Early anthropological discourse on the Inuit and the influence of Virchow on Boas

Cet article examine le contexte anthropologique de l’étude de Rudolf Virchow concernant deux familles inuit du Labrador présentées durant l'exposition ethnographique (Völkerschau) de Berlin en 1880 et la façon dont celle-ci reflètait le discours de l’époque sur les Inuit en tant que «race». On y discuste aussi de la façon dont la méthodologie anthropométrique de Virchow et ses découvertes concernant les deux familles font le lien avec le travail sur le terrain de Franz Boas en Arctique ainsi que ses futures recherches anthropologiques. Virchow, un des créateurs de l’ethnologie et de l’anthropologie allemandes, avait contribué à un discours «scientifique» plutôt limité au sujet des «Esquimaux», grâce à plusieurs études sur les peuples de l’Arctique, avant de rencontrer le jeune Boas. En particulier, le Völkerschau lui a offert sa première opportunité d’étudier les Inuit du Labrador directement. Une analyse de cette étude et d’autres travaux de Virchow apportent un éclairage différent sur les problèmes contemporains de l’interprétation anthropologique auxquels il a dû faire face. Elle montre aussi comment son approche a conduit au choix de la Terre de Baffin par Boas comme zone de recherche sur le terrain et aussi, au changement vers le relativisme culturel.This article examines the anthropological context of Rudolf Virchow’s study of two Labrador Inuit families displayed at an 1880 Völkerschau (‘ethnographic exhibit’) in Berlin, and how the latter reflected the ongoing discourse of the Inuit as a “race.” It also discusses how Virchow’s anthropometrical methodology and findings regarding the two families are linked to Franz Boas’ Arctic fieldwork and subsequent anthropological research. Virchow, one of the founders of German ethnology and anthropology, had contributed to a sparse “scientific” discourse surrounding the “Esquimaux” with several studies on Arctic peoples, before meeting the young Boas. In particular, this Völkerschau provided him with the unprecedented opportunity of studying the Labrador Inuit directly. An analysis of his study, and other work by Virchow, sheds light on the contemporary issues of anthropological interpretation, which he faced, and how his approach lent itself to the choice of Baffin Island by Boas as a site of fieldwork, as well as the shift towards cultural relativism

Pauper Emigration to Upper Canada in the 1830s

L’émigration des pauvres au Haut-Canada dans les années 1830 était directement liée aux conditions socio-économiques en Grande-Bretagne, servant de soupape de sûreté pour «l’excédent démographique» de ce pays. Les autorités coloniales faisaient appel à des émigrants de toutes sortes dans le double but d’appuyer les intérêts du Haut-Canada et de venir en aide à la mère patrie. On a fortement sous-estimé le nombre d’émigrants sans ressources qui, de leur propre gré ou non, sont alors venus dans les Canadas. On n’a aussi que partiellement évalué l’accueil qu’ils ont reçu, les problèmes d’adaptation qu’ils ont eus, de même que l’influence qu’ils ont exercée sur la répartition des terres et les formes d’assistance publique. Nous essayons ici de reconnaître les effectifs de ces miséreux, leur origine et les conditions de leur venue; nous établissons aussi pourquoi les structures de la société ont perpétué une indigence qui, à l’origine, n’était liée qu’au type et au nombre même de ces émigrants. Nous concluons que les autorités d’alors ont délibérément sous-évalué l’ampleur des difficultés que connaissaient les nouveaux arrivants au point de déformer la réalité, cette présentation des choses devant néanmoins être reprise par les historiens

Reconstructing Heritage and Cultural Identity in Marginalised and Hinterland Communities: Case Studies from Western Newfoundland

