The stratigraphical signature of the Anthropocene in England and its wider context

The Anthropocene deposits of England, here regarded as those formed after ～1950 CE, are now extensive, take various forms, and may be characterized and recognized by a number of stratigraphic signals, such as artificial radionuclides, pesticide residues, microplastics, enhanced fly ash levels, concrete fragments and a novel variety of ‘technofossils’ and neobiotic species. They include the uppermost parts of both ‘natural’ deposits such as the sediment layers formed in lakes and estuaries, and more directly human-made or human-influenced ones such as landfill deposits and the ‘artificial ground’ beneath urban areas and around major constructions. ‘Negative deposits’ include the worked areas of quarries and regions such as the English Fenland, where thick peat deposits have ablated to leave a strongly modified underlying landscape, and extend beneath into the subterranean realm as mine workings, metro systems and boreholes. The production of these is still rapidly increasing and evolving in character, while the early signs of global change, such as warming, sea level rise, and modifications to biotic assemblages, are beginning to further modify the emerging geology of this new phase of Earth history.     

Self,others and objects in an ‘alternative economy’: Personal narratives from the Heiveld Rooibos Cooperative

This paper explores the personal narratives of 12 women members of the Heiveld, a rooibos¹ producer cooperative in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It contributes to the emerging literature in geography and allied disciplines on so-called ‘alternative economies’, the aims of which often include the conceptual re-location of agency from the capitalist system to the realm of the human. This work suggests that human development – both individual and collective – is central to the success and indeed the alterity of alternative economies. The Heiveld members’ narratives support these ideas, in particular through their accounts of the importance of autonomous work and the significance of learning from and with others. We argue, however, that these narratives also foreground a theme that tends to be neglected in the alternative economies literature – that of consumption and the possession of material things. Our interviewees repeatedly emphasise buying and owning things as being among the most meaningful outcomes of alternative economic activity. They see great value both in having their own money, homes, and furnishings, and in being able to give to others. Through an analysis of the reciprocal, meaningful relationships between these women and everyday objects, we suggest that consumption is not opposed to human development but can be part of it. More attention should therefore be paid to the ways in which tangible, material things help constitute the more commonly researched, intangible benefits of alternative economic participation, such as empowerment, dignity, knowledge-sharing and care for others.     

A Late-glacial colluvial sequence at Watcombe Bottom,Ventnor, Isle of Wight,England

In a dry valley near Ventnor, Isle of Wight, thick subaerial slope deposits of Devensian Late-glacial age overlie the Chalk. The deposits are crudely stratified chalk muds and rubble produced by frost-shattering, and moved downslope by the release of water from melting snow-fields and frozen ground. A laterally extensive humic horizon of a rendzina soil occurs within the sequence, clearly reflecting a period of relative slope stability. In places this horizon divides and its upper surface appears to have been disturbed, possibly by cryoturbation. Micromorphological and other analyses confirm the pedogenic origin of this humic horizon, but also demonstrate the occurrence of pedological features both above and below it. The humic horizon therefore is not a ‘buried’ soil in the strictest sense, but is part of a vertical sequence representing a single complex soil with transported, accretionary and welded components. Molluscan analyses reveal that the sequence can be divided into four local mollusc zones, showing a progressive increase in faunal diversity throughout the profile. This succession is broadly similar to other Late-glacial sequences described from south-east England. Minute fragments of charcoal from the lower part of the humic horizon have yielded an AMS date of 11690 ± 120 vr BP, demonstrating formation during the ‘Allerød phase’ of the Late-glacial Interstadial. This humic horizon is correlated provisionally with the ‘Pitstone Soil’, even though existing dates from its type-site in Buckinghamshire are somewhat younger.     

