The Violence of Poverty: Theology and Activism in an “Age of Austerity”

ABSTRACT

Faith groups are in the front line of the struggle to defeat poverty in breadline Britain. Given their roots in local communities Churches and Christian NGOs are well-placed to challenge economic policies that have resulted in the spiraling of food poverty, homelessness, personal debt and child poverty. By framing poverty as a political choice, a form of structural violence and systemic sin this paper brings peace studies and political theology into a constructive dialogue. In the face of ongoing “austerity” the paper demonstrates that poverty represents a clear and present danger to the social fabric of the UK and argues that only a re-imagined interdisciplinary theology of liberation can provide academics and activists with the tools needed to defeat systemic poverty and the cultural violence upon which it rests.     

A locally-adaptive model of archaeological potential (LAMAP)

A new method for modelling archaeological resource potential is presented that avoids some of the mathematical violations and inconsistencies of previously-favoured techniques. The Minanha research area in west-central Belize and a database of other Maya centres from within Belize are used as a case study for demonstrating the utility of the proposed modelling technique.     

Linking Land and Navy: archaeological investigations at the site of the Woolwich Royal Dockyard,south‐eastern England

This paper outlines the archaeological evidence found at the demolished Royal Naval Dockyard at Woolwich for the development and construction of dockyard structures of the 18th to early‐19th centuries. This is set within the framework provided by historic, documentary, map and historic‐model evidence. The results of earlier excavations at the same facility are also reviewed. The themes covered include; the interplay of ‘carpentry’ versus ‘shipwrightry’ in dockyard construction, aspects of naval timber‐supply and landscape, the recycling of ships' timbers, dockyard craft specialisation and changing relative sea‐levels. © 2011 Pre‐Construct Archaeology Limited     

Urine trouble: a social history of bedwetting and its regulation

Bedwetting has confounded the presumed boundaries of the human body, existing in a fluid space, between the normal and pathological, its treatment has demanded the application of a wide array of different technologies, each based on a distinct conception of the relationship between the body and personality, human organs and personal conduct. In tracing the social history of bedwetting and its regulation, this article examines the ontological assumptions underpinning the treatment of bedwetting and how they have changed over the past two centuries. Through the analysis of medical journals, newspaper articles and magazine advertisements, different topologies are identified which redefine the boundaries of the human body and its capacities. From 16th-century naturalism, in which the human body is subordinated to a cosmic totality, to the circumscribed space of 19th-century paediatrics and the expansive circuits of behavioural psychology and modern psychoanalysis, the body has become multiplied, differently enacted through the application of diverse technologies. It was be shown how coordinating the messy and divergent conceptions of the human body has posed an endemic problem for the human sciences, and how the enduring tension between object enactment and subject constitution is an expression of modern "baroque" subjectivity.