Colonial Period (colonial + period)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences


Selected Abstracts


Adding insult to injury: opportunistic treponemal disease in a scalping survivor

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 6 2008
M. O. Smith
Abstract Although the taking of scalps is arguably a perimortem trophy-taking behaviour, cases of scalping survival are occasionally reported in the historical documents of the American Colonial Period and the 19th century westward expansion. Survival cases are also detected in pre-Columbian bioarchaeological contexts. Although scalp avulsion injuries can heal without complication, often the process is compromised by secondary osteomyelitis, usually attributable to environmentally ever-present Staphylococcal or Streptococcal bacteria. A scalping survivor case from the late prehistoric (AD 1200,1600) Hampton site (40RH41) of East Tennessee unusually displays infectious sequelae in the area denuded by scalp avulsion which are pathognomonic for treponemal disease (caries sicca, stellate scarring). This infection is probably a reflection of the easy opportunity afforded by the large size of the wound bed, poor post-trauma hygiene, and direct inoculation of the diploë by a ubiquitous Treponema. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Changes in the Style, Production and Distribution of Pottery in Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca, Mexico during the 1990s

MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
Mary S. Thieme
The potters of Santa María Atzompa, a town located in the Valley of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico, have been making pottery for at least 500 years. The town has been widely known for its production of green glazed cookware and ornamental pottery, which is sold throughout the State of Oaxaca and beyond. Beginning in the mid-1990s, to a large extent as a result of public concern, publicity, and legislation about the lead glaze, which they have been using since the Colonial Period, the potters changed the style, distribution and social context of their ceramics production. This paper examines the town's pottery industry through time, focusing on the household as a key social unit. [source]


Labour Discipline and Resistance: The Oruro Mining District in the Late Colonial Period

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 1 2003
Concepción Gavira Márquez
This article discusses the characteristics of the (principally indigenous) work force in the mines of Charcas, Bolivia, in the last decades of the eighteenth century. It analyses the ways in which mine workers were disciplined under law and in daily practice, as well as their resistance to such discipline, so as to assess the application and impact of mining legislation. The chief obstacles to proletarianization lay in the characteristic mixture in the mines of wage labourers and peasants, as well as in the different concepts of work held by Spaniards and Indians. An increase in coercion during this period, both by the State and private individuals, so as to recruit and retain workers provoked different strategies of resistance among the Indians, as is illustrated by a significant joint protest among smelting,mill workers in Oruro and Paria in 1793. [source]


The American Master Bedroom: Its Changing Location and Significance to the Family

JOURNAL OF INTERIOR DESIGN, Issue 1 2005
John L. Vollmer M. S.
ABSTRACT This article discusses the possible relationship between changes in the master bedroom and parenting values in middle class America. The authors review information from the US homebuilding industry, statistical data on housing trends, literature on the history of the bedroom from the Colonial period to the present, and literature on family sleep practices. The owner's bedroom, one domain among various domains in the home, is an individual-private domain that functions to ensure adult privacy and increase physical barriers between parents and children. The authors contend that changes in the location and function of the master bedroom in the American home over the past centuries reflect the upward social mobility afforded by rising incomes, expansive and undeveloped land, and shared concepts of prestige held by home builders and homeowners. These influences have helped develop a purely American sense of parenting among middle and upper-income families that reflects their individualism. Middle class parents have encouraged more physical distance between themselves and their offspring. Consistent with this trend, they have shown a preference for houses with large master suites that are sometimes located at a distance from other bedrooms in the house. Using a model by Chermayeff and Alexander (1965), the authors examine the relationship between parenting practices and private space, highlighting the implications of this trend for home planners and interior designers. [source]


Height and relative leg length as indicators of the quality of the environment among Mozambican juveniles and adolescents