Parallel currents in the natural and social sciences

Einstein's relativity and the subsequent quantum theory have split physicists into two camps. One argues that the apparent inconsistencies between the mechanistic order of Newtonian physics and the holistic properties of matter revealed by relativity and quantum theory will eventually be resolved within an overall mechanistic order. The second argues that these holistic properties are genuine and require a drastic change in our overall world view. This tension between the mechanistic and holistic conceptions of the world has always existed in the life, human and social sciences. The force behind their emergence and development was the dialectical tension created by the inconsistencies between the mechanistic-Cartesian order, which dominated science, and the holistic properties which are apparent in the domains of life and human society. This recent split among physicists thus creates a new reality, in which the tension between the holistic and mechanistic conceptions of the world is no longer a tension between the scientific natural sciences and the non-scientific ‘humanities’, but rather the tension of science as a whole. The paper discusses the development of these parallel currents in the natural and social sciences and explores their implications.     

‘Competing Regionalisation’ Through Territory and Cluster Networks: Experiences from Post-Socialist Eastern Germany

‘New regionalism’ has become a buzzword in current debates on regions and regional governance. Much of this discussion revolves around the ‘right’ scale and structure of regional governance, implying changes to the ways in which the conventional main variables institutions, hierarchy and territoriality interact to circumscribe ‘regions’. The main difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism is the degree of variability and responsiveness to locational strategies by businesses, i.e. essentially relative regional competitiveness, and thus by implication the question of territoriality and boundedness. Evidence ‘on the ground’ among policy makers, however, suggests that the changes may go further than theoretical arguments with their emphasis on territory and scale (Brenner, 2000, 2003) are suggesting. Much of the difference revolves around the distinction between technocratic, planning focused and firmly institutionalised understandings of territorially fixed regions within a government structure on the one hand, and more purpose driven, flexible, and inherently temporary and variable arrangements outside fixed government structures, whose territoriality is composed of the varying spatial background of the participating actors. Here, regional territoriality is an incidental rather than determining factor.The cleavage between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism has become particularly obvious in post-socialist eastern Germany, where staid forms of traditional institutionalism and territorial governance had been transferred from ‘west’ to ‘east’. Increasingly, these arrangements appeared inadequate to respond to the vast and spatially widely varying challenges of post-socialist restructuring. The result has been a tentative emergence of new forms of regionalisation in between, and in addition to, the established ‘old regionalist’ approaches. Evidence from eastern Germany suggests that ‘new’ is not necessarily replacing ‘old’ regionalism’ in the wake of a shift in paradigm, but rather that the two coexist, with new forms of regionalisation sitting within established conventional territorial-administrative arrangements. This points to the emergence of a dual track approach to regionalisation, sometimes covering the same territory, more often relating to variably sized areas that overlap. Both forms of regionalisation aim at an internal and external audience, using varying images and employing different sets of actors when dealing with the two main sources/directions of consumption: internal (local) and external (corporate, competitive). By their very nature, however, these processes are varied and differ between places, rooted in particular local-regional constellations of policy-making pressures, actor personalities and established ways of doing things. This paper examines such processes for two regions in eastern Germany, both with distinctly different economic traditions and geographical contexts, aiming to illustrate the multi-layered process of regionalisation and region making. Inevitably, within the scope of this paper, the study cannot cover all possible models and regionalisation approaches across eastern Germany, because they not only differ between places, but also over time.     

