bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
EXISTENCE OF POSITIVE SOLUTIONS FOR SUPERLINEAR SEMIPOSITONE $m$-POINT BOUNDARY-VALUE PROBLEMS
Authors: Ma Ruyun
Published: July 2003

In this paper we consider the existence of positive solutions to the boundary-value problems

\begin{align*} (p(t)u')'-q(t)u+\lambda f(t,u)\amp=0,\quad r\ltt\ltR, \\[2pt] au(r)-bp(r)u'(r)\amp=\sum^{m-2}_{i=1}\alpha_iu(\xi_i), \\ cu(R)+dp(R)u'(R)\amp=\sum^{m-2}_{i=1}\beta_iu(\xi_i), \end{align*}

where $\lambda$ is a positive parameter, $a,b,c,d\in[0,\infty)$, $\xi_i\in(r,R)$, $\alpha_i,\beta_i\in[0,\infty)$ (for $i\in\{1,\dots m-2\}$) are given constants satisfying some suitable conditions. Our results extend some of the existing literature on superlinear semipositone problems. The proofs are based on the fixed-point theorem in cones.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 34B10, 34B18, 34B15
INTEGRAL FORMULAE FOR SPACELIKE HYPERSURFACES IN CONFORMALLY STATIONARY SPACETIMES AND APPLICATIONS
Authors: Alías Luis J. , Brasil Aldir , Gervasio Colares A.
Published: July 2003

In this paper we develop general Minkowski-type formulae for compact spacelike hypersurfaces immersed into conformally stationary spacetimes, that is, Lorentzian manifolds admitting a timelike conformal field. We apply them to the study of the umbilicity of compact spacelike hypersurfaces in terms of their $r$-mean curvatures. We derive several uniqueness results, for instance, compact spacelike hypersurfaces are umbilical if either some of their $r$-mean curvatures are linearly related or one of them is constant.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 53C42. Secondary 53B30; 53C50; 53Z05; 83C99
NUMERICAL INDEX AND THE DAUGAVET PROPERTY FOR $L_\infty(\mu,X)$
Authors: Martín Miguel , Villena Armando R.
Published: July 2003

We prove that the space $L_\infty(\mu,X)$ has the same numerical index as the Banach space $X$ for every $\sigma$-finite measure $\mu$. We also show that $L_\infty(\mu,X)$ has the Daugavet property if and only if $X$ has or $\mu$ is atomless.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 46B20; 47A12
A SHOCK LAYER IN PARABOLIC PERTURBATIONS OF A SCALAR CONSERVATION LAW
Authors: Shelukhin Vladimir
Published: July 2003

A definition of a shock layer of thickness $\delta$ is proposed when a parabolic perturbation is applied to a scalar conservation law. The asymptotic equality $\delta\asymp\sqrt{\varepsilon}$ is established, where $\varepsilon$ denotes viscosity. This equality is proved to be optimal. Nevertheless, the equality $\delta\asymp\varepsilon$ is also proved to be valid for a class of shocks in accordance with the Mises conjecture.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 35L67. Secondary 35K65
STEIN EMBEDDING THEOREM FOR $\mathbb{B}$-MANIFOLDS
Authors: Gadea P. M. , Grifone J. , Muñoz Masqué J.
Published: July 2003

An analogue of the Stein embedding theorem for $C^\infty$ manifolds endowed with two equidimensional supplementary foliations is proved.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 30G35. Secondary 16P10; 26E05; 32E10; 53C12; 57R30.
POINCARÉ SERIES FOR SEVERAL PLANE DIVISORIAL VALUATIONS
Authors: Delgado F. , Gusein-Zade S. M.
Published: July 2003

We compute the (generalized) Poincaré series of the multi-index filtration defined by a finite collection of divisorial valuations on the ring $\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{C}^2,0}$ of germs of functions of two variables. We use the method initially elaborated by the authors and Campillo for computing the similar Poincaré series for the valuations defined by the irreducible components of a plane curve singularity. The method is essentially based on the notions of the so-called extended semigroup and of the integral with respect to the Euler characteristic over the projectivization of the space of germs of functions of two variables. The last notion is similar to (and inspired by) the notion of the motivic integration.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 14B05; 16W70
A UNIQUENESS THEOREM FOR AN INVERSE ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING PROBLEM IN INHOMOGENEOUS ANISOTROPIC MEDIA
Authors: Cakoni Fioralba , Colton David
Published: July 2003

We show that the support of a (possibly) coated anisotropic medium is uniquely determined by the electric far-field patterns corresponding to incident time-harmonic electromagnetic plane waves with arbitrary polarization and direction. Our proof avoids the use of a fundamental solution to Maxwell’s equations in an anisotropic medium and instead relies on the well-posedness and regularity properties of solutions to an interior transmission problem for Maxwell’s equations.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 35R30; 35Q60. Secondary 35P25; 78A45
PROJECTIVE DESCRIPTION OF WEIGHTED (LF)-SPACES OF HOLOMORPHIC FUNCTIONS ON THE DISC
Authors: Bierstedt Klaus D. , Bonet José
Published: July 2003

