AHS Classics: Rural History and Environmental History

Studying rural history and environmental history in Australian Historical Studies reveals a shared effort to challenge the colonial narrative of the settlement of rural Australia that continues to hold sway in popular representations of the national past. Rather than finding distinct spheres of urban and rural Australia, it reveals instead the processes by which these areas have been mutually constitutive, whether through cultural representations, economic exchanges, or the application of science and technology. Rather than confirming the dichotomy of nature and culture of the city and the bush, it highlights instead the wider cultural and ecological implications of settler Australians’ diverse engagements with an ancient and Aboriginal land. By transcending disciplinary and spatial boundaries, rural and environmental historians reveal the complexities of colonisation and the networks of exchange that have shaped Australians and their environments since 1788. In their hands, history becomes an important form of knowledge for making sense of rural and environmental change in the twenty-first century.     

The Poor Law of old England: institutional innovation and demographic regimes

The striking improvement in life expectancy that took place in England between the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century cannot be explained either by an increase in real wages or by better climatic conditions. The decrease in the risk of utter destitution or of death from famine that was evident on the eve of the Industrial Revolution stemmed, in part, from institutional changes in the old poor law, which began to take shape and become effective early in the seventeenth century.     

British Students at the International Lenin School 1926-37: A Reaffirmation of Methods, Results, and Conclusions

Alan Campbell, John McIlroy, Barry McLoughlin, and John Halsteadhave offered a sweeping, if incoherent, criticism of the researchpresented in ‘Stalin's Sausage Machine’, our recentarticle on British students at the International Lenin School.By expanding upon and reaffirming the methods, results, andconclusion of our original article, we address each of the maincriticisms made and show that none can be substantiated. Usingstatistical analysis based on matched samples, we demonstratethat we did not underestimate the school's impact on the apparatusof the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). We also showthat none of the supposed ‘significant deficiencies’in our handling of qualitative analysis has any foundation.We deal briefly with the sole alternative explanation our criticsoffer for the CPGB's internal leadership changes, namely ‘lifeitself’ and natural causes. We suggest that such a de-politicizedinterpretation not only lacks any evidential basis but revealsa profound ignorance as to the internal workings of communistparties and flies in the face of all available literatures onthe subject. We also document the contrast between our critics'methodological pretensions and the ways in which their casedepends for its plausibility on methods of an extremely dubiousnature. Every possible academic rationale for the attack uponus is disposed of. We therefore end with a plea for a less personalizedapproach to the writing of Communist Party history.     

Imagined Country: National Environmental Ideologies in School Geography Textbooks

This essay considers the "imagined geographies" of Britain found in school geography textbooks in the postwar period. The first part of the essay considers the role that school geography plays in processes of social reproduction. It suggests that textbooks represent an important resource through which meanings are negotiated in the everyday lives of teachers and students. The second part of the essay discusses some of the specific "national environmental ideologies" found in geographies of Britain. The essay concludes with a discussion of the wider context in which geographies of Britain are taught in schools.     

Stalin's Sausage Machine. British Students at the International Lenin School, 1926-37

Between 1926 and 1937 at least 160 British communists attendedthe Communist International's International Lenin School (ILS)in Moscow. The aims of the school were to produce a new stratumof leading communist party cadres, young, proletarian, disciplined,and free of the taint of reformism. Using materials from theComintem archives in Moscow, this article assesses the degreeto which the school was successful in meeting these objectives.It shows that among the difficulties it encountered were thereluctance of the British Communist Party (CPGB) to lose theservices of large numbers of its best activists and the uncertainapplication of the lessons inculcated by the school when studentsreturned to Britain. In the short term, ILS alumni played acrucial role in the leadership of the CPGB at both nationaland district levels, and some were also drawn into work forthe Comintern or Soviet state organs. However, by the late 1930sattendance at the school played a reduced role in appointmentsto key party positions, and as early as 1943 there was onlyone former student on the CPGB's executive committee. Set ina comparative context, it is argued that the school's significancein Britain was largely confined to the ‘long’ ThirdPeriod of 1927–35 and rapidly diminished thereafter.     

