From Serbia with Hate: A Case Study in Globalization, Trauma, and Language

This article analyzes a set of five postcards, purchased from a street stand in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, shortly after the NATO bombing of the country took place in the spring of 1999. While the postcards obviously serve as protests against the bombing, as well as testimonies of the nation-wide trauma caused by it, they also reveal a careful negotiation between representations of trauma — keeping it displaced enough to avoid vicarious traumatization for individual survivors, but focused enough to translate it into a part of the national Serb identity and relying on the symbolism available in historical public narratives. However, since all the postcards analyzed here use English language in one form or another, they can also be read as peculiar interpretations of globalization on a local level. The article is an examination of the function of English, both in the negotiation of private/public trauma as described above, and its role in the complex reconfiguration of the phenomenon of globalization as embedded with local meaning given the context of the narrative within the Serbian popular culture. While these pop culture artifacts offer an assurance to the Serb national spirit, they also express a multifaceted national take on globalization visible in the use of English as the language of the Western ‘enemy’. Overall,the postcards can be read as a curious traumatic figuration of postmodernism which seems to be battling modernism in Belgrade's streets, while the Serb nationalism faces off with the global world in the realm of the imaginary.     

Home,Sweet Home: Women and the “Other Space” of Domesticity in Colonial Indian Postcards,ca. 1880–1920

This article explores colonial Indian postcards from the 1880s to the 1920s through the idiom of “imagined geographies,” as expressions of the relationship between the Othering of people and the Othering of spaces. Specifically the article focuses on representations of domestic space as a means by which those located within such spaces could be situated within a hierarchical, colonial relationship. I propose that colonial Indian postcards not only worked to disseminate macro, imperial ideology and the male colonizers’ fantasy of possession, but also expressed the microcosm of imperialism at work in the domestic, feminine sphere.     

The mass‐produced postcard and the photography of emotions

During its heyday, roughly 1890–1940, the mass‐produced European picture‐postcard brought a tremendous variety of scenes, real and fabricated, within the reach of an avid buying public. While many people early in the present century did put together albums of postcards—commonly unused ones—others were able to use these for brief formalized messages to friends and family once the post office had decided to transmit such things. Amateurs and local commercial photographers alike could also make up their own picture‐postcards, to memorialize local scenes or even fleeting emotional states. Yet in the main postcard production was a large industry and a genuine mass medium. At the beginning of the century Germany alone was producing about 9 million cards a month. Examples from several countries are presented here.     

Species 38. Cisticola Ruficeps. Pl. XVIII.

An easily recognized little bird in both of its very different seasonal dresses: one with no very near relative among the other species, but thoroughly Cirticoline from every point of view, alive or on the table: about the size of the Wood-Warbler (P. sibilatrix) , but with a shorter tail and much shorter wings, (totally different coloration), and in behaviour more like a bush-loving Sylvia , the Whitethroat (S. communis) for instance, only without any of that bird's aerial love-dances.     

Mediterranean landscape changes: evidence from old postcards

Recent, rapid and often underestimated landscape changes have occurred over large areas in Mediterranean Europe. They are the result of major rural depopulation. Old photographs of landscapes taken at the beginning of the twentieth century (i.e. old postcards) and present-day photographs taken at the same places were compared in a 2500-km² area of southern France. Vegetation changes were analysed using transition matrices. During the 80-year study period, land uses and vegetation changed dramatically. Woodland cover and tree height increased; but in contrast, the extent of cropped lands and rangelands decreased. Forest spread was heterogeneous, depending on initial composition of the vegetation, and locally dominant ecological and socio-economic conditions. Our data show that a Mediterranean forest can re-establish under humid climatic conditions and spread within a century, despite severe prior exploitation over several decades. These dramatic changes are liable to have biological and ecological consequences (e.g. spread of woodland species, threat against open habitat species, fire regime modification, deterioration in water resources), some of them being already perceptible.     