The topology of certain weighted inductive limits of Fréchet spaces of holomorphic functions on the unit disc can be described by means of weighted sup-seminorms in case the weights are radial and satisfy certain natural assumptions due to Lusky; in the sense of Shields and Williams the weights have to be normal. It turns out that no assumption on the (double) sequence of normal weights is necessary for the topological projective description in the case of o-growth conditions. For O-growth conditions, we give a necessary and sufficient condition (in terms of associated weights) for projective description in the case of (LB)-spaces and normal weights. This last result is related to a theorem of Mattila, Saksman and Taskinen.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 46E10. Secondary 30H05; 46A13; 46M40
GLADSTONE AND CHRISTIAN ART, 1832–1854
Authors: CONLIN JONATHAN
Published: July 2003

Although his activity as a private collector has been documented, the extent to which William Ewart Gladstone's interest in art was implicated in his thought on church and state has been overlooked. Previously unnoticed memoranda and correspondence of the 1830s and 1840s with the French art historian and Roman Catholic thinker, François Rio, demonstrate a fascination with religious painting of early Renaissance Italy, of the sort which only came to be appreciated in Britain many years later. For Rio, however, introducing Gladstone to ‘Christian art’ was as much about encouraging Gladstone in his hopes of reuniting the Protestant and Catholic churches as it was about reforming his taste. The manuscripts considered here show Gladstone to have viewed art history in terms of a struggle between sanctity and sensuality, visualized in terms both of the individual as well as of nationalities. In so far as the young Conservative politician formulated this history in tandem with his theory of the religious personality of the state, a study of his model of Christian art's development affords a new path into an old debate: did Gladstone betray the principles of his first book, The state in its relations with the church (1838) in his subsequent political evolution into Liberal statesman?
RESISTING LABOUR: UNIONISTS, LIBERALS, AND MODERATES IN GLASGOW BETWEEN THE WARS
Authors: SMYTH JAMES J.
Published: July 2003

This article examines the co-operation between unionists and liberals in inter-war Glasgow. As with the parliamentary challenge of labour, unionists and liberals were confronted at the local level also. The usual response was some sort of municipal alliance or pact. In Scotland, where unionist support for continuing links with liberals was particularly pronounced, this took the form of specific ‘moderate’ parties created to contest local elections. This strategy was markedly successful in keeping labour out of office. The moderates secured their majority in Glasgow by completely dominating the middle-class wards and winning a number of working-class seats. Moderate success is examined through the essential unity of the middle-class vote, the more limited local franchise, and religious sectarianism. However, it became increasingly difficult for the moderates to satisfy both their middle-class and working-class supporters. The sudden emergence of a militant protestant party in the depths of the depression provided a temporary vehicle of protest, which split the moderate vote and allowed labour in to power in 1933.
THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND INDIAN INDEPENDENCE, 1945–1947
Authors: OWEN NICHOLAS
Published: July 2003

The article examines the reasons for the failure of the Conservative party to offer effective opposition to the independence of India in 1947. It is argued that until the last moment the Conservative stance on Indian independence was much more hostile than is usually recognized. That this opposition did not evolve into a full-scale revolt is explained less by the conversion of Conservatives to acceptance of the Attlee government's Indian policy than by the party leaders' beliefs that it would be hard to sustain a coherent campaign against it. The inability of unreconciled Conservatives to challenge this tactical decision as they had done in the early 1930s resulted from the erosion and disappearance of many of the organizational advantages they had then enjoyed and of the rapid pace of events in India.
VERSAILLES REVISITED: NEW WORK ON THE OLD REGIME
Authors: PRICE MUNRO
Published: July 2003

Over the last thirty years, the absolute monarchy in France has been a subject of much controversy among historians. The traditional view, which can be traced back to Tocqueville, sees it primarily as an ‘administrative monarchy’, an essential step in the formation of a centralized French state. More recently, this approach has come under sustained attack from (mostly Anglo-American) scholars, who have emphasized in contrast the limits of absolutism, and in particular the persistent power of local and central elites in relation to the crown. In the light of these disputes, this article argues that the French absolute monarchy was above all a political compromise, in which neither crown nor elites had the definitive upper hand, but which could only function effectively through the co-operation of both sides. An aspect that has not sufficiently been stressed, however, is the fragility of the arrangement: it was ambiguous in practice if not in theory, and ultimately unable to deliver the resources necessary to sustain France's great-power status in the eighteenth century.
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON BRITAIN'S CIVIL WARS Regicide and republicanism: politics and ethics in the English Revolution, 1646–1659. By Sarah Barber. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Pp. x+246. ISBN 1-85331-211-8. £40.00. The English Civil War: the essential readings. Edited by Peter Gaunt. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Pp. viii+360. ISBN 0-631-20809-7. £15.99. Soldiers, writers and statesmen of the English Revolution. Edited by Ian Gentles, John Morrill, and Blair Worden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xi+343. ISBN 0-521-59120-1. £40.00. Constructing Cromwell: ceremony, portrait, and print, 1645–1661. By Laura Lunger Knoppers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+249. ISBN 0-521-66261-3. £35.00. The journal of Thomas Juxon, 1644–1647. Edited by Keith Lindley and David Scott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. x+214. ISBN 0-521-65259-6. £45.00. The political world of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, 1621–1641. Edited by J. F. Merritt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv+293. ISBN 0-521-56041-1. £37.50. Refiguring revolutions: aesthetics and politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution. Edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker. Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press, 1998. Pp. x+376. ISBN 0-520-20920-6. £13.95. Celtic dimensions of the British Civil Wars. Edited by John R. Young. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1997. Pp. viii+232. ISBN 0-85976-452-4. £20.00.
Authors: SMITH DAVID L.
Published: July 2003

