Domesticated Landscapes: The Subsistence Ecology of Plant and Animal Domestication

Harvesting different species as foods or raw materials calls for differing skills depending on the species being harvested and the circumstances under which they are being taken. In some situations and for some species, the tactics used are mainly behavioral—that is, people adjust, or adapt, their own actions to fit the behavior and circumstances of the species they are taking. Under other circumstances and for other species, the skills and tactics used may call for greater environmental preparation or manipulation. Therefore, instead of trying to distinguish people today and in the past as either foragers or farmers, it makes sense to define human subsistence behavior as an interactive matrix of species and harvesting tactics, that is, as a provisions spreadsheet.     

Hydrology of the combination irrigation system in the Wadi Faynan, Jordan

The field system of the Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan was fed by an ancient combination irrigation system that incorporated runoff farming and diversion irrigation techniques. The hydraulic characteristics of this system were most probably designed to take advantage of the confluence of three tributary streams. A theoretical model of discharge produced by runoff is based on contemporary ground conditions and historic climate reconstructions. The design principles of the main hydraulic features are examined and velocity and discharge measurements in principal conveyance irrigation channels are reconstructed. The design of this hydraulic system took into account the environmental constraints and opportunities of the area and maximized different sources of water in the catchment using various techniques of water collection.     

“合”与“分”的地理效应及民族个性差异

本文从人文地理学的角度剖析了地理环境对于中国历史上国家统一与分裂的重大影响,暨阐述了通常所说的自然与人文的历史的辩证的关系。高山大川的“长城效应”与各区域民族个性差异形成对国家统一的威胁。但同时也是多民族国家统一体的再造与地域文化发展的前提条件之一。     

Informal markets and global value chains – the disembedding of Romanian dairy smallholders

The Romanian dairy-farming sector is marked by subsistence and semi-subsistence farms. Through consolidation in the retail and dairy sector, the price pressure has moved toward producers of raw milk. Through new European, national and private standards and global actors tapping into the Romanian market this development is reinforced. At the same time, the smallholders, formerly accepted to be acting on an informal level, cannot access their main distribution channels anymore. Additionally, through several legal constraints being developed since Romania’s accession to the European Union, the smallholders are neither able to issue invoices, nor to access certain subsidy programmes as they are not considered juridical persons. This article focuses on the consequences of this disembedding of farmers. The peasants are pushed toward informal activities or value chain positions, in which they do not have any bargaining power with the globally sourcing intermediaries they are supplying. The contemporary approaches of global value chains and global production networks build the theoretical framework for the study. Here it is argued that informal markets must be included into these approaches more concisely.     

Cows and capitalism: humans,animals and machines in West German barns, 1950–80

ABSTRACT

From the beginning of the 1950s, milking machines increasingly replaced former agricultural workers in West German stables who now preferred better-paid jobs in the industrial sector. The investment necessary for the milking machines led to new ideas about economic thinking and production-optimization, which changed the interplay among human, animal and technology. Within less than two decades, cattle farming in the Federal Republic of Germany changed from an animal-lacking, devastated economic branch of manual labour to a mechanized profit-oriented industry, which produced more than was demanded. This essay challenges the prevailing historical interpretation in which the industrialization of farming has been described as one of the last stages of capitalism’s penetration of society. Central aspects of capitalism remained unfulfilled: there was neither a free market nor individual autonomy of entrepreneurs, and wage labour literally vanished within the barns. A close-up view of the practices at the place of action reveals an arbitrary mixture of efficiency and care that made the industrialization of animal farming differ from the traditional narrative of capitalistic expansion. When animals are the resources to be utilized, capitalist economic activity reaches its limits at the point where the animals’ vital processes begin to malfunction. By bringing together human-animal studies with economic history, this article offers new insights into the role of animals as living beings in history as well as into the expansion of capitalism in an economic sector that continued to operate according to its own rules.     

抗战时期陕甘宁边区代耕问题研究

抗日根据地的代耕是根据地政权实行的帮助没有劳动力或劳动力不足的抗工属和退伍军人代耕、代种、代管、代收的制度。在陕甘宁边区,它是诸多优抗措施中最中心的方式。边区政府颁布了一系列相关条例和细则,制定了代耕原则、代耕办法、代耕方式及加强代耕的组织领导和思想教育等措施。代耕的实施,对改善抗工属及退伍军人的生活,稳定军心,激励士气乃至抗战的胜利起到了重要作用。边区的代耕充分体现了统一战线的政治特征和全民性、长期性等时代特色。