Generation of Domestic Solid Waste in Rural Areas: Case Study of Remote Communities in the Brazilian Amazon

The Brazilian rural population is estimated to be around 30 million people and many rural areas do not have universal access to basic infrastructure services, including those related to solid waste. There are very few scientific studies on rural domestic solid waste and more investigative work is needed to provide information for appropriate solid waste management policies. This paper aims to characterize rural domestic solid waste in terms of quantity and quality. Amazonian rural communities were chosen for our case study. The issue of domestic solid waste was characterized both by means of interviews, at household level, and by a study of industrialized products traded in the communities located along the banks of the Juruá River, in the Brazilian Amazon. Quantitative results have shown that generation of solid waste in these rural communities reaches 0.5 kg/person/day. Organic matter represents 90 % of domestic solid waste generation and is mainly reused to feed animals and/or is composted using a method called paú. Inorganic solid waste (10 %) is either reused, burned or inadequately dumped in open sites. Based on these data, the annual production of solid waste is 437 tons per year in these communities. Since infrastructure services are virtually non-existent in this rural context, even this amount of solid waste may have a serious environmental impact, with negative effects on the population’s health, particularly in terms of hazardous waste. Even though solid waste management solutions for rural populations might not always be based on economic efficiency, decision makers responsible for development and planning should present solutions that are socially, technologically, environmentally and economically suitable for this context.     

Transfer of Micro-organisms between Nurses and Patients in a Clean Air Environment

S ummary . A uni-directional downflow ('laminar'flow) ventilation system for a single-bed patient-room is described. It produced clean air at velocities as low as 0.12 m/sec (25 ft/min). Bacteriological studies on bed-making done in the room showed that strains of Staphylococcus aureus carried on the nurses'external clothing were often transferred to the patients'bedclothes. This possible route of patient infection was almost eliminated when the nurses wore disposable plastic aprons over their dresses.     

Reduction of skin bacteria in theatre air with comfortable,non-woven disposable clothing for operating-theatre staff.

Conventional loose-weave cotton operating garments were compared with clothing of a non-woven fabric to test their efficacy in reducing the dispersal of skin bacteria into theatre air. When men wore operating suits made of the non-woven fabric dispersal of skin bacteria was reduced by 72%. When all the operating-theatre staff wore suits and dresses of this fabric air bacterial counts during operating sessions were reduced by 55%; no reduction occurred when the fabric was worn by only the scrubbed team. The lowest levels of microbial contamination of the air in the operating theatre occurred when both the unscrubbed and scrubbed theatre staff wore clothes of non-woven fabric.     

The effect of urban and rural habitats and resource type on activity budgets of commensal rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) in Bangladesh

Macaques are characterized by their wide distribution and ability to adapt to a variety of habitats. Activity budgets are affected by habitat type, season, and food availability in relation to differing age–sex class and individual requirements. We conducted a comparative study on two commensal rhesus groups, one living in a rural village and the other in the center of urban Dhaka, Bangladesh. The study was conducted in three different seasons between 2007 and 2009 in order to evaluate how habitat type and season affects their behavioral activities. Differences in food type and its availability between these two habitats were mainly responsible for the variations in activity budgets between groups. Feeding time in the rural group was significantly longer than that in the urban group. In contrast, grooming and object manipulation/play were significantly greater in the urban than the rural group. Seasonal variations in all major behaviors were significantly affected by group, with more time spent feeding in summer than in winter/dry season, and more time spent grooming and moving in winter/dry season than summer in the rural group. In contrast, time spent resting was greater in the monsoon and summer seasons than the winter/dry season in the urban group. Grooming time was greater in the winter/dry season than the monsoon and summer seasons. In both groups, immature of both sexes spent significantly more time on feeding and object manipulation/playing and less time resting than adults. Adult females spent more time grooming than males and immatures, of both sexes, in both groups. Moreover, the rural group spent most of their time feeding on garden/crop produce and wild plant food resources, while the urban group spent more time feeding on provisioned foods. These results showed that differences in the activity budgets of rural and urban dwelling macaques were due largely to the differences in available food resources. Commensal rhesus macaques show a high degree of behavioral flexibility in response to habitat and resource variability, and knowledge of these differences is important for the conservation and management of highly commensal primates.     