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 2 2009
Cristina Padez
The growth status of Mozambique adolescents was assessed to test the hypothesis that relative leg length is a more sensitive indicator of the quality of the environment than the total height. The sample comprised 690 boys and 727 girls, aged between 9 and 17 years, from Maputo. It is divided between those living in the Centre of Maputo and those living in the slums on the periphery of the city. Height, weight, and sitting height were measured and the sitting height ratio was calculated. The hypothesis that relative leg length is more sensitive than total stature as an indicator of environmental quality is not uniformly confirmed. Overall, mean stature is greater for the centre group than the slum group, but relative leg length as measured by the sitting height ratio does not differ. Compared with African-American references (NHANES II), all centre girls, 9- to 14-year-old slum girls, all slum boys, and the oldest centre boys show relatively shorter legs. These findings show that within the Mozambique sample, relative leg length is not sensitive enough to distinguish the quality of the living environment. Mozambique was a colony of Portugal until 1975. Civil unrest and warfare characterized the late Colonial period and the postindependence period until a peace settlement was concluded in 1992. It is possible that all socioeconomic status groups within the country suffered sufficiently to reduce relative leg length compared with the better-off African-American reference sample. Possible genetic influences on relative leg length are also discussed. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 2009. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Economic intensification and degenerative joint disease: Life and labor on the postcontact north coast of Peru

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2009
Haagen D. Klaus
Abstract This study tests the hypothesis that the colonial economy of the Lambayeque region of northern coastal Peru was associated with a mechanically strenuous lifestyle among the indigenous Mochica population. To test the hypothesis, we documented the changes in the prevalence of degenerative joint disease (or DJD) in human remains from the late pre-Hispanic and colonial Lambayeque Valley Complex. Comparisons were made using multivariate odds ratios calculated across four age classes and 11 principle joint systems corresponding to 113 late pre-Hispanic and 139 postcontact adult Mochica individuals. Statistically significant patterns of elevated postcontact DJD prevalence are observed in the joint systems of the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and knee. More finely grained comparison between temporal phases indicates that increases in prevalence were focused immediately following contact in the Early/Middle Colonial period. Analysis of DJD by sex indicates postcontact males experienced greater DJD prevalence than females. Also, trends between pre- and postcontact females indicate nearly universally elevated DJD prevalence among native colonial women. Inferred altered behavioral uses of the upper body and knee are contextualized within ecological, ethnohistoric, and ethnoarchaeological frameworks and appear highly consistent with descriptions of the local postcontact economy. These patterns of DJD appear to stem from a synergism of broad, hemispheric level sociopolitical alterations, specific changes to Mochica activity and behavior, regional economic intensification, and local microenvironmental characteristics, which were all focused into these biological outcomes by the operation of a colonial Spanish political economy on the north coast of Peru from A.D. 1536 to 1751. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


CHEMICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF TIN-LEAD GLAZED POTTERY FROM THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND THE CANARY ISLANDS: INITIAL STEPS TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF SPANISH COLONIAL POTTERY IN THE AMERICAS,

ARCHAEOMETRY, Issue 4 2009
J. G. IÑAÑEZ
Majolica pottery was the most characteristic tableware produced in Europe during the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Because of the prestige and importance attributed to this ware, Spanish majolica was imported in vast quantities into the Americas during the Spanish Colonial period. A study of Spanish majolica was conducted on a set of 186 samples from the 10 primary majolica production centres on the Iberian Peninsula and 22 sherds from two early colonial archaeological sites on the Canary Islands. The samples were analysed by neutron activation analysis (NAA), and the resulting data were interpreted using an array of multivariate statistical approaches. Our results show a clear discrimination between different production centres, allowing a reliable provenance attribution of the sherds from the Canary Islands. [source]


Conditional Belonging: Farm Workers and the Cultural Politics of Recognition in Zimbabwe

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2008
Blair Rutherford
ABSTRACT This article examines Zimbabwean land politics and the study of rural interventions, including agrarian reform, more broadly, using the analytical framework of territorialized ,modes of belonging' and their ,cultural politics of recognition'. Modes of belonging are the routinized discourses, social practices and institutional arrangements through which people make claims for resources and rights, the ways through which they become ,incorporated' in particular places. In these spatialized forms of power and authority, particular cultural politics of recognition operate; these are the cultural styles of interaction that become privileged as proper forms of decorum and morality informing dependencies and interdependencies. The author traces a hegemonic mode of belonging identified as ,domestic government', put in place on European farms in Zimbabwe's colonial period, and shows how it was shaped by particular political and economic conjunctures in the first twenty years of Independence after 1980. Domestic government provided a conditional belonging for farm workers in terms of claims to limited resources on commercial farms while positioning them in a way that made them marginal citizens in the nation at large. This is the context for the behaviour of land-giving authorities which have actively discriminated against farm workers during the politicized and violent land redistribution processes that began in 2000. Most former farm workers are now seeking other forms of dependencies, typically more precarious and generating fewer resources and services than they had accessed on commercial farms, with their own particular cultural politics of recognition, often tied to demonstrating support to the ruling political party. [source]


