bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Unit I 10,9
Authors: Allison Penelope M.
Published: November 2020

The pavement of this area was of mortar and the walls had a coarse plaster socle with finer white plaster above. Elia noticed numerous holes and numeric graffiti in the white plaster and therefore identified it as a workshop. The excavators noted that the pavement was in a ruined state. There is a masonry base in the south-east corner (dimensions: 1.5 m × 0.6 m). The excavators recorded the base of a fornello, probably a hearth, along the south wall and a limestone step, in the south-east corner, which they identified as the first step of a wooden stairway. Elia reported that absolutely nothing was found in this area, but recorded finds consisted of: two small marble weights and one oval lead weight; two bronze pins, possibly from a small lock; a ceramic storage jar; a ceramic bowl and a ceramic plate, probably tableware; and three large ceramic lids, possibly used in cooking. These finds are associated with weighing, storage, and possibly food preparation and eating. It is conceivable that this unit was a food outlet. If this is the case then the fixture in the south-east corner may well have been a hearth. The state of the pavement suggests that it was not in a good state of repair at the time of the eruption.
All About Oil
Authors: Harvey David
Published: November 2020

My aim is to look at the current condition of global capitalism and the role that a ‘new’ imperialism might be playing within it. I do so from the perspective of the long durée and through the lens of what I call historical-geographical materialism. I seek to uncover some of the deeper transformations occurring beneath all the surface turbulence and volatility, and so open up a terrain of debate as to how we might best interpret and react to our present situation. The longest durée any of us can actually experience is, of course, a lifetime. My first understandings of the world were formed during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. Then, the idea of the British empire still had resonance and meaning. The world seemed open to me because so many spaces on the world map were coloured red, an empire upon which the sun never set. If I needed any additional proof of ownership, I could turn to my stamp collection—the head of the British monarch was on stamps from India, Sarawak, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Nigeria, Ceylon, Jamaica . . . But I soon had to recognize that British power was in decline. The empire was crumbling at an alarming rate. Britain had ceded global power to the United States and the map of the world started to change colour as decolonization gathered pace. The traumatic events of Indian independence and partition in 1947 signalled the beginning of the end. At first I was given to understand that the trauma was a typical example of what happens when ‘sensible’ and ‘fair’ British rule gets replaced by irrational native passions and reversions to ancient prejudices (a framework for understanding the world that was and is not confined to Britain and has exhibited remarkable durability). But as struggles around decolonization became fiercer, so the seamier and more nefarious side of imperial rule became more salient. This culminated, for me and for many others of my generation, in the Anglo-French attempt to take back the Suez Canal in 1956.
How America’s Power Grew
Authors: Harvey David
Published: November 2020

Imperialism is a word that trips easily off the tongue. But it has such different meanings that it is difficult to use it without clarification as an analytic rather than a polemical term. I here define that special brand of it called ‘capitalist imperialism’ as a contradictory fusion of ‘the politics of state and empire’ (imperialism as a distinctively political project on the part of actors whose power is based in command of a territory and a capacity to mobilize its human and natural resources towards political, economic, and military ends) and ‘the molecular processes of capital accumulation in space and time’ (imperialism as a diffuse political-economic process in space and time in which command over and use of capital takes primacy). With the former I want to stress the political, diplomatic, and military strategies invoked and used by a state (or some collection of states operating as a political power bloc) as it struggles to assert its interests and achieve its goals in the world at large. With the latter, I focus on the ways in which economic power flows across and through continuous space, towards or away from territorial entities (such as states or regional power blocs) through the daily practices of production, trade, commerce, capital flows, money transfers, labour migration, technology transfer, currency speculation, flows of information, cultural impulses, and the like. What Arrighi refers to as the ‘territorial’ and the ‘capitalist’ logics of power are rather different from each other. To begin with, the motivations and interests of agents differ. The capitalist holding money capital will wish to put it wherever profits can be had, and typically seeks to accumulate more capital. Politicians and statesmen typically seek outcomes that sustain or augment the power of their own state vis-à-vis other states. The capitalist seeks individual advantage and (though usually constrained by law) is responsible to no one other than his or her immediate social circle, while the statesman seeks a collective advantage and is constrained by the political and military situation of the state and is in some sense or other responsible to a citizenry or, more often, to an elite group, a class, a kinship structure, or some other social group.
Accumulation by Disposession
Authors: Harvey David
Published: November 2020

