New life in Japan's ‘endingness’ business

The Japanese deathcare and Buddhist goods industry is a growing field, emerging out of radical shifts in the socio-economic conditions of everyday life: smaller households, an ageing population and more irregular employment/lifestyle patterns. Based on fieldwork, this article reports tectonic ruptures within Japan’s household-based mortuary system and Buddhist practice. It takes readers to ENDEX, the premier convention for Japan’s ‘ending industry’, where new ‘life’ emerges from the falling away of older death rites that get remixed and remade into newer experimental practices, businesses and business subjectivities. Examples range from high-tech gravestones and drones to competitions for the ‘Hottest Priest’ and best encoffiner. This article engages with these new necro-technologies and asks why the old deathcare system is falling apart. What are the socio-material effects of its unravelling? And what does the futurity of necro-praxis look like in Japan (and elsewhere) when the existential fabric of mortality may be torn apart?     

Contesting ‘Global Sisterhood’: The Global Women's Health Movement,the United Nations and the Different Meanings of Reproductive Rights (1970s–80s)

The article contributes to a genealogy of the global articulation of reproductive rights principles, as established at the 1994 United Nations (UN) Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo and the UN Women's Conference held in Beijing the following year. It highlights the key role played by an emerging global women's health movement in the 1970s–80s, in shaping UN debates on family planning, women's rights in procreative choice and women's roles in socio-economic development. The article focuses on the International Campaign for Abortion, Sterilisation and Contraception (est. London 1978) and the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights (Amsterdam and Manila 1984; ECOSOC consultative status in 1992). Adopting an intersectional perspective, the paper highlights the local embeddedness of feminist positions, the shortcomings of Western feminism and the ways in which conflicts between women's organisations allowed for an original and evolving concept of reproductive rights to emerge. It is based on UN papers and the archives of the above organisations and family planning movements.     

Mandibular ramus posterior flexure: a sex indicator in Homo sapiens fossil hominids?

Accurate determination of sex in skeletal human samples is very important in anthropological and demographic studies. Recently, Loth and Henneberg have suggested that a new osteological criterion on the mandible, the mandibular ramus posterior flexure (MRPF) had a high sex discriminating effectiveness. A preliminary test applied to a few hominid mandibles )including Australopithecines, Homo erectus, Neanderthals and Upper palaeolithic hominids) apparently confirmed the high reliability of the MRPF as a sex indicator ‘over time and through palaeospecies’. As the pelvis is commonly considered as providing the most significant criteria that allows the establishment of skeletal sexual dimorphism of adults, the present paper evaluates this mandibular feature on a few additional palaeolithic hominids (i.e. Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans) for whom a gender estimation was known based upon the pelvis. This analysis was conducted on the original material and its results appear in contradiction with those of the previous studies made by Loth and Henneberg. A reconsideration of the visual assessment of MRPF as a sex indicator in Homo sapiens fossil hominids is therefore suggested. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Edgar Kant (1902–1978): A Baltic Pioneer

It is indeed a joy to speak about Edgar Kant on this occasion which celebrates the hundredth anniversary of his birth. His lifepath traversed only two‐thirds of this eventful century, yet he did experience directly many of its dreams and realities, the passion and pain of war and peace, of economic boom and bust, of national liberation, scientific revolutions, exile and the traumas of geopolitical transformations. The twentieth century also witnessed profound changes in practices of geography and the name of Edgar Kant deserves an honoured place as pioneer of many influential turns in the discipline. It is especially delightful to simultaneously honour his mentor and friend, Johannes G. Granö, who stirred his imagination in conceptual directions which were truly novel in those days‐directions which later spawned enthusiastic research on environmental perceptions, time geography, and‐most especially‐landscape and cultural identity.     

Looked at and looked over or: I wish I was adopted

Through collaborative narrative writing, in this article, we redeploy the sense of refugeity present in our singular narratives to co-construct a shared space for creative scholarship that becomes a feminist space to belong. Drawing on feminist scholarship and performance theory, narrative collaborations awkwardly embrace our mutual and sometimes contradictory senses of self and identity performance. The co-constructed nature of this article reflects contemporary developments in qualitative research that employ creative arts practice-led methodologies and acknowledge researcher/writers as situated gendered, sexualized, and encultured subjects within particular global and local contexts. This unconventional structure is used here to foreground the intersubjectivity and spatiality from which research and the desire to research arise, and as an experiment in tracing the lines of flight between new identities and new spaces.     

Protocol for Recording Enamel Hypoplasia in Modern and Archaeological Caprine Populations

This paper outlines the first methodology for recording dental enamel hypoplasia in the high‐crowned dentition of modern and archaeological caprine teeth. The method has been developed and trialed on five caprine populations from Orkney (UK); two modern populations (Shetland and North Ronaldsay breeds) and three Neolithic assemblages from the archaeological sites of Knap of Howar, Skara Brae and Holm of Papa Westray. Problems associated with differential tooth wear, as well as the presence of coronal cementum, are discussed, and recommendations are given on the identification and recording of hypoplastic dental defects in caprines. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dental Pathology,Trauma and Attrition in a Zambian Iron Age Sample: A Macroscopic and Radiographic Investigation

Using morphological and radiographic methods, we analysed the dentitions of 24 individuals from Ingombe Ilede and Isamu Pati Zambian Iron Age archaeological sites. In this study, we determined the frequency and distribution of attrition, pathological conditions and dental trauma. This research also presents the first view of dental health for an Iron Age population in southern Africa. In total, 482 teeth were available for this study with 287 teeth missing, where 50 of these were lost antemortem and one individual had an erupted supernumerary first mandibular incisor. With the use of radiography and morphology, 21.5% (104/482) of the analysed teeth had at least one pathological condition or evidence of dental trauma. Some interesting dental aspects found and discussed in this paper are linear enamel hypoplastic lesions, radicular resorption, periapical lesions, fractures, dental modification and carious lesions. Many of these features were diagnosed with radiography, and this was especially important for those found below the cemento‐enamel junction (p = 0.0202) that are less obvious with macroscopic investigation alone. Additionally, the quantity and direction of dental attrition was studied. There were observed sex differences with the direction of wear, likely representing a sex‐specific cultural practice of using teeth as tools. Overall, the results show that this sample suffered relatively little from dental problems, and many of those observed features were associated with the traumatic procedure of dental modification, whereas others were age and diet‐related. Additionally, with the use of radiography, rare dental fractures and other features were diagnosed; these results demonstrate the requirement for its application in dental studies on archaeological assemblages. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.