Useful work for idle hands or a brightening and elevating influence? The introduction of the Brabazon Employment Scheme to Glasgow’s public institutions in the late 19th century

Women’s ability to effect changes in welfare policy during the later workings of the new Poor Law has been presented as a ‘marginal influence’ within past historiography. This perspective is contested in recent empirical work, which argues for a more positive view of female agency. The Brabazon Employment Scheme was a charitable initiative, which occupied the poor unable to take part in the routine work of public institutions. Findings from its operation in Glasgow demonstrate how women drew upon philanthropic experience as well as elected positions in the management of institutions to secure the scheme’s introduction in these settings. While the initiative originated in the English workhouses, local women extended the Brabazon activities to address gaps in welfare provision for asylum patients. In doing so, the article shows how organised charity continued to function as an avenue of support for the poor alongside municipal relief into the early 20th century.     

Buddhist buildings in England: the construction of ‘under-represented’ faith heritage in a multicultural and post-Christian setting

Until recently the ‘heritage industry’ in England overlooked buildings of minority faith traditions. Little has been written about this ‘under-represented’ heritage. Drawing on data from the first national survey of Buddhist buildings in England, we examine the ways in which Buddhist heritage is beginning to be incorporated into the state-funded ‘heritage industry’ as well as how Buddhist communities in England construct heritage through these buildings. First, we draw upon spatial theory in the study of religion to examine three dimensions of minority faith buildings in England and what this tells us about the communities involved: ‘location’ (i.e. the geographical location of the buildings); ‘space’ (i.e. what the buildings are used for and their relationship to local, national and transnational scales); and ‘place’ (i.e. what types of buildings are selected by different communities and why). We then turn to theories of memory that have become popular within the study of religion as well as heritage studies. Religion understood as ‘a chain of memory’ plays an important role in heritage construction via faith buildings, and an analysis of faith buildings, their spatial dimensions and role in ‘memorywork’, helps us think through the dynamics of modern religious belief in a multicultural and post-Christian setting.     

War Trauma and Alcoholism in the Early Writings of Charlotte and Branwell Brontë

During and after the Napoleonic Wars, there was an outpouring of military-based biographical writing never before seen in British history. Over 200 military memoirs were published either as standalone entities or in periodicals such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and The United Service Journal. As a result, the experiences of ordinary soldiers were brought to the forefront of Britain’s public consciousness. Although many of these memoirs glorified war, a number revealed the psychological damage war inflicted on the British male population and explicitly exposed the horrors of combat to a domestic readership. Furthermore, this explosion of life writing also exposed a connection between suffering and alcoholism, consolidating trauma as a post-war, national problem. The Brontës, typically recognized as canonical, Victorian authors, first participated in this military-based literary movement. This article attempts to reposition and establish two of the siblings – Charlotte and Branwell – as significant post-war commentators. By focussing on their military reading, it will become clear how they vicariously processed and reimagined war trauma and addiction through their Glass Town and Angrian sagas. Not only will this article argue that the introduction of military biography into British society generated wide-scale recognition of war trauma, despite its absence within contemporary medical discourse, but it will also argue that the young Brontës’ literature is an important historical source for understanding and re-evaluating the public response to post-war military masculinity.     

Indigeneity and the refusal of whiteness

Drawing on international literature examining mismatch between racial appearance and racial identity, this paper analyses the subgroup of Indigenous Australians who have been identified, and self-identify, as ‘light-’, ‘fair-’, ‘pale-’ or ‘white-skinned’. We utilise the term ‘race discordance’ to describe the experience of regularly being attributed an identity that is different from how one personally identifies. In contrast to existing terms such as elective race, ethnic fraud and transracialism, race discordance does not seek to explain or judge the validity of identity claims that do not match perceived appearance. When unnoticed or unchallenged, ‘race discordance’ corresponds to ‘passing’. We propose the term ‘race refusal’ to describe instances when a person rejects the race they are ascribed to. In the case of white-skinned Indigenous Australians who are frequently assumed to identify as white, race refusal entails the refusal of whiteness. When light-skinned Indigenous people refuse whiteness, what are they refusing? In conversation with Audra Simpson’s notion of refusal of state recognition as an assertion of continued Indigenous sovereignty, we find that these particular micro-politics of race refusal demand rather than negate state recognition. We argue that identity refusal by pale-skinned Aboriginal people acts to disrupt histories of assimilation, white sociality and everyday racialisation while simultaneously reinforcing Australian recognition regimes.     

