Eastern Nicaragua Research Articles

When the Forest and the Rivers is Home – Managing Indigenous Territory and Settler Relations in North Eastern Nicaragua

When the Forest and the Rivers is Home – Managing Indigenous Territory and Settler Relations in North Eastern Nicaragua

A comparison of seasonal rainfall forecasts over Central America using dynamic and hybrid approaches from Copernicus Climate Change Service seasonal forecasting system and the North American Multimodel Ensemble

AbstractSeasonal rainfall forecasts provide information several months ahead to support decision making. These forecasts may use dynamic, statistical, or hybrid approaches, but their comparative value is not well understood over Central America. This study conducts a regional evaluation of seasonal rainfall forecasts focusing on two of the leading dynamic climate ensembles: the Copernicus Climate Change Service seasonal forecasting system (C3S) and the North American Multimodel Ensemble (NMME). We compare the multimodel ensemble mean and individual model predictions of seasonal rainfall over key wet season periods in Central America to better understand their relative forecast skill at the seasonal scale. Three types of rainfall forecasts are compared: direct dynamic rainfall predictions from the C3S and NMME ensembles, a statistical approach using the lagged observed sea surface temperature (SST), and an indirect hybrid approach, driving a statistical model with dynamic ensemble SST predictions. Results show that C3S and NMME exhibit similar regional variability with strong performance in the northern Pacific part of Central America and weaker skill primarily in eastern Nicaragua. In the northern Pacific part of the region, the models have high skill across the wet season. Indirect forecasts can outperform the direct rainfall forecasts in specific cases where the direct forecasts have lower predictive power (e.g., eastern Nicaragua during the early wet season). The indirect skill generally reflects the strength of SST associations with rainfall. The indirect forecasts based on Tropical North Atlantic SSTs are best in the early wet season and the indirect forecasts based on Niño3.4 SSTs are best in the late wet season when each SST zone has a stronger association with rainfall. Statistical predictions are competitive with the indirect and direct forecasts in multiple cases, especially in the late wet season, demonstrating how a variety of forecasting approaches can enhance seasonal forecasting.

Grisi Siknis: A cultural idiom of gender-based violence and structural inequalities in eastern Nicaragua.

For the Miskitu of Nicaragua, Grisi Siknis is a contagious illness that predominantly affects women. It is characterized by numerous psychosomatic symptoms, including headache, fear, aggressive behavior, loss of consciousness, and periods of rapid frenzy. Although Grisi Siknis has gained academic and public attention due to its unique cultural elements and perceived sexual aspects, little is known how the contextual and gender dimensions of Grisi Siknis are played out in relation to the socio-political context in the region. Based on 16 months of ethnographic work in the Nicaraguan Miskitu Coast, including semi-structured interviews (n = 20) and participant observation, this article documents a semantic shift in the embodied and symbolic language of a cultural idiom of distress. I show how duhindu (Miskitu spirit associated with illness and misfortune) and witchcraft are symbols that share cultural resonance in the Miskitu community, while gender violence discourse is a new language incorporated into the logic of this cultural idiom of distress. I argue that this semantic shift allows the individuals in this study to communicate local experiences of complex forms of structural inequalities (migration status, unemployment, ethnic identity) and gender-based violence that tend to be normalized as a ubiquitous cultural problem while preserving the broader socio-cultural meaning the Grisi Siknis represents. The ethnographic accounts of Grisi Siknis provide empirical data to unpack the unexplored contextual processes and local discourses that transform the meaning and logic of cultural idioms of distress at the individual level of experience.

Customary law and the mediation of witchcraft accusations in Eastern Nicaragua

This article focuses on efforts to overcome the divide between state legality and local practices. It explores a pragmatic effort to deal with witchcraft accusations and occult-related violence in customary courts among the Miskitu people in Eastern Nicaragua, taking into account both indigenous notions of justice and cosmology, and the laws of the state. In this model, a community court (elected by the community inhabitants and supported by a council of elders), watchmen known as ‘voluntary police’ and a ‘judicial facilitator’ play intermediary roles. Witchcraft is understood and addressed in relation to Miskitu cultural perceptions and notions of illness afflictions, and disputes are settled through negotiations involving divination, healing, signing a legally binding ‘peace’ contract, a fine, and giving protection to alleged witches. This decreases tensions and the risk of vigilante justice is reduced. The focus is on settling disputes, conciliation and recreating harmony instead of retribution.

