2. SOME KEYWORDS TOWARD DECOLONIAL METHODS: STUDYING SETTLER COLONIAL HISTORIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL VIOLENCE FROM TKARONTO

This article provides keywords and reflections for decolonial methods, drawing on insights from the Indigenous-led Land and the Refinery project, which concerns the history of Canada's Chemical Valley. This project is crucially organized as Indigenous people co-researching the Imperial Oil Refinery, not as academics studying Aamjiwnaang, and asks how Indigenous and decolonial methods might reorient the use of archives toward other futures. Together, the keywords begin to outline a particular place-based theory of change within decolonial historical practice.     

The Unflinching Mr. Smith and the Nuclear Age**

This article focuses on the U.S. diplomat and nuclear arms control negotiator Gerald (Gerry) Coat Smith in order to cast new light on the importance of diplomats in the context of the set of international activities currently labelled as “science diplomacy.” Smith, a lawyer by training, was a key negotiator in many international agreements on post-WW2 atomic energy projects, from those on uranium prospecting and mining, to reactors technologies to later ones on non-proliferation and disarmament. His career in science (nuclear) diplomacy also epitomized the shortcomings of efforts to align other countries’ posture on nuclear affairs to U.S. wishes. In particular, the unswerving diplomat increasingly understood that strong-arm tactics to dissuade other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons would not limit proliferation. Not only did this inform later U.S. diplomacy approaches, but it lent itself to the ascendancy of the new notion of “soft power” as critical to the re-definition of international affairs.     

河南渑池县仰韶村遗址考古勘探报告

为配合仰韶村国家考古遗址公园建设,2019年3~5月,河南省文物考古研究院等单位对河南渑池仰韶村遗址进行了系统性考古勘探工作。遗址包含仰韶文化和龙山文化时期的聚落,主要遗迹有壕沟、房址等,基本搞清了遗址的范围,仰韶、龙山时期的聚落规模、面积、重要遗迹分布、聚落布局和功能分区等情况,对该遗址的聚落形态及发展演变等有了较全面的认识。     

Warlords’ Rainmaking: Religion,Science, and Legitimating Governance in Early Republican China

This article uses case studies to examine the rainmaking activities of provincial military governors during a historical period when a decentralized China suffered from frequent droughts. On the one hand, it analyzes why their rainmaking has been interpreted in a very negative light and demonstrates that progressive intellectuals writing in the Republican-era (1912–49) print media were crucial to fostering misunderstandings of the rainmaking activities of these “warlords” as superstitious and backward. On the other hand, it argues that public ceremonies of praying for rain served as a crucial venue for the military governors to perform their local authority and make a claim to political legitimacy. Some of them pursued efficacy by all possible means, including experimenting with Western “scientific” rainmaking techniques of concussion and fire, which suggests that their rainmaking efforts were not merely a utilization of traditionalism, but drew from a complex and eclectic rainmaking culture emerged in early twentieth-century China. In an age when truly effective weather modification methods had not yet been discovered, the highly visible public rainmaking activities of warlords, regardless of results, constituted an integral and important dimension of their local governance, particularly in desperate times, amidst prolonged and severe droughts when popular feeling was unsettled and volatile.     

The changing nature of GIS and the provision of formal GIS education in the UK: a case study

The arrival of the term Geographical Information System (GIS) in the 1960s soon created a demand for training and education in the use of this specialist hardware and software. Initially the main focus was on training people to use GIS, formal named degree programmes leading to postgraduate and undergraduate qualifications arrived later. This paper explores the changing landscape of U.K. degree level GIS education drawing on contemporary information from Higher Education Institution websites and a case study of the first single honours degree in GIS in Europe. The paper identifies a rise and fall in the number of named undergraduate “GIS” degrees since the late 1980s sandwiched between the continuation and development of postgraduate qualifications. In parallel with this trend the teaching and learning of GIS skills has emerged as a core component of undergraduate degree programmes with “Geography” in their title and in national school and degree level benchmarking statements for the discipline.     

Touch in anthropometry: Enacting race in Dutch New Guinea 1903–1909

Starting from the idea that race is an assemblage, the author investigates two instances of touch in anthropometry. Firstly, the detailed instructions for mechanized measurements of “the living”. Second, the practices involved in actual measurements of Papuans in Dutch New Guinea during two expeditions in 1903 and 1909.     

