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Panic buying of toilet rolls in Australia began in early March 2020. This was related to the realisation that the novel coronavirus was spreading across the country. To the general population the impact of the virus was unknown. Gradually the federal government started closing the country’s borders. The panic buying of toilet rolls was not unique to Australia. It happened across all societies that used toilet paper rather than water to clean after defecation and urination. However, research suggests that the panic buying was most extreme in Australia. This article argues that the panic buying was closely linked to everyday notions of Western civilisation. Pedestal toilets and toilet paper are key aspects of civilisation and the fear of the loss of toilet paper is connected to anxiety about social breakdown, the loss of civilisation. This is the fear manifested in the perceived threat posed by the virus. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the brand of “gumuge” mangtuan paper. The purpose of this research is to focus on the inheritance and development of mangtuan paper, and actively treat this ancient technology from the perspective of protection and rescue, so as to promote and expand it in the process of civilization in the new century. The research method is to integrate the characteristics of traditional handmade process into the design concept in detail, combine the production process of mangtuan paper with the local national culture, and design and create the brand image and logo of gumuge mangtuan paper. The logo is composed of a variety of design elements, which comes from the patterns, colors and artistic forms of the ethnic minorities in mangtuan village, making the national craft brand concrete. The next step is to carry out VI creative design for the brand image and extend a series of derivatives to promote consumers’ understanding of ancient crafts in various ways.

But, according to the authors, understanding pathogen history and evolution holds the key to saving technological humanity from the onslaught of those many EIDs that have yet to explore the immense opportunity space that climate change and human civilization have provided them with By taking us on a whirlwind tour through the history of such diverse topics as evolutionary biology, the history of vaccines, past pandemics, and climate change, Brooks, Hoberg, and Boeger dismantle our preconceived notions about host-pathogen co-evolution, they explain how we got into the current mess, as they aptly call it, and propose a possible way to get out of it before it is too late Daniel R Brooks, Eric P Hoberg, Walter A Boeger, The Stockholm Paradigm: Climate Change and Emerging Disease [Extracted from the article] Copyright of History & Philosophy of the Life Sciences is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use This abstract may be abridged No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract (Copyright applies to all Abstracts )

Over the past millennium and across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have been burning paper replicas of the material world to send to their deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of imaginary beings. The paper replicas, which include all types of goods and treasures, mostly old and new forms of money, is commonly referred to as the paper money custom. Studies of the paper money custom have neglected the native opposition to it, especially that of the contemporary intelligentsia, one form of which consists of news reports and human interest stories in the popular press that lampoon the practice of burning paper money. Many stories lampoon the paper money custom by showing how it burlesques traditional virtues such as filial piety. One of the interesting maneuvers in this criticism is how it employs the old and newer kinds of paper monies to shape the response of the readers. OR A THOUSAND YEARS people in China have been replicating their material world of social things in paper in order to provender and avail the family ghosts, ancestors, and myriads of imaginary beings by the magic of fire. Cut from an endless scroll of paper, the effigies replicate everyday items, utensils, valuables, money—a virtual inventory of things that constitute the effects of Chinese civilization, both old and new. The whole medley is a cornucopia of simulated consumption and desire on a cosmic scale. From its advent

The advent of boys' popular culture is signaled by 1870s entertainment periodicals. Following in the cur rent of Oliver Optic's more expensive series books, boys' cheap peri odicals were bought, traded, collected, and even, at times, authored by the youth that read them. Mythologized by Tom Sawyer who follows their every rule in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and easily replicated and later repented of by amateur author Jo March in Little Women, the sensational stories of boys' periodicals became the touchstone for boy's culture. Lorinda Cohoon, in Serialized Citizenships: Periodicals, Books, and American Boys, 1840-1911, connects the proliferation of boys' pe riodical literature during the second half of the nineteenth century with a shift in the construction of American boyhood identities (and their corresponding boyhood citizenships)—namely, the emergence and pro liferation of the popular good-hearted, fun-loving "bad boy" who re bukes civilization along with his rival, the upstanding, almost seductive good boy who reforms civilization.1 While Cohoon focuses the majority of her study on representations of boys, I examine how boys represent themselves. I extend her arguments about boyhood citizenships into a broader public sphere: the marketplace. I build on Cohoon's analysis of boys' civic identities toward their vocational identities, which revolve around both consuming and producing. While fictional children of the nineteenth century were largely portrayed as innocent and good, as Anne Scott MacLeod points out, real children of the era were courted as an increasingly autonomous class of child consumers, as Viviana Zelizer argues.2 As youth make their own consumer choices, they play a large part in sanctioning and even constructing their own culture. Late-nineteenth-century story papers provided unique spaces and special opportunities for young writers to enter the marketplace by voicing their desires and queries and improving their writing abilities and professional literacies. Story papers, newspaper-sized weekly pub lications containing fiction and miscellany, while certainly not devoid of adult interference, literally created space for boys to interact with

Normal 0 0 1 92 527 4 1 647 11.768 0 21 0 0 To summarize and illustrate Frank Webster’s main theses and arguments on the Information Society domain, we used three pieces of his oeuvre, forming theses (T1-9) from his strong statements. Before a more detailed analysis we passionately argue against these theses. In our view the original concept of Information Society is complex and holistic, and was formulated on civilization theory level. The only methodologically acceptable approach is the multi-criteria definition. Since Webster constantly refuses to accept it, and insists on using an information density-based definition instead of it, all his main statements become false.