Rosa Luxemburg argues that capital accumulation has a dual character: One concerns the commodity market and the place where surplus value is produced—the factory, the mine, the agricultural estate. Regarded in this light accumulation is a purely economic process, with its most important phase a transaction between the capitalist and the wage labourer. . . . Here, in form at any rate, peace, property and equality prevail, and the keen dialectics of scientific analysis were required to reveal how the right of ownership changes in the course of accumulation into appropriation of other people’s property, how commodity exchange turns into exploitation, and equality becomes class rule. The other aspect of the accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism and the non-capitalist modes of production which start making their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant methods are colonial policy, an international loan system—a policy of spheres of interest—and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern laws of the economic process. These two aspects of accumulation, she argues, are ‘organically linked’ and ‘the historical career of capitalism can only be appreciated by taking them together’. Luxemburg rests her analysis upon a particular understanding of the crisis tendencies of capitalism. The problem, she argues, is underconsumption, a general lack of sufficient effective demand to soak up the growth in output that capitalism generates. This difficulty arises because workers are exploited and by definition receive much less value to spend than they produce, and capitalists are at least in part obliged to reinvest rather than to consume. After due consideration of various ways in which the supposed gap between supply and effective demand might be bridged, she concludes that trade with non-capitalist social formations provides the only systematic way to stabilize the system. If those social formations or territories are reluctant to trade then they must be compelled to do so by force of arms (as happened with the opium wars in China).
Social Movements as Problematic Agents of Global Environmental Change
Authors: Yearley Steven
Published: November 2020

By the end of the old millennium, social movement organizations (SMOs) had become the most popularly acclaimed and, in many respects, trusted agencies advocating global environmental change. They had won widespread public admiration because of their daring and heroic undertakings, because of the verve and symbolic acuity of their actions and because they seemed to be in the vanguard of environmental change. Of course, commentators noted that governments and inter-governmental agencies might have more power to set and influence environmental standards, that companies might be making the greatest impacts on the environment, that it was often scientists who identified possible environmental problems which were ‘off the radar’ of environmental groups, and that the daily consumer choices of the industrialized world’s massed citizens and commuters might outweigh their efforts. All the same, social movements represented the quintessential environmental actor. In cultural terms, environmental organizations stood for the environment in a way which the Environment Minister, the collected scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or Shell simply could not. Moreover, those movement organizations which focused on issue of global environmental change seemed particularly successful; in the late 1980s through to the early 1990s—around the time of the Earth Summit— they were rewarded with disproportionately rapid growth and cultural cachet (see McCormick 1991: 152–5 who cites Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in this regard). And their market prominence within the NGO sector has largely continued. At the same time, social movements commanded the attention of social scientists and commentators. For one thing, social movements and the associated movement organizations appeared to confound expectations. Far from politics as usual, social movements indicated how successfully and how enduringly people could be organized—or organize themselves —around non-conventional political objectives. Standard economic and political theories did not anticipate that people ‘ought’ to mobilize so successfully around a diffuse political objective such as global environmental improvement.
Cities, People, Planet
Authors: Girardet Herbert
Published: November 2020

As urban areas become our primary habitat—three-quarters of the human population are expected to become city dwellers by around 2050 (Worldwatch Institute 2000)—it is of key importance to establish whether a sustainable relationship can be established between cities and the planet. The urgency of this task is only too evident: the size of modern cities in terms of numbers of citizens and physical scale is unprecedented: in 1800 there was only one city of a million people: London. At that time the largest 100 cities in the world had 20 million inhabitants, with each city usually extending to just a few thousand hectares. In 1990 the world’s 100 largest cities accommodated 540 million people, of which 220 million people lived in the 20 largest cities, mega-cities of over 10 million people, some extending to hundreds of thousands of hectares. In addition, there were 35 cities of over 5 million and hundreds of over one million people (Satterthwaite 1996). Urban sprawl is a major concern for environmentalists. It is typical of cities of increasing affluence in which people often prefer the spaciousness of suburbs to denser city centres. Metropolitan New York’s population, for instance, has grown only 5 per cent in the last 25 years, yet its surface area has grown by 61 per cent, consuming much forest and farmland in the process. In the USA and Europe, sprawl today is above all else caused by the routine use of the motor car. Los Angeles is famous for the way it sprawls along its vastly complex freeway system. Ninety per cent of its population drive to work by car and many live in detached houses surrounded by large patches of land. A city of 11 million people, it covers an area three times larger than London which has a population of 7 million. London itself, where semi-detached houses are the norm in the suburbs, is several times larger than Hong Kong which has 6 million inhabitants and where most people live in high rise blocks. Not surprisingly, Hong Kong uses space far more efficiently than either LA or London.
The ‘Wild’, the Market, and the Native: Indigenous People Face New Forms of Global Colonization
Authors: Langton Marcia
Published: November 2020

