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Reviews / Comptes rendusRelations between Traditional Knowledge andWestern Sciencean audio CD of a Northern Forum, sponsored inpart by the NSERC Northern Chair at Carleton Uni-versity, Dr. Chris Burn, and published by theDepartment of Geography and Environmental Stud-ies, Carleton University, Ottawa, 2003, Cdn$10.Dr. Chris Burn and his co-sponsors offer an inter-esting twist on documenting and publishing con-ference proceedings. The audio CD, 'Relationsbetween Traditional Knowledge and WesternScience' strings together recordings from a confer-ence held in spring of 2003 at Carleton Universitywhere 'northerners and scientists got together todiscuss their relationship and approaches to know-ledge' (Track 1 on CD). Th e conference participantswere well known in their fields, and the CD high-lights some of their important statements on keyissues such as collaborative research and the inte-gration of traditional knowledge (TK) and science.The CD opens with gentle acoustic guitar music.Th e narrator, who speaks clearly an d at a comfort-able pace, explains the basis of the conference an dhow a CD will be the venue used to report on theconference. From here, the CD is divided into tw omajor parts. The first three tracks (approximatelyeleven minutes each) feature excerpts from talksgiven by Julie Cruikshank and Alestine Andre (Ses-sion 1: Traditional Knowledge from Stories); PeterUsher, Barney Smith and Rosemarie Kuptana (Ses-sion 2: Traditional Knowledge from Observation);and Mary Tapsell and Rachel Crapeau (Session 3:Integrating Traditional Knowledge and WesternScience in Public Decision Making). The remainderof the CD moves between additional commentsrecorded from the above speakers, from other aca-demics and questions fielded from the audience.The first section of the CD is informative andwell edited. The narrator helps navigate the lis-tener through the first three formal sessions ofthe conference, summarising points, linking thesession topics and speakers and providing contextfor the excerpts, presumably based on the com-plete presentations. Cruikshank provides compel-ling testimony about the importance of context forunderstanding TK, drawing on her work collectingstories in the Yukon. Andre supports the import-ance of stories and context in TK, offering examplesfrom her ow n Gwich'in community. Usher and

Smith address some of the challenges of workingwith and applying TK in research and manage-ment. Smith raises important points regarding thefunding and direction given to biologists and otherpractitioners who are willing to engage in TK. Atthis point and elsewhere on the CD, Kuptana pro-vides a nice complement to the discussion byurging for the recognition of TK and continuedeffort towards this end, not only in science, butalso as it applies to national and internationallaw. Tapsell and Crapeau tie up the core part ofthe CD by providing an example of TK/sciencerelations as they played out in the developmentof the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories.The rest of the CD is not as well structured andthe listener hops through short (one to sevenminute) recordings from the above speakers andothers. Although the CD editors did a good jobselecting meaningful sound bites, ninety secondseach from George Wenzel and Jacques Chevalierleft me wishing for more as their comments pro-vided interesting ways to think about the informa-tion presented in the other CD tracks. For example,Wenzel's point about the flexibility of knowledgesystems and Chevalier's suggestion that we replace'knowledge systems' with 'learning systems' weretwo important themes that could have been givenmore consideration on the CD (perhaps availablespace on the CD is to blame?). Questions from theaudience also complemented the CD, but after thequestion on Track 17 was posited, the listener is notinformed as to who provided the answer.The quality of the CD recording is very good, theaudio is clear except for a few minutes of slight'buzzing' on Track 5. The presence of the CD nar-rator wanes in the later tracks of the CD and theabrupt ending after the last track (a bit of a disap-pointment after such a creative beginning) couldbenefit from a conclusion or closing comment. Theediting of clips is well done, but the lack of narra-tor and seemingly random track organisation inthe last third of the CD is somewhat confusing.On the whole, this is a useful way to report on aconference, the purpose of which was set out in theintroductory track of the CD. Overall, the CD offersthe listener a good sense of what was discussed atthe conference and important issues at stake. Theaudio format is an accessible way to catch thehighlights of a missed meeting or seminar. Alter-native ways of presenting research and informa-tion are becoming more popular as CD an d

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Reviews / Comptes rendus 11CD-ROM technology become more affordable anduser-friendly. This audio CD is a fine example ofthis technology put to good use.