Over the past several centuries, the West has emerged as a global leader economically, militarily, scientifically and technologically. This article explores why it has been so successful in the past in order to determine where its strengths lie at a time when the West's advantage is melting away. This article will argue that the West was the only civilisation that took advantage of the communications revolution involving cheap paper and the printing press in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and could do so because of its values and ethics. Compared to other parts of the world, the West offered more freedom to its peoples, and its societies were the most vertically mobile. This is an important lesson for today when we are in the midst of the digital and Internet communications revolution and another wave of globalisation, and when the whole world seems to be adopting Western values. It is important not to forget where these values originated.

Nwando Achebe. Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2005. Glossary. Index. Bibliography. No price reported. Paper. This study of female power among northern Igbo of the old Nsukka Division of southeastern Nigeria contains many features of a model feminist historical analysis. Achebe examines women's spiritual power, female economics, and political power during three historic periods-precolonial, early colonial, and late colonial to postcolonial. In addition to drawing on archives, dissertations, government reports, and the diverse publications on the northern Igbo, she makes extensive use of taped life histories and other oral accounts. Copious footnotes include numerous interviews, mostly of women, with all of her interviewees and assistants acknowledged over the lengthy periods of research in 1996 and 1998. Achebe calls those interviewed "collaborators," a better term than the older anthropological "informants," with its hegemonic implications. The book is enriched with sometimes lengthy excerpts from her collaborators, and it is delightfully sprinkled with Igbo proverbs and sayings in Igbo with English translations; there is a strong sense of the African voice. While Achebe is not from the northern Igbo area, but from farther south, she spent a good many years at Nsukka and has full control of the northern dialect. Certain key themes appear again and again: that of female husbands, either dedicated to a female shrine or married to other females, as well as the distinction between gender as cultural behavior and sex. Another theme is that androcentric colonialism and Christianity limited women's roles beyond the family, though not always successfully. To counter this tendency, Achebe adopts an "African/female-centric methodology" (98). The introductory chapter explores Achebe's field experiences, her scholarly background, and issues that arise in feminist historical studies. She views herself as both insider and outsider in her research. The following chapter offers a good critique of previous literature on the area, supporting the charge of androcentricity. Northern Igbo is complex, with a mixed cultural history. There were early influences from the Igbo civilization of Nri to the southwest, Igala pressure from the northwest, the impact of the Idoma area in the north, and of Arochukwu to the southeast. As a consequence, many of the cases of female activities are specific to the village or village group. Achebe points out that the major northern Igbo spiritual forces have been female. She details women's relationships to theseincluding the warrior goddess, Nimu Rome, and the women-marrying spirit Efuru and her female dedicatees-and she writes of four female diviners and healers. I wonder why it is that in a patrilineal society so many spiritual forces are female, but Achebe does not discuss this. She writes little, too, of ancestral spirits, in contrast to their importance in most Igbo societies. Is there no belief, as elsewhere in Igboland, in female reincarnation through ancestors? Achebe then traces northern Igbo economy through time. She shows that while men mostly grow yams, the basic foodstuffs for the family and for trade have been the products of female labor. Women kept the proceeds of the sale of crops and crafts for their family and their own use, not turning them over to husbands. There is a good section on northern Igbo women's weaving, leaving me to wonder why both northern Igbo and Akwete Igbo weaving is done by females and on vertical looms, while virtually all other Nigerian weaving is by males on horizontal ones, a question the author does not deal with. Women also play a major role in pottery production and trade, both of which loom large in the female economy. As in the case of weaving, in recent years both males and commercial products have intruded into this sphere. Northern Igbo markets have been controlled by women. …

