Polylinear incursions and autochthonous adaptations: Neolithisation and sustainable sedentarisation of the Arabian Peninsula

This contribution’s broad and in parts essayistic approach to Arabia’s Neolithic is less a discussion of findings than an explicit advocacy for future holistic research strategies. Based on the contribution’s meta-theoretical inputs, it suggests two sets of theses to be tested by the hitherto gained fragmentary information and future research on Arabia’s Neolithic. It aims to encourage an “emancipation” of Arabia’s early to mid-Holocene research from conceptions developed outside its regions, and to identify the Neolithic elements and developments of the Arabian lands by distinguishing incursions from primarily autochthonous and/or autonomous adaptations in their own right. It is suggested that productive lifeways are considered to be the only crucial parameter to testify a Neolithic status. In our view this is the case, provokingly enough, for the productive foraging management of natural resources which attests surplus and pre-planning strategies and contacts with established Neolithic socio-economies. Polylinear incursions and autochthonous adaptations are discussed as the two poles between which early to mid-Holocene developments in Arabia took place. A set of basic and a set of trajectory hypotheses on Arabia’s neolithisation and finally sustainable sedentarisation (reliance on oases economies) is presented, offered as a possible framework for future multi-/ transdisciplinary research.     

Towards transnational feminist queer methodologies

This article introduces the possibilities of transnational feminist queer research as seeking to conceptualise the transnational as a methodology composed of a series of flows that can augment feminist and queer research. Transnational feminist queer methodologies can contest long-standing configurations of power between researcher and researched, subject and object, academics and activists across places, typically those which are embedded in the hierarchies of the Global North/Global South. Beginning with charting our roots in, and routes through, the diverse arenas of transnational, feminist, participatory and queer methodologies, the article uses a transcribed and edited conversation between members of the Liveable Lives research team in Kolkata and Brighton, to start an exploration of transnational feminist queer methodologies. Understanding the difficult, yet constructive moments of collaborative work and dialogue, we argue for engagements with the multiplicities of ‘many-many’ lives that recognise local specificities, and the complexities of lives within transnational research, avoiding creating a currency of comparison between places. We seek to work toward methodologies that take seriously the politics of place, namely by creating research that answers the same question in different places, using methods that are created in context and may not be ‘comparable’. Using a dialogue across the boundaries of activism/academia, as well as across geographical locations, the article contends that there are potentials, as well as challenges, in thinking ourselves through transnational research praxis. This seeks complexities and spatial nuances within as well as between places.     

Ruy Cinatti,the French–Portuguese mission and the construct of East Timor as an ethnographic site*

The French–Portuguese Ethnological Mission to Portuguese Timor (1966/1969) financed by French and Portuguese research bodies and initially directed by Louis Berthe was the first mission that conducted lengthy and thorough ethnographic research in East Timor vernaculars and with East Timorese communities. Using personal and scientific archives, printed and oral sources, this article analyses the mission’s background, the role of Ruy Cinatti (a Portuguese poet, former colonial official in Timor and anthropologist trained in Oxford) in its launch, and its political and scientific context. The mission, undertaken during the Portuguese late colonial period and subject to the Portuguese authorities’ approval and surveillance, marked East Timor as a site of anthropological inquiry into the Anthropology of European tradition produced in Southeast Asia, affiliated to post-war structuralism. This case study throws light on individual agency, Portugal’s shortcomings in modern anthropology training, the international competition for Portuguese Timor as part of the Indonesian “field of ethnological study” and the transnational connections in its construction in the era of decolonization.     

Re-examining the Australian public's attitude to military casualties: post-heroic or defeat-phobic?

Australia, like most other developed democracies, is often alleged to suffer from ‘casualty phobia’. The perception that the Australian public will not tolerate casualties in foreign conflicts has shaped the decisions of both civilian and military policy makers. Measures taken to protect Australian forces from casualties may, for instance, also serve to increase the risk to civilians in the country to which they are deployed. The USA underwent a similar debate some years ago. Innovative public opinion research techniques—especially ‘survey experiments’ which allow researchers to establish causal relationships by consciously manipulating one variable while holding others constant—have established that the American public are not reflexively casualty-phobic and that the impact of casualties on public opinion can be outweighed by other factors, such as the public's confidence in the mission's overall success. In this article, the author replicates one of the key survey experiments from the US debate, suitably adapted to Australian conditions, with a nationally representative sample of Australian voters. The author finds that the same pattern holds in Australia as in the USA: casualties do lower public support for a given mission, but the mission's chances of success matter more.     

