Narrating Boundaries: Framing and Contesting Suffering, Community, and Belonging in Enclaves along the India-Bangladesh Border

This paper explores the politics of community making at the India-Bangladesh border by examining the public and private narratives of history and belonging in a Bangladeshi enclave-a sovereign piece of Bangladesh completely territorially surrounded by India. Drawing on framings of political society, this paper argues that understanding populations at the margins of South Asia and beyond requires attention to two processes: first, to the ways that para-legal activities are part and parcel of daily life; and second, to the strategies through which these groups construct themselves as moral communities deserving of inclusion within the state. Border communities often articulate narratives of dispossession, exceptionality, and marginalization to researchers and other visitors-narratives that are often unproblematically reproduced in academic treatments of the border. However, such articulations mask both the complicated histories and quotidian realities of border life. This paper views these articulations as political projects in and of themselves. By reading the more hidden histories of life in this border enclave, this article reconstructs the notion of borders as experienced by enclave residents themselves. It shows the ways that the politics of the India-Bangladesh border are constitutive of (and constituted by) a range of fractures and internal boundaries within the enclave. These boundaries are as central to forging community-to articulating who belongs and why-as are more public narratives that frame enclave residents as victims of confused territorial configurations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dual origins of dairy cattle farming - evidence from a comprehensive survey of European Y-chromosomal variation

BACKGROUND: Diversity patterns of livestock species are informative to the history of agriculture and indicate uniqueness of breeds as relevant for conservation. So far, most studies on cattle have focused on mitochondrial and autosomal DNA variation. Previous studies of Y-chromosomal variation, with limited breed panels, identified two Bos taurus (taurine) haplogroups (Y1 and Y2; both composed of several haplotypes) and one Bos indicus (indicine/zebu) haplogroup (Y3), as well as a strong phylogeographic structuring of paternal lineages. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Haplogroup data were collected for 2087 animals from 138 breeds. For 111 breeds, these were resolved further by genotyping microsatellites INRA189 (10 alleles) and BM861 (2 alleles). European cattle carry exclusively taurine haplotypes, with the zebu Y-chromosomes having appreciable frequencies in Southwest Asian populations. Y1 is predominant in northern and north-western Europe, but is also observed in several Iberian breeds, as well as in Southwest Asia. A single Y1 haplotype is predominant in north-central Europe and a single Y2 haplotype in central Europe. In contrast, we found both Y1 and Y2 haplotypes in Britain, the Nordic region and Russia, with the highest Y-chromosomal diversity seen in the Iberian Peninsula. CONCLUSIONS: We propose that the homogeneous Y1 and Y2 regions reflect founder effects associated with the development and expansion of two groups of dairy cattle, the pied or red breeds from the North Sea and Baltic coasts and the spotted, yellow or brown breeds from Switzerland, respectively. The present Y1-Y2 contrast in central Europe coincides with historic, linguistic, religious and cultural boundaries.

Detrital Zircon Evidence for Mixing of Mazatzal Province Age Detritus With Yavapai Age (ca. 1700-1740 Ma) and Older Detritus in the ca. 1650 Ma Mazatzal Province of Central New Mexico, USA