Re-Bordering the Nation: Neoliberalism and Racism in Rural Greece

Over the last several decades, rural Greek society has undergone rapid changes. In large part these changes are due to two interrelated developments: the integration of Greece into the European Union and the arrival of large numbers of Eastern European migrant laborers. Social organization in Greek villages has been influenced by global systems of production and exchange for hundreds of years, if not longer, but since the early 1980’s, with the accession of Greece into the European Union, these relations seem to have been altered in novel ways. As Greece has become integrated into the transnational and global markets through the E.U., social relations are increasingly shaped by a pervasive global trend toward neoliberalism, that is, by a new round of market liberalization that has in effect redefined the way that local communities and international markets interact. This change has had a profound effect on the ways that rural Greeks participate in international markets as both producers and consumers. A related development, in fact a by-product of neoliberal policies in the formerly socialist countries of Eastern Europe, is the introduction of large numbers of immigrant laborers into rural Greece, which has significantly altered rural labor markets and allowed for important changes in patterns of the social reproduction of labor. While these changes have been for the most part not of their own making, except perhaps in an indirect way, Greek agriculturalists are not hapless victims in these developments. Globalization has indeed brought changes to rural society, but not exactly in the ways that policy-makers or others with a “top -- down” perspective have imagined. During ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in several Greek villages between 2000 and 2004 I found that rural people have engaged these changes in the global political economy through an active process of adaptation, manipulation, resistance and accommodation. Here I will focus on changes in the mobilization of labor and the production of national identity, and the relationship between the two. I will argue that there has been a transformation in how national identities are being produced within the new configuration of nation and state that has important implications for understanding how inequality is structured and reproduced under global capitalism.     

方寸天地 世纪履痕——纪念国际昆虫学大会100周年

首届国际昆虫学大会1910年召开至今,已经100年了,本文通过邮票,回眸大会的发起与大会早期的情景;1910年到2008年间23届大会的概况,其中两次世界大战使大会受挫;在战后和平环境中,才获得日趋兴旺的发展。文章详细介绍了会期发行的邮票、邮戳、明信片和首日封。     

Ethnobiological notes on some tribes of Arunachal Pradesh,northeastern India

A total of 171 plant species used by the Nishis, the Hill M iris, the Sulungs, and the Apatanis of Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India; 12 animal species used by the Nishis were identified. Of the total plant species recorded 38% of the total were leafy vegetables and 28% were edible fruits. Others were used for food, liquor, medicine, household goods, traditional dresses, dyes, tattoos, fish and animal poisons, or for salt extraction. The Sulungs use starch obtained from the pith ofMetroxylon sagu as a staple food. The extensive use of wild plants and animals suggests that the tribes of northeastern India rely heavily on forest resources. The importance of conserving these in the light of rapid conversion of rainforests is emphasized.     

Conservation Heroes Versus Environmental Villains: Perceiving Elephants in Caprivi,Namibia

This article investigates the impact of transnational environmental organizations on rural people involved in conservation by exploring the impacts of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) ivory trade ban on Namibia’s elephant conservation policy. This case study examines how rural African people are put into categories of ‘conservation heroes’ or ‘environmental villains’ by local conservation practitioners, government officials in Namibia and transnational conservation actors. Findings indicate that the approach of state officials and conservation organizations (CO) results in incomplete representations of both rural African people and the cultural importance these people attach to elephants. The article concludes that current environmental narratives associated with rural African people have been used as powerful ‘tools of persuasion’ at the state and international level to support and legitimate conservation policy and resource use in relation to the concerns of transnational environmental actors to the exclusion of rural African people.     