Indigenous and traditional peoples world-wide are facing a crisis, one that supersedes that inflicted on indigenous peoples during the imperial age. Just as in the last 500 years, imperialism caused the encapsulation of indigenous societies within the new settler nation-states and their subjection to colonial political formations, loss of territory and jurisdiction, so have the globalizing market and the post-industrial/technological complex brought about another phase of profound change for these societies. The further encapsulation of indigenous societies by the global complex, to which nation-state formations are themselves subservient, has resulted in continuing loss of territory as a result of large-scale developments, urban postcolonial population expansion, and ongoing colonization of the natural world by the market. This last point is illustrated, for example, by the bioprospecting and patenting of life forms and biota by new genetic and chemical engineering industries (see Posey, this volume). Coincidental with the new colonization is the crisis of biodiversity loss; a critical issue for indigenous peoples, particularly hunting and gathering societies. The massive loss of biota through extinction events, loss of territory and species habitats, and environmental degradation, together with conservationist limitation of indigenous harvesting, constitute significant threats to indigenous ways of life. While aboriginal rights to wildlife are restricted to ‘non-commercial’ use, the pressures increase for indigenous peoples to forge unique economic niches to maintain their ways of life. Of particular importance is the vexed issue of aboriginal entitlements to commercial benefits from the utilization of wildlife arising both from developing standards of traditional resource rights and from customary proprietary interests. The new threats to indigenous life-ways in the era of the globalizing market have been brought about by the increasing commodification of features of the natural world, putting at risk the very survival of ancient societies that are directly dependent on the state of their natural environment. For instance, already in June 1978, Inupiat leader Eben Hopson, then founding Chairman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and spokesperson for the Alaska Whaling Commission, appealed to the London press corps for understanding and support in the legal recognition of Inuit rights: ‘We Inuit are hunters. There aren’t many subsistence hunting societies left in the world, but our Inuit circumpolar community is one of them.’
The Roman West and the Roman East
Authors: Burnett Andrew
Published: November 2020

Many Aspects of Different Cultures can help to throw light on their differing identities—language, architecture, religion, and many other things, such as the ‘range of landscapes, ways of thought, racial groups, roof-tops and cheeses’. In fact, almost anything. A particular category is provided by the institutions people observe, a category which might embrace an enormous range of different things, from burial practices to legal systems, or from different calendars to different systems of weights and measures. The link between coins, weights, and measures was clear to the Greeks and Romans, and that coins could be regarded as an expression of some at least of the values characteristic of a particular society is evident from an anecdote reported by Pliny as taking place in the reign of Claudius. He relates how a Roman was forced by a storm to Sri Lanka (ancient Taprobane), and how he told the local king about Rome: A freedman of Annius Plocamus, who had brought the tax collection for the Red Sea from the Treasury, was sailing round Arabia. He was carried along by winds from the north past Carmania and, on the fifteenth day, made harbour at Hippuros in the island; and in consequence of the kind hospitality of the king he learned the local language thoroughly over a period of six months, and afterwards in reply to his questions described the Romans and Caesar. In what he heard the king got a remarkably good idea of their honesty, because among the captured money there were denarii which were of equal weight, even though their various types indicated that they were issued by several persons. I want to apply this approach to the Roman world, and use coins in a way that may throw light on some of the ways that Romans regarded themselves, having a special look at the differences between the western and eastern parts of the empire. I want to suggest that we can use this sort of approach to help explain the fundamental change that took place in the currency of the Iberian peninsula, Gaul, Italy, Sicily, and Africa in the first century ad—how people there stopped using locally made coins and started to use coins imported from Rome, coins which might otherwise have been regarded in some sense as almost ‘foreign’.
Silent Springs: Groundwater Resources Under Threat
Authors: Edmunds W. M.
Published: November 2020

