More substance on subsistence

Bernard Nietschmann. Between Land and Water. New York: Seminar Press, 1973. xiv + 279 pp. Illustrations, tables, appendixes, glossary, references, and index. $14.00.

James Ward, producer‐editor, and Brian Weiss, anthropologist‐photographer. The Turtle People. Los Angeles: B & C Films. Twenty‐six minutes. Color and sound. $310.00 (purchase price), $25.00 (rental fee).     

The Interplay of Spirit in Greek Island Dancing

Values of honourable courtship are expressed in dance and this paper is an ethnographic reconstruction of a Greek island dance called the sousta practised on the Dodecanesian island of Rhodes during the interwar period (1925–1940). Its performance was a dynamic interplay of gender roles that mediated romance and moved the performers toward the resolution of marriage. The aim of the paper is to elaborate on values ascribed to men and women during the occasion of dancing at a village wedding in southern Rhodes. The interplay of grace (hari) and honour (timi) will locate why and how men reveal through hari and why women are concealed through timi during the dance performance.     

Seismic Response of Secondary Systems Supported by Torsionally Yielding Structures

Substantial damage sustained during several recent earthquakes was non structural in nature. The economic consequence in terms of non structural component damage far exceeded the structural damage. Currently, there are several analytical studies that address the interaction between non structural components or Secondary systems (S-systems) and the main supporting structure or Primary system (P-system). Only a few of these analytical approaches have been proposed to evaluate and characterize the response of the S-systems attached to torsionally coupled P-systems. In addition, the experimental verification for the analytical approaches is scarce.

In the current study, the results and observations of an experimental research program conducted to characterize the behavior of both stiffness eccentric and mass eccentric torsionally coupled Primary-Secondary systems (PS-systems) are presented. From this experimental investigation it was found that the torsional yielding of the primary system has significant implications on the deamplification of near tuned secondary system response. The location of the S-system mounted on the P-system affects the peak response amplification, and interaction with the coupled P-system.     

Inscribing the border: Schizophrenia and the aesthetics of Aztla´n

Late modernity is replete with new borders that defy traditional geographic notions of scale. The irruption of such transverse borders is seen by some as signalling a threatening loss of the link between place and identity. Yet others have viewed this as a productive decentring. The Chicano movement and the aesthetic production that arises from it illustrates this productivity. Chicano national identity is actively produced through the revisioning of space that both draws from and defies geopolitical borders. This challenges geographers and other border-based scholars to rethink the ways that borders manage late modern power.     

Benches in Switzerland

Benches are a common form of outdoor seating in Switzerland. Their popularity arises from a long history of benches as indoor furniture and from the Swiss propensity for hiking and landscape appreciation. In urban areas, benches are found in parks and squares and along terraces and wooded footpaths. In rural areas they are found attached to traditional housetypes and barns as well as scattered on private or communally owned meadows, pastures and woodlands. They appear with remarkable consistency throughout the diverse cultural and physical regions of Switzerland but decrease in number and density across all the usaional borders.     

Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies

Ongoing debates over the significance of specialized production in ancient political economies frequently hinge on questions of whether elites or commoners controlled craft manufactures and whether the material or ideological import of these production processes was more significant in deciding power contests. Though long recognized, such queries were traditionally answered in relatively straightforward economic terms. Recently, these time-honored approaches have been questioned. An ever increasing number of authors are promoting varied takes on the causal linkages between political forms and processes, on the one hand, and patterns of production, distribution, and use of craft goods, on the other. The literature generated by these discussions is extensive, vibrant, and often confusing. Rather than trying to synthesize all reports and essays dealing with specialized manufacture, this paper highlights general interpretive trends that underlie and structure current debates. The concluding section offers suggestions for how studies of relations among crafts, power, and social heterogeneity might be pursued profitably in the future.