The Punjab crisis since 1984: A reassessment

Over the last decade there has been increasing scholarly interest in the ethnic character of the Indian state. This interest has coincided with the rise of the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP], nation‐wide clashes between Hindus and Muslims, and bitter conflict over affirmative action for backward classes. Simultaneously, the Indian state has been confronted by regional movements in Kashmir, Assam and Punjab seeking secession from the Indian Union. By focusing on the Punjab crisis this article argues that conventional explanations have concentrated on national political centralization and regional economic factors, to the neglect of Sikh ethno‐nationalism and its dialectical relationship with strategies for ethnic conflict management followed by the Indian state since 1947. Drawing on recent revisionist accounts, the Indian state, it is suggested, should be viewed as a form of an ethnic democracy in which hegemonic control is exercised over non‐Hindu ethnic groups. The Punjab case‐study shows that hegemonic control has characterized the relationship between the Sikhs and the Indian state between 1947 and 1984, and efforts to re‐establish hegemonic control after 1984 degenerated into violent control. The experience of the last ten years suggests that hegemonic control and violent control are unlikely to provide an enduring solution to the Punjab crisis. Rather, there is a need to address fundamentally the crisis of the Indian political system and how it has managed its minorities since 1947. Central to this reassessment is the viability of India's majoritarian political system in the context of an ethnically plural society.     

National purities and ecological disasters: Greek modernity and the war on nature

The ecological peculiarities we have experience lately are unintended consequences of the intellectual, scientific, and political patterns of modernity. This paper aspires to discuss nationalism as a cultural mechanism at the service of man’s scientific quest and domination over nature. As a major force and a by-product of the political project of modernity, nationalism appropriated designated landscapes and allowed their transformation into polluted environments. Through a strong alliance between state and industry, the pure and the pristine have mutated into the polluted and the contaminated. This paper will focus on the narratives of modernity, chemical agriculture, and environmental pollution in Greek Macedonia. It will discuss how our past emphasis on national politics and identity overshadowed early local concerns for environmental pollution, illness, and death. The mantle of nationalism can be held accountable for the miasmatic geographies that modernity created, threatening the nation with pollution, and vulnerable citizens with dreadful diseases and ailments, such as cancer.     

Roads,speculators, and colonization in the Ecuadorian Amazon

In view of the generally disappointing performance of colonization projects in the Amazon basin, unusual projects merit close scrutiny because they may suggest a more effective organizational form for the colonization of humid lowlands. With this end in mind, this article examines those aspects of the Upano-Palora project in southeastern Ecuador that are attributable to the project's unusual plan of establishing settlements first and building the roads afterwards. It concludes that the “settlements first, roads second” developmental sequence reduced the costs of the project, produced an egalitarian pattern of landownership, and contributed to a pattern of land use that had potentially damaging ecological effects. These findings suggest that variations in the timing of road building have an important impact on outcomes in new land settlement schemes.     

Nationalist Anxiety or the Fear of Losing Your Other

The nation of the nationalists is always conceived to be in crisis. There is always an other standing between them and ‘it’. ‘It’ is often the impossible goal of a ‘totally gratifying nation’. Within a psychoanalytic framework, gratifying this nation is perceived as a fantasy, an object-cause of desire (Lacan), that is, a practical impossibility that neverthless keeps the practitioner trying to reach it. Within such a framework the other standing between the nationalists and their goal becomes a necessary subjective construction which allows the conversion of the impossibility of the nationalist fantasy into deferred possibility. The crisis presented by nationalist thought as triggered by the presence of the other is in fact a mode of reproducing the nationalists' belief in themselves and their nation. The ‘real’ crisis is when nationalists ‘lose’ their other and are forced to face the impossibility of the desired nation. Such situations can be described as states of nationalist anxiety. This paper, based on research during the civil war in Lebanon, examines certain events where the Lebanese Christian Nationalists were faced with the threat of losing their Muslim other. The paper describes the states of anxiety generated by this ‘threat’ and the nature of the strategies the Christian militias deployed to bring their state of anxiety to an end.     

