Spooner, Brian
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Publication Developing World: Challenges and Opportunities(1986) Spooner, BrianThe complex problem which confronts us in the world's rangelands -- is the need to raise living standards, increase economic productivity, and at the same time reduce ecological stress -- is approached in this symposium from a number of different disciplinary points of view. The case material presented in the papers shows (in varying degrees) the significance of the accumulated experience and cultural ideals of the different types of people involved -- local pastoralists, Western-trained ecologists, planners - as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. s - as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. The role of human activity in the history of the rangeland ecosystem and the cultural memory of the ecological past are treated as complementary to the potential of social forms and cultural aims and values.Publication Review of R.B. Thomas, Human Adaptation to a High Andean Energy Flow System(1976-09-01) Spooner, BrianThis is a review of R.B. Thomas' Human Adaptation to a High Andean Energy Flow System (1973).Publication The Iranian Deserts(1972) Spooner, BrianThis chapter marks a transition in the volume from agriculture to other subsistence bases. It is concerned particularly with the effects of environment-and the technologies used to exploit it-on the culture and identity of pastoral nomadic groups, mining colonies, and certain agricultural communities specializing in different ranges of crops. It deals with an arid region where these three occupational categories are closely linked and interdependent economically. It suggests that before agricultural technology reached a stage of development that would allow exploitation of such a marginal region, exploitation by other means (for example, pastoralism) was not possible either, and excess population from the lush peripheries was not able to overflow into the deserts.Publication Afghan Languages in a Larger Context of Central and South Asia(2012-01-01) Schiffman, Harold F; Spooner, BrianThe pioneer Western investigator of the languages of Afghanistan, Georg Morgenstierne, who began his work in 1924, called Afghanistan linguistically “one of the most interesting countries on earth.” Linguistic work by local scholars began in the following generation. When one of us [Spooner] first met Dr. A. G. Ravan Farhadi (the author of Le Persan Parlé en Afghanistan, 1953) in Kabul in 1972, he announced that in the latest count the number of languages known in Afghanistan had reached 48.Publication Weavers and Dealers: The Authenticity of an Oriental Carpet(1988) Spooner, BrianOriental carpets have been recognized as prestigious furnishing in the West since the Middle Ages. In many ways, they represent the epitome of Western concern with alien things - especially utilitarian alien things. Carpets entered the Western cultural arena as a rare alien item of interest and eventually became a commodity. But commoditization does not adequately explain their continuing success in the market or the special attention they receive from collectors.Publication Desert(1994) Spooner, BrianDESERT (Pers. bīābān; kavīr; lūt; see below), area of low precipitation that supports little vegetation and lacks surface water. Secondary characteristics typically include poor soils, salinity, high winds, and extreme temperatures, accompanied by high rates of erosion and sand accumulation. Global wind patterns maintain these conditions in zones that encircle the earth in the subtropical latitudes, both north and south of the equator.Publication Nomads in a Wider Society(1984-04-01) Spooner, BrianNomadism is found mostly in marginal areas which support only relatively sparse populations, particularly in the arid and semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia. It is a traditional form of society that allows the mobility and flexibility necessary for relatively even use of vegetation over large areas of low quality rangeland. It also facilitates more social interaction than would be possible among people living in small scattered settlements. Since nomads cope successfully with both social and ecological problems in areas where other people don't want to live, their way of life deserves careful attention. Nomadism involves ways of thinking about space and people which may be important for successful economic development in marginal areas.Publication The Craft and Commerce of Oriental Carpets: Cultural Implications of Economic Success and Failure(1988) Spooner, BrianWhat we recognize now as oriental carpets, especially pile-carpets, are currently made in most of the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, and southwest and Central Asia, including of course Pakistan and India, as well as China. The technique originated before 500 B.C. somewhere in the area that later became the culturally Irano-Turkic part of Asia. Royal patronage under the Sasanians (if not earlier empires) raised carpet production to the status of high art. The most highly regarded carpets have continued to come from Irano-Turkic areas (including the Caucasus). Carpets made to the west and south of these areas have remained derivative in both technique and design, and less admired, though sometimes of objectively excellent craftsmanship. (The Chinese tradition is also derivative but developed independently.)Publication The Function of Religion in Persian Society(1963) Spooner, BrianObservations on the religious aspect of rural life made during residence and travel in the north, east and south of Persia between 1959 and 1962.Publication Balochi: Towards a Biography of the Language(2012-01-01) Spooner, BrianBalochi is known in the literature of area studies and linguistics as a series of dialects, for the most part mutually intelligible, differing mainly in vocabulary and the degree of influence from neighboring languages, mainly Persian (cf. Elfenbein 1989a, 1989b). It is spoken by three to five million people in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Oman and the Persian Gulf states, Turkmenistan, East Africa, and diaspora communities in other parts of the world. But some communities on the peripheries of this distribution, isolated from other Balochi-speaking communities in Punjab, Sindh, India and elsewhere, have ceased to be Balochi-speaking. The most important contributors to modern studies of the Baloch have been Joseph Elfenbein and Carina Jahani. Jahani (1989:86-90) summarises the official status of Balochi in each country, and is a valuable source for the situation with regard to standardization and literacy up to 1989.