Making space for fish: the regional,network and fluid spaces of fisheries certification

In this paper, we examine the multiple spatialities of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certifications. The MSC uses its ecolabelling scheme to promote sustainable fisheries management; its logo may be used on the products of certified fisheries. The certification process involves the definition of a ‘fishery’. This involves the designation of boundaries around a particular location. While these boundaries suggest exclusivity for each fishery, these regional spaces are also entwined in the MSC's network, whereby they are viewed relationally. The utility of areal boundaries is also rendered problematic by the materiality of the seas: coastlines change, fish swim, water moves and ships travel. To operate its scheme successfully, the MSC has to recognise this spatial fluidity, acknowledging the rupture of boundaries and the movement of actors. We argue that attention to a multiplicity of spatialities helps direct attention to the role of non-humans in the acting out of hybrid geographies.     

Introduction: towards trans geographies

Gender geographies have focused on normatively gendered men and women, neglecting the ways in which gender binaries can be contested and troubled. Trans people question hegemonic conventions that link sexed bodies, gender roles and lives. This collection spans a range of theoretical fields in this context, including trans theories, queer engagement, feminist geographies, gender geographies and sexualities geographies. It offers empirical investigations of trans lives, while addressing the often theoretical use of ‘trans’ to render gender fluid, incoherent and unintelligible. As a whole this themed section questions geography's presumption of man/woman and male/female.     

When History Hurts

Book reviewed in this article:
Amy J. Elias, Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction     

Scotty Martin's Jadmi Junba: a Song Series from the Kimberley Region of Northwest Australia1

Barwick (1990) finds that, in Central Australian performance, whilst text and melody in isolation are relatively fixed, ‘there is immense variability in their combination, which is accomplished by what may be crudely characterised as a process of expansion and contraction of the melody to accommodate texts of different lengths’ (Barwick 1990:61). Following musicological examinations by both Barwick (Barwick 1989, 1990 and 1995) and Keogh (Keogh 1995) which focus on identifying principles that underlie this process of expansion and contraction, the paper presented here looks at songs of the junba genre, composed and performed by Ngarinyin elder, Scotty Martin, in the North central Kimberley. In addition, it is suggested in this paper that the style of musicological analysis developed by Barwick and Keogh has relevance beyond the discipline of musical analysis, as its results allow the analyst and reader to begin to trace relationships between creative processes active in the moment of performance with ‘patterns and rules’ evident in other aspects of the music‐makers' ways of being in the world.     

Levallois Lithic Technology from the Kapthurin Formation,Kenya: Acheulian Origin and Middle Stone Age Diversity

The earliest fossils of Homo sapiens are reported from in Africa in association with both late Acheulian and Middle Stone Age (MSA) artifacts. The relation between the origin of our species during the later Middle Pleistocene in Africa and the major archaeological shift marked by the Acheulian-MSA transition is therefore a key issue in human evolution, but it has thus far suffered from a lack of detailed comparison. Here we initiate an exploration of differences and similarities among Middle Pleistocene lithic traditions through examination of Levallois flake production from a sequence of Acheulian and MSA sites from the Kapthurin Formation of Kenya dated to ∼200–500 ka. Results suggest that MSA Levallois technology developed from local Acheulian antecedents, and support a mosaic pattern of lithic technological change across the Acheulian-MSA transition.Les premiers restes fossiles d’Homo sapiens sont rapportés d’Afrique aussi bien à des avec des outillages de l’Acheuléen final que du Middle Stone Age (MSA). La relation entre l’origine de notre espèce au Pléistocène moyen final d’Afrique et le changement majeur marquée par la transition Acheuléen-MSA est par conséquent un moment clé de l’évolution humaine qui a manqué jusqu’ici d’analyses comparatives détaillées. Nous nous proposons ici de commencer à explorer les différences et les similarités qui peuvent se faire jour au Pléistocène moyen dans les traditions techniques à l’examen des productions à éclats Levallois, dans une séquence de sites acheuléens et MSA de la formation de Kapthurin (Kenya), datée de 200–500 ka. Les resultants obtenus suggèrent que la technologie Levallois MSA s’est développée sur ce substrat acheuléen et renforce cette perception que l’on peut avoir d’une mosa?que de changements technologiques jalonnant la transition Acheuléen-MSA.     

Negotiated Agreements,Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industry in the Salar de Atacama,Chile: When Is an Agreement More than a Contract?

While acknowledging advances in legal recognition of Indigenous rights, much of the research literature positions negotiated agreements between Indigenous peoples and corporations simply as ‘neoliberal technology’ that gives the appearance of Indigenous consent while allowing exploitation to continue. This analysis is flawed in considering agreements as discrete, stand-alone phenomena. It ignores the possibility that Indigenous peoples may use agreements as part of broader strategies to achieve control over extractive industry activity and to secure a share of ‘development’ benefits — strategies that involve selective engagement with the state. This article supports its argument by locating an agreement between the Chilean lithium mining company, Albemarle, and the Council of Atacameño Peoples within a broad and sustained strategy by Atacameño people to address the negative impacts of mining in the Salar de Atacama, Chile, while securing its economic benefits. This strategy includes using the agreement to voice Atacameño territorial claims and environmental concerns to the state, and to insist that the state lives up to its responsibilities. The analysis leads to a fuller appreciation of the agency exercised by Indigenous peoples in dealing with the sustained expansion of extractive activity on their territories, and a more nuanced understanding of negotiated agreements between Indigenous peoples and mining corporations and between Indigenous people and the state.     

Book reviews

THE ALLIED OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 1945–1952: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WESTERN‐LANGUAGE MATERIALS. R.E. Ward and F.J. Shulman. American Library Assoc., Chicago, 1974. 876 pp. 0–8389–0127–1. $US50.

AUSTRALIAN COMMENTARIES: SELECT ARTICLES FROM THE ROUND TABLE 1911–1942. L.L. Robson (ed.). Melbourne University Press, 1975. xi + 212 pp. $12.60.

APPROACHES TO ASIA: Australian Postwar Policies and Attitudes. Gordon Greenwood and Pamela Bray. McGraw‐Hill Book Company, Sydney, 1975. XII + 612 pp. 0–07–093308–1. $17.95.

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY: An Australian Reader. John J. Ray (ed.). Australian and New Zealand Book Co., Sydney, 1974. xxix pp, 402 pp. 0 85552 029 9. paper. $6.95.

PAKISTAN UNDER CHALLENGE. L.F. Rushbrook Williams. Stacey International, London, 1975. 224 pp. incl. appendices. 0 9503304–1 8. hardback $3.90. 0 9503304–2 6. paperback $2.50.

LABOUR, RACE, AND COLONIAL RULE: THE COPPERBELT FROM 1924 TO INDEPENDENCE. Elena L. Berger. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974. 257 pp. 0–19–821690–4. $19.30.

THE NATIONAL INCOME OF WESTERN SAMOA. Ian J. Fairbairn. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1973, 215 pp. 0–19–550389–9. $12.00.

BOUGAINVILLE AN NATIONALISM: Aspects of Unity and Discord. Alexander Mamak and Richard Bedford with Leo Hannett and Moses Havini. Bourgainville Special Publication, No. 1. Christchurch, 1974. $NZ2.50. (Distributed by Bougainville Special Publications, c/‐ Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.)

THE BALTIC DILEMMA: THE CASE OF THE DE JURE RECOGNITION BY AUSTRALIA OF THE INCORPORATION OF THE BALTIC STATES INTO THE SOVIET UNION. Edgars Dunsdorfs. Robert Speller and Sons, Publishers, Inc., New York, 1975. 302 pp. 0–8315–0148–0.