The crisis that gripped the three kingdoms of England, Ireland, and Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century continues to fascinate historians. The sheer variety of names attached to these events reveals the diversity of interpretations and preoccupations that scholars have brought to them. ‘The English Civil War’, ‘the English Revolution’, and ‘the British Civil Wars’ are just three of the different labels found in the titles of the eight books under review. Between them, these books offer a valuable cross-section of current work on the period. They present a range of perspectives, principally on the 1640s and 1650s, and give a flavour of the experiences of very different individuals living through these extraordinary events. They also indicate the variety of approaches that historians are now adopting to the period, ranging from finely focused work on particular figures to the reconstruction of British (or un-English) dimensions, and the use of interdisciplinary methods. Rarely in this field can such a wide range of tools have been simultaneously applied to so many different areas or individuals or types of source material. Such varied approaches are essential for recovering the experiences and mindsets of those who lived through these events, and between them these books offer a vivid sense of the richness, diversity, and drama of the period.
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN MODERN BRITAIN Popular politics and British anti-slavery: the mobilisation of public opinion against the slave trade 1787–1807. By J. R. Oldfield. London: Frank Cass, 1998. Pp. ix+216. ISBN 0–7146–4462–5. £17.50. Friends of religious equality: nonconformist politics in mid-Victorian England. By Timothy Larsen. The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 1999. Pp. ix+300. ISBN 0–8511–5726–2. £40. Female lives, moral states: women, religion and public life in Britain, 1800–1930. By Anne Summers. Newbury: Threshold, 2000. Pp. ix+182. ISBN 1–903152–03–8. £17.50. Congregational missions and the making of an imperial culture in nineteenth-century England. By Susan Thorne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp. ix+247. ISBN 0–8047–3053–9. £45.50. Divine feminine: theosophy and feminism in England. By Joy Dixon. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. xix+293. ISBN 0–8018–6499–2. $54.95.
Authors: HALL CATHERINE
Published: July 2003

The appearance of J. R. Oldfield's study, Popular politics and British anti-slavery, first published by Manchester University Press in 1995, now in paperback and therefore available for a student market, is much to be welcomed. The book is already well established in its field. As James Walvin writes in his preface, ‘Oldfield's research serves to clinch a simple but critical issue, namely that in the attack on the slave trade, popular revulsion was crucial’ (p. vi). Building on the work of earlier scholars, notably Seymour Drescher, Hugh Honour and Clare Midgley, Oldfield has demonstrated the ways in which the abolition movement turned to mobilizing public opinion after 1787 against the slave trade. At the centre of his investigation are the petition campaigns of 1788 and 1792. In analysing anti-slavery sentiment he successfully brings together approaches which focus on the eighteenth century as a period of expansion in commercial society and popular forms of politics with the agenda of historians of the slave trade and slavery. The abolition movement, he argues, provided the prototype for modern reforming organizations. It was peopled by practical middle-class men who understood the importance of the expansion of the market and consumer choice. It succeeded in capturing the imagination of those, predominantly middle-class men and women, who were increasingly interested in engaging in forms of public debate and who had the resources, both in terms of time and money, to do so. His book, he argues, is a piece of ‘thick description’ which offers ‘fresh insights into the increasingly powerful role of the middle classes in influencing Parliamentary politics from outside the confines of Westminster’ (p. 5).
THE LAST YEARS OF THE HABSBURG MONARCHY Hitler's Vienna: a dictator's apprenticeship. By Brigitte Hamann. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 512. ISBN 0-19-512537-1. £25.00. The undermining of Austria-Hungary: the battle for hearts and minds. By Mark Cornwall. Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000. Pp. 504. ISBN 0-333-80452-X. £57.50. The Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1765–1918: from enlightenment to eclipse. By Robin Okey. New York: St Martin's Press, 2001. Pp. 456. ISBN 0-312-23375-2. £55.50. The Jews of Vienna and the First World War. By David Rechter. London and Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001. Pp. 232. ISBN 1-874774-65-X. £29.50. Reconstructing a national identity: the Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I. By Marsha L. Rozenblit. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 266. ISBN 0-19-513465-6. £47.50.
Authors: UNOWSKY DANIEL
Published: July 2003

