Plant use and crop husbandry in an early Neolithic village: Vaihingen an der Enz,Baden-Württemberg

Abstract

Rescue excavations carried out during the 1970s at the Iron Age hillfort of Broxmouth in East Lothian produced a small assemblage of fish bone. Despite some uncertainties surrounding the recovery of this material, recent analysis has produced highly unusual results. In particular, the presence of large specimens of ling and other species raises the possibility that the Broxmouth community was, at least periodically, engaged in deep-sea fishing. This suggestion is at variance with present understandings of Iron Age fishing strategies which generally envisage more expedient practices, such as line fishing from the shore. Indeed, it has even been suggested that the consumption of fish was avoided altogether in Iron Age Britain, for religious or cosmological reasons. The composition of the Broxmouth assemblage thus has potentially important implications for our understanding of Iron Age marine exploitation.     

Book reviews

In the context of a shift away from municipal multiculturalism towards community cohesion, and in the light of renewed debates around difference, national identity and Britishness, this article sets out a geographically informed theoretical framework which focuses upon the spatial (re)construction of racial and ethnic identities. The article develops the idea of the everyday as a way of viewing the spatially contingent, complex and negotiated state of inter-ethnic relations in a specific UK city. Not only does this reveal the manner in which strong and stubborn boundaries between social groups are entrenched through the (re)enforcement of spatialised relations of power, but also how accommodations across, between and within difference are realised. Through the employment of empirical material from Leicester, England, the article contends that everyday solidarities emerge from a number of intersecting spatial influences which do not equate to abstract or fixed versions of national belonging.     

Photovoice Evaluated: An Appropriate Visual Methodology for Aboriginal Water Resource Research

Methodologies in human geography are rapidly evolving to include participatory approaches that incorporate other voices and knowledges. Central to these participatory methodologies is the co‐evolution of research objectives, the co‐production of knowledge, joint learning, and capacity building of all those involved. Visual methodologies that use the media of photography are gaining recognition as powerful participatory methods. In this paper, we evaluate whether photovoice is a culturally appropriate and engaging visual methodology, and consider how it can be improved to better facilitate research between non‐Aboriginal researchers and Aboriginal Australians involved in water resource management. We draw from two photovoice projects conducted in partnership with two separate Aboriginal groups in northern Australia. Photovoice methodology in this context was found to be both culturally appropriate and engaging. It facilitated genuine participatory research, empowered participants, and was easily adapted to the field situation. The methodology proved to be a powerful tool that revealed in‐depth information including Aboriginal values, knowledge, concerns, and aspirations for water resource management that may not have been captured through other participatory approaches. Photovoice methodology could be enhanced with a more defined role for the researcher as knowledge broker and as translator and communicator of research outcomes (as deemed appropriate by research participants) to policy makers.     

Legal Geographies of Intellectual Property, ‘Traditional’ Knowledge and Biodiversity: Experiencing Conventions,Laws, Customary Law,and Karma in Thailand

This article explores the existence of customary laws relating to ‘traditional’ knowledge of plants in Thailand through micro‐ethnographic case studies. This is juxtaposed against global and national frameworks of intellectual property laws that have a privatising effect on knowledge under the rubric of discovery or ‘invention’, as well as liability rights approaches of compensation and benefit‐sharing for research access. By understanding scale and legal jurisdiction as socially and politically constructed phenomena, we explore how laws at different scales and in different jurisdictions may override each other, discriminate against foreign laws and practices, and ignore customary laws. In doing so, the paper presents complex legal geographies of plants and associated knowledge, which suggest that the customary laws and norms of Indigenous groups and traditional healers are often ignored by ‘outsiders’. The paper notes that the possibility of ‘injury’ to traditional healers remains considerable without appropriate consent and given the discriminations surrounding knowledge made by patent laws. However, the ethnographies also point to the possibility of local remedies to these injuries through ritual processes, and we note resistant co‐constitutions of law and scale through the Nagoya Protocol.     

民俗、社区与文化:燕京大学社会学的本土化探索

由许仕廉、吴文藻、赵承信等领军的燕大社会学,一直有着本土化的学术自觉。在此探索与实践历程中,先行引入的孙末楠以民俗,尤其是以德型为核心的社会学说,影响深远。在吴文藻那里,社会学的民俗与民俗学的民俗有了级差,并影响到其社区社会学的建设,其指导的毕业论文有了重释风俗、礼俗与民俗的尝试。在"吴门四犬"中,现今湮没无闻的黄迪对孙末楠学说进行了最为系统的诠释。受孙末楠学说的影响,与瞿同祖一道,黄迪对民俗进行了社会学释义,并化用本尼迪克特的"文化模式",与林耀华同期提出"文化重心"这一概念。在燕大社会学实验室平郊村的研究中,与把社区研究等同于社会学调查的赵承信等一道,黄迪将社区-功能论夯实,并强调家、村、镇等不同阶序社区的连带性、一体性。由此,德型、社区与文化也就成为燕大社会学本土化历程中的三个重要面相,并使其有着厚重的民俗学基底。     

