Late Cambrian (Iverian,Jiangshanian) fossils from the Professor Range area,Western Tasmania

Abstract

Late Cambrian (Iverian, Jiangshanian) agnostoids and trilobites are described from two localities in the Professor Range area of western Tasmania. The fossils occur within a thick folded flysch succession of siltstone, mudstone, quartzwacke sandstone and siliceous conglomerate that forms the lower part of the Owen Group correlatives in this area. The flysch succession has a conformable and probable gradational contact with the underlying Mt Read Volcanics and is abruptly overlain by the siliceous pebble-cobble conglomerate correlated with the Middle Owen Conglomerate of the West Coast Range. The stratigraphically lower southern locality contains the agnostoids Pseudagnostus sp. and Agnostinae gen. et sp. indet. plus the polymerid trilobites Parabolina sp., Hedinaspis sp. cf. H. regalis and Eugonocare sp. The northern locality contains the agnostoids Rhaptagnostus sp. and Pseudagnostus sp. plus the polymerid trilobites Hedinaspis sp. cf. H. regalis, Ketyna? sp. 1, Ketyna? sp. 2, and Cermatops sp. It is possible that most specimens of the cosmopolitan genus Hedinaspis belong in the type species, H. regalis.

Christopher J. Bentley [bigfossil@bigpond.com], 30 Albert Street, Clare SA 5453; James B. Jago [jim.jago@unisa.edu.au], University of South Australia, School of Natural and Built Environment, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095; Keith D. Corbett [keith.corbett@bigpond.com], 35 Pillinger Drive, Fern Tree Tas 7054, Australia.     

Rural settlement and economic development in Southern Italy: Troia and its contado, c.1020 - c.1230

The history of urban life in Southern Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries was particularly disjointed. At varying points many of the regions' cities were subject to the domination of petty Lombard princes, Byzantine emperors, Norman dukes and, as one passes into the twelfth century, Sicilian kings and German emperors. This paper uses the case of the northern Apulian city of Troia to show that, below this surface of political discontinuity, it is possible to discern a different understanding of an urban history. In highlighting the significance of the economic development of Troia's surrounding territory and the manner in which this created a damaging rivalry with the neighbouring settlement of Foggia, this essay emphasises the need to take into account local (and not only wider-ranging political) influences on the shaping of medieval south Italian urban life. In this context the paper also considers the importance of the development of a stable local government and a burgeoning civic conscience at Troia.     

Imperial Projections & Crisis: The Liberal International Order as a ‘Pseudo-Empire’

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that empire serves as a suitable framework for understanding how and why the liberal international order is exhibiting symptoms of ‘imperial overstretch’. Noting that many of its critics and opponents subscribe to a simplistic and yet powerful narrative that views liberal internationalism as a pseudo-imperial project, it shows that detractors tend to perceive democracy promotion and globalisation as the two main instruments of an order-building endeavour that is remoulding international structures along imperial lines to reflect liberal values and institutions. Within the transatlantic community, critics from the left resent liberal internationalism for its corporate greed, its imperialistic tendencies, wars of intervention, and the veneer of humanitarianism that disguises its ideology of a ‘civilising mission’. Critics from the right fear the erosion of national boundaries and the subversion of the nation-state as a result of mass migration, the dilution of national identities, and the constant meddling of supra-national organisations. Externally, the order is under attack by revisionist states, competitors, and violent non-state actors. Ideological incompatibility and differences in motives notwithstanding, these hostile forces are increasingly united in their struggle against the liberal order – with the risks of its possible disintegration all too familiar to the students of empire.     

Terrace Dissent in Urban Western Sahara: Between Plazas and Homes

Since 2018, domestic Saharawi houses in occupied Western Sahara have become tactical sites for organising dissent. The move to interior spaces came as a collective retreat from the city's public plazas. This retreat from extravagant plazas illustrates that the turn toward interior spaces was a tactic in front of destructive occupation power rather than a withdrawal. This article explores Saharawi spatial production of dissent under two different political moments. I ask, what spaces of dissent do people under occupation animate when the city is mobilised against them? This paper is based on ethnographic engagement with encounters between Saharawis and Moroccan security forces that led Saharawis to construct the house as its own public. I demonstrate interiorising the exterior by analysing homes’ terraces as the new space of urban dissent in the Western Sahara. As such, the terrace appears as a new space and a new tool of and in urban insurgency.     

近代台湾水利工程--以嘉南大圳为例

日本占据台湾后,为了满足本国粮食与糖类的需要,也为侵华战争提供粮食支持,加紧扶持台湾的农业生产。对此,日辖台湾总督府多次颁布有关农业发展的政策并采取一系列措施。在推广优质品种、实行强制性农会组织后,总督府逐渐将重点放到完善和修筑水利工程上。由于原有埤圳模式缺点的暴露以及政府期望更有力地控制公共资源,日辖台湾总督府开始实施官修埤圳政策。台南州的嘉南大圳正是这一时期的代表。     

Neoliberalizing state spaces in postwar Western Europe: The emergence of a new integrative regime of sovereignty

Contrary to recurrent statements that neoliberalism was implemented from the late 1970s in the United Kingdom and United States, this article shows how in fact, this political ideology was rolled out in Western Europe much earlier, in the years following World War II. The experiences of Italy, West Germany and France reveal how some neoliberal reformers took advantage of postwar geopolitical crises to impulse a new spatial regime of sovereignty based on macroregional economic integration and submission of domestic policies to international economic competition. Far from being hegemonic, this neoliberal opening up of state spaces is implemented within the framework of a composite, flexible and ever evolving policy regime. A multifactorial and complex explanatory framework is used to show how neoliberalization in Western Europe takes the shape of a systemic process of macro-regional economic integration.     