苏南地区农村工业对农业生态系统作用的系统动力学模型

以江苏南部农村工业发达地区的吴江市为研究范例,采用系统动力学模型模拟分析方法,分析农村工业发展对农业生态系统的影响。结果表明,农村工业的发展对农业生态系统有正负两方面的影响,正影响表现为提高农民收入、增加农业投入、转移农村劳力等;负影响表现为导致耕地减少和环境污染等。农村工业实力增强后,若其产值利润以一定的比例用于发展农业和治理环境,将能减弱或避免农村工业给农业生态系统带来的负影响,达到农村工业与农业的协调发展。     

Assessing the Effects of Invasive Alien Species on Rural Livelihoods: Case Examples and a Framework from South Africa

The detrimental impacts of invasive alien species (IAS) on ecosystem goods and services and local and regional economies are well documented. However, the use of IAS by rural communities is little understood, and rarely factored into IAS control programmes. Understanding the use of IAS by rural communities and factoring these into cost-benefit models is complex, depending upon a range of local-level attributes such as the time since invasion, abundance, and local-level costs and benefits. This paper reports on two case studies examining the role of IAS in rural livelihoods in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. In both cases, rural communities made widespread consumptive use of the IAS and generally would prefer higher densities, except in certain key localities. Several households traded in IAS products to generate supplementary income. We present a conceptual framework to guide interpretation of these and future case studies, considering attributes such as time since invasion, the competitiveness of the species, and the relative costs and benefits.     

CLUENaban—A land use change model combining social factors with physical landscape factors for a mountainous area in Southwest China

Land use modelling has used rural areas as object for a long time. Modellers start in general with physical landscape factors to determine the spatial distribution of land use, especially agricultural crops. An important factor defining rural areas is the dominance of livelihoods/economies based on agriculture combined with a strong relationship to tradition, high value of family ties, scales of social aggregation, and a framework given by nature. The inter-linkages among economic, social and environmental components determine both the complexity and dynamics of rural development. Both modellers and social scientists seek a better understanding of these complex rural systems in terms of their development paths, the underlying forces and the interactions between physical land use and rural society. In this paper, we use a combination of a land use change model and information about social relationship by referring both to the common spatial unit of villages for a rural region in south west China. We want to show how such a common unit can help to include social science information into a physically oriented land use model. The inclusion of social data results in a substantial improvement of the modelling results. In the model run we could show that land use patterns in the study area were closely related to socio-economic characteristics and governmental rules. In China, collective land and state land are distinguished. This land designation turned out to be the most important factor for the land use types rainfed, irrigated land, and rubber. All land use types were influenced by the ethnicity of village inhabitants because they had different land use traditions.     

Differential fertility in Bangladesh: A path analysis

Abstract

This study attempts to show both theoretically and empirically the causal links between selected background, socioeconomic, and demographic variables, on the one hand, and between these variables and cumulative fertility, on the other. Two distinct models, urban and rural, emerge as a result of a statistical test. In both models, neither wife's nor husband's childhood background is found to have any significant direct effects on fertility. Wife's age, religion, and age at marriage are the common variables which directly affect the number of children ever born. While age and religion bear positive direct effects, age at marriage exerts a negative direct effect. The indirect effect of religion is positive both in the rural and urban area. Both the direct and indirect effects of wife's education on fertility in urban Bangladesh are negative. Husband's education, in contrast, has a positive direct effect in the urban area and no effect at all in the rural area.     

Dynamic trait-niche relationships shape niche partitioning across habitat transformation gradients

Multidimensional approaches examining complex trait-niche relationships are crucial to understand community assembly. This is particularly important across habitat transformation gradients because specialists are progressively substituted by generalists and, despite increasing functional homogenization, in both specialist and generalist communities niche partitioning is apparent. Here, in line with the continuum hypothesis, we expected that divergent trait-niche relationships would arise in passerine assemblages across the natural-to-urban transformation gradient. More specifically, we expected that traits linking form to function would be more important in less transformed habitats, while population density and traits linked to dispersal and dominance would predominate in more transformed habitats. Accordingly, we found that beak length and its interaction with tarsus length correlated significantly with isotopic niches in natural and rural habitats, where specialists predominate. Conversely, body size and aggressiveness only showed significant relationships with isotopic niches with increasing habitat transformation, where generalists prevail. Interestingly, we recorded a mix of these processes in rural habitats, which acted as a frontier between these two domains. Our study is thus important in showing that a complex combination of morphological and behavioral traits determine niche characteristics, and that these relationships are dynamic across habitat transformation gradients.     

