Naming the land: San countermapping in Namibia’s West Caprivi

Both ‘indigenous rights’ and environmental discourses brought a NGO-led natural resource mapping project to the West Caprivi Game Park in northern Namibia in the late 1990s. San countermapping elsewhere in southern Africa demonstrates how mapping has been used as a tool for ‘indigenous’ identity-building and asserting authority over land. At the same time, mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have increasingly been used by conservationists in Namibian Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), demonstrating the potential therein for state and NGO surveillance and intervention regarding both natural resources and their users in conservancies and national parks. Mapping in West Caprivi thus embodied a tension between ‘visibility’ and ‘legibility’. This paper explores how mapping activities reflected, and became part of, institutional and ethnic struggles over identity, authority and natural resources. It argues that members of a San group called Khwe used mapping to construct particular histories, promote a unified, exclusive ethnic identity, and bolster their authority in the area. This in turn presented particular challenges for NGO relationships with the state. The mapping project also showed that, in their bid to counteract their own exclusion, Khwe not only opened up the landscape to new forms of NGO and state legibility, but sought to exclude ethnic others. Like other CBNRM projects, mapping often served socio-political, rather than environmental, functions.     

Something in the Air: Civic science and contentious environmental politics in post-apartheid South Africa

The emergence of an environmental movement in post-apartheid South Africa has involved the reframing of the environment as a ‘brown’ issue, articulating the discourse of social and environmental justice and a rights-based notion of democracy. Environmental movements have pursued a dual strategy of deliberation and activist opposition. Environmental movements have deployed science to pursue the strategic task of democratic opposition and have established networks of environmental knowledge and expertise. Ecological modernization is the dominant approach to environmental governance and adopts a science-based policy approach. In this context the regulation and management of the environment is premised on the need for science, which provides the authoritative basis for a regulatory response. In local environmental movements, there exists a fundamental tension between a cumulative history of lay knowledge about pollution and the lack of official acknowledgement of qualitative narratives. This is accompanied by a lack and suspicion of reliable official data. Environmental movements have thus employed ‘civic science’ strategically to place the issue of air pollution on the political agenda. This paper uses the case of environmental politics in Durban to reflect on the ways in which civic science and lay knowledge, together constituting community hybrid knowledge, are produced and disseminated in order to pressure the state and capital. The three ways in which knowledge is deployed are: to frame environmental problems, in strategies of oppositional advocacy, and in deliberative policy forums. Empirical analysis shows that civic science is produced through knowledge networks, and both lay knowledge and civic science are opportunistically used by environmental movements to engage both inside and outside formal policy making arenas. This deployment of hybrid knowledge by environmental movements represents a broader challenge to the power of science and technology based on increasing evidence of the hazards and risks facing ordinary people in their daily lives.     

A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of eastern North America,and implications for dinosaur biogeography

Tyrannosaurs and hadrosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of eastern North America (Appalachia) are distinct from those found in western North America (Laramidia), suggesting that eastern North America was isolated during the Late Cretaceous. However, the Late Cretaceous fauna of Appalachia remains poorly known. Here, a partial maxilla from the Campanian Tar Heel Formation (Black Creek Group) of North Carolina is shown to represent the first ceratopsian from the Late Cretaceous of eastern North America. The specimen has short alveolar slots, a ventrally projected toothrow, a long dentigerous process overlapped by the ectopterygoid, and a toothrow that curves laterally, a combination of characters unique to the Leptoceratopsidae. The maxilla has a uniquely long, slender and downcurved posterior dentigerous process, suggesting a specialized feeding strategy. The presence of a highly specialized ceratopsian in eastern North America supports the hypothesis that Appalachia underwent an extended period of isolation during the Late Cretaceous, leading the evolution of a distinct dinosaur fauna dominated by basal tyrannosauroids, basal hadrosaurs, ornithimimosaurs, nodosaurs, and leptoceratopsids. Appalachian vertebrate communities are most similar to those of Laramidia. However some taxa-including leptoceratopsids-are also shared with western Europe, raising the possibility of a Late Cretaceous dispersal route connecting Appalachia and Europe.     

