Distant Periphery Research Articles

AS A TOURIST IN TAHITI

This article evolved from a disappointing holiday I had in Tahiti. First, I present my Tahitian experience in a storied form. Then, after condemning Tahiti as an unworthy leisure resort, I examine my own expectations as a Western woman and trained ethnographer. I discuss how I longed for an exotic, unspoiled, Pacific pleasure paradise in a distant periphery and how I searched for something in Tahiti that I defined as authentic. I discuss how these expectations reflect a stereotypical Western cultural bias toward a binary, hierarchical understanding of the world—a worldview that as an ethnographer, I was consciously trying to avoid. Because I am mainly concerned with issues of self-reflexivity in ethnographic research, this article focuses on the relationship between researcher's Westernness and tourism.

Environmental Mismanagement in Australia's Far North

For almost a century Australians have been concerned about the settlement of their tropical north (Basedow 1932; Crowley 1960; Graham-Taylor 1980). Because of the region's sparse population and its proximity to Asia, they have feared they would lose it to a land- and food-hungry yellow horde (Western Australian Parliamentary Debates 1925; Willard 1967; Crowley 1974, 274, 293; Chapman 1992). This xenophobic anxiety, deeply imbedded in the White Australia policy, was formally encoded in the Federal Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. The White Australia policy prohibited the entry into Australia of any person who could not, upon command of a government officer, write a passage of fifty words in a European language, a test that the federal Parliament agreed was to be given only to non-Europeans (MacIntyre 1920; Borrie and others 1947; Spate 1968, 154; Clark 1981, 5, 131-132). One outgrowth of Australia's xenophobia was the undertaking of a joint venture between the federal government and the government of Western Australia to encourage settlement by Europeans in the Ord River Valley [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], in a region known as the Kimberleys (Cannegieter 1964, 375). Planners and others projected that after building two dams, one of which would create a huge artificial lake, 75,000 hectares would be opened to irrigated farming in Western Australia and the adjoining Northern Territory (Robertson and Chapman 1985; DAWAWA 1987; MAWRNW 1990a, 1990b). Construction of a diversion dam began in 1961 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED], and in May 1963 the first farm was irrigated. Several other farms began operations the next year, and by 1966 thirty-one of them had been allocated to settlers. Soon more than 2,500 hectares were under cultivation, 90 percent of them in cotton (Young 1979, 25; Walker 1992, 185). In April 1969 work began on the main or Ord River Dam. When the dam was completed in 1972, it created Lake Argyle, which provided a more certain supply of water and offered the potential for a considerable expansion of irrigated farming [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]. For a number of economic, institutional, and biological reasons, cotton and sundry other large-scale agricultural endeavors failed, however. Not until the 1980s did a more diversified strategy that included horticulture and forage crops for cattle produce a small but viable farm economy. By 1996, 10,500 hectares were under cultivation in the Ord. Although the area farmed fell far short of initial hopes and aspirations, some planners predict that by the year 2020, with private infrastructural development, 60,000 hectares of farmland will be irrigated (Johnston 1993, 6; Neales 1996). For decades Australians have considered the Ord River Scheme an economic failure, and it has frequently been tagged as the continent's shining example of a great white elephant (Davidson 1965, 1982; MAWRNW 1990a, 1990b; Walker 1992). Unfortunately, few Australian critics have been willing to acknowledge the real origins of the scheme - xenophobia, foremost, but also various benefits of a noneconomic or nonfarm nature: nation building, the perceived threat of an Asian invasion, and tourism. By the early 1990s the small town of Kununurra and the surrounding region were attracting more than 100,000 tourists a year and generating more income than farming produced (WADA 1985; McQuie 1990; Johnston 1993).(1) In another and no less significant key, few students of the Ord River Scheme have noted that it is an egregious example of state mismanagement and exploitation of a distant periphery for the benefit of those whose real allegiances lie some 3,200 kilometers distant. Like all faraway frontiers, Australia's north has been seen as a resource to plunder. PROTECTING THE ORD RIVER WATERSHED Assuming that irrigated farming would be successful, the ultimate life of the Ord River Scheme would depend on how well the watershed was safeguarded. …

Celtic motifs in the late classical and Hellenistic toreutics of North Pontic area

The author discussed some find of the IVth-IInd century B.C. jewelry in Kuban basin in South Russia. The find of a gold stamped plaque in shape of a male head, reflecting the typical motif of Early La-Tène art, in a tumulus near stanitsa Ivanovskaya in Kuban basin suggests the penetration of the motifs of Celtic art in distant periphery of antique world in the kingdom of Bosporus already in the IVth century B.C., i.e. before the well known after literary and archaeological sources evidence of the Celtic penetration in North Pontic area. It was due to the fact that since the first half of the IVth century B.C. the Celts were hired as mercenaries, first by the Dionysius I, the king of Syracuse. With the broad use of mercenaries in Greek armies the soldiers, also barbarian, with their own amunition and armaments, may had found their way in distant parts of oikumene. The possibility of the Celts penetration via South Italy seems to be indirectly proved by the complex find at Sergievskaya of the helmet of Etrusco-Italic type and two small “phalerae” with the design, having prototype among the Celtic and South Italian antiquities of the IVth century B.C. It seems also that some other peculiar motifs in the Hellenistic toreutics of Kuban basin (eight-shaped fibulae) also reflect the influence of the IVth-IIIrd century B.C. Celtic art.

