Shades of Orientalism: Paradoxes and Problems in Indian Historiography

In Orientalism, Edward Said attempts to show that all European discourse about the Orient is the same, and all European scholars of the Orient complicit in the aims of European imperialism. There may be “manifest” differences in discourse, but the underlying “latent” orientalism is “more or less constant.” This does not do justice to the marked differences in approach, attitude, presentation, and conclusions found in the works of various orientalists. I distinguish six different styles of colonial and postcolonial discourse about India (heuristic categories, not essential types), and note the existence of numerous precolonial discourses. I then examine the multiple ways exponents of these styles interact with one another by focusing on the early‐twentieth‐century nationalist orientalist, Sri Aurobindo. Aurobindo's thought took form in a colonial framework and has been used in various ways by postcolonial writers. An anti‐British nationalist, he was by no means complicit in British imperialism. Neither can it be said, as some Saidians do, that the nationalist style of orientalism was just an imitative indigenous reversal of European discourse, using terms like “Hinduism” that had been invented by Europeans. Five problems that Aurobindo dealt with are still of interest to historians: the significance of the Vedas, the date of the vedic texts, the Aryan invasion theory, the Aryan‐Dravidian distinction, and the idea that spirituality is the essence of India. His views on these topics have been criticized by Leftist and Saidian orientalists, and appropriated by reactionary “Hindutva” writers. Such critics concentrate on that portion of Aurobindo's work which stands in opposition to or supports their own views. A more balanced approach to the nationalist orientalism of Aurobindo and others would take account of their religious and political assumptions, but view their project as an attempt to create an alternative language of discourse. Although in need of criticism in the light of modern scholarship, their work offers a way to recognize cultural particularity while keeping the channels of intercultural dialogue open.     

Prospects for the Rural‐Urban Fringe in Australia: Observations from a Brief History of the Landscapes around Sydney and Adelaide

Despite being a major site of recent population growth and, arguably, a key arena for sustainability concerns, the rural‐urban fringe has received relatively little attention in the literature concerning Australian cities and urban policy. To address this shortcoming the authors review post‐World War II efforts to plan the rural‐urban fringes of Sydney and Adelaide and find a number of issues for contemporary policy‐makers. First, the fringe is becoming increasingly complex due to multi‐faceted demographic change, a broadening economic base and demands for better environmental management, all within the context of an evolving understanding of sustainability. Second, water resource management, partly under the auspices of integrated natural resource management, is assuming a much higher priority than in early fringe planning endeavours, which emphasised urban containment, agricultural land protection and landscape conservation. Third, and partly as a consequence of this shift of priorities, there is also evidence of changes to the nature and focus of policy tools used in the fringe, with land management concerns now cutting across traditional land use planning. Finally, and fundamentally, these observations raise questions about how future governance of the fringe should be organised. Together these four themes pose an enthralling series of challenges for policy‐makers for which much more research and discussion are needed.     

Archaeopedological analyses around a Neolithic hearth and the beginning of Sabaean irrigation in the oasis of Ma'rib (Ramlat as-Sab'atayn,Yemen)

Archaeopedological analyses in the oasis of Ma'rib (Yemen) yield new information of Neolithic land use, Bronze Age soil formation, and Sabaean irrigation. The AMS radiocarbon age of a Neolithic fireplace buried under Sabaean irrigation sediments in the Southern oasis indicates Pre-Sabaean human activities in Wadi Dhana about 5600 years ago. The associated Mid-Holocene palaeosol, developed in fluvial sediments of Wadi Dhana and also in the filling of the hearth, marks the Bronze Age-land surface before it was covered with irrigation sediments. Based on AMS radiocarbon data from charcoal in reservoir sediments of the “Great Dam” and an estimated time span of pedogenesis of the Mid-Holocene palaeosol in this region, we propose the beginning of the irrigation in Ma'rib in the period of 2500–1000 cal yr BC.     

The shaping of the American Empire

This paper creates a traditional, counterfactual, historical geography that proposes the rise of an American Empire in the 1800s instead of the British. The industrialization of the British world-economy of the early 1800s, victory in the Napoleonic Wars, and the consequent success of the British Empire fundamentally depended on cotton textiles, thus on American cotton agriculture. Cotton was, to the economies of the nineteenth century, very much like oil is to those of the late twentieth and early twenty-first enturies. The development of the American cotton South after 1800 was based heavily on the reproduction of slaves within the South. Had Jefferson ended slavery, as he at one time considered, I suggest that an alternative America would have arisen in which Jeffersonian idealism would have encouraged family farms as the principal units of agricultural production. I further argue that, absent the availability of cheap British manufactures, the Philadelphia School of Protectionists would also have likely triumphed early and an American industrial development based on internal growth fueled by cotton grown on family farms would have allowed America to come to dominate the world-economy of the late 1800s. Protectionist policies would have similarly excluded French manufactures and the industrial development based on cotton the French were also attempting in the late 1700s would have failed just as did that of Britain. French military victory in the Napoleonic Wars would not have produced a French world-economy. An America without serious global opposition would not have resisted annexing all of Mexico and Canada in the 1840s and expanding aggressively into Asia via the Pacific basin and Hawaii to create an American Empire.     

Adaptive Cell Tower Location Using Geostatistics. 基于地统计学的适应性基站发射塔选址研究

In this article, we address the problem of allocating an additional cell tower (or a set of towers) to an existing cellular network, maximizing the call completion probability. Our approach is derived from the adaptive spatial sampling problem using kriging, capitalizing on spatial correlation between cell phone signal strength data points and accounting for terrain morphology. Cell phone demand is reflected by population counts in the form of weights. The objective function, which is the weighted call completion probability, is highly nonlinear and complex (nondifferentiable and discontinuous). Sequential and simultaneous discrete optimization techniques are presented, and heuristics such as simulated annealing and Nelder–Mead are suggested to solve our problem. The adaptive spatial sampling problem is defined and related to the additional facility location problem. The approach is illustrated using data on cell phone call completion probability in a rural region of Erie County in western New York, and accounts for terrain variation using a line‐of‐sight approach. Finally, the computational results of sequential and simultaneous approaches are compared. Our model is also applicable to other facility location problems that aim to minimize the uncertainty associated with a customer visiting a new facility that has been added to an existing set of facilities.