Dietary patterns and social structures in medieval Sigtuna, Sweden, as reflected in stable isotope values in human skeletal remains

Stable isotopes (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N) have been studied in human burials from the medieval town Sigtuna in Sweden. Dietary patterns of 80 adult individuals were analyzed on three cemeteries representing the phases of establishment, prosperity and decline of the town. All analyzed individuals were radiocarbon dated. One of the cemeteries, Church 1, represents a population of higher social status than those at the other two cemeteries.The δ¹³C values are homogenous and showed that the protein intake was mainly of terrestrial origin in the whole population. δ¹⁵N values varies more and they may indicate a higher input of vegetables in the diet at one of the cemeteries, the Nunnan block.Already in the initial phases of Sigtuna a social hierarchy had been established which is reflected in dietary patterns. Apparently more animal protein was consumed among the high status population of the town. Furthermore, differences in dietary patterns between the sexes were noted. In all phases the females show more clustered values indicating a more homogeneous diet than that of the males.     

‘The Kite is Tied to You’: Custom,Christianity, and Organization among Kanak Women of Drueulu,Lifou, New Caledonia

This paper explores Drueulu women's engagement in an organized collectivity during the late 1980s and early 1990s. I focus particularly on the Drueulu Women's Group, a group affiliated to the umbrella Catholic organization, mouvement féminin vers un Souriant Village Mélanésien (mfSVM), to illustrate how these women mobilized cultural elements, including customary bonds, religious affiliation, and maternal relations, to assert their agency and empowerment. To move beyond a given and unchanging representation of Lifouan men and women means bringing to the fore multiple changing identities which are negotiated in different times and places. This does not mean privileging localism over national commonalities. By examining a 1990 protest march against alcohol abuse by men, I attest to the various articulations of women's concerns, customary linkages, and denominational affiliation which informed women's agenda at the village level. I then consider how these configurations were articulated in the 1992 annual general assembly of the mfSVM when 200 women gathered in Drueulu from all over the country for the twentieth anniversary of the movement. In the wider social settings here examined, the ubiquitous metaphorical use of maternal tropes gained strategic efficacy.     

Social and political trust in Istanbul and Moscow: a comparative analysis of individual and neighbourhood effects

Aiming to bring local context into studies of social capital, our study uses samples of 4006 individuals in Istanbul and 3476 in Moscow using a comparable questionnaire. The stratification of each city's neighbourhoods on the basis of socio-economic characteristics provided the basis for the sampling. Using a multilevel modelling procedure, we show both that locality matters (neighbourhood effect proved significant) and that social capital may indeed be constituted in very particular ways in illiberal democracies such as Russia and Turkey. Social and political trust are frequently thought to contribute to social capital – that is, to provide social resources upon which individuals or groups may draw for their political efficacy. Trust in fellow citizens in Istanbul exhibits a positive relationship to associational activities (joining clubs etc.), while in Moscow social trust can be explained predominantly in terms of (lower) socio-economic status. At the same time, important similarities emerged between the two cases. For social trust, in both cities the 'cosmopolitanization thesis', which holds that those who associate more widely are also more trusting of fellow citizens, generally applied. Further, in both cities, residents with lower socio-economic status (though in Moscow this is complicated by education) and lower likelihoods of engagement in direct political action were more trustful of parliament . While this is the opposite of what we have been led to expect based on Western democratic polities, it is a reasonable outcome of illiberal democratic governance operating in these two cities.     

Invoking Religion in Australian Politics

As religious engagement in the Australian population continues to decline, the apparent increased prominence of religion in Australian politics is puzzling. This article examines the characteristics of 2422 speeches given by prominent Australian federal politicians between 2000 and 2006 to assess whether religion has become more prominent in early twenty-first century Australian politics, and whether or not the explanations provided to explain the increase are compelling. It is argued that the framing of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ as a religious conflict weakened adherence to Rawls' (2005 Rawls, J. 2005. Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press.  [Google Scholar]) liberal consensus (exclusion of religious beliefs from the public forum) and normalised the use of Christian terminology and ideas in Australian political discourse.     

Democratisation and Ethnic Conflict: The Kin Connection

Abstract. This article posits that individuation is a determining factor in making democratisation efforts workable or, where it is absent, ethnic conflict likely. Somalia serves as a case study. Since the Somali state has not been able to secure individuals' social welfare or their futures, citizens use genealogies, which chart trustworthiness, to construct social welfare safety-nets. There is also a moral dimension to genealogy. This is quite different from what occurs in the democratic West, where the state has guaranteed individuals a significant measure of social welfare security over time, and where identity can be considered situational. I argue that under conditions of uncertainty, such as have existed in Somalia, identity is not at all situational, but is fixed and fixes individuals in ethnic groups. The push to democratise can then lead to armed ethnic conflict.     

COMPUTATIONAL COMPARISONS OF SPATIAL PRICE EQUILIBRIUM METHODS*

ABSTRACT. In this paper we propose new algorithms for the solution of both general and standard spatial price equilibrium problems, and test their performance with existing algorithms on randomly generated problems. For the standard problem, we propose decomposition schemes based on the concept of “equilibration operator” and compare their performance with the Frank-Wolfe method. For the general problem, we present alternative variational inequality formulations defined over Cartesian products of sets and then exploit these formulations to construct Gauss-Seidel-type serial decomposition methods. We then compare their performance with the projection method. Our computational tests suggest that the new schemes are substantially more efficient than earlier ones.