Preliminary detrital zircon age distributions from Mazatzal crustal province quartzite and schist exposed in the Manzano Mountains and Pedernal Hills of central New Mexico are consistent with a mixture of detritus from Mazatzal age (ca. 1650 Ma), Yavapai age (ca. 1720 Ma.), and older sources. A quartzite sample from the Blue Springs Formation in the Manzano Mountains yielding 67 concordant grain analyses shows two dominant age peaks of 1737 Ma and 1791 Ma with a minimum peak age of 1652 Ma. Quartzite and micaceous quartzite samples from near Pedernal Peak give unimodal peak ages of ca. 1695 Ma and 1738 Ma with minimum detrital zircon ages of ca. 1625 Ma and 1680 Ma, respectively. A schist sample from the southern exposures of the Pedernal Hills area gives a unimodal peak age of 1680 Ma with a minimum age of ca. 1635 Ma. Minor amounts of older detritus (>1800 Ma) possibly reflect Trans-Hudson, Wyoming, Mojave Province, and older Archean sources and aid in locating potential source terrains for these detrital zircon. The Blue Springs Formation metarhyolite from near the top of the Proterozoic section in the Manzano Mountains yields 71 concordant grains that show a preliminary U-Pb zircon crystallization age of 1621 ¿ 5 Ma, which provides a minimum age constraint for deposition in the Manzano Mountains. Normalized probability plots from this study are similar to previously reported age distributions in the Burro and San Andres Mountains in southern New Mexico and suggest that Yavapai Province age detritus was deposited and intermingled with Mazatzal Province age detritus across much of the Mazatzal crustal province in New Mexico. This data shows that the tectonic evolution of southwestern Laurentia is associated with multiple orogenic events. Regional metamorphism and deformation in the area must postdate the Mazatzal Orogeny and ca. 1610 Ma ¿ 1620 Ma rhyolite crystallization and is attributed to the Mesoproterozoic ca. 1400 ¿ 1480 Ma Picuris Orogeny.

The Gandhi Story: An Official Indian Comic Book History of the Mahatma

In 1966, the Publications Division of the Government of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting released a 47-page hardbound comic book entitled The Gandhi Story. Written and illustrated by S.D. Sawant and S.D. Badalkar, it opens with a foreword by independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and presents a state sanctioned narrative of Gandhi’s life and role in the Indian struggle for independence. This articles examines how the creators of The Gandhi Story drew upon both textual and visual sources as reference material during its creation, and investigates the relationship between "official" and "unofficial" nationalisms of twentieth-century Indian history.

The Constitutional-Judicial Control of the Legislative and Executive Powers in Central and Eastern European Countries

