“We will not perish; we’re going to keep flourishing”: Race,Food Access,and Geographies of Self‐Reliance

Drawing from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Washington, DC, this article outlines geographies of self‐reliance; a theoretical framework for understanding black food geographies that are embedded in histories of self‐reliance as a response to structural inequalities. Using a community garden as a case study, I argue that the garden functions as a site for addressing several manifestations of structural violence: racist and classist depictions of low‐income and working class people, joblessness, gentrification, and youth underdevelopment. Drawing on self‐reliance ideologies as well as collective and personal histories, the residents exhibit a form of agency that demonstrates unwavering hope in the sustainability of their shared community. Through this analysis, I show that self‐reliance functions as a mechanism through which residents navigate spatial inequalities.     

The Icelandic medieval monastic garden - did it exist?

In the multidisciplinary project presented here, 12 known monastic grounds in Iceland were surveyed by a group of medievalists from different fields in the summers of 2009, 2010 and 2011. The aim of the survey was to increase knowledge of the Icelandic monastic garden and of the plants that were known and used there; to look for possible medieval cultural relict plants; to observe continental influence on the island; and to vitalize discussion and research. Landscape and plants were surveyed at the 12 monastic sites, and full botanical investigations made. Many of the plants found have a medieval past as medicinal and utility plants, and some of their properties may have been common knowledge to medieval Icelanders. An investigation of written sources and archaeological and archaeobotanical findings from excavated sites added to the investigators’ knowledge. So were there monastic gardens in Iceland in the Middle Ages? The answer is a rather confident yes. With all the evidence combined, the investigators were able to trace the deliberate use of medicinal, food and utility plants in the monastic contexts. Whether they were cultivated, tended in situ, gathered growing wild or imported is another matter. Continental influence was more evident than has previously been observed.     

清乾隆时期的宫殿建筑风格

康熙、雍正、乾隆以及嘉庆朝所建的宫殿,在传统礼制规定内,其宫殿环境、建筑布局及艺术等力求贴近现实生活。表现出创造惬意的环境和方便舒适的建筑、满足皇帝的理政及生活要求等一系列特性。这也构成了“乾隆时期”宫殿建筑的整体风格。     

‘The One and the Two’: Mainlanders and Saltwater People in Buka,Bougainville

ABSTRACT The paper explores the socially salient contrast between ‘mainlanders' and ‘saltwater people’ in the Buka area in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, as observed during ethnographic fieldwork in 2004–05. Buka people themselves articulate three at first sight disparate points of contrast between mainlanders and saltwater people. These concern settlement patterns, predominant subsistence activities and different degrees of ancestral knowledge. This paper explores these points and aims to specify their interconnection from the perspective provided by a fourth contrast established ethnographically, that between different modes of objectifying relations on the mainland and ‘at sea’. With a detailed investigation of the ethnographic ‘surface’ of the phenomenon, the paper aims to provide a basis for future in‐depth analyses of various aspects of the mainland‐saltwater contrast in the context of Bougainvillean politics and the sustainability of livelihoods in the area.     

ÉVOLUTION DE L'AGRICULTURE MARAÎCHÈRE AU QUÉBEC DE 1940 À 1990: SUPERFICIES,PRODUCTIONS ET DIVERSITÉ

Depuis plus d'un siècle, l'agriculture québécoise en général, et la production maraîchère en particulier, ont subi d'importantes transformations. Cette étude historique vise à comprendre comment la production maraîchère a évolué par rapport aux changements dans l'environnement décisionnel général de l'agriculture entre 1940 et 1990. L'analyse des données statiques de superficie, de production et de rendement pour 12 légumes ont permis d'identifier trois périodes, intercalées d'années transitoires, dans l'évolution de la production maraîchère référant chacune à une stratégie agricole particulière. La première (1940–1957) correspond à une stratégie agricole de type familial traditionnel; la seconde (1963–1975), à une agriculture marchande spécialisée fondée sur la maximisation des revenus à court terme par intensification; la troisième (1980–1990), à une agriculture marchande diversifiée fondée également sur une maximisation à court terme. Les facteurs externes de l'environnement décisionnel qui ont entraîné ces changements sont identifiés et discutès. For more than a century, Quebec agriculture in general, and market-gardening production in particular, have experienced important changes. This study, using a historical perspective, seeks to understand how market gardening evolved in relation to changes in the broad decision environment for agriculture between 1940 and 1990. Statistical analysis of data on the areas cultivated, production levels, and yields for 12 vegetable crops revealed three distinct periods, separated by periods of transition, in the evolution of market gardening. Each period is characterized by a particular type of agricultural development strategy. The first period (1940–1957) is characterized by a focus on the traditional family form; the second (1963–1975), by a specialized market agriculture driven by short-term income-maximization intensification; the third (1980–1990), by a diversified marketoriented agriculture, also based on short-term income maximization. External environmental factors that stimulated these changes are identified and discussed.     