Creativity and its contexts: the emergence,institutionalisation and professionalisation of science and culture in Luxembourg

While an abundant literature on the social history of culture and science in Europe has developed over the past few decades, there is to date hardly any academic work exploring the social history of science and culture in Luxembourg. The aim of this article is to put Luxembourg ‘on the map’ by focusing on its scientific research and museums in order to examine the emergence, institutionalisation and professionalisation of Luxembourg's science and culture. It will be argued that the most radical changes occurred in the 1980s and 1990s: a multiplication of infrastructures, an increase in budgets, a professionalisation of practices, the emergence of a market for artworks, and an appearance of dedicated policies. During this period, both the material architecture and the socioeconomic architecture of science and culture have been significantly (re)configured. Within the political debates accompanying these changes, the discourses stressing the positionality and relationality of science and culture are noteworthy: while both were increasingly positioned within a European context, research was predominantly portrayed as a resource to boost Luxembourg's economy whereas culture more as a complement to Luxembourg's image of a financial player and a means to ‘regenerate’ its symbolic capital.     

Reconstructing prehistoric hunter–gatherer foraging radii: a case study from California's southern Sierra Nevada

The concept of the foraging radius is essential to understanding hunter–gatherer settlement, subsistence, and sociocultural complexity yet is notoriously difficult to reconstruct archaeologically. Late prehistoric Western Mono foraging radii in the southern Sierra Nevada were reconstructed using GIS analysis of least-cost path distances between dispersed caching features and centralized residential features. Mean distances from settlements to caches exhibit a bimodal distribution, with peaks between 0.5 and 5.0 km, and 6.0 and 8.5 km, the former representing a caching limit and the latter a foraging limit around major settlements. Combined, these data demarcate a two-part foraging radius predicated not only on sustaining winter group aggregations but also on facilitating spring and summer residential moves. These results show the efficacy of using features and simple GIS-based spatial analyses to reconstruct prehistoric foraging radii and provide the means to model the energetics of different foraging behaviors, these speaking strongly to the social and economic factors conditioning the development of complex hunter–gatherer societies.     

An endogenous approach to regional economic development: The emergence of Wales

The article looks at how developments in economic theory have influenced the regional development strategy agenda in Wales. It concentrates in particular on the importance of endogenous aspects of policy in a post‐Fordist context. Such issues as the relevance of networking, learning, foreign direct investment and technology transfer are looked at and applied in the Welsh context. The role of the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) as the principal economic agent is given particular attention. The general conclusion is that the WDA has been working on the right lines in attempting to develop an endogenous offensive approach alongside its obvious past success at attracting inward investment. There is, however, a danger of national trends and political forces favouring the latter over the former.     

Book reviews

L'avenir des villes — The Future of Cities. Marc Bonneville (Ed.), Lyon Programme Pluriannuel en Sciences Humaines Rhônes‐Alpes, 1993, 176 pp., 100FF, ISBN 2–909604–03–9.

Spatial Policy in a Divided Nation. Richard T. Harrison and Mark Hart (Eds), London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, with the Regional Studies Association, London, Regional Policy and Development Series 2, 1993, 304 pp., £25.00, ISBN 1–85302–103–2.

Les régions qui gagnent. Georges Benko and Alain Lipietz (Eds), Paris: Presses Unwersitaires de France, 1992, 424 pp..

Rebuilding the City: Property‐led Urban Regeneration. P. Healey, S. HDavoudi, S. Tavsanoglu, M. O'Toole and D. Usher (Eds), London: E & F Spon, 1992, 320 pp., £30.00, ISBN 0 419 17280 7 (hbk).

The Embedded Firm: On the Socio‐economics of Industrial Networks. Gernot Grabher (Ed.), Routledge, 1993, 306 pp., ISBN 0–415–07374‐X.

Inner City Regeneration: The Demise of Regional and Local Government. N. Lewis, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992, £6.99, ISBN 0335086328.