Distribution of affiliative behaviors among adult females within a group of wild patas monkeys in a nonmating, nonbirth season

The distribution of four affiliative behaviors (proximity within 3 m, allogrooming, contact calling, and co-night-resting) were examined in a group of wild patas monkeys (Erythrocebus patas) during a nonmating, nonbirth season. To a greater or lesser extent, dominance rank and kinship influenced these behaviors of the adult females. Since high-ranking females tended to exhibit some of these behaviors with high frequency, they were considered to be acting as the focus of affiliative behaviors and as the center for group cohesion. Furthermore, related adult females also tended to exhibit some of these behaviors with a high frequency toward one another, so that matrilineal kinship was also seen to be an important factor for group cohesion. In contrast, the harem male tended to exhibit these behaviors at a low frequency and/or had no affiliative partner for any of them. Thus, it appears that the social organization of the patas group is concentric, being composed of high-ranking females in the center, low-ranking females at the periphery, and the harem male at the distant periphery.

Articulating Economic Modernization and National Integration at the Periphery: Addis Ababa and Sidamo's Provincial Centers

Addis Ababa, founded a century ago, has exerted influence over its periphery like no other Ethiopian town before it. From a straggling, disjunctive village in the 1880s, Addis Ababa (New Flower) developed into one of the largest urban centers in Africa. By the end of World War II, it was a city of over a half million people and home to the Organization of African Unity and several other international bodies. The growth of this metropolis was phenomenal, particularly since it emerged within an economy that was 90 percent agricultural and largely feudal.1 After serving initially as Shewa's provincial center, Addis Ababa became the imperial capital in 1889 with Menilek's accession to the Ethiopian throne. Addis Ababa also became the geographic center of an Ethiopia that in the 1880s was in the process of constituting itself both physically and culturally. The twentieth century provided Addis Ababa and its imperial resident with the technological and economic means with which to dominate and defend a state that was larger than that of any previous Abyssinian ruler. Modern firearms permitted the conquest of areas never before subject to the Abyssinian monarch; improved communications in the form of roads, transport vehicles, telegraph, and telephone gave the center the means with which to supervise a distant periphery; new export crops and improved access to international markets insured the financing of these modern innovations. Addis Ababa was at the heart of these changes. Its own evolution and development reflected the efforts of both Menilek II (r. 1889-1913) and Haile Sillassie I (regent 1917-1930; emperor 1930-1974) to modernize and centralize the feudal state.2 The patterns of Addis Ababa's evolutionary growth and development were reflected, albeit to a lesser degree, in the peripheral centers, particularly in the newly incorporated regions of the south. In a number of ways these centers were as new as Addis Ababa itself; although none would approach the magnitude in either size or influence of the national capital. Over time each was linked more tightly to the imperial center and, while each retained its own unique spirit and style, each carried out Addis Ababa's directives. Just as Addis Ababa's showcase development magnified and glorified the emperor, each peripheral center reflected the authority of its local lord. Much depended upon the personality and resources of the individual local ruler who could either support or impede imperial objectives. But these individuals, appointed by the

Historical Writing on Colonial Panama

EITHER here nor is an apt phrase to begin this review of the historical literature relating to the isthmus of Panama. Central Americanists consider the isthmus a part of the Gran Colombian region or, perhaps, an economic and political appendage of the viceregal court at Lima, while Colombianists and Peruvianists view Panama as part of a distant periphery or, worse, as one of a series of dictator-dominated banana republics between Mexico and South America. The specifics of Panamanian history have tended to blur the issue. Before the conquest, Panama was sandwiched between Chibcha and Maya cultures, sharing commonalities with both, but part of neither. For most of the colonial period, Panama was directly tied to Peru; during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was more or less integrated into New Granada and Colombia. Since achieving independence in 1903, however, Panama has made efforts to distance itself from Colombia, instead becoming a major player in Central American and Caribbean affairs. Given the confusion as to Panama's proper place in the historiographical tradition of Latin America, scholars of the Gran Colombian region and Central America alike have rarely considered Panama a topic of study.' Conversely, students of Panamanian history find themselves poised between two larger historical structures, unable to find a home in either, and perhaps not wanting to.2 Nevertheless, there exists a substantial body of literature relating to the history of Panama, though much of it is almost unknown. In the noted Griffin Guide of 1971, under the heading General, Panama has

Local enhancement of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II expression and cell infiltration in experimental allergic encephalomyelitis around axotomized motor neurons

The effect of unilateral peripheral nerve lesions on the inflammatory response of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE) in rat central nervous system (CNS) was studied. Immunostaining for major histocomapatibility complex (MHC) antigens and T-cell subsets demonstrated that MHC class I expression was markedly enhanced in as well as around axotomized motor neurons and that MHC class II expression was induced on several cells, in close proxomity to the axotomized motor neurons. There was also a pronounced increase in interleukin 2 receptor-positive lymphocytes as well as T-cells and the T-cell subsets on the injured as compared to the non-injured contralateral side. These effects were present particularly in the initial phase of EAE and persisted for several weeks. The results suggest that neurons may communicate immunoregulatory signals to their microenvironment and that retrograde axonal signals from the distant periphery may alter the immune response locally within the CNS.