La incorporación del cacao ecuatoriano al mercado mundial entre 1840 y 1925, según los informes consulares (Estudios)

Este artículo ofrece una reinterpretación del proceso de incorporación del cacao ecuatoriano al mercado mundial, entre 1840 y 1925. Esta revisión se realiza a partir de los conceptos desarrollados por el economista italiano Giovanni Arrighi: incorporación nominal, incorporación periférica e incorporación no-periférica. Por medio de estos, el ensayo analiza la variedad de enlaces que se desarrollaron entre el centro y la periferia, y dentro la periferia misma. Se estudian especialmente dos momentos de este proceso: 1840-1890 y 1890-1910. El análisis de las articulaciones externas e internas que se dieron en cada una de estas fases y los factores de producción que los sustentaron permiten caracterizar al primer momento como ‘incorporación nominal’ y al segundo como ‘periférica’. Esta distinción permite una mejor comprensión del auge cacaotero ecuatoriano en el largo siglo XIX. El trabajo se basa en los informes consulares extranjeros, un tipo de documentación que no ha sido suficientemente estudiada todavía.

Políticas de inmigración en América Latina: el extranjero indeseable en las normas nacionales, de la Independencia hasta los años de 1930 (Estudios)

El artículo explora el surgimiento de la figura del extranjero indeseable en las legislaciones nacionales latinoamericanas, desde la Independencia hasta finales de la década de 1930, aproximadamente, de forma paralela a la política de inmigración en los Estados Unidos. Las restricciones sobre la entrada libre de extranjeros que establecieron las repúblicas, durante las primeras décadas de la Independencia, estaban relacionadas con el modelo del ciudadano idealizado. El análisis de los impedimentos para la entrada de extranjeros muestra cómo, durante el siglo XIX, el extranjero “deseado” fue definido cada vez más en contraste con los rasgos negativos de los “indeseables”, bajo el supuesto objetivo de “defender la nación”.

El constitucionalismo revolucionario en la Nueva Granada (Estudios)

Este artículo muestra los orígenes del variado constitucionalismo creado durante la revolución de la Nueva Granada en la década de 1810. Contrasta la noción revolucionaria de “constitución” con aquella propia de la sociedad monárquica y muestra sus rasgos distintivos, así como los mecanismos mediante los cuales fue elaborada y puesta en vigor. Subraya cómo ese concepto entrañaba un horizonte de profunda ruptura con la sociedad en la cual nacía. En este sentido, el artículo interroga los aportes historiográficos que señalan los orígenes de la historia constitucional colombiana en 1821, remontándose a las experiencias político revolucionarias de la primera década del siglo XIX, por medio de una reevaluación del aporte constitucional neogranadino frente al gaditano.

Narraciones compartidas: imaginarios políticos entre Charcas y Buenos Aires. (De las reformas borbónicas al proceso juntista) [Estudios]

Este artículo expone los vínculos entre las élites charqueñas y rioplatenses desde mediados del siglo XVIII hasta inicios del siglo XIX, con una mirada que incorpora la relación territorial y el vínculo de las culturas políticas que se entretejen en la conformación de ambas élites. El trabajo da cuenta de los vínculos políticos entre el mundo charqueño y el rioplatense, asumiendo ambas realidades como vinculadas e interdependientes, y muestra que dicho vínculo estuvo configurado por narraciones y preocupaciones comunes, el impacto de la crisis imperial de 1808, la resonancia de la insurgencia indígena en los años previos (La Gran Regelión de los Andes y la Rebelión de Túpac Katari) y las experiencias autonomistas del mundo andino: La Plata (Chiquisaca) y La Paz. Se utilizan los aportes de la historia conceptual y la sociología política para analizar esos complejos mundos políticos y de conformación de élites.

