The Making of Speculative Biodiesel Commodities on the Agroenergy Frontier of the Brazilian Northeast

In this paper, I examine the speculative dimensions of biodiesel production in Northeast Brazil under the National Program for the Production and Use of Biodiesel (PNPB), by focusing on the case of castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) in semi-arid Bahia, a promising flex crop that was said to generate social, environmental and economic benefits, especially for the historically marginalised Northeast peasantry. I argue that speculative practices over castor have relied on state policies and discourses as well as biophysical and biotechnological (im)materialities that are transforming agrarian relations in ways that compromise peasants’ control over their (re)productive systems while promoting the expansion of the agroindustrial frontier. By examining the everyday, performative and place-based character of speculative biodiesel practices and their uneven and contested socioenvironmental implications, this paper contributes to current political ecology debates on the nexus between agroenergy development, nature’s capitalist valuation and rural dispossession.     

Grassroots Ecologies of Value: Environmental Conflict and Social Reproduction in Southern Italy

In this article I examine socio-environmental conflicts through the category of value. Drawing from a single case study, an industrial city in southern Italy, I address the revaluation projects underpinning the conflict around socio-ecological arrangements that are considered unfair, unsustainable and detrimental to life. Focusing on the trajectory of local environmentalism and the specific case of a women group, the article shows how the intensification of the socio-ecological crisis prompted the shift of environmental conflicts from the sphere of production to the broader relations of social reproduction. I propose to analyse this shift through the concept of grassroots ecologies of value, which outlines a framework for thinking about how people deal with the socio-environmental contradictions in which they live, and their struggles for dignity and worth.     

施邦曜评点《阳明先生集要》及其价值

施邦曜与王阳明有深刻的牵连,施邦曜所编《阳明先生集要》不仅传播了王学,且体现了施本在评点上的意义及其价值,建立了新的诠释体系,创新评点内容的运用机制,意义非凡。     

论“苏州片”失蜡铸造工艺的特色及其价值

"苏州片"是我国传统失蜡铸造的代表性工艺,以其法制作的仿古铜器,以精绝、乱真闻名于世,研究者与苏州艺人经数年的密切合作,成功复原此工艺。"苏州片"仿古铜器工艺蜡料配方独特、制范技艺考究、制作过程精细缜密,不仅具有历史人文价值,而且具有一定的经济、科技价值。传统手工艺要揭示其科学内涵,保护传承的同时注重创新,紧跟时代特色,走向产业化,才能在现代社会赢得生存空间。     

UNDERSTANDING COMPUTERS

Abstract.

Forensic accounting is used to reconstruct the data on emissions, redemptions, and bills outstanding for colonial New Jersey paper money. These components are further separated into the amounts initially legislated and the amounts actually executed. These data are substantial improvements over what currently exists in the literature. They also provide a more complete and nuanced accounting of colonial New Jersey's paper money regime than what has been done previously for any British North American colony. Enough detail of the forensic accounting exercise is given for scholars to reproduce the data series from the original sources.     

大遗址价值评估体系研究

古遗址是重要的一种文化遗产形态,大遗址则是具有中国特色的一种与文化历史价值、行政管理、政府决策密切相关的保护对象。显然大遗址的价值判定和评估是这一特殊对象有效保护的基础。本文通过国内外评估体系的比较分析、国内资料、现状的调研分析,确立评估要素,进而结合价值评估体系构架的方法,对我国大遗址价值评估体系进行了初步研究。     

《大南实录》若干问题探析

《大南实录》是越南阮朝国史馆编修、载有历代皇帝实录和历代人物列传的阮朝正史,是研究越南近代史的基本史料。本文从其编修过程,主要内容,版本及流传情况,史料价值,与史实不符的若干记载等方面对这部庞大的官修史书进行初步研究。     

Value chains,business conventions,and market adaptation: A comparative analysis of Norwegian and Icelandic fish exports

Business transactions’ value chains can constrain their capacity to maximize market value from limited resources. Seafood markets exhibit a strong demand for fresh, high‐quality seafood yet empirical studies show large variations in value chains’ adaptation and exploitation of market opportunities. This article presents a comprehensive model that identifies the main drivers and constraints in value chains for wild harvested seafood that generate differences in market adaptation. The model is built on theories of value chains, business conventions, competitive behaviour, governance conventions, legal regulation, and direct ecological and economic constraints. The model is applied in a comparative case analysis of market adaptation by value chains for North Atlantic cod products in Norway and Iceland, which explains why business conventions in Iceland are more consumer market adapted than those in Norway.     

A Blaze in the Northern Sky: Black Metal and Crimes Against Culture

Abstract

This paper focuses on an act that can be seen to typify what heritage organizations might con?dently describe as a ‘crime against culture’: the deliberate destruction by ?re of a twelfth-century wooden stave church at Fantoft in Norway in 1992. This paper uses the case study of Fantoft to challenge the ways in which heritage organizations (in this case Norway’s Directorate of Cultural Heritage) establish and protect mono-cultural narratives and push interpretative agendas predicated on an uncritical concept of universal ‘value’ and its equation with material authenticity. It also examines how distinct minority communities construct new meanings, values, and traditions without reference to institutional narratives, a process that, whilst arguably initiating a more meaningful dialogue with the past, brings in train a new set of problems.