“Punching Above its Weight”. The Mafikeng Anti-Repression Forum (Maref) and the Fall of Bophuthatswana

Abstract

This article traces the history of the Mafikeng Anti-Repression Forum (Maref) that operated in the former homeland of Bophuthatswana from early 1990 to late 1994. It was the only human rights organisation in Bophuthatswana. Maref's work was in five areas. Firstly, it monitored human rights abuses as a consequence of political repression in the homeland. Secondly, it responded to these abuses by means of disseminating the facts behind them. Thirdly, it attempted to defend the interests of the victims by means of seeking legal redress and relief from suffering and deprivation. Fourthly, it agitated for political change in Bophuthatswana in accordance with the changing nature of political reform in South Africa as a whole. Lastly it collated and published the information that formed an essential component of the negotiations that led to the new dispensation in 1994. For these activities, Maref members were severely harassed. The role the organisation played generally has received little analysis or comment, and is deserving of a place in the annals of human rights activities and activists during this period of transformation and upheaval in South Africa.     

The Evolution and Destruction of Oorlam Communities in the Rustenburg District of South Africa: The Cases of Welgeval and Bethlehem, 1850s–1980

Abstract

This is a study of two Oorlam communities in the Rustenburg district. The one, Welgeval, was predominantly rural, the other Bethlehem, otherwise known as the Oorlam Locasie, in Rustenburg town itself, was mostly urban in character. They were situated no more than 60 kilometres apart. They were both off-springs of Boer, later Afrikaner society, and, to a lesser extent, of attachment to missionaries. They both survived for approximately the same duration, and both were victims, in slightly different ways, of apartheid. There was some known contact between the two communities. The emergence of their respective histories has rested in part on land restitution claims, which like many across South Africa, have brought to light previously forgotten or uncovered remembrances. There are, therefore, significant points of similarity and comparison between them. This article further complements the existing literature of previous scholars on the Oorlam by uncovering the experiences of two more sites of Oorlam occupation. Finally a study of the two communities raises interesting issues regarding their identity and the ways in which they have remembered and reconstructed their pasts.     

Picturing knowledge: Chinese brushwork illustrations of Western natural history in a late Qing periodical, 1907–1911

In recent years, a number of studies have examined the introduction of Western learning into China after the late nineteenth century. Many of these works discuss how Chinese scholarship might have been reshaped by Western classification and structure of knowledge, and ask how it absorbed and adopted the vocabulary and language of Western learning. While defining the newly emerged idea of “national essence”, late Qing Chinese literati, notably the members of the Society for Preserving National Learning, also tried to incorporate Western scientific knowledge, as they understood and perceived it, into the framework of Chinese learning. From 1907–1911, more than a hundred botanical and zoological illustrations, drawn more or less according to Western scientific norm, appeared in Guocui xuebao, a journal published by the Society for Preserving National Learning. These pictures are an indication of the attempts made by late Qing Chinese literati to integrate Chinese and Western scholarship. Focusing on these drawings, this paper examines how the painter Cai Shou might have adopted and applied the natural history knowledge and the drawing techniques he acquired through various means. It also asks with what ideal late Qing and early Republican Chinese literati might have identified themselves.     

William speirs bruce,the ben nevis observatory,and antarctic meteorology

Following his participation in an expedition to the Weddell Sea (1892–1893), William Speirs Bruce determined to undertake further polar research and sought training and experience in such techniques and methodologies as might prove useful to him in securing opportunities to participate in future expeditions. During 1895–1896 he worked at the Ben Nevis Observatory gaining experience of meteorological research. The experience he gained in the design and operation of an observatory in a harsh environment he was later to apply when he established an observatory on Laurie Island, South Orkneys. This paper draws on a recently discovered archival source (Swinney (2001) to re‐examine Brace's involvement with the Ben Nevis Observatory.     

Doing is Learning: Analysis of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Adapt TEK/IK Methodology to Norwegian Sámi Circumstances

Abstract

This article describes a case where an attempt was made to introduce TEK/IK into a conflict between Sámi reindeer owners and environmental institutions. The conflict was brought on by the establishment of a national park in Southern Sámi areas in Norway. At first, the Sámi were in favour of the park, but later on their attitudes changed as the content of planned national park developed. The reindeer owners discovered that the size of the park would be reduced, leaving out what they thought were significant areas in need of protection. They saw the encouragement of increased tourism activities as a threat to reindeer herding and felt alienated by the number of representatives they received in the park management structures. On the basis of these observations reindeer owners protested, but were ignored. As researchers well-established in the Southern Sámi area, we were brought into conversations regarding the park as the local reindeer owners searched for ways of bringing new arguments into the process. At this point we thought TEK/IK represented an opportunity to add weight to Sámi perspectives. As the title of this article indicates, as push came to shove we did not succeed in making room for local participation in our TEK/IK project, despite these existing on-going relations. The article attempts to understand what happened. Our analysis is based upon a perception of TEK/IK as not one, but at least two co-constituted knowledge practices. The premise is that research failures are as important to publish as successes. Our joint ethnographic experience has methodological implications for future TEK/IK research.     

