I would hap­pily take George Wood­cock as a mod­el for trav­el writ­ing. He him­self out­lines the sources of his style: eigh­teenth cen­tury Eng­lish mod­els of clar­ity and pre­ci­sion, the writ­ings of ear­ly nat­u­ral­ists and sci­en­tists, and the direct influ­ence of his close friend, George Orwell. Wood­cock is best known as a his­to­rian of anar­chist the­ory, and in Cana­da as a cham­pion of Cana­dian lit­er­a­ture (espe­cially that of the west­ern provinces), but for decades he put bread on the table by trav­el­ing to remote cor­ners of the Earth and writ­ing about it in his crisp, evoca­tive prose. A fine descrip­tion of Sal­ish spir­it dance, for which he only had to trav­el a few miles from his doorstep, and a keen­ly obser­vant tour of the Cana­dian arc­tic show that he didn’t have to leave the coun­try to cre­ate the sense of won­der. But the strongest stuff is when he writ­ing about India, espe­cially the Tibetan Exile com­mu­ni­ties that he him­self helped fund and orga­nize, and in the jun­gle tem­ples of Cam­bo­dia. Read more »

This work brings me up to date on the cur­rent state of evi­dence and the­ory con­cern­ing the tran­si­tion to agri­cul­ture. Graeme Bark­er sum­ma­rizes many reports that I haven’t seen, includ­ing for­eign lan­guage ones that I couldn’t have. On the whole, it is grat­i­fy­ing to me, as it shows that both the weight of evi­dence and the weight of opin­ion have been grad­u­ally shift­ing towards my own views. The genet­ic, pale­ob­otan­i­cal, and pale­oiso­topic evi­dence is all push­ing it in that direc­tion. I’m hap­py to see that fish­ing is now accord­ed the promi­nent posi­tion that it deserves. In the long run, I think that fur­ther evi­dence will force the pro­fes­sion­als to make the “leap” that I feel is nec­es­sary. Cur­rently, pre­his­toric trade net­works, while rec­og­nized, are still seen as inci­den­tal, or irrel­e­vant to the tran­si­tion. A few the­o­rists posit that they play a role in fos­ter­ing elites and seden­tarism ― with the assump­tion that acqui­si­tion of “pres­tige goods” was the essence of such trade. I believe, on the oth­er hand, that the process of sub­stitut­ing goods for­merly import­ed through this trade sys­tem by local pro­duc­tion, is the heart of the mat­ter. Pre­his­toric trade, I think we will dis­cover, was over­whelm­ingly con­cerned with food sta­ples, wide­ly used prod­ucts, and “mass mar­ket” tech­nol­ogy, with “pres­tige goods” mere­ly a side-effect. The spread of agri­cul­ture was mere­ly one aspect of an ongo­ing macro-eco­nom­ic process that has its roots in the ear­ly devel­op­ment of homo-sapi­ens, and not a dis­rup­tion of a sta­tic or “non-eco­nom­ic” pre-agri­cul­tur­al soci­ety, com­ing out of the blue. None of the pre­vail­ing “push” or “pull” visu­al­iza­tions of the adop­tion of agri­cul­ture rec­og­nize the impor­tance of this process. The archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence, espe­cially in north­ern Europe, screams out to be inter­preted in this way. It will mere­ly take a small con­cep­tual shift to make it hap­pen. I would real­ly love to sit down with some of the peo­ple who are close to mak­ing the leap, and argue them into it.

