s aphorism draws us right into the midst of questions about the dangers of consumption and incorporation, as well as the possibilities for meaningful interaction between these fields of study.     

Combining Indigenous and Maritime Archaeological Approaches: Experiences and Insights from the ‘(Re)locating Narrunga Project’, Yorke Peninsula, South Australia

This paper details the unique pairing of Indigenous and maritime archaeological approaches in the ‘(Re)locating Narrunga Project’. Narrunga was a ketch built by the Narungga Aboriginal community at Point Pearce Mission (Yorke Peninsula, South Australia) at the turn of the twentieth century and later sunk in the 1940s. It is argued that convergences between the scholarly interests of Indigenous and maritime archaeological approaches have been slow to develop and that maritime archaeology as a sub-discipline has not capitalized on the insights that can be gained from collaborative approaches between communities and practitioners. Similarly, Indigenous communities in Australia have had few opportunities to work with researchers to record their maritime heritage. As is evident in the Narrunga story told in this research, non-Indigenous records have been complicit in underplaying the maritime achievements and skills of Narungga people and collaborative research can work towards decolonizing this past.     

Biodiversity and palaeoecology of Foulden Maar: an early Miocene Konservat-Lagerstätte deposit in southern New Zealand

Lee, D.E., Kaulfuss, U, Conran, J.G., Bannister, J.M. & Lindqvist, J.K., August 2016. Biodiversity and palaeoecology of Foulden Maar: an early Miocene Konservat-Lagerstätte deposit in southern New Zealand. Alcheringa 40, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518.

This paper highlights the biodiversity and palaeoecology of the 23 million year old Foulden Maar, the first Konservat-Lagerstätte deposit described from New Zealand and a key site for reconstructing early Miocene Southern Hemisphere terrestrial ecosystems. The 1000-m-diameter, ca 200-m-deep Foulden Maar volcanic crater lake was a closed system with anoxic bottom waters, capturing and preserving in exquisite detail organisms from the lake and adjacent rainforest. The fossils include numerous leaves, flowers with in situ pollen, fruits, seeds, fish and arthropods. Surrounding Foulden Maar was an evergreen, Lauraceae-dominated notophyll vine forest with a diverse understorey, lianes, epiphytes and mistletoes. Diverse pollination and seed dispersal modes are evident. Fish include larval to adult stages of articulated specimens of Galaxias, some with preserved soft tissue and a species of eel resembling Anguilla. The arthropod fauna comprises ca 20 families in the orders Araneae (spiders), Plecoptera (stoneflies), Odonata (dragonflies), Isoptera (termites), Hemiptera (true bugs), Diptera (true flies), Coleoptera (beetles), Trichoptera (caddis flies) and Hymenoptera (wasps, ants and bees), representing faunas typical of soil, leaf litter, forest floor or freshwater habitats. Many fossil taxa have close relatives in the extant New Zealand biota; others are now locally extinct. Coprolites containing quartz sands sourced from outside the lake indicate the presence of volant birds, presumably waterfowl. The Foulden Maar Lagerstätte is crucial for reconstructing Miocene lake and forest ecosystems in New Zealand, particularly the terrestrial arthropod component.

Daphne E. Lee [daphne.lee@otago.ac.nz], Department of Geology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand., Uwe Kaulfuss [uwe.kaulfuss@otago.ac.nz] and Jon K. Lindqvist, [jonlind@ihug.co.nz], Department of Geology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; John G. Conran [john.conran@adelaide.edu.au], Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity and Sprigg Geobiology Centre, School of Biological Sciences, Benham Bldg DX 650 312, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia; Jennifer M. Bannister [jennifer.bannister@xtra.co.nz], Department of Botany, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand.     

Demography and the Palaeolithic Archaeological Record

Demographic change has recently re-emerged as a key explanation for socio-cultural changes documented in the prehistoric archaeological record. While the majority of studies of Pleistocene demography have been conducted by geneticists, the archaeological records of the Palaeolithic should not be ignored as a source of data on past population trends. This paper forms both a comprehensive synthesis and the first critical review of current archaeological research into Palaeolithic demography. Within prevailing archaeological frameworks of dual inheritance theory and human behavioural ecology, I review the ways in which demographic change has been used as an explanatory concept within Palaeolithic archaeology. I identify and discuss three main research areas which have benefitted from a demographic approach to socio-cultural change: (1) technological stasis in the Lower Palaeolithic, (2) the Neanderthal-Homo sapiens transition in Europe and (3) the emergence of behavioural modernity. I then address the ways in which palaeodemographic methods have been applied to Palaeolithic datasets, considering both general methodological concerns and the challenges specific to this time period. Finally, I discuss the ability of ethnographic analogy to aid research into Palaeolithic demography.     

Comics and the Demystification of France's Immigration ‘Problem’: Reading Christophe Dabitch's Immigrants

While universalism constitutes the foundation of French republicanism, public discourse and changes in immigration law have revealed that racial and/or ethnic discrimination and exclusion are necessary for cultural assimilation and for the protection of France's ‘universalist’ model. Studies have also shown that at least 40% of the French population is of foreign origin. So how has France justified the reconciliation of universalism and particularism (now referred to as communitarianism) in certain instances but not others? Christophe Dabitch's collaborative comic-book project, Immigrants (2010), aims to deconstruct the French republican narrative of universalism by using a popular medium that is both transcultural and transnational. An effective collage of visual styles, reproduced testimony and scholarship on immigration in France, Dabitch's album proposes writing an alternative French history of immigration and invites readers to question founding mythologies which have erected France as the country of human rights. This article has three objectives: to present Immigrants as a serious historical and artistic project on immigration; to critically examine this publication's purpose (can comics effectively demonstrate that immigration is a common but significant aspect of nation building?); and to explore how comics can positively re-imagine France as a métropole cosmopolite, as an international point of convergence.