‘Why did they take him away?’ The theft of Neddy Larkin

Neddy Larkin, a Bundjalung man from New South Wales, Australia, was stolen from his grave and in 1891 sold to the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA. This paper uses the methodology and concepts outlined in Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence to chart Neddy Larkin’s transitions from kinsman to scientific data.     

‘It was Satan that Took the People’: The Making of Public Authority in Burkina Faso

This article explores the making of public authority through the analysis of one specific master‐hunter in Western Burkina Faso and of the cultural and political contexts in which he has emerged as a political actor. Instead of looking at institutions and socio‐political structures per se, the article focuses on a powerful but controversial political actor, in order to unpick the intricate networks that he has creatively appropriated in the making of public authority. The master‐hunter, whom we will call Kakre, has been breaking state law in order to assert his own authority, but he has also drawn upon state institutions to be recognized as a legitimate political actor. External actors, such as civil servants, politicians and private business entrepreneurs, have consulted him and asserted his public authority. As a political actor Kakre is generally held to be unpredictable, which is one of the reasons for the importance of scrutinizing his public authority. It could even be argued that ‘unpredictability’ is one of the characteristics that make authority and power compelling. In conclusion, it is suggested that public authority is derived from a combination of different sources of legitimacy and that, therefore, public authority is shaped by the very ‘unpredictability’ of specific political actors.     

Environmental adjustment and private economic strategies in reindeer pastoralism: Combining game theory with participatory action research

The aim of this article is to suggest a research approach to be used in studies of common‐pool resource problems and the deterioration of reindeer pasture. A frequent strategy in such studies is game theory based on rational choice assumptions. This approach has been criticised, for instance, for the neglect of local knowledge concerning cultural preconditions and for the political implications damaging Saami reindeer‐ecology. Our contention is that such problems can be handled by combining game theory with participatory action research when studying the subject above.     

Remaking Sarajevo: Bosnian nationalism after the Dayton Accord

The task of rebuilding a city after war-time destruction can take many forms. In addition to the obvious signs of refurbishment and new buildings, there are more subtle forms of renewal involving a re-creation of the city’s identity and changes to its inhabitants’ views of the world. For Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the cessation of the struggle for control of the city, involving various ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia, has brought about several forms of renewal, many of which have been closely related to the altered political status of Bosnia. This paper investigates ways in which the changing face of Sarajevo is associated with attempts to establish the state of Bosnia and Hercegovina subsequent to the signing of the Dayton Accord that guaranteed some measure of security to Sarajevo and to Bosnia itself. In particular, manifestations of a growing Bosnian nationalism are analysed in the context of the new state’s attempts to establish a clear identity within the deeply disturbed geopolitical setting of the former Yugoslavia. Special attention is given to the renaming of many streets within Sarajevo and to the symbolism on the newly-issued banknotes. Consideration is given to theories of nationalism and to the manifestations of nationalism in the specific context of the former Yugoslavia. There is particular focus upon the position of the Bosnian Muslims in the newly-established state and the emergence of a Bosnian nationalist agenda.     

SPATIAL DISEQUILIBRIUM

ABSTRACT. The well-known extremal principle for the solution of spatial equilibrium for a single commodity [Samuelson (1952)] is extended to deal with the case of disequilibrium caused by rigid prices and/or price controls. Both disequilibrium in consumer markets and in factor markets is covered.
The study of disequilibrium is well known in general interdependent economic systems (the so-called fixed-price model of interdependent systems). The present work extends this approach to the spatial dimension, and shows how it is possible to represent and solve disequilibrium models by mathematical programming rather than by fixed-point techniques.