Assessing the state of the art in national ocean policy studies

Abstract

For over a decade the nation‐states of the world have been redefining the legal and political status of the world's oceans, both unilaterally and in multilateral negotiations. Despite the growing importance of ocean policy, we know too little concerning what are current nation‐state marine interests, how they make their marine related decisions, or how they organize themselves for marine policy. This paper was written as an organizing paper for a workshop to assess the state of the art in national ocean policy studies. It was sponsored by the Marine Science Affairs Program, International Decade of Ocean Exploration Office, National Science Foundation. The paper states the goal of the workshop, it defines the terms of reference, such as public policy, public policy analysis, comparative public policy analysis and national ocean policy; it offers a “systems”; influenced model for the evaluation of national ocean policy, and it identifies the state of our knowledge of the various components of national ocean policy by performing a computer‐based survey of the literature. Some 5,000 studies were examined and reduced to 1,000 relevant items. Highlights of the findings show that: 1) we know most about the output stage of ocean policy, less about input, little about process; 2) we know most about bureaucratic ocean decisions, less about legislative, little about judicial ocean decisions; 3) output studies rose and declined, input studies have increased steadily, and process studies may show a sharp rise; 4) we know most about the United States, Japan, and the USSR, less about Western Europe, little about the Third World; and 5) most of the studies were conducted by those using “traditional”; research tools.     

Dancing with a Difference: Reconfiguring the Poetic Politics of Aboriginal Ritual as National Spectacle1

This paper argues that indigenous dance is a poetic politics of cross‐cultural encounter that engages Aboriginal identities with those of the Australian nation. I question the nature of this encounter in terms of a performative dialogue that is both musically and kinesically presented by indigenous communities and ‘translated’ into political discourse by the government. The sentiments of ‘translation’ raise questions as to how local ritual expressions of Aboriginal dance can mediate dialogue when presented as national spectacle. What is being meditated? What is happening in the process of evocation? In this performative nexus, I focus specifically on the poetic politics of Yolngu ritual as spectacle; the nature of performative dialogue in terms of shared dance forms between indigenous communities; the problem of the authentication of dance identities; and how corporeal dispositions of indigenous dance genres influence national sentiment by their symbolic power. I pursue these issues through an analysis of how ancestral dances have been repositioned in national performance venues, such as concerts, cultural centres and ritual arenas, as a means of asserting performative statements about indigenous positioning within the nation‐state. The nature of this dialogue raises questions of authenticity and processes of authentication. It highlights indigenous concerns to control representations of indigeneity as national event, as well as a desire to convey something of the sentiment and sentience embodied in the poetics of their ancestral performances.     

Rural indebtedness in North‐Eastern Nepal part I: The ethnography and its implications*

This paper discusses ideas about ‘the nation’ and ‘the people’ expressed by residents of a low‐income district in the city of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia, Brazil. The analysis relates positive and negative evaluations of national identity to a dialectic of hegemony and resistance. It focuses on gender and race in the local making or negating of nationalism, concluding that constitutive discourses and practices must be understood in relation to social inequality and the class structure.     

The 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP): A visual arts replication study

The 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Arts Assessment was administered to selected 8th grade students throughout the nation, and in 2009 the results from that administration were publicly reported. In the spring of 2010, building on the format and structure of the 2008 national assessment, the researcher administered a self-portrait test locally to 166 students across three regions in a small southeastern state. In replicating the content and process as closely as possible given the publicly available resources, the purpose of this study was to compare the reported 2008 NAEP self-portrait scores with the results of the 2010 replication study self-portrait scores. Specifically, given that all schools in this small state are required to have dedicated art teachers for K–8 schools, a requirement not typical in all states, the researcher sought to understand the degree to which the local performance mirrored the national scores. After confirming that this study met the requirements to be considered a replication study, the researcher determined that based on comparative results from the 2008 NEAP test and 2010 replication assessment, there was evidence that supported having a stand-alone art teacher in K–8 schools. In fact, the researcher affirmed that early and consistent exposure to art and art making is consistent with a student's positive performance on NAEP Arts Assessments.     

