The Challenges of Financial Responsibility in the Tribal Administration of Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1919–1966

Abstract

This account of tribal finances in Bechuanaland Protectorate under British colonial rule argues that while the treasury dispensation made the tribes responsible for their finances, it also brought about a new dynamic and challenge in tribal communities as a result of a new monetary and financial system. Little or inadequate remuneration led to low morale, theft, and the employment of incompetent personnel in some instances. The colonial authority needed the chiefs to run tribal affairs and for political stability. As a result, chiefs often escaped unpunished whenever they were involved in peculation of funds. On the other hand, when tribal revenue workers did the same they were harshly dealt with. Efficiency and corruption in the treasury system differed from one area to another and was dependent on the character of the chief in the area.     

The Early Bronze Age funerary archaeological landscape of western Ja'alan: results of three seasons of investigation

This paper presents the results of three seasons of investigations in the western part of Ja'alan in the southern al‐Sharqyiah Governorate in the Sultanate of Oman. The results highlight the importance of this part of Ja'alan during the Early Bronze Age (EBA), particularly the Hafit period and provide us with important information about the funerary archaeological landscape during this period. The results also reveal important aspects of landscape utilisation and occupation during this time and add to our knowledge of the cultural and economic facets of the earliest Bronze Age societies. The distribution of tombs in the landscape suggests that they were constructed by nomadic or semi‐nomadic pastoral groups that shifted from one location to another in search of grazing for their livestock. The availability and seasonality of natural resources such as water, pasture and game made it necessary for them to mark their tribal territory with their funerary structures.     

乡镇地域多功能性评价与主导功能定位——以金湖县为例

地方乡镇发展正面临着主体功能区规划要求下的功能再定位,客观评价乡镇地域多功能性是科学确定乡镇主导功能的关键。从县域视角,乡镇地域具有农业生产、非农业生产、社会保障、文化传承和生态保护等多种功能,选取表征各功能强弱的"态"指标和反应功能发展变化趋势的"势"指标,构建了县域乡镇地域多功能性评价指标体系以及单项功能位评价模型、多功能综合多维评价模型和主导功能判定的四象限分析模型。以金湖县为例对各乡镇的多功能性进行评价,并基于评价结果确定了各镇的主导功能。     

Terr(it)or(ies) of Peace? The Congolese Mining Frontier and the Fight Against “Conflict Minerals”

This article traces the geography of the “conflict minerals” campaign and its impact on artisanal mining in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a region that currently emerges as a pioneer case of traceability and due diligence efforts with regard to the exploitation and trade in tantalum, tungsten and tin. We subsequently analyse the opening and attempted closure of the Congolese resource frontier in the context of recent market reform, and we describe how this process has accompanied a transnational corporate–government nexus bent on monopolising Congo's artisanal 3 T resources. Specifically, we argue how the conflict minerals campaign and its implementation “on the ground” has brought about a harmful, disruptive logic for an artisanal mining sector that is notoriously categorised as unruly, illegal, and informal, but of which upstream stakeholders have in practice been jeopardised by transnational reform. We thus shift the attention from questions on the political economy of “resource wars” towards a deeper understanding of the intersecting spaces of production and regulation that underpin formalisation and traceability of “conflict minerals” in this protracted conflict environment.     

Gendered meanings and everyday experiences of violence in urban Brazil

Violent acts are not random, but are infused with meaning: those intended by the perpetrators and those ascribed by others. This article explores how dominant gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro attempt to manipulate the meanings of violence to maintain their control of territory, presenting themselves as protectors of the community. Gangs impose violent punishment on residents who have breached their rules and behavioural norms. The messages they send out regarding the (un)acceptability of violence against women is highly ambiguous, however, which reduces women's options and increases levels of insecurity. Despite the ambiguity and unpredictability of gang rule, residents refrain from challenging gang control, preferring to moderate their own daily routines as a means to feel secure in the face of high levels of insecurity.     

行政区与功能区嵌套空间的生产与重构——国家尺度重构视角下的深圳特区扩容

我国经济特区的设置具有明显的国家尺度重构特征。深圳经济特区在扩容过程中产生了行政区与功能区嵌套的地理空间。采用 TPSN 组合方法对深圳特区扩容不同阶段的社会空间特征进行比较,发现,不同阶段会形成不同类型的嵌套空间,并且 TPSN组合存在明显的差异。嵌套空间生产与重构的直接动因包括资源协同效应、政策协同效应和综合协同效应,以政治动员网络为主的网络维度在嵌套空间生产与重构过程中扮演着关键角色。研究结果表明,对我国嵌套空间的研究深化了国家尺度重构理论,而在行政区划调整的制度供给进一步收紧的背景下,嵌套空间可视为一种新型的行政区划改革与调整手段。     

5. IMPERIAL SPACES IN PEKKA HÄMÄLÄINEN'S THE COMANCHE EMPIRE

This review focuses on Pekka Hämäläinen's characterization and analysis of the Comanche empire as a spatial category in The Comanche Empire and discusses how this work relates to broader discussions about space and power in borderlands and imperial histories. Although empires have long been central actors in borderlands histories, “empire” has not necessarily been a category of spatial organization and analysis and certainly not one used to describe spaces controlled by Native peoples. By contrast, while Hämäläinen emphasizes the imperial characteristics of the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of Comanche history (as other contributors to this forum discuss), he also uses “empire” to characterize Comanche dominance spatially. Hämäläinen helps us to rethink the spatial dynamics that both shaped and were produced by the encounters between Comanches and Spaniards, French, Mexicans, Americans, and other Native peoples in the Great Plains during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By analyzing how Comanches came to control vast stretches of the southern plains, The Comanche Empire challenges our assumptions about how Native polities and imperial powers (and groups like the Comanches that Hämäläinen argues were both) thought about territorial claims and how they employed more nuanced spatial strategies to assert their authority, extend their cultural influence, and control trade and resources.     

Production of subterranean resources in the Atacama Desert: 19th and early 20th century mining/water extraction in The Taltal district,northern Chile

The Chilean water model imposed by the Chilean dictatorship in 1981 is broadly known as a radical example of neoliberal water management. Several studies have focused their analyses on this model, and its relation to mining, from a political ecology perspective; however, this has minimized the broader historical context. In this paper, we followed a geohistorical standpoint to gain an extensive understanding of the processes of mining development and the related water extraction in the Atacama Desert. By analyzing different official documents, historical sources and scientific discourses of the 19th and early 20th centuries, we aimed to denaturalize the idea of the Atacama Desert as hyper-arid space, rich in mineral resources. By doing so, from a political ecology perspective, and with a critical approach to territory, we interrogated the mining development in the Taltal district (1840–1920). This exercise led us to understand the Atacama Desert as a socially-produced mining territory, or miningscape, where foreign actors have produced hegemonic discourses and uneven materialities. Here, water, minerals, global markets, scientific knowledge, political and legal discourses, and colonialism have inevitably become interwoven in a territorial long-standing production process. Thus, we propose that the production of miningscapes and waterscapes are entangled process in the Andes mining territories. In turn, this process has enabled the reproduction of the Chilean state, capital accumulation, and the consolidation of a modern project at the expense of local populations and rationalities, which have been invisibilized.