Transience, Labor, and Nature: Itinerant Workers in the American West

2014 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Joanna Dyl
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
American West ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
The Face ◽  
Loss Of Contact ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Industrial Wage

AbstractThis article focuses on the tens of thousands of itinerant workers, also known as tramps or hoboes, who provided the primary labor force for the natural resource extraction industries of the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Itinerant workers' visceral encounters with nature differed from the experiences of most urban residents in this era of city growth and related anxiety about Americans' loss of contact with the natural world. This article argues that some hoboes embraced time spent in “wild” nature as an escape from work, and they consciously asserted their ability to appreciate nature in the face of claims that such appreciation was class-specific. As workers and as travelers, itinerant laborers experienced and knew nature in ways that reflected both their distinct circumstances as mobile industrial wage workers and the cultural context of a national obsession with nonhuman nature.

Mining, Political Settlements, and Inclusive Development in Peru

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Bebbington ◽  
Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai ◽  
Denise Humphreys Bebbington ◽  
Marja Hinfelaar ◽  
Cynthia A. Sanborn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Inclusive Development ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
Indigenous Participation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Distribution Of Power

This chapter examines how political factors have influenced mineral extraction, governance, and development in Peru since the late nineteenth century. It argues that the legacies of the past have weighed heavily in contemporary governance, but also points to periods in which shifting political alliances and agency aimed to alter past legacies and introduce positive institutional change. The chapter identifies three periods with distinct and relatively stable arrangements for the distribution of power. For the most recent, post-2000 period, it discusses how government responses to social conflict included the creation of institutions to redistribute mining rents, regulate environmental impacts, and promote indigenous participation. However, it argues that political instability and fragmentation have inhibited the effectiveness of these institutions and of longer-term policymaking in general, which in turn explains Peru’s persistent reliance on natural resource extraction and the challenges to more inclusive and sustainable development.

Gospel of Gold: Unearthing Religious Spaces in the Nineteenth-Century American West

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-135
Author(s):  
Brennan Keegan
Keyword(s):  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Gold Rush ◽  
Mining Communities ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
National Economic ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gold Miners

ABSTRACTLike much of the American West, a history of material conquest and natural resource extraction has precluded sustained study of Montana's religious past. This article uses the case of gold miners in the southwestern corner of the Territory of Montana from 1862 to 1889 to argue for the value of place-based studies of American religious experience. Rather than serving as a restrictive lens, place-based studies reveal religion in process. In Montana gold mining communities, religion was produced and reproduced through the labors of daily life, intricately tied to the limits and possibilities of place, never static or complete. Protestant missionaries adopted alternative tools of evangelism to fit the particularities of place. Those who succeeded found that the “get-saved-quick” approach of revivals appealed to the “get-rich-quick” lifestyle of mining communities. Dominated by male miners, defined by physical toil for uncertain reward, and subject to national economic trends, gold rush communities reveal how religion shifts and transforms in relation to labor, gender relations, and the natural world. Situated at the nexus of mineral extraction and missionary adaptation and appropriation, this article reflects on the ways in which religion in the United States develops across borders and through practical engagement with regional landscapes.

The Sino-Japanese War and the Collapse of the Qing and Confucian World Order in the Face of Japanese Imperialism and European Acquiescence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Sze-lok Leung ◽  
Bijun Xu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
East Asian ◽  
World Order ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Japanese Imperialism ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) has been perceived as a sign of a new East Asian power order, but the legitimacy of the war has yet to be clarified. The Japanese foreign minister Mutsu’s Kenkenroku shows that the reasons claimed by Japan were only pretexts for its ambition to put Korea under its control. The 1885 Convention of Tianjin, which was used to justify the Japanese behaviour, needs to be reinterpreted. The Chinese reaction can be understood by exploration into Confucianism, which opposed wars between equal peers. Meanwhile, the Western powers which invented and developed international law were self-interested and did little to prevent the war. The incident shows that international law, empowered by the strong states, failed to maintain peace efficiently in the late nineteenth century.