The Uncertainty of Prosperity: Dependence and the Politics of Middle-Class Privilege in Maputo

In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a ‘middle class’ in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to ‘new’ middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these ‘emerging middle classes’ are central for economic growth and the safeguarding of a stable, liberal order. The case of Mozambique complicates this assertion and demonstrates an occurrence now taking place across the globe. When the relationships of dependence and obligation and the narratives that justify them erode, the structures of power that may have once been mutually constitutive between an emerging middle class and the state can become damaging as the system they once upheld loses its legitimacy.     

Avian alcohol dehydrogenase. Characterization of the quail enzyme, functional interpretations, and relationships to the different classes of mammalian alcohol dehydrogenase

The primary structure of the major quail liver alcohol dehydrogenase was determined. It is a long-chain, zinc-containing alcohol dehydrogenase of the type occurring also in mammals and hence allows judgement of the gene duplications giving rise to the classes of the human alcohol dehydrogenase system. The avian form is most closely related to the class I mammalian enzyme (72-75% residue identity), least related to class II (60% identity), and intermediately related to class III (64-65% identity). This pattern distinguishes the mammalian enzyme classes and separates classes I and II in particular. In addition to the generally larger similarities with class I, the avian enzyme exhibits certain residue patterns otherwise typical of the other classes, including an extra Trp residue, present in both class II and III but not in class I, with a corresponding increase in the UV absorbance. The avian enzyme further shows that a Gly residue at position 260 previously considered strictly conserved in alcohol dehydrogenases can be exchanged with Lys. However, zinc-binding residues, coenzyme-binding residues, and to a large extent substrate-binding residues are unchanged in the avian enzyme, suggesting its functional properties to be related to those of the class I mammalian alcohol dehydrogenases. In contrast, the areas of subunit interactions in the dimers differ substantially. These results show that (a) the vertebrate enzyme classes are of distant origin, (b) the submammalian enzyme exhibits partly mixed properties in relation to the classes, and (c) the three mammalian enzyme classes are not as equidistantly related as initially apparent but suggest origins from two sublevels.     

Eugenics, politics and the state: social democracy and the Swiss 'gardening state'

This article explores the connections between eugenics, politics and the state, taking the Swiss case as a particular focus. It is argued that Switzerland provides a historical example of what Bauman [Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.] describes as 'gardening states': states that are concerned with eliminating the 'bad weeds' from the national garden and thereby constructing sharply exclusionary national identities. The Swiss experiments with eugenics (1920s-1960s) can be seen as an example of an ongoing struggle against 'difference'. Against this backdrop I will examine, first, the ways in which state regulation of reproductive sexuality, and other eugenic measures, became central mechanisms for dealing with cultural and other 'differences' in the Swiss nation. Second, I will analyse the gendered nature of such mechanisms, as well as the preoccupation with racial 'difference' exemplified by eugenic policies towards 'Gypsies'. To conclude, I will examine the impact of political institutions and political ideology, in particular, social democracy, on these eugenic gardening efforts.     

Syntaxonomic diversity as an indicator of ecological diversity — case study Vranica Mts in the Central Bosnia

Syntaxonomic diversity (SD) represents the number of plant communities (phytocoenoses) in certain area. Plant communities as organized systems of populations of various coexisting plant species inhabiting same or similar habitat in the function of time. SD is one of the best indicators of the state and potential carrying capacity of every ecosystem and an attribute of total ecological diversity. In general, level of syntaxonomic diversity indicates habitat heterogeneity and diversity. This could have significant importance in the categorization of habitat values in accordance with European Nature Information System (EUNIS) criteria. The results presented in this paper indicate without any doubt high natural values of mountain range Vranica in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of the best proofs is an extremely high level of syntaxonomic diversity. In this area covering just 288 km², vegetation is differentiated into 9 formations, 28 classes, 44 orders, 73 alliances and 165 associations. This represents 85% of all classes, 73% of all orders, 65% of all alliances, and 53% of all associations of vegetation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or 35% of all classes in vegetation diversity in Europe. Going from the level of class to the level of order, the number of syntaxa increases for 61%, from order to alliance for 60%, and from alliance to association for 44.24% (average 55%). SD index is very high and it is 0.5729. This means that on each km² contains 0.5729 syntaxa.     

