Frost, Hail, Prairie Fire and Weeds: Families Harvesting Crops on a Saskatchewan Homestead, 1872-1914

Under the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, certain regulations needed to be met by homesteaders to ensure that they could eventually acquire title to their 160 acres of free land. This land needed to be cleared, seeded and harvested, however problems existed which threatened the successful cultivation of a homesteader’s crops. Early frosts, hail, prairie fires and weeds would destroy the plants as would pests such as grasshoppers, cutworms, and gophers. Trying to combat mosquitoes, and bulldog flies while working the fields also posed a hazard to both the homesteader and their working farm animals. Using survey data collected by the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan in the mid-1950s, this paper highlights the labour-intensive nature of farm work and the numerous difficulties faced by homesteaders and their families in their attempt to successfully produce crops.

Revolutionary Road

After a cross-country drive to visit friends, Berkman and Barbara Zeller settled in Boston to do politics and community medicine. Berkman worked with those creating a view of what was needed in radical politics called “Prairie Fire.” Hoping to work as a doctor for rebels in Mozambique, Berkman in the end was told not to come because they had won their revolution, and he ended up in Lowndes County, Alabama in a community clinic.

Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium

Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the globe, yet the relative importance of human activity and climate on fire regimes is controversial. This is particularly true for historical fire regimes of the Americas, where indigenous groups used fire for myriad reasons but paleofire records indicate strong climate–fire relationships. In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate–fire relationships. We used an offsite geoarchaeological approach to link terrestrial records of prairie fire activity with spatially related archaeological features (driveline complexes) used for intensive, communal bison hunting in north-central Montana. Radiocarbon-dated charcoal layers from alluvial and colluvial deposits associated with driveline complexes indicate that peak fire activity over the past millennium occurred coincident with the use of these features (ca. 1100–1650 CE). However, comparison of dated fire deposits with Palmer Drought Severity Index reconstructions reveal strong climate–fire linkages. More than half of all charcoal layers coincide with modest pluvial episodes, suggesting that fire use by indigenous hunters enhanced the effects of climate variability on prairie fire regimes. These results indicate that relatively small, mobile human populations can impact natural fire regimes, even in pyrogeographic settings in which climate exerts strong, top-down controls on fuels.

A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

This article examines the human flesh search (Ren Rou Sou Suo), which may be the most salient and controversial phenomenon in the Chinese cyberspace. Unlike the conventional view that treats the human flesh search as illegal or trivial, this article argues that: first, the human flesh search may indeed have some ‘bad’ aspects (eg libel and privacy infringement), but the laws we have so far are sufficient in regulating these ‘bad’ aspects without scapegoating the entire human flesh search; second, and more importantly, every human flesh search is an online free speech mass movement. It gives millions of ordinary Chinese citizens a chance to express themselves in various forms and on wide-ranging topics, and allows them to create a new and more democratic culture. For the first time, activating the long dormant Article 47 of the Chinese Constitution and creating a culture ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ may become possible in China.

Modeling Democratic Transitions

This chapter examines why some democratic transitions were driven by mass mobilization, while others appeared to be predominantly elite processes, with a greater role for international influences as well. It first outlines core theoretical arguments about the way authoritarian regimes and the capacity for collective action influence transitions to democracy before discussing some statistical modeling of transitions during the Third Wave. Contrary to “prairie fire” models of political mobilization, this chapter shows that enduring social organizations play a major role in fomenting the mass protest that drives distributive conflict transitions, particularly unions and ethnonationalist organizations. Moreover, it provides evidence that these factors do not give us purchase in explaining elite-led transitions.