China and world anthropology: A conversation on the legacy of Fei Xiaotong (1910–2005) (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Fei Xiaotong (Fei Hsiao‐Tung, 1910–2005) obtained his PhD under Bronislaw Malinowski's supervision at the London School of Economics in 1938. Of the 20 volumes of his completed works, two books are well‐known in the West: Peasant life in China, published in English in 1939, and Xiangtu zhingguo (1947), translated as From the soil by Gary Hamilton and Zheng Wang in 1992. As one of China's finest sociologists and anthropologists, Fei was instrumental in laying a solid foundation for the development of sociological and anthropological studies in China, and his work helped to influence China's social and economic development. This is a translated, abridged and revised version of a conversation originally conducted in English, but published in Chinese to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fei Xiaotong. Wu Zitong, the editor of China Reading Weekly, puts a series of questions to Gary Hamilton and Xiangqun Chang.     

The role of music in the development of children with Down syndrome: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Music is commonly used in special education to achieve developmental and therapeutic aims, often in people with special needs. The present article conducts a systematic review of results from previous studies that explore the role of music in the development of children with Down syndrome (DS). It analyses a sample of 19 articles, in English and Spanish, from several databases (ERIC, Scopus, SciELO, Dialnet, Web of Science, CSIC and Pubmed). The results show that music has positive effects in the treatment and progress of the four main areas of development (social-emotional, motor, cognitive and communication) in children with DS. Nevertheless, the review reveals a lack of detail in the methodologies used and in the specific development areas, which call for further clarification in future research. These aspects are discussed in order to gain more conclusive results from future studies.     

Investigating Dietary Variation With Burial Ritual in Iron Age Hampshire: An Isotopic Comparison of Suddern Farm Cemetery and Danebury Hillfort Pit Burials

The formal Iron Age cemetery at Suddern Farm, located near Danebury hillfort, provides a unique opportunity to investigate whether differences in burial tradition and ritual behaviour seen at the two sites are linked to access to food resources during life. We measured the carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios of 40 humans from Suddern Farm and compared this information to previously published faunal data from the site and human isotopic data from Danebury. Despite substantial variation in the faunal isotope signatures, the adult humans have notably homogeneous isotopic results, which are very similar to those at Danebury. This indicates that they had similar access to dietary resources, and supports other evidence for the interdependence of sites with regard to their farming practices. Any social practices that define groups within Hampshire Iron Age society at these sites do not seem to have had any detectable influence on diet.     

Waiting during disasters: Negotiating the spatio-temporalities of resilience and recovery

Always spatial, waiting time is the observation of past-present-future, and temporality is the condition of being bounded by time. Both are mechanisms of state governance that control how and when families recover from rapid-onset humanitarian disasters. Analysing these spatio-temporalities reveals how families leverage resources to engage in acts of resilience that challenge the state’s spatio-temporal control of recovery. A case study focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. We draw on qualitative longitudinal research to explore politicised spatio-temporal experiences of waiting for the state to fix public infrastructures; approve financial support; and provide access to affordable consumables—which all shape families’ recovery rates and pathways. Disaster-affected families do not passively wait for the state and often leverage their incomes and social networks to engage in resilience-based strategies that ease their everyday lives and enable recovery while waiting for the state. Waiting feels more arduous for families with fewer resources and when there is uncertainty about access to the state and how and when to begin certain recovery activities. Waiting in disasters can also provide space for collective socio-political practices such as community gardening to emerge in neighbourhoods. For researchers of disasters, this article highlights the spatio-temporal dimensions of grassroots resilience and the ways in which state power and citizen agency interact in ways that subvert state control of families’ recovery rates in heterogeneous ways. Research on waiting during disasters has great potential to inform and reform governance for resilience and recovery.