Evaluating the impact of rural development measures on nature value indicators at different spatial levels: Application to France and The Netherlands

This paper proposes an approach for assessing the effectiveness of those agri-environmental schemes and rural development measures aimed at enhancing the natural value of farmland and, more generally, aimed at releasing the pressure on the environment due to agriculture. First, based on fine scale data, indicators derived from the High Nature Value farmland concept are tested at different scales, resolutions and situations: LAU2 for The Netherlands and LAU1 for France. The effect of rural development measures on the evolution of these indicators is then explored. Significant cause-effect relationships are found in the French cases, while only relationships of correlations are observed from the Dutch case study, obviously caused by a lack of data. Using fine scale data on rural development measures related to both 2000–2006 and 2007–2013 programming periods of the Common Agricultural Policy, a spatial econometrics methodology is applied to France, at national level on the one hand, and at a selected NUTS2 level on the other. The results indicate that agri-environmental schemes and specific rural development measures affect the changes in the indicators, and that the spatial scale of the analyses matters. In particular, results indicate that trends observed at the national scale do not necessarily apply at the regional scale (e.g. impacts of conversion to organic farming, the grassland premium, payments for water and biodiversity protection) underlining the importance of multi-scale assessments. Interestingly, delayed effects of the measures implemented in the 2000–2006 programming period, such as machinery investment aids and less-favoured area payments, are detectable. As regards the 2007–2013 rural development measures, the most significant positive effects on the farm nature value indicator are found, at the national level, for locally targeted agri-environmental schemes focused on biodiversity and water issues and, at the NUTS2 level, for supporting organic farming schemes. Given that the farm nature value indicator is built from three different indices (addressing crop diversity, grassland share, and wooded and afforested farmland) the effect of rural development measures on each of these individual indices is also explored. This enables the main structure and the magnitude of policy impacts to be captured and helps with the understanding of why certain objectives were not met. Key findings are relevant in the context of policy monitoring and evaluation, while the methodology proposed, that incorporates spatial effects, is an important contribution to the implementation of the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework by Member States to account for national, regional or local characteristics.     

Interdisciplinary research towards management of non-timber forest resources in lowland rain forests of Sri Lanka

Lowland and mid-elevational rainforests of Sri Lanka harbor a relict, endemic-rich flora which is also rich in timber and non-timber forest resources. These forests supply nearly half the total wood requirements of the country and are dwindling rapidly; management of the forests to conserve the biological richness and maintain environmental services is therefore a difficult proposition. This predicament is further compounded by the dependency of rural people on a range of non-timber forest resources for their subsistence and income. A forestry master plan recently prepared for Sri Lanka has not given adequate recognition to the important role played by non-timber forest resources in rural livelihood. This oversight is primarily due to the lack of quantitative information to justify the role of non-timber forest resources in forestry sector development. Forestry policies that ignore these resources often anger local people, leading the villagers to vent their disapproval through destructive actions such as burning timber plantations. Long-term interdisciplinary research in ecology, reproductive and soil biology, ethnobiology, silviculture, rural sociology and resource economics in progress at Sinharaja attempts to address these questions of sustainable development of forest resources in an integrated mode. While research oriented toward conservation investigates both short- and long-term ecosystem dynamics in natural and modified forest stands, utilization-oriented research probes the impact of increased human disturbance, particularly the impact of rural communities on dwindling forest resources, as well as the effect of forest conservation on rural livelihood. These studies continue to seek alternative methods of forest management which are socially acceptable, economically viable, and ecologically sustainable for multiple uses. These methods will assist in the refinement of current forest policies, forestry planning, and the implementation of new policies and plans in Sri Lanka.