Designs of identity: Politics of aesthetics in the GDR*

Within less than five decades we could witness the ascent and descent of a national project in East Germany. From the very start, the scope of this project was total, this resembling a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. Various cultural themes, with which competing designs for a socialist nation on German soil resonated, gained or lost in force in accordance with historical trends. Such cultural themes, especially those relating to images of collective identity, are interpreted with regard to the aesthetic cum political efforts that went into the construction of a new nation and a new people.     

On Novelty,Heterochrony and Developmental Constraints in a Complex Morphological Theory of Recapitulation: The Genus <Emphasis Type="Italic">Trophon</Emphasis> as a Case Study

Darwin proposed natural selection as the main evolutionary mechanism in 1859. However, he did not think that this was the only process by which new species were generated. It was the so-called Modern Synthesis who established natural selection as the only mechanism responsible for evolution. Since then, the evolutionary process is explained by the pair mutation-adaptation: new species are generated by the appearance of new mutations, which in case of allowing new adaptations to the environment, they will be fixed and organisms will survive, therefore resulting in new species. An alternative view to the plasticity promoted by the adaptationist program is to think organisms as truly organized structures, having different levels of structural organization, which would mean that not every form is possible, but only those that correspond to a certain building plan. This would be reflected in the appearance of structural constraints, showing the limits imposed to the organism during its evolutionary development. In this work, I studied the ontogeny and development of three species of the genus Trophon by geometric morphometrics, in order to clarify important concepts in evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo). Integrating theoretical and empirical investigations, I could propose a new conceptual framework for heterochrony in a context of a complex theory of recapitulation. Furthermore, I could detect a developmental constraint in Trophon, which provided an opportunity to reconstruct the concept of constraint and propose a synthesis between heterochrony and constraint that explained evolution as a process fueled by them, that is, as directive and driving force.     

Reversible, cell-heritable changes during the development of tobacco pith tissues

Cytokinin requiring cells of Nicotiana tabacum L. cv "Havana 425" can be induced in culture to become cytokinin autotrophic. This process is known as cytokinin habituation. Earlier we showed that pith parenchyma tissue consists of inducible cells, which habituate at high rates when treated with cytokinin, and noninducible cells, which remain cytokinin requiring under these conditions. The inducible and noninducible phenotypes are determined states that arise during the development of the tobacco plant and are inherited by individual cells. Here we show that pith tissue of plants regenerated from cloned lines of noninducible cells exhibits the inducible phenotype indicating that noninducible cells, or their descendants, can become inducible. This change in competence for habituation appears to have an epigenetic basis; it is reversible, occurs at high rates, and depends on the developmental state of the cells. The habituated state occurs in two forms that can be distinguished by their difference in developmental potential. Habituated cells derived from inducible pith cells give rise to normal plants whose leaf and pith tissues require cytokinin for growth in culture. In contrast, habituated cells obtained by transferring noninducible cells on media with progressively lower cytokinin concentrations give rise to plants whose leaf and pith tissues exhibit a cytokinin-habituated phenotype in culture.     

Estimating parameters and predicting membrane voltages with conductance-based neuron models

Recent results demonstrate techniques for fully quantitative, statistical inference of the dynamics of individual neurons under the Hodgkin–Huxley framework of voltage-gated conductances. Using a variational approximation, this approach has been successfully applied to simulated data from model neurons. Here, we use this method to analyze a population of real neurons recorded in a slice preparation of the zebra finch forebrain nucleus HVC. Our results demonstrate that using only 1,500 ms of voltage recorded while injecting a complex current waveform, we can estimate the values of 12 state variables and 72 parameters in a dynamical model, such that the model accurately predicts the responses of the neuron to novel injected currents. A less complex model produced consistently worse predictions, indicating that the additional currents contribute significantly to the dynamics of these neurons. Preliminary results indicate some differences in the channel complement of the models for different classes of HVC neurons, which accords with expectations from the biology. Whereas the model for each cell is incomplete (representing only the somatic compartment, and likely to be missing classes of channels that the real neurons possess), our approach opens the possibility to investigate in modeling the plausibility of additional classes of channels the cell might possess, thus improving the models over time. These results provide an important foundational basis for building biologically realistic network models, such as the one in HVC that contributes to the process of song production and developmental vocal learning in songbirds.     

