Towards a Feminization of Agricultural Labour in Northwest Syria

Smallholdings in the rural areas of northwest Syria are a result of land fragmentation that is due to inheritance. Because of rapid population growth combined with land fragmentation, these smallholdings are increasing and cannot sustain the rural households whose sizes and needs are also increasing rapidly This situation has led to increasing numbers of males migrating to urban areas in Syria and to neighbouring countries looking for work opportunities. In addition, recent agricultural intensification trends seem to have led to the emergence of a waged labour force which, in the absence of male workers owing to significant rates of migration, is now predominantly female. Agricultural labour use depends upon household characteristics and resources (type of labour used, gender of labour waged/exchanged/familial). The article attempts to present a comprehensive analysis of household labour use in distinctive farming systems in one region of Syria that has undergone great change in recent decades, and examines the changes in the composition of the agricultural labour force. Secondary information, rapid ural appraisals and formal farm surveys were used to gather information on the households in a study area where different farming systems coexist. The results show that the decrease in landholding size, the resulting male migration, and land intensification have resulted in the expansion offemale labour in agriculturalproduction, which has been termed in this research a 'feminization of agricultural labour'. This suggests that agricultural research and extension services will have to work more with women farmers and farm workers, seek their wisdom and involve them in technology and transfer. This is not easy in conservative societies but requires research and extension institutions to take this reality into consideration in their programmes.     

Regulation of Cohabitation and Marriage in Canada

Marriage in Canada had lost much of its legal significance because of the extension of many of the incidents of marriage to unmarried cohabitants of the same or opposite sex. This process has resulted in large part from decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or marital status is constitutionally impermissible. In a decision that seemed to many a surprising reversal of this trend, the Supreme Court of Canada in 2002 ruled that legislators could constitutionally exclude unmarried couples from family property laws. The effect of this decision has been to revive the legal significance of marriage. At the same time, courts have resurrected the social significance of marriage by accepting the argument of same-sex marriage advocates that a "separate but equal" civil union institution would not respect the constitutional guarantee of equality and by endorsing the constitutional right of same-sex couples to the symbolic value of marriage as a public and legal celebration of a relationship. Same-sex marriages may now be legally celebrated in three Canadian provinces, and the federal government has made a commitment to open up civil marriage to same-sex couples across the country. While some same-sex couples and unmarried cohabitants have fought for spousal or marital status, others have sought to avoid the burdens associated with spousal status. After the same-sex marriage debate is concluded, Canada will be ready to move on to consider whether all of the legal privileges and burdens now assigned to those in conjugal relationships, whether married, unmarried, same-sex or opposite-sex, can be justified.     

THE BOOK SHELF

Books reviewed in this article: 1. Block, Dr. William A. What Your Child Really Wants to Know About Sex – And Why . 2. Bingham, Sallie. The Way It Is Now . 3. Charny, Dr. Israel. Marital Love and Hate . 4. Cooper, Boyd, M.D. Sex Without Tears . 5. Cuse, Arthur R. Financial Guideline: Divorce . 6. Evslin, Dorothy. The Fortunate Sex . 7. Gorney, Roderil, M.D. The Human Agenda . 8. Halsell, Grace. Black/White Sex . 9. Hart, Harold (Ed.). Marriage: For and Against . 10. Kavanaugh, James. Faces In the City . 11. Satir, Virginia. Peoplemaking . 12. Steincrohn, Peter J., M.D. Antidotes for Anxiety . 13. Stuart, Irving R., Ph.D. and Lawrence Edwin Abt, Ph.D. Children of Separation and Divorce .     

The new stock in trade — technology or stewards of technology transfer — Dr. Dvorkovitz & Associates

A brief account of the growth of the “market” concept, as related to technology transfer, leads into the establishment of Dr. Dvorkovitz & Associates by its founder and owner, Vladimir Dvorkovitz, Ph.D., where the company has been, where it is at present, and plans for the immediate future, as related to the world wide dissemination of data on technology available for license from industry, government organizations, university and private research centers, and individual inventors. Company activities cover the computerized data bank, InstanTechEx; TechEx, the annual World Fair for Technology Exchange; the publication on licensing and technology transfer, UNIT.     

THE BOOK SHELF

Books reviewed in this articles: 1. Berne, Eric, M.D. What Do You Say After You Say Hello? 2. Brothers, Joyce, Ph.D. The Brothers System for Liberated Love and Marriage. 3. Dominguez, J., M.D. Felicidad Sexual, Matrimonial y Prematrimonial. 4. Gagnon, John H., and William Simon. Sexual Conduct. 5. Goldstein, Joseph; Anna Freud, and Albert J. Soinit. Beyond the Best Interests of the Child. 6. James, Muriel, and Dorothy Jongeward. Born to Win. 7. Klein, Carole. The Single Parent Experience. 8. Kuhn, Jerold R., Ph.D. Marriage Counseling: Fact or Fallacy? 9. Le Shan, Eda. The Wonderful Crisis of Middle Age. 10. Lieberman, E. James, M.D., and Ellen Peck. Sex and Birth Control. 11. Maliver, Bruce L., Ph.D. The Encounter Game. 12. Mann, John. Encounter. 13. Tanner, Ira J. Loneliness: The Fear of Love.     

Why Weren’t We Taught? Exploring Frontier Conflict Through the Lens of Anzac

This article examines public understandings of two key strands of Australian history that sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of remembrance: frontier conflict and Anzac. The former, W. E. H. Stanner argued in 1968, was subsumed in a vacuum of silence, lost to popular consciousness in a wilful act of forgetting. Despite a wealth of subsequent scholarship documenting the violence and dispossession that characterised European colonisation, considerable gaps in public awareness about these foundational events remain. Anzac, in contrast, has become a defining narrative of Australian history for large segments of the general population and the political class. Recent scholarship suggests that this prominence has served to mask other, important histories of the continent, including frontier conflict. In this article, we argue that this is neither a necessary nor essential binary, and further, that one can inform the other. The written reflections of 320 tertiary students enrolled in a course about Australian military history provide insights into the ways that frontier conflict is popularly understood and how the fascination with Anzac can be leveraged to raise awareness of the violent historical dimensions of colonisation.