Classification of paraglacial barrier systems: coastal New England, USA

The New England coast harbours a wide variety of barrier forms, which we organize into six barrier-coastline types. The barriers develop in response to the relative importance of several spatially and temporally variable parameters, particularly antecedent topography and geology, sediment abundance and size, exposure to wave and tidal energy and sea-level history. The six coastline types can also be identified in other paraglacial regions. Existing barrier-coastline classification schemes do not allow consistent subdivision of paraglacial barrier coasts. This paper presents a new scheme that is applicable to paraglacial and non-paraglacial barrier coasts alike. Aside from hydrodynamic regime, which forms the basis of the barrier classification most commonly used to date, it includes a compartmentalization factor. Sediment-starved ‘isolated’ (‘type 1’) barrier coastlines are characterized by short, widely spaced barriers. Small, localized updrift and offshore sources have provided sediment for short barriers along ‘clustered headland-separated’ (‘type 2’) barrier coastlines. Various amounts of sediment from larger updrift and offshore glaciofluvial deposits or directly from rivers have formed the longer barriers along ‘wave-dominated mainland-segmented’ (‘type 3a’), ‘mixed-energy mainland-segmented’ (‘type 3b’), ‘wave-dominated inlet-segmented’ (‘type 4a’) and ‘mixed-energy inlet-segmented’ (‘type 4b’) barrier coastlines. Geomorphic form, grain size and stratigraphy can be used to characterize individual barriers along barrier coastlines. Most paraglacial barriers form as spits, but many are transformed subsequently. Welded barriers are common along ‘type 1’ and ‘type 2’ coasts. Baymouth barriers are characteristic of ‘type 3’ coasts, and barrier islands occur exclusively along ‘type 4’ coasts. The coarsest grained barriers are located along ‘type 1’ and ‘type 2’ coasts. Progradational barrier sections are concentrated along ‘type 3’ and ‘type 4’ coasts with abundant sediment supply, but are also present along ‘type 2’ coasts. Temporary increases in sediment supply, common in paraglacial regions, result in transitions between retrogradational and progradational barrier behaviour, which may be recognized on shore-perpendicular stratigraphic cross-sections.     

Thinking like a geologist: The culture of geology Mawson lecture 1996∗

Geology plays a crucial role in both the scientific and the popular culture; it has transformed the way ordinary people look at the world over the last two centuries. Much of this transformation is understood in terms of information about the age of the earth, the disposition of the continents, and the evolution of living things. The two main concerns of this paper are with geology as education, and geology as a system of thought, a way of thinking about the world. My central question is how does a grounding in geology affect the cast of mind, the way one thinks, perceives and behaves? What is the culture of geology? Conclusions are of two kinds. Some of the propositions advanced about the nature of geology in relation to the other sciences and our general culture are: (i) there is no hierarchy of the sciences; (ii) geology is a Romantic science rather than a Classical one; (iii) there is no such thing as the scientific method; (iv) geologists often attempt to reconcile competing hypotheses; (v) geological phenomena are often of an almost irreducible complexity and their investigation is beset by problems of scale, both spatial and temporal; and (vi) the concept of ‘universality’ has a distinctive application in geology. Among the non‐professional uses of geology are: (i) human history is incomplete without environmental history; (ii) geology has application in environmental planning and management, but this requires judgement and experience as knowledge of the geology is not enough, it is equally important to know when it can safely be overridden, when it is useful background, and when it is critically important to decision‐making; and (iii) an awareness of the geology of a region enhances the sense of place—our sense of our individual and communal identities owes much to an awareness of place.     

Development for a postneoliberal era? Sumak kawsay,living well and the limits to decolonisation in Ecuador

Latin American development is being rapidly transformed, with popularly elected governments embarking on reversals of neoliberalism informed by autochthonous notions of human wellbeing. Through a detailed examination of the origins and application of one development model, this article examines the constraints on and limits to postneoliberal development in terms of state-civil society relations and as a form of postcolonial governmentality. Interpreting Ecuadorian sumak kawsay (living well in English) in relation to embedded political cultures, specific opportunity structures, and the dynamic between contentious and electoral politics highlights the extent of room for manoeuvre in rethinking development. As a form of governmentality and pastoral power, Ecuadorian ‘postneoliberalism’ incorporates a constitutional commitment to social rights, collective citizens and the rights of nature. The paper also reveals the difficulty of making a definitive break from neoliberalism, which remains pervasive in practice, conceptualisations and state formations. Moreover, although various forms of anti-colonial ‘border thinking’ were proposed by social movement’s contentious politics, the paper argues that sumak kawsay works to sustain postcolonial conditions of development.     