Springs are symbolic of the sustainability of life on earth. Since the earliest times flowing springs have been held as sacred and as a subject of awe and fascination. Subterranean water is identified in the creation myths on Babylonian tablets, where waters above the earth are separated from the ‘water of the deep’. The persistence of these creation myths is still reflected in the Arabic word ain or ayun, which has the double meaning of spring and eye (Issar 1991). Springs were the eyes of the gods. Springs (or fountains) were the focal point of many events in the Bible and other religious texts, and were the subject of veneration, as in Psalm 104: 10, ‘He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills Modern scientific understanding of the origins of spring flow dates from the seventeenth century. The earliest explanations of the hydrological cycle, often termed the reversed hydrological cycle, probably stem from biblical sources (Ecclesiastes 1: 7). The unexplained constancy of the ocean volume was accounted for by the return of seawater through the rocks, which then purified them and returned the water to the surface as freshwater rivers and springs. This interpretation of the hydrological cycle persisted through the writings of ancient Greece and Rome as in Seneca’s Quaestiones Naturales and into the Middle Ages (Tuan 1968) until correctly explained by Edmond Halley(Halley 1691). In modern society spring waters are valued highly because they still embody an element of mystery and bring us face to face with the subsurface expression of the hydrological cycle or ‘groundwater’. There is also traditional belief that spring waters represent a source of perennial pure water. The properties of pure spring water command a high market value and in a world where tap water is (often wrongly) perceived as something less pure, the bottled water image-makers seek after evidence of the purity, longevity, and healing properties of the spring, with a zeal that echoes the reverence accorded to spring waters by early philosophers. The objective of this chapter is to explore the reasons for the decline of natural springs and the fragility of groundwater resources in general.
Water for Europe: The Creation of the European Water Framework Directive
Authors: Kaika Maria
Published: November 2020

When the French politician Clemenceau visited Athens in 1899, he was taken on a tour of the city and briefed on the social, political, and economic problems facing both the city and the young Greek state. Afterwards, he addressed the local political and intellectual elites, starting his speech by exclaiming: ‘The best politician amongst you shall be the one who will bring water into Athens’ (Clemenceau 1899, cited in Gerontas and Skouzes 1963: in). Indeed, water supply was one of the most important and intricate political and social issues of the nineteenth century. Although water supply and management is today often presented as a purely technological and engineering problem, it remains, as we shall see, a deeply political issue, implicated in relations of social power (Reisner 1990; Postel 1992). Indeed, today, more than a century onwards from Clemenceau’s comment, his aphorism still holds true. Despite the fact that Western economies have undergone a period of ‘fierce modernization’ during the twentieth century, and despite technological advances and innovation, water supply and management remain major socio-technical issues at the heart of the political agenda (Bank 1992). Whilst contemporary Europe is not faced with severe water shortages (although many areas, particularly but not exclusively in the European South still face disruptions in water supply during dry months (ETC/IW 1996; ICWS 1996)), water supply and management remain amongst the most important political issues at the European and international level (Hundley 1992; Faure and Rubin 1993; Gleick 1993). Today, if anything, the political ecology of water has become more complex, and more important politically than in the nineteenth century. With the increasing internationalization and complexity of water resource management, with the emergence of an increasingly larger number of actors and institutions involved in this process, with the newly vested economic interests in water supply, and with the increasing concern and sensitivity towards environmental protection, if Clemenceau were alive today, he would probably maintain his aphorism— rephrasing it for the contemporary era: ‘The best politician amongst you shall be the one who will bring clean water into Europe, while keeping happy all the parties involved in water supply, use, and management, at the local, regional, national, and European level.’
Water and Conflicts, Hobbes v. Ibn Khaldun: The Real Clash of Civilizations?
Authors: Trottier Julie
Published: November 2020

This chapter will begin by considering the two opposing schools of thought concerning water wars. A first school of thought has maintained since the 19805 that competition over water will lead to wars as relative water scarcity increases around the planet. A second school of thought has emerged as a response, arguing that competition for water, far from leading states to wage war on each other, will rather incite them to cooperate. The arguments of each of these schools of thought and the common hypotheses that underlie both sets of theories will be explored. The evolution of war in an era of globalization and of a state’s involvement in competition for water will be examined, which will lead to revisiting the concepts of water wars and water cooperation. How the various theories of war that emerged from the three great Western ideologies, conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism, limited the definition of issues and the choice of factors that were deemed relevant when examining water conflicts will be studied. This chapter details how a Hobbesian prism was used to look on a Khaldunian reality, which has prevented us from understanding the coming water conflicts and has left us ill equipped to deal with them. ‘Water conflicts will cause the wars of the twenty-first century.’ This is more than a catchy statement: it is the object of numerous arguments and counter-arguments in the scientific community as much effort has been devoted to either proving or disproving the causal connection between water scarcity and water wars. Thomas Naff and Ruth Matson (1984: 181) seem to have launched the debate by arguing that ‘water runs both on and under the surface of politics in the Middle East’, and analysing the role played by water in riparian state relations. A series of publications followed that supported the concept of the causal link between water and war (Starr 1988,1991) (Bulloch and Darwish 1993; Biswas 1994; Soffer 1999). The development of this literature led Hussein Amery (2001: 51) to refer to ‘the well-established and thoroughly documented positive link between resource scarcity and violent conflict’.
Water and Development: A Southern African Perspective
Authors: Ashton Peter
Published: November 2020