Theodicy and Lovindeer’s ‘Wild Gilbert’ on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast

This article considers the impact of Lovindeer's reggae recording 'Wild Gilbert' on the people of eastern Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast who experienced Hurricane Joan in October 1988. Lovindeer's song which was released shortly afterwards offered a humorous account of Hurricane Gilbert providing a theodicy, examined here that made moral sense for the people of Nicaragua affected by Joan at the time and which was still very popular during the period of my first fieldwork in the early 1990s.

The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849–1899

The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849–1899

Agroforestry Practices Promote Biodiversity and Natural Resource Diversity in Atlantic Nicaragua.

Tropical forest conversion to pasture, which drives greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss, remains a pressing socio-ecological challenge. This problem has spurred increased interest in the potential of small-scale agroforestry systems to couple sustainable agriculture with biodiversity conservation, particularly in rapidly developing areas of the tropics. In addition to providing natural resources (i.e. food, medicine, lumber), agroforestry systems have the potential to maintain higher levels of biodiversity and greater biomass than lower diversity crop or pasture systems. Greater plant diversity may also enhance soil quality, further supporting agricultural productivity in nutrient-limited tropical systems. Yet, the nature of these relationships remains equivocal. To better understand how different land use strategies impact ecosystem services, we characterized the relationships between plant diversity (including species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and natural resource diversity), and soil quality within pasture, agroforests, and secondary forests, three common land use types maintained by small-scale farmers in the Pearl Lagoon Basin, Nicaragua. The area is undergoing accelerated globalization following the 2007 completion of the region’s first major road; a change which is expected to increase forest conversion for agriculture. However, farmer agrobiodiversity maintenance in the Basin was previously found to be positively correlated with affiliation to local agricultural NGOs through the maintenance of agroforestry systems, despite these farmers residing in the communities closest to the new road, highlighting the potential for maintaining diverse agroforestry agricultural strategies despite heightened globalization pressures. We found that agroforestry sites tended to have higher surface soil %C, %N, and pH relative to neighboring to secondary forest, while maintaining comparable plant diversity. In contrast, pasture reduced species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and natural resource diversity. No significant relationships were found between plant diversity and the soil properties assessed; however higher species richness and phylodiversity was positively correlated with natural resource diversity. These finding suggest that small, diversified agroforestry systems may be a viable strategy for promoting both social and ecological functions in eastern Nicaragua and other rapidly developing areas of the tropics.

“God Save the King of the Mosquito Nation!” Indigenous Leaders on the Fringe of the Spanish Empire

The Miskitu Indians of Eastern Nicaragua and Honduras are one of the most numerous indigenous groups in the southern part of Central America. Never conquered by the Spaniards during the colonial era, they first came under control of the Central American republics in the late nineteenth century. Their leaders were known as “kings” from the early seventeenth century up until 1860. A scholarly debate has arisen on the character of these leaders: were they big men or chiefs? Generalizations on the character of leadership over extended periods of time, however, are problematic, since Miskitu political organization underwent significant change over time as a result of the fluctuating influence of the colonial powers (Spain and England) that sought hegemony in the region. This article will therefore periodize Miskitu leadership patterns, taking into account the influence of the colonial powers as well as of resident British and US traders, who played a major role in local politics.

The Awakening coast: an anthology of Moravian writings from Mosquitia and eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899

The Awakening coast: an anthology of Moravian writings from Mosquitia and eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899

カリブ海の漁場 - 東ニカラグア、ミスキート諸島の事例 -

カリブ海の漁場 - 東ニカラグア、ミスキート諸島の事例 -

The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899 by Karl Offen and Terry Rugeley (review)

