Octavia Hill Women Housing Managers in South Africa: femininity and urban government

Women trained in a system of housing management developed by Octavia Hill in Victorian England were employed in South Africa's Coloured and European townships from the mid-1930s. They were also involved in training South African women in this tradition which emphasized the mutual responsibilities of landlords and tenants and rested upon the formation of trusting relationships or friendships between women housing managers and the tenants. Octavia Hill's followers worked hard to make a place for women in the field of housing management and claimed that their femininity gave them special expertise in this area, especially in terms of training housewives in domestic skills and in building up the relations of trust required by Octavia Hill's system. This paper describes the implementation of this system of management in South Africa and considers the implications of the role of women in housing management for our thinking about the gendered character of the state. My main argument is that rather than being a precedent for the value of incorporating femininity and women into the state, Octavia Hill's management tradition had already incorporated both historically masculine and historically feminine practices. In so far as she and her followers (and perhaps other female reformers) played a role in shaping the nature of the state, then it could be argued the state reflected a mediation of masculinity and femininity rather than a dominant masculinity and a subordinated or segregated femininity.     

Charismatic Healers on Iberian Soil: An Autopsy of a Mythical Complex of Early Modern Spain

The saludadores, charismatic healers specialised in the curing of hydrophobia, represent one of the most exceptional mythical complexes of the Iberian Peninsula. The myth emerged abruptly in the last decades of the fifteenth century. The evidence suggests that the complex of the Iberian saludador refers to an archaic substratum of Mediterranean beliefs, related to the immunity to poisonous animals attributed to certain ethnic groups or charismatic healers. In the western Mediterranean, at some later moment, the belief fused with the cult of the saints, thus acquiring its original traits. This combination with Christian mythology endowed the saludador healers with some characteristics typical of European folk possession-systems. Once the belief in the Iberian saludadores' complex was firmly in place at the beginning of the sixteenth century, many local cunning-men succumbed to the temptation of trying to incorporate the mythical subject of the saludador. By assuming some of the most spectacular features of the mythical subject, they sought to legitimise the various services they rendered to the rural communities.     

Symbol,faith, and ritual and the success of Healers: A Mexican case

Finkler, Kaja. Spiritualist Healers in Mexico: Successes and Failures of Alternative Therapeutics. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1985. xii + 256 pp. including bibliography, glossary, and index. $27.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.     

Climbing heritage: The lines and aesthetics of rock climbing

Climbing is an experience born of the interplay of aesthetics and heritage. Nowadays, climbing attracts people in droves, all eager to join the contest between body and rock. In this article, the author addresses the refined social background of climbing. He asks how the intangible heritage left behind in rocks by generations of climbers manifests itself in the aesthetics of movement and the experiences embedded in the lines that form the climbing routes. How might anthropologists study the mind-body experiences and traces left by generations of rock users? How are we to understand the multisensory craft of climbing?     

老铁山·将军山积石墓浅析

在以往的考古报道和研究中,学者们多使用老铁山积石墓、将军山积石墓等遗址名称.经查,这两地点相距不远,而且积石墓相连成片①,同时有学者指出:"过去所谓老铁山积石冢,实际上是包括将军山积石冢在内" ②.因此笔者以为这两个遗址名称名义上指代的是两个遗址,实为同一墓地的两个不同称谓.为避免引起混淆,笔者建议将该遗址合称为老铁山·将军山积石墓.     

寂静岭上:碛口故事

碛口之名,最早见于《隋书》,是山西面对匈奴的防御要塞。乾隆年间,碛口则是有名的"晋商西大门,黄河大码头"。时至今日,山西碛口镇长在被黄河造就的黄土高坡上,受着繁荣的晋商经济辐射,这里的人们也有了新的生活。摄影师李双喜在山西碛口李家山拍摄到一组图片,借着窑洞、黄土和城墙,记录下历史的脚步,和这里万年未变的黄河交响乐。     

George W. Bush's City on a Hill

This paper explores the various and sometimes contradictory meanings of the metaphor of A City on a Hill, with an emphasis on how such an investigation can contribute to an understanding of the foreign policy of George W. Bush, especially in terms of the War on Terrorism in general and the war in Iraq in particular. The strands within the metaphor include religious, political, economic, and technological dimensions which too often exacerbate the confusions about national self-image many Americans have about our role in the world and about what has been called the right-wing Wilsonianism of the Bush White House. Greater clarity about the role of this metaphor in our history might help in minimizing what can fittingly be called the law of unintended consequences.     

Decolonising the Broken Hill Skull: Cultural Loss and a Pathway to Zambian Archaeological Sovereignty

For more than ninety years, between 1921 and 2012, our knowledge of the Broken Hill Man phase of human evolution has been provided by scholars who have been able to access the skull in England, where it was taken in 1921. This paper presents findings of the circumstances under which the skull was discovered in Northern Rhodesia and taken to England, its significance to science, and issues relating to its return to Zambia. The study grew out of the disillusionment of Zambians due to the reluctance of the Natural History Museum in London to repatriate the skull to its country of origin. The study has established that despite the existence of a legal framework in Northern Rhodesia to regulate the removal of relics from the territory, which was then under the administration of the British South Africa Company, the Rhodesia Broken Hill Mine Company donated the skull to the British Museum (Natural History) without obtaining an export permit. It is within the context of the findings and arguments advanced by the parties involved in the claim of ownership that this paper advocates for the return of the skull to Zambia.     

Women and economy: complex inequality in a post-industrial landscape

This article looks at the workplace, home and welfare/state to explore intergenerational, dynamic inequality experienced by women around paid work. Based in a former coalfield, it brings women's paid work centre stage and resonates with the experiences of women (and men) living and working in other post-industrial places that grew out of a particular industry, suffered the trauma of industrial closure, redundancy and job loss, and coping with a new economy shaped by low pay and insecurity. To examine the dynamic element of inequality, the article draws upon Walby's (2009, Globalisation and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities, London: Sage) theory of ‘complex inequality’ to understand intersecting regimes of oppression. The article is based on ethnographic work in East Durham, England, including repeat in-depth group discussions with 31 women aged 16–90.     

长调悠悠

泉湾里的牧草,长得又高又绿,把那一大片洼地填满了。泉水在草丛里闪着点点银星,就像无数萤火虫在飘动。有几只水鸭子从泉边飞起,一直朝德尔吉爷爷去的方向飞去。巴达玛望着水鸭子。当它们飞到德尔吉爷爷上空时,看见他那鹰嘴似的帽沿,准要把他当成一个凶猛的鹞鹰,不知要折飞到什