The role of women in payment for environmental services programs in Osa,Costa Rica

Costa Rica was the first country in the world to implement a nation-wide payment for environmental services (a.k.a. ‘payment for ecosystem services’), or PES, system in 1996. This research investigates the role of women in PES programs in Costa Rica’s Osa peninsula in response to the current dearth of such gendered research on this topic. Osa, one of the least-developed regions of the country, is still heavily forested and replete with properties under PES contracts which are aimed at forest conservation. Extended, structured interviews of 80 landowners in Osa (40 women and 40 men) culled both quantitative and qualitative information about PES participation, environmental perceptions, and both economic and conservation goals. Salient results were, first, that women see current levels of PES funding as more helpful and useful than do men. Second, women much more often perceive themselves as the sole entity responsible for protecting the environment. Third, women more commonly than men listed ‘helping the environment and animals’ as a personal benefit of their PES participation, while men more commonly focused on financial rewards. Last, according to the study herein, women in PES households currently display less decision-making power than those in non-PES households. This dynamic is analyzed through the lens of patriarchal hierarchies as well as women’s mitigation of those hierarchies through the deployment of ideology and agency. Based on these general findings, the researcher recommends that FONAFIFO, the government agency in charge of PES payments, take specific steps to increase PES funding to female-headed households.     

Palaeoenvironments and Cultural Sequence of the Florisbad Middle Stone Age Hominid Site, South Africa

Florisbad, an open-air spring site with 7 m of strata, has yielded the type assemblage of Middle Stone Age (MSA) fauna, the cranium of an archaic hominid in 1932 and an extensive sequence of MSA artefacts in the 1980s. The cultural assemblages include an early MSA dated broadly to 279,000±47,000 years, a highly retouched form of MSA at 157,000±21,000 years and a minimally retouched, expedient MSA assemblage from a series of occupation horizons at 121,000±6000 years. The latter represents multiple brief visits to a hunting and butchery site on the edge of an active spring pool, where periodic sedimentation gently buried occupation debris in a near-pristine context. Periods of lower spring discharge are represented by organic horizons as swampy vegetation encroached on the springs, while periods of higher spring discharge created pools. Overall the spring sequence indicates low-energy subaqueous environments similar to lakes, ponds or backwater sites. The sequence is characterized by fine sands, silts and clays responsible for the good archaeological preservation.     

The Actions of Abraham: A Life of Ethical Contradictions

ABSTRACT

Taking my point of departure in questions of ethnogenesis within the regions of Yehud and Idumea in the pre-Hasmonean period, I analyze the interrelationship of the themes of conflict and reconciliation in the composition of Genesis. I pay particular attention to perceptions of Idumea in narrative reiterations which tie the Cain story to the narratives about the destruction of Sodom and the Jacob-Esau conflict story in order to raise the question of whether the narrative strategy reflected in these stories might justify a further analysis of the Jacob and Joseph stories as contributions to a larger mnemonic discourse, bearing a utopian trajectory aimed at a realization of Ezekiel 16's reconciliation between Idumea, Yehud and Samaria.     

DOGS, 'WATER' AND WALL

1 Sam 25 describes David and Nabal on a collision course diffused by Nabal's wife Abigail. Had she not been successful, David would not have left ''a single one who urinates against a wall'' (25,22.34). The phrase also appears a number of times in 1-2 Kgs. Much has been written about this phrase either in reference to dogs or male humans, but very little scholarship has discussed it in terms of canine realia. We intend to re-examine all of the verses and will attempt to show that some of the later Rabbinic commentary was sensitive to canine realia and maybe of help in determining the meaning of the phrase.     

Samson: The Only Nazarite in the Hebrew Bible and His Women!

Abstract

Since the publication of Eißfeldt's study in 1935, it has been doubted by some scholars that a Hebrew god named Moloch or Molekh has ever existed. Recently, however, two studies have been published, one by George Heider (1985) and the other by John Day (1989), in which the existence of the god Molekh is defended once again. Especially Day's arguments seem convincing. Nevertheless, considering the Carthaginian archaeological evidence (in 1991 gathered by Shelby Brown), and also considering the ideological bias of the biblical passages concerned, the existence of a separate god of human sacrifice in Israel remains uncertain. By a new analysis of the biblical passages, arguments are given that the god Molekh is an invention from the Persian period in an attempt to conceal that Judahite worship of YHWH in the eighth and seventh century B.C.E. also included child sacrifice.