A NOT SO PERFECT PEACE: A HISTORY OF CONFLICT ON IFALUK

Many accounts of the Caroline Islands have called the people in them non-violent. This paper uses early ethnographies, more recent ethnohistories, and new recollections on the part of the people of Ifaluk to reconstruct the extent of conflict on Caroline Islands and between them. Culture on Ifaluk in precontact times, and even in recent times, was violent in many respects. The evidence presented here contradicts several earlier arguments, among them: that the balance in the tribute relationship with Yap favoured outer islanders; that the balance in the tribute relationship between Ifaluk chiefs and commoners favoured commoners; and that sorcery and aggression were rare or absent on Ifaluk. Legends of wars between Ifaluk and other islands are also retold.     

Killing the Priest-King: Addressing Egalitarianism in the Indus Civilization

Journal of Archaeological Research - The cities of the Indus civilization were expansive and planned with large-scale architecture and sophisticated Bronze Age technologies. Despite these hallmarks...     

Exchange on the quantitative measurement of ethnic and national identity*

In recent decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the use of quantitative techniques in the study of ethnicity and nationalism, without, however, a sufficient amount of reflection on how these techniques have contributed to our understanding of ethnic and national identities. As such, in this exchange three sets of authors answer questions about the degree to which it is possible to use quantitative data to measure ethnic and national identities, which types of methods are most suitable in measuring these identities and what the major research findings of this quantitative research are that were not possible using qualitative approaches.     

Tensions between municipal reform and outdated fiscal levers in rural British Columbia

Debates about the future of small municipalities in Canada are set against a backdrop of economic, political, and social restructuring processes that have displaced former state investment policies in favour of neoliberal public policy approaches. Small municipalities struggle with outdated financial and governance structures and a provincial public policy agenda that asks them to become more creative, innovative, and “entrepreneurial” in their approach and responsibilities. Drawing upon key informant interviews with eight case studies in British Columbia, Canada, this research examines the tensions between municipal reforms mandated by the provincial government over the past 30 years and commensurate fiscal levers and capacities in place to address these broadening responsibilities for small municipalities in volatile staples-dependent regions. Our findings demonstrate how successive provincial governments have mobilized New Public Management objectives through a host of legislative and regulatory changes that have increased the responsibilities and requirements on local governments without commensurate fiscal or jurisdictional capacity.     

Financial Inclusion or Subordination? The Monetary Politics of Debt in Cambodia

Financial inclusion is a leading driver of household debt across the global South. Although critical geographers have analysed this debt through the lens of financialisation, few have examined it in terms of monetary politics. This is a salient issue, because poorer nations often have limited control over their monetary policy due to their dependence on foreign currencies, which can adversely affect the structure of their financial markets. Building on the concept of monetary dependency from scholarship on financial subordination, I analyse the monetary politics of debt in Cambodia. Drawing on elite interviews and ethnographic research, I argue that Cambodia's extreme monetary dependence on the US dollar has shaped monetary and fiscal policies that compel poorer households to take on private debt to pay for their basic needs. This paper advances critical geographies of debt and development by studying financial subordination and its impact on financial inclusion in the global South.     

Book Reviews

Technopoles of the World: The Making of 21st Century Industrial Complexes. M. Castells and P. Hall. London, Routledge, 1994, x + 275 pp, £45.00 hb, ISBN 0 415 10014 3, £14.99 pk, ISBN 0 415 10015 1 pb.

Transport and Communications Innovation in Europe. G. Giannopoulos and A. Gillespie (Eds). London, Belhaven Press, 1993, xii + 369 pp, £42.00 hb, ISBN 1 85293 269 4.

The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. F. Fisher and J. Forester (Eds). London, UCL Press, 1993, 327pp, £14.95, pb, ISBN 1 85728 183 7.

Regional Development in the 1990s. The British Isles in Transition. P. Townroe and R. Martin (Eds). London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers and Regional Studies Association, 330pp, £22.50 pb, ISBN 1 85302 139 3.

Urban Land and Property Markets in France. R. Acosta and V. Renard. London, University College Press, 1993, 166pp, £40.00 hb, ISBN 1 85728 050 4.     

Cultural Resource Management and American Archaeology

Cultural resource management (CRM) work accounts for most of the archaeology conducted in the United States. A diverse and somewhat fragmented field, CRM has nonetheless achieved a degree of institutional and organizational maturity. CRM archaeology has produced important contributions to archaeological methodology and has established and refined knowledge of regional cultural-historical sequences and settlement and subsistence patterns. The current florescence of historical archaeology is attributable to CRM. Yet the maintenance of high quality in CRM is a pervasive and enduring problem. Academic institutions need to reestablish alliances with the CRM community. The future viability of CRM archaeology depends on factors both internal and external to the discipline: regulatory and statutory “reform,” agency funding levels, looting and other destructive forces, and Native American and other public involvement.     

Categories of Local Economic Development: An Empirical Analysis

In examining local economic development incentives, scholars have found it useful to employ typologies of development practices. Such typologies have been based on assumptions that techniques reflect functional categories, such as marketing and financial incentives, or can be organized by the nature of costs and benefits, or by the nature of incentive goals. While useful heuristic devices, little effort has been made to test these typologies empirically. This research note provides an empirically based typology of local economic development incentives, using data from 967 cities collected by the International City Management Association.