Plot by Plot: Plotting Urbanism as an Ordinary Process of Urbanisation

With this paper, we analyse an ordinary urban process, which has received little attention so far, and propose a new concept to take account of it: plotting urbanism. It is usually subsumed under terms like “urban informality” or “incremental urbanism” and not studied as a distinct process. In comparing Lagos, Istanbul and Shenzhen we captured four defining features of plotting urbanism: first, it unfolds in a piecemeal fashion with limited comprehensive planning. Second, it emerges from specific territorial compromises often resulting from conflicts between overlapping modes of territorial regulation, land tenure and property rights. Third, plotting is based on commodification of housing and land, which might accentuate socio-economic differentiations between property-owners, who often live in the same area, and their tenants. The term “plotting” highlights the key role of the plot in the process. It also alludes to strategic acts of collaboration for individual and collective benefit.     

Chronological Sequences in Nigerian Ceramics

Ceramic sequences are useful tools for chronology and culture history in many parts of the world but are lacking in Nigeria. The few published seriations of ceramic assemblages suffer from modes of presentation that make comparison difficult. Useful seriations require quantified sherd collections recovered from stratified deposits as frameworks, presented in a way that facilitates comparison to new assemblages and preferably calibrated by chronological indicators such as radiocarbon assays or cross-datable artifacts (e.g., European imports). Ceramic collections from three areas of Nigeria meet the minimal criteria: the Kainji Reservoir, Benin, and the Lake Chad region. This paper considers the data from each region and offers ceramic seriations as models for further testing and refinement toward the development of regional culture sequences. Les séquences des céramiques sont les instruments utiles pour faire la chronologie et l'histoire culturelle en diverses régions du monde, mais on les manque du Nigeria. Les rares sériations imprimées des ensembles des céramiques souffrent des présentations qui rendent difficiles les comparaisons. Les sériations utiles demandent les ensembles des tessons quantifiés et récupérés des dépots stratifiés pour établir un modèle, donnés afin de faciliter la comparaison avec des ensembles nouveaux, et de préférence calibrés par les indicateurs de la chronologie comme les dates du radiocarbon ou les objets datés ailleurs (e.g., les importations européennes). Les ensembles de tessons de trois régions de Nigeria remplissent les critères minimaux: le Réservoir Kainji, Bénin, et la région du Lac Chad. Cette étude discute les données de chaque région, et propose les sériations des céramiques comme modèles qu'on peut mettre à l'épreuve des comparaisons pour mener au développement des séquences culturelles régionales.     

Paratexts and pornographic potential in seventeenth-century anatomy books

ABSTRACT

This article discusses paratexts in seventeenth-century anatomy books and their relation to contemporary concerns that these books might be read erotically. Suggesting that discussions of these concerns have hitherto neglected the material object of the book, I argue for the importance of paratexts (illustrations, legends, prefaces, running titles and marginal notes) as sites of negotiation over anatomy books’ pornographic potential. I examine these paratexts both as strategies by which writers and printers carefully and collaboratively attempt to frustrate erotic reading, and as devices that might simultaneously function to facilitate this mode of reading. The centrality of these concerns to the construction of anatomy books indicates, I suggest, a need to augment our characterisation of early modern readers, incorporating wilfully thoughtless and/or excessive reading alongside active and productive reading. My discussion focuses on Helkiah Crooke’s Mikrokosmographia, and is supplemented with analysis of other English anatomy books published throughout the seventeenth century.     

Book reviews

Young Whan Kihl and Peter Hayes (eds), Peace and Security in Northeast Asia. The Nuclear Issue and the Korean Peninsula. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. xvi + 491 pp. US$74.95 (cloth).

Dae Hwan Kim and Tat Yan Kong (eds), The Korean Peninsula in Transition. London: Macmillan, 1997. xiv + 269 pp. £40.00 (cloth).

Desmond Ball, Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) in South Korea. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 110, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1995. 83 pp. $15.00 (paper).

Suisheng Zhao, Power By Design: Constitution‐Making in Nationalist China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. xii + 217 pp. US$37.00 (cloth).

Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun, The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution 1966–1971. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. 251 pp. US$30.00 (cloth).

Paul J. Bailey, Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. xv + 208 pp. $22.95 (paper).

Ralph Pettman, Understanding International Political Economy: With Readings for the Fatigued. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner, 1996. xiv + 257pp. US$19.95 (paper).