河南西峡盆地恐龙蛋化石及略论恐龙绝灭问题

西峡盆地晚白垩世红色陆相碎屑岩系地层中(包括高沟组、马家村组、寺沟组),产有类型多、数量大、成窝性好的恐龙蛋化石。已发现有7科8属10种。自下而上,恐龙蛋的种类、数量、含蛋层数、蛋窝均大幅度地减少,由高沟组内5科67种,约10层含蛋层,至寺沟组内仅存1科1属2种,含蛋层为2层。恐龙绝灭原因的研究,已有30种以上的学说或观点,但这些观点都不能圆满地解释恐龙的绝灭问题。恐龙的绝灭应该是多因素的,既有地外的灾变,又有地内,生物本身生理的因素。在内、外因等诸因素的共同作用下,恐龙才有可能绝灭。     

There’s nothing inherent about scale: political ecology, the local trap, and the politics of development in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper argues that research in political ecology would benefit from more explicit and careful attention to the question of scale and scalar politics. Although political ecologists have extensively considered scale as a methodological question, they have yet to develop an explicit theoretical approach to scale as an object of inquiry. We highlight one principal drawback to this underdeveloped approach to scale: what we call “the local trap” in which political ecologists assume that organization, policies, and action at the local scale are inherently more likely to have desired social and ecological effects than activities organized at other scales. Over the past 10 years or so, an increasingly sophisticated literature on scale has been developing among scholars in geography working in the political economy tradition. This literature has argued that scale is socially produced rather than ontologically given. Therefore, there is nothing inherent about any scale, and so the local scale cannot be intrinsically more desirable than other scales. We suggest that a greater engagement with this scale literature offers political ecology a theoretical way out of the local trap. As a first approximation of the kind of scalar analysis we advocate, we present a case study that examines the scalar politics that have shaped environmental change in the Brazilian Amazon.     

Yeosu dinosaur track sites of Korea: The youngest dinosaur track records in Asia

Eighty two dinosaur trackways were newly discovered in Upper Cretaceous lacustrine deposits on islands in the vicinity of Yeosu, Korea. Most dinosaur tracks occur in marginal lake deposits with polygonal desiccation cracks. The dinosaur tracks at the Yeosu site include 65 ornithopod trackways, 16 theropod trackways and one sauropod trackway. The prevalence of ornithopod tracks and the limited occurrence of sauropod tracks at the Yeosu site evidently reflect decreased sauropod diversity in the Upper Cretaceous. All ornithopod trackways represent bipeds, and most of the ornithopod tracks are similar to Caririchnium from other sites of the Korean peninsula. All fossil wood specimens collected in the study area represent conifers (three species of cupressaceous and two species of taxodiaceous conifers, and a new species) except for one, which is a discotyledon. It is thus inferred that the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula was primarily covered with mesic forests with taxodiaceous trees during the Late Cretaceous. The K–Ar age of the Yeosu tracksite is determined as 81–65 Ma (Camapnian to Maastrichtian). It indicates that the Yeosu track site contains the last records of dinosaurs living in Asia. Consequently, semi-arid palaeoclimatic conditions, together with a large lake as a persistent water source and rich vegetation of gymnosperm trees as food, resulted in the preservation of abundant dinosaur tracks in the Upper Cretaceous on the Korean Peninsula.     

A historical review on the roles of science and politics in addressing global environmental issues

Based on a historical review of the so-called Ozone crisis in the late 1970s and global climate changes since the 1980s, this paper examines the role of sciences and policies in the international community in dealing with the global environmental issues. Lessons show that a multi-discipline, multi-organizational and multi-national UN agency which remains relevant, assisting rather than guiding the process of climate negotiations is important.     

基于恐龙足迹重建攀西地区白垩纪恐龙动物群

攀西地区没有白垩纪恐龙骨骼化石记录,对该区白垩纪恐龙动物群组合的认识尚属空白。1991年,攀西地区首次发现了恐龙足迹,此后陆续发现了8个足迹点。这些足迹点共发现9种不同的非鸟恐龙足迹(6种非鸟兽脚类、1种蜥脚类和2种鸟脚类足迹),以及翼龙和龟类足迹。共11种足迹形态类型由185道行迹(与孤立足迹)组成,可能代表着同等数量的造迹者。其中飞天山组的组合多样性最强,小坝组和雷打树组较弱。这个相对全面的足迹数据库,为该地区白垩纪四足类的古生态学普查提供了动物群的组成信息,这在该缺乏骨骼化石的地区显得尤为重要。     

中国新沂马陵山白垩纪恐龙足迹——从虎到肉食龙及由传说至古生物学（英文）

江苏省新沂市马陵山地区的4个神秘的印记,传统上被解释为“李存孝打虎处”的“虎爪印”和“人足迹”,重新将其解释为大盛群田家楼组恐龙足迹。这些足迹中只有一个最深的“虎爪印”保存了可识别的趾印,表明它是一个有着后内侧拇趾印的兽脚类恐龙左足迹,是一道单步约50cm的直线行迹的一部分;另一种解释是该足迹为小型蜥脚类恐龙的右后足迹,形成行迹的右侧部分,其左侧部分没有保存。马陵山足迹点提供了恐龙足迹如何影响中国民间传说的另一个案例。     

