Changes In Cultural Practices Research Articles

The key to cultural innovation lies in the group dynamic rather than in the individual mind

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation--a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.

Competing Cultures of Conservation

In the last quarter century, environmental conservation efforts by nongovernmental organizations, private companies, or nation states have most prominently featured expansion of formally protected areas and the integration of elements of biological and social sciences in their monitoring and management. For most involved in such efforts, culture has been either an obstacle to wider adoption of practices intended to achieve conservation or a characteristic of societies who protect nature through their management practices and belief systems. The next quarter century would benefit from a broader awareness of conservation culture, which I define as a series of distinct aesthetic, technical, and ideological positions. Conservation cultures pertain not only to small societies, but also to the institutions and initiatives that characterize conservation as a complex transnational field of experts, policy makers, private and public sector leaders, and community members. I write of my own experiences in Appalachia and equatorial Africa and of popular novels and films to show how a reflexive idea of culture, or awareness of symbols and meanings in one’s own self and society, is a key to future conservation success. Contrast and Conflict in Conservation Cultures I grew up in Tennessee, along the perimeter of the U.S. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a suburban youth whose family often went backpacking in the park on weekends. Oblivious to the history of the park’s designation, I relished that landscape’s contrasts with my ordinary routines. After time in the mountains, my sister and I basked in the hour-long return drive to our home, our bodies salty and streaked with the loamy black soil of southern Appalachia. We would ride out of the park through valleys dotted with shacks, where pickup trucks almost all sported gun racks. As we crossed the Tennessee River into Knoxville we saw emblems of a suburban landscape. The first was the groomed lawn of a graceful yet dilapidated old mansion that housed the Teen Board of Knoxville, a social club that invited us to attend both cotillions and meetings to organize volunteer projects. From that mansion onward we looked out at a parade of carefully mulched dogwood trees and azalea plants nestled around splashing stone fountains. In my residential neighborhood, named Sequoyah Hills after the famous Cherokee leader, such fountains were designed in the 1920s to emulate Native American symbols and designs. They are interspersed with an actual Indian mound, badly eroded but affixed with plaques provided by a neighborhood preservation association that offer a terse history of Cherokee settlement in the region. As an adolescent, I was vaguely conscious of ways of life that had been displaced in favor of the settlements that matured into today’s suburban riverbanks. Not until my early twenties, after working at conservation sites in the Congo Basin as a Peace Corps volunteer and researcher, did I find myself avidly reading reprinted works from the early 1900s such as James Mooney’s ethnography (Mooney & Ellison 1992) of Cherokee culture and Horace Kephart’s (1976) accounts of his time with white farmers and hunters in the southern Appalachians. These books were early attempts to debunk stereotypes about so-called rural or primitive peoples, yet each unwittingly established new stereotypes. In trying to translate alterity, or otherness, in relation to dominant cultural norms, these books also marked cultural difference in ways that inadvertently reinforced boundaries among contemporary land uses. Suburbia and wilderness are distinct, yet both preclude the kind of local subsistence use of resources that Mooney or Kephart chronicled.

Women Have Found Respect: Gender Quotas, Symbolic Representation, and Female Empowerment in Rwanda

Building on previous studies of women's formal, descriptive, and substantive representation in Rwanda, this article examines women's symbolic representation, defined as the broader social and cultural impact of the greater representation of women in the Rwandan political system. It explores the cultural meanings of gender quotas by analyzing popular perceptions of women, of women's roles in politics and society more broadly, and of changing cultural practices vis-à-vis gender. Data were gathered over 24 months of ethnographic research conducted between 1997 and 2009 and by ongoing documentary research. The study finds that although Rwandan women have made few legislative gains, they have reaped other benefits, including increased respect from family and community members, enhanced capacity to speak and be heard in public forums, greater autonomy in decision making in the family, and increased access to education. Yet there have also been some unexpected negative consequences, such as increased friction with male siblings, male withdrawal from politics, increased marital discord, and a perception that marriage as an institution has been disrupted by the so-called upheaval of gender roles. Most significantly, increased formal representation of women has not led to increased democratic legitimacy for the government.

