A Medieval Heroine for the Modern Woman

This article discusses the history writing of the early liberal women’s movement in Sweden, in the Fredrika Bremer Association’s journals such as Tidskrift för hemmet and Dagny. Prominent members of the movement sought to create a new history, by women and for women, and to create a pantheon of foremothers and examples for the modern woman. Medieval women were particularly favoured as they could be described in ways that harmonized well with the overall objectives of the liberal women’s movement and with the self-images of these early feminists. Thus, individuals such as Saint Birgitta and Queen Philippa were given heroine’s portraits and presented as carriers of ideal characteristics. This was a means of positioning themselves and of proving that women were fit to rule and to take active part in political and social life.     

Food,faith and community: social well-being of Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands

This article explores how Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands enhance their gendered social well-being. We provide an in-depth view of gender-specific places and relations that shape the social well-being of migrants, focusing on place-based lived experiences, by conducting in-depth interviews and observations. Our results demonstrate that social well-being is enhanced by social networks, wherein the participants recreate feelings of self-esteem, belonging and recognition. Furthermore, the special meaning of food and faith also contributes to the social well-being of the participants. Food and faith serve as commemorations of traditions in their home country and alleviate the transition to new traditions in the host country. We also found that specific places, such as shops and churches, contribute to the social well-being of participants in the study. Men and women in our study use different strategies to construct their well-being, and they interpret places and social relations differently, but they all showed to be active agents in enhancing their social well-being. Our female participants in particular look for opportunities in the host country to independently enhance their social well-being, for instance through establishing their own small businesses and social groups. Through its focus on the social well-being of migrants, the study contributes to increase understanding between different cultural groups.     

Automated Analysis of Environmental Degradation of Paint Residues

The development of effective conservation strategies for the protection of rock art sites involves the assessment of the taphonomic risks posed by physical and chemical weathering. This study outlines the methodology used in a pilot study to monitor and model the deterioration of paint residues in a cave environment. Mineral oxide pigments were mixed with water and placed on the walls of a cave in the Mendip hills (U.K.). The physical degradation of the paint residues was simulated visually and modelled mathematically. A training stage learning the characteristics of a reference image is followed by comparisons with this image as the test paints deteriorate. The study will be extended over three years and digital image processing will be used to quantify changes in the colour and dimensions of the test paints. The results will be correlated with micro-climatic variables. This methodology can be used to model taphonomic changes to rock art and other forms of imagery in differing environments.     

Institutionalizing Participatory,Client-Driven Research and Technology Development in Agriculture

This article identifies key characteristics of participatory research and development(R&D) in the agricultural sector: it is client-driven, requires decentralized technology development, devolves to farmers the major responsibility for adaptive testing, and requires institutions and individuals to become accountable for the relevance and quality of technology on offer. Through case study material drawn from Latin America, Asia and Africa, the article then reviews ways by which institutions have responded to these characteristics and raises issues for further elaboration. Steps need to be taken, in particular, to safeguard equity, both between the more and less vocal groups of farmers, and between the requirements of present and future generations (the latter referring particularly to environmental concerns). It is argued that participatory R&D alone is insufficient to deliver innovations relevant to diverse client groups: policy mechanisms are required to define which clients are to participate, whose agendas are to drive the process, and what organizational innovations are needed to move agricultural R&D in these directions.     

Tooth Evulsion in the Maghreb: Chronological and Geographical Patterns

The practice of tooth evulsion was widespread in the Maghreb from the Iberomaurusian through to the Neolithic. We present an updated summary of the geographical and chronological distribution of different patterns of tooth evulsion during this period based on a site-by-site review. Tooth evulsion was almost universal during the Iberomaurusian but typically restricted to the upper central incisors. During the Transitional Epipalaeolithic, the practice was extended to include removal of a minimum of four central incisors in both males and females. During the Capsian the custom became less prevalent and more variable, suggesting regional difference and a possible change or diversification of social meaning. A markedly higher prevalence of tooth evulsion among females during the Capsian period supports this interpretation. The prevalence of tooth evulsion was further reduced in the Neolithic.     

The Unusual Case of ‘Mrs Sherlock’. Memoir,Identity and the ‘Real’ Woman Private Detective in Twentieth–Century Britain

Despite a huge popular and literary interest in detective fiction and an extensive academic literature on the history of policing, there have been very few studies of the history of private detectives/investigators. The work of women investigators has proved to be even more marginal. Histories of women and work have tended, for obvious reasons, to concentrate on mainstream industries, occupations and professions rather than the unusual or the unique. Focusing on the memoirs of Annette Kerner, published in the early 1950s, this article examines the range of opportunities that investigation created in the first half of the twentieth century, analysing the interaction of professional, gender and class identities. It highlights, firstly, women's ‘professional’ commitment to an exciting and challenging area of work, exploring their relationships with other occupational groups including women police. Second, it considers how disguise and masquerade presented opportunities for urban exploration and the crossing of traditional boundaries of gender and class. Investigative work developed, historically, at the same time as detective fiction and it has been deeply affected by fictional portrayals. The cultural mantle of ‘the female Sherlock Holmes’ was a hard inheritance to shake off and it suffused women's public presentations of themselves.     