This project looked at the nature, contents, methods, means and legal and political effects of the influence that constitutional courts exercise upon the legislative and executive powers in the newly established democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. The basic hypothesis was that these courts work to provide a limitation of political power within the framework of the principal constitutional values and that they force the legislature and executive to exercise their powers and duties in strict accordance with the constitution. Following a study of the documentary sources, including primarily the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions and decisions of constitutional courts, Mr. Cvetkovski prepared a questionnaire on various aspects of the topics researched and sent it to the respective constitutional courts. A series of direct interviews with court officials in six of the ten countries then served to clarify a large number of questions relating to differences in procedures etc. that arose from the questionnaires. As a final stage, the findings were compared with those described in recent publications on constitutional control in general and in Central and Eastern Europe in particular. The study began by considering the constitutional and political environment of the constitutional courts' activities in controlling legislative and executive powers, which in all countries studied are based on the principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers. All courts are separate bodies with special status in terms of constitutional law and are independent of other political and judicial institutions. The range of matters within their jurisdiction is set by the constitution of the country in question but in all cases can be exercised only with the framework of procedural rules. This gives considerable significance to the question of who sets these rules and different countries have dealt with it in different ways. In some there is a special constitutional law with the same legal force as the constitution itself (Croatia), the majority of countries allow for regulation by an ordinary law, Macedonia gives the court the autonomy to create and change its own rules of procedure, while in Hungary the parliament fixes the rules on procedure at the suggestion of the constitutional court. The question of the appointment of constitutional judges was also considered and of the mechanisms for ensuring their impartiality and immunity. In the area of the courts' scope for providing normative control, considerable differences were found between the different countries. In some cases the courts' jurisdiction is limited to the normative acts of the respective parliaments, and there is generally no provision for challenging unconstitutional omissions by legislation and the executive. There are, however, some situations in which they may indirectly evaluate the constitutionality of legislative omissions, as when the constitution contains provision for a time limit on enacting legislation, when the parliament has made an omission in drafting a law which violates the constitutional provisions, or when a law grants favours to certain groups while excluding others, thereby violating the equal protection clause of the constitution. The control of constitutionality of normative acts can be either preventive or repressive, depending on whether it is implemented before or after the promulgation of the law or other enactment being challenged. In most countries in the region the constitutional courts provide only repressive control, although in Hungary and Poland the courts are competent to perform both preventive and repressive norm control, while in Romania the court's jurisdiction is limited to preventive norm control. Most countries are wary of vesting constitutional courts with preventive norm control because of the danger of their becoming too involved in the day-to-day political debate, but Mr. Cvetkovski points out certain advantages of such control. If combined with a short time limit it can provide early clarification of a constitutional issue, secondly it avoids the problems arising if a law that has been in force for some years is declared to be unconstitutional, and thirdly it may help preserve the prestige of the legislation. Its disadvantages include the difficulty of ascertaining the actual and potential consequences of a norm without the empirical experience of the administration and enforcement of the law, the desirability of a certain distance from the day-to-day arguments surrounding the political process of legislation, the possible effects of changing social and economic conditions, and the danger of placing obstacles in the way of rapid reactions to acute situations. In the case of repressive norm control, this can be either abstract or concrete. The former is initiated by the supreme state organs in order to protect abstract constitutional order and the latter is initiated by ordinary courts, administrative authorities or by individuals. Constitutional courts cannot directly oblige the legislature and executive to pass a new law and this remains a matter of legislative and executive political responsibility. In the case of Poland, the parliament even has the power to dismiss a constitutional court decision by a special majority of votes, which means that the last word lies with the legislature. As the current constitutions of Central and Eastern European countries are newly adopted and differ significantly from the previous ones, the courts' interpretative functions should ensure a degree of unification in the application of the constitution. Some countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Russia) provide for the constitutional courts' decisions to have a binding role on the constitutions. While their decisions inevitably have an influence on the actions of public bodies, they do not set criteria for political behaviour, which depends rather on the overall political culture and traditions of the society. All constitutions except that of Belarus, provide for the courts to have jurisdiction over conflicts arising from the distribution of responsibilities between different organs and levels in the country, as well for impeachment procedures against the head of state, and for determining the constitutionality of political parties (except in Belarus, Hungary, Russia and Slovakia). All the constitutions studied guarantee individual rights and freedoms and most courts have jurisdiction over complaints of violation of these rights by the constitution. All courts also have some jurisdiction over international agreements and treaties, either directly (Belarus, Bulgaria and Hungary) before the treaty is ratified, or indirectly (Croatia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Romania, Russia and Yugoslavia). In each country the question of who may initiate proceedings of norm control is of central importance and is usually regulated by the constitution itself. There are three main possibilities: statutory organs, normal courts and private individuals and the limitations on each of these is discussed in the report. Most courts are limited in their rights to institute ex officio a full-scale review of a point of law, and such rights as they do have rarely been used. In most countries courts' decisions do not have any binding force but must be approved by parliament or impose on parliament the obligation to bring the relevant law into conformity within a certain period. As a result, the courts' position is generally weaker than in other countries in Europe, with parliament remaining the supreme body. In the case of preventive norm control a finding of unconstitutionality may act to suspend the law and or to refer it back to the legislature, where in countries such as Romania it may even be overturned by a two-thirds majority. In repressive norm control a finding of unconstitutionality generally serves to take the relevant law out of legal force from the day of publication of the decision or from another date fixed by the court. If the law is annulled retrospectively this may or may not bring decisions of criminal courts under review, depending on the provisions laid down in the relevant constitution. In cases relating to conflicts of competencies the courts' decisions tend to be declaratory and so have a binding effect inter partes. In the case of a review of an individual act, decisions generally become effective primarily inter partes but is the individual act has been based on an unconstitutional generally binding normative act of the legislature or executive, the findings has quasi-legal effect as it automatically initiates special proceedings in which the law or other regulation is to be annulled or abrogated with effect erga omnes. This wards off further application of the law and thus further violations of individual constitutional rights, but also discourages further constitutional complaints against the same law. Thus the success of one individual's complaint extends to everyone else whose rights have equally been or might have been violated by the respective law. As the body whose act is repealed is obliged to adopt another act and in doing so is bound by the legal position of the constitutional court on the violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and rights of the complainant, in this situation the decision of the constitutional court has the force of a precedent.

