‘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.     

Feminism and the Spaces of Transformation

Feminist political theory draws on particular spatial imaginations in elaborating a politics of transformation. This paper establishes this in relation to two familiar accounts of feminist transformation – those of Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray. Respectively I read their work as suggesting that transformation of gender relations takes the form of ubiquitous revolution, taking place everywhere, or a distant dream of an (im)possible future – elsewhere. The paper then turns to discuss the work of Julia Kristeva, often dismissed as not feminist and conservative. I read her work politically, within the frame of feminist theory. She offers a different, heterogeneous account of transformation, as both possible in the present and also limited by the existence and need for social and symbolic orders. In exploring the heterogeneous spatial imagination of her work, the paper suggests that the spatialities of abjection are diverse and productive. Abjection is not simply about devising territories and borders. Moreover, dominant spatialities cannot be described as simply masculine. Finally, drawing links with Lefebvre's account of representational spaces, I argue that Kristeva's work can be extended to inform our understanding of how spaces themselves can be transformed.     

The prediction of physique from the skeleton

This paper attempts to define the relation between (1) human skeletal measurements and (2) height, weight and physique indices. Admitted to the study were 686 men and women from five ethnic groups (White, Inuit, Gurkha, Bantu and San). In addition to height and weight, subjects had defined cranial and postcranial measurements taken using methods derived from clinical examination techniques. Measurements were checked for reliability. Skinfold callipers were used to allow for the thickness of soft‐tissues overlying bone widths. Adjustment factors were derived from radiological gold standards. Radiological measurements, adjusted for magnification, of the lumbar vertebrae from 42 subjects were also done. A correlation matrix was constructed for the complete study population and all variables to allow a preliminary assessment of useful predictive independent variables. Discriminant scores for classification by gender were calculated. Regression computations, using least square regression, were calculated for six defined reference populations. The regression residuals were examined to confirm fulfilment of assumptions. The results indicated that skull and dental arcade variables yield little information about the size and physique of an individual but have some relevance for group comparisons. Long bone widths are moderately and equally correlated with height and weight. Lower limb bone widths are better correlated with body weight than those of the upper limb. The best predictive variables for body weight are the minimal ‘area’ of the lumbar vertebrae (L1–L4) and regressions involving various bone widths. It is confirmed that height correlates well with the lengths of long bones, but the prediction is improved by the addition of a width from the same bone as a second independent variable. Lower limb long bones are not better predictors of height than upper limb ones. The body mass index is best predicted from the available measurements by a regression with the minimal ‘area’ of L1 and the tibial length as independent variables. A lumbar vertebra, particularly L1, yields important information about height, weight and the