Living with Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) as everyday life

Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a legislation of the Government of India promulgated in the ‘disturbed areas’ of India’s North-East since 1958 and in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since the 1990s merits spatial and contextual analysis. This is because in these regions where AFSPA operates, the armed forces are alleged to have committed one of the world’s least-known abuses of human rights but revel in legal impunity. For this, AFSPA is perceived as ‘draconian’ and ‘colonial’. Drawing upon ethnographic research, supplemented by 20 informal interviews, the key aim of the research is to examine the extent to which the people of these highly contested spaces continue to live with AFSPA as a part of their daily lives. Alongside, the research aims to highlight upon Ms Irom Chanu Sharmila’s silent protest; she was on her world’s longest fast for 16 years (since 4 November 2000 demanding revocation of AFSPA) until 9 August 2016. The key findings demonstrate that the ‘sense of alienation’ created by AFSPA is one of the major causes of disturbance in the regions, where the people desperately crave for peace to be restored.     

Marginal land and the global land rush: A spatial exploration of contested lands and state-directed development in contemporary Ethiopia

The ‘global land rush’ or ‘global land grabbing’ phenomena has prompted concerns over the potential of large-scale land acquisitions to displace rural populations and impact food security in lesser-developed countries. State actors often assert that lands being leased to investors are ‘marginal’, ‘wasteland’, ‘barren’, or ‘unused’ without explicitly stating the criteria that are used to classify those spaces. Using Ethiopia as a case study, this paper synthesizes semi-structured interviews and geospatial land-use data to unpack the federal government’s notion of ‘marginal land’ to investigate how land qualifies for deposition into a federal land bank set aside for future investment and the agro-ecological characteristics and human-environment interactions endemic to these areas. We find that government officials conceive land bank areas to be generally fertile but currently ‘unused’. In reality, we find land bank areas: (1) are used by pastoralists or rural people practicing land extensive forms of cultivation that are only loosely integrated into the Ethiopian state, (2) overlap with protected areas such as National Parks, and (3) are located in places that have surface water resources the government intends to use for large-scale development such as irrigation or hydropower projects. We argue that the intended land uses of banked lands serve not only to fulfill larger development objectives but also increase state-accessible product produced in these areas strengthening the link between ‘othering’ labels, development, and state-making in the context of the global land rush.     

‘Selling Our Own Skin:’ Social dispossession through microcredit in rural Bangladesh

In this paper, I articulate a notion of ‘social dispossession,’ an optic that extends current theorizing on agrarian dispossession into the realm of social reproduction, by examining the testimonies of microcredit borrowers in rural Bangladesh. In recent years, research on microcredit has highlighted new forms of subject-making employed by microcredit and other NGO entrepreneurship development programs. These developments have received insufficient attention in scholarship on agrarian change, both globally and in specific places. I correct this by arguing that microcredit drives social dispossession through three specific mechanisms: the confiscation of assets necessary to social reproduction (as well as to production); the construction of debt relations within a community which reshape what reproduction can look like; and the re-configuration of women’s social status and subjectivities in relation to their communities.     

Global sea level stratigraphy: An appraisal

Although Pleistocene sea level concepts were first developed in the Mediterranean Basin, research has been revolutionized during the past 15 years by massive dating programs applied in other world areas. reappraisal of four key sequences nonetheless shows that the chronometric framework is imperfect. As a result, available paleosea level traces continue to depend on deep-sea stratigraphy for confirmation rather than the reverse; they do not provide independent support for the Milankovitch radiation cycles, nor do they invite deductive-hypothetical ‘dating’ by means of such astronomical reconstructions. Inferred ‘initial’ sea levels, based on uplift assumptions or δ¹⁸O determinations on coral and mollusca, show considerable divergence but broadly agree that sea levels assigned to isotope stages 5a and 5c were lower than today. Systematic studies should be expanded in environments that allow lithostratigraphic resolution of interdigitated marine and continental sediments, meticulously complemented by biostratigraphic work. Direct information on the complexity and significance of regressional hemicycles helps place sea level stages recorded by transgressive facies into a multidimensional context essential for comprehensive interpretation.     

