The Soul of the Luba: W.F.P. Burton,Missionary Ethnography and Belgian Colonial Science

This article examines the motivations, institutions and processes involved in colonial knowledge formation through a study of the missionary William Burton. It considers Burton’s work on the Luba of Katanga in relation to the practices of Belgian colonial science and Anglo‐Saxon social anthropology. The essay discusses why missionaries engaged in ethnographic research when they were so intent on changing the customs and beliefs they described and why Burton in particular did not get the recognition he deserved as an authority on his subject. The article charts Burton’s shifting attitude toward the Luba, showing how he moved from an aggressive intrusive mode of research to a position of greater sympathy as he came to consider their cultural riches through study of language, proverb and folklore. Consideration of the second phase of Burton’s research opens up discussion of the missionary origins of the disciplines of African theology and African religious studies.     

The Atlantic Empires in the Eighteenth Century

Spanish America; John J. Tepaske     

Affective politics and colonial heritage,Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the spatial entanglement of colonial heritage struggles through a study of the Rhodes Must Fall student movement at the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford. We aim to shed light over why statues still matter in analyzing colonial traces and legacies in urban spaces and how the decolonizing activism of the RMF movement mobilizes around the controversial heritage associated with Cecil Rhodes at both places – a heritage that encompasses statues, buildings, Rhodes scholarship and the Rhodes Trust funds. We include a comparative study of the Facebook use of RMF as it demonstrates significant differences between the two places in the development of the student movements as political activism. Investigating in more detail the heritage politics of RMF at UCT we fledge out what we call an affective politics using non-representational bodily strategies. We argue that in order for actual social movements to mobilize in current political controversies, they need to put affective tactics to use.     

Land Tenure and Food Security: Exploring Dynamic Linkages

Land tenure and food security have each been the subject of extensive—but generally separate—research in the past. Links between the two issues are now receiving increased attention, yet critical links between them remain unexplored. After a brief review of the two concepts, this article combines both issues within a dynamic framework that recognizes not just the conventional link between access to land and access to food in the short run, but also the recursive link between access to food and the ability to maintain sufficient resources to meet long-run needs. Such a framework makes explicit the trade-offs that poor households may face in bad years between consumption and investment in non-labour assets. Perhaps less intuitively, it also suggests that the need for self-insurance may force poor households to choose less efficient crops or production strategies than wealthier households even in good years. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for equity, efficiency, research, and policy.     

Explaining Canada–US Differences in Attitudes Toward Crime and Justice: An Empirical Test of S.M. Lipset’s Account

Despite cultural similarities between Canada and the United States, some observers contend that significant differences remain in attitudes and values between the two countries. For example, Lipset has observed that “efforts to distinguish Canada and the United States almost invariably point to the greater respect for law and order and those who uphold it north of the border”. Lipset’s argument is that Canadian values are based on the nation’s founding principles of “Peace, Order and Good Government” while American values stem from the country’s revolutionary origins and are based on the values of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” We test Lipset’s observations, and those of some of his critics, using parallel surveys administered to university students in two institutions on either side of the Canada–US border. This is a very demanding test of his arguments so the supportive evidence we uncover for his arguments is significant.     

The Difficult Place of Deserted Coasts in Archaeology: New Archaeological Research on Cooks Beach (Pukaki), Coromandel Peninsula,New Zealand

Sites which have been occupied semi-continuously in the past present some inherent difficulties for archaeology. Here we present new research from a coastal site on the North Island of New Zealand at Cooks Beach where anthropogenic vegetation changes are seen using microfossil analysis of obsidian tools, sediments and pit fill. The results indicate the initial presence of people in AD 1300–1400 followed by subsequent periods of disuse or abandonment and sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) cultivation. Around the time of initial settlement, obsidian from this location is found at sites across the country. After AD 1400 the area appears to be deserted for a century or more, after which we see evidence for the cultivation of sweet potato in AD 1500 as evidenced by extensive soil modification and numerous storage pits. There is no evidence of a permanent settlement at the site. The geographic distribution of Cooks Beach obsidian was constricted while the site was used for sweet potato cultivation, a pattern often attributed to increased warfare. It appears cultivation was abandoned after AD 1650 marking a second secession of use, a fact confirmed in AD 1769 when Captain Cook visited the area. We consider the possible drivers for the late abandonment of cultivation at Cooks Beach.     

Dunster and Its Lords

As part of a wider study of the archaeological evidence for slavery in the ancient world, this paper deals with the typology, mechanism, chronology, and distribution of iron age and Roman slave-shackles. These are subdivided into neck-shackles, manacles (for hands), and fetters (for feet). The distribution of iron age examples defines a trading pattern between the Celtic and Roman worlds. The preponderance of Roman types a) on the limes and b) in Gaul and Britain suggests the role of the military in slave-taking on the one hand, and the use of slaves in agriculture on the other. Separate sections deal briefly with the Pompeian material, the physiological evidence for shackles (including Greece), and animal hobbles of iron age and recent date. A catalogue of the material is appended.     

Dendrochronology reveals the construction history of an early 19th century farm settlement,southwestern Virginia,USA

The McDonald Farm (also called the Anderson-Doosing Farm) in Catawba Valley, Virginia dates to 1789 and is registered with the National Register of Historic Places maintained by the National Park Service. According to written accounts, oral histories, and architectural analyses, the construction of four structures (a collapsed cabin, a standing cabin, a barn, and a smokehouse) at the farm likely occurred in the early to mid-19th century. To verify and refine the construction dates of the four structures, we absolutely dated the tree rings in logs used in their construction by comparing their ring patterns with a composite reference tree-ring chronology created from four regional locations. We used established graphical and statistical techniques used in dendrochronology to ensure that all tree rings were dated absolutely with 99.99% certainty. We found cutting dates for the collapsed cabin ranged from 1809 to 1810, making the likely builder Samuel Myers and not Joseph Anderson, who is currently given credit for its construction. The logs in the barn had cutting dates ranging from 1830 to 1831, confirming the 1830 construction date estimated by the historical documents and confirming the builder was Joseph Anderson. The logs from the standing cabin and smokehouse had cutting dates ranging from 1838 to 1840, refining the “mid-19th century construction” listed in the register nomination. Furthermore, the nomination gave credit of the construction of these latter two structures also to Joseph Anderson, but the builder was actually John Gish who owned the farm from 1837 to 1845. Our study demonstrates the benefit and reliability of using dendrochronology to verify and refine construction dates and ownership histories of historic structures in the Southeastern U.S.     

‘Her – she,this woman,me’: the representation of subjectivity in Tom Murphy's Alice Trilogy

In this essay, I will discuss Murphy's exploration of the (un)bearable nature of an existence characterised by loss, and by longing, in his recent play sequence Alice Trilogy (2005). Positing the explicitly dualised characterisation in the first and third of these plays as a reflection of, and natural progression from, earlier dramaturgic representations of duality, I will examine Murphy's overt rendering of subjectivity, in Alice Trilogy, focusing upon the ways in which such theatrical duality explicates the silences which pervade the Purgatorial affective no-man's-land – or ‘in-betweenness’ – of mind, body, and soul.