At least since Carl Schorske published Fin-de-siècle Vienna in 1981, the cultural explosion of Vienna 1900 has attracted the attention of scholars in many fields. Yet, the glittering imperial capital also incubated the Social Darwinian racist vision of Adolf Hitler, and Vienna's modern music, literature, and visual arts could not prevent the melting away of the Habsburg state at the close of the First World War. The five books under review explore the last years of the Habsburg Monarchy. The authors look beyond familiar topics, question basic scholarly assumptions, and provide fresh perspectives on the monarchy's final decade.
THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE TRANSFER AND RISE OF BOMBAY, C. 1661–1687
Authors: AMES GLENN J.
Published: July 2003

Based on hitherto unexplored sources in Lisbon and Goa, this article re-examines the imbroglio relating to the transfer of Bombay from the Portuguese crown to Charles II of England from 1661 to 1665. In doing so, it provides new information on the motivation of the Portuguese viceroy Antonio de Mello de Castro, particularly religious factors, which initially compelled him to refuse to hand over this imperial possession to the English. The article then examines the pivotal importance of the religious policies adopted by the English crown and East India Company, in the years after 1665, in Bombay's rise to commercial prominence by 1687.
THE EXPERIENCE OF SURVIVAL DURING THE 1641 IRISH REBELLION
Authors: COPE JOSEPH
Published: July 2003

In recent scholarship, the problem of violence has dominated work on the 1641 Irish rebellion. Unfortunately, no scholarship has addressed the means by which victims of the war survived this conflict. This article uses microhistorical evidence from the 1641 depositions for county Cavan to reconstruct the range of possible survival strategies. Philip MacMulmore O'Reilly, a member of the Irish gentry and kinsman to the Cavan rebels, balanced support for the rebellion with attempts to assist endangered Anglo-Protestant settlers. Although deponents questioned O'Reilly's motives, they agreed that he was instrumental in protecting settlers. George Creichton, a Scottish minister and planter, provides a distinctly different example. Despite his religious views and politics, Creichton forged strong ties to neighbouring Irish before the rising. Although in danger, Creichton mobilized a network of friends, kin, and sympathetic neighbours to protect himself and to assist less fortunate Anglo-Protestant neighbours. These two examples reveal the wider existence of early seventeenth-century social relationships that crossed ethnic and religious lines. In the midst of the chaos of 1641, a significant number of settlers benefited from fragmentation in the rebel ranks and often built their survival strategies upon the social relationships that they had forged in more stable times.
PREDESTINATION AND POLITICAL CONFLICT IN LAUD'S LONDON
Authors: COMO DAVID R.
Published: July 2003

This article examines the policy pursued by William Laud during his tenure as bishop of London, focusing specifically on the way in which he enforced the various royal edicts against discussion of predestination. It is argued that Laud enforced Charles I's decrees in an unbalanced manner, attacking Calvinists while apparently leaving their anti-Calvinist opponents untouched. It is likewise argued, however, that this strategy was accomplished not through a policy of overt judicial persecution, but through a more subtle regime of quiet threat and harassment. Such a policy was necessary because, at least in London, the question of predestination had by 1629 become a serious and explosive issue, one that was inextricably linked in the minds of many observers to more explicitly ‘secular’ matters of government and policy. In the process of examining Laud's strategy, the article seeks to untangle the question of why both the Caroline authorities and their enemies saw the seemingly scholastic question of predestination as a matter of such crucial political significance. Ultimately, the article helps to revise our understanding of the political atmosphere that prevailed in England at the outset of the personal rule, while likewise contributing to a deeper understanding of the political breakdown that led to civil war and revolution in the 1640s.
PETER MOHYLA'S TRANSLATION OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST
Authors: CHARIPOVA LIUDMILA
Published: July 2003

The article is dedicated to one of the least known early works of Peter Mohyla, Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev (1633–46). Known as a great church and educational reformer and ‘Westernizer’, he made a major contribution to the cultural development in Ruthenia, then a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Muscovy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The work has survived in a single manuscript copy which could have been made from a printed edition that was suppressed or destroyed soon after its publication. The author has established, for the first time, that the work in question is not an original piece, but a rendition of the fifteenth-century Catholic devotional treatise The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis into contemporary literary Ukrainian. First-hand evidence is presented to support this claim. Mohyla brought many significant changes to the original text using it as a vehicle to convey his own views formed under the influence of the Catholic Reformation, Jesuit education, and Latin books. Conclusions are drawn about the way he applied Western sources to rid the Orthodox Church from obscurity and self-imposed isolation from the European Christian civilization.
WAR, WITCHES AND TRAITORS: CASES FROM THE MPLA'S EASTERN FRONT IN ANGOLA (1966–1975)
Authors: BRINKMAN INGE
Published: July 2003