Towards a trickster science/fiction: complexifying boundaries with Neal Stephenson and Michel Serres

ABSTRACT

This article highlights an intersection between the science fiction of Neal Stephenson and the science philosophy of Michel Serres. As two of the most prolific contemporary advocates of the communication between literature and science, Serres and Stephenson employ permutations of the trickster figure as a potent lens on the epistemological transformations that occur when boundaries are crossed and static systems perturbed. Allegorizing the birth of science and rational consciousness as the intervention of a trickster, Stephenson finds in hackers and couriers the same generative force that Serres associates with the Greek god Hermes and the figure of the parasite. With particular attention to Stephenson’s postcyberpunk novel Snow Crash (Stephenson, Neal. 1992. Snow Crash. London: Penguin Books) and Serres’ Hermes series (1969–1980), the concept of the trickster will be explored as both a personification of the kinship between creation mythologies, information theory, anthropology, and modern physics, and as the template for a productive transdisciplinary mode of cultural inquiry.     

From folk history to empathy: contesting heritage values in Chinchero,Peru

In the small Peruvian, Quechua-speaking town of Chinchero, processes of heritagization of the Pre-Hispanic legacy encouraged by the State and supported by the tourist industry have been trying to create among the population an obligation of historical and emotional identification with their Inca ancestors. This operation has been mainly effected through the territorial transformation of the vernacular space of the Inca ruins into an archaeological site for tourism consumption. The operation has left out other histories grounded in grassroots events, like the struggle for the land against the abusive landowners that took place during colonial times. More than the distant history of the Incas, it is this kind of more recognisable and meaningful folk history what people remember the most and what largely constitutes the fabric of social memory in Chinchero. It is precisely folk history what forms the basis for local heritage values that, unlike what happens with the Inca remains, express intense affective ties with the physicality of other non-archaeological spaces. In light of these developments, the author explores how the people of Chinchero are contesting official versions of heritage and history by foregrounding the emotional power of their own heritage values.     

‘To Prostitute the Elements’: Weather Control and Weaponisation by US Department of Defense

The US military has a long and robust history of scientific research programs, often conducted in conjunction with civilian scientists at non-military governmental agencies as well as universities. These programs flourished in the immediate post-Second World War and the early cold war years, as the field of military science expanded to address the sprawling Soviet threat. One area of growth was in atmospheric science, which had already taken off preceding Second World War in conjunction with the growth of air warfare. Advances in meteorology, cloud science and climatology enabled military interests to align with weather forecasters and also agricultural interests, as old ideas about cloud seeding and weather control were revived in the light of new research. The military, largely through the Air Force, advanced a series of projects investigating the potential of weather and climate control, manipulation, and ultimately weaponisation. These programs, which were sometimes linked to US Department of Agriculture programs aimed at improving agricultural production, persisted for decades. Some of the newly developed tools were deployed: local climate manipulation efforts during the Vietnam conflict were aimed at impeding traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, with mixed results. Significant efforts came during the Weather Bureau leadership of Francis W. Reichelderfer, whose papers contain a wealth of information about efforts ranging from cloud seeding to proposals to drop atomic weapons on hurricanes. These papers, along with those of Weather Bureau scientist Harry Wexler, provide a fascinating window to a time when the US military and scientific establishment seemed poised to grasp the levers of power over nature itself. This paper describes these little-studied programs, and situates these efforts within the broader military science programs accompanying the emergence of air warfare, as well as post-war science programs aimed at countering the Soviet challenge.     

WHAT IS HISTORY? WHAT IS LITERATURE?

Ivan Jablonka seeks something other than a mere combination of history, social science, and literature. He would like history, itself understood as a social science, to be a literature of the real world. He is also interested in literature informed not only by the results but, more important, by the forms of reasoning and inquiry of history and related social sciences (notably anthropology and sociology). Jablonka's own positioning within the Annales seems obvious, notably in his stress on cognition, problem‐oriented research, and the status of history as a social science. But the attention and research devoted in the work of scholars in and around the Annales to the relations among history, literature, and fiction have not been pronounced, and in this context Jablonka inflects the understanding of history in relatively underdeveloped directions. Despite possible disagreements one may have over specific issues, Jablonka's thought‐provoking book raises very important questions, opens many significant avenues of inquiry, and seeks a desirable interaction between historical and literary approaches.