SHARI FO X GEARHEARDHarvard University

Paris, Capital of Modernityby David Harvey, Routledge, New York and London,2003, xi+372 pp., cloth Cdn$45.00, US$30.00(ISBN 0-415-94421-X)David Harvey's still massively impressive andimportant Limits to Capital 1982) has its roots (ashe says in the introduction to that book) in hisdesire to come to terms with the transformationof Paris between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848and the Commune of 1871. Knowing that a geo-graphical theory of capital circulation and capi-talist production would be vital to understandingSecond Empire Paris and its specific geographicconfigurations, Harvey set out to integrate a spa-tialised Marxism with a closely observed historicalgeography of Parisian urban transformation. Hefailed. What resulted instead was Limits on theon e hand and two books of essays on capitalismand urbanism in Paris on the other (Harvey 1985a,1985b), and his admission that he found it excep-tionally difficult to integrate the two.Paris, The Capital of Modernity, finally, is hisintegration. But, it is a lot more than that. It is,often directly, an answer to his critics not only ofLimits but also of his later Conditionof Postmodern-ity (Harvey 1989). It is also a brilliant synoptichistorical geography of the Second Empire coupledwith a close reading of the Empire's pre-history inthe work of Balzac, the dreams of Utopia thatshaped the sensibilities of both its architects andits adversaries, its denoument in the Communeand its apotheosis in the Basilica Sacre Couer.Readers of Harvey's work over the course of hiscareer will find much that is familiar here. Theheart of the book is a rewriting of his essays of1985, the coda is a revised (and more elaboratelyillustrated) version of his classic 'Monument andMyth' (Harvey 1979), and versions of the essay onBalzac have been published elsewhere. But, such isHarvey's skill that the whole is far greater than thesum of its parts. Paris s a strikingly complete andoriginal reading of the capital-urban nexus, a thorough

argument about how the ground for revolutionarychange is always prepared in the contradictions ofhistorical-geographical development (even ifthat preparation often comes to naught) and anevocative, bird's-eye view of Paris in the throesof modernisation.Even so , the title of the book is misleading. Pariis not really, in any substantive sense that I couldfind, about that city as the Capital of Modernitif, by that phrase, Harvey means the centre ormodernist creation and creativity. Paris may havebeen that, but Harvey does not make the case (nordoes he seem to intend to). If, on the other hand,by the phrase Harvey means to signal ho w capitaconstructed a new kind of modernity in Paris, thenperhaps the title is more apt, but not much more, asthe book is far more ranging and far more subtlethan a reading of cultural and social developmentof f of transformations in a political-economic base.The book is written in two main parts (togetherwith the 'Monument and Myth' coda). Part 1entitled 'Representations' surveys the revolution-ary period between 1830 and 1848 through essayson Balzac and on utopian and revolutionaryschemes of the period. This section not only sur-veys the cultural ferment of the era, but also showshow this ferment laid an ideological (as well asmaterial) groundwork for the Second Empire-even for the parties of order and reaction thatdominated the era. Haussmann, Harvey shows,was deeply influenced by Saint-Simonian utopian-ism, drawing out especially its authoritarian andpopulist sides while trying (sometimes) to recon-cile these with 'an uneasy respect for private prop-erty and the market' (86). The tw o wide-rangingessays that make up Part I are compelling histor-ical geographies of a cultural moment, linking boththe literature of Balzac (and others) and the revolu-tionary ferment of the time to the growing contra-dictions of a capitalism-and a city-making awrenching transition from its pre-modern traditionsrooted in crafts an d even, often, a form of mutualismto a modern capitalism-and city-rooted in morefully alienated labour and systematised modes ofproduction, all while quickly outgrowing the,space relations' (as Harvey calls them) thatmade such modernising possible. All thischange, utopian scheming and revolutionaryardour-and this section of the book-culminatein the revolution of 1848, a 'socialist revolutionthat failed' (85). This failure paved the way, in

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