16395. (Thomas T. Allsen) The Roy­al Hunt in Eurasian History
16396. (Philip K. Dick) The Zap Gun ― Being that Most Excel­lent Account of Tra­vails and
. . . . . Con­tayn­ing Many Pretie His­to­ries By Him Set Foorth in Come­ly Colours and
. . . . . Most Delight­ful­ly Dis­coursed Upon as Beau­ti­fied and Well Fur­nished Divers
. . . . . Good and Com­mend­able in the Gesi­ht of Men of That Most Lam­en­ta­ble Wepens
. . . . . Fasoun Design­er Lars Pow­derdry and What Near­ly Became of Him Due to
. . . . . Cer­tain Most Dread­ful Forces
16397. (Charles Allen) God’s Ter­ror­ists ― The Wah­habi Cult and the Hid­den Roots of 
. . . . . Mod­ern Jihad
16398. (Peter Ack­royd) Thames ― Sacred River
16399. (Michael H. Shu­man) The Small-Mart Rev­o­lu­tion ― How Local Busi­ness­es are 
. . . . . Beat­ing the Glob­al Competition
16400. (Robert McCloskey) Homer Price
16401. (David K. Wyatt) Thai­land, a Short History
16402. (Edward Schneier) Craft­ing Con­sti­tu­tion­al Democ­ra­cies ― The Pol­i­tics of Institutional 
. . . . . Design
16403. (Jana Švábová & Tomáš Rygl) Prague
16404. (Jonathan Jar­rett) [in blog A Cor­ner of Tenth-Cen­tu­ry Europe] Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary
. . . . . Con­ver­sa­tion: Veg­etable Barter [arti­cle]
16405. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberger’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] The Pennsic War [arti­cle]
(Rich Coad –ed.) Sense of Won­der Sto­ries ― Issue Zero, Feb­ru­ary 2007 [zine]
. . . . 16406. (Rich Coad) What This Coun­try Needs [pref­ace]
. . . . 16407. (Bruce Town­ley) Mod­el Cit­i­zen [arti­cle]
. . . . 16408. (Rich Coad) The Built a Crooked Uni­verse [arti­cle]
. . . . 16408. (Rich Coad) Spung! [arti­cle]
. . . . 16409. (Ian Maule) I Dood It ! [arti­cle]
(Rich Coad –ed.) Sense of Won­der Sto­ries # 1, 2007 [zine]
. . . . 16410. (Rich Coad) Won­der­to­r­i­al [pref­ace]
. . . . 16411. (Randy Byers) The Ear­ly Days of a Bet­ter Genre [arti­cle]
. . . . 16412. (Bruce Town­ley) The Shad­ows Out of Space [arti­cle]
. . . . 16413. (Robert Licht­man) Love­craft In The Real World [arti­cle]
. . . . 16414. (Bill Burns) Thomas Edi­son and the Elec­tric Pen [arti­cle]
. . . . 16415. Let­ters from Chris Gar­cia, Mark Plum­mer, Har­ry Bell, John Pur­cell, Jerry 
. . . . . . . . Kauf­man, Claire Bri­a­ley, and Cy Chau­vin [let­ters]
(Rich Coad –ed.) Sense of Won­der Sto­ries #2, July 2008 [zine]
. . . . 16416. (Rich Coad) Won­der­to­r­i­al [pref­ace]
. . . . 16417. (Bruce Gille­spie) The Good Sol­dier: George Turn­er as Com­bat­ive Crit­ic [arti­cle]
. . . . 16418. (Bruce Town­ley) A Dream Flight [arti­cle]
. . . . 16419. (Peter West­on) Heresy, Maybe? [arti­cle]
. . . . 16420. (Gra­ham Charnock) J. G. Bal­lard, A Jour­ney of Infer­ence [arti­cle]
. . . . 16421. Let­ters from Robert Licht­man, John Pur­cell, Eric May­er, John Nielsen-Hall, Jim 
. . . . . . . . Lin­wood, Mog Decarnin, James Bacon [let­ters]
16422. (Eric L. Jones) Cul­tures Merg­ing ― A His­tor­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Cri­tique of Culture
(Robert A. Hein­lein) The Unpleas­ant Pro­fes­sion of Johnathan Hoag:
. . . . 16423. [3] (Robert A. Hein­lein) The Unpleas­ant Pro­fes­sion of Jonathan Hoag [sto­ry]
. . . . 16424. [3] (Robert A. Hein­lein) The Man Who Trav­eled in Ele­phants [= The Elephant 
. . . . . . . . Cir­cuit] [sto­ry]
. . . . 16425. [4] (Robert A. Hein­lein) “All You Zom­bies—” [sto­ry]
. . . . 16426. [2] (Robert A. Hein­lein) They [sto­ry]
. . . . 16427. [2] (Robert A. Hein­lein) Our Fair City [sto­ry]
. . . . 16428. [2] (Robert A. Hein­lein) “—And He Built a Crooked House” [sto­ry]
16429. (Mar­jorie Man­del­stan Balz­er) The Tenac­i­ty of Eth­nic­i­ty: A Siber­ian Saga in Global 
. . . . . Perspective 
(Yaron Matras, Peter Bakker & Hris­to Kyuchukov –ed.) The Typol­o­gy and Dialec­tol­ogy of Romani:
. . . . 16430. (Peter Bakker & Yaron Matras) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 16431. (Peter Bakker) Ath­e­mat­ic Mor­phol­o­gy in Romani: The Bor­row­ing of a 
. . . . . . . . Bor­row­ing Pat­tern [arti­cle]
. . . . 16432. (Vik­tor Elšik) Towards a Mor­phol­o­gy-based Typol­o­gy of Romani [arti­cle]
. . . . 16433. (Yaron Matras) The Typol­o­gy of Case Rela­tions and Case Lay­er Dis­tri­b­u­tion in 
. . . . . . . . Romani [arti­cle]
. . . . 16434. (Vít Bubeník) Object Dou­bling in Romani and the Balkan Lan­guages [arti­cle]
. . . . 16435. (Nor­bert Boret­zky) Sup­ple­tive Forms of the Romani Cop­u­la: “ovel / avel”
. . . . . . . . [arti­cle]
. . . . 16436. (Mile­na Hüb­schan­nová & Vít Bubeník) Causatives in Slo­vak and Hungarian 
. . . . . . . . Romani [arti­cle]
. . . . 16437. (Bir­git Igla) The Romani Dialect of the Rhodopes [arti­cle]
. . . . 16438. (Petra Cech & Mozes F. Hein­schink) The Dialect of the Basket-Weavers 
. . . . . . . . [Sepečides] of Izmir [arti­cle]
. . . . 16439. (Vic­tor A. Fried­man) Lin­guis­tic Form and Con­tent in the Romani-lan­guage Press 
. . . . . . . . of the Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia [arti­cle]
. . . . 16440. (Ian F. Han­cock) George Borrow’s Romani [arti­cle]
16441. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberger’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] Excit­ing Views on Scholarship
. . . . . [arti­cle]
16442. (Michael Drout) [in blog Wormtalk and Slugs­peak] A Mod­el ―But Would it Work if it 
. . . . . Were Gen­er­al­ized? [arti­cle]
16443. (Michael Drout) [in blog Wormtalk and Slugs­peak] Method: Push the Metaphor Until it 
. . . . . Breaks ― or, Mock­ing “Imbri­cat­ed” Yet Again [arti­cle]
16444. (Tu Thanh Ha, Bill Cur­ry & Anne McIl­roy) Inspec­tors Failed to Adopt More Rigorous 
. . . . . U.S. Mea­sures [arti­cle]