Changing household responses to drought in Tharaka, Kenya: vulnerability, persistence and challenge

DISASTERS, Issue 2 2008
Thomas A. Smucker
Drought is a recurring challenge to the livelihoods of those living in Tharaka District, Kenya, situated in the semi-arid zone to the east of Mount Kenya, from the lowest slopes of the mountain to the banks of the Tana River. This part of Kenya has been marginal to the economic and political life of Kenya from the colonial period until the present day. A study of more than 30 years of change in how people in Tharaka cope with drought reveals resilience in the face of major macro-level transformations, which include privatisation of landownership, population growth, political decentralisation, increased conflict over natural resources, different market conditions, and environmental shifts. However, the study also shows troubling signs of increased use of drought responses that are incompatible with long-term agrarian livelihoods. Government policy needs to address the challenge of drought under these new macro conditions if sustainable human development is to be achieved. [source]


Colonial Constructions of Masculinity: Transforming Aboriginal Australian Men into ,Houseboys'

GENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2009
Julia Martínez
In Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia, Aboriginal men made up more than half of the domestic servant population by 1938. They replaced the Chinese and Malay male servants who had worked for British colonists in the early colonial period. Much of the historical work on male domestic servants in colonial situations plots the construction of the ,houseboy' as emasculated, feminised and submissive. In contrast, colonial constructions of Aboriginal men as ,houseboys' in Darwin emphasise the masculinity of the Aboriginal hunter. Aboriginal men were characterised as requiring constant discipline and training, and this paternalistic discourse led to a corresponding denial of manhood or adulthood for Aboriginal men. While male domestic servants in other colonial settings were allowed some privileges of masculinity in relation to female workers, amongst Aboriginal domestic workers, it was so-called ,half-caste' women who, in acknowledgment of their ,white blood', received nominally higher wages and privileges for domestic work. Aboriginal men were denied what was referred to as a ,breadwinning' wage; an Australian wage awarded to white men with families. Despite this, their role as husbands was encouraged by the administration as a method of controlling sexual relations between white men and Aboriginal women. These sometimes contradictory images can be understood as manifestations of the racialised construction of gender in Australia. [source]


INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE ANALYSES OF CHANGE OF MIOMBO WOODLAND IN TANZANIA AND ITS IMPLICATION FOR ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN LIVELIHOOD

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES A: PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2009
LENNART STRÖMQUIST
ABSTRACT. Landscapes bear witness to past and present natural and societal processes influencing the environment and human livelihoods. By analysing landscape change at different spatial scales over time the effects on the environment and human livelihoods of various external and internal driving forces of change can be studied. This paper presents such an analysis of miombo woodland surrounding the Mkata plains in central Tanzania. The rich natural landscape diversity of the study area in combination with its historical and political development makes it an ideal observation ground for this kind of study. The paper focuses on long-term physical and biological changes, mainly based on satellite information but also on field studies and a review of documents and literature. The miombo woodlands are highly dynamic semi-arid ecosystems found on a number of nutrient-poor soil groups. Most of the woodlands are related to an old, low-relief geomorphology of erosion surfaces with relatively deep and leached soils, or to a lesser extent also on escarpments and steep Inselberg slopes with poor soils. Each period in the past has cast its footprints on the landscape development and its potential for a sustainable future use. On a regional level there has been a continual decrease in forest area over time. Expansion of agriculture around planned villages, implemented during the 1970s, in some cases equals the loss of forest area (Mikumi-Ulaya), whilst in other areas (Kitulangalo), the pre-independence loss of woodland was small; the agricultural area was almost the same during the period 1975,1999, despite the fact that forests have been lost at an almost constant rate over the same period. Illegal logging and charcoal production are likely causes because of the proximity to the main highway running through the area. Contrasting to the general regional pattern are the conditions in a traditional village (Ihombwe), with low immigration of people and a maintained knowledge of the resource potential of the forest with regards to edible plants and animals. In this area the local community has control of the forest resources in a Forest Reserve, within which the woody vegetation has increased in spite of an expansion of agriculture on other types of village land. The mapping procedure has shown that factors such as access to transport and lack of local control have caused greater deforestation of certain areas than during the colonial period. Planned villages have furthermore continued to expand over forest areas well after their implementation, rapidly increasing the landscape fragmentation. One possible way to maintain landscape and biodiversity values is by the sustainable use of traditional resources, based on local knowledge of their management as illustrated by the little change observed in the traditionally used area. [source]


Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in Late Colonial India

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2010
Swapna M. Banerjee
Tracing the genealogy of domesticity from India's precolonial past, this essay problematizes the recent emphasis on the link between women and domesticity in late colonial India. Based on a review of the growing literature in the field, it considers the newly evolved notions of colonial domesticity as a moment of [re]consideration rather than a break with the past. The discursive formation of the new ideas of domesticity under colonial regime transcended the private-public and often national boundaries, indicating an overlap where the most intimate details of the ,private', personal life were not only discussed and debated for public consumption but were also articulated in response to imperial and international concerns. This paper argues that domesticity as a new cultural logic became the motor of change for both the British and the colonized subjects and it particularly empowered women by giving them agency in the late colonial period. In conclusion, this paper signals the importance of children, childhood, fatherhood, and masculinity as critical components of domesticity, which are yet to be broached by South Asian historians. [source]


Education for All: Reassessing the Historiography of Education in Colonial India

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2009
Catriona Ellis
This essay won the 2007 History Compass Graduate Essay Prize, Asia Section. Despite the extensive literature on the history of education in colonial India, historians have confined their arguments to very narrow themes linked to colonial epistemological dominance and education as a means of control, resistance and dialogue. These tend to mirror the debates of the colonial period, particularly regarding the Anglicist-Orientalist controversy. This article argues that such an approach is both gendered and hierarchical, and seeks to fundamentally redress the balance. It looks firstly at formal school education , colonial and indigenous , in both philosophical and technological terms. It then turns to education as experienced by the majority of Indian children outwith the classroom, either formally or within the domestic sphere. The article then looks at the neglected recipients of education, and seeks to re-establish children as agents within these adult-driven agendas. By considering educational discourse and practice, and the emerging historiography of Indian childhood and children, we can begin to establish a more rounded and inclusive picture of what education really meant. [source]


A Question of Rites?

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2006
Perspectives on the Colonial Encounter with Sati
Although a rare occurrence, sati has become a highly controversial issue in modern India. In the wake of the now notorious burning of Roop Kanwar in 1987, sati and its glorification became a terrain on which wider issues about religion, identity, modernity and tradition were contested. In this debate both supporters and opponents of sati invoked the rhetoric of ,rights'. It is generally agreed that such terms in the contemporary debate have their roots in the colonial period; some supporters of sati go as far as to argue that those who condemn sati as a violation of women's rights are adopting a ,Western' perspective without appreciating sati's ,true' social, religious and cultural significance. In doing so, however, they assume a homogenous and consistent colonial condemnation of sati. New perspectives suggest, however, that the British response to sati was more multifaceted than this allows and the link between colonial discourses and modern protagonists more complex. [source]


A Global, Community Building Language?

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 2 2008
Amitai Etzioni
Although long championed, a global language has not come to fruition despite considerable efforts. Many fear that such a language would undermine the particularistic, identity-constituting primary languages of local and national communities. These concerns can be addressed at least in part by utilizing a two-tiered approach in which efforts to protect primary languages are intensified at the same time that a global language is adopted as an additional language and not as a substitutive one. Although the U.N. or some other such global organization could, theoretically, choose a language to serve as the global language, English is already (and increasingly) occupying this position as a result of the colonial period and post-colonial developments. In this respect, English is compared to the development of the railroad system in the United States, which although introduced at considerable human costs by overpowering corporations, later became an integral part of the economy and society. Whether English should be adopted as a second language, or as a third or fourth one, is heavily influenced by the level of difficulty involved,the labor to fluency ratio,in acquiring a new language. [source]


