THE FOOD VALUE CHAIN AS A LOCUS FOR (DIS)AGREEMENT: CONVENTIONS AND QUALITIES IN THE SPANISH WINE AND NORWEGIAN SALTED COD INDUSTRIES

According to the theory of conventions, food value chains (FVCs) involve a complex array of actors who share an agreement about the qualities embodied in their particular foodstuff. Nevertheless, that agreement is continuously challenged by changes in consumer markets. Therefore, I argue that FVCs able to adapt those qualities to new trends will perform better than FVCs whose commitment to certain qualities leads to a misunderstanding between producers and consumers. The organization of the chain itself, the values of national regulatory frameworks, and the goals of the national innovation system are discussed as factors that shape an FVCs' ability to re‐arrange that core agreement. By using professional reports, statistical records and personal interviews, this article focuses on two FVCs that have experienced contrasting trajectories in recent decades in the Spanish market: the wine industry located in the region of Castile and Leon (Spain) and the Norwegian salted cod industry. The growing wine FVC has achieved a successful agreement about a set of qualities linked to nature, tradition, and place, all of them guaranteed by the reputation of the Designation of Origin (DO) system. In contrast, the salted cod FVC is losing its market share because its main actors are failing to properly communicate the key qualities of environmental sustainability and artisanal cod production to concerned Spanish consumers, as well as in the adoption of the place‐related attributes that still shape consumer preferences in Spain.     

Has the Income Share of the Middle and Upper‐middle Been Stable around the ‘50/50 Rule’, or Has it Converged towards that Level? The ‘Palma Ratio’ Revisited

In an article published in this journal in 2011, an alternative measure of inequality was suggested, which has subsequently become known as ‘the Palma Ratio’. In this new article, the author of the original proposal revisits the argument for such a measure. Using new data, he examines whether the current remarkable homogeneity in the income share of the middle and upper‐middle around the world — the foundation of the so‐called ‘Palma Ratio’ — is an historically stable stylized fact, or whether it is a new phenomenon, the outcome of a process of convergence towards the current ‘50/50 Rule’ (in which half of the population in each country located within deciles 5 to 9 tends to appropriate about 50 per cent of the national income, or just above). Although partly written in response to a comment on the 2011 paper (published in this issue), the article also makes a substantive further contribution to the literature on inequality and the statistics to measure it.     

The Neolithic Transition in the Iberian Peninsula: Data Analysis and Modeling

We apply GIS techniques to analyze a carefully selected database of 93 Early Neolithic sites in the Iberian Peninsula. This allows us to study the spatial dynamics of the Neolithic transition in Iberia. We study how the Neolithic was introduced into the peninsula in order to test the hypothesis that the Neolithic was introduced almost simultaneously from two sources: one at the northeast (via the Mediterranean coast) and another one at the south (possibly from Northern Africa). We also analyze how the expansion of the Neolithic transition took place within the Iberian Peninsula and measure local rates of spread in order to identify regions with fast and slow rates (such as the slowdown at the Cantabrian coast). In addition, we attempt to reproduce the main results obtained from the GIS analysis by applying reaction–dispersal models to the expansion of the Neolithic transition in the Iberian Peninsula. We conclude that a model with two sources is a reasonable assumption that agrees better with the archaeological data available at present than a model with a single source.     

Accommodation and the politics of fiscal equalization in multinational states: The case of Canada

The politics of accommodation in multinational states sometimes features an important, yet often overlooked, fiscal dimension. In fact, the scholarly literature on the accommodation of nationalist movements emphasizes territorial autonomy, access to power and representation within central institutions, and the promotion of the state national identity, but it is virtually silent on how patterns of territorial fiscal redistribution, and more specifically programs of horizontal fiscal equalization, may contribute to accommodating sub‐state nationalism. This article looks at the Canadian case and analyses the multidimensional relationship between equalization policy and Québécois nationalism. It explains how a key motivation behind the creation of Canada's fiscal equalization program in 1957 was to “end” the institutional and political isolation of Québec and how equalization may have, thereafter, contributed to making Québec's secession less appealing to a good number of Quebeckers than it would have been in the absence of this program. Simultaneously, the article discusses how equalization may have contributed to a certain political backlash against Québec in the other provinces, thus providing mixed evidence in the assessment of the accommodation potential of equalization policy.     