“Cul­ture” is a slip­pery con­cept, used in many dif­fer­ent ways by his­to­ri­ans, anthro­pol­o­gists and econ­o­mists. Jones’ book is more a sur­vey than the cri­tique implied by the title, but it is an extreme­ly use­ful and well-pre­sent­ed sur­vey. I pre­fer this, since it is best to start off with some idea of who has thought and said what about the sub­ject before plung­ing into debates. Pre­sump­tions about cul­ture, espe­cially about whether it deter­mines how peo­ple act eco­nom­i­cally, or mere­ly shapes itself on the basis of how peo­ple must act eco­nom­i­cally, under­lie all sorts of the­o­ries and descrip­tions in the three fields. Usu­ally these pre­sump­tions are shared by some group of thinkers with­out them being explic­itly stat­ed. Argu­ments between dif­fer­ent groups, with dif­fer­ent pre­sump­tions, usu­ally result in con­fu­sion. But a num­ber of works, in all three dis­ci­plines, either illus­trate or make explic­it par­tic­u­lar ideas of culture’s rela­tion to behav­iour and economies. Schol­ars have tak­en their cues from these sem­i­nal works, and pol­i­cy-mak­ers adhered to any of sev­eral con­tra­dic­tory atti­tudes gen­er­ated by them. Some have been down­right sil­ly (such as “the end of his­tory” and “clash of civ­i­liza­tions” tom-fool­ery). Jones presents most of them fair­ly dis­pas­sion­ately, but he is obvi­ously impa­tient with the stu­pider ones, and does not hide it. Of spe­cial inter­est to me is his sen­si­ble dis­cus­sion of the “Asian Val­ues” mys­tique, pro­moted by many East Asian econ­o­mists and politi­cians, and often uncrit­i­cally accept­ed else­where. (He cites Steve Muhlberg­er and myself in this dis­cus­sion, so I could hard­ly fail to find it inter­est­ing.) On the whole, Jones gets the horse in front of the cart rather than the oth­er way round. He plumps for com­mon-sense cau­sa­tion when it is pos­si­ble, and holds back his con­clu­sions when cau­sa­tion can­not be dis­cerned, rather than appeal to enig­matic col­lec­tive properties.

