Encounter with the Past: Design Work for a Postcolonial Commemoration

The bicentennial of Captain Vancouver's arrival was the occasion for a series of festivities in Vancouver during the summer of 1992. This paper analyzes the major event commissioned by the city which, contrary to most commemorations of colonial histories, focused on immigrants' experiences of arrival and encounter with local inhabitants. Writing as a member of the firm that was responsible for creating temporary architecture for this event, the author analyzes the attempt to work through notions of heteroglossia in a civic commemoration.     

Bai Jiao 1—the excavation of a Song Dynasty shipwreck in the Dinghai area, Fujian Province, China, 1995

The ships that sail the Southern Sea and south of it are like houses. When their sails are spread they are like great clouds in the sky… The big ship with its heavy cargo has naught to fear of the great waves, but in shallow water it comes to grief (cited in Guy, 1992: 18).     

How to Reform a Reform Coalition: Outreach, Agenda Expansion, and Brokerage in Urban School Reform

Coalitions have always played an advocacy role in policymaking, but they are increasingly regarded as a form of community capacity that can be harnessed to civic ends. As explored in this study of urban school reform in Oakland, California, this civic view of coalitions confronts a tension between the cohesiveness and the inclusiveness of coalitions. Coalitions unified around cohesive goals and beliefs are often narrowly based, which can encourage the formation of rival coalitions. By contrast, reform coalitions that build broad-based support across the community may have difficulty developing coherent reform strategies. Using a social network analysis of key stakeholders to analyze the challenges of building civic capacity in Oakland, we find that the school district's recent reform experience more closely resembles an advocacy coalition than a broad civic coalition. The article then explores strategies for developing a broad civic coalition by expanding the existing advocacy coalition. We use the network analysis to identify opportunities for brokerage across individuals, institutions, and issues.     

Auctoritas as sanctitas: Balthild's depiction as ‘queen-saint’ in the Vita Balthildis

This paper assesses the representation of Queen Balthild of Neustrian Francia in her seventh-century Vita as a new kind of saintly figure, a ‘queen-saint’ rather than as a traditional saint-queen. Balthild made herself unpopular among certain factions of the Frankish nobility during her son's minority by interfering in Church matters. In particular, she compelled bishops to grant episcopal exemptions to monasteries and promoted her own, unpopular, candidates to Neustrian dioceses, leading to her identification as a ‘modern-day Jezebel’ by her enemies, and her banishment to the monastic community at Chelles. Modern scholarship on Balthild, led by Lynda Coon, has assumed that Balthild's biographer was keen to erase from popular memory her actions as queen, actions which could be interpreted as inappropriate behaviour for a saint, and that the Life reflects this by emphasising Balthild's more stereotypical saintly behaviour as a nun once she had retired to Chelles. However, it will be argued that, rather than underlining her humility, the author of the Vita Balthildis was in fact keen to show that her interference in Church matters should be seen as contributing to her identification as a saint, by stressing that her autonomous and authoritative use of her power was actually a positive attribute.     

Constructing Sustainable Rural Landscapes: Oil Mallees and the Western Australian Wheatbelt

This paper considers the landscapes of the Western Australian wheatbelt and the possibilities for sustainability signified by the Oil Mallee Project. The Oil Mallee Project aims to develop commercially viable tree crops for the low rainfall wheatbelt region as a means of profitably managing dryland salinity. Interviews with farmers and other stakeholders in the Oil Mallee Project and agriculture are analysed to reveal important elements of landscape construction in the wheatbelt and stages in the emergence of the Project. These elements include historical land clearing, international chemical and machinery companies and the technologies they supply, land of marginal economic productivity, global food markets and alley farming systems. The paper uses material semiotics and actor‐network theory in describing the networks of relationships that shape wheatbelt landscapes. Breakdowns in the dominant networks of industrial agriculture provide spaces for the Oil Mallee Project to build relationships that reconnect industrial systems to the specific ecology of the wheatbelt landscape. However, the networks of industrial agriculture remain powerful and the Project has worked strategically to become integrated with existing agricultural systems, rather than aiming to directly resist or entirely displace dominant patterns of production in the wheatbelt.     

Shaping childhood risk in post‐conflict rural Northern Ireland

The realities of the ethno‐sectarian conflict have dominated the analysis of social problems within the context of Northern Ireland (NI). As a result of this, issues such as non‐conflict related childhood risk have received less attention than in the remainder of the UK. However, with the rapidly changing agenda of the Peace Process there is now the momentum to take a broader approach to examining Northern Irish society. This paper examines children's own experiences of growing up in rural NI and explores their own and adults' perceptions of the risks that they encounter and the resulting constraints placed on children's activity outside the home. It is evident that the legacy and reproduction of ethno‐sectarian conflict still influences notions of fear and mistrust of ‘an ethno‐sectarian other’. However, as shown within this paper these fears run in parallel with other fears that are constructed around concerns over ‘everyday’ risks that are evident in the range of outdoor play practices reported by the children involved in the study.     

Resource Intensification and Resource Depression in the Pacific Northwest of North America: A Zooarchaeological Review

In the Pacific Northwest of North America, researchers routinely suggest changes in human use of animals explain hunter-gatherer organizational changes and development of cultural complexity. For example, most models developed to explain developing cultural complexity invoke salmon in some fashion. Yet until recently, fish remains were not carefully studied and more generally, zooarchaeological evidence has not been systematically used to test models of culture change. This study reviews the 10,000-year-old faunal record in the Pacific Northwest to test predictions drawn from models of resource intensification, resource depression and hunter-gatherer organizational strategies. The records from two subareas, the South-Central Northwest Coast (Puget Sound/Gulf of Georgia) and the Northern Columbia Plateau, are examined in detail, representing 63 archaeological sites. While minor changes in animal use are evident, the overall record is characterized by stability rather than change.