The Biology of Canadian Weeds. 145. Muhlenbergia frondosa (Poir.) Fernald

Darbyshire, S. J., Francis, A., Crompton, C. W. and Swanton, C. J. 2011. The Biology of Canadian Weeds. 145. Muhlenbergia frondosa (Poir.) Fernald. Can. J. Plant Sci. 91: 205-219. Muhlenbergia frondosa is a perennial grass native to eastern North America, which naturally inhabits moist to wet forest margins and openings, freshwater littoral habitats, and grasslands. In Canada, its spread as a weed appears to have coincided with changes in cultivation practices during the past few decades. Infestations in such crops as maize and soya bean have been reported mainly from southern Ontario and Quebec, and the Midwest and northeastern areas of the United States, where it reduces yields and can be difficult to control. It is shade tolerant and able to compete under the closed canopy of crops. Although this weed can be controlled by herbicides, its ability to spread by regrowth from rhizomes, and its abundant seed production, cause ongoing problems in arable fields, particularly in conservation-tillage systems. As a warm-season C4 grass, growth begins relatively late in the season (early June in Canada), after most intensive weed control measures have already been taken. Timing herbicide application with active growth stages (10-30 cm) is most effective and the use of herbicide-tolerant crops provides additional control opportunities after crop planting.

The Biology of Canadian Weeds. 145.Muhlenbergia frondosa(Poir.) Fernald

Darbyshire, S. J., Francis, A., Crompton, C. W. and Swanton, C. J. 2011. The Biology of Canadian Weeds. 145. Muhlenbergia frondosa (Poir.) Fernald. Can. J. Plant Sci. 91: 205–219. Muhlenbergia frondosa is a perennial grass native to eastern North America, which naturally inhabits moist to wet forest margins and openings, freshwater littoral habitats, and grasslands. In Canada, its spread as a weed appears to have coincided with changes in cultivation practices during the past few decades. Infestations in such crops as maize and soya bean have been reported mainly from southern Ontario and Quebec, and the Midwest and northeastern areas of the United States, where it reduces yields and can be difficult to control. It is shade tolerant and able to compete under the closed canopy of crops. Although this weed can be controlled by herbicides, its ability to spread by regrowth from rhizomes, and its abundant seed production, cause ongoing problems in arable fields, particularly in conservation-tillage systems. As a warm-season C4grass, growth begins relatively late in the season (early June in Canada), after most intensive weed control measures have already been taken. Timing herbicide application with active growth stages (10–30 cm) is most effective and the use of herbicide-tolerant crops provides additional control opportunities after crop planting.

Early puberty and public health: a social scientific pinboard

Whilst a number of social scientists have described significant changes in cultural practices and discourses around girls’ sexual development in the contemporary moment, there is almost complete silence on the question of widely reported changes in the physical and public health-related aspects of this seemingly ‘sped up’ development. This article addresses this deficit by critically exploring a range of technoscientific, biomedical, popular and environmentalist discourses describing such changes. Using science studies theorist John Law's device of the ‘pinboard’, I provide a map of the field of early puberty and elaborate areas of popular and expert concern, of controversy and debate, and of incoherence and confusion. Using the pinboard's facility for jarring juxtaposition and lateral connection, I raise critical questions about links between early puberty and other biomedical conditions and question the role of normative assumptions in the field.

WHEN THE MONOGRAPH IS NO LONGER THE MEDIUM: HISTORICAL NARRATIVE IN THE ONLINE AGE1

ABSTRACTOver the last fifty years there has been much discussion about the value of narrative in the production of historical knowledge whereby it is generally assumed that “narrative” is a given and that the only thing at issue is its epistemological value. This article critically examines this assumption. It shows how conceptions of “narrative” have mutated in response to changes in cultural practice and, as importantly, how they have been implicitly modeled on the particular medium envisaged for telling stories: the stand‐alone monograph. The belief that history's natural form is a book written by an individual historian has thus informed most discussions of narrative in the twentieth century, meaning that the primacy of language, the autonomy of the author, and the finished, self‐contained character of the work have been taken for granted. The “naturalness” of the stand‐alone monograph can no longer be taken as a given, however, in the new media ecologies. Digitization and the internet offer new technologies for producing and disseminating historical knowledge and, in the process, present both opportunities and challenges to professional historians. Beyond their practical implications, the digital media also provide a new theoretical model for viewing historical narrative in terms of its social production by multiple agents across different platforms, and this changes our understanding both of past and of future practices.

Maternal mortality in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka: a systematic review of local and national policy and practice initiatives.

