Forest Extraction to Theme Parks: The Modern History of Land Change

Author(s):  
Peter Klepeis

Modern-day deforestation in the southern Yucatán peninsular region began in earnest in the late 1960s. The composition of the region’s forest and options for land uses, however, were partly shaped by eighty years of activity leading up to the 1960s, just as it was by the ancient Maya over a millennium ago (Ch. 2). Most of the modern impacts began in the twentieth century and are traced here through three major episodes of use and occupation of the region: forest extraction, 1880–1983; big projects and forest clearing, 1975–82; and land-use diversification, conservation, and tourism, 1983 to the present. Each episode corresponds to different visions of how the region should be used and to different human–environment conditions shaping the kind, location, and magnitude of land change. Understanding these changing conditions underpins all other assessments of the SYPR project. The episode of forest extraction spans the bulk of the modern history of the region. It began in the late nineteenth century and ended with the demise of parastatal logging companies in the 1970s and early 1980s, due primarily to the depletion of reserves of mahogany and Spanish cedar throughout the region. Before this episode fully expired, a new one, that of big projects and forest clearing began, marked by large-scale rice and cattle schemes undertaken in the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s. This episode accelerated the road construction that began in the latter part of the 1960s, and it witnessed expanded settlement linked to colonization programs. The Mexican debt crisis of 1982 brought this episode to an abrupt halt, triggering the search for a new alternative to developing the frontier. This search, made in the context of neoliberal economic reforms, led to the establishment of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in 1989 and other, more recent initiatives, defining the most recent episode of land-use diversification, conservation, and tourism. From the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization to the twentieth century, the occupation of the region was sparse (Turner 1990), the forest serving as a refuge during the colonial period for those Maya fleeing Spanish domination along the coasts and in the north, especially during the Caste War of the middle nineteenth century, when the northern Maya revolted against Mexico (Jones 1989).

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1060-1083
Author(s):  
Ruthann Clay ◽  
Peter N Stearns

Abstract Gratitude is much discussed these days as an area of research in the positive psychology movement. But the quality has not been given much historical attention—despite the surge of historical attention to other types of emotional response. This article lays out the evidence for extensive reliance on gratitude in the nineteenth-century United States and its measurable decline in the twentieth century—at least until the recent revival. From childrearing materials to comments on etiquette, both references and conventions shifted measurably. The essay goes on to establish the context for these changes, relating gratitude to developments in gender relations and, particularly, to a heightened sense of self and, arguably, of self-entitlement. Current efforts to promote gratitude operate against the contemporary historical dynamic, and the resulting tensions deserve attention from historians and psychologists alike.


Author(s):  
Ellen T. Harris

The performance history of Dido and Aeneas in the nineteenth century is marked by two, seemingly conflicting, trends: attempts to create a more authentic score and the increased use of added orchestration. Many of the most important contributions to the reception history of the opera in this era, including new editions and major revivals, can be attributed to the faculties at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music. The founding of the Purcell Society by William Cummings, his biography of the composer, and his edition of the opera mark a watershed in the modern history of the opera. Within the so-called “English Musical Renaissance” of musical composition, Dido and Aeneas became a stylistic touchstone to which composers through the mid-twentieth century returned.


Author(s):  
Sheila Whiteley

Every place has its local history of queerness, as shown in this chronicle of queerness in Brighton, England. The author sketches an account of Brighton’s non-normative sexual practices and sexually dissident residents and visitors, especially from the late nineteenth century on. The discussion identifies many gay clubs and other sites of queer community. Two examples illustrate aspects of mid-twentieth-century queer culture: the 1960s radio comedy “Round the Horne,” rich in camp humor and using the queer underground language Polari; and a recent poem by Brighton poet John McCullough that shows nostalgic affection for Polari. The author includes information about her own initiation into the gay world of Brighton. The queer culture of Brighton has produced extensive historical and present-day local self-documentation on websites, which provides much of the information for this discussion.


2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Allmon

Our images of dinosaurs have changed greatly and repeatedly since the group was first recognized in 1842. Although these changes have frequently been noted, their causes have not been adequately investigated. The history of dinosaur iconography since the publication of the Origin of Species can be usefully divided into at least four phases. During each of these phases, images of dinosaurs have been affected as much by what scientists thought dinosaurs should look like according to their particular views of the evolutionary process, as by empirical information derived from analysis of fossils. In the late nineteenth century, when paleontological views of evolution were diverse, views of dinosaurs were highly pluralistic, with some seen as slow and ponderous and others seen as agile and active. In the early twentieth century, as paleontological opinions about evolution narrowed around progressive orthogenesis, the spectrum of images narrowed to a view of almost all dinosaurs as primitive, slow, and stupid. The advent of the modern synthetic view of evolution in the 1940s had little effect on dinosaur science, and it was not until the late 1960s that dinosaurs would be viewed as advanced in many respects, harkening back to ideas first put forward just after Darwin.