En busca de tinterillos. Intermediarios en el mundo indígena ecuatoriano durante el siglo XX (Debates)

Este artículo aborda el papel de los abogados semiprofesionales, conocidos como tinterillos, en las comunidades indígenas de la sierra ecuatoriana, a partir de mediados del siglo XIX, quienes adquirieron una presencia aparentemente ubicua en las comunidades rurales del Ecuador. Muchas veces los tinterillos fueron parte de las élites locales con algo de educación. Inspiraban respeto entre los indígenas (quienes, en su mayoría, eran analfabetos) debido a su habilidad a manejar documentos escritos. Estos intermediarios comúnmente explotaron su posición privilegiada para su propio beneficio económico, social y político. Sin embargo, los indígenas llegaron a depender del apoyo de los tinterillos para denunciar ante el gobierno los abusos de los terratenientes. En ocasiones, en lugar de sentirse impotentes o víctimas, los indígenas aprendieron a negociar sus relaciones con esos intermediarios para su beneficio. El estudio de los tinterillos permite examinar las relaciones de poder que se negociaron entre diferentes culturas y a través de profundas divisiones de clase.

Biopolítica y gran relato nacional: presencia espectral del mundo aborigen en tres novelas de la selva (Estudios)

Escritas durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, Canaima, La vorágine, y Sangama son tres novelas de la selva en las cuales aparece una representación del mundo indígena del Amazonas o del Orinoco. Se ha repetido que se trataba de novelas progresistas, que encerraban una crítica del sistema social de la época, y más particularmente del genocidio acarreado por la explotación del caucho durante el “ciclo da borracha”. Sin embargo estas ficciones nos proporcionan un enfoque ambiguo de la realidad indígena. Una visión impregnada por las mismas concepciones del siglo XIX que favorecieron los excesos, maltratos y masacres que dichas novelas pretenden denunciar. Este ensayo se propone analizar la matriz científica de estas representaciones, insistiendo en el paradigma racialista decimónico, derivado de la teoría evolucionista y de la ideología del progreso. Los indios de las ficciones se desplazan como fantasmas en un universo mágico, embrujado, o infernal que carece de realidad. Este “flor” romántico es la proyección literaria de una estrategia biopolítica que se da en las sociedades de la época: la cuestión gira en torno a la construcción del pueblo nacional. Los “aparecidos” del espacio novelesco son un momento de unas estrategias discursivas más globales: se trata de construir una homegeneidad nacional a partir de una etnicidad ficticia que requiere el rechazo del “otro atrasado”. El espectro es la huella o el testigo de esta violencia fundadora.

Onset of recent rapid sea-level rise in the western Atlantic Ocean

A high-resolution record of sea-level change spanning the past 1000 years is derived from foraminiferal and chronological analyses of a 2m thick salt-marsh peat sequence at Chezzetcook, Nova Scotia, Canada. Former mean tide level positions are reconstructed with a precision of +/- 0.055 in using a transfer function derived from distributions of modern salt-marsh foraminifera. Our age model for the core section older than 300 years is based on 19 AMS C-14 ages and takes into account the individual probability distributions of calibrated radiocarbon ages. The past 300 years is dated by pollen and the isotopes Pb-206, Pb-207, Pb-210, Cs-137 and Am-241. Between AD 1000 and AD 1800, relative sea level rose at a mean rate of 17cm per century. Apparent pre-industrial rises of sea level dated at AD 1500-1550 and AD 1700-1800 cannot be clearly distinguished when radiocarbon age errors are taken into account. Furthermore, they may be an artefact of fluctuations in atmospheric C-14 production. In the 19th century sea level rose at a mean rate of 1.6mm/yr. Between AD 1900 and AD 1920, sea-level rise accelerated to the modern mean rate of 3.2mm/yr. This acceleration corresponds in time with global temperature rise and may therefore be associated with recent global warming. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The social life of ruins: sites of memory and the politics of a Zimbabwean periphery