Review question / objective The primary objectives of this systematic review are to compare and evaluate the health policy positions across Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka as they relate to maternal mortality and the provision of midwifery services. The specific questions this review will seek to address are: 1. What are the strategies to reduce maternal mortality in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka? 2. Which strategies have had the greatest impact in relation to a change in maternity care practice within the countries of interest? Inclusion Criteria Types of participants The review will consider studies that include: pregnant and birthing women who receive care from a skilled birth attendant. Types of intervention(s)/phenomena of interest The review will consider studies that describe: 1. The health system / service delivery structures and underlying policy. 2. The maternity care provided by a skilled birth attendant. Types of outcomes The primary outcomes of interest in this review are: Strategies that have reduced maternal mortality rates. Secondary outcomes of interest to this review include: Strategies that have had the greatest impact in relation to: a) Changes to health system structures related to pregnancy and childbirth (including resources / finances) b) Change in cultural practices related to pregnancy and birth c) Empowerment of women and their position in society (and what impact this has had with respect to their choice of pregnancy and birth care)

Effects of changing rice cultural practices on C-band synthetic aperture radar backscatter using Envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar data in the Mekong River Delta

Changes in rice cultivation systems have been observed in the Mekong River Delta, Vietnam. Among the changes in cultural practices, the change from transplanting to direct sowing, the use of water-saving technology, and the use of high production method could have impacts on radar remote sensing methods previously developed for rice monitoring. Using Envisat (Environmental Satellite) ASAR (Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar) data over the province of An Giang, this study showed that the radar backscattering behaviour is much different from that of the reported traditional rice. At the early stage of the season, direct sowing on fields with rough and wet soil surface provides very high backscatter values for HH (Horizontal transmit - Horizontal receive polarisation) and VV (Vertical transmit - Vertical receive polarisation) data, as a contrast compared to the very low backscatter of fields covered with water before emergence. The temporal increase of the backscatter is therefore not observed clearly over direct sowing fields. Hence, the use of the intensity temporal change as a rice classifier proposed previously may not apply. Due to the drainage that occurs during the season, HH, VV and HH/VV are not strongly related to biomass, in contrast with past results. However, HH/VV ratio could be used to derive the rice/non-rice classification algorithm for all conditions of rice fields in the test province. The mapping results using the HH/VV polarization ratio at a single date in the middle period of the rice season were assessed using statistical data at different districts in the province, where very high accuracy was found. The method can be applied to other regions, provided that the synthetic aperture radar data are acquired during the peak period of the rice season, and that few training fields provide adjusted threshold values used in the method.

Glyphosate effects on diseases of plants

Glyphosate, N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine, is the most extensively used herbicide in the history of agriculture. Weed management programs in glyphosate resistant (GR) field crops have provided highly effective weed control, simplified management decisions, and given cleaner harvested products. However, this relatively simple, broad-spectrum, systemic herbicide can have extensive unintended effects on nutrient efficiency and disease severity, thereby threatening its agricultural sustainability. A significant increase in disease severity associated with the wide spread application of the glyphosate herbicide can be the result of direct glyphosate-induced weakening of plant defenses and increased pathogen population and virulence. Indirect effects of glyphosate on disease predisposition result from immobilization of specific micronutrients involved in disease resistance, reduced growth and vigor of the plant from accumulation of glyphosate in meristematic root, shoot, and reproductive tissues, altered physiological efficiency, or modification of the soil microflora affecting the availability of nutrients involved in physiological disease resistance. Strategies to ameliorate the predisposing effects of glyphosate on disease include judicious selection of herbicide application rates, micronutrient amendment, glyphosate detoxification in meristematic tissues and soil, changes in cultural practices to enhance micronutrient availability for plant uptake, and biological amendment with glyphosate-resistant microbes for nitrogen fixation and nutrient availability. Given that recommended doses of glyphosate are often many times higher than needed to control weeds, we believe the most prudent method to reduce the detrimental effects of glyphosate on GR crops will be to use this herbicide in as small a dose as practically needed. Such a frugal approach will not only curtail disease predisposition of GR crops, but will also benefit the grower and the environment.

