Diet and seasonality in the Lower Pecos: evaluating coprolite data sets with cluster analysis

This article presents an analysis of three previous coprolite studies from Hinds Cave (41VV456), Val Verde County, Texas (Edwards, 1990; Stock, 1983; Williams-Dean, 1978). Patterns of dietary consumption related to season, microhabitat exploitation and diet breadth are explored with the statistical techniques of the cluster analysis and Canonical Discriminant Function Analysis (CDA). Shafer (1988) has proposed a model of seasonal mobility for the Lower Pecos that suggests that Hinds Cave would be predominantly occupied in the late summer/early fall. The results of the current analysis support the view that the site was also occupied intermittently during the rest of the seasonal cycle, suggesting a flexible mobility strategy that responded to annual and seasonal fluctuations in resource availability.     

Book reviews

The Essential Codex Mendoza. By FRANCES F. BERDAN and PATRICIA RIEFF ANA WALT. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1997. Pp. xiii, 268, 148.

Cruzados, mártires y beatos: Emplazamientos del cuerpo colonial. MARIO CESAREO. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1995. Pp. xi, 201.

Dineros de ventura: La varia fortuna de la emigración a Indias (siglos XVI‐XVII). By CARLOS ALBERTO GONZALEZ SANCHEZ. Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1995. Pp. 277.

La administración como un fenómeno social. La justicia penal de la Ciudad de Quito (1650–1750). By TAMAR HERZOG. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 1995. Pp. 352.

The Countryside in Colonial Latin America. Edited by LOUISA SCHELL HOBERMAN and SUSAN MIGDEN SOCOLOW. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Pp. 295.

Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico's National State. By PETER F. GUARDINO. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp. viii, 319.

Poder terrateniente, relaciones de producción y orden colonial. By EDUARDO AZCUY AMEGHINO et al. Buenos Aires: Fernando García Cambeiro, 1996. Pp. 259.

Storms Brewed in Other Men's World's: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795. By ELIZABETH A. H. JOHN. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [1975] 1996. Pp. 805.

The World Upside Down: Cross‐Cultural Contact and Conflict in Sixteenth‐Century Peru. By SUSAN ELIZABETH RAMIREZ. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp. 234.

Architecture and Power in the Ancient Andes: The Archaeology of Public Buildings. By JERRY D. MOORE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii, 256.

Las crónicas y los Andes. By FRANKLIN PEASE G. Y. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995. Pp. 632.

The War with Spain in 1898. By DAVID F. TRASK. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [1981] 1996. Pp. xiv, 654.

The Village and the Outside World in Golden Age Castile. Mobility and Migration in Everyday Rural Life. By DAVID E. VASSBERG: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xvii, 253.     

‘Gender hates men’: untangling gender and development discourses in food security fieldwork in urban Malawi

This article examines the social construction and contestation of gender and gender roles in the city of Blantyre in Malawi. In fieldwork on gendered household roles related to food security, interviews with men and women revealed a distinct set of connotations with the word gender, which reflected Malawians’ historical and contemporary engagement with concepts of development, modernity, and human rights. We denote the Malawian concept of gender as gender in order to distinguish the word participants used in interviews from the more widely accepted conventional definition. We then use this distinction to highlight the ways in which ideas of gender equality have been introduced and received in the Malawian context. The urban setting of the research is key to drawing out the association of gender with Westernization, bringing into focus the power dynamics inherent in the project of translating global discourses of gender rights and gender equality into meaningful social change in developing countries. Gender in Malawi denotes a top-down (and outside-in) process of framing Malawi’s goals for gender equality. This creates political constraints both in the form of resistance to gender, because it resonates with a long history of social change imposed by outside forces, and in the form of superficial adherence to gender to appear more urban and modern, especially to a Western researcher. Local understandings of gender as gender undermine efforts to promote gender equality as a means to address Malawi’s intense urban poverty and household food insecurity.     

Italy and the World Bank: The European Foundations of Development Lending, 1947–51

Foreign financial assistance for economic development and the discipline of development economics have traditionally been associated with US Cold War policy toward the Third World. This article, however, suggests that these practices were also shaped by the experiences of foreign aid for European reconstruction after the Second World War. The article traces loan negotiations between the World Bank and the Italian government, and argues that this process played a substantial role in shaping not only the World Bank's lending policies, but also the way its staff understood the institution's mission. The article emphasises Europe's significance as a site in the early history of development, suggesting new ways of understanding the evolution of development ideas, practices, and institutions after 1951.