Simultaneous identities: ethnicity and nationalism in mother tongue education in Nepal*

The scholarly works on ethnicity and nationalism have been highly dominated by binary frameworks. In addition, the normative preference for civic consciousness and the concerns of national disintegration often separate the notions of ethnicity and nationalism. This article suggests that the notions of ethnicity and nationalism cannot be understood exclusively as a choice between maintaining the integrity of the nation and completely rejecting it. Drawing on fieldwork in mother tongue schools in Nepal, the article draws attention to the ways in which school actors discursively positioned ethnic identity as imperative to national identity, the one that bolsters the notion of Nepali nationhood. By paying close attention to the everyday context within which discourses of nationalism are situated, this article argues for an analytical necessity to approach ethnicity and nationalism in relation to each other to appreciate the process of symbolic negotiations in public spaces.     

The form, the permit and the photograph: an archive of mobility between South Africa and India

Inspired by recent scholarship that calls for a more critical engagement with archives and knowledge production, this article plots the biography of an archive in Cape Town. Unravelling the layers of paperwork, it locates the origins of the archive in a repressive state project of excluding Indian immigrants and controlling those within the borders of the Cape Colony. The paper trail reveals documents of identity and the state’s attempts to verify identity. In seeking to answer the question as to how the historian should approach such an archive of control and surveillance, it concludes that a social history and gendered approach to migration is possible and the real treasures are those documents that enter the archive beyond the limits of state intentions.     

Empirical Fragility Curves for Non-Residential Buildings from the 2010–2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence

This study develops a motion-damage database (the Canterbury Earthquake Building Assessment, CEBA database) using surveyed information obtained from the Canterbury earthquake sequence. The database is then applied to derive fragility curves for non-residential buildings in New Zealand. The results indicate that unreinforced masonry buildings are the most vulnerable to damage, while the concrete shear wall buildings were found to be the most resilient. Discrepancies were found when comparing equivalent structures in New Zealand and the United States. Inherent difference of building characteristics between the two countries, significant ground failure, and accumulated damage from multiple events might explain the difference.     

Prohibido Tocar Este Cenote: The Archaeological Basis for the Titles of Ebtun

Ebtun, Kaua, Cuncunul, Tekom, and Tixcacalcupul are a group of related communities on the Yucatán peninsula described in the corpus of Maya-language documents known as The Titles of Ebtun. In this paper I explore transformations in agrarian practice and material expressions of identity after the Spanish invasion by analyzing archaeological variation in the life histories of places over the last 500 years. As new plants, animals, and technologies were adopted, landscape organization changed, and locales took on new meanings. Ebtun’s landscape reflects a historically contingent process that has transformed place and identity, fostering autonomy of cultural practice and renewal of tradition.     

“Mixed up in a Bit of Do‐Goodery”: Judy Inglis,Activist Anthropology and Aboriginal History

As one of few people to study urban Aborigines in the early 1960s, Judy Inglis was well situated to comment on the workings of government policies such as assimilation. Her sudden death in 1962, aged thirty‐two, cut short her contribution to contemporary debates and froze in time her thinking. Inglis wanted her academic work to help the subjects of her study. Although she struggled with the idea of blending anthropology with activism, her desire to effect positive change ultimately outweighed other considerations. By her own account, she was “mixed up in a bit of do‐goodery”. In the decade after her death, the same impulse drove her friend Diane Barwick and mentor W. E. H. Stanner, both fellow anthropologists, to bring into being “Aboriginal History” as a field of study. This article explores the links between Judy Inglis’ approach to anthropology‐as‐activism and the origins of Aboriginal History.     