Policy and creative strategies: Hong Kong CEPA films in the China market

Abstract

This article examines the creative strategies of Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) films in engagements with the China market under the framework of CEPA introduced in 2004. One of the aims of CEPA for the film sector is to boost co-production between Hong Kong and the mainland. In the past 10 years, CEPA has dramatically changed Hong Kong cinema’s relationship with China in that major film directors have moved to produce CEPA films to tap into the rapidly growing mainland market. This shift has been considered as part of HKSAR’s overall mainlandization and subsequent disappearance of a distinct local identity. This article revisits this view by presenting two case studies to see if indeed Hong Kong CEPA pictures are devoid of Hong Kong elements. The case studies analyze textual elements of two CEPA blockbuster films, The Mermaid (dir. Stephen Chow, 2016) and The Taking of Tiger Mountain 3D (dir. Tsui Hark, 2014). Citing the intertextual allusions to the directors’ old works seen in these two films, the authors argue that the market advantage granted by the CEPA scheme in effect allowed Hong Kong filmmakers to revive and extend signature creative strategies of Hong Kong cinema, despite censorship constraints.     

Climate as resource and challenge: international cooperation in the UNESCO Arid Zone Programme

ABSTRACT

Perceptions of climatic challenges have changed significantly during the twentieth century. In recent decades, the question of global climate change received more attention than regional climatic challenges and the problems of arid regions. Historians have shown that persistent misconceptions and a lack of understanding of arid zones rooted in misguided colonial ideologies were propagated by United Nations (UN) initiatives such as the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Arid Zone Programme. Alarmist narratives of progressive desertification proliferated and put the blame on destructive local practices such as deforestation and overgrazing. This article investigates UNESCO’s interests in natural resources (section 1) and takes a closer look at the development and scientific elements of the Arid Zone Programme (sections 2 and 3). It argues that the Arid Zone Programme offered an effective framework that helped develop and spread new interdisciplinary research approaches to improve knowledge about arid zones. The myth of progressing desertification and misguided colonial expertise characterized much of its political rhetoric, but not its scientific work, which reflected balanced and more critical appraisals of out-dated colonial expertise. In its conclusion, the article suggests that broader contexts need to be taken into account to understand a resurgence of alarmist narratives of desertification such as shifting interests in climatology from local climatic issues to the global atmospheric circulation and a neglect of the climatology of arid zones.     

Comparison of two cluster life stages in a synthetic knowledge base

ABSTRACT

Knowledge flows in clusters are highly important since they are related to innovation. Types and spatial levels of knowledge sources have been studied by many scholars. This study examines knowledge sources from evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary Economic Geography suggests that regional industries and their dynamics co-evolve. While conceptual and empirical studies argue that network characteristics take different characteristics throughout time, and that knowledge sources are subject to change, little is known about in what way they change in a synthetic knowledge base. In this study, we examined the knowledge sources in a specific knowledge base throughout time. The study was applied to two clusters in Turkey in a synthetic knowledge base yet in different life stages: emergence and maturity. The network structure was analysed by social network analysis, hypotheses were tested by Mann–Whitney U-Tests. The findings show that although network structure and density change through maturity, the types and spatial levels of knowledge sources do not vary between the two life stages, they keep the same characteristics of their knowledge bases.     

Shifts Along a Spectrum: A Longitudinal Study of the Western Eurasian Realized Climate Niche

ABSTRACT

Climate niches that modern humans and earlier hominin ancestors occupied have changed dramatically over time, but the extent of those changes has gone largely undocumented. This study investigates the manner in which the realised hominin climate niche has expanded, contracted, or stayed stationary across four time periods (Last Interglacial, Last Glacial Maximum, Mid-Holocene, and 1950–2000) in Western Eurasia. Using spatially gridded general circulation model data and site locations this study examines climate variables from archaeological sites and current Western Eurasian cities to describe both the regional Western Eurasian fundamental and realised climate niches. Changes between the three prehistoric periods and modern-day time period are analysed by calculating each realised niche breadth, overlap, position, and variance. Results indicate that as global temperatures cooled from the Last Interglacial to Last Glacial Maximum, populations expanded their climate niche breadth beyond that of earlier Neanderthal groups, shifting toward regions with less seasonal variation. Conversely, Mid-Holocene humans, who saw the proliferation of both agriculture and population, contracted their realised climate niche space. The contraction and expansion of realised climate niche space illustrates how hominins have evolved the capacity to shift their niche through changes to their subsistence strategy and adaptations to overall climatic conditions.