Commodity conservation: The restructuring of community conservation in South Africa and the Philippines

The world over, neoliberal modes of conservation are hybridising with, or even replacing, other forms of conservation. Under the banner of ‘win–win’ policies, planners actively work to commoditize natural resources and the social relations that determine the use and conservation of these resources. While these general processes seem to hold sway globally, it is crucial not to lose sight of the context specific ways in which neo-liberalism influences conservation practice and local outcomes. The paper examines how neo-liberalism’s global pervasiveness becomes manifest across different levels and scales in South Africa and the Philippines. The conclusion suggests that as a result of these neoliberal pressures, emphasis is shifting from local constructions of ‘nature’ by communities to what the environment should mean for communities in terms of commodified resources and growing capitalist markets.     

A grievable life? The criminalisation and securing of asylum seeker bodies in the ‘violent frames’ of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders

The life of those seeking asylum from persecution and other human rights abuses has become interminably precarious. As minority world governments deploy various apparatuses of security to govern the circulation of ‘unruly’ populations, the world’s most vulnerable people have been reconstituted as security threats. In this paper I trace this ‘transfer of illegitimacy’ and criminalisation of asylum seeker bodies in the context of the Australian government’s newly deployed Operation Sovereign Borders. Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality as a domain of security and Butler’s articulation of recognition, precariousness and grievability, I explore both the subjectivities formed as a function and technique of securing Australia’s borders and the way this framing produces a certain governed reality that ‘acts upon the senses’ to delimit public discourse. I argue that the range of discursive and non-discursive practises that make up Operation Sovereign Borders has dire implications for those seeking asylum in Australia. Not only do these practises constitute a social crafting where conditions for a flourishing life are diminished, but this crafting of precarity is carried out in the name of securing citizens lives. The life of the asylum seekers is a life unrecognised in the violent frames of Operation Sovereign Borders.     

Palaeontology,stratigraphy and sedimentology of Woodeaton Quarry (Oxfordshire) and a new microvertebrate site from the White Limestone Formation (Bathonian,Jurassic)

Woodeaton Quarry in Oxfordshire has previously yielded a number of large sauropod vertebrae and other (unpublished) dinosaur remains from a horizon in the Rutland Formation. No review of the wider terrestrial fauna from Woodeaton has been published to date. Here we present an overview of new material recovered from a microvertebrate site at the top of the White Limestone Formation (Middle Jurassic, Bathonian, Great Oolite Group, Retrocostatum Zone) and review the stratigraphy to provide a comprehensive local stratigraphic framework and place the quarry in the correct regional context. The terrestrial fauna is similar to that found from other UK Bathonian microvertebrate sites and includes probable dromaeosaurid theropods, ornithischians, tritylodontids and mammaliaforms such as amphitheriids, docodonts, ‘eutriconodonts’, ‘haramyids’ and multituberculates. Placement of the White Limestone Formation boundaries are clarified with respect to the Rutland and Forest Marble Formations. This indicates that the microvertebrate bed from Woodeaton is slightly older than that of the well-known mammal bed from nearby Kirtlington Quarry.     

Splendid isolation: ‘Philosopher’s islands’ and the reimagination of space

This paper argues that the metaphorical figure of the island plays an important but profoundly ambiguous role in the imagination of social space. The paper argues that ‘utopic’ islands have historically provided a fictional domain of experimentation that has informed the constitution of ‘real’ state spaces. From the 16th to 20th centuries this took the form of an increasingly consolidated and ‘global’ endotopia: a world, exemplified by the ‘political’ map, full of state spaces constituted as interiors. More recently, islands have served a very different metaphoric function, being used to create and legitimise spaces of exteriority – ‘xenospaces’ such as the online worlds of the ‘metaverse’ and the arcane legal/financial spaces of offshore – which in combination constitute an emergent xenotopia. The ‘philosopher’s island’ (Mackay, 2010), therefore, represents a complex and polyvalent spatial form that serves to continuously and expediently redefine the nature of social space.