Cal Clark and K.C. Roy, Comparing Development Patterns in Asia. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997. ix+ 198 pp. US$45.00 (cloth).

David Wall, Jiang Boke and Yin Xiangshuo, China's Opening Door. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, International Economics Programme, 1996. 150 pp. £15.95 (paper).

Hal Hill, The Indonesian Economy since 1966. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xx + 327 pp. No price given.

Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova, Douglas Kruse, foreword by Andrei Shleifer, Kremlin Capitalism: Privatizing the Russian Economy. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. xix + 249 pp. US$42.50 (cloth) US$16.95 (paper).

Ron Edwards and Michael Skully (eds), ASEAN Business Trade and Development: An Australian Perspective. Melbourne: Butterworth Heinemann, 1996. xviii + 356 pp. $45.00 (paper).

Richard Robison (ed.), Pathways to Asia: The Politics of Engagement. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1996. xvii + 270 pp. $24.95 (paper).

Edwin E. Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996. xviii + 304 pp. US$39.95 (cloth).

Peter Edwards, A Nation at War: Australian Politics, Society and Diplomacy during the Vietnam War, 1965–1975. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin in Association with the Australian War Memorial, 1997. xx + 460 pp. $59.95 (cloth).

Meg Gurry, India: Australia's Neglected Neighbour? 1947–1996. Brisbane: Centre for the Study of Australia‐Asia Relations, Griffith University, 1996. 105 pp. $18.00 (paper).

Sandy Gordon, Security and Security Building in the Indian Ocean Region. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 116, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1996. 243 pp. $24.00 (paper).

David Stevens (ed.), In Search of a Maritime Strategy: The Maritime Element in Australian Defence Planning since 1901. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 119, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1997. xviii + 252 pp. $24.00 (paper).

Helen Hookey and Denny Roy (eds), Australian Defence Planning: Five Views from Policy Makers. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 120, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1997. xiv + 71 pp. $15.00 (paper).

Carl G. Jacobsen, The New World Order's Defining Crises: The Clash of Promise and Essence. Aldershot, Hants: Dartmouth, 1996. 124 pp. £37.50 (cloth).

Douglas T. Stuart and William T. Tow, Security Policy in the Asia‐Pacific: A US Strategy for a New Century? Griffith University: Centre for the Study of Australia‐Asia Relations, Australia‐Asia Papers, No. 76, 1996. xiv + 52 pp. No price given.

Stanley R. Sloan, NATO's Future: Beyond Collective Defense. Washington, DC: INSS McNair Paper No. 46, 1995. 73 pp. No price given.

John M. Shields and William C. Potter (eds), Dismantling the Cold War: U.S. and NIS Perspectives on the Nunn‐Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Cambridge, MA: CSIA Studies in International Security, MIT Press, 1997. 426 pp. $39.95 (paper).

William F. Martin, Ryukichi Imai and Helga Steeg, Maintaining Energy Security in a Global Context. A Report to the Trilateral Commission No. 48. New York: The Trilateral Commission, 1996. xiv+ 117 pp. No price given.     

Environment,cooking strategies and containers

This paper is an exercise in theory building that explores container form, function, and distribution. Using ethnographic data, environmental reconstructions, and archaeological information, containers are examined within the framework of the container complex, the group of containers used within a system. The results reveal a robust patterning between stone boiling and direct fire boiling and environmental thresholds. It also shows that container fabric used in these cooking strategies patterns by environmental variables. The results are models of the distribution of cooking strategies and the container fabrics used for cooking that can then be applied to the archaeological record.     

Territorially-nested urbanization in China - the case of Dongguan

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the question of extended urbanization by arguing for the need to overcome dualistic views to properly address the political specificities of urbanization in China. To this end, this paper understands state-territorial relations as a process of étatization by drawing on the particular literature on the role of the party-state in urbanization. Through a brief history of Guangdong, it elaborates on the political modalities of territorialization through China’s administrative rank system. This has enabled the party-state to mediate the production of urban space. From this, I arrive at the concept of “territorially-nested urbanization”, moving beyond limited accounts of hierarchical state powers in Chinese urban studies. Next, from a short periodization of Dongguan’s urbanization, the paper exemplifies how a particular mode of territorialization has evolved into tense relationships between the city and towns in the ongoing dilemma of multi-centered versus concentrated direction of urbanization. Based on insights from in-depth fieldwork, the last part of this paper illustrates the contradictory mobilization of village collectives within extended state power through local government, and the development of villagers’ politics and activism in contested land transformations.