Contesting Keweenaw: competing visions of landscape aesthetics at Keweenaw National Historical Park

Keweenaw National Historical Park (hereafter KNHP) is one of a periodically growing list of partnership parks developed in response to changing ideals of what the National Park Service ought to preserve and interpret. Established in 1992, KNHP and some other newer parks are intended by Congress to be public–private partnerships. This paper illuminates how KNHP stakeholders used information vacuums to intensify competing narratives regarding landscapes in a partnership park. Ethnographic fieldwork illustrates that stakeholders’ competing narratives complicate KNHP's management. Furthermore, this case study highlights the need for historic preservation professionals to build trust and to communicate effectively with all stakeholders in communities with historic preservation programs. Within a social group, insiders’ knowledge construction guides ideas of landscape aesthetics.     

A park of the people: the demotion of Platt National Park,Oklahoma

Platt National Park, Oklahoma, was the smallest national park in the United States until it was combined with an adjacent, reservoir-centered recreation site in 1976 to form Chickasaw National Recreation Area. Set aside as Sulphur Springs Reservation by agreement with the Chickasaw Indians in 1902 and designated a national park in 1906, Platt is the only American national park to be demoted since World War II. The story of Platt's creation and demotion reflects the changing mission of the National Park Service (NPS), shifting images of nature and recreation among the American public, and broader social forces that frame park purposes. What started as local boosterism of hydrotherapy in cold mineral springs grew into one of America's most visited national parks by the 1920s. Despite its popularity, Platt lacked both scenic grandeur and political influence; it did not fit prevailing images of wild nature among NPS bureaucrats and the urban elite who formed the core of the environmental movement; it was too small, too humanized, and too ordinary. As images of people embedded in nature have gained wider acceptance in recent decades, would this small, geographically distinctive, and culturally rich “park of the people” have met a similar fate today?     

Residential versus civic use in the Pueblo II-III period: A case study from the Harlan Great Kiva site in the Goodman Point area of southwestern Colorado

Abstract

Sites recorded during survey that were occupied or used for long periods of time often present problems in determining when particular activities may have occurred, and what types of activities correspond to which periods of use. The Harlan Great Kiva site, in southwestern Colorado, provides an opportunity to examine sequential residential and civic use of one ancestral Pueblo period site over a period of 250 to 300 years. Pottery recovered during test excavations suggests that it may be possible to recognize changing types of use from surface remains recorded during survey. This analysis may prove useful for survey-level studies of long-lived sites with recognizable civic architecture at the surface.     

‘Wanderer,kommst du nach Pforta …’: the tension between Classical tradition and the demands of a Nazi elite-school education at Schulpforta and Ilfeld, 1934–45

This paper explores the tensions which arose when Schulpforta, Germany's leading humanistic boarding school, was forcibly turned into a Nazi elite school (a Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt, or Napola). The time-honoured traditions of Christianity and enlightened humanism previously cultivated at the erstwhile Landesschule zur Pforta (alma mater of Fichte, Ranke and Nietzsche) were swiftly subordinated to the demands of National Socialist ideology. Schulpforta, a former monastic foundation, was radically dechristianised, and the school's Classical curriculum soon served only to emphasise those aspects of Greco-Roman Antiquity which could ‘help the Third Reich achieve its destiny’, portraying the Greeks and Romans as proto-National Socialists, pure Aryan ancestors of the modern German race. The Napola curriculum focused on sport and pre-military training over academic excellence, and contemporary documentary evidence, memoirs and newly obtained eyewitness testimony all suggest that the Napola administration wished to assimilate Pforta with any other Napola. This idea is borne out by comparing the case of Napola Ilfeld, a former Klosterschule (monastery school) with a similar history. By the mid-1940s, Ilfeld had lost almost all connection with its humanistic past. Ultimately, we can see the erosion and Nazification of these schools' Christian and humanistic traditions as exemplifying in microcosm tendencies which were prevalent throughout the Third Reich.