冷战与拉美游击运动的兴衰(1961-1969)

20世纪60年代,古巴革命的成功及共产主义势力在拉美地区的不断增强打破了美国主导的泛美体系的国际格局,拉美游击运动登上了冷战的历史舞台,并成为当时第三世界最强劲的地区势力,但最终在双方冷战战略的调整和竞争地位的转换中以失败谢幕.因此,这一时期拉美游击运动的兴衰是冷战对第三世界地区势力发展影响的典型案例,对它的研究具有一定的学术意义.     

Guerrilla healthcare innovation: creative resilience in Zimbabwe’s chimurenga, 1971–1980

Abstract

Drawing from the last five years of chimurenga, Zimbabwe’s war of self-liberation from the early 1960s to 1980s, this paper shows that the most important aspect of technology and innovation in Africa is not the technology and innovation itself, but the African spirit of creative resilience born of the specificities of struggles its people have endured. By creative resilience is meant a phenomenon whereby, even where death is the outcome, and where the situation is insurmountable, people do not just surrender to fate, but die fighting. As a site of creative resilience, chimurenga is the ultimate site of creative labor and a vast laboratory, not simply a destination for incoming technologies, or a 'user' space but generative of its own insurgent and counter-insurgent innovations. Focusing on the communal war effort involving guerrillas and ordinary Africans in the rear bases of Mozambique and Zambia and on the front inside Zimbabwe, the paper makes its argument through a focus on healthcare innovation.     

Southern rebels against Italian unification: the Great Brigandage in the province of Capitanata

This article explores counter-revolutionary brigandage in Southern Italy after 1860 (also known as Great Brigandage). Working from archival sources, the article offers a new interpretation of the interactions between the political, social and criminal aspects of the guerrilla war against the Risorgimento. Notwithstanding the plurality of the individual motives leading single actors to fight, it is argued that brigandage was an essentially political phenomenon and that the alliances between common bandits and loyalist forces were made possible only in the macro-political setting of the collapse of the Neapolitan monarchy, the difficulties facing Italian state-building, and the emergence of popular legitimist sympathies after 1860.     

Streets as new places to bring together both humans and plants: examples from Paris and Montpellier (France)

Greening public city space is a growing issue in France. With examples drawn from Paris and Montpellier, this article seeks to understand what happens when city-dwellers green the public space outside their door and when policies encourage spontaneous flora on the street. Plants were already part of ancient cities and have been a tool for urban planning since the nineteenth century leading to the development of public green spaces and street-tree planting. Urban ecology sparked an interest for spontaneous flora in the 1980s. Public policies concerning water, climate, and biodiversity have been trying to take this unbidden vegetation into consideration since the beginning of this century. Besides, the social sciences have shown that city-dwellers are interested in plants to embellish their balcony, and in city gardens and parks. We tried to find out if this vegetation can be more than just a tool to plan, to green, to bring biodiversity, and to beautify urban space. We argue that letting planted and unbidden flora colonize sidewalks and allowing people to act directly on it brings residents and plants to co-inhabit and co-domesticate the streets, and challenges the timelessness of a city by introducing a life cycle.     

Between Boundaries: From Commoning and Guerrilla Gardening to Community Land Trust Development in Liverpool

Emerging in the cracks of the ownership model are alternatives to state/market provision of affordable housing and public/private‐led regeneration of declining urban neighbourhoods, centred on commoning and collective dweller control. This paper explores how the community land trust model can become an effective institutional solution to urban decline in the context of private property relations. It explores a case study of a CLT campaign in Granby, a particularly deprived inner‐city neighbourhood in Liverpool, England. The campaign seeks to collectively acquire empty homes under conditions of austerity, which have opened up the space for grassroots experimentation with guerrilla gardening, proving important for the campaign in gaining political trust and financial support. This paper discusses the potential of the CLT model as a vehicle for democratic stewardship of place and unpacks the contradictions threatening to undermine its political legitimacy.