‘You’re not big,you’re just in Asia’: Expatriate embodiment and emotional experiences of size in Singapore§

This article brings together work on privileged migration with critical geographical work on body size. In uniting these areas together I focus on the role of embodiment within expatriate experiences of migration to Singapore. I argue that despite a developing body of critical work on migration, this work has failed to explore embodied experiences of size. To counter this gap, this research demonstrates the importance of recognising how sized narratives and experiences are shaped through gendered migration and the need to explore the multiplicity of experiences of women in different places of the city. Drawing upon empirical research with expatriate women in Singapore I advance work within critical geographies of body size by presenting original work that challenges dominant and medicalised understandings of fatness as inherently bad. Furthermore, I contribute to the growing area of work that places emphasis on the subjective nature of size through recognition of work on migration. In this article, I explore how migration was embodied and discussed through size, firstly by looking at how women discussed losing their sense of identity. Secondly, the temporal and spatial embeddedness of size. Finally, how women rejected and resisted dominant discourses through humour and indifference.     

Honduran boys confronting adversity: urban multi-locality and kin mobilization

This article describes ethnographic research involving street children and child labor in urban Honduras. It is set in a context of deteriorating social, political, and economic conditions that has created an increase in child labor. However, the research findings have delineated that a growing number of children are choosing to work and live on the street to escape extreme poverty and hunger in their familial households. Despite the multi-local spaces they inhabit, they have been able to create unique non-kin relations while often maintaining family based linkages. This study, undertaken in two centers for boys in Tegucigalpa and Comayagua, Honduras analyzes the contextual dynamics and decision-making processes of Honduran youth regarding work and living arrangements in urban spaces.     

Iron Age people of Norway

‘Iron Age People in Norway’ is an interdisciplinary research project. The source material consists of archaeological finds of graves containing human skeletal remains. Archaeological and physical anthropological methods and data will be combined in analyses of the people, their living conditions, aspects of social organization and questions about ethnic groups, using a specially developed computer registration system and database structure. The in‐depth analyses concentrate on the five northernmost counties in Norway, while the catalogue covers the whole country.     

Statistical Network Analysis for Analyzing Policy Networks

To analyze social network data using standard statistical approaches is to risk incorrect inference. The dependencies among observations implied in a network conceptualization undermine standard assumptions of the usual general linear models. One of the most quickly expanding areas of social and policy network methodology is the development of statistical modeling approaches that can accommodate such dependent data. In this article, we review three network statistical methods commonly used in the current literature: quadratic assignment procedures, exponential random graph models (ERGMs), and stochastic actor‐oriented models. We focus most attention on ERGMs by providing an illustrative example of a model for a strategic information network within a local government. We draw inferences about the structural role played by individuals recognized as key innovators and conclude that such an approach has much to offer in analyzing the policy process.     

Gendering Border Studies

Scholars working in (post)colonial settings have called for more-than-human (MTH) and post-human geographies to shift their gaze beyond Anglo-European ways of knowing the world. In this paper I explore the opportunities for an MTH political project that works in solidarity with and learns from Indigenous communities. I begin by examining the considerable synergies between MTH theorists’ understandings of nonhuman agency and kinship, and the worldviews of Ngāi Tahu (a Māori tribe). I then examine how Ngāi Tahu have worked within a new water management regime in the Canterbury region of Aotearoa New Zealand to articulate a relational ethics with the Hurunui River. In navigating multiple tensions and advocating for the lively river, the political space of the new catchment committee was expanded to (begin to) include the river. However, non-Māori who attempted to describe an understanding of a river-kin were less successful. This unevenness, I argue, highlights the complementary contributions to be made by expanded theoretical engagements. In particular there are generative possibilities for MTH theorists to work alongside Indigenous communities, and carve political space for more people to advocate for a relational ethics.