Recommended (fun and/or serious)

Agnelli, Marella (1987) Gardens of the Italian Villas. (in association with Luca Pietromarchi, Robert Emmett Bright, Federico Forquet), Rizzoli, New York.

Ambrosoli, Mauro (1997) The Wild and the Sown: Botany and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1350-1850. Cambridge University Press (translated by Mary McCann Salvatorelli  from Italian to English).

Anan, Paro (2019) Being Gandhi. HarperCollins (Illustrations by Priya Kuriyan).

Graeber, David (2019) Bullshi*t Jobs: A Theory (The rise of pointless work and what we can do about it). Penguin.

Ishiguro, Kazuo (2001) [1986] An Artist of the Floating World. Faber and Faber.

Morike, Eduard (1968) [1914] Mozart auf der Reise Nach Prag (Novelle). Philipp Reclam Jun., Stuttgart.

Muckenhoupt, Meg. (2018). Cabbage: A Global History. Reaktion Books, London (see book review).

Pearce, Michael (2017) The Mamur Zapt and the Donkey-Vous. HarperCollins.

Rebank, James (2016) The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District. Penguin (see book reivew).

Varoufakis, Yanis (2017) Talking To My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism. Vintage

Tolerable (books with some points of interest, so I finished reading them)

Kruger, Susanna S. (2017) My Mother's Story and Worth: Africa to Aotearoa (NZ, self-published family history with some general historical interest).

Mackintosh, Sophie (2018) The Water Cure. Penguin (depressing description of dystopia dominated by gender conflict).

This week I have been in Bangladesh for work related to my own research subject. I am collaborating with a counterpart at one of the universities here. He gave me days of his time, so I was very happy to help edit thesis abstracts for two of his MSc students.

The abstracts were first sent to me by email, as digital documents, but I insisted on working with the texts printed on paper, and with the students in person.

One student was sick, so eventually I had a good 30 minutes one-to-one with the other student, working through the abstract and improving the expression.

The basic content and structure was mostly good. By working through the text together, the student could observe the editing process, not just receive a final result. I hope it was helpful. For me as an editor, the work was much easier because I could ask the author for immediate feedback on my suggestions, and for clarification of meaning when needed.

Photo: Almost a red London bus in Dhaka?!

I am sure the similarity is intentional, since so many people from Bangladesh are living in the UK, or have been there for work or study.

Many staff at the university I am working with have obtained a PhD in the UK.

In 460 detailed pages, including a detailed index, this densely-packed book reviews the spread of nitrogen fixing legumes across Europe and their changing roles in two agricultural revolutions (ascending in one, declining in the other):

Mauro Ambrosoli (1997) The Wild and the Sown: Botany and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1350-1850. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge

This is an excellent English translation by Mary McCann Salvatorelli. The original Italian edition was published in Turin in 1992.

There is a lot to learn about cabbages - and they in turn are just a small part of the large family of brassica vegetables!

This new book on cabbage is good to read, for anyone who grows, cooks or eats cabbages:

Muckenhoupt, Meg. (2018). Cabbage: A Global History. London, Reaktion Books.

There are many interesting side-stories along the way. The author has read - and eaten - widely to give us this book. I particularly like the use of old paintings of cabbages and cabbage fields to illustrate the book here and there.

The book is one of many in the "Edible" series published by Reaktion Books.

Book review: The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District , by James Rebank (2016 , Penguin Books, UK).

Peter J. Matthews, for The Research Coooperative, blog, 6th May 2019.

The Lake District of northern England is most famous today as a scenic destination for millions of tourists annually, a get-away-from-it-all region for visitors from across the United Kingdom and the world. It is mountainous, with many peaks of more than 600m, including the highest peak in England, at 978m. These are not high mountains by world standards, but at a latitude of around 54 degrees North, the entire region is very cold in winter, has short summers, and is not easy for farming.

It is in this region that James Rebanks grew up as a farmer and shepherd, like his parents and grandparents and others before them. While telling the story of his own family, and the tensions, tenderness and cooperation that coexist in a multi-generational family farm, Rebanks also tells the larger story of a traditional farming system that has existed for thousands of years, based on sheep herds that may have originated with the migrations of Vikings into the region from northern Europe. There is also a story here of modern social history, telling how landless peasants became tenant or smallholding farmers while also retaining access to high mountain pastures (the fells) that are still managed as commons, having escaped enclosures (privatisation) during and after the 19th century.

The author also shows how traditional "cultural landscapes" and "intangible cultural heritage" are formed, and how these may struggle to survive even as efforts are made to preserve the outward, material appearances of a landscape. To understand his own world, Rebanks stepped outside, into the world of academic study, and then returned. Rebanks is quite explicit in his own wish to dedicate his life to a particular place and culture, while helping others to do the same in other regions of the world, through various kinds of negotiation with the modern world. He is anti-dogmatic, despite his dedication to a particular way of life: his purpose is not to prescribe solutions, but to help others find their own solutions, and to enjoy their own ways of living. The stories in this book are both personal and universal, and I could easily find resonances with my own experiences of life growing up in New Zealand, where my ancestors were farmers, and where some branches of the family remain close to a particular landscape and rural culture, while others have wandered far from it.