中国新沂马陵山白垩纪恐龙足迹——从虎到肉食龙及由传说至古生物学

江苏省新沂市马陵山地区的4个神秘的印记,传统上被解释为“李存孝打虎处”的“虎爪印”和“人足迹”,重新将其解释为大盛群田家楼组恐龙足迹。这些足迹中只有一个最深的“虎爪印”保存了可识别的趾印,表明它是一个有着后内侧拇趾印的兽脚类恐龙左足迹,是一道单步约50cm的直线行迹的一部分;另一种解释是该足迹为小型蜥脚类恐龙的右后足迹,形成行迹的右侧部分,其左侧部分没有保存。马陵山足迹点提供了恐龙足迹如何影响中国民间传说的另一个案例。     

Performing democracy and violence,agonism and community,politics and not politics in Sri Lanka

The paper examines the construction of the political as a space of contestation in Sri Lanka. Empirically, the article draws on two different field projects, one locating in a Sinhala village in the south of the country in the early 1980s, the other in a Muslim town in the East in the late 2000s. The case studies concentrate on the relationship between religion and politics, and specifically the way in which religion – Buddhism, Islam – is presented as a privileged space for expressions of community, unsullied by the agonistic consequences of the political. The paper at once draws on, and critiques, certain strands of radical democracy theory which have been widely discussed in recent political geography.     

Making Alzheimer’s disease matter. Enacting, interfering and doing politics of nature

This article contributes to recent discussions about the politics of nature by exploring how Alzheimer’s disease is being shaped as a ‘matter of concern’. Drawing on work on differences in medicine from science and technology studies, and from the geographies of naturecultures, it explores the ‘mattering’ of this disease in a number of locations including: an international Alzheimer’s patients’ movement; a medical textbook; laboratory science; daily care practice; an advertisement for anti-dementia medication; general practice; parliamentary politics; and a conference on dementia. It explores how these locations interfere and co-exist with one another and argues against the ‘science centrism’ of science and technology studies which contributes to the dominance of science and medicine by granting these analytical privilege. The same problem is posed in the recent STS turn from science to politics - the danger is that politics is similarly privileged.     

Wasting the rural: Meat,manure, and the politics of agro-industrialization in contemporary China

This paper uses pork as a lens on China’s rural transformations. Taking the industrialization of pig farming in the reform era as a trace on broader processes of social and environmental change, it advances three arguments. First, the massive increase in pork production and consumption since 1978 has been propelled by an industrial meat regime. A party-state led and agribusiness-operated regime, it articulates modernist notions of meat-as-progress with the relentless drive for capital accumulation. Second, using Marx’s concept of metabolic rift, the paper examines how processes of concentration in the industrial meat regime are at the same time processes of separation. This dialectical approach highlights the contradictions inherent in ongoing attempts to disembed capitalist production from biological and social relations. Finally, while official party-state discourse conceptualizes “the rural” as a production base for surplus value, and/or as a site for preserving environmental integrity, the paper’s analysis reveals a further unofficial recasting of the rural: in the process of agroindustrialization, the rural is also a sink for offloading capitalist crises. Between the rivers of manure that flow from industrial livestock operations and contaminate rural waterways; the loss of soil nutrients and food calories in the inefficient conversion of grains and oilseeds into industrial meat; the erosion of agricultural knowledge and practice that accompanies the dispossession of China’s farmers; and the shifting values of pigs, pork, and manure, this is a system that “wastes” the rural in service of capital.     

Burning issues: Whiteness, rurality and the politics of difference

In the past decade geographers have critiqued the exclusivity of idyllic representations of rurality and sought to explore the diverse experiences of Other social groups in the countryside. This paper builds upon that small but significant strand of research which has highlighted the whiteness of representations of rurality and the consequences of this for racialised minorities. These debates have been crucially important in forwarding our understanding of racially-exclusive constructions of idyllic country living; however, it is important that academics neither assume that such ideas are forever fixed, nor that they affect all minority ethnic groups in the same ways. This paper takes both the potential power and frailty of these ideas seriously, as it examines how the concepts of race, racism and rurality are deployed by different commentators as they debate the place of one specific minority ethnic group in the English countryside. The route taken into this is a consideration of print-media reporting of events in Firle, Sussex, where, in 2003, some white rural residents symbolically purged their village of Gypsy-Travellers by burning a mock caravan complete with effigies at their annual bonfire celebrations. In conclusion, the paper challenges the relative lack of attention to these issues within the white-dominated discipline of geography, and argues that it is imperative to trace the dynamic ways in which the whiteness of idyllic understandings of the rural are reinforced and challenged through contemporary social practice.