What a labor government is

Carol Johnson The Labor Legacy: Curtin. Chifley. Whitlam. IJawke, Sydney. Allen and Unwin, 1989, pp. 143. $14.95 (paper)

Graham Maddox The Hawke Government and Labor Tradition, Ringwood, Penguin, 1989, pp.232. $14.99 (paper)     

Beyond Gender Roles? Conceptualizing the Social and Economic Lives of Rural Peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa

The repeated failure to design and appropriately target policies and interventions which address the needs of rural peoples in Africa suggests that something may be wrong with our understanding of the way that these peoples live their lives. Perspectives which focus on intra-household processes, and on gender issues in particular, represent useful advances in the way that the social and economic lives of Africa's rural peoples are conceptualized. However, this article questions the value of adopting development planning, policy and project approaches based on the rigid identification of `gender roles'. By reference to field research undertaken in northern Ghana, the paper aims to demonstrate that other social constructs, such as marital status and seniority, may be as important as gender in determining the roles and status of individuals in African rural societies. The article concludes by highlighting a number of practical implications of this finding in terms of the structuring of development-oriented research and the targeting of policy and interventions.     

Ancient Biological Invasions and Island Ecosystems: Tracking Translocations of Wild Plants and Animals

Biological invasions are one of the great threats to Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity in the Anthropocene. However, species introductions and invasions extend deep into the human past, with the translocation of both wild and domestic species around the world. Here, we review the human translocation of wild plants and animals to the world’s islands. We focus on establishing criteria used to differentiate natural from human-assisted dispersals and the differences between non-native and invasive species. Our study demonstrates that, along with a suite of domesticates, ancient people transported numerous wild plants and animals to islands and helped shape ecosystems in ways that have important ramifications for modern conservation, restoration, and management.     

Preliminary archaeoentomological analyses of permafrost-preserved cultural layers from the pre-contact Yup'ik Eskimo site of Nunalleq,Alaska: Implications,potential and methodological considerations

At Nunalleq, a pre-contact Yup'ik Eskimo village site in Alaska (14th–17th century AD), abundant insect remains from highly organic substrates preserved within permafrost offer a unique opportunity to investigate past ecological and living conditions. This paper presents the preliminary results obtained from the analysis of two samples collected from floor layers in sod houses. The numerous and diverse insect remains highlight the exciting potential of archaeoentomology for reconstructing past ecological conditions, resource exploitation and the use of space at northern hunter–gatherer sites and have permitted the development of a strategy for the future collection of archaeoentomological data at permafrost-preserved sites in Alaska and elsewhere.