Asia Comes to Main Street and May Learn to Speak Spanish: Globalization in a Poor Neighborhood in Worcester

This paper considers how and why an Asian enclave of small businesses has appeared in a poor neighborhood characterized by Puerto Rican and other Latino immigration in the post-industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts. We begin by examining the role of the US in the world system, and argue that the US hegemonic role and specific political economic aspects of global capitalism (ie. deindustrialization) account for some of the migration stream. Next, using socioeconomic and historical data, interviews, and observations, we outline the history of Worcester’s economy and immigration patterns. We demonstrate that the increasing economic inequality leaves few promising employment options for newcomers to Worcester. Drawing on existing literature on immigrant entrepreneurs and ethnic enclaves, we argue that some aspects of the literature appear to shed light on the Vietnamese enterprises which have so visibly appeared (e.g., ethnic niches), while others, (e.g., middle-man minority theory) are not now reflected in local conflict. We conclude by considering the prospects for immigrants to this neighborhood in light of its political economic context.

A graph theoretic approach to testing associations between disparate sources of functional genomic data

The last few years have seen the advent of high-throughput technologies to analyze various properties of the transcriptome and proteome of several organisms. The congruency of these different data sources, or lack thereof, can shed light on the mechanisms that govern cellular function. A central challenge for bioinformatics research is to develop a unified framework for combining the multiple sources of functional genomics information and testing associations between them, thus obtaining a robust and integrated view of the underlying biology. We present a graph theoretic approach to test the significance of the association between multiple disparate sources of functional genomics data by proposing two statistical tests, namely edge permutation and node label permutation tests. We demonstrate the use of the proposed tests by finding significant association between a Gene Ontology-derived "predictome" and data obtained from mRNA expression and phenotypic experiments for Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Moreover, we employ the graph theoretic framework to recast a surprising discrepancy presented in Giaever et al. (2002) between gene expression and knockout phenotype, using expression data from a different set of experiments.

Mid-Holocene Climate and Culture Change in the South Central Ande

This chapter reviews the history of study and the current status of Mid-Holocene climatic and cultural change in the South Central Andes, which host a wide range of different habitats from Pacific coastal areas up to extremely harsh cold and dry environments of the high mountain plateau, the altiplano or the puna. Paleoenvironmental information reveals high amplitude and rapid changes in effective moisture during the Holocene period and, consequently, dramatically changing environmental conditions. Therefore, this area is suitable to study the response of hunting and gathering societies to environmental changes, because the smallest variations in the climatic conditions have large impacts on resources and the living space of humans. This chapter analyzes environmental and paleoclimatic information from lake sediments, ice cores, pollen profiles, and geomorphic processes and relates these with the cultural and geographic settlement patterns of human occupation in the different habitats in the area of southern Peru, southwest Bolivia, northwest Argentina, and north Chile and puts in perspective of the early and late Holocene to present a representative range of environmental and cultural changes. It has been found that the largest changes took place around 9000 cal yr BP when the humid early Holocene conditions were replaced by extremely arid but highly variable climatic conditions. These resulted in a marked decrease of human occupation, “ecological refuges,” increased mobility, and an orientation toward habitats with relatively stable resources (such as the coast, the puna seca, and “ecological refuges”).

Eruptive history of Maderas volcano using new 40Ar/39Ar ages and geochemical analyses