Reviewed by: The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899 by Karl Offen and Terry Rugeley Andrew Hilburn The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899. Karl Offen and Terry Rugeley. University of Nebraska Press. xi + 430 pp., maps, figures, tables, notes, selected bibliography, index. $75.00 cloth. (ISBN: 978-0-8032-4896-0). For Central Americanist geographers and those familiar with the region, the Moravian Church is known as a key institution in the regional identity of eastern Honduras and the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. So much so that today, it is taken as a given and does not appear strange at all to them or even this region’s residents that what began as a small German-Czech Hussite social-religious experiment now defines religious life amid a broader region dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. Yet how it came to be this way, and more importantly how this was experienced and recorded by the Moravian missionaries [End Page 245] themselves, has until now been confined to short excerpts amid larger tomes and elusive archival shelves. Thankfully, geographer, Mosquitia-expert, and CLAGista Karl Offen and Latin Americanist historian Terry Rugeley have brought to life the seminal moments of the Moravian Church in Mosquitia from 1849 to 1900 with their annotated anthology, The Awakening Coast. More importantly, the careful passage selection, annotation, and contextualization by the authors serve to create a wonderfully readable cultural-historical geography of the Nicaraguan Mosquitia. Unlike the mid-19th century Moravian missionaries who were dropped off unaware into unfamiliar villages amid the lagoons, pine savannas, and rainforests, the reader is introduced to the Nicaraguan Mosquitia with a thorough introduction chapter by Offen. In fact, this chapter is a considerable scholarly contribution in itself and provides the overarching narrative that the excerpted vignettes flesh out with their lived experiences and observations. As a whole, this keystone chapter contextualizes the time and geographic setting during which the featured writings took place. In it, Offen begins by situating the importance of the Moravian Church in the regional identity of the Nicaraguan Mosquitia while pointing to the “Great Awakening” of the 1880s there as the moment of synthesis between the two. The majority of the essay, though, is an excellent summary on the social, cultural, political, and economic changes that swept the region in the latter half of the 19th Century through the experiences of its Moravian, Miskitu, Rama, Mayangna, and Creole residents. In this sense, Offen’s chapter and the book in total succeed in the same way Bernard Nietschmann’s and Charles Hale’s work show the effects of globalization on the Nicaraguan Mosquitia, the only difference being Offen and Rugeley’s focus on the second half of the 1800s from archival sources. While the introductory chapter works as a stand-alone essay, it is also valuable as an annotated index for the selected writings by the Moravians. For readers interested in specific thematic aspects of the anthology, such as boom towns, disease, Miskitu cosmology, healing, or buried poisons, among many others, Offen provides useful parenthetical “tags” on these subjects by noting the chapter numbers of the selected writings that reference those themes. This small, but significant detail adds to the book’s lasting contribution as an anthology of difficult-to-access writings. Most of the 31 entries written by the Moravian missionaries are very brief, usually 3-7 pages, but some more substantive chaptered entries could qualify as monographs, with one exceeding 50 pages. Some are accounts of actual events, such as the description of events related to the religious “awakening” of 1879 in Karata, but others are general histories of places (“Changes in Dakura”) or descriptions of economic activity or cultural practices (“Trade among the Miskito Indians”; Sorcery at Kukalaya”). While many of the entries have the overly religious, ethnocentric discourse expected from mid-19th Century Protestant missionaries, this does not make them uninteresting or useless as vistas into the past. If the reader can tune out the dated language and religious qualifiers, the observations of some writers, especially those of Heinrich Ziock, at least read like...

Amphibians and reptiles in the swamps dominated by the palm Raphia taedigera (Arecaceae) in northeastern Costa Rica