Water is acknowledged as the most indispensable of all natural resources, and neither biological diversity nor social and economic development can be sustained in its absence (Hudson 1996; Ashton 2002). Every country faces a similar challenge, namely, providing sufficient water to meet the escalating needs of expanding populations while continuing to ensure that the available resources are used equitably and efficiently (Biswas 1993; Gleick 1998; Ashton and Haasbroek 2002). Increasing rates of industrialization, urbanization, and mechanization aggravate the pressures imposed by population growth, while increasing rates of utilization and pollution place further demands on dwindling resources (Falkenmark 1994,1999; Rosegrant 1997; Gleick 1998; Ashton 2002). This situation is especially serious in arid regions where water scarcity hinders social and economic development and is linked closely to the prevalence of poverty, hunger, and disease (Falkenmark 1989; Gleick 2000; Ashton 2002). In southern Africa, water resources are unevenly distributed in both geographical extent and time, and large areas of the region regularly experience prolonged and extreme droughts. Ironically, these droughts are often ‘relieved’ by equally extreme flood events (Christie and Hanlon 2001). Whilst the availability of water resources is naturally variable and often unpredictable, there is also compelling, though as yet unverified, evidence that projected trends in global climate change could worsen this situation (Ashton 2002). Falkenmark (1989) noted that several African countries had approached or would soon pass the point indicating severe water stress or water deficit, and that this could hinder further development in these countries. Recent estimates suggest that more African countries will exceed the limits of their economically usable, land-based water resources before the year 2025 (Ashton 2002). These disturbing statistics emphasize the urgent need to find sustainable solutions to the problem of ensuring secure and adequate water supplies for all countries in the region. The consequences of social and political dispensations imposed by previous colonial and apartheid administrations in southern Africa are reflected in the disparate levels of social, economic, and political development attained by these countries. These unequal levels of development have been accompanied by differing levels of need for water, further complicating the search for equitable and sustainable solutions to water supply problems (Ashton 2000, 2002).
Vegetation and Ecosystem Dynamics
Authors: Allen Harriet
Published: November 2020

Within the Mediterranean region a number of distinctive vegetation communities can be recognized, comprising some 25,000 species, of which about 50 per cent are endemic. Broadly defined, these originated with the establishment of a mediterranean-type climate about 3.2 million years ago, since when they have been subject to the vicissitudes of glacial–interglacial climate changes, plus the intensification of human impact during the last 10,000 years (Chapters 4 and 9). These communities are dynamic, responding to environmental changes at a variety of scales, both spatial and temporal. This chapter explores the characteristics of these communities and examines the relationships between ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity, and ecosystem response to disturbance. For example, each year fires burn out of control and are the subject of regular news stories during summer months. While fires may be economically devastating and lead to loss of life (Chapter 19), ecologically their incidence is an important dynamic component of Mediterranean ecosystems and may, indeed, be crucial to the successful propagation and spread of plants and communities regarded as typically Mediterranean. Associated animal populations generally recover quickly despite inevitable loss of life in some populations. Thus understanding the role of fire and other disturbance factors such as grazing is key to understanding Mediterranean vegetation communities and ecosystem dynamics. The chapter concludes with an evaluation of the likely response of vegetation communities to potential atmospheric and land use changes. While a number of distinct vegetation communities have been identified, a common characteristic is an ability to survive hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, together with frequent disturbances. Many of the communities are dominated by shrubs, and Mediterranean evergreen sclerophyllous shrublands are recognized as one of the defined ecosystems of the world (di Castri 1981). Such shrublands are at the centre of a continuum of communities which vary along gradients of moisture availability, temperature, and nutrient availability, usually determined by substrate, and human activity. At the extreme ends of these gradients, but still Mediterranean, are sclerophyllous woodlands, coniferous and deciduous forests, savannas and grasslands grading into steppe and semi-desert shrublands, and heathlands.
Hydrology, River Regimes, and Sediment Yield
Authors: Thornes John , Woodward Jamie
Published: November 2020