Accusations, trials and executions of witches and sell-outs frequently occurred at the MPLA's Eastern Front in Angola (1966–75). These events do not fit the general self-portrayal of the MPLA as a socialist, secular movement that was supported by the Angolan population without recourse to force. The people interviewed, mostly rural civilians from south-east Angola who lived under MPLA control, suggested many links between treason and witchcraft, yet at the same time differentiated between these accusations. Witchcraft cases were often initiated by civilian families and the accused were mostly people who had a long-standing reputation of being a witch. While the MPLA leadership was often suspicious of the accusations of witchcraft, many civilians regarded the trials of witches as more legitimate than those of treason. Civilians held that the accusation of treason was often used by the guerrillas to get rid of political or personal rivals and/or to control the population. The accusations showed few patterns and cannot be interpreted as deliberate attempts to overcome structural forms of domination, of chiefs over followers, men over women or old over young.
CHIEFTAINCY POLITICS AND COMMUNAL IDENTITY IN WESTERN NIGERIA, 1893–1951
Authors: VAUGHAN OLUFEMI
Published: July 2003

This article examines the dimensions of indigenous political structures that sustained local governance in colonial Yorubaland. Legitimated by reconstructed traditional political authorities and modern concepts of development, Yoruba indigenous political structures were distorted by the system of indirect rule. Conversely, obas (Yoruba monarchs), baales (head chiefs), chiefs, Western-educated Christian elites and Muslim merchants embraced contending interpretations of traditional authorities to reinforce and expand their power in a rapidly shifting colonial context. With a strong emphasis on development and governance, collective political action also entailed the struggle over the distributive resources of the colonial state. Traditional and modern political leaders deployed strong communal ideologies and traditional themes that defined competing Yoruba communities as natives and outsiders.
NEAR DEATH IN THE STREETS OF KARIBIB: FAMINE, MIGRANT LABOUR AND THE COMING OF OVAMBO TO CENTRAL NAMIBIA
Authors: GEWALD JAN-BART
Published: July 2003

Namibian politics and society are today dominated by people who trace their descent from the settlements and homesteads of Ovamboland in southern Angola and northern Namibia. Yet, prior to 1915, and the defeat by South Africa of the German colonial army in German South-West Africa, very few Ovambo had settled in areas to the south of the Etosha Pan. In 1915, a Portuguese expeditionary army defeated Kwanyama forces in southern Angola, and unleashed a flood of refugees into northern Namibia. These refugees entered an area that was already overstretched. Since 1912 the rains had failed and, on account of the First World War, trade and migration had come to a standstill. As a result the area was experiencing its most devastating famine ever. Unable to find sanctuary in Ovamboland, thousands of people trekked southwards into central Namibia, an area which had only just come under the control of South Africa. The famine allowed for the easy entrance of South African military administrators and labour recruiters into Ovamboland and heralded the demise of Ovambo independence. By focusing on developments in the central Namibian town of Karibib between 1915 to 1916, the article explores the move of the Ovambo into central and southern Namibia. It traces the impact of war and drought on Ovambo societies, and follows Ovambo famine migrants on their route south into areas administered by the South African military administration. Discussion also concentrates on the reception and treatment of Ovambo famine migrants in the Karibib settlement, and argues that the refugee crisis heralded the establishment of Ovambo in modern central and southern Namibia.
THE NEOLITHIC OF SOUTHERN AFRICA
Authors: SADR KARIM
Published: July 2003

As the exception on the continent, southern Africa has no Neolithic period. In the 1920s, when the term came to mean Stone Age with food production, Neolithic was dropped in South Africa for lack of evidence for farming or herding in Stone Age sites. But since the late 1960s many sheep bones have surfaced in just such sites. Now, the continued absence of a Neolithic may say more about the politics of South African archaeology than about its prehistory. This paper describes food production in the southern African late Stone Age and argues in favor of (re-)introducing the term Neolithic to the subcontinent.
AFROCENTRISM: BETWEEN CROSSCULTURAL GRAND NARRATIVE AND CULTURAL RELATIVISM History in Black: African-Americans in Search of an Ancient Past. By YAACOV SHAVIT. London: Frank Cass, 2001. Pp. xxii+422. £45 (ISBN 0-7146-5062-5); £19.50, paperback (ISBN 0-7146-8126-0). Afrocentrismes: l'histoire des Africains entre Egypte et Amérique. Edited by FRANÇOIS-XAVIER FAUVELLE-AYMAR, JEAN-PIERRE CHRÉTIEN and CLAUDE-HÉLÈNE PERROT. Paris: Karthala, 2000. Pp. 402. No price given (ISBN 2-84586-008-0). The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism: An Afrocentric Response to Critics. By MOLEFI KETE ASANTE. Trenton NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 1999. Pp. xvii+128. No price given (ISBN 0-86543-742-4); £13.99, paperback (ISBN 0-86543-743-2). We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism. By CLARENCE E. WALKER. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xxxv+172. £18.99; $25 (ISBN 0-19-509571-5).
Authors: DE MORAES FARIAS P. F.
Published: July 2003

