From liberating production to unleashing consumption: Mapping landscapes of power in Beijing

This article offers an analysis of two locales in downtown Beijing nominally set aside for public use, Tiananmen Square and The Place, as successively linked landscapes of power that define the shifting and relations between market and place negotiated by the Chinese Communist Party-state over time. However, whereas Zukin (1993) argues that such landscapes lack coherent values because of their subordination to capitalism’s haphazard process of “creative destruction,” a salient feature of Beijing’s shifting landscapes of power is the authoritarian Party-state’s persistent mediation of market relations, and its subordination of the contradictions between market and place to the changing needs of the regime under market reform. Despite their apparent differences in intent and design, the shopping mall has eclipsed the public square as a key urban site through which the Party-state seeks to build a self-conscious and cohesive socioeconomic class of subjects over which and for which it seeks to rule.     

Human and animal diet at Conchopata, Peru: stable isotope evidence for maize agriculture and animal management practices during the Middle Horizon

This paper reports δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values for human and animal skeletal remains from the Middle Horizon (AD 550–1000) site of Conchopata in the Peruvian highlands. The data indicate that maize was the dietary staple for both humans and the majority of animals at this urban site. Camelids at the site segregated into two groups according to δ¹³C values, reflecting two distinct animal management strategies. Human infants were found to have elevated δ¹⁵N values, reflecting the trophic level effect of breastfeeding. No sex based differences in diet were observed.     

Characterization of bricks and tiles from the 17th-century brick Chapel,St. Mary's City,Maryland

The brick Chapel at St. Mary's City, Maryland, built around 1667, would have been an impressive structure on a colonial frontier where all the other buildings were built only of wood. While the building is no longer extant, the bricks remaining in the buried foundations hold information about the technologies and materials used by brickmakers in the 17th-century Chesapeake region. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) and petrographic analysis of thin sections were used to compare the Chapel bricks and other 17th-century bricks and tiles from several Chesapeake contexts to locally available clay sources. While the composition of the Chapel bricks is generally consistent with that of clays available in southern Maryland, these historic materials could not be linked to any one deposit, and may reflect the mixing of clays from multiple sources. In contrast, building materials from other 17th-century buildings at St. Mary's City could be more precisely “matched” to specific local clay deposits. This paper reports on our initial investigations toward understanding the technology of the Chapel bricks and their relationship to other bricks from St. Mary's City.     

Book reviews

Local Development — Restructuring, Locality and Economic Initiative in Portugal. Stephen Syrett. Aldershot, Avebury, 1996, US$75.95, ISBN 1 856 28 4840.

Geographic Information Systems: Socioeconomic Applications. David Martin. New York, Routledge, 1996, XXII + 210 pp., £45.00 hb, £14.99 pb, ISBN 0 415 12571 5 hb, 0 415 12572 3 pb.

Town and Country Planning in Britain (11th edition). J. B. Cullingworth and V. Nadin. London, Routledge, 1994, XX + 343 pp., £14.99pb, ISBN 0 415 10708 3.

Towards Visitor Impact Management. Visitor Impacts, Carrying Capacity and Management Responses in Europe's Historic Towns and Cities. J. Glasson, K. Godfrey and B. Goodey (with H. Absalom and J. Van der Borg). Aldershot, Avebury, Urban and Regional Planning and Development Series, 1995, XII + 189 pp., £35.00 hb, ISBN 1 85972 054 4.     

Reviews

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism , Janet Afary, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, xxi + 448 pp., Bibliography, Index.

Surveyors of Persian Art: A Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham Pope & Phyllis Ackerman , Jay Gluck and Noel Siver, eds., Ashiya, Japan: SoPA and Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 1996, xxii + 658 pp., illustrations, Bibliography, Index.

Syria and Iran: Rivalry and Cooperation , Hussein J. Agha and Ahmad S. Khalidi, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, xii + 126 pp.

Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution , Nikki R. Keddie, New York: New York University Press, 1995, ix + 303 pp.

Études safavides , Jean Calmard, ed., Bibliothèque Iranienne 39, Paris and Téhéran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1993, xiv + 389 pp., 58 plates.

Women and Fundamentalism: Islam and Christianity , Shahin Gerami, Women's History and Culture, Vol. 9, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996, xiii + 178 pp.

The Persian Revolution , Edward G. Browne, Abbas Amanat, ed., New Edition, Washington: Mage Publishers, 1995, Ixiv + 470 pp., Introduction, correspondence, reviews.

Iran After the Revolution: Crisis of an Islamic State, Saeed Rahnema and Sohrab Behdad, eds., London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 1995, xii + 292 pp., Index.

Mediaeval Isma^cili History and Thought ,Farhad Daftary, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xviii + 331 pp.

A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin's Portrait of a Seventeenth‐Century Empire , R.W. Ferrier, ed., London and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, 256 pp., illustrations.

George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy ,James A. Bill, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Shi^ca Islam: From Religion to Revolution , Heinz Halm, translated by Allison Brown, Princeton, New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997, 176 pp.

Iran and the Former Soviet South , Edmund Herzig, London: Royal Institute for Foreign Affairs, 1995.

Torture and Modernity: Self, Society and State in Modern Iran , Darius M. Rejali, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994, xviii + 289 pp.     

Land and revolution in Iran

Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980. By Eric J. Hooglund. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. xvii + 191 pp. $19.95 cloth.     

MARKET DEFINITION AND ASSESSING THE COMPETITIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RAIL AND TRUCK TRANSPORTATION*

ABSTRACT. In this paper we develop a method for establishing market definition in studies of intermodal competition. We employ the proposed method in a transportation model that yields estimates of the substitutability between truck and rail services for the transport of fresh fruits and vegetables. The model includes the produce being shipped as an input into the production of delivered produce. Our results demonstrate that fairly disaggregate market definitions are required to characterize adequately the intermodal substitution possibilities of interest. While disaggregate data are required for econometric estimation of the cost function, it is essential that elasticities be calculated at a disaggregate level as well. The elasticities reported are larger than reported in earlier work and provide strong evidence of vigorous intermodal competition in produce transportation markets.     

Pandora and Hatshepsut: Ancient Archtypes in the iconography of kingship

Greek myths contain iconographic material relating to the legitimacy, power and succession problems of early kingship. They may even represent the relics of kingly liturgies recited at coronations and New Year festivals. This essay analyses Hesiod's Pandora, her presentation and regalia, as an icon of queenly power reflecting the important power of women in the Egyptian royal cult and the great exponent of that role, Queen Hatshepsut. Pandora's veil, crown, name and ‘box’ or ‘jar’ recall both the moment of apotheosis of Egyptian queens and the emblems of the Egyptian royal priestesses who tended the divinity of kings. They also recall the astral and solar imagery of the great goddesses of Mesopotamia, Anath, Ishtar and Astarte—as well as Hesiod's Europa—queenly figures of great power.