Authority and Expertise: The Professionalisation of International Development and the Ordering of Dissent

I explore how the increasing professionalisation of international development has enabled the expansion of the neoliberal agenda of development agencies and, at the same time, the co‐optation of so‐called "alternative" approaches onto this agenda. The focus is on the key figure of the development "expert" as an agent involved in consolidating unilinear notions of modernising progress. First, there is an examination of the post‐war production of the development expert and the reproduction of systems of expertise and forms of authority that they articulate. Research with former UK colonial officers who worked in the post‐independence development industry is subsequently drawn upon to exemplify the continuities and divergences from colonial rule to contemporary discourses of development. Then, there is a demonstration of the co‐optation of potentially critical discourses, focusing upon the creation of professionals and the exclusive forms of knowledge that surround the practice of participatory development. Finally, in the conclusion, I argue that increasing professionalisation within the development industry supports the neoliberal development agenda and that there remains a need to identify how critical discourses can be effective within it.     

The Aboriginal Adjustment Movement in Colonial Victoria

Whilst much has been written about Aboriginal religious syncretism in Australia, particularly about what has become known as the “Adjustment Movement” that occurred in Arnhem Land in the 1950s (see McIntosh 2004), there were several remarkable examples of spiritual adjustment by Aboriginal people a century earlier on the Victorian goldfields that hitherto have not been explored by historians. Building on Magowan's (2003) discussion of the connection between Christianity and the ancestral law of Aboriginal culture in northern Australia, this article will examine how Christian influences in colonial Victoria competed with, and conversely moulded, southern Kulin ancestral understanding. Several Kulin ceremonies — including the Myndee ceremony and the “Veinie Sacred Sunday Dance” — will be examined. These ceremonies were described by colonial officials (Joseph Panton, a Gold Commissioner, and William Thomas, the Aboriginal Guardian of Aborigines in Victoria) in the midst of a second wave of invasion and rupture for Victorian Aboriginal people — the first being the sheep herders in the 1830s, and the second being the gold rush which commenced in 1851. Serving as exemplars of what might be called the Victorian Aboriginal Adjustment Movement, these ceremonies demonstrate the extent to which Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria engaged in a culturally congruent mode of Christianity.     

Development of Probabilistic Framework for Performance-Based Seismic Assessment of Structures Considering Residual Deformations

Recently, the importance of considering residual (permanent) deformations in the performance assessment of structures has been recognized. Advanced structural systems with re-centering properties as those based on unbonded post-tensioning tendons are capable of controlling or completely eliminating residual deformations. However, for more traditional systems, which count for the vast majority of buildings, residual deformations are currently considered an unavoidable result of structural inelastic response under severe seismic shaking.

In this article, a probabilistic framework for a performance-based seismic assessment of structures considering residual deformations is proposed. The development of a probabilistic formulation of a combined three-dimensional performance matrix, where maximum and residual deformations are combined to define the performance level corresponding to various damage states for a given seismic intensity levels, is first presented. Combined fragility curves expressing the probability of exceedence of performance levels defined by pairs of maximum-residual deformations are then derived using bivariate probability distributions. The significance of evaluating and accounting for residual deformations within a Performance-based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) approach is further confirmed via numerical examples on the response of Single Degree of Freedom (SDOF) systems, with different hysteretic behavior, under a selected suite of earthquake records. Joined fragility curves corresponding to various performance levels, defined as a combination of maximum and residual response parameters, are derived while investigating the effects of hysteretic systems and strength ratios. It is observed that stiffness degrading Takeda systems result in lower residual deformations than elasto-plastic systems and show lower probability of exceeding a jointed maximum-residual performance level. For a chosen performance level, Takeda systems with higher strength ratios show better performance, particularly with lower intensity of excitations.     

Haciendas and economic change in Yucatán: Entrepreneurial strategies in the Parroquia de Yaxcabá, 1775–1850

Using archaeological and historical data from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century haciendas in theParroquia de Yaxcabá, Yucatán, this paper demonstrates how documentary records can be employed to create diachronic archaeological explanations. Both the organization of production on the hacienda and the entrepreneurial strategies pursued by the estate owners. contribute to the form of the hacienda. The following analysis suggests quantitative and qualitative explanations for variation in hacienda size and architectural elaboration. The archaeological interpretations offer a reconsideration of processes of economic change in central Yucatán prior to the Caste War of 1847.