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Animism has been a topic of interest for some time, and several innovative approaches challenging earlier conventional perspectives have been presented. Inspired by the recent thinking on this classical anthropological subject, this article explores conceptualizations of the human‐spirit, or transdimensional, relationship central to any theory on animism. Drawing on fieldwork among the Matsigenka of the tropical lowlands of southeastern Peru, conceptions of and motivations for the interaction with spirits are examined. For a society that places high moral value on equality and conviviality, the emphasis on discrimination and hierarchical relations that is prominent in many studies is inappropriate. As an alternative more congenial to the Matsigenka ethos, the article stresses the convivial qualities of sharing and mutual trust. Both these virtues play down the importance of hierarchy and discrimination allowing us to understand what motivates the Matsigenka to enter into an often arduous and demanding relationship with spirits.

Historical ecology is a new interdisciplinary research program concerned with comprehending temporal and spatial dimensions in the relationships of human societies to local environments and the cumulative global effects of these relationships. Historical ecology contains core postulates that concern qualitative types of human-mediated disturbance of natural environments and the effect of these on species diversity, among other parameters. A central term used in historical ecology to situate human behavior and agency in the environment is the landscape, as derived from historical geography, instead of the ecosystem, which is from systems ecology. Historical ecology is similar to nonequilibrium dynamic theory, but differs in its postulate of human-mediated disturbance as a principle of landscape transformation. Such disturbances counterintuitively may involve anthropogenic primary and secondary succession that result in net increases of alpha and even beta diversity. Applied historical ecology can supply the reference conditions of time depth and traditional knowledge to restore past landscapes.

Over the past few years, a push to reverse the overall paltry state of science academies in the developing world has emerged as a central theme in numerous reports and has garnered the attention of a variety of organizations, including The National Academies in the United States. In particular, the establishment and maintenance of well-organized and functioning national academies of science throughout Africa is becoming an increasingly essential and crucial element of their overall prospects for development. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to analyze the particular institutional traits and characteristics related to African science academies—including their small member-ships, lack of finances, little experience with policy advising, and worries about government backlash—and to argue that, because of these factors, these institutions must work to find suitable activities that will allow them to leverage whatever resources they do have to become effective policy advisors for government.

This article investigates complexities and dynamics of water governance reforms at a number of levels in the Mekong Region. It looks comparatively at countries within the region and at the Mekong as a transboundary basin. The study takes catchment management processes as a focus for reform agendas related to water and relates water management in a river basin context to wider issues of governance reform. A central argument is that the effectiveness of water governance cannot be assessed in terms of simple environmental, economic, or social outcomes, or even against a more comprehensive "triple bottom line." Governance agendas and definitions are too diverse, and stakeholder interests too complex, to come up with a straightforward "best practice" of catchment-oriented water governance toward which policy reform should aspire. Rather, catchment governance in the Mekong is an arena for negotiating more sustainable, equitable, and productive use and management of water at multiple scales.

One of the Nordic Council of Ministers' long-term goals is to support the Nordic countries to mainstream a gender equality perspective into the national budget and budgetary process. A further aim is to ensure that this perspective is given prominence in change work in the Nordic welfare states. One such area of work is referred to internationally as gender budgeting. This is the final report of a joint three-year project between Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The finance ministries and ministries responsible for gender equality affairs have engaged in development work, exchanged ideas and experience concerning the work of mainstreaming a gender equality perspective into the national budget and budgetary process in each country. The aim of the report is to present the knowledge and experience that the project has helped generate and to provide recommendations on how gender budgeting in central government administrations may be successfully accomplished.

This paper reviews Finnish economic history during the 'long' twentieth century with a special emphasis on policies for equity and growth. We argue that Finland developed from a poor, vulnerable, and conflict-prone country to a modern economy in part through policies geared at both growth and equity, such as land reform and compulsory schooling. The state participated in economic activity both indirectly and directly in the post-war period, implementing many social policy reforms that facilitated the functioning of the labour market and led to greater equity. Centralised collective bargaining was just one of the many means through which central government intervened in the economy. Both the long-run growth record and the equality of different kinds of economic outcomes are fairly positive. This suggests that facilitating economic growth through such policies that further more equitable outcomes may at least in the case of Finland have met with some success.

