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Broader Analysis (broader + analysis)
Selected AbstractsWhat Should Historians Do With Heroes?HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2007Reflections on Nineteenth-, Twentieth-Century Britain This article reviews research on modern British heroes (in particular Henry Havelock, Florence Nightingale, Amy Johnson and Robert Falcon Scott) to argue that heroes should be analysed as sites within which we can find evidence of the cultural beliefs, social practices, political structures and economic systems of the past. Much early work interpreted modern heroes as instruments of nationalist and imperialist ideologies, but instrumental interpretations have been superseded within the New Cultural History by broader analyses of the range of gendered meanings encoded in heroic reputations. Studies of heroic icons have generated important insights for historians of masculinity and femininity. More research, however, is needed on the reception rather than the representation of heroic icons, on visual and material sources, and on the changing forms and functions of national heroes after 1945. [source] The changing face of mass murder: massacre, genocide, and postgenocideINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 174 2002Mark Levene This contribution argues the case for the efficacy of labelling distinct episodes of extreme violence. While accepting common ingredients in what are here denoted as examples of ,massacre', ,genocide', and ,post-genocide the clue to their ' separateness lies not in the form but in the historical framework within which each occurs. Only by examining patterns of historical process, in this case in the late-Ottoman empire, are we likely to be able to build a broader analysis of the nature and causation of chronic and systemic violence in the modern world. [source] The role of Steller sea lions in a large population decline of harbor sealsMARINE MAMMAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2010Elizabeth A. Mathews Abstract We provide the first direct evidence that Steller sea lions will prey on harbor seals. Direct observations of predation on marine mammals at sea are rare, but when observed rates of predation are extrapolated, predation mortality may be found to be significant. From 1992 to 2002, harbor seals in Glacier Bay declined steeply, from 6,200 to 2,500 (,65%). After documenting that Steller sea lions were preying on seals in Glacier Bay, we investigated increased predation by sea lions as a potential explanation for the large decline. In five independent data sets spanning 21,25 yr and including 14,308 d of observations, 13 predation events were recorded. We conducted a fine-scale analysis for an intensively studied haul-out (Spider Island) and a broader analysis of all of Glacier Bay. At Spider Island, estimated predation by sea lions increased and could account for the entirety of annual pup production in 5 of 8 yr since 1995. The predation rate, however, was not proportional to the number of predators. Predation by Steller sea lions is a new source of mortality that contributed to the seal declines; however, life history modeling indicates that it is unlikely that sea lion predation is the sole factor responsible for the large declines. [source] Phylogeography and population structure of an ecotonal marsupial, Bettongia tropica, determined using mtDNA and microsatellitesMOLECULAR ECOLOGY, Issue 12 2000L. C. Pope Abstract The northern bettong, Bettongia tropica, is an endangered species of Potoroidae with a restricted distribution in the wet tropics of north Queensland, Australia. The species is only found within a thin strip of sclerophyll forest along the western margin of rainforest. This tight association with rainforest boundaries is predicted to have resulted in population isolation as rainforest contracted during the Pleistocene, though some have proposed that the northern bettong was not present in the wet tropics until the late Pleistocene. The dispersal ability of the species, and of the family, is not known. This study examined gene flow among populations within areas of continuous habitat complemented by a broader analysis of phylogeography. Individuals trapped at each of the four known regions (one region was subsampled at three different sites), were sequenced for 547 base pairs of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region and typed for seven microsatellite loci. The mtDNA phylogeny showed congruence with a biogeographical hypothesis, a relatively deep split suggesting historical isolation in separate northern and southern refugia. The two divergent clades were both present within the Lamb Range, indicating an expansion from these refuges and subsequent admixture at one site. mtDNA allele frequencies indicated relatively limited gene flow within the Lamb Range over distances as short as nine km. Tests of population divergence using microsatellites (FST and assignment tests) strongly supported this result. A molecular signal indicative of a recent bottleneck was unexpectedly detected in one of the Lamb Range subpopulations. This lead us to examine the behaviour of the statistics used in this bottleneck test under a linear stepping-stone model with varying migration rates. We found that it may be more difficult to detect molecular signatures for recent bottlenecks under conditions of very low migration rates than for isolated populations and, conversely, that ,false' bottleneck signatures may be observed at higher migration rates. The Lamb Range FST estimate clearly fell within the category of potentially ,false' bottleneck signals. Despite relatively limited gene flow, evidence for asymmetric dispersal suggests more complicated population dynamics than a simple linear stepping-stone model. [source] Conservation genetics of endangered flying squirrels (Glaucomys) from the Appalachian mountains of eastern North AmericaANIMAL CONSERVATION, Issue 2 2005Brian S. Arbogast We assessed the genetic status of two endangered subspecies of the northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus) that are restricted to isolated stands of high elevation spruce-fir and adjacent spruce-fir-hardwood ecotonal habitat in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America. We used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and allozyme data to estimate levels of genetic variability in the two subspecies of interest and then evaluated this information in the context of large-scale phylogeographical structure and overall genetic variability for the entire species and for the closely related and partially sympatric southern flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans). This broader analysis involves much of North America's northern coniferous forest biome, together with the deciduous forest biome of eastern North America. Our results support the evolutionary distinctness of the endangered Appalachian populations of G. sabrinus. These populations possess several private alleles and have levels of genetic variability that are substantially lower than those observed in conspecific populations found elsewhere. However, the endangered Appalachian populations of G. sabrinus have higher levels of genetic variability than those observed in populations of G. volans from across eastern North America. These results highlight the utility of evaluating the conservation genetics of small and isolated populations within a broad-scale comparative evolutionary and biogeographical framework. [source] "Sophisticated People Versus Rednecks": Economic Restructuring and Class Difference in America's WestANTIPODE, Issue 1 2002Lucy Jarosz In this paper, we argue for the importance of constructing a human geography of white class difference. More particularly, we present a theoretical framework for understanding the cultural politics of class and whiteness in the context of rural restructuring. We theorize these politics through an examination of the national discourse of redneck that has emerged in the US. We analyze the term "redneck" as one of several rhetorical categories that refer to rural white poor people. We argue that while various terms are employed in geographically specific ways and cannot be used interchangeably, they nonetheless function similarly in positioning the white rural poor. Our examination of redneck discourse exemplifies these processes and points up the need for a broader analysis of representational strategies that reinforce class difference among whites. Drawing upon three case studies of white rural poverty, we deconstruct these imagined rural spaces by situating discourses about white rural poor people in the context of geographically specific political economies of power and social relations in Kentucky, Florida, and Washington. These case studies, as well as the national discourse of redneck, represent rural poverty as a lifestyle choice and as an individualized cultural trait. Abstract rural spaces are construed as poor, underdeveloped, and wild; rural, white poor people are represented as lazy, dirty, obsolescent, conservative, or alternative. A focus upon the political economy of community resource relationships and the construction and reproduction of redneck discourses reveals how exploitative material processes are justified by naming others and blaming the persistence of rural poverty upon the poor themselves. [source] | |||||||||||||