Maderas volcano is a small, andesitic stratovolcano located on the island of Ometepe, in Lake Nicaragua, Nicaragua with no record of historic activity. Twenty-one samples were collected from lava flows from Maderas in 2010. Selected samples were analyzed for whole-rock geochemical data using ICP-AES and/or were dated using the 40Ar/39Ar method. The results of these analyses were combined with previously collected data from Maderas as well as field observations to determine the eruptive history of the volcano and create a geologic map. The results of the geochemical analyses indicate that Maderas is a typical Central American andesitic volcano similar to other volcanoes in Nicaragua and Costa Rica and to its nearest neighbor, Concepción volcano. It is different from Concepción in one important way – higher incompatible elements. Determined age dates range from 176.8 ± 6.1 ka to 70.5 ± 6.1 ka. Based on these ages and the geomorphology of the volcano which is characterized by a bisecting graben, it is proposed that Maderas experienced two clear generations of development with three separate phases of volcanism: initial build-up of the older cone, pre-graben lava flows, and post-graben lava flows. The ages also indicate that Maderas is markedly older than Concepción which is historically active. Results were also analyzed regarding geologic hazards. The 40Ar/39Ar ages indicate that Maderas has likely been inactive for tens of thousands of years and the risk of future volcanic eruptions is low. However, earthquake, lahar and landslide hazards exist for the communities around the volcano. The steep slopes of the eroded older cone are the most likely source of landslide and lahar hazards.

THE FANNED FLAMES OF DISCONTENT: A SOLIDARITY-INSPIRED HISTORY OF THE IDENTITY/IDEOLOGY, CULTURAL HISTORY, AND RHETORICAL STRATEGIES OF THE WOBBLIES DURING THE 1916 MINNESOTA IRON ORE STRIKE

Rooted in critical scholarship this dissertation is an interdisciplinary study, which contends that having a history is a basic human right. Advocating a newly conceived and termed, Solidarity-inspired History framework/practice perspective, the dissertation argues for and then delivers a restorative voice to working-class historical actors during the 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike. Utilizing an interdisciplinary methodological framework the dissertation combines research methods from the Humanities and the Social Sciences to form a working-class history that is a corrective to standardized studies of labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oftentimes class interests and power relationships determine the dominant perspectives or voices established in history and disregard people and organizations that run counter to, or in the face of, customary or traditional American themes of patriotism, the Protestant work ethic, adherence to capitalist dogma, or United States exceptionalism. This dissertation counteracts these traditional narratives with a unique, perhaps even revolutionary, examination of the 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike. The intention of this dissertation's critical perspective is to poke, prod, and prompt academics, historians, and the general public to rethink, and then think again, about the place of those who have been dislocated from or altogether forgotten, misplaced, or underrepresented in the historical record. Thus, the purpose of the dissertation is to give voice to historical actors in the dismembered past. Historical actors who have run counter to traditional American narratives often have their body of "evidence" disjointed or completely dislocated from the story of our nation. This type of disremembering creates an artificial recollection of our collective past, which de-articulates past struggles from contemporary groups seeking solidarity and social justice in the present. Class-conscious actors, immigrants, women, the GLBTQ community, and people of color have the right to be remembered on their own terms using primary sources and resources they produced. Therefore, similar to the Wobblies industrial union and its rank-and-file, this dissertation seeks to fan the flames of discontented historical memory by offering a working-class perspective of the 1916 Strike that seeks to interpret the actions, events, people, and places of the strike anew, thus restoring the voices of these marginalized historical actors.

Selection of preadapted populations allowed Senecio inaequidens to invade Central Europe

Invasive species often evolve rapidly in response to the novel biotic and abiotic conditions in their introduced range. Such adaptive evolutionary changes might play an important role in the success of some invasive species. Here, we investigated whether introduced European populations of the South African ragwort Senecio inaequidens (Asteraceae) have genetically diverged from native populations. We carried out a greenhouse experiment where 12 South African and 11 European populations were for several months grown at two levels of nutrient availability, as well as in the presence or absence of a generalist insect herbivore. We found that, in contrast to a current hypothesis, plants from introduced populations had a significantly lower reproductive output, but higher allocation to root biomass, and they were more tolerant to insect herbivory. Moreover, introduced populations were less genetically variable, but displayed greater plasticity in response to fertilization. Finally, introduced populations were phenotypically most similar to a subset of native populations from mountainous regions in southern Africa. Taking into account the species' likely history of introduction, our data support the idea that the invasion success of Senecio inaequidens in Central Europe is based on selective introduction of specific preadapted and plastic genotypes rather than on adaptive evolution in the introduced range.