This article explores conflicts over a series of ruins located within Zimbabwe's flagship National Park. The relics have long been regarded as sacred places by local African communities evicted from their vicinity, and have come to be seen as their ethnic heritage. Local intellectuals' promotion of this heritage was an important aspect of a defensive mobilization of cultural difference on the part of a marginalized minority group. I explore both indigenous and colonial ideas about the ruins, the different social movements with which they have been associated and the changing social life they have given the stone relics. Although African and European ideas sometimes came into violent confrontation - as in the context of colonial era evictions - there were also mutual influences in emergent ideas about tribe, heritage and history. The article engages with Pierre Nora's notion of 'sites of memory', which has usefully drawn attention to the way in which ideas of the past are rooted and reproduced in representations of particular places. But it criticizes Nora's tendency to romanticize pre-modern 'memory', suppress narrative and depoliticize traditional connections with the past. Thus, the article highlights the historicity of traditional means of relating to the past, highlighting the often bitter and divisive politics of traditional ritual, myth, kinship, descent and 'being first'. It also emphasizes the entanglement of modern and traditional ideas, inadequately captured by Nora's implied opposition between history and memory. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

'Operation motorway': landscapes of construction on England's M1 motorway

Recent years have seen an increasing number of academics attempt to write more process-oriented and 'nonrepresentational' accounts of landscape. Drawing upon this literature, I discuss a number of the movements, materialities, and practices entailed in constructing England's M1 motorway in the late 1950s. The performances, movements and durability of a diverse range of things-including earth-moving machines, public relations brochures, maps, helicopters, senior engineers, aggregate and labourers-are shown to be important to the construction and ordering of the motorway and spaces of the construction company in different times and spaces, with people's experiences or understandings of construction, both now and in the past, emerging through memories, talk and embodied encounters with architectures, texts and artefacts which are assembled, circulated and/or archived. Aerial perspectives assumed a prominent role in depictions of construction, while journalists and engineers frequently drew upon a military vocabulary and alluded to the military nature of the project when discussing the motorway. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Stable isotope evidence for 1500 years of human diet at the city of York, UK

We present here the results of a large-scale diachronic palaeodietary (carbon and nitrogen isotopic measurements of bone collagen) study of humans and animals from a single site, the city of York (U.K.) dating from the Roman period to the early 19th century The human sample comprises 313 burials from the cemeteries of Trentholme Drive and Blossom Street (Roman), Belle Vue House (Anglo-Saxon), Fishergate (High and Later Medieval), and All Saints, Pavement (Later and Post-Medieval). In addition, 145 samples of mammal, fish and bird bone from the sites of Tanner Row and Fishergate were analyzed. The isotope data suggest dietary variation between all archaeological periods, although the most significant change was the introduction of significant quantities of marine foods in the Medieval periods. These are first evident in the diet of a small group of individuals from the High Medieval cemetery at Fishergate, although they were consumed almost universally in the following periods. The human isotope values are also remarkable due to unusually elevated delta N-15 ratios that are not sufficiently explained by the comparably small enrichment in C-13 that accompanies them. We discuss the possible reasons behind this and the archaeological significance of the data set.

The evolution of indigenous contractors in Ghana

This paper provides some preliminary insights into the emergence and development of indigenous general contractors in Ghana. General contracting is the means by which an individual or organisation takes responsibility for supplying all of the materials, labour, equipment and services necessary for the construction of a project. Whereas the development of general contracting in places like the UK is well documented, the evolution of contractors in Ghana is not clearly articulated in the literature. Therefore, the main question in this paper is: How did indigenous contractors evolve in Ghana? To examine and analyze the research question, a literature review on similar developments elsewhere was first carried out. This was followed by discussions and unstructured interviews with experienced construction practitioners in Ghana most of whom were Quantity Surveyors. Most interviewees narrated their knowledge of contractor development in Ghana dating back to around 1945. From the explanations given, it was possible to develop a general understanding of the research question and to make a qualitative interpretation of the respondents’ comments and to draw some conclusions. General contractors emerged rapidly in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) shortly after World War II. Most were Italian master craftsmen in Ghana who were capitalized by the British colonial government to develop infrastructure in the Gold Coast following devastating effects of the war. Some of the indigenous people learned from the Italians and also established construction firms. Thus, general contracting in Ghana has a relatively short history in comparison to countries like Britain where the profession developed rapidly in the early part of the 19th century in response to the industrial revolution. Although they may possess sufficient technical expertise, many indigenous contractors in Ghana today lack the capacity to carry out major projects because of low capitalization and poor organisational structures. The current construction market in Ghana is dominated by foreign contractors. To become major players in the market, indigenous Ghanaian contractors should build strong organisational structures and pursue mergers and joint venturing to boost their financial, technical and managerial capacity.