Authenticity, Colonialism, and the Struggle with Modernity

JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 4 2002
John B. Hertz
Puerto Rico's architectural legacy and struggle with modernity is found in the confrontation between the colonial period and the recent past. This conflict is revealed in the plan to replace the modernist icon, the Hotel La Concha in San Juan, with a revivalist "Hispanic" complex. In spite of the latter supposedly being more "Puerto Rican," it is the modern building from the recent past, rather than the new revival model, that is truly authentic. The proposed development copies an invented style imposed by the United States on the island after its conquest one hundred years ago. However, rather than acknowledging the presence of architecture built by the Spanish in Puerto Rico, the project revives the architecture of American colonization. [source]


Social Identity and Culture Change on the Southern Northwest Coast

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2007
MARK A. TVESKOV
Driven by the participation of Native American people in the contemporary political, cultural, and academic landscape of North America, public and academic discussions have considered the nature of contemporary American Indian identity and the persistence, survival, and (to some) reinvention of Native American cultures and traditions. I use a case study,the historical anthropology of the Native American people of the Oregon coast,to examine the persistence of many American Indian people through the colonial period and the subsequent revitalization of "traditional" cultural practices. Drawing on archaeological data, ethnohistorical accounts, and oral traditions, I offer a reading of how, set against and through an ancestral landscape, traditional social identities and relationships of gender and authority were constructed and contested. I then consider how American Indian people negotiated the new sets of social relationships dictated by the dominant society. [source]


Discourse Resistance And Negotiation By Indigenous Australians

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 2 2003
John Synott
In the context of intercultural relations, the boundaries between dominant and subordinated communities are constructed in a variety of ways. Language frames, or discourses, understood from a sociological rather than a linguistic perspective can be considered to constitute one of the main processes for determining the character of intercultural boundaries. Using this theoretical perspective, this article examines a number of discourses that have contributed to the construction of social relations between Australian Aborigines and the dominant nonindigenous cultural groups in Australia. Examples from the colonial period show the way in which indigenous people were oppressed along racial boundaries, even as they resisted, while more recent instances chart the process of indigenous people in renegotiating social relations and in asserting the process of self-determination and cultural celebration. [source]


Rural mobility as a response to land shortages: the case of Malawi

POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 4 2006
Deborah Potts
Abstract Malawi is the most densely populated country in southern Africa, and its economy and the livelihoods of the vast majority of its people are dependent on agriculture. Rural land is, therefore, a critical resource. Malawi is divided into three Regions and during the colonial period, such economic development as did occur tended to be concentrated in the Southern Region. The Northern Region was often characterised, by contrast, as the ,dead North'. Levels of economic development in the Central Region fell between the other two regions. At independence in the 1960s, internal migration patterns reflected this, with net in-migration to the Southern Region and net out-migration from the Northern. In the 40 years since, there have been marked changes in these patterns, and in the last intercensal period, 1987,1998, the Northern Region was experiencing net in-migration from the Southern Region, and was the fastest growing region. This paper traces these changes over time through analysis of census data, and relates them to increasingly serious land shortages in the south and the geography of tobacco estate development since independence. This analysis is further supported by a range of other surveys and research which indicate the depth of land shortage and rural poverty in the south of the country. The paper concludes that rural,rural migration, although under-studied, particularly in southern Africa, is a vitally important aspect of rural livelihood change and positive adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa which deserves more attention. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


THE CO-OPERATIVE REFORM PROCESS IN TANZANIA AND SRI LANKA

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2010
Johnston Birchall
ABSTRACT**:,This article reports on findings from a three year study of co-operatives in Sri Lanka and Tanzania. The article asks three questions: why do co-operative sectors need reforming; what is the co-operative reform process; and why has reform succeeded in some countries but not others? It provides a short history of co-operatives in three phases: the colonial period, the post-colonial nationalist period and the period of market liberalisation. It shows that the control exercised by colonial governments was deepened under nationalist governments, with co-operatives becoming parastatals. Liberalisation brought a sustained attempt by international agencies to reassert the distinctive nature of co-operatives as member-owned businesses. However, co-ops were ill-prepared to adjust to a competitive market and the lifting of government regulation; many failed, some were corrupted, while a few became truly member-controlled. The article draws on documentary analysis and key informant interviews to provide accounts of the reform process in Tanzania and Sri Lanka. It finds that the process is incomplete and often contested. [source]