Are universities ready for interculturality? The case of the Intercultural University ‘Amawtay Wasi’ (Ecuador)

This article focuses on the creation of the Intercultural University ‘Amawtay Wasi’ in 2003, and its evolution up until its final suspension from the university system in Ecuador. I reflect on the difficulty of implementing educational approaches based on locally situated cultural identities that involve epistemologies different from those which are hegemonic in academic spheres on the global level. From the point of view of the indigenous movement, the current situation is solely the result of the ignorance and arrogance of the state, which ‘has led to a backlash against the gains made by indigenous people that has even led to a decline in terms of indigenous rights’, calling the current government a government of ‘a new colonization’ (Salvador). However, interviews conducted in the years after the closure of Amawtay Wasi bring to light certain discourses and opposition that go beyond the obvious intellectual and political reluctance of the current government to maintain the Amawtay Wasi Intercultural University.     

Preliminary U-series and Thermoluminescence dating of excavated deposits in Liang Bua sub-chamber,Flores, Indonesia

We report the results of a test excavation of deposits in a limestone cave sub-chamber located beneath the main chamber of Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia; the discovery site of the small hominin species, Homo floresiensis. Well-preserved remains of extinct Pleistocene fauna and stone artefacts have previously been identified on the surface of a sediment cone within the sub-chamber. Our excavation of the deposits, at the base of the sediment cone in the sub-chamber (to 130 cm depth) yielded only a few fragmentary bones of extant fauna. Uranium/Thorium (U-series or U/Th) dating of soda straw stalactites excavated from 20 to 130 cm in depth demonstrates that the excavated sediments were deposited during the Holocene. Red Thermoluminescence (TL) dating of the sediments at the base of the excavation (130 cm depth) indicates these sediments were last exposed to sunlight at 84 ± 15 ka (thousand years), similar to red TL ages of cave sediments from the main chamber. Together, these results indicate that the surface faunal remains, which are morphologically analogous to Pleistocene finds from the main chamber excavations, were transported to the sub-chamber relatively recently from the main chamber of Liang Bua and probably originated from conglomerate deposits at the rear of the cave and from deposits around the front entrance. There is no evidence for hominin occupation of the sub-chamber, instead it seems to have acted as a sink for cultural materials and fossil remains transported from the surface via sinkholes. Despite the small number of finds from the test excavation, it is possible that more extensive excavations may yield additional transported cultural and faunal evidence at greater depths.     

Furry families: making a human–dog family through home

The last fifty years have seen dogs increasingly drawn into the home as family members. While the health and social implications of these relatings have been the focus of much research, the everyday practices by which more-than-human families are constituted have received little attention. The paper draws on interviews with, and diaries recorded by, new dog owners in 2006–2007. It highlights three ways that dogs became family in and through the home. First, describing dogs as ‘furry children’, participants emphasised the time spent caring for dogs. Second, engaging with dogs as ‘pack animals’, participants discussed an inherent ‘otherness’ that shaped family relations, and reconceptualised the human-family as a pack relation. Third, the individual agency of dogs was recognised as shaping family and home. However, these familial relatings were often tenuous as humans were faced with the particular character and ‘otherness’ of dogs. While the majority experienced a strengthening of family ties following the introduction of a dog, a number of individuals discussed the divisive impact of this experience. The paper extends debates about family and home, broadening family beyond biological relations to include more-than-human relationships forged through cohabitation and interaction.