Anthropology of mutualism

What might anthropology offer to our understanding of mutualistic relations? In making sense of these interspecies interactions, which, despite some costs, are ultimately beneficial to each partner species, zoological approaches operate at the level of populations on an adaptive scale. Anthropologists bring focus on individual actors and their subjective experiences within far more condensed temporospatial ethnographic timescales. This guest editorial brings a multispecies anthropological approach into dialogue with zoological understandings of mutualism. It examines the practical and theoretical potential of mutuality to make sense of relations of domestication. Materialistic profit and market-oriented forms of engagement in the domestic sphere are often detrimental to more-than-human communities. The persistence of different kinds of mutual co-existences, as shown in different forms of care of orphaned animals in Mongolia, Pakistan and Australia, offers an alternative and perhaps more hopeful model of more-than-human engagement in the Anthropocene.     

Procedural and Substantive Fairness in Risk Decisions: Comparative Risk Assessment Procedures1

The issue of fairness often is central within environmental policy debates. The recent proliferation of state and local comparative risk projects for informing the selection of environmental policy priorities offers an appropriate setting to explore the issue of procedural fairness in risk-based decisionmaking. This paper describes and evaluates the process by which one of the initial state comparative risk projects, Washington's “Environment 2010,” attempted to include a broader range of participants in identifying, assessing, and generating preferred management strategies for a wide range of environmental hazards. The Washington case study suggests that comparative risk projects can be fairer procedurally, but that significant barriers remain. Noting that greater procedural fairness does not necessarily produce greater substantive fairness, the paper concludes that more attention needs to be directed at the process by which comparative risk projects translate their consensus upon risk priorities into subsequent actions.     

Obstacles to women's progress to be addressed in Beijing

Speakers at the Third Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee Assembly held in December 1994 maintained that power sharing between women and men is still intolerably low and that economic hardship, abuse, and discrimination remain. One speaker announced that society needs to do more to challenge obstacles to women's advancement: poverty, violence, access to resources, women's rights, education, and health. She asserted that, for this reason, the Fourth World Conference on Women scheduled for September 1995 in Beijing must succeed. Discussions and action at the December assembly will constitute a major part of the groundwork for the Beijing Conference. The Committee debate centered on the advancement of women as a cause and effect of development. The 1994 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development shows that economic development may be complexly connected with advancement of women. In societies where women have progressed, the economy tends to grow steadily, while, in societies where women cannot fully participate in development, the economy is stagnant. The Assembly called on the Commission on the Status of Women to ensure that the Platform for Action recognize and incorporate older women's concerns and contributions to development into its strategies, programs, and policies. It also called for countries to protect women migrant workers from violence and corrupt recruitment practices. It condemned the illegal trafficking of women and girls across borders for sexual or economic oppressive and exploitative purposes and for other illegal activities (forced domestic labor, false marriages, clandestine employment, and false adoption).     

THE POSSIBLE FRACTIONATION OF LEAD ISOTOPES IN ANCIENT METALLURGICAL PROCESSES

The possibility of lead isotope fractionation in ancient lead production is examined. Kinetic theory relating to isotopic fractionation in non-equilibrium evaporation is considered and the feasibility of the alteration of lead isotope abundance ratios in ore roasting and smelting is assessed. Previous experimental work is shown to have been inconclusive and conclusions are drawn on the need for further research to quantify the possible extent of fractionation in practice.     

The Impact of Urbanisation on Water Quality in the Lane Cove River,Sydney New South Wales: a Comparison of Urban and Non-Urban Catchments

The Lane Cove River drains an established urbanised catchment and is impacted by urban runoff, point sources of pollution from sewer overflows and leachate from a refuse tip. The Sydney Water Board conducted a three year water quality monitoring programme assessing the impacts of pollution. The findings are presented and the impact of urbanisation evaluated by comparing water quality in urban and non-urban catchments. Water quality in a near-pristine control creek was consistently better than the urban catchment in all weather conditions. During wet weather, water quality in urban creeks deteriorated significantly, although the control creek generally remained in a near-pristine condition. Poor water quality in urbanised reaches of the catchment has degraded the aquatic ecosystem, encouraged and sustained weed infestation of the riparian environment and restricted recreational use of the river.