曹仲达与“曹家样”研究

本文重新研究曹仲达与“曹家样”,考订了曹氏的生卒年及其可考的生平,认为他有着由南(朝)入北(朝)的经历。本文从画史所载曹氏师承入手,发现代表南梁新画风的张僧繇和来自中亚西域的塞特(壮)勤是其师承的重要来源,从而进一步探讨了“曹家样”的形成问题,认为“曹家样”是南、北二源以及其他复杂的社会、宗教、文化身份认同等因素共同作用的结果。本文还对长时段、大范围内相关的图像遗存进行考察,重新勾勒了“曹家样”的面貌。在对这一具体问题研究的基础上,作者提倡在后现代之后风格史研究的一种可能与方向——厚背景研究法。     

《河南通史》评议

《河南通史》是河南省“八五”社会科学规划重点项目成果,填补了河南地区没有地方通史的空白。该书在研究特色上有自己的特点和优长之处,也有较高的学术价值。主要表现在:既在全国整体中写河南,又注意突出河南地方特色;注重中国古代历史上的一些重大问题的研究;资料翔实,既广泛运用典型的正史资料,又充分使用方志资料,并重视使用考古资料,实现了考古与文献资料的结合;注意吸收学术界的最新成果,观点多有创新。不足之处是,某些观点还有可商榷之处,各卷之间的布局不够均衡,某些部分显得单薄。     

基于居民移动-活动行为的城市空间研究

在以人为本及后现代思潮的大背景下,人文地理学研究越来越关注个体人的行为以及生活质量问题,基于居民移动-活动行为的城市空间研究正成为人文地理及城市规划学等学科的焦点。论文在对城市活动空间研究及城市交通出行研究中的问题进行梳理的基础上,提出一个基于居民移动-活动行为的城市空间研究新框架,强调行为与空间之间的互动关系,强调RP法和SP法的结合,强调现实行为、现实空间与理想行为、理想空间之间的和谐。     

毛泽东与中国科学技术的自主研发

毛泽东将科学技术视为革命者完成自身历史使命的重要工具,他洞见先进技术在后发国家追赶发达国家中的作用,将大力发展科学技术视为国家的重要职能,在西方国家封锁禁运、苏联毁约的困境下,千方百计引进先进科技并努力促进自主研发,果断地发展高科技产业,提高中华民族的国际地位,为中国进一步发展打下了基础。回顾毛泽东与中国科学技术自主研发的历程,有助于我们深刻认识和实践新形势下中共中央、国务院做出的建设创新型国家的重大战略决策。     

计量经济分析方法在国外旅游研究中的应用——基于ATR和TM所载文献的统计分析

本文对国外旅游界最具影响力的两大旅游研究刊物Annals of Tourism Research（ATR）（1974—2005）和Tourism Management（TM）（1980—2005）中运用计量经济分析方法的122篇文献进行了全面回顾。在对计量经济分析方法的构成情况及应用领域进行统计分析的基础上,对其在国外旅游研究中的应用演进情况做了归纳和概括。研究发现,计量经济分析方法正逐渐成为国外学者进行旅游研究的主要手段之一,其中回归模型、时间序列模型和面板数据模型是最常用的手段;方法的应用主要集中在旅游需求研究方面,其次是旅游产业与环境关系研究、旅游供给研究。从研究方法的应用演进来看,经过30多年的发展,从静态的零星运用到比较系统的、动态的多种方法的整合运用,计量经济分析方法在旅游研究中的应用日渐成熟。     

Forum: Cultural Geography and Cultural Studies

This forum discusses linkages between cultural geography and allied ‘cultural’ disciplines. A symposium on this topic – held at the 2005 conference of the Institute of Australian Geographers in Armidale – was triggered by the targeted inclusion of geography in a cross‐disciplinary network funded by the Australian Research Council. Although non‐geographers in the network have articulated strong interest in and an enthusiasm for geography, their knowledge of, and everyday participation in its disciplinary travails have been limited. Given this, the papers in the forum review geography's long and dynamic consideration of the relations between place and culture, and raise a set of key issues for geographers to consider: how we might interact with other disciplinary debates about the ‘cultural’, retain distinctiveness as the home of intellectual inquiry around issues of space and place, and leverage opportunities to forge more permanent connections to geographers working not in our traditional institutional settings, but in a range of research centres, schools and disciplinary homes.