The evolution of strategy: thinking war from antiquity to the present

Latin had no word for "strategy", but the East Romans, whom we call the Byzantines, did. This book tracks the evolution of the concept of warfare being subjected to higher political aims from Antiquity to the Present, using Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, English and German sources. It tracks the rise, fall, and resurrection of the belief in the Roman and later the medieval and early modern world that warfare was only legitimate if it pursued the higher goal of a just peace, which in the 19th century gave way to a blinkered concentration on military victory as only war aim. It explains why one school of thought, from Antiquity to the present, emphasised eternal principles of warfare, while others emphasised, in Clausewitz's term, the "changing character of war". It tracks ideas from land warfare to naval warfare to air power and nuclear thinking, but it also stresses great leaps and discontinuities in thinking about strategy. It covers asymmetric wars both from the point of view of the weaker power seeking to overthrow a stronger power, and from the stronger power dealing with insurgents and other numerically inferior forces. It concludes with a commentary of the long-known problems of bureaucratic politics, non-centralised command and inter-service rivalry, which since the 16th century or earlier has created obstacles to coherent strategy making.

Cannabis sativa and the endogenous cannabinoid system: therapeutic potential for appetite regulation

The herb Cannabis sativa (C. sativa) has been used in China and on the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years as a medicine. However, since it was brought to the UK and then the rest of the western world in the late 19th century, its use has been a source of controversy. Indeed, its psychotropic side effects are well reported but only relatively recently has scientific endeavour begun to find valuable uses for either the whole plant or its individual components. Here, we discuss evidence describing the endocannabinoid system, its endogenous and exogenous ligands and their varied effects on feeding cycles and meal patterns. Furthermore we also critically consider the mounting evidence which suggests non‐tetrahydrocannabinol phytocannabinoids play a vital role in C. sativa‐induced feeding pattern changes. Indeed, given the wide range of phytocannabinoids present in C. sativa and their equally wide range of intra‐, inter‐ and extra‐cellular mechanisms of action, we demonstrate that non‐Δ9tetrahydrocannabinol phytocannabinoids retain an important and, as yet, untapped clinical potential.

On the troublesome relationship of feminism and terrorism: representing the female terrorist in contemporary art

This paper analyses tendencies in debates about cultural representations of terrorism to assume that artists make critical interventions, while the mass media circulates stereotypes. Some recent feminist analyses of female terrorist acts have re-instituted essentialist arguments in which violence and terrorism is described as inherently masculine, while women are by nature pacifist, so that femininity is the antithesis of militarism. More progressive analyses mostly tend to expose the circulation of stereotypes and their gender bias, in order to protest the misrepresentation of women in violence. These analyses do not construct alternative accounts. Through an analysis of two works by artists Hito Steyerl and Sharon Hayes, the paper argues that some of the moves to re-image the question of women, violence and agency have already been made in contemporary art practices. Through analysing legacies of terrorism and feminism, it becomes possible to rethink the question of agency, militancy and the nature of political art. The paper appears in an edited interdiscplinary collection arising from a conference at Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich. It relates to wider projects involving collaborations with Birkbeck and Edinburgh on representations of terrorism and on violence and contemporary art.