A balanced approach to the subject of these books may be constructed from some of the points made by the African American historian W. J. Moses, in his erudite and insightful study of folk historiography. First, though there have been attempts to provide single definitions of it, ‘Afrocentrism’ is not a monolithic doctrine, but a label covering a range of opinions and themes (not all of which are discussed by the four works listed above). In the United States (and now elsewhere, too), the label extends over aspects of popular culture as well as stances taken by individual academics and by some university departments. And desktop publishing and the internet have created new opportunities for the diffusion and ramification of Afrocentric ideas. Second, it is no wonder that the sheer irrationality of white racism generated, in return, writings that can be ‘sometimes quaint, sometimes fantastic’. Third, arguments for the blackness of the Ancient Egyptians were lent topicality by prejudiced assumptions that, by definition, black Africans could not be creators of ‘civilization’ either in the past or in the present day. In the United States, moreover, such arguments were taken up ‘at a time when “one drop of Negro blood” was enough to make even the whitest person a Negro’. None the less racial classifications of, say, nineteenth-century America cannot be transferred to ‘Neolithic Egyptians or Ethiopians’. Fourth, the body of ideas now labelled ‘Afrocentric’ has a long and complex genealogy, in which white (often Jewish, like Franz Boas and Melville J. Herskovits) and black (and ‘mulatto’) scholars have all participated. Finally, that body of ideas famously includes traditions that reconcile assimilation to Western culture with separation from it in seemingly paradoxical ways.
BRIDEWEALTH AND FEMALE CONSENT: MARRIAGE DISPUTES IN AFRICAN COURTS, GUSIILAND, KENYA
Authors: SHADLE BRETT L.
Published: July 2003

From the early 1940s Gusiiland (Kenya) underwent a series of transformations that pushed bridewealth to unheralded levels. As a result, many young couples could not afford a proper marriage and eloped. Some fathers forced their daughters into marriages with men wealthy enough to give cattle; many of these women ran off instead with more desirable men. In the hundreds of resulting court cases, Gusii debated the relative weight to be given to bridewealth, parental approval and female consent in marriage. Young people did not reject marriage, but fought against senior men who would ignore women's wishes. Gusii court elders usually agreed with fathers and husbands but also believed that female consent did carry some significance.
FETISHIZING RELIGION: ALLAH KOURA AND FRENCH ‘ISLAMIC POLICY’ IN LATE COLONIAL FRENCH SOUDAN (MALI)
Authors: MANN GREGORY
Published: July 2003

This article argues that an innovative religious movement in postwar French Soudan (Mali) led some French administrators and military officers to adopt a new and more open stance towards local religious practices even as they fought hard to limit conversion to Islam and to counteract Muslim reform. Meanwhile, although the founder of the movement advocated submission to local authorities, young men claiming to be his messengers attacked elders and sorcerers. The article suggests that the religious sphere in the Western Sudan was broader than historians have recognized, and that religious identities were particularly important in the troubled transition from subjects to citizens.
Conserving forest biodiversity in times of violent conflict
Authors: McNeely Jeffrey A.
Published: July 2003

Forests are often frontiers, and like all frontiers, they are sites of dynamic social, ecological, political and economic changes. Such dynamism involves constantly changing advantages and disadvantages to different groups of people, which not surprisingly can lead to armed conflict, and all too frequently to war. Many governments have contributed to conflict, however inadvertently, by nationalizing their forests, so that traditional forest inhabitants have been disenfranchised while national governments sell the rights to trees in order to earn foreign exchange. Biodiversity-rich tropical forests in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Indochina, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Central and West Africa, the Amazon, Colombia, Central America and New Caledonia have all been the sites of armed conflict in recent years, sometimes involving international forces. Forests have sometimes been part of the cause of conflict (as in Myanmar and Sierra Leone) but more often victims of it. Violent conflicts in temperate areas also typically involve forests as shelters for both civilians and combatants, as in the Balkans. While these conflicts have frequently, even invariably, caused negative impacts on biodiversity, peace can be even worse, as it enables forest exploitation to operate with impunity. Because many of the remaining forests are along international borders, international cooperation is required for their conservation. As one response, the concept of international “Peace Parks” is being promoted in many parts of the world as a way of linking biodiversity conservation with national security. The Convention on Biological Diversity, which entered into force at the end of 1993 and now has 187 State Parties, offers a useful framework for such cooperation.
Does forest certification conserve biodiversity?
Authors: Gullison R. E.
Published: July 2003

Forest certification provides a means by which producers who meet stringent sustainable forestry standards can identify their products in the marketplace, allowing them to potentially receive greater market access and higher prices for their products. An examination of the ways in which certification may contribute to biodiversity conservation leads to the following conclusions: 1) the process of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certification generates improvements to management with respect to the value of managed forests for biodiversity. 2) Current incentives are not sufficient to attract the majority of producers to seek certification, particularly in tropical countries where the costs of improving management to meet FSC guidelines are significantly greater than any market benefits they may receive; available incentives are even less capable of convincing forest owners to retain forest cover and produce certified timber on a sustainable basis, rather than deforesting their lands for timber and agriculture. 3) At present, current volumes of certified forest products are insufficient to reduce demand to log high conservation value forests. If FSC certification is to make greater inroads, particularly in tropical countries, significant investments will be needed both to increase the benefits and reduce the costs of certification. Conservation investors will need to carefully consider the biodiversity benefits that will be generated from such investments, versus the benefits generated from investing in more traditional approaches to biodiversity conservation.
Our shifting perspectives on the oceans
Authors: Roberts Callum M.
Published: July 2003

