The Unbounded Space and Moral Transgression: Capitalist Expansion in West New Britain

ABSTRACT

Capitalist transformations in West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, have focused on setting boundaries on land and social relations as an efficient way to generate productive relations. But for the Maututu around Bialla town where the palm oil industry has been established the perception of productivity rests not on establishing boundaries but on exploring horizons. Recent dramatic changes to the economy and demography of this area have introduced moral conflict into Maututu endeavours to generate well-being. Maututu have responded to these conflicts in ways that continue to bring their indigenous morality to bear on the moral strategies pursued by state and capitalist forces.     

From Mukogodo to Maasai: Ethnicity and Cultural Change in Kenya

From Mukogodo to Maasai: Ethnicity and Cultural Change in Kenya . Lee Cronk. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2004. 172 pp.     

Structure and Dynamics in an Urban Landscape: Toward a Multiscale View

Ecosystems and city systems often form hierarchically structured landscapes whose spatial pattern is scale dependent. While trends in the upper tail of national city-size distributions leave the impression that fractal-scaling laws such as Zipf's law or the rank-size rule truly represent the essence of the system, the linearity depicted at aggregate scale actually obscures variation and discontinuity in the urban size-density function, including multimodalities evident in regional data sets. Tracing individual city trajectories through these hierarchical patterns reveals structural resilience at macroscopic scale, the punctuated growth of individual cities of differing sizes, the persistence and self-reinforcing character of spatial agglomeration, and a general need for further empirical investigation of the relationship between city size and growth. It also raises questions for future exploration, including the meaning of persistent departures from the power laws of traditional urban systems theory. Interpretation of such departures in the context of questions of jurisdictional scale in environmental management and “smart growth” policy adds a practical dimension to the research agenda. Received 14 November 2000; accepted 5 September 2001.     

Epilogue: Toward a Transdisciplinary Science of Ecological and Cultural Landscape Restoration

To bridge the gaps between restoration as a science and as a practice, restoration ecology has to broaden its scope toward transdisciplinarity in close cooperation with landscape ecologists and other holistic environmentally oriented scientists, professionals, practitioners, and stakeholders. For restoration, the ongoing transdisciplinary scientific revolution has opened new insights to cope with the complex bio‐hydro‐ and human‐ecological network relations. The Total Human Ecosystem (THE), integrating humans with all other organisms and their total environment at the highest level of the global hierarchy, should become the unifying holistic paradigm for all synthetic “eco‐disciplines.” These should link ecological knowledge, wisdom, and ethics with their scientific and professional expertise from the natural and social sciences and the humanities. As the tangible matrix for all organisms, including humans, our industrial Total Human Landscape is the concrete spatial and functional system of the THE. It forms a closely interlaced network of solar energy–powered natural and seminatural biosphere landscapes and fossil energy–powered urban and agro‐industrial technosphere landscapes. The self‐organizing and self‐creative restoration capacities of biosphere landscapes are driven by mutually amplifying auto‐ and cross‐catalytic feedback loops, but the rapidly expanding technosphere landscapes are driven by destabilizing “run‐away” feedback loops. To prevent a global breakdown and to ensure the sustainable future for both humankind and nature, these positive feedbacks have to be counteracted by restraining, cultural feedbacks of environmental planning and management, conservation, and restoration. As the theme of this special issue alludes to, this template should become an integral part of an urgently needed sustainability revolution, to which the transdisciplinary landscape restoration could contribute its important share.     

Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World: Toward an Engaged Cultural Criticism

Taking. Stand in. Postfeminist World: Toward an Engaged Cultural Criticism. Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Patricia Sharpe. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. 241 pp.     

The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism as Cultural Performance

The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism as Cultural Performance. David M. Guss. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 252 pp.     

Population Dynamics and Range Expansion in Nine-Banded Armadillos

Understanding why certain species can successfully colonize new areas while others do not is a central question in ecology. The nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) is a conspicuous example of a successful invader, having colonized much of the southern United States in the last 200 years. We used 15 years (1992–2006) of capture-mark-recapture data from a population of armadillos in northern Florida in order to estimate, and examine relationships among, various demographic parameters that may have contributed to this ongoing range expansion. Modeling across a range of values for γ, the probability of juveniles surviving in the population until first capture, we found that population growth rates varied from 0.80 for γ = 0.1, to 1.03 for γ = 1.0. Growth rates approached 1.0 only when γ ≥0.80, a situation that might not occur commonly because of the high rate of disappearance of juveniles. Net reproductive rate increased linearly with γ, but life expectancy (estimated at 3 years) was independent of γ. We also found that growth rates were lower during a 3-year period of hardwood removal that removed preferred habitat than in the years preceding or following. Life-table response experiment (LTRE) analysis indicated the decrease in growth rate during logging was primarily due to changes in survival rates of adults. Likewise, elasticity analyses of both deterministic and stochastic population growth rates revealed that survival parameters were more influential on population growth than were those related to reproduction. Collectively, our results are consistent with recent theories regarding biological invasions which posit that populations no longer at the leading edge of range expansion do not exhibit strong positive growth rates, and that high reproductive output is less critical in predicting the likelihood of successful invasion than are life-history strategies that emphasize allocation of resources to future, as opposed to current, reproduction.     

Cultural and insecticidal control of Thrips tabaci on onions in the Sudan

Onion thrips (Thrips tabaci) is the major pest of onions in the Sudan. In the Gezira Scheme onions are normally transplanted between October and January when the thrips population is very low. Later, thrips commence to breed. Early transplanted onions were well established before infestations became severe and, without the need for insecticidal control, produced significantly higher yields. Onions transplanted later, when thrips began to multiply, produced lower yields. Depending on the duration and intensity of infestation three to five sprays applied at fortnightly intervals were required to control thrips on the late transplanted crop. The effect of spray frequency on the development and yield of onions was investigated and the response found to be solely due to the extent of thrips control achieved. The toxicant itself had no effect on growth. Although the leaves were unaffected by the various treatments, spraying when most thrips were present increased fresh and dry leaf weights, bulb weight and, in the Hudeiba cultivar, the proportion of flowering plants. With the late-transplanted crop, light infestations led to yield losses of at least 39% whilst severe thrips attacks reduced the crop by 57%.     

The Dynamics of Cell Expansion by Turgor

In changes of cell volume, the mean turgor pressure throughoutthe cell is greater or less than the wall pressure, dependingon the direction of water flow. When measured, however, indefinitelyclose to the wall, the turgor pressure is always exactly equalto the wall pressure, the law of the equality of action andreaction being true of dynamic as well as of static states.     

The Dynamics of Cell Expansion by Turgor

It is pointed out that in dynamic cell-states, when alterationin volume is taking place, the turgor pressure and wall pressureneed not be equal: it is the difference between them which isthe cause of the volume change.     

Toward a Cultural Understanding of Human Microevolution on the Great Plains

Abstract

In order to explain the patterns of similarities and differences among the Plains skeletal populations analyzed by physical anthropologists, the populations must be viewed in the context of the sociocultural systems whichproduced them. Close cooperationbetween physical anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and linguistsis needed if this is to be accomplished. This paper attempts to set the stage for such studies by sketching out some of the aspects of the Plains Indian cultural environment which affected population genetics, material culture, and communications systems. On this basis, an attempt is made to interpret the results of some of the other papers in this volume.