Empire and the state: a critical theoretical assessment

In recent years there has been increasing use of the term ‘empire’ to describe US primacy in world affairs. This should not be viewed merely as an indictment of US power: there are genuine insights to be gained from the study of imperial formations in contemporary politics. Yet there remains confusion and disagreement over the true meaning of ‘empire’. Progressive schools of thought in the academic discipline of international relations can facilitate a fresh understanding of ‘empire’—one that is suited to the complexities of the contemporary global scene.     

Testing child-woman ratios and the own-children method on the 1900 Sweden census: Examples of indirect fertility estimates by socioeconomic status in a historical population

Focusing on the Swedish census of 1900, the child-woman ratio and own-children method have been applied to assess socioeconomic differences in fertility. These indirect estimates of fertility have been compared to the vital statistics at the national level to assess their reliability. This comparison demonstrated that the estimated results suffered from few errors. Even if these indirect estimates of fertility could be affected by possible socioeconomic differences in mortality, the tests show that at least in the Swedish case, the impact of mortality on the indirect measures is limited. As infant mortality differences by socioeconomic status are relatively small, indirect fertility estimates are mainly affected by differences in reproductive behavior.     

Learning and teaching online with the UK census

This paper describes the online learning and teaching resources that are currently being developed for the contemporary and historical UK censuses as part of a project that is being funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to support its ‘Information Environment’. The online resources are intended to support learners and teachers in the UK Higher and Further Education sectors who are interested in UK census data. A variety of resources is available including: interactive online tutorials with practical exercises, textual materials, web pages and PowerPoint slides. The materials have been designed to be as flexible as possible encouraging a ‘pick and mix’ approach to the use of the resources. The resources are also intended to facilitate the use of 2001 census data. Feedback from student piloting and consultation workshops is also considered. All the resources can be accessed at: http://www.chcc.ac.uk.     

The long shadow of apartheid: a critical assessment of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years on

ABSTRACT

Based on insights gained from two decades of research on South African heritage and monuments, this paper critically reflects on the status quo of heritage transformation in South Africa 25 years after the end of apartheid. It assesses new directions in national heritage policy and government strategy in relation to recent developments around post-apartheid heritage and the popular demand for a removal of ‘colonial statues’, which gained impetus from the #Rhodes Must Fall campaign. It is argued that the government’s approach to heritage transformation and most notably its treatment of white minority heritage, dominated by the ‘juxtaposition model’, has had limited success. The paper illustrates how heritage and the memory of the past are entangled with socio-political and economic realities in the present, which in turn is overshadowed by the long-term effects of apartheid and impacted by global or transnational considerations, such as foreign investment and tourism.     

Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed heightened public and governmental awareness of the nature and scale of environmental challenges likely to face the planet over the course of the next fifty to one hundred years. Scholars from across a broad range of disciplines have been drawn into these debates and have begun to reorient their research towards finding solutions to some of the most pressing problems and to devising more sustainable and resilient livelihoods. Archaeologists, with their conventional orientation toward past events and processes have been rather slower to engage with these issues. Recently, however, there has been a steady shift within the discipline so as to incorporate more future-oriented perspectives, and ‘the use of the past to plan for a better future’ is rapidly becoming a common theme within archaeological research projects and publications. While welcoming some of these developments, this paper offers a critical assessment of the various claims that are now being made of archaeology's potential to help overcome current environmental challenges and its contributions to defining and understanding ‘the Anthropocene.’     

Filipinos settle in the Canadian North: unsettling a gendered frontier

This paper explores how contemporary accounts of Filipino settlement in the Yukon articulate with the imaginative project of a ‘frontier Yukon.’ Since 2007, Whitehorse, Yukon has been as a prominent site of settlement for Filipino newcomers to Canada. This has been supported by the implementation of a new immigration policy–the Yukon Nominee Program (YNP)—inaugurated to address shortages in the territory’s service sector labour market. What happens, we ask, to frontier narratives when they are put into conversation with bodies, peoples, places, and collective experiences that they were never meant to narrate? We discuss how hegemonic notions of race, gender, and frontier masculinity are reworked and unsettled in emerging narratives of Filipino settlement. In working through multiple and contested notions of the frontier, we play on varying meanings of the verb “to settle.” Frontier mythologies seek to settle the disruptive potential of Filipino workers and families as they newly inhabit borderline spaces. At the same time, the hard work of “settling" into a foreign environment is set both within and against the hegemonic facade of frontier mythology. We find that while the examined discourses of arrival in the Yukon reinforce hegemonic accounts of the Yukon’s settlement, and obscure histories of settler colonialism through their celebration of multiculturalism and diversity, they also contain moments of ambiguity that “unmap” hegemonic frontier narratives.