The intensification of production: Archaeological approaches

In this paper I reexamine the Boserup model of agricultural intensification and archaeological reaction to it. Although causes have been extensively debated, little attention has been paid to process, and even those who reject the causal efficacy of population may adopt other aspects of the Boserup model. These unexamined aspects include the assumption that intensification proceeds along a single course, characterized by gradual decreases in the frequency of cropping. I suggest that the course of intensification is complex and variable and that, only by breaking down the process of intensification into its component strategies, can we come to an understanding of both the causes and the courses of intensification.     

Native Californians at the Presidio of San Francisco: Analysis of Lithic Specimens from El Polín Spring

Relatively few archaeological studies have examined the experiences of native people at Spanish colonial military installations. A small flaked lithic assemblage at the Presidio of San Francisco provides insight into the lives and labor of Native Californians there. Technically proficient knappers, making do with poor-quality, locally available material, engaged in freehand core reduction and produced non-symmetrical, bifacially flaked tools through percussion production. These tools were most likely used for cutting during specific tasks. The analysis reveals how Native Californians in colonial institutions maintained flintknapping traditions in social spaces that were likely shared by native people and colonists.     

The contradictory logic of global ecosystem services markets

Commodification and transnational trading of ecosystem services is the most ambitious iteration yet of the strategy of ‘selling nature to save it’. The World Bank and UN agencies contend that global carbon markets can slow climate change while generating resources for development. Consonant with ‘inclusionary’ versions of neoliberal development policy, advocates assert that international payment for ecosystem services (PES) projects, financed by carbon-offset sales and biodiversity banking, can benefit the poor. However, the World Bank also warns that a focus on poverty reduction can undermine efficiency in conservation spending. The experience of ten years of PES illustrates how, in practice, market-efficiency criteria clash directly with poverty-reduction priorities. Nevertheless, the premises of market-based PES are being extrapolated as a model for global REDD programmes financed by carbon-offset trading. This article argues that the contradiction between development and conservation observed in PES is inevitable in projects framed by the asocial logic of neoclassical economics. Application in international conservation policy of the market model, in which profit incentives depend upon differential opportunity costs, will entail a net upward redistribution of wealth from poorer to wealthier classes and from rural regions to distant centres of capital accumulation, mainly in the global North.     

Editorial: Culture matters

In this paper, I examine the notion of privilege as it relates to whiteness. The argument that racial privilege is actively constructed in the micro-geographies of everyday life is based on a case study conducted in Buffalo, New York. In this study, I analyze the narrated experiences of white elderly, primarily female, residents of a changing urban neighborhood. To capture the interrelationships between racial privilege and place, I used multi-methods research which included surveys, mental maps, travel diaries, interviews, and participation observation. The stories told are detailed accounts of the ways in which these white elderly residents cope with a slipping away of their white privilege through learning new boundaries of privilege, devising strategies for coping with their changed neighborhood, and reclaiming, in part, their previously held privileges. I propose that whiteness and its attendant privilege is not just about who you are, but where you are.