In comparison to the rest of Europe, Africa, and Asia, most rivers arising and flowing within the Mediterranean watershed typically drain small catchments with mountainous headwaters. The hydrology of Mediterranean catchments is strongly influenced by the seasonal distribution of precipitation, catchment geology, vegetation type and extent, and the geomorphology of the slope and channel systems. It is important to appreciate, as the preceding chapters have shown, that the area draining to the Mediterranean Sea is large and enormously variable in terms of the key controls on catchment hydrology outlined above, and it is therefore not possible to define, in hydrological terms, a strict single Mediterranean river type. However, river regimes across the basin do have a marked seasonality that is largely controlled by the climate system (Chapter 3) and, in most basins, the dominant flows occur in winter—but autumn and spring runoff is also important in many areas. These patterns reflect the general water balance of the basin as a whole, but there are key geographical patterns in catchment hydrology and sediment yield and a marked contrast is evident between the more humid north and the semi-arid south and east (Struglia et al. 2004; Chapter 21). Also, because of the long history of vegetation and hillslope modification by human activity and the more recent and widespread implementation of water resource management projects, there are almost no natural river regimes in the Mediterranean region, especially in the middle and lower reaches of river catchments (Cudennec et al. 2007). Runoff generation on hillslopes in the Mediterranean is very closely related to rainfall intensities and land surface properties as discussed in Chapter 6. While this is probably true of most catchments, runoff generation in the Mediterranean is very sensitive to vegetation cover because of the seasonal dynamics of rainfall and the role played by extreme events. The cumulative effect of these characteristics is a specific set of management problems and restoration issues and, although these are rather different in the various socio-political regimes of the region, it can be argued that they are in many ways unique to Mediterranean catchments.
Industrial Transformation in the Developing World
Authors: Rock Michael T. , Angel David P.
Published: November 2020

Grow first, clean up later' environmental strategies in the developing economies of East Asia pose a critical regional and global sustainability challenge in this area of continuing rapid urban-based industrial growth which is the most polluted region in the world. Using detailed case studies and rigorous empirical analyses Rock and Angel show that East Asian governments have found institutionally unique ways to overcome the sustainability challenge, thus proving an important antidote to those who argue that poor countries cannot afford to clean up their environment whilst their economies remain under-developed. The authors, leading experts in the field, demonstrate that low income economies outside East Asia can also use the same policy integration effectively.
Worlds of Food
Authors: Morgan Kevin , Marsden Terry , Murdoch Jonathan
Published: November 2020

From farm to fork, the conventional food chain is under enormous pressure to respond to a whole series of new challenges - food scares in rich countries, food security concerns in poor countries, and a burgeoning problem of obesity in all countries. As more and more people demand to know where their food comes from, and how it is produced, issues of place, power, and provenance assume increasing significance for producers, consumers, and regulators, challenging the corporate forces that shape the 'placeless foodscape'. Far from being confined to niche products, questions about the origins of food are also surfacing in the conventional sector, where labelling has become a major political issue. Drawing on theories of multi-level governance, three leading scholars in the field explore the geo-politics of the food chain in different spatial arenas: the World Trade Organization, where free trade principles clash with fair trade concerns in the debate about agricultural reform; the European Union, where producers are under pressure from environmentalists for a more traceable and sustainable food system; and the US, where there is a striking contradiction between the rhetoric of free markets and the reality of a heavily subsidised farming sector. To understand the local impact of these global trends, the authors explore three different regional worlds of food: the traditional world of localised quality in Tuscany, the peripheral world of commodity production in Wales, and the frontier world of agri-business in California.
Localized Quality in Tuscany
Authors: Morgan Kevin , Marsden Terry , Murdoch Jonathan
Published: November 2020

With its rolling hills, small farms, diverse products, and high-quality foodstuffs, Tuscany easily conjures up a world of diversification and localization. In fact, so many of the region’s products are seen as world class—notably its wines, olive oils, cheeses, and processed meats—that it is tempting to see this region as the prime example of an Interpersonal World (in Salais and Storper’s terms). Yet, Tuscany’s perceived success in this world of food is a recent phenomenon. Until the 1990s the region was thought to be rather ‘backward’ in character, mainly due to its inability to adopt conventional industrial approaches to food production and processing. While some effort was made to shift Tuscany on to a more industrialized development path during the 1960s and 1970s, by the early 1990s this was widely regarded as having failed. Out of this failure, however, came the search for a new development model, one that could work with, rather than against, the region’s core assets—notably, its localized variety in foodstuffs and environmental features. Thus, a distinctively Tuscan approach to the agri-food sector is explicitly identified in the recent Rural Development Plan (RDP) drawn up by the Tuscan regional government. The document states that the strategy elaborated in the plan is aiming at ‘strengthening the ‘‘Tuscan model’’ of agricultural and rural development’. The plan goes on to identify key characteristics of the model, including the presence of small and mediumsized farms, the existence of quality products, the diversification of agricultural production, the provision of adequate marketing networks, and the enhancement of the environment and the agricultural landscape (Regione Toscana, 2000). It is tempting to imagine that the consolidation of a diversified and localized world of food production in Tuscany owes much to the implementation of this model by governmental authorities in concert with other actors in the food sector. However, it will be argued below that the emergence of a new world of food in Tuscany owes as much to happenstance as it does to the conscious agency of differing institutions and organizations.
Granite Weathering
Authors: Migon Piotr
Published: November 2020

