Walter Benjamin: Quel matérialisme? Quelle histoire?

Cet article est consacré à l'étude de quelques uns des aspects de la philosophie de l'histoire de Walter Benjamin qui, aujourd'hui, suscitent le plus d'intérêt. En pratique, il analyse la notion de progrès, le rôle joué par l'écoulement du temps et l'interruption messianique. Il insiste aussi sur la critique du marxisme vulgaire entreprise par W. Benjamin et met en évidence ses apports les plus personnels ; enfin, il attire l'attention sur le risque encouru par les historiens qui orientent leur travail vers le futur et se montrent aveugles en ce qui concerne le passé.     

CORN HYBRID SELECTION AND CLIMATIC VARIABILITY: GAMBLING WITH NATURE?

Farmer adaptation to climatic variability is explored via an analysis of corn hybrid selection in southern Ontario. Corn hybrid varieties are available for a wide range of conditions, including accumulated heat, measured as Corn Heat Units (chus). Hybrids with higher chu ratings generally have higher yields, so long as there is sufficient heat for them to mature. Farmers choose their hybrid varieties prior to the growing season, in the face of uncertainty about the chus that will accumulate at their location. Farmers in the sample counties showed a consistent tendency to adjust their hybrid selection on the basis of the previous year's growing conditions. After the high chu year of 1991, farmers chose significantly more longer-maturing and potentially higher-yielding, but riskier varieties. After the lower chu years of 1992 and 1993, farmers' hybrid selections became markedly more conservative. L'étude de I'adaptation des fermiers aux changements climatiques se fait par une analyse de /'hybridation du maïs au sud de l'Ontario. Les variétés de maïs hybrides conviennent à différentes conditions climatiques in-cluant la chaleur accumulée, mesurée en Unitées de Chaleur de Maïs (ucms). Les hybrides ayant une valeur ucm plus élevée donnent généralement un rendement plus élevéà condition qu'ils bénéficient d'assez de chaleur pour mûrir. Les fermiers des comtés sélectionnés ont démontré une tendance persistante à baser leurs sélections d'hybrides en fonction des conditions de crois-sance de I'année précédente. Depuis 1991, année ayant connu un taux élevé d'UCM, les fermiers ont opté pour un type d'hybride à croissance prolongée, au potentiel de rendement plus élevé mats également plus risqué. Les années 1992 et 1993 ayant connu un niveau ucm moins élevé, les fermiers ont alors sélectionné des hybrides plus traditionnels.     

Anthropology and Aboriginal Tradition: The Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair and the Politics of Interpretation

Events that have become popularly known as ‘the Hindmarsh affair’ arose from conflict over a bridge development, and refer to an Aboriginal heritage issue that has had a significant impact on Australian society. 1 1 Justice Mathews (Commonwealth of Australia, 1996:1) begins her Commonwealth Hindmarsh Island Report with a similar assessment, noting how painful and divisive an affair it has been, and how enduring its legacies are likely to be.
The attendant controversy and dissension have ramified widely, beyond matters of Aboriginal heritage and its relationship to development, to include the status and role of anthropological research and reporting, past and present. A brief chronology of developments both prior to and following the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Royal Commission (1995) is provided here as a backdrop for discussion of these matters. Other salient issues also examined include: the nature of culture in relation to the complexities of ‘tradition’ and the effects of change; the structural correlates of secrets; the politics of interpretation; and the legitimacy of innovative processes in Aboriginal cultural construction and representation. In conclusion, some implications of the Hindmarsh affair for the anthropology profession are considered.     

Inward investment and economic development in Poland

This paper summarizes results of a research project funded by the Overseas Development Administration of the UK Government. Its aims were to explore the nature and extent of foreign direct investment in Poland, and to assess the extent of integration of such investment with the indigenous economy. The research involved interviews with Polish government ministries, banks, development agencies, inward investors and indigenous firms. It concludes that there are numerous financial and technical obstacles to indigenous business development. The majority of inward investors aim to serve the Polish and other Central and Eastern European markets rather than simply selling cheaply produced products to the West. Moreover, most have already developed significant local sourcing from Polish suppliers.     

LAND USE IN THE PRESENCE OF AN ATMOSPHERE EXTERNALITY,WITH AND WITHOUT CORRECTIVE TAXES*

ABSTRACT. Total cleared area in a von Thünen land-use model drives an atmosphere externality which depresses agricultural productivity uniformly throughout the region. Exogenous events that encourage clearance and use of a larger cultivated area (output price or population increase) exacerbate the externality. Imposition of a simple, corrective tax on land rents does not reverse these patterns but does mitigate the increase in the externality and leaves cultivators with higher incomes than they would obtain without the tax. We examine an optimal tax on land rents, designed to maximize the social value of land rents in the region, and an output tax.     

The culture history of Madagascar

Madagascar's culture is a unique fusion of elements drawn from the western, northern, and eastern shores of the Indian Ocean, and its past has fascinated many scholars, yet systematic archaeological research is relatively recent on the island. The oldest traces of visitors are from the first century AD. Coastal settlements, with clear evidence of ties to the western Indian Ocean trading network, were established in several places over the next millennium. Important environmental changes of both plant and animal communities are documented over this period, including the extinctions of almost all large animal species. Urban life in Madagascar began with the establishment of the entrepôt of Mahilaka on the northwest coast of the island in the twelfth century. At about the same time, communities with ties to the trade network were established around the island's coasts. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, social hierarchies developed in several regions of the island. During the succeeding two centuries, Madagascar saw the development of state polities.     

West Highland and Hebridean landscapes: have they a history without runrig?

This paper questions the history of runrig townships in the western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It challenges assumptions still held about their archaism and draws attention to the fact that many townships in the region show signs of having once been enclosed. It argues that these systems of enclosure, together with evidence for a more diffused system of settlement, constitute the pre-runrig landscape and further argues that the shift into runrig did not begin until the closing years of the medieval period.     

Doing Great Basin archaeology recently: Coping with variability

Great Basin archaeologists spent the 1970s and most of the 1980s tearing down the Desert Culture hypothesis without presenting compelling means for dealing with the empirical variability that made it untenable. Recent research seeks to understand this variability by examining the effect of key variables in extreme environmental contexts, especially in wetlands and at high altitudes, and by developing and refining models of optimality that anticipate variability as the local expression of general evolutionary ecological principles. Research on intraregional and ethnic variability has lagged behind—the former because it is said to be costly, the latter because it is problematical in theory.