THE THERAPEUTIC STATE

State subsidy for the arts in Britain has been determined by a variety of political and social factors over the last two hundred years. This article examines the recent emergence of a therapeutic ethos that has come to shape arts policy in the United Kingdom. It begins with a survey of existing literature describing a shift in Britain’s arts policy since the 1970s. It examines the limitations of existing explanations and suggests another explanatory factor – the growing valorisation of the arts as a therapeutic tool to address social problems. This can be seen in two historically convergent trends: the challenge to cultural authority through the emergence of a therapeutic understanding of creativity, and the reorientation of political activism around issues of culture and wellbeing. Finally, the article considers how and why these ideas became institutionalised in Britain’s main arts policy body – the Arts Council.     

THE FORMATION OF “TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITIES”

This article will explore the multicultural challenges resulting from increasing numbers of migrant workers and foreign (non‐Chinese) brides in Taiwan, and discuss how such outside cultural influences create new forms of cultural expression, identity and citizenship. It will further describe experiences and present theories specific to Taiwan’s experience. Research on “transnational communities” is fairly advanced in Taiwan. “Transnational communities” in Taiwan are expected to “assimilate” quickly into mainstream Taiwanese society, and personal cultural needs and influences are largely ignored. These communities continue to remain isolated from mainstream Taiwanese society, thus making them “invisible” to society as a whole. Therefore, this research hopes to encourage research into “transnational communities” within the field of cultural policy studies and provide a basic picture of the cultural influence and development of these communities in Taiwan.     

Forest as hazard,forest as victim: Community perspectives and disaster mitigation in the aftermath of Kelowna's 2003 wildfires

Situated within the political ecology of hazard, this article is an extended case study of the devastating 2003 wildfires in and around Kelowna, British Columbia (also known as the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire). This article reveals how compliance (or lack thereof) with fire mitigation strategies recommended by provincial, regional, and municipal agencies is complicated by differing social constructions of what constitutes ecologically sustainable forest management and community safety. Three perspectives emerge regarding the urban forests: “nature as hazard”—a volatile force to be controlled; “nature as instrumentally valuable”—a contribution to the character of one's surroundings and subsequent sense of place; and “nature as intrinsically valuable”—a distinct entity to be preserved and protected for its own sake. The article also examines how experiences of disaster influence community perceptions and result in a greater willingness to engage in fire mitigation strategies due to perceptions of heightened vulnerability. Forestry and fire mitigation agencies need to determine multiple courses of action among the varied and valid range of residents’ nature perspectives. The role of human agency in disaster mitigation must be examined, particularly as the risk of fire at the wildland‐urban interface continues to be exacerbated by encroaching human settlements and climate change.     

Beyond Alternative: Exploring the Potential for Autonomous Food Spaces

Abstract: Much attention has been given in recent years to the rise of alternative food networks However, the very concept of “alternative” has come under increasing scrutiny, as theorists grapple with what is meant by alternative and whether the concept adequately captures the key components of such a diverse range of networks and communities. Drawing on poststructuralist political economy, I propose the concept of autonomous food spaces as one possible lens for approaches food‐provisioning activities that situate food within the broader context of non‐capitalist communities seeking to build relationships of mutual aid and non‐market exchanges. I use the examples of a radical collective kitchen, Food Not Bombs, and a community‐supported agriculture operation, Vegetables Unplugged, to explore the potential for autonomous food spaces as part of a broader “politics of possibilities” beyond capitalism.     

David J. Starkey,Chris Reid and Neil Ashcroft: England's Sea Fisheries. The Commercial Sea Fisheries of England and Wales since 1300. Chatham Publishing,London 2000, 272 pages

Abstract

This article explores the management practice of protection notices, fredlysning, in the traditional practice of eider down harvesting in Northern Norway. Previously, private initiatives were legitimate for protecting land and resources from public utilization, while today only the state authorities have this privilege. By juxtaposing empirical material from current eider down harvesting activities with childhood memories of growing up in this area during the 1960s, and available legal documents, the author finds that some quite radical changes have tacitly taken place, indicating rather tense dilemmas concerning local perceptions of land use issues. Analytically, Olwig's distinction between customary and natural law is used as a tool for addressing the political dimensions of the landscape concept historically. In this perspective, fredlysning fluctuates in and out of codified law through the centuries, and under growing impact of natural law rationale. Land issues, both concerning property rights and public access and use of the common resources of the outlying fields, utmarksressurser, are here understood as very powerful means to bind the people to the land, as a way of transforming the legitimate scale of polity, of building bonds to the nation.