The herpetofauna that inhabits Caribbean Costa Rica has received considerable attention in the last two decades. This assemblage includes a total of 141 species of reptiles and 95 amphibians mostly distributed in tropical wet and moist lowland forests. While most information available came from primary and secondary forest sites, little is known about the amphibians and reptiles that inhabit more open habitats, such as wetlands and swamps. For instances, swaps dominated by the yolillo palm Raphia taedigera extend through much of the northeastern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and eastern Nicaragua, but information about the herpetological community that uses such environments remains practically unknown. This situation reflects the little research conducted in such inhospitable environments. Here, we report the results of an intensive survey conducted to assess the herpetological community that inhabit R. taedigera palm-swamps. A total of 14 species of amphibians and 17 of reptiles have been recorded from these swamps. Amphibians and reptiles that inhabit yolillo swamps have wide distributions along much of Middle America and are considered common species throughout their range. In general, yolillo swamps are poor environments for herpetofauna: richness of reptiles and amphibians is almost two times higher in the adjacent forest than in the palm dominated swamps. Furthermore, most species observed in this swamps can be considered habitat generalists that are well adapted to the extreme conditions imposed by the changes in hydroperiods, reduce understory cover, low tree diversity and simple forest architecture of these environments. Despite similarities in the herpetofauna, it is clear that not all forest species use yolillo habitat, a characteristic that is discussed in terms of physical stress driven by the prolonged hydroperiod and reduced leaflitter in the ground, as these features drive habitat structure and herpetofaunal complexity. Our list of species using yolillo swamps is not definitive, and is likely to grow as more studies are conducted in this unexplored environment.

Recruitment dynamics of the tropical rainforest tree <i>Dipteryx oleifera</i> (Fabaceae) in eastern Nicaragua

Seed production, seed dispersal and recruitment are critical processes in population dynamics, because they are almost never completely successful. We recorded the recruitment dynamics for the population of Dipteryx oleifera in a tropical rainforest in eastern Nicaragua (12 degrees 05' N., 83 degrees 55' W.) from March 2002 to August 2006. Seeds and seedlings had highly clumped distributions, while sapling distributions appeared to be random. Seedling survival increased away from the nearest conspecifc adult tree, where seedling density is lower. Since relative growth rates of seedlings are not correlated with the distance to the nearest conspecific adult, seedling survival appears to be independent of seedling growth. Seedling density is inversely correlated with seedling insect herbivory damage. Seedling survival correlated negatively with the number of saplings per sub-plot (10x10 m), suggesting that insect herbivore may also cue in on saplings rather than only on adult D. oleifera trees in order to locate seedlings. Seedling establishment is significantly clumped with respect to the nearest adult tree. Larger clumps of seedlings seems more ephemeral than isolated smaller clumps located away from the nearest D. oleifera tree. These results support current empirical evidence presented earlier for the Janzen-Connell hypothesis for Dipteryx oleifera at seed and seedling stages and, the Recruitment Limitation hypothesis at the sapling stage, because sapling individuals might have recruited after random light-gap formation.

Market Citizenship in Eastern Nicaraguan Indigenous Territories

Drawing from critical assessments of market citizenship and neoliberal resource management, this article on eastern Nicaragua demonstrates that state policies threaten the subsistence rights of indigenous peoples in spite of recent advances in land titling. Case studies of three prominent disputes linked to protected areas and tourism demonstrate that where territorial recognition and land titling has not occurred, or the rights and responsibilities of outsiders and native occupants remain unclear, indigenous claims are threatened by both real estate sales and biodiversity conservation efforts. Ever-present contradictions in market-oriented definitions of indigenous rights and biodiversity values suggest outcomes remain uncertain due to racial prejudice, structural inequalities, and profit motives.

Mesozoic Oceanic Terranes of Southern Central America-Geology, Geochesmistry and Geodynamics.

