Marxist/Feminist Models in the New Guinea Highlands

ABSTRACT The widespread existence of men's houses in Highland New Guinea raises the question as to the existence of the nuclear family in this area. We know that in some cases (e.g. the ‘Sambiah’) a married couple co‐reside, despite the fear of the woman's alleged pollution. In others there may be symbolic isolation of the nuclear family, e.g. by subclassification in kin terminology. The matter is especially important in current kinship studies, wherein Marxist and ‘radical’ feminist models of sociality, which tend to see the nuclear family as a sort of Western aberration, abound.     

Risk and the Sacred: Environment,Media and Public Opinion in Bali

This exploration of controversies over environmental regulation in the Indonesian province of Bali traces the relationship between the media, environmental attitudes and Balinese identity, focusing on the religious dimension of that identity and the ways in which this has become bound up with conceptions of environmental imbalance and a popular critique of capitalist development on the island. The fusion of cultural and environmental metaphors of ‘erosion’ and ‘preservation’ in public discourse is striking in the Balinese case, since sites of great spiritual significance are also attractive to investors for their aesthetic appeal and heritage value (Verschuuren et al. 2010). From the earliest emergence of environmental conflict on the island, the emotive power of cultural identity became intimately connected with environmental politics. This article traces several of the pervasive and interconnected dichotomies ‐ sacred and profane, cultural value and economic interest, environmental preservation and use (exploitation), certainty and uncertainty (risk) ‐ that characterise debates surrounding environmental regulation and development on the island.     

The Militia Ordinance of 1642 and the 14th‐Century Great Statute of Praemunire

This article opens with a review of the important scholarship concerning the conflict over prerogative between the crown and parliament from mid 1641 through the winter of 1642. The resulting impasse was over which of these institutions would control the militia. This article argues that the Militia Ordinance committee was committed to ‘the legal process’ in developing its directive of March 1642. The balance of the study reviews the medieval Statute of Praemunire, its subsequent development, and how that law would have provided an essential basis for the parliament to assume control of the militia. The article concludes that the Long Parliament acted legally with the Great Statute of Praemunire as a reference point for the adoption of the Militia Ordinance. This conclusion rests on five evidentiary considerations: (i) surviving texts of Commons’ private diarists; (ii) the probable role of John Selden in the Militia Ordinance committee deliberations; (iii) the September 1642 publication of John Marsh's An Argument Or, Debate In Law of the Great Question Concerning the Militias; (iv) proposition five of the Nineteen Propositions; and (v) language parallels between the 1393 Great Statute and the Militia Ordinance itself.     

Charles Gleyre's ‘Les Romains’: Classics and nationalism in Swiss art

This article looks at an example of how classical antiquity was used by a nineteenth‐century Swiss painter and explores the national dimension of one of his works. Through an examination of the painting, Les Romains passant sous le joug, its Swiss artist Charles Gleyre and his commission from the canton of Vaud, it will elaborate an example of how a classical legend was transformed in an artistic representation of the nation.