Hygiene,health and environment: European directives

Summary The setting up of the 1993 single market aimed at promoting free movement within the European Community, requires the elaboration of documents intended for the State members, so that the latter may adapt their own national standards which, at the present time, often hinder this free circulation. As for the ?Construction products?, a Directive was passed in this respect on December 21, 1988. It defines six essential requirements applicable to both building and civil engineering works, among which the one entitled: ?Hygiene, Health and Environment?. Each of these requirements will give rise to the elaboration of an ?Interpretative Document? which is aimed at explaining the contents of each requirement, specifying the relevant terminology, allowing the requirements, to be transformed into levels (or classes) of performances to comply with, as well as stating precisely the standards and harmonized technical documents indispensable for both the expression and checking of these levels. With respect to the range of subjects pertinent to the ?Hygiene, Health and Environment? requirement, it should be possible to deal easily with certain aspects such as hydrological cycle, in so far as both regulations and means of verification have, for a long time, been determined in most EEC countries. On the other hand, it will be more difficult to treat other aspects such as: air quality, emission of pollutants or radiation, owing to an almost total absence of any regulations at the present time.     

中国生态安全屏障体系建设现状、主要问题及对策建议

中国生态安全屏障体系建设是生态文明建设的重要组成部分，在维护国家安全方面具有重大战略意义。研究从生态安全屏障功能特点、建设、监测与评估及规划和实施等方面阐述了我国生态安全屏障体系建设现状；分析了在生态安全屏障建设中，自然生态系统的破坏、社会-生态系统脆弱性、生物多样性保护受到威胁、科技体系支撑不足、公众参与意识薄弱和保护与发展的矛盾等方面面临的主要问题和挑战；进而提出了基于生态安全格局的整体布局方略，指出了开展社会-生态脆弱性调查和评估的重要性，强调了国家公园在生态安全屏障体系建设的引领示范作用。最终，希望通过围绕生态文明建设，引导社会公众深度参与，构建“生态-生产-生活”统筹协调机制，以求积极探索生态安全屏障体系建设高质量、高速和可持续发展道路，迈向新时代生态安全屏障建设新征程。     

Bioinspiration as a method of problem‐based STEM education: A case study with a class structured around the COVID‐19 crisis

Bioinspiration is a promising lens for biology instruction as it allows the instructor to focus on current issues, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic. From social distancing to oxygen stress, organisms have been tackling pandemic‐related problems for millions of years. What can we learn from such diverse adaptations in our own applications? This review uses a seminar course on the COVID‐19 crisis to illustrate bioinspiration as an approach to teaching biology content. At the start of the class, students mind‐mapped the entire problem; this range of subproblems was used to structure the biology content throughout the entire class. Students came to individual classes with a brainstormed list of biological systems that could serve as inspiration for a particular problem (e.g., absorptive leaves in response to the problem of toilet paper shortages). After exploration of relevant biology content, discussion returned to the focal problem. Students dug deeper into the literature in a group project on mask design and biological systems relevant to filtration and transparency. This class structure was an engaging way for students to learn principles from ecology, evolution, behavior, and physiology. Challenges with this course design revolved around the interdisciplinary and creative nature of the structure; for instance, the knowledge of the participants was often stretched by engineering details. While the present class was focused on the COVID‐19 crisis, a course structured through a bioinspired approach can be applied to other focal problems, or subject areas, giving instructors a powerful method to deliver interdisciplinary content in an integrated and inquiry‐driven way.     

Notes and news

Some anthropologists perceive an increasing nationalisation or even globalisation of cultures and identities. Others, however, stress that in many places villagers assert their right to a local identity. This article discusses how the inhabitants of the Dutch island of Texel have renegotiated and articulated their identity within the context of processes of nation building and state formation in the Netherlands. It aims to show that nationalisation of culture and localisation of identity are inextricably intertwined.