In the last 15 years new research findings have radically reshaped our understanding of human effects on ocean ecosystems. Here I describe five major shifts in perspective that reveal our impacts to be more severe and persistent than previously appreciated. Firstly, scientists have delved deep into the past and found that the global expansion of European nations across the planet caused the large-scale loss of marine megafauna. In the past century, expansion of industrial scale fishing has continued the process, massively reducing the biomass of exploited species. Secondly, once depleted we are finding that populations rarely rebound rapidly, contrary to a widespread belief in greater resilience of marine compared to terrestrial species. Thirdly, marine ecosystems are being shifted into alternative states that are less desirable from the human perspective and may be stable. It could be difficult, or impossible in some cases, to reverse impacts once inflicted. Fourthly, marine species are at risk of extinction. Loss of shallow water marine habitats is proceeding as rapidly as on land, many species have small geographic ranges, and many possess life history characteristics that leave them highly susceptible to overexploitation. Finally, the deep sea is not beyond harm. Depletion of shallow water fisheries and technological advances are opening up the deep to exploitation and its collateral impacts. If we are to reverse these negative trends we must establish large-scale networks of marine reserves that are off limits to damaging activities and fishing. Such reserves would protect biodiversity, and recover and sustain the world's fisheries productivity.
Biological invasions: winning the science battles but losing the conservation war?
Authors: Hulme Philip E.
Published: July 2003

Biological invasions by non-indigenous species (NIS) are widely recognized as a significant component of human-caused global environmental change. However, the standard programme of mapping distributions, predicting future ranges, modelling species spread, assessing impacts, developing management guidelines and screening species suffers from a number of serious limitations. NIS distribution maps can often be as misleading as they are instructive. Perceptions of the intensity, scale and rate of invasion are a function of mapping resolution, and the lack of common mapping standards prevents accurate comparative assessments. Coarse resolution data may overestimate the role of climate in the invasion process relative to other variables such as land use or human population density. Climate envelopes have therefore been widely used to predict species future ranges, but often overestimate potential distributions. Without an appropriate mechanistic understanding of the invasion process, correlative approaches may misinterpret the relative risks posed by different NIS. In addition, statistical models of invasion fail to encapsulate the complexity of human-mediated dispersal, which includes such diverse processes as transatlantic timber trade, horticultural fashion and the continuing expansion of road networks. Screening tools based on species traits, taxonomy and/or invasion history can sometimes result in high discrimination rates. Yet where the cost of false positives outweighs the risks from false negatives, a higher discriminatory power is required. Certain research outputs have perhaps been counterproductive in the war against invasive species. Studies have highlighted that only a tiny proportion of NIS are invasive, that most invasions occur in human dominated rather than pristine ecosystems, that indigenous and non-indigenous species are sufficiently similar that their impacts may not necessarily be different, and that there is evidence that introduced species augment rather than reduce species diversity. It is crucial to address these wider perceptions of the problem in order to mobilize the resources necessary for a global invasive species management programme.
Reconciliation ecology and the future of species diversity
Authors: Rosenzweig Michael L.
Published: July 2003

Species-area relationships (SPARs) dictate a sea change in the strategies of biodiversity conservation. SPARs exist at three ecological scales: Sample-area SPARs (a larger area within a biogeographical province will tend to include more habitat types, and thus more species, than a smaller one), Archipelagic SPARs (the islands of an archipelago show SPARs that combine the habitat-sampling process with the problem of dispersal to an island), and Interprovincial SPARs (other things being equal, the speciation rates of larger biogeographical provinces are higher and their extinction rates are lower, leading to diversities in proportion to provincial area). SPARs are the products of steady-state dynamics in diversity, and such dynamics appears to have characterized the earth for most of the last 500 million years. As people reduce the area available to wild species, they impose a linear reduction of the earth's species diversity that will follow the largest of these scales, i.e. each 1% reduction of natural area will cost about 1% of steady-state diversity. Reserving small tracts of wild habitat can only delay these reductions. But we can stop most of them by redesigning anthropogenic habitats so that their use is compatible with use by a broad array of other species. That is reconciliation ecology. Many pilot projects, whether intentionally or inadvertently espousing reconciliation ecology, are demonstrating that it can be done.
Nature matrix: reconnecting people and nature
Authors: Pyle Robert Michael
Published: July 2003

