Producing liminal space: gender,age and class in northern Ontario's tree planting industry

Drawing upon qualitative data, this article examines how tree planters in northern Ontario, Canada engage with liminality in terms of gender, class, age and space. In doing so, it provides insight into concepts of gender liminality and the variegated experiences of males and females in liminal space. The article focuses on four aspects of the liminal engagement. First, the spaces of tree planting are liminal as they are marked by homelife and worklife, but dominated by neither. Second, gender performances are liminal, as males perform masculinities seldom necessary or appropriate – yet often valorized – in their permanent communities, while females (who make up nearly half of the workforce) are offered opportunities to work and succeed in a traditionally male industry. However, success often requires that they adopt certain masculine traits. Third, most tree planters are in the interstitial age of ‘youth’, somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. Finally, tree planters are generally members of affluent urban middle-classes, yet the work they perform is more readily associated with rural or peripheral working-classes.     

Aspects of ancient Greek trade re-evaluated with amphora DNA evidence

Ancient DNA trapped in the matrices of ceramic transport jars from Mediterranean shipwrecks can reveal the goods traded in the earliest markets. Scholars generally assume that the amphora cargoes of 5th-3rd century B.C. Greek shipwrecks contained wine, or to a much lesser extent olive oil. Remnant DNA inside empty amphoras allows us to test that assumption. We show that short ∼100 nucleotides of ancient DNA can be isolated and analyzed from inside the empty jars from either small amounts of physical scrapings or material captured with non-destructive swabs. Our study material is previously inaccessible Classical/Hellenistic Greek shipwreck amphoras archived at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens, Greece. Collected DNA samples reveal various combinations of olive, grape, Lamiaceae herbs (mint, rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage), juniper, and terebinth/mastic (genus Pistacia). General DNA targeting analyses also reveal the presence of pine (Pinus), and DNA from Fabaceae (Legume family); Zingiberaceae (Ginger family); and Juglandaceae (Walnut family). Our results demonstrate that amphoras were much more than wine containers. DNA shows that these transport jars contained a wide range of goods, bringing into question long-standing assumptions about amphora use in ancient Greece. Ancient DNA investigations open new research avenues, and will allow accurate reconstruction of ancient diet, medicinal compounds, value-added products, goods brought to market, and food preservation methods.     

Stable isotope analysis of dog,fox, and human diets at a Late Holocene Chumash village (CA-SRI-2) on Santa Rosa Island,California

Stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope analyses of dog (Canis familiaris), island fox (Urocyon littoralis), and human bone collagen from CA-SRI-2 (AD 130–1830) on Santa Rosa Island, California provide a proxy of diet and the relationships between humans and these animals. Carbon isotopic signatures indicate that Native Americans and their dogs at CA-SRI-2 subsisted almost exclusively on marine resources, while the island fox ate primarily terrestrial foods. Nitrogen isotopes and archaeofaunal remains indicate that humans and dogs also ate higher trophic level foods, including finfishes, marine mammals, and seabirds with smaller amounts of shellfish. The CA-SRI-2 island foxes appear to have eaten higher amounts of terrestrial foods, similar to the diets observed in modern fox populations. These data generally confirm the commensal relationship assumed to exist between domesticated dogs and people, but the carbon isotopic composition of dogs is enriched ∼2‰ compared to humans. We hypothesize that the difference in carbon isotopes between dogs and humans may have resulted from a higher consumption of C3 plants with lower δ¹³C values by humans, or less likely from the ingestion by dogs of significant amounts of bone collagen, which is enriched by ∼4‰ over associated muscle.     

Problematizing Labour's Agency: Rescaling Collective Bargaining in British Columbia Pulp and Paper Mills

Abstract: This paper focuses on the contradictory nature and sometimes unintended consequences of workers’ efforts to defend particular communities against the ravages of capital restructuring. In the past decade, pattern collective bargaining in the highly unionized British Columbia pulp and paper industry has faced enormous strains due to intense industry restructuring. Our analysis focuses on the repercussions of actions taken by union locals in two British Columbia towns—Port Alice and Port Alberni—to try to secure the survival of their pulp and paper mills and, even in the case of Port Alice, the continued existence of the community. Our analysis resonates with recent debates surrounding worker agency as well as writing in the 1980s which addressed the often contradictory and problematic nature of workers’ struggles to “defend place”; writing largely neglected in more recent work in labour geography.     

Aimé Césaire 1913–2008

In a necessarily selective way, this paper explores the historiographical evolution of ‘settler colonialism’ as a category of analysis during the second half of the twentieth century. It identifies three main passages in its development. At first (until the 1960s), ‘settlers’, ‘settlement’ and ‘colonisation’ are understood as entirely unrelated to colonialism. The two do not occupy the same analytical field, pioneering endeavours are located in ‘empty’ settings and the presence and persistence of indigenous ‘Others’ is comprehensively disavowed. In a second stage (until the late 1970s), ‘settler colonialism’ as a compound identifies one specific type of diehard colonialism, an ongoing and uncompromising form of hyper-colonialism characterised by enhanced aggressiveness and exploitation (a form that had by then been challenged by a number of anti-colonial insurgencies). During a third phase (from the late 1970s and throughout the first half of the 1980s), settler colonialism is identified by a capacity to bring into being high standards of living and economic development. As such, settler colonialism is understood as the opposite of colonialism and associated underdevelopment and political fragmentation. It is only at the conclusion of a number of successive interpretative moments that ‘settler colonial’ phenomena could be theorised as related to, and yet distinct from, colonial ones. On the basis of this transformations, beginning from approximately the mid-1990s, ‘settler colonial studies’ as an autonomous scholarly field could then consolidate.