Small Area Population Estimation: Estimating Population Size at Ward Level 2014 in South Africa

The census is the traditional source of population figures at various levels. Census figures however are technically outdated immediately they are released because planners require figures for the present and possibly for future dates. In an attempt to meet this demand different organisations and researchers produce population estimates and projections. These estimates however are usually at higher geographical levels and often do not meet the planning needs of administrators at lower geographical levels. This study extends a top‐down estimation method to an African country by estimating the mid‐2014 population at ward level in South Africa. The study used the 2011 South Africa Census to estimate current levels of fertility, mortality as well as current trends in net migration at a higher geographical level. Historical trends in fertility and mortality were based on the 1996 Census, 1997 and 1998 October Household Surveys as well as the 2007 Community Survey data. The results indicate that that 20 of the largest wards as at mid‐2014 were located in South Africa's metropolitan areas. Nineteen of the 20 largest wards are currently growing at a rate of over 4% per annum and if this trend continues, eighteen of these wards will double their current population size in less than 15 years.     

The Design,Application and Evaluation of an Effective Subsurface Sampling Strategy: Detecting Holocene Knapping Floors in Southeastern Australia

Subsurface sampling programs are regularly employed to detect buried archaeological material in open landscapes. Rarely, however, is the effectiveness of the sampling program assessed through subsequent excavation. Here, an optimal subsurface testing strategy is designed using Kintigh’s simulation approach to locate prehistoric knapping floors and is applied to an open landscape in southeastern Australia. Several prehistoric knapping floors were discovered using this strategy and nine of these were subsequently excavated to establish their diameters, densities, and density distributions. The results indicate that there is a high level of divergence between test-pitting data and excavation data. This demonstrates that test-pit data cannot be assumed to provide an accurate representation of site characteristics. It follows that an empirical validation of site characteristics through subsequent excavation is needed before a meaningful evaluation of the effectiveness of a sampling strategy can be conducted.     

Halil İnalcık (1916–2016): a preliminary anatomy of a legacy

Halil Inalcik (1916–2016) was the pre-eminent historian of the Ottoman Empire in the world from his establishment as a published scholar in the 1950s until the time of death. This article is an initial examination of his legacy to the study of Ottoman history broadly. His goal was to create an empirically-based narrative of Ottoman history from beginning to end, based on exploitation of the vast resources of the Ottoman archives as well as the extensive library of Ottoman narrative chronicles, together with non-Ottoman sources. In addition, he invested extensive energies in training several generations of Ottoman historians. Overall, his impact on scholarly and public perceptions of the Ottoman Empire has been unmatched to the present day.     

European democracy deferred: de Gaulle and the Dehousse Plan, 1960

Abstract

This article examines the first debate within the European Economic Community (EEC) over democracy following the Treaty of Rome. The treaty called for the newly created European Parliament to draw up a proposal for direct, transnational parliamentary elections. A plan in 1960 led by Fernand Dehousse emerged as the consensus choice. Charles de Gaulle, however, opposed the plan and succeeded in defeating it. We see during the1960 debate over the Dehousse Plan competing interpretations of democracy in European unity that still frame the issue today. At stake was the democratic character of the new EEC as well as the proper role of the public in the uniting of Europe. Should the public vote on matters of European integration via transnational parliamentary elections, national referendums or neither? By analytically reconstructing the key participants’ democratic worldviews, the article contributes to developing a deeper understanding of the debate over direct elections to the European Parliament, a fuller comprehension of the early life of the Treaty of Rome and a sharper realisation of the essential interconnectedness of the development of the EEC and the resumption of national democracy in post-WWII Western Europe.     

Embodying violence: critical geographies of gender,race, and culture

The papers in this themed section collectively explore the intertwined geographies of corporeality and violence; to explore the ways in which narrow representations of race and culture are imbricated in the mis/understanding of gender based violence. This introductory essay draws out linkages across these papers, and to several themes in feminist geography. Combined, the four papers in the themed section offer new pathways for feminist geographers to consider. The authors connect the intimate and the global, the personal and the geopolitical, and offer critical insights into how feminist geographers might unpack entangled inequalities that give rise to distinct experiences of violence. Through their disparate studies, the authors also destabilize the assumptions mapped onto gendered bodies, particularly those that rely on racist, sexist, and classist representations of ‘culture’ and ‘community’ to describe gendered vulnerability. Subsequently, their analyses reveal how these assumptions simultaneously work to erase or ignore structural inequalities of capitalism or the state, which frame, contribute to and perpetuate violence against vulnerable bodies and geographies. They collectively underscore the epistemological, methodological and ontological possibilities of corporeal geographies particularly when tasked with intellectually analyzing both exceptional and everyday experiences of violence.     

Beyond ‘Culture’ as an explanation for intimate violence: the politics and possibilities of plural resistance

This article interrogates simplified culturalist explanations of gendered violence, which evoke timeless ‘tradition’ and religiosity to locate violence in racialized places and upon ‘othered’ bodies. I examine structural processes that shape women’s experiences of and vulnerability to intimate violence. My analysis complicates culturalist narratives, but engages critically with culture as one context within which violence is embedded. Drawing on field research within Muslim communities in Hyderabad, India, I discuss the complexities of interwoven experiences of structural, state, and intimate gender violence. I draw attention to how anti-violence organizations working in marginalized communities theorize these complexities, and practices of what I am calling ‘plural resistance,’ which these organizations enact through equally complex responses to such violences. Plural resistance describes community-based strategies that simultaneously reject both gender violence and other forms of systemic violence, such as poverty born of uneven development. Embodied resistance to gender violence provides a critical lens for understanding articulations between regional patriarchies, exclusionary state practices, uneven development, and Islamophobia.