The Most Secret Quintessence of Life: Sex, Glands, and Hormones, 1850–1950 (review)

Reviewed by: The Most Secret Quintessence of Life: Sex, Glands, and Hormones, 1850–1950 Eric J. Engstrom Chandak Sengoopta. The Most Secret Quintessence of Life: Sex, Glands, and Hormones, 1850–1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xii + 354 pp. $45.00 (0-226-74863-4). This book explores the origins, contexts, and consequences of the humoral approach to sex gland research. It charts some of the complex ways in which sexual organs came to be viewed as secreting potent chemicals that determined “not only the narrowly sexual aspects of our existence but also our very beings and lives” (p. 2). Stressing views about the chemical maleability and “plasticization” (p. 6) of the body, Chandak Sengoopta illustrates how, under the auspices of a new hormonal science, the “sexual body” was transformed into a “therapeutically accessible entity” (p. 173). The book is overwhelmingly a history of endocrine science and the various experiments, theories, and therapies developed from the 1900s through the 1940s. Much attention is devoted to Eugen Steinach’s broad scientific and therapeutic agenda, involving testicular transplantation to cure homosexuality, hormonal treatment of hermaphroditism, and vasectomies for premature senility. Steinach’s work and its implications are the keystone in the arch of Sengoopta’s narrative. The study is especially strong in its account of the range of medical uses to which gonadal, biochemical, and hormonal therapies were put: cures for menopause, aging, hemophilia, cancer, homosexuality, hermaphrodism, impotence, depression, and so on are all part of Sengoopta’s story. This broad therapeutic spectrum is especially valuable because it is often ignored in more narrowly focused studies on gender and sexuality. The book is composed of five main chapters and an epilogue. First, it explores nineteenth-century views of the gonads as crucial nodes in the nervous system. It then describes the early research on internal secretions by Brown Séquard, Steinach, and others. A third chapter treats the “heroic age of the endocrine glands” (p. 69) in the 1920s, when sex glands seemed to hold the key to the chemical perfectibility of human life and offer hope of alleviating a wide array of bodily ailments. The fourth chapter then traces developments up to the late 1930s, especially the displacement of Steinach’s sex polarity by ideas of hormonal bisexuality, the end of gonadocentrism, and the construction of a “polyglandular infrastructure for the hormonal sexual body” (p. 119). In an extensive fifth chapter, Sengoopta then explores the role of hormones in the clinic and the transition of endocrine research from physiology and gynecology to biochemistry. Finally, in the epilogue, Sengoopta crafts his narrative as an historical return, aligning nineteenth-century views on nervous connections among ganglia, plexuses, and the gonads with the “infinitely more complex” (p. 213) neurohumoral body of the late twentieth century. Sengoopta is unapologetic in describing his method as broad, synoptic, and “publication based.” He claims that demonstrating the sociocultural and therapeutic diversity of uses to which the gonads were put “compelled” (p. 7) such an approach. Throughout, he is at pains to illustrate the “mutual reinforcement of science, professional aims, cultural beliefs, and social stereotypes” (p. 54). At times this ambitious aim is achieved. But for the most part, the book doesn’t fulfill its [End Page 730] promise. Neither the research methodology nor the book’s theoretical and narrative architecture are constructed in ways that allow adequate exploration of such mutual reinforcement. And too often Sengoopta balks at the “complex ocean of facts, interpretations, and sociocultural debates” (p. 164) that are needed to study it. For example, on several occasions he mentions pharmaceutical companies, but nowhere does he analyze their relationship to scientific research. Indeed, it’s implausible to assume that that relationship can be assessed adequately using his “publication-based” approach. Yet that relationship is crucial to any understanding of what the monograph purports to be about, namely the “intellectual, therapeutic, social, [and] cultural” (p. 7) uses to which endocrine research was put. Future researchers will benefit from Sengoopta’s careful exposition of the scientific research literature, but they will have to look elsewhere for models which link that literature to changing cultural practices and mores. Eric J. Engstrom Humboldt University Copyright © 2008 The Johns Hopkins...