Emmanuel Kreike. Deforestation and Reforestation in Namibia: The Global Consequences of Local Contradictions. Princeton, N.J.: Marcus Wiener Publishers, 2010. xviii + 224 pp. Maps, Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $88.95 Hardcover. $28.95 Paper. In Deforestation and Reforestation, Kreike draws from his earlier work on the socio-environmental history of Ovamboland to confront modern paradigms of environmental change. Modernizationists view Western conservation science and technology, guided by state authority, as mastering world environments and overturning destructive, irrational indigenous natural resource use. Declinists argue that Western science, capitalism, and commodification have disrupted a pristine nature characterized by indigenous people in harmony with their environments, ushering in environmental decline. Inclinists place faith in indigenous knowledge and resource use to solve environmental problems, eschewing alarmist claims about environmental degradation. They all, in Kreike 's view, posit false dichotomies that separate nature from culture, wilderness from civilization, overlooking historical paradoxes that do not fit neatly into any single framework. Kreike offers historical evidence from Ovamboland, a region bisected by the AngolanNamibian border, to argue for a view of environmental change that is nonlinear, and that accepts the reality of historical paradoxes and contradictions in local environments. Despite the title, there are few forests in this book. Yet the forestry case study perhaps best illustrates Kreike 's main argument. Nineteenth-century European explorers, missionaries, and colonial conquerors entered into a floodplain environment between the Cunene and Okavongo rivers that was densely populated and heavily forested, punctuated by Ovambo grain fields and cattle kraals. One hundred years later, Ovamboland was again heavily forested, although not in the same locales or with the same tree species of the previous century, but rather with fruit trees that had accompanied and facilitated Ovambo migration from Angola into Namibia. In the interval, Ovamboland had gone through decades of deforestation caused by the influx of refugees, who used trees to build fortified homesteads and fire to clear floodplain and bush lands for grain crops. Over time Ovambo migrants actively and passively propagated indigenous fruit trees, recreating, but not replicating, the dense forest environment of the previous century. This is a familiar argument in recent African forest history. Depending on the point at which evidence is sought, Kreike argues, one will find "dramatic deforestation" or "spectacular reforestation" in the same landscape, challenging linear views of environmental change. Other chapters present similar paradoxes. While many histories see colonialism as integrating African societies into modern international commodity networks, Kreike argues that before colonialism began, Ovambo people were already well-integrated into "global" commodity networks by supplying tens of thousands of cattle to regional and Atlantic markets. …

Those of us whose lives have been deeply touched by the technology of papermaking – and many others besides – are in for a real treat this coming fall when the book On Paper is scheduled to be published. The author, Nicholas Basbanes, employs an engaging, personalized approach as he brings to life the story of how paper has enabled the progress of civilization throughout two millennia. I first learned about Nick’s grand project, to capture the most intriguing aspects of paper’s story, during a re-broadcast of his hour-long interview that was presented on the CSPAN TV network. His enthusiasm is infectious, and it can be an uplifting experience to have him as a tour-guide to “all things paper”.

LITERATURE & THE ARTS Marie-Louise Labelle. Beads of Life: Eastern and Southern African Beadwork from Canadian Collections. Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation. 100 Laurier St., Gatineau, Quebec J8X 4H2. xi + 185 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. Paper. The publication of Marie-Louise Labelle's book coincides with a major exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (April 2005-February 2006) entitled "Beads of Life: Eastern and Southern African Adornment," curated by the author. The book is not an exhibition catalog, although many of the 185 artworks in the exhibition are illustrated in color and appear along with many field photographs. Rather, it is a study in depth of the historical-social-cultural matrix in which the artistry of beadworking developed and is pursued today in eastern and southern Africa. (If one wishes to see the exhibition without traveling to Gatineau, an excellent "Exhibition Preview" by Labelle appears in African Arts 38, no. 1 [2005].) Studies in African art have largely focused upon sculpture in wood, bronze, ivory, and terra cotta. The "crafts" of weaving, dyeing, and beadworking have only recently been considered in terms of the criteria of technical skill and artistic imagination. With respect to artistry in beads, while there have been an increasing number of essays in the last two decades appearing in various journals, there have been few lengthy studies on the order of Labelle's work. Only Henry Drewal and John Mason's Beads, Body and Soul: Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe (1998) comes to mind; I know of no comparable study of eastern and southern African or central African beadwork. Labelle's book has several strengths. It is based upon fieldwork among the Maasai and Samburu of Kenya in the 1980s and an inventory of seven thousand objects of eastern and southern Africa in Canadian collections. In addition, the author is acutely aware of the important point that aesthetic values are produced within historical and social contexts and constantly shift over time. Thus she begins her study with a review of the origins of beadwork in an examination of the principal materials used before the arrival of glass beads in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While glass beads, brought by Arab merchants from the shores of the Indian Ocean, reached even remote regions of eastern and southern Africa, these beads were rare. People made beads from seeds, wood, teeth, bone, cowries, ostrich eggs, clay, and metal. Some materials were "alive," scented, noisy when strung together, and "talkative"; that is, they provided immediate visual identification of family, social, political, and ritual status, even the wearer's personal history. Hence beads were not essentially adornment in the sense of finery-ephemeral beauty-but rather expressions of status and self-respect. European beads came initially from Venice and Murano and subsequently from Bohemia, brought in ever greater quantities by Portuguese, Dutch, and English traders. …

MacKay offers an accessible, quantitative account of the changes that are needed to switch the United Kingdom to sustainable energy sources.