Montaigne on Monsters and Monstrosity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Long
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

Monsters take on many roles in Montaigne’s Essays, almost always in novel ways. They do not take on their usual roles as markers of other races, genders, or bodies, as threats or objects of repulsion. Rather, the authorial self and his work are seen as monstrous; Europeans and their culture are seen as monstrous; the knowledge systems that create monsters are themselves monstrous; man’s vanity is monstrous. But most of all, the monster is the provocation to meditation on man’s presumption, and on the limitations of human knowledge and power in the face of the world and the divine. As the sign of the diversity and mutability of the natural world and thus of divine omnipotence, the monstrous and unusual is valued by Montaigne over the normal or usual. It is also the mark of human creativity, dependent as it is on the vagaries of the imagination, new and radically different from the rhetorical, literary, and artistic norms. This is why the Essays themselves can be considered a monstrous work.

scholarly journals Afro-Communitarianism and the Role of Traditional African Healers in the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luís Cordeiro-Rodrigues ◽  
Thaddeus Metz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Traditional Healers ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
The Face

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to healthcare systems worldwide, and in Africa, given the lack of resources, they are likely to be even more acute. The usefulness of Traditional African Healers in helping to mitigate the effects of pandemic has been neglected. We argue from an ethical perspective that these healers can and should have an important role in informing and guiding local communities in Africa on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Particularly, we argue not only that much of the philosophy underlying Traditional African Medicine is adequate and compatible with preventive measures for COVID-19, but also that Traditional African Healers have some unique cultural capital for influencing and enforcing such preventive measures. The paper therefore suggests that not only given the cultural context of Africa where Traditional African Healers have a special role, but also because of the normative strength of the Afro-communitarian philosophy that informs it, there are good ethical reasons to endorse policies that involve Traditional Healers in the fight against COVID-19. We also maintain that concerns about Traditional African Healers objectionably violating patient confidentiality or being paternalistic are much weaker in the face of COVID-19.

Neanderthal and the fossilization of the Third World

2020 ◽  
pp. 030631272098346
Author(s):  
Ryan Higgitt1
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Third World ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Investment Bankers ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Third World

Neanderthal is the quintessential scientific Other. In the late nineteenth century gentlemen-scientists, including business magnates, investment bankers and lawmakers with interest in questions of human and human societal development, framed Europe’s Neanderthal and South Asia’s indigenous Negritos as close evolutionary kin. Simultaneously, they explained Neanderthal’s extinction as the consequence of an inherent backwardness in the face of fair-skinned, steadily-progressing newcomers to ancient Europe who behaved in ways associated with capitalism. This racialization and economization of Neanderthal helped bring meaning and actual legal reality to Negritos via the British Raj’s official ‘schedules of backward castes and tribes’. It also helped justify the Raj’s initiation of market-oriented reforms in order to break a developmental equilibrium deemed created when fair-skinned newcomers to ancient South Asia enslaved Negritos in an enduring caste system. Neanderthal was integral to the scientism behind the British construction of caste, and contributed to India’s becoming a principal ‘Third World’ target of Western structural adjustment policies as continuation of South Asia’s ‘evolution assistance’.

scholarly journals Arctic meltdown: A problematic property rights structure translates into poor resource management

SURG Journal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Olivia Mancuso
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Open Communication ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
The Commons

As access to the Arctic region continues to grow, many land-use issues have become increasingly prominent. The exposure of shorter shipping routes, unresolved maritime boundaries between the bordering states, and most importantly, the plethora of renewable and non-renewable resources in the region have created a strain on international relations between the states bordering the Arctic. Rising global temperatures have created the promise and opportunity of better access to natural resources in the coming years, raising the likelihood of potentially substantial economic gains to the bordering states. However, the current property rights structure in the Arctic, as governed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), dictates that the jurisdiction of each coastal nation state shall not exceed past 200 nautical miles beyond the coastline of each respective state. The goal of this report is to provide an assessment of the basic property rights that govern the Arctic territory in an attempt to illuminate how current and future inefficiencies in natural resource extraction and management can result from a poor property rights structure. The current property rights structure has led to a departure from an efficient allocation of rights and as a result currently operates under an anticommons scenario, while also setting the stage for a tragedy of the commons in the not so distant future. To move away from these sub-optimal outcomes and toward more efficient resource management, open communication, cooperation, and better defined property rights are important components needed to strengthen resource management among Arctic states. Keywords: Arctic land-use and property rights (assessment of); natural resource extraction and management (inefficiencies in); anticommons scenario; tragedy of the commons; Arctic Council; UNCLOS

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