TECHNOLOGICAL LEARNING FOR INNOVATING TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE CULTIVATION PRACTICES: THE VIETNAMESE SMALLHOLDER ROSE SECTOR

Deregulation and globalisation has altered the views of public involvement in development and led to strategies focusing on private sector participation. An implicit assumption seems to be that these linkages will enhance the technological capacity of smallholder producers by way of more cost-efficient technologies trickling down through the value chain or by quality requirements inducing best practices. The argument put forward in this paper is that sustainable non traditional agricultural chain development requires more purposeful actions and institutional transitions, both in the public and private spheres, targeting improved upstream innovative capacities. Empirical findings from a Dutch-Vietnamese partnership on sustainable floriculture development are used. Research revealed that the pest and disease control solutions applied by smallholder rose growers were incremental adaptations of experiences obtained in former food crop cultivation practices. Floriculture however may require more drastic changes in cultivation practices to make the sector more environmentally benign. In the case of smallholder Vietnamese flower producers, this implies adaptation of knowledge and skills currently not present. An important hindrance in promoting this knowledge and skills appears to be the weak vertical linkages between flower growers and public and private research and development organizations.

Aging and Social Change Among Abaluyia in Western Kenya: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives

This article presents narrative accounts which illustrate ways that modernization and social change have transformed the daily lives of Abaluyia, especially older people, in rural western Kenya since the late nineteenth century. The narratives reveal history as lived experience, as observed and recorded by an anthropologist who has been doing research among Abaluyia in Bunyala and Samia over the past 25 years. The story involves continuity of cultural beliefs and practices, and it involves change-change imposed by the macro-events of globalizing processes, from colonialism to Structural Adjustment Programs, and change as people's adaptive responses to those processes, particularly how changing cultural practices have impacted elders. The grand narrative is historical, the overarching story of the incorporation of Kenya and Kenyans into the global political economy from the colonial period to the present. Other narratives are biographical, case studies of individuals from two extended families and their personal experiences of social change over the past century. The background narrative is autobiographical, the anthropologist's story of the practice of anthropological fieldwork and her own experiences and observations of social change in western Kenya. Since anthropological data over time become history, the approach here is both anthropological and historical.

‘No goats in the mother city’: using Symbolic Objects to help students talk about diversity and change

This paper reports on a first year project in a South African engineering foundation programme which attempted to bring a cultural studies perspective to teaching academic literacy. Students identify and investigate everyday objects that have symbolic meanings in their communities. Objects are seen as catalysts for enabling student narratives to emerge, and are a way of exploring the tensions between convention and change in cultural practices. A project such as this breaks disciplinary frames, working across diverse contexts such as engineering and cultural studies. The aim is to begin to explore some of the complexities around ‘development’ in contexts of diversity and change, globalization and relocalization.

Alchemies and Governing: Or, questions about the questions we ask

This article turns one of most cited philosopher's John Dewey's title, How We Think (1933/1998) back upon itself to consider how ‘thought’ or ‘reason’ are cultural practices that historically order and generate principles for reflection and action. The discussion proceeds thusly: (1) Schooling is about changing people; (2) Changing people embodies cultural theses about modes of living, such as that of being a lifelong learner or a Learning Society. The modes of living in modern pedagogy embody changing cultural norms and values about systems of reason that are to express universal cosmopolitan qualities; (3) Pedagogy fabricates the systems of reason to principles for reflection and participation that shreds provincial values in the name of greater universal cosmopolitan values; (4) This ‘making’ of cosmopolitan ‘reason’ forms through cultural practices that have overlapping sets of distinctions and differentiations about agency, the rational planning of one's biography in time, and science as a procedure for action in daily life. The educational sciences and philosophy of education are inscription devices or intellectual tools in the governing practices; (5) The inscriptions of reason, however, are more than mere qualities of thought or the mind. The narratives and images of cosmopolitan reason embody particular sublimes about collective hopes, desires and fears; (6) Further, the distinctions of cosmopolitan reason are comparative in that the very qualities of the ‘reasonable person’ create maps of its opposite: those who do not ‘fit’ the normalized qualities of the cosmopolitan thus stand outside that mode of living; The last section (7) provides three exemplars of the changing notions of the cosmopolitan and its ‘other’ in school subjects (literacy, mathematics, and music). School subjects are viewed as alchemies that transmogrify disciplinary thinking into normalizing pedagogies that fabricate who the child is and should be. The historical sketch has two layers in its educational study. One is to explore the politics of schooling with cosmopolitanism as a comparative method to consider the changing cultural practices that fabricate who child is and should be. The second raises questions about taken‐for‐granted categories and their systems of reason of education and reform. The very categories and distinctions of policy, educational research and philosophy are historicized as cultural practices to order, classify and divide what is ‘seen’ and felt as experience.

Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands / Mour ilo Republic eo an Majol (review)

Reviewed by: Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands / Mour ilo Republic eo an Majol Hilda Heine and Julianne Walsh Kroeker Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands / Mour ilo Republic eo an Majol, written by Marshall Islanders and edited by Anono Lieom Loeak, Veronica C Kiluwe, and Linda Crowl. Translated by Veronica C Kiluwe, Maria Kabua Foler, and Alson J Kelen. Majuro: University of the South Pacific Centre; Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 2004. ISBN 982-02 0364-3; 266 pages, tables, figures, maps, photographs, chronology, glossary, acronyms, appendixes, bibliography, index. US$25.00. Finally. A text about life in the Marshall Islands by Marshall Islanders themselves—their voices, their words, their descriptions, reactions, explanations, genealogies, relationships, humor, sorrow, and sufferings. In Lifein the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Marshallese people are humanized and fully portrayed, better understood, and self-represented in a way that is unavailable in print elsewhere. A companion volume written in Marshallese, Mour ilo Republic eo an Majol, only adds to its value. This is a treasure as the first of its kind, a model for other collections to follow, and an opening of the door for a world of Marshallese authors and audiences. [End Page 453] Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands contains sixteen essays, some coauthored, by twenty Marshall Islanders (ten men and ten women), and a conclusion by one of its editors, the only non-Marshallese collaborating on the project, Linda Crowl. Crowl is a former Peace Corps volunteer in the Marshalls and long-time Publications Fellow at the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. Unlike other collections, these accounts are not excerpts from interviews, not indented long quotations in another outsider's research or report, but accounts written in the first person in a Marshallese way, according to a Marshallese aesthetic. These are big-picture essays —how dominant institutions were formed, how fate, Americans, and customs dictated lives and impacted the development of a nation and people. These are essays about meaning—changes in cultural practices, transformations of families, technology, media, opportunities, diets, and day-to-day life and work. The essays include autobiographical accounts; institutional histories (from local perspectives); current controversies (the education system, adoption); environmental knowledge (preserving pandanus [böb], navigating and racing in Aeloñlaplap, making Marshallese medicine for babies and moms); history (the mission schools, Rongelap experiences); and explicitly cultural topics (land, legends, canoes, irooj [chiefly] manners). Family histories are integrated into them all, asauthors name their parents, grandparents, children, and close friends. The continuity of strong family relationships is highlighted amid the constant changes recounted. These arethe important relationships and gatherings in which Marshallese people and ways thrive—where they share stories, jokes, food, worship, and travel. These broad topics are written to be accessible to foreign as well as Marshallese audiences. Cultural explanations are inserted where necessary, in unobtrusive ways. For example, the significance of the kemmem (achild's first birthday) is noted in more than one account (Joash, Lodge,and Fowler and Kabua) as a reference for family learning about genealogies. Similarly, the wake (ilomij) is described as part of a larger story about memorable family celebrations and sorrows. The collection has many strengths. First, it is untraditional in the sense that unlike the limited number of Marshall Islands "collections" it is not limited to folklore, US strategic interests and impacts, or cultural description. This collection includes those topics, as well as controversial topics (eg, the disputed foreign adoption of Marshallese children) and contemporary institutional histories (the growth of the major FM radio station). The collection expands awareness of Marshallese lives in the context of US strategic interests and enables the reader to glimpse the very real challenges faced by Marshall Islanders without denying their agency and collective strengths. We find the collection refreshing because the too-familiar "issues" bemoaned in impersonal international donor reports are glimpsed here in the context of real people's lives and lived experiences. Rather than seeing the [End Page 454] Marshall Islands as a nation faced with critical "issues," the reader comes away with a deeper awareness of the Marshall Islands as...