In the jar­gon of sci­ence fic­tion fan­dom, Rich Coad is pub­lish­ing a “ser­con fanzine” — an ama­teur pub­li­ca­tion that empha­sizes seri­ous dis­cus­sion of sci­ence fic­tion lit­er­a­ture and issues, rather than social chat­ter, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal writ­ings, or in-group humour. Long before the exis­tence of blog­ging or the web, fanzines were the vehi­cle that car­ried much of the same func­tions and sen­si­bil­ity. A few sci­ence fic­tion fanzines of the old-fash­ioned print-on-paper vari­ety still sur­vive, but few­er still are “ser­con”. There’s a spe­cial plea­sure in hold­ing the stuff in your hands, and my hat goes off to Rich for fac­ing the daunt­ing bar­ri­ers of high postal rates and com­put­er-gen­er­a­tion apa­thy. Read more »

When I returned from up north, I found this book in the mail — a won­der­ful gift from my friend Fil­ip Marek in Prague. It’s a beau­ti­ful, high­ly detailed guide to the medieval, renais­sance and baroque archi­tec­tural trea­sures of Prague. Fil­ip knows how much I love those build­ings, and how much this is a treat for me. The above pho­to is from else­where, but it gives you some idea of Prague’s charms, if you haven’t been there.

I would like to see every­one involved with urban reform and with demo­c­ra­tic activism to read this book. There is a pow­er­ful under­cur­rent of change going on in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, def­i­nitely some­thing mov­ing up from the grass roots and ignored by both the media and the elite polit­i­cal drones. It’s some­thing far more cre­ative and sig­nif­i­cant than a mere flaky fash­ion for “anti-glob­al­ism” demon­stra­tions, with which the read­er might at first con­fuse it. It’s the fact that peo­ple — ordi­nary peo­ple — are start­ing to ques­tion the ortho­dox­ies they have been taught about how things “have to be”, and real­iz­ing that their self-inter­est, as well as their future, depends on re-invig­o­rat­ing local eco­nomic and polit­i­cal pow­er. You would nev­er guess it from fol­low­ing the media, but Amer­i­cans and Cana­di­ans are start­ing to shake off the pas­siv­ity and mor­bid fatal­ism that their rulers have ener­get­i­cally cul­ti­vated. They’ve begun to notice that Wal-Mart mov­ing into your neigh­bour­hood pro­duces pover­ty, not pros­per­ity, that North Amer­i­can soci­ety has been rapid­ly hemor­ag­ing cash into a “glob­al” empire of multi­na­tion­als-kings-dic­ta­tors, and that if they don’t do some­thing about it they are going to become help­less pau­pers. Shu­man describes some of the things that peo­ple have been doing, most­ly in small scale entre­pre­neur­ial and social action, to turn the tide. His analy­sis of the issues and process­es is not entire­ly accu­rate — he still suf­fers from the con­fu­sion of cat­e­gor­i­cal ter­mi­nol­ogy, such as the idi­otic “left-right” con­cept, that crip­ples reform think­ing — but he is def­i­nitely on the right track. Read more »

This is an excel­lent book, which demon­strates that his­to­ri­ans do not have to be sequestered in con­ti­nen­tal ghet­tos. Allsen is able to cite the Armen­ian and Geor­gian Chron­i­cles, the clas­sics of Indi­an and Per­sian lit­er­a­ture, and the vast bureau­cratic doc­u­men­ta­tion of Chi­na with the same ease and famil­iar­ity as when he cites stan­dard Euro­pean sources. “Eura­sia” actu­ally means some­thing to him. In oth­er words, the man is mod­ern. With this kind of atti­tude, he is capa­ble of address­ing a phe­nom­e­non that oth­er his­to­ri­ans have ignored: the Roy­al Hunt. This insti­tu­tion — which often called up an impres­sive chunk of a society’s resources — per­sisted as a con­tin­u­ously inter­con­nected phe­nom­e­non from the ear­li­est antiq­uity to near-mod­ern times. It demon­strates that the whole super­con­ti­nent of Afro-Eura­sia has been a cul­tural con­tin­uum through­out record­ed his­tory, with ideas and cus­toms trav­el­ing back and forth from end to end to end. Allsen tries to get some sort of han­dle on how and why the rulers of states engaged in spec­tac­u­lar col­lec­tive hunt­ing expe­di­tions and main­tained vast “game parks”, a cus­tom which tran­scended all the bar­ri­ers of empire, lan­guage, ecosys­tem, and reli­gion. His work has no “the­ory” behind it, only a relent­less curios­ity and a respect for the sources. The only defi­ciency that I found was that he seemed to nev­er ask the ques­tion “what hap­pened to the meat?”. It’s my hunch that he could have reached a more com­plete under­stand­ing of the phe­nom­e­non if he had explored the issues of who got to eat the vast quan­ti­ties of meat that these hunts pro­duced, how it was dis­trib­uted, and how this dis­tri­b­u­tion served social and polit­i­cal ends. I’ve noticed that there is a sim­i­lar absense of the ques­tion in stud­ies of Rome’s “games”.