Perhaps it is my own farming instincts and family history that made this book so interesting for me, but I also want to think about the implications for my work as an ethnobiologist. For many years I have been looking at how people across Asia and the Pacific have maintained certain plants, cultivation methods, and cooking methods over thousands of years, not only across generations but also across cultures and languages. Although we often think of the world as divided by geographical, social, and cultural boundaries, there are also many continuities across ancient cultural landscapes. Understanding such continuities may help us to recognise shared interests in the present, and opportunities for mutual support in the future.

[See also: The Illustrated Herdwick Shepherd , by the same author].

Photo above: "Herdwick sheep browsing in a field remarkably popular with moles", by Pete Birkinshaw , 19th February, 2009 (via Wikimedia Commons and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

I tend read whatever happens to come to hand, when a free moment lets me get started -- and then I try to finish what I start, but sometimes it's just not possible; sorry to the authors.

Here's a list of finished readings in 2018 (to help me recall where I went in spare hours).
Wohlleben's book gave me good food for thought while looking at forests in China and Vietnam.

* * *

Crumley, Jim (1997) The Company of Swans (Engravings by Harry Brockway). Harvill Press. London. Non-fiction.

Drucker, Peter F. (2001) The Essential Drucker. Collins Business: New York [2005]. Non-fiction.

Fermour, Patrick Leigh (1953) The Violins of Saint Jacques. John Murray: London [2004]. Fiction.

Follett, Ken (2017) A Column of Fire. Penguin, New York. Fiction.

Garfield, Simon (2000) Mauve: How one man invented a color that changed the world. W. W. Norton: New York and London. Non-fiction.

Gopnik, Adam (2000) Paris to the Moon. Random House: New York. Non-fiction.

Hemingway, Ernest (1929) Across the River and Into the Trees. Arrow Books: London [1991]. Fiction.

Higashino, Keigo (2015) Malice. Abacus, London. Fiction.

O'Brian, Patrick (1973) H. M. S. Surprise. Norton: New York and London [1991]. Fiction.

Wohlleben, Peter (2017) The Hidden Life of Trees. W. Collins: London. Non-fiction.

The following note is advice that I gave to someone who joined the Research Cooperative and made a public request for help finding a postdoc position in a particular research field, but without providing any details of full range of interest, actual experience or publication record, present location, or a wished-for destination.

As a result, the best I could do was speak from my own experience, in general terms. Perhaps the story is useful for others too, in some way. 

* * * * 

I can't give any specific direction to ongoing work in your area.

What I can say is that opportunities are many if you can show sufficient ability (through publications and personal encounters) and interest (when speaking or corresponding with potential hosts).

In my own case (starting out as a post-doc in the more friendly 1990s), opportunities in Japan arose through my communication with students of my own generation, post-docs of my own generation, and eventually with potential senior hosts.

I gave seminars whenever and wherever I could find an interested audience for my work. I explored potential work places while working on short-term contracts in nearby work places. And I kept writing and publishing my own single-author papers and reviews whether or not I had a current employer.

In fact I never applied for an advertised position but was able to find hosts to support my applications (to Japanese government funding agencies) for funding to work in particular labs on projects of mutual interest.

Whenever I had income I invested as much as possible in my own work, field travel and equipment, and kept working and writing. I had my own research direction and goals and found people and institutions willing to support me.

I found people and work opportunities through proactive correspondence (which is what you have done by joining this network; thank you for joining).

All this is to say:  have courage, and have faith that the work you do matters and needs to be done, and keep looking for opportunities wherever they may be, and keep looking for ways to add to your experience and learning.

"OneAll Social" is a system module in the back end of our network. With this, Admin. can let new members signup using an existing account at another social network, or signin using that account. 

Another function of the module is to allow members to share their comments, blogposts, and other activities with other social networks where they have accounts.

At present, it is possible, in theory, to share to a Facebook account or LinkedIn account. Each member has to set this up for themselves after logging in to the Research Cooperative. 

Go to YOUR USERNAME in MAIN MENU>>ACCOUNT SETTINGS>>NETWORKS>>Facebook Icon (or other Icon)

If Facebook recognises your email address (used to set up the account at Research Coopeerative), then clicking on the Facebook Icon will activate sharing to your Facebook account.

After that, when you compose a blog post (for example) the sharing options will be shown after the text field, and can be checked or unchecked for the message:

I will try sharing the present post with my Facebook account, which is sure to be ignored as yet another dull message from the Research Cooperative! Sorry!