Transfers ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Torma

This article deals with the history of underwater film and the role that increased mobility plays in the exploration of nature. Drawing on research on the exploration of the ocean, it analyzes the production of popular images of the sea. The entry of humans into the depths of the oceans in the twentieth century did not revitalize myths of mermaids but rather retold oceanic myths in a modern fashion. Three stages stand out in this evolution of diving mobility. In the 1920s and 1930s, scenes of divers walking under water were the dominant motif. From the 1940s to the 1960s, use of autonomous diving equipment led to a modern incarnation of the “mermen“ myth. From the 1950s to the 1970s, cinematic technology was able to create visions of entire oceanic ecosystems. Underwater films contributed to the period of machine-age exploration in a very particular way: they made virtual voyages of the ocean possible and thus helped to shape the current understanding of the oceans as part of Planet Earth.


1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin H. Ackerknecht

SynopsisPsychosomatic medicine begins with the Greeks. It finds a place in Galen's system as diseases of passion, a concept current until the middle of the nineteenth century. The great French and German clinicians of the nineteenth century were all familiar with psychosomatic diseases. During the twentieth century the field was for a while monopolized by psychoanalysts. The psychosomatic specialist is essentially the doctor who listens to the patient.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-609
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ferraris

In this paper I try to sketch a brief history of new realism. Starting from nineteenth century idealism, I then move on to discuss twentieth century postmodernism, which, I argue, is the heir of idealism and the theoretical enemy of new realism. Finally, I offer a reconstruction of how and why contemporary new realism came into being and propose a few remarks on its future perspectives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-596
Author(s):  
Carlos S. Alvarado

There is a long history of discussions of mediumship as related to dissociation and the unconscious mind during the Nineteenth Century. After an overview of relevant ideas and observations from the mesmeric, hypnosis, and spiritualistic literatures, I focus on the writings of Jules Baillarger, Alfred Binet, Paul Blocq, Théodore Flournoy, Jules Héricourt, William James, Pierre Janet, Ambroise August Liébeault, Frederic W.H. Myers, Julian Ochorowicz, Charles Richet, Hippolyte Taine, Paul Tascher, and Edouard von Hartmann. While some of their ideas reduced mediumship solely to intra-psychic processes, others considered as well veridical phenomena. The speculations of these individuals, involving personation, and different memory states, were part of a general interest in the unconscious mind, and in automatisms, hysteria, and hypnosis during the period in question. Similar ideas continued into the Twentieth Century.


Lituanistica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurynas Giedrimas

The article deals with the households of the nobles and peasants in the first half of the nineteenth century in Užventis parish, Samogitia. In the middle of the twentieth century, John Hajnal and Peter Laslett started researching the history of resident households. The researchers formulated theoretical and methodological foundations for household analysis and encouraged other historians and demographers to undertake similar studies. The researchers who analysed the households of Central and Eastern Europe either refuted or corrected many of the statements proposed by John Hajnal and Peter Laslett and established that the most common household in Central and Eastern Europe was a nuclear household, although in many cases it was also possible to find an extended household. However, it was not clarified at what age people started building new households and which household model dominated in Samogitia. Also, it was not known what the difference between a household of nobles and a household of peasants was. The data on the households of the nobles and peasants also interconnected. The households of landlords were bigger than the households of peasants and the petty nobility, because the menage of a landlord used to be part of the household. After analysing the aforementioned data, it has been discovered that in the first half of the nineteenth century, nuclear household dominated Užventis parish. Extended household models were often found as well. The Catholic inhabitants of Užventis parish married late and had a child every two years. Around 3500 Catholic residents lived in Užventis parish in the first half of the nineteenth century. The analysis of the data showed that nuclear household dominated the Užventis parish in the first half of the nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Vernon Bogdanor

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of the British constitution in the twentieth century. The findings reveal that while there was widespread confidence in the virtues of the constitution at the beginning of the twentieth century, that confidence seemed to have evaporated. This loss of confidence coincided with a collapse of national self-confidence that had begun in the 1960s when British political and intellectual elites began to come to terms with the fact that Great Britain was falling economically behind her continental competitors.


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