Weathering is a necessary precursor for landform development. However, in the context of granite it acquires a particular importance for various reasons. First, many granite terrains show an extensive development of deep weathering profiles, which can be extremely varied in terms of their depth, vertical zonation, degree of rock decomposition, and mineralogical and chemical change. Moreover, the transitional zone between the weathering mantle and the solid rock, for which the term ‘weathering front’ is used (Mabbutt, 1961b), may be very thin. There is now sufficient evidence that many geomorphic features of granite landscapes, including boulders, domes, and plains, have been sculpted at the solid rock/weathering mantle interface and they are essentially elements of an exposed weathering front. Therefore, the origin of granite landscapes cannot be satisfactorily explained and understood without a proper understanding of the phenomenon of deep weathering. Second, granites break down via a range of weathering mechanisms, both physical and chemical, which interact to produce an extreme diversity of small-scale surface features and minor landforms. In this respect, it is only limestones and some sandstones which show a similar wealth of weathering-related surface phenomena. Third, both superficial and deep weathering of granite act very selectively, exploiting a variety of structural and textural features, including fractures, microfractures, veins, enclaves, and textural inhomogeneities. In effect, the patterns of rock breakdown may differ very much between adjacent localities, and so the resultant landforms differ. In the context of deep weathering, selectivity is evident in significant changes of profile thickness and its properties over short distances, and in the presence of unweathered compartments (corestones) within an altered rock mass. Fourth, it is emphasized that granites are particularly sensitive to the amount of moisture in the environment (Bremer, 1971; Twidale, 1982). They alter very fast in moist environments, whereas moisture deficit enhances rock resistance and makes it very durable. Hence, a bare rock slope shedding rainwater and drying up quickly after rain will be very much immune to weathering, whereas at its foot a surplus of moisture will accelerate decomposition.
The Last Glaciation and Geomorphology
Authors: Böse Margot
Published: November 2020

The Weichselian ice sheets were smaller than those of the preceding Middle Pleistocene and covered only the north-eastern part of the German lowland, as well as the eastern and northern parts of the Jutland peninsula. The Late Weichselian (Late Devensian) ice sheet also covered the northern part of the North Sea Basin (Ehlers and Wingfield 1991). The young morainic landscape still has distinct morphological features distinguishing it from the old morainic areas with relief shaped by the long-lasting periglacial processes during the Weichselian. The area of the last glaciation is easily recognizable on topographical maps owing to the irregular relief and the numerous lakes that are still preserved today. This scenic landscape also features end moraines and kames, till plains, and huge meltwater valleys (pradolinas or Urstromtäler), as well as a complex drainage system. The general climatic development of the last interglacial- glacial-Holocene cycle can be interpreted from curves showing the ratio of the oxygen isotopes 18O and 16O in deep-sea sediments, which is indirectly indicative of the growth of ice masses worldwide. The different OIS (Oxygen Isotope Stages) are numbered, with uneven numbers representing the relatively warmer phases. OIS 5e corresponds to the Eemian Interglacial. The stages 5d–5a represent the Early Weichselian, which is colder than the preceding interglacial but is subdivided into stadials and interstadials. The Brørup interstadial s.l., including both the Amersfoort (5c) and the Odderade interstadial (5a), is characterized by boreal forests in this part of Europe. OIS 4 marks the onset of the Middle Weichselian or Pleniglacial, and is the first stage involving much lower temperatures and the growth of considerable ice masses. This is probably the time when a real inland ice sheet started to grow in Fennoscandia. OIS 3, the middle part of the Pleniglacial, is represented by several climatic changes. The interstadials—or intervals, as they are also called—such as Oerel, Glinde, Moershoofd, Hengelo, and Denekamp—are well documented by terrestrial palynological records of a herb and shrub bush vegetation (van der Hammen et al. 1967; Behre 1989; Caspers and Freund 2001).
Marine and Coastal Environments
Authors: Kroon Aart
Published: November 2020