The Emergence of Ornaments and Art: An Archaeological Perspective on the Origins of “Behavioral Modernity”

The earliest known personal ornaments come from the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa, c. 75,000 years ago, and are associated with anatomically modern humans. In Europe, such items are not recorded until after 45,000 radiocarbon years ago, in Neandertal-associated contexts that significantly predate the earliest evidence, archaeological or paleontological, for the immigration of modern humans; thus, they represent either independent invention or acquisition of the concept by long-distance diffusion, implying in both cases comparable levels of cognitive capability and performance. The emergence of figurative art postdates c. 32,000 radiocarbon years ago, several millennia after the time of Neandertal/modern human contact. These temporal patterns suggest that the emergence of “behavioral modernity” was triggered by demographic and social processes and is not a species-specific phenomenon; a corollary of these conclusions is that the corresponding genetic and cognitive basis must have been present in the genus Homo before the evolutionary split between the Neandertal and modern human lineages.     

Girls’ perspectives on the ideal school playground experience: an exploratory study of four Australian primary schools

ABSTRACT

Based on research conducted as part of the Sydney Playground Project, this paper provides an exploratory investigation of the perspectives of girls relating to the ideal school playground experience, and whether their perspectives are influenced by a loose-parts playground intervention. The focus is on the play behaviours of 22 girls aged 8–10 years, from the perspective that school playgrounds are generally designed in ways that are more suited to the play behaviours of boys. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of children’s drawings, interviews and focus groups, exploring meanings associated with desired play experiences. Findings indicate that girls’ views of the ideal school playground are influenced by the geographies of the spaces they play in, and that girls highly valued changes provided by a loose-parts intervention.     

The utility of livestock dung for reconstructing recent ethnological and environmental histories

Animal dung is evaluated here as a tool to reconstruct recent societal and environmental changes. Studies completed on the macro- and micro-contents from dung deposited in a mountain cave in Catalonia during the 1970–1980s, preceding the socio-economic changes in the area, was supplemented by the testimony of the last shepherd alive in the area. This information was also compared with evidence from aerial photographs of the area surrounding the cave taken in 1956 and 2009. Although taphonomic distortion of the dung shape precluded its assignment to its producers based on morphology, information from the organic remains reflects the agro-pastoral activities in the mountainous area of the Catalan coast. A lack of calcium phosphate and abundant phytolith and epidermal remains from wild species indicates that the dung was excreted by ovicaprines, who sheltered in the cave during spells of adverse weather. These indicators also signify that the animals fed only on natural vegetation. Insect remains in the dung include fragments of chafers, dung and ground beetles, bees and ants, and whilst the latter may have foraged in the cave, the others may have been accidentally ingested by herbivores. The nannofossils and diatoms found in the dung derive from tertiary crops 4 km away from the cave but within the range of the ovicaprine herd. The lack of cereal and vegetable remains in the dung is consistent with the ethnographic record that shepherds and farmers could not afford to supplement the herds’ diet with fodder crops or grain, a consequence of the low productivity of the local subsistence agriculture. This study further discusses the socio-economic impacts of the introduction of intensive farming, industrialisation and tourism in Catalonia during the latter part of the last century and how they are represented in the dung.     

Spurious weather effects

Rainfall is exogenous to human actions and hence popular as an exogenous source of variation. But it is also spatially correlated. This can generate spurious relationships between rainfall and other spatially correlated outcomes. As an illustration, rainfall on almost any day of the year has seemingly high predictive power of electoral turnout in Norwegian municipalities. In Monte Carlo analyses, I find that standard tests reject true null hypotheses in as much as 99% of cases. Standard approaches to estimating consistent standard errors do not solve the problem. Instead, I suggest controlling for spatial and spatiotemporal trends using multidimensional polynomials.