Looking for Heroes in All the Wrong Places: African Americans' Search for a Champion in the Far East

Book reviewed in this article:
Marc S. Gallicchio, The African–American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895–1945     

Heteronormative Citizenship: The Howard Government's Views on Gay and Lesbian Issues

This article analyses recent federal debates regarding gay and lesbian issues, focusing on the Howard government, and drawing attention to the arguably heteronormative nature of many politicians' views. Policy issues analysed include assisted reproductive technology, superannuation rights and censorship. Reference is also made to the Justice Kirby controversy. The article explores the way in which heteronormative arguments not only construct heterosexual citizens as the norm but are also used to discount arguments that discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens is taking place.     

Scale,Factor Analyses,and Neighborhood Effects

Studies of potential neighborhood effects have been constrained in most situations by the absence of small‐area data generated to characterize the local contexts within which individuals operate. Using small‐area data from the U.K. Census, this paper Illustrates the creation of bespoke neighborhoods—local areas defined separately for each individual in a sample survey—at a variety of scales, and their characterization using factor analysis techniques. Theories of neighborhood effects are uncertain as to the spatial scale at which the relevant processes operate, hence the value of exploring patterns consistent with those processes at a range of spatial scales. One problem with such comparative study is the incommensurability of regression coefficients derived from analyses using factor scores as the independent variables. The work reported here adapts a procedure introduced for reconstituting partial regression coefficients to circumvent that problem, and illustrates that patterns of voting at a recent British general election showed neighborhood‐effect‐like patterns at two separate scales simultaneously—with individual voter characteristics held constant.     

Writing and Waiting: The First World War Correspondence between Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton

The unpublished letters exchanged between Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton during the First World War, and Brittain’s diary of the period, show the extent to which men’s and women’s war experiences were interdependent, thus collapsing those binary oppositions of home and front, women and men, within which we write war. In these texts, the woman Brittain defines as ‘waiting at home’ cannot be divorced from the official war arena - the front. Furthermore, such interdepend-ence reveals that women’s tendency to accept much of the discourse of propaganda occurred not because of their separation from the world of combat, but because their intimate connection with it demanded the site of mourning that was offered by such discourse.     

The Rural Estate through the Eyes of the Land Agent: A Community in Microcosm c1812 – 1844

This article explores how the Castleman/Anglesey archive forms a micro-study of an estate and its associated rural community at work. It will survey the type of data which can be found within the land agent’s estate vouchers and diurnal correspondence and why they are important. It will begin by examining the concepts and ideology of the rural community and seek to explain why it is so hard to define. The article will then investigate how a micro-study can assist in understanding the ways in which estates reacted to periods of economic difficulties. This will include: why landowners left rent arrears to accrue, the types of petition which the local populace presented, the reasoning behind improving landscapes and the ways an estate contributed to the relief of the labouring poor. The Castleman archive reveals the multi-layered, complex nature of the rural community and the diverse role of the land agent in balancing the relationships which existed within it. In effect it acts as an historical prism.     

The DEEPSAL Project: Using the Past for Local Community Futures in Jordan

ABSTRACT

The Deep Past as a Social Asset in the Levant (DEEPSAL) project, conducted in 2015–16 by the Council for British Research in the Levant, examined two communities in southern Jordan, Beidha and Basta, who live near significant Neolithic archaeological sites. The project collected information on the communities’ current socioeconomic conditions, their relationship with local cultural heritage and how that cultural heritage currently benefits or hinders them. The information was used to inform nascent strategies to utilize the sites sustainably as development assets and suggest alternative strategies as necessary. The results showed that a tourism-based strategy is suitable for Beidha but there was a need to focus on basic business skills. For Basta a tourism-based strategy is currently unsuitable, and efforts should rather focus on supporting educational activities. The results of the project are presented here within the context of archaeology’s increasing interest to use archaeological resource to benefit local communities, and outlines lessons for that effort.     

Teaching social science models

Ralph L. Beals. The Peasant Marketing System of Oaxaca, Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. ix + 419 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, appendices, bibliography, and index. $20.00.

Scott Cook and Martin Diskin, eds. Markets in Oaxaca, Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976. 285 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, glossary, bibliography, and index. $9.95.