Re-placing gender? Reflections on 15 years of Gender,Place and Culture

This article reflects on Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) from 1994 to mid-2008, to highlight some of the key subjects and debates which have been delimited and progressed within its pages. Launched simultaneously with the cultural turn in human geography, GPC proceeded to raise important questions about identity and difference, effectively reflecting but also driving a number of transformative intellectual and political agendas. This reflection will focus on three interrelated sites of such activity: empirical, theoretical and political. Empirically, numerous articles have examined the ways gender is lived, in and across spaces and these have been enlivened by approaches highlighting masculinities, sexualities and embodiment. Theoretically these subjects have been informed by post-colonial and post-structural frameworks, directing discussion towards multiple identities, reflexivity, research practice, performativity, material cultures, positionality and the nature of academic knowledge. In addition, GPC has registered progressive political concerns for justice and equality, though the nature and extent of its political import has been legitimately questioned from without and within the pages of the journal. The resolution of the many dilemmas associated with the ways gender is lived, thought about and practiced has not always been successful in the pages of GPC, and the ongoing reality of Anglo-American dominance, the persistence of women's inequality and the tension between discursive and political activism, remains. However, in re-placing gender over the last 15 years, GPC has been a journal of serious and path-breaking scholarship which has further legitimized the value of feminist geography.     

Book reviews

CHINA

EDWARD FRIEDMAN and BARRETT L. McCORMICK, eds. What if China Doesn't Democratize? Implications for War and Peace. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. 376 pp. Index, introduction, notes, tables. US$69.95, hardcover; US$26.95, paper.

SHAOHUA HU. Explaining Chinese Democratization. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2000. 194 pp. Acknowledgments, introduction, bibliography, index. US$62.50, hardcover.

S. A. SMITH. A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai 1920–1927. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. x, 315 pp. £45.00, hardcover.

MARAM EPSTEIN. Competing Discourses: orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 197, 2002. xii, 353 pp. US$39.50, hardcover.

JAPAN, KOREA

BRIAN J. McVEIGH. Wearing Ideology: state, Schooling and Self‐Presentation in Japan. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000. 231 pp. Illustrations, introduction, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. US$65.00 cloth; US$19.50 paper.

ALISON McQUEEN TOKITA. Kiyomoto‐bushi. Narrative Music of the Kabuki Theatre Sen Studien zur Traditionellen Musik Japans Bd. 8. Basel. London: Barenreiter Kassel, 1999. 400pp. Preface, foreword, Japanese and English abstracts, introduction, photographs, illustrations, appendices. DM68.00, hardcover.

BERT EDSTROM (ed). The Japanese and Europe: images and Perceptions. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000. 283 pp. £45.00, hardcover.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

SIRI GAMAGE and I. B. WATSON (eds). Conflict and Community in Contemporary Sri Lanka: “Pearl of the East” or the “Island of Tears”. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 355 pp. Rs495, hardcover; Rs295, paper.

RANABIR SAMADDAR. The Marginal Nation: transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 228 pp. Rs 325.

GENERAL ASIA

DAVID WALKER. Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999. 312 pp. $29.95, paper.

J. S. EADES, TOM GILL and HARUMI BEFU (eds). Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000. viii, 295 pp. A$39.95/US$26.00, paper.

YAMAMOTO YOSHINOBU (ed). Globalism, Regionalism & Nationalism. Asia in Search of its Role in the 21st Century. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. xi, 260 pp. £14.99/US$34.95, paper.

DONALD DENOON. Getting Under the Skin: the Bougainville Copper Agreement and the Creation of the Panguna Mine. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000. vii, 264 pp. Maps, bibliography, appendices, index. A$39.95, hardcover.

JOANNE R. BAUER and DANIEL A. BELL (eds). The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xii, 394 pp. Notes, index. £40.00, hardcover; £14.95, paper.

ANNE‐MARIE HILSDON, MARTHA MACINTYRE, VERA MACKIE and MAILA STIVENS (eds). Human Rights and Gender Politics: Asia‐Pacific Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2000. ix, 240 pages. Notes, index. £60.00, hardcover.