The present coastline of western Europe is shaped by physical processes such as wind, waves, and tidal currents, which cause the marine and coastal sediment transport. Spatial gradients in sediment transport rates induce the morphological adaptation, reflected by either an accumulation or erosion of material. All mutual interactions between these physical processes, and the resultant gradients in sediment transport together with the morphological adaptations, constitute the coastal morphodynamics. The specific initial stage of the morphology and the availability of sediment influence the direction of the morphological adaptation, whereas the rate of the morphological adaptation mostly depends on the energy input into the system. Chemical processes are of less importance in coastal environments of the high to mid-latitudes. Here most geochemical reactions are far too slow to influence the coastal morphology. However, biological processes sometimes play an important role. For example, flocculation of fine sediments by algae in estuaries (Ten Brinke 1993) or filtering by salt-marsh vegetation (Houwing 2000a, b) both positively influence the sediment accumulation rates. The long-term boundary conditions upon which the physical processes act are often determined by geology. The nature of the drainage basin that delivers fresh water and sediments into coastal waters and the nature of the shoreline can be considered as static boundary conditions for short-term morphodynamics. Tectonic forces and global sea-level rise are typical long-term geophysical forces. They will slowly change these boundary conditions, but they hardly influence the short-term adaptations of the morphology. The western European shelf fringes a series of integrated coastal environments that vary from coastal dunes and sandy beaches to estuaries and tidal basins and to sea cliffs and shore platforms. In this chapter a general description of the location and dimensions of the shores of western Europe is presented, followed by a brief summary of its geological history. The geology is focused on present-day deposits, the local lithology with sinks and sources of sediments, and with reference to some geophysical processes such as the relative sea-level rise. Thereafter, the actual coastal processes are discussed.
General Conclusion
Authors: Thomas Edmund
Published: November 2020

Lucian’s architectural descriptions reveal the moral and cultural pressures that were exerted on new building in the age of the Antonines. Legendary archetypes such as the Persian king’s golden plane tree and the palaces of Homeric epic offered a yardstick by which the monumentality of future buildings could be measured. But they also warned builders of the limits to be avoided. On the one hand, to make its mark in history, monumental architecture needed to exhibit a grandeur, exuberance, and brilliance that would inspire spectators with awe; on the other hand, there was perceived to be something ‘uncivilized’ about buildings which set out only to impress and which reduced viewers to irrational beings. Antonine architecture wanted to be seen as more ‘cultivated’ than that, and to appeal to viewers’ humanity and culture. There was a real dilemma here, one which has preoccupied many subsequent periods of architectural history: if the architecture of the past set the standard of monumentality, how truly ‘monumental’ could the buildings of the modern age be? Older works seemed ‘larger’ than new ones because they inspired more noteworthy memories. To Marcus Piso in the late Republic, the new Sullan senate-house seemed, despite its greater height, ‘smaller’ than its ancient predecessor, the Curia Hostilia, which, when he looked at it, brought him visions of famous senators of the past. Modern buildings, which, by definition, lacked associations, could, it seemed, only make an impression by being more imposing and on a scale too large to invite direct comparison; but, in that, they ran the risk of appearing inhuman. For example, the very first work of Antoninus Pius’ reign, the Tomb of Hadrian, produced a clear impression of monumental scale. The bronze chariot on the summit was said to be ‘so large . . . that a very fat man would be able to pass through the eye of each horse, but, to men on the ground, the horses and statue of Hadrian still look very small, because of the extreme height of the construction’.
Reactive agents
Authors: Walton Christopher
Published: November 2020

In the previous chapter we described three languages for representing knowledge on the Semantic Web: RDF, RDFS, and OWL. These languages enable us to create Web-based knowledge in a standard manner with a common semantics. We now turn our attention to the techniques that can utilize this knowledge in an automated manner. These techniques are fundamental to the construction of the Semantic Web, as without automation we do not gain any real benefit over the current Web. There are currently two views of the Semantic Web that have implications for the kind of automation that we can hope to achieve: 1. An expert system with a distributed knowledge base. 2. A society of agents that solve complex knowledge-based tasks. In the first view, the Semantic Web is essentially treated a single-user application that reasons about some Web-based knowledge. For example, a service that queries the knowledge to answer specific questions. This is a perfectly acceptable view, and its realization is significantly challenging. However, in this book we primarily subscribe to the second view. In this more-generalized view, the knowledge is not treated as a single body, and it is not necessary to obtain a global view of the knowledge. Instead, the knowledge is exchanged and manipulated in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner between different entities. These entities act on behalf of human users, and require only enough knowledge to perform the task to which they are assigned. The use of entities to solve complex problems on the Web is captured by the notion of an agent. In human terms, an agent is an intermediary who makes a complex organization externally accessible. For example, a travel agent simplifies the problem of booking a holiday. This concept of simplifying the interface to a complex framework is a key goal of the Semantic Web. We would like to make it straightforward for a human to interact with a wide variety of disparate sources of knowledge without becoming mired in the details. To accomplish this, we want to define software agents that act with similar characteristics to human agents.