One of the Nordic Council of Ministers' long-term goals is to support the Nordic countries to mainstream a gender equality perspective into the national budget and budgetary process. A further aim is to ensure that this perspective is given prominence in change work in the Nordic welfare states.One such area of work is referred to internationally as gender budgeting. This is the final report of a joint three-year project between Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The finance ministries and ministries responsible for gender equality affairs have engaged in development work, exchanged ideas and experience concerning the work of mainstreaming a gender equality perspective into the national budget and budgetary process in each country. The aim of the report is to present the knowledge and experience that the project has helped generate and to provide recommendations on how gender budgeting in central government administrations may be successfully accomplished.

'South - South cooperation' and 'regionalism' have been the buzzwords used to describe new forms of inter-state collaboration after the end of the Cold War. This paper attempts to trace the emerging linkages between ASEAN - particularly Malaysia - and the newly independent states of Central Asia. It argues that it is a revival rather than an establishment of new contacts on the political, economic and security level that takes place here. Not only can contacts between the two regions be traced back to the ancient Khorazan, but also, during the Cold War era, trade, non-alignment and multilateral cooperation were already important issues; they are reformulated and reshaped today. Cold war security has turned into post-11 September terrorism concerns, the debate on shared Asian and Islamic values has replaced former rigid ideological barriers, and ultimately contacts between the regions' corporate sectors have led to the emergence of altogether 'alternative foreign policies'.

The aim of this article is to delineate the symbolic position of the Slavonic, and in particular the Czech, in German-language Austrian culture of the period 1890–1940. My approach will be informed by psychoanalysis. A subsidiary aim is to try to demonstrate uses of psychoanalysis in the study of central European culture. What is at issue here is an historical set of social power relations that find their expression in culture, that is to say, in art and literature, and that can be interpreted by psychoanalysis. All too often psychoanalysis avoids the social and the political outside the framework of the individual and her or his predictable traumas emanating from domestic life.1 This article, however, constitutes an exercise in inter- and intra-cultural psychoanalysis: intra-cultural as an investigation of psychoanalytic dynamics within German-language culture; inter-cultural as an examination of the relationship between German-language and Slav cultures in psychoanalytic terms.

This article introduces a critical approach to the analysis of post-conflict peacebuilding (PCPB). It acknowledges the latter's complex nature, questions sophisticated social engineering policies, is grounded in a historical understanding and subscribes to local ownership. The complexities, subtleties and ambiguities of historical processes of state formation across Europe and the world point towards the need for a similar sensitization in the approach to PCPB through externally driven state-building. This sensitization can best be captured through three issue-areas: security, welfare and representation. These themes are commonly seen as the core functions of modern states and are thus central to PCPB. The challenge for the international community hence revolves around rethinking several core concepts, such as state-building, security, development aid, civil society and sovereignty. Overall, such a critical approach to PCPB does not negate the possibility of social engineering, but questions its limits and the usefulness of blueprint solutions.

A computer simulation study is conducted to explore the interaction of alternative segmentation strategies and the competitiveness of the market environment, a goal that can neither be tackled by purely analytic approaches as there is neither sufficient and undistorted real market data available to deduct findings in an empirical manner. The fundamental idea of the simulation is to increase competition in the artificial marketplace and to study the influence of segmentation strategy and varying market conditions on organisational success. Success/failure is measured using two performance criteria: number of units sold and survival of organisations over 36 periods of time. Three central findings emerge: (1) the more competitive a market environment, the more successful the concentrated market segmentation strategy; (2) increased levels of marketing budgets do not favour organisations following a concentrated segmentation strategy; and (3) frequent rethinking and strategy modification impairs organisations that concentrate on target segments.

This study contributes to the emerging international literature on women's soccer by exploring how South African women are negotiating material and ideological constraints to participate in the historically masculine sport of football. Special attention is given to situating athletes' micro-level experiences within macro-level social structures, including the material legacies of colonialism and apartheid. This analysis is based on a multi-methods approach that includes interview, survey, documentary, and observational data collected during 1999 and 2000. Theoretically, this analysis draws upon various frameworks characteristic of feminist sport literatures as well as theoretical insights of Black feminists writing within and beyond Southern Africa. The findings show that a strong ethic of care within the women's soccer community and strategies of creative resistance in the everyday lives of South African women soccer athletes are central to challenging exclusionary practices in soccer. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.