Front and Back Covers, Volume 23, Number 5.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 5 2007
Ocotober 200
Front and back covers caption, volume 23 issue 5 Front cover The front cover illustrates Julie J. Taylor's article on the outcome of the San people's court case against the Botswana government. The photo shows Roy Sesana, leader of the San organization First People of the Kalahari and chief appellant in the case, with Gordon Bennett, the San group's lawyer, at the start of the case in July 2004. In the course of the last century, the San or Bushmen of southern Africa became possibly the most studied indigenous group in the world. In addition to suffering land dispossession and violence during the colonial period, their image in the West has long been that of exotic and innocent ,Other', fuelled over time by the work of scientists, anthropologists and filmmakers among others. In recent years the San have become part of wider debates about indigeneity, poverty and development, often in relation to land rights. Many San have formed their own representative institutions and have also entered into relationships with national and international NGOs to campaign for their rights as an indigenous minority. From 2004, San claims to land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana drew unprecedented attention in the international media, due in part to the efforts of local NGOs and the British-based advocacy group Survival International. After protracted court proceedings and much controversy, the case finally came to an end in late 2006. At first sight the outcome appeared to offer victory to San applicants, but matters in the Central Kalahari are far from resolved, raising questions about the role of advocacy groups and the fate of marginalized San groups elsewhere. Back cover (IM)PERSONAL MONEY Roboti of Giribwa Village, Trobriand Islands (above) is seen wearing the armshell Nanoula and the necklace Kasanai. Both have been circulating in the kula for at least a century and were already famous when Malinowski saw them. He was sure that these valuables were not money because they were not an impersonal medium of exchange, but Marcel Mauss, in a long footnote to The gift, wrote: ,On this reasoning there has only been money when precious things have been really made into currency , namely have been inscribed and impersonalised, and detached from any relationship with any legal entity, whether collective or individual, other than the state that mints them, One only defines in this way a second type of money , our own.' This exchange was in some ways the high point of economic anthropology. The world of national currencies issued and controlled by states and banks must now come to terms with innumerable virtual instruments such as those seen flashing on the screens of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (below). But, as the current ,sub-prime mortgage' crisis shows, these anonymous money instruments are still closely linked to personal credit. The challenge facing anthropologists today is to renew the legacy of Mauss and Malinowski in ways that illuminate such matters of universal practical concern. In this issue, Keith Hart argues that money, like society itself, is and always has been both personal and impersonal. A pragmatic anthropology should aim to show that the numbers on people's financial statements constitute a way of summarizing their relations with society at a given time. The next step is to explain how these numbers might serve in building a viable personal economy. When we are able to take responsibility for our own economic actions, we will understand better the social forces impinging on our lives. Then it will become more obvious how and why ruling institutions need to be reformed for all our sakes. [source]


COLONIALISM AND INDUSTRIALISATION: FACTORY LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY OF COLONIAL KOREA, 1913,37

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2008
Duol Kim
colonial Korea; colonialism; entrepreneurship; factory labour productivity; industrialisation Unlike other colonial economies, Korea industrialised rapidly during its colonial period, which past scholars attributed to the industrialisation policy directed by the Japanese colonial government between 1930 and 1945. Our analysis of factory labour productivity from 1913 to 1937 suggests significant revisions to this claim. Factory labour productivity as well as total production grew rapidly before the active intervention of the colonial government. In addition, Korean entrepreneurs invested heavily in their firms and successfully competed with Japanese entrepreneurs. We conjecture that the pre-war experience of Korean entrepreneurs provided a critical foundation for the post-colonial economic growth. [source]


Nation-building and informal politics

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 192 2008
Victor T. Le Vine
Among the problems that confront nation-builders in new states is dealing with their country's informal sector and its politics, manifest not only in the informal economy of markets and hidden transactions, but also its traditional authority systems, networks of patronage, bonds of ethnic and other parochial identities, and illicit activities, including corruption and criminal organisations. Some of these aspects of the informal sector have survived from pre-independence or colonial periods. Others, like kleptocracy and the criminalisation of the state, are outgrowths of the new state and its leadership cadre. These problems largely arise in the so-called juridical state, the legal-rational construct of new statehood, and reflect the failure, or unwillingness of the managers of the new state to move beyond the juridical state to the empirical state, that is, to nationhood and a generalised national identity and citizenship. [source]