eSharp

An Ecology of Invasion:  The Environmental Effects of California’s Missions

Mary Kristen Layne

An environmental history of the 18^th century California missions provides a cross-cutting depiction of the Spanish mission movement, explaining the shift in hegemony from the perspectives of both the Spanish crown and the indigenous people groups. The emerging conflict comes down to a matter of land usage, in which Spanish agricultural, economic, and defensive concerns in the New World subsumed the indigenous lifestyle of the Native Californians.

The Spanish established their California holdings to guard their interests in Mexico from external invasion, and to open up international trading opportunities. The species of plants, animals, and pathogens they introduced, both intentionally and unintentionally, proved to be the downfall of the California landscape and Native Americans, who had evolved separately from the highly competitive European species.

The Indians of California were intimately tied to the land and its natural processes. As these processes were upset by different methods of Spanish landscape usage, the Indian culture struggled to continue as it once had. In order to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape, Native Americans accepted the mission culture, attempting to merge it with their own. However, the two cultures proved to be so at odds that the demise of the Native Americans occurred as a byproduct of the attempted merger. 

Keywords

California, missions, environment, indigenous, environmental history

The Rise of British TV Formats: An exploration of the British Predominance in Format Trade through the Positioning of British Non-fictional Entertainment Formats in the German Television Market 

Josephin V. Meyer  

Television formats have become a global phenomenon in recent years, creating billions of pounds for the international media and television industry, while continuously increasing in value and reach. This trend is led by the United Kingdom as the most successful force in the international format trade, as opposed to the United States, which is the prevalent force in the export of most other audio-visual programming for television and cinema. This paper explores the reasons for the United Kingdom’s predominance in global television format trade by positioning British formats in the German television landscape. While similar in structure and revenue, the German television market is dominated by imported TV formats, especially British entertainment formats. I will argue that the factors affecting the United Kingdom’s successful positioning can be traced to a variety of areas connected to the audiences, especially their awareness of the origin of formats localised for their domestic television screens, to the attitudes of television markets (including TV channels and professionals) towards risks in programming and development, the knowledge traded along with the licence to produce a format locally, as well as the effect of nurturing environments and innovation. The methodology employed consists of an online self-completion questionnaire to determine German audience perceptions of format origins and a mixture of face-to-face, phone and email elite interviews concerning the perceptions and attitudes of German television industry professionals.

Keywords

Television formats / TV format trade / Format Adaptation / Media localisation / British formats

A Post-Lacanian and Postmodern  Interaction with the Utopian Project of  Modernity: Ideology and Power in Brave New World

Michael O’Brien 

Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World to define and satirize the social conditions of England at the end of the Second World War, with the specific objective of writing a novel which was both personal and social in its examination of the dark and oppressive cultural environment of the period. Bernard Marx, the central character, was written to be symbolic of the shared experience of a coerced proletariat. As a novel of social history Huxley's Brave New World satirizes the function of ideology and power in post-Fordian liberal society in an attempt to find the ends and means to creating a practical utopia. From the point of view of very recent postmodern and post-Lacanian theory Huxley's entire oeuvre can be reconsidered as containing elements of genealogical and psychoanalytical interest. There is strong evidence for the thesis that within Huxley's oeuvre, within his sociological-utopian project, there is an exploration of how desire, ideology and power have come to function throughout the history of society. It is my thesis that Huxley examined desire, ideology and power throughout his oeuvre to find how real-life agents could harness their potentialities to transform real-world societal structures and processes. Only the most recent post-Lacanian and postmodern theory can fully expose Huxley's examinations of ideology and power.

Keywords

Huxley, Foucault, Žižek, Ideology, Power

Basic Colours in the Bible

David Robinson

This paper considers the use of Basic Colour Terms and non-Basic Colour Terms in the Bible, both in the original Hebrew and Greek, and in translations into Greek and Modern English. After reviewing the Berlin & Kay model of Basic Colour Theory it considers in detail examples from different stages of the model: red (Stage II), a word in the green–yellow range (Stage III) and purple (Stage VII).

It argues that the horses of the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ are all represented by Basic Colours and that popular translations such as ‘the pale horse’ are wrong. However, the use of the word purple in translations is not appropriate, but this is a result of recent changes in the meaning of the English word. These examples are used to argue that Basic and non-Basic Colour Terms are not interchangeable, and that this distinction is important in interpreting a text and should be retained in translations. More broadly, this suggests that this distinction between basic and non-basic vocabulary may apply to other semantic fields. This means that the two types of term may not be interchangeable and, further, that the appropriateness of a translation may change over time even if the meaning, in the strict sense of the word, remains the same.

The work is intentionally based on readily available online resources and shows how modern technology makes a ‘specialized’ field such as this accessible to all.

Keywords

Basic Colour Theory; Bible; Colour; Pale Horse; Translation 

How is the character of contemporary economic development in China illuminated by recent collective labour experience?

Nicholas Walton

This paper will examine the dynamics of China’s labour market. It will primarily assess labour as a factor of production during China’s rapid development post 1978, and then utilize classical economic theory to highlight the conditions that enabled such growth. A crucial model in the analysis of China’s economic development is the Lewis model of structural change (1954). The implications of structural change and urban development, both of which caused a rural/urban split, or ‘dual society’ (Boeke 1952), will be discussed. Trade union formation will be assessed in conjunction with their responses to the plight of rural migrants. Finally, this paper will close with an analysis of recent collective labour experience in China whilst illustrating the movement towards the idea of labour’s collective consciousness. Overall this paper will show that China’s rapid development since 1978 was in part due to rural-to-urban migration and that a by-product of this has been industrial action and collective consciousness.

Keywords

China, Collective Labour Experience, Trade Unions, Proletariat, Development 

How to build a nation: examining the role of truth commissions in transitional societies

Janneke Parrish

For many societies transitioning from regimes that abused human rights, the question of how to overcome this past is a difficult one, and one that often continues to cause conflict in the recovering nation. This paper examines the main techniques used in transitional societies to overcome a history of human rights abuses, focusing especially on truth commissions and their potential. Through this examination, the paper argues that truth commissions are preferable to other methods of dealing with the past primarily because of their ability to unite a people, and create a common identity and history rather than a divided history and divided country. This is done while also bearing in mind truth commissions that have been seen as failures, examining why these failed, and what can be done to achieve an ideal truth commission. It also addresses the question of what a transitional society should be looking for when trying to avoid human rights abuses in the future, whether it is better to set a normative example through courts or to focus on rebuilding a national identity. The paper, more generally, argues that the best approach for a transitional society to take is to look to the future, while bearing in mind the lessons and effects that the past has had on people and their perceptions of the world.

Keywords

Truth Commission, National Identity, Reconciliation

---

First published: 3 June 2014