Many individuals and societies are no longer connected to the more-than-human world in such a way as to ensure a sustainable future. As such connection has diminished, environmental challenges have multiplied and influences for estrangement intensified. I review the importance of direct, intimate encounter with places and organisms on the attitudes of the young, as well as the significance of biophilia. The result of the loss of contact and subsequent alienation is the Extinction of Experience: an inexorable cycle of disconnection, apathy, and progressive depletion. I describe an effort to demonstrate this effect. Small, humble habitats, especially in urban settings, can be as important as big reserves in awakening biophilia. Biophobia, abetted by the loss of such habitats, the rise of the virtual in place of actual experience, economic inequalities, and overpopulation, further feeds the downward spiral of extinction and disaffection. The climate of global corporate growth that now prevails is inimical to sustainability, as is the current state of ecological illiteracy. Radical change is therefore necessary to address both economic disparity, in the direction of minimal ownership rather than maximum consumerism, and educational reform that places nature at the centre rather than the margin of the curriculum. I present a six-point programme, called Nature Matrix, for an alternative social and ethical paradigm. Rather than a pragmatic plan for the near future, Nature Matrix is a model for essential, incremental change, a dream whose eventual adoption may enhance chances for reconnection and for ecological survival itself: at present, a deeply uncertain prospect.
Sustainable use and incentive-driven conservation: realigning human and conservation interests
Authors: Hutton Jon M. , Leader-Williams Nigel
Published: July 2003

Discussions of sustainable use have become polarized. Welfarists oppose all use that involves killing animals. Among conservationists polarization arises in part from failure to distinguish between different ideas nestled under the umbrella term of ‘sustainable use’. These include direct use as an imperative or choice, the ideal of keeping any use within biologically sustainable limits, and use as a possible conservation strategy that can create positive incentives, which are key where land could otherwise be converted to biodiversity-unfriendly practices. People will continue to use wild living resources, which increasing human populations could further deplete. In response the conservation community can follow one of two approaches. On the one hand, it can try to stop use through the establishment of strictly protected areas and by enforcing legislation, although many would question the ethical position of imposing such an approach. On the other hand, it can work to introduce the wider management systems needed to deliver sustainable use and, if possible, incentive-driven conservation. Because most rural populations will continue using wild living resources in human-dominated landscapes, sustainable use and incentive-driven conservation should both be at the centre of the conservation agenda this century. Both species- and ecosystem-based management are likely to have a role in sustainable use. However, current enthusiasm for the ecosystem approach may throw up unexpected consequences, making the search for sustainability even more polarized. Nevertheless, direct use of species cannot provide sufficient incentives to ensure the continued delivery of ecosystem services, which need to be fully incorporated in the global accounting system.
Global governance for the environment and the role of Multilateral Environmental Agreements in conservation
Authors: Steiner Achim , Kimball Lee A. , Scanlon John
Published: July 2003

The role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, and the Barcelona Convention on the Mediterranean has grown increasingly important, in the context of conservation management, during the last decade as human impacts intensify and cross national boundaries more often. In resorting to MEAs it is important to maintain a clear focus on their opportunities and limitations. They are a means to resolve transboundary problems with neighbouring states and adopt harmonized approaches, they increasingly offer access to worldwide knowledge, tools and financial resources, and they can give conservation agencies a stronger mandate domestically. But they are specialized instruments focused on particular problems or sectors. The threats they address and the solutions they outline have to be evaluated in relation to overall environmental and socio-economic priorities. This entails linkages among different problems and sectors at various scales. Regional and ecosystem-level approaches are most appropriate for sorting out linkages and priorities. Extensive capacity building is needed at these levels to foster the requisite skills for integrated approaches. In addition, new mechanisms may be required at these levels to coordinate diverse specialized regimes. This does not require a monolithic, top-down approach but rather ongoing flexibility and responsiveness informed from the bottom up. We should take advantage of the new directions highlighted by the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, in 2002 and other recent international conferences to build these abilities into international governance. Conservation managers have an important role to play. By working nationally and internationally they can inform and influence the shift towards integrated and coordinated efforts, suggesting ways to accomplish this on a larger, international scale based on concrete experience in situ.
Who should pay for tropical conservation, and how could the costs be met?
Authors: Balmford Andrew , Whitten Tony
Published: July 2003

While conservation activities are underfunded almost everywhere, the gap between current expenditure and what is needed is particularly extreme in the tropics where threatened species and habitats are most concentrated. We examine how to bridge this funding gap. Firstly, we try to identify who in principle should pay, by comparing the spatial distribution of the costs and the benefits of tropical conservation. The immediate opportunity costs of conservation often exceed its more obvious, management-related costs, and are borne largely by local communities. Conversely, we argue that the greatest benefits of conservation derive from ecological services, and from option, existence, and bequest values; these are often widely dispersed and enjoyed in large part by wealthier national and global beneficiaries. We conclude that the gap in funding tropical conservation should be borne largely by national and especially global communities, who receive most benefit but currently pay least cost. In the second part of the paper we review recent developments in order to examine how in practice increased funding may be raised. There are many growing and novel sources of support: private philanthropy, premium pricing for biodiversity-related goods via certification schemes, and the development of entirely new markets for environmental services. Despite their potential, we conclude that the principal route for meeting the unmet costs of tropical conservation will have to be via governments, and will inevitably require the transfer of substantial resources from north to south. This will be enormously difficult, both politically and logistically, but without it we believe that much of what remains of tropical nature will be lost.