Homelessness,poverty, and risks to health: beyond at risk categorizations of street children1

Homeless and street children are commonly portrayed in the academic and welfare literature as a prime category of ‘children at risk’. They have attracted world‐wide attention due to rising numbers in cities of the Western and developing world coupled with a discourse of childhood that ascribes risk to poor urban children unaccompanied by adults on the streets. This paper presents a critique of views about homeless and street children that rest upon an unhelpful blanket generalization of risk and, more specifically, that adopt polemical or categorical statements about homelessness as the most salient risk factor for poor health. Current research is distancing itself from a discourse that sets global characteristics for a ‘street lifestyle’, aiming instead to contextualize research on street children. Many studies have also questioned the stereotypical expectation that homeless children are the most vulnerable in deprived environments, arguing that poverty, not homelessness per se, carries the most significant risks to children's health. A risk discourse is unhelpful where it promotes a stereotype of vulnerability about children, resulting in further discrimination and social exclusion; it is most helpful when it focuses attention on ways to negotiate adverse situations. Some challenging academic and practical questions need to be raised regarding risk assumptions and risk assessment.     

Beneath the Rising Sun: “Frenchness” and the Archaeology of Desire

This article takes the case of “rouge pot” fragments found in an archaeological context in New Orleans’ French Quarter associated with the circa 1822 Rising Sun Hotel and investigates the discourses and desires that shape our interpretations of artifacts. We argue that archaeological, historiographic, and public desires overlap and inform one another in a complex web of relations. In New Orleans, the particular web into which the archaeology of cosmetic jars and hotel sites can fall is spun by the ways in which the former French colonial capital is sexualized in both textbooks and folk songs.     

Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition: The Case of Kenyan Horticulture

This article examines the social effects of contract farming of export horticulture among smallholders in Meru District, Kenya. During the 1980s and 1990s, contracting was popularized by donors and governments alike as a way to reduce poverty and increase opportunities for self–employment in rural areas. Considerable research has documented the tensions in social relations that emerge in such cases, giving rise to gendered struggles over land, labour, and income in the face of new commodity systems. This article highlights similar tendencies. It suggests that men’s failure to compensate their wives for horticulture production has given rise to a string of witchcraft allegations and acts, as the wealth engendered by horticultural commodities comes up against cultural norms of marital obligation. While witchcraft accusations can expose women to risks of social alienation and financial deprivation, witchcraft nevertheless remains a powerful weapon through which women can level intra–household disparities and, more broadly, challenge the legitimacy of social practice. In Meru, witchcraft discourses are a vehicle through which gendered struggles over contract income are articulated and contested, and through which the social costs of agrarian transition become apparent.     

Confronting a Disciplinary Blindness: Women,War and Rape in the International Politics of Security

Much of the debate surrounding the inclusion of women in the study of international politics, particularly in reflections of war, promotes passive representation. State-sanctioned images of non-combatant women in supportive wartime roles reflect, rather than confront, traditional conceptualisations of 'legitimate knowledge' and ways of knowing. Therefore, estimates that 30,000 women were raped during the war in Bosnia shocked the international community. Yet it shouldn't. War rape is as old as war itself. This article looks at why, and how, traditional forms of theorising about international politics fails to identify or vocalise the violent insecurities of women in domestic and international space, thus ensuring women's silence. It also draws on alternative ways of knowing to confront the tradition and to un/recover the experiences of women.     

Reconstructing subsistence at the Yingpanshan and Gaoshan sites in Sichuan province,China: Insights from isotope analysis on bone samples and charred crop remains

During the Neolithic period, the Chengdu Plain was a key region where two important crops, rice and millet, were cultivated together. Millet was probably introduced from north-western China c.3500–3300 cal. bce , and rice came from the Middle Yangtze River c.2600 cal. bce . In this study, human and faunal remains, as well as charred crop grains, were collected from the Yingpanshan (3300–2600 cal. bce ) and Gaoshan (2500–2000 cal. bce ) sites where the dominant crop was millet and rice, respectively. Carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were conducted on human bones and the ecofact samples in order to reconstruct the subsistence at the sites. The results indicate that the diets of two individuals recovered from the Yingpanshan site consisted of both C₃- and C₄-based foods, predominantly the former. By contrast, Yingpanshan pigs consumed a large quantity of C₄ fodder. This result, combined with the ecofact evidence, suggests that millet was the main crop at the Yingpanshan site. It also highlights the fact that the two Yingpanshan individuals might be non-locals and/or belonged to later periods. On the other hand, the diet of the Gaoshan community was dominated by C₃-based foods. When considering the archaeobotanical evidence at Baodun, a site contemporaneous with and near to the Gaoshan site, it can be stated that rice was an important food resource for the Gaoshan community. This study also suggests how crops were managed at the two sites. The Yingpanshan people might have used manure for growing millet. Both manuring and irrigation might have also been practised by Gaoshan's rice farmers. However, more studies are required to understand the extent of manuring and irrigation in their agricultural economies.