Soil Organic Carbon Changes in Diversified Rotations of the Western Corn Belt

Sequestration and storage of carbon (C) by agricultural soils has been cited as one potential part of the solution to soil degradation and global climate change. However, C sequestration in soils is a slow and dynamic process. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of crop rotation and N fertilizer management on soil organic C (SOC) levels at several points in time during 18 yr of a long‐term study in the Western Corn Belt. Seven cropping systems (three monoculture, two 2‐yr, and two 4‐yr rotations) with three levels of N fertilizer were compared. Soil samples were taken in the spring in 1984, 1992, 1998, and 2002 to a depth of 30 cm in 0‐ to 7.5‐, 7.5‐ to 15‐, and 15‐ to 30‐cm increments. No differences were obtained in SOC levels in 1984 at the beginning of the study. After 8 yr, rotation significantly increased SOC 449 kg ha−1 across all cropping systems. From 1992 to 2002, SOC levels in the 0‐ to 7.5‐cm depth decreased by 516 kg ha−1 across all cropping systems. Soil organic C levels in the 7.5‐ to 15‐cm depths in 1992 and 2002 demonstrated similar rotation effects to those in the surface 0‐ to 7.5‐cm, being not significantly affected from 1984 to 1992 but being significantly decreased from 1992 to 2002 (568 kg SOC ha−1 across all cropping systems). Many of the SOC gains in the surface 30 cm measured during the first 8 yr of the study were lost during the next 10 yr in all but the 4‐yr cropping systems after 18 yr. The loss of SOC in this latter period occurred when depth of tillage was increased by using a tandem disk with larger‐diameter disks. These results demonstrate that more than one point‐in‐time measurement from long‐term experiments is necessary to monitor SOC changes when several management variables, such as cropping system and N fertilizer, are being used. They also indicate that apparent small changes in cultural practices, such as in depth of tillage in this experiment, can significantly change SOC dynamics in the soil. Subtle changes in cultural practices (e.g., tillage depth) can have significant long‐term results, but long‐term experiments are required to quantify their impact under variable climatic conditions.

Damage control inputs: a comparison of conventional and organic farming systems

The economic literature on pest control exclusively assumes a non-negative marginal product of pesticides based on a monotonic non-decreasing function of damage abatement, which may bias pesticide productivity estimates. This paper proposes a specification that allows for a negative marginal product of pesticides and a damage-abating role for labour and machinery. Pesticide productivity is found to be lower than previously reported. Conventional farms are found to rely substantially on pesticides and machinery for damage abatement, whereas organic farms mainly rely on machinery use and changes in cultural practices. Productivity analyses based on the asymmetric specification suggest that pesticides are used optimally in conventional farming, which contrasts with results in previous literature.

Variability in Pathogenicity among Phytophthora spp. Isolated from Citrus in Corsica

AbstractGummosis, caused by several Phytophthora species, is one of the most serious constraints to citrus production in Corsica. The current Phytophthora population on citrus trees is mainly composed of P. citrophthora divided into two major groups, namely G1 and G2, with two additional minor groups. Following changes in cultural practices, favourable climatic conditions, and introduction of new hosts, repeated gummosis outbreaks have been observed. The pathogenicity of several Phytophthora isolates of each group collected in citrus groves was assessed for gummosis disease on 20 citrus scion and rootstock cultivars. All isolates tested proved virulent on citrus but extensive pathogenicity differences were observed among and within Phytophthora groups. The data indicate that G1 isolates of P. citrophthora are pathogenic to resistant rootstocks such as Poncirus trifoliata or Carrizo citrange, and moderately aggressive towards scions. In contrast, isolates of the group G2 tend to display a greater aggressiveness to a number of scion cultivars, but are not virulent to P. trifoliata and its hybrids. Implications of these data on disease management are discussed.

On the Factors that May Have Influenced the Esca Epidemic in the Eighties in Tuscany

Tuscany is one of the viticultural regions in Italy most severely affected by esca. The epidemic started in 1986, and at the time it was explained as being caused by the great frost that hit Tuscany and many other parts of Italy the year before. Now, several years later, with a clearer understanding of the disease in the light of more recent research, we re-examined the cause of the epidemic and ask which factors could have been more likely explanations of that epidemic – factors such as the chemicals then used to control other vine diseases in Italy (active ingredients, dosages, times of application), or, contemporary, methods to produce propagation material, changes in cultural practices, or the rootstock that were then used in new vineyards and so on. We found little evidence that there was a direct correlation between the cold damage suffered in 1985 and the increase in esca disease later. We suggest that contributing factors causing the epidemic included the selective activity of fungicides used in the vineyard, which may have led to a build-up of inoculum of the fungi causing esca, and poor quality planting material arising from large scale propagation, resulting in vines more susceptible to weak pathogens such as Phaeomoniella chlamydospora.