The Northwestern edge of the modem Caribbean Plate, located in central Middle America (S-Guatemala to N-Costa Rica), is characterized by a puzzle of oceanic and continental terranes that belonged originally to the Pacific facade of North America. South of the Motagua Fault Zone, the actual northern strike slip boundary of the Caribbean Plate, three continental slivers (Copan, Chortis s. str. and Patuca) are sandwiched between two complex suture zones that contain HP/LT mafic and ultramafic oceanic rocks: The Motagua Melanges to the North, extensively studied in the last ten years and the newly defined Mesquito Composite Oceanic Terrane (MCOT) to the South. No modern geological data were available for the oceanic terrane located in the southern part of the so called continental “Chortis Block”. Classically, the southern limit of this block with the Caribbean Large Igneous Province (CLIP) was placed at a hypothetical fault line connecting the main E-W fault in the Santa Elena Peninsula (N-Costa Rica) with the Hess Escarpment. However, our study in eastern Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica evidences an extensive assemblage of oceanic upper mantle and crustal rocks outcropping between the Chortis/Patuca continental blocks and the CLIP. They comprise collided and accreted exotic terranes of Pacific origin recording a polyphased tectonic history. We distinguish: 1The MCOT that comprises a Late Triassic to Early Cretaceous puzzle of oceanic crust and are-derived rocks set in a serpentinite matrix, and 2The Manzanillo and Nicoya Terranes that are made of Cretaceous plateau-like rocks associated with oceanic sediments older than the CLIP. This study has been focused on the rocks of the MCOT. The MCOT comprises the southern half of the former “Chortis Block” and is defined by 4 corner localities characterized by ultramafic and mafic oceanic rocks of Late Triassic, Jurassic and Early Cretaceous age: 1 The Siuna Serpentinite Melange (NE-Nicaragua), 2The El Castillo Melange (Nicaragua-Costa Rica border), 3DSDP Legs 67 and 84 (Guatemala fore-are basin), and 4The Santa Elena Peridiotite (NWCosta Rica). The Siuna Serpentinite Melange (SSM) is a HP/LT subduction zone melange set in a serpentinite matrix that contains Oceanie crust and arcrelated greenschist to blueschist/eclogite facies metamafic and metasedimentary blocks. Middle Jurassic (Rajocian-Bathonian) radiolarites are found in original sedimentary contact with arc-derived greenstones. Late Jurassic black detrital chert possibly formed in a marginal (fore-arc?) basin shortly before subduction. A phregnite 40Ar/39Ar -cooling age dates the exhumation of the high pressure rocks as 139 Ma. The El Castillo Melange Mesozoic oceANic TeRRANes oF soUTHeRN ceNTRAL AMeRicA-GeoLoGY, GeocHesMisTRY AND GeoDYNAMics

Maps and the Teaching of Latin American History

Abstract Historical maps deserve a place in the college classroom as primary sources. Since the 1980s, scholarship has shown how maps can be analyzed and interpreted to reveal something not only about the peoples, spaces, and times they portray but also about the societies that create, consume, and contest them. Over the last decade, the maps themselves have become increasingly accessible, as important research libraries and archives digitize their holdings. Yet these graphic texts are not yet staples of college curricula or documentary readers. This essay provides a brief overview of recent research in the history of cartography and presents two examples of map discussion modules for the Latin American history classroom: a demonstration of US neocolonialism, resource extraction, and social change in late nineteenth-century eastern Nicaragua, and a case of urban planning and ideas of order in colonial Mexico City.

Tree mortality following ENSO-associated fires and drought in lowland rain forests of Eastern Nicaragua

Occurrence of fires is an unusual event in many tropical terra firma rain forests, in particular those in Mesoamerica. As a result of the unusually intense ENSO event of 1998/1999, these forests were subjected to a prolonged drought that favored the propagation of extensive fires. In the lowland rain forests of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, fires were mostly low-intensity leaf litter fires, but they produced high tree mortality. Data from 5 to 17 years of study of permanent plots/transects from four sites were used to investigate whether survival following the ENSO drought episode and subsequent fires may be affected by factors such as successional status, tree size, taxonomic identity or growth rate. The study included two sites that burned in their entirety, one that had only part of its area burned and a fourth site that was not affected by fire. Overall, tree survival was lower in burned plots, and remained low in those plots for at least 2 years after fires, especially among pioneer and mature forest species. Mortality experience between burnt and unburned plots differed widely among the 15 most abundant species. The 38 most abundant species were grouped into five guilds corresponding to their ecological successional status: (1) pioneers; (2) subcanopy/understory heliophiles; (3) canopy heliophiles; (4) subcanopy mature forests species; (5) canopy mature forest species. All guilds experienced significantly lower survival in plots that burned in mortality among guilds were between significant differences. The only the canopy mature forest species and the pioneers, which had the highest mortality. Two years after fire, survival remained significantly lower in burnt plots than in plots that had not burned, but the pattern of mortality was quite different. Both mature forests species guilds had significantly higher mortality than heliophile guilds. Tree size had an overall significant positive effect on survival after fires particularly among subcanopy and canopy mature forest species guilds. However, in unburned sites, survival was negatively correlated to tree size in mature forest guilds. While relative growth rate had no overall significant effect in plots that burned, faster growth was positively correlated with survival in particular guilds such as in pioneers and canopy heliophiles. Delayed mortality increased with relative growth rate for pioneers but decreased for subcanopy heliophiles. The effect of the ENSO event drought resulted in a significantly reduced overall survival caused by high mortality of pioneers, compared to non-drought years and to other guilds, but non-significant differences in post-drought survival were apparent among the remaining guilds. Individual tree basal area was positively correlated with survival given drought, overall, but particularly in pioneers and mature forest canopy species. Contrary to hurricanes, the delayed mortality and overall damage caused by fires is not conducive to maintaining the structure, diversity and species composition of these forests.

The good and the bad: Alkaloid screening and brineshrimp bioassays of aqueous extracts of 31 medicinal plants of eastern Nicaragua

Context: Presence/absence tests for alkaloids of 31 medicinal vascular plant species from 31 genera and 26 families of eastern Nicaragua provided a baseline for bioactivity tests.Objective: To determine the bioactivity and cytoxicity of aqueous extracts of widely used medicinal species in eastern Nicaragua.Materials and methods: Ethnomedicinal applications were obtained from interviews of traditional healers. We used Dragendorff’s reagent to test alkaloids and brine shrimp for cytotoxicity of aqueous extracts.Results: Twenty-nine of the 31 species tested positive for alkaloids. The median lethal concentration that kills 50% of the larvae within 24 h of contact with the extract (LC50 was less than 1000 µg/mL for 4 (13%) species (the usual cytotoxic category), 1001–5000 µg/mL for 23 (74%) species, and between 5001–7500 µg/mL for the remaining 4 (13%) species.Discussion and Conclusion: Twenty-five of the ethnomedicines contain alkaloids but are not cytotoxic. In contrast to first suppositions, we suggest that this is a good and desirable, and perhaps expected, outcome. Medicinal plants that are cytotoxic may obviously control or kill bacteria or other pathogens, but may also negatively affect the patient; some high alkaloid levels have been associated with carcinogens. Thus, perhaps the majority of effective medicinals should be expected to be noncytotoxic. We suggest that this is a new paradigm for consideration of the overall value and effectiveness of medicinals. Of course, medicinals also can be effective in numerous ways (e.g., organ stimulation or other physiological functions) other than simply as antimicrobials or antipathogens.

Inter‐Indigenous development aid: markets, corporations, and biases

The Canadian government and the Meadow Lake Tribal Council sponsored a forest extraction corporation in eastern Nicaragua that restructured 16 Miskitu and Mayangna villages and transformed local human‐environment interactions. The Central American aid project demonstrated paternalistic and interventionist tendencies and exposed biases in inter‐Indigenous aid that rendered it inseparable from conventional aid. This case encourages reflection on social and ecological impacts from the marketing of collective resources, the creation of Indigenous development corporations, and the decision‐making criteria and processes driving foreign aid. The case study demonstrates how foreign aid programs targeting Indigenous Peoples may actually thwart the self‐determination that they set out to encourage. Aid agencies and business partners, who had limited knowledge of local cultures and institutions, created externally defined rules that instigated resource conflicts and undermined the authority of customary leaders without resolving poverty or uneven development.

Mother Scorpion: Women’s Politics and Affinal Relations among the Miskitu and other “Brideservice Societies”

This article is concerned with modelling the logic of social processes and cultural representations that inform “politics and gender in simple societies” (Collier and Rosaldo 1981), and considers the well‐known ideal type presented by Collier and Rosaldo in which particular gendered practices and ideas are organized around a style of marriage commonly termed “brideservice”. These authors’ modelling of the cultural logic of so‐called “brideservice societies” provides in many ways a satisfyingly coherent analysis of this institution that offers considerable predictive power, but it remains in some respects a partial account neglecting important aspects of older women’s political motivations and representations and the role of these women in the context of corporate groups. I consider here ethnographic materials from the Miskitu of eastern Nicaragua, amongst whom brideservice is widely practiced, to highlight some limitations with Collier and Rosaldo’s ideal type, arguing that their model should be modified to accommodate these limitations.