This essay examines the issue of missing heritage, cultural identity, and regeneration of two historically marginalised communities in the Humber River Basin region of western Newfoundland, Canada: Woods Island and Crow Gulch. This region was shaped by the implementation of international treaties which restricted settlement until the turn of the twentieth century by Britain, France and the United States. The first case study focuses on a former fishing community in the Bay of Islands, Woods Island, whose prosperity once coincided with the need by large fish producers based in Gloucester, Massachusetts; they relied on the Bay of Islands for a herring bait fishery to conduct their operations, making the location one of the most important sources of supply in the North Atlantic. Issues surrounding treaty rights and access to this region's resources resulted in international arbitration and The Hague Tribunal of 1910, and set a legal precedent for opening up global access to the world's oceans. A half-century later, in the face of the forces of 'modernisation', Woods Island was resettled under pressure from the Newfoundland government, as part of a larger strategy to transform the island's society and economy. Its heritage remains however important to former residents and their families in understanding a world now lost. The second case study explores an abandoned underclass community, consisting mostly of residents with French/Aboriginal background who were largely discriminated against because of their ethnicity. While also no longer in existence, Crow Gulch in its iconic role is significant in the wake of a recent major Mi'kmaw resurgence in Western Newfoundland. Together, these studies demonstrate how to conserve tangible and intangible culture of marginalised communities by linking micro-history to macro-history and how to preserve the past for future cultural benefit

Leap and Play: Encouraging Creative Thinking in Little Ones

This project outlines the process of developing activities that foster the creativity leap skills in young children. The end product is a book of ten activities, which utilized the creativity leap skills from Making the Creative Leap Beyond by Torrance and Safter (1999). The contents of the guidebook also incorporates parts of Growing Up Creative: Nurturing a Lifetime of Creativity by Teresa Amabile (1989)

Bionic Building Concept

This paper describes a framework for creating a structured series of levels of building automation. It is designed to allow buildings to acquire intelligence about their own systems and equipment and to gradually obtain control of themselves. This allows planners, users, owners and other actors in the planning, construction and use to view and understand the building's operations and performance at many levels. The framework has five horizontal levels and three communication streams. Each level implies a degree of automation with the scale shifting from the mechanization at the bottom to intelligence at the top. The levels describe (bottom to top) the physical object, their representation as data, the history of the data, the processes to analyse and model the histories, and at the highest level, the ability to learn from this analysis to predict, model and plan future building behaviour. Information moves among these levels in an upstream path as well as in a downstream path. The upstream path describes how sensor information is curated to create logs that, using the IFC structure, create semantic histories. In the downstream path, the histories are measured against simulations and model-based predictions to create use-models and potential event sequences. The event sequences then become the instruction sets for the actuators and equipment in the building. Once these are carried out, the effects then feed the sensor data back upstream. In this way, a cycle of information both upstream and downstream feeds a system that can learn. The paper also describes the third stream of communication. This, at each level of the framework, shows how information given to people can be categorized in a scale of increasingly sentient perception. This denotes how the different levels allow users to perceive the building as a purely mechanistic process at the lowest level and as a sentient being at the highest level

Alkalinity and Its Consequences for the Performance of Steel-Reinforced Geopolymer Materials

This paper investigates the development of the alkalinity and its impact on carbon steel reinforcement embedded in alkali-activated fly ashes (AAFA) and alkali-activated fly ashes with ten percentage mass (wt%) of blast furnace slag (AAFAS)-based materials (geopolymer–GP). The pH analysis of eluates indicates a remarkable decrease of alkalinity in AAFA and AAFAS in the first hours of the geopolymerization process. Phenolphthalein solution and pore solution tests on concretes also show a sharp decrease of alkalinity with increased Ca content in the binder due to carbonation. Micro X-ray computer tomography (µXCT) and electrochemical techniques indicate that the changed pH in the GP systems was accompanied by a decrease in the corrosion rates of steel reinforcement when compared to ordinary Portland cement (OPC) systems. In contrast to calcite and vaterite, which were detected in OPC and AAFAS after a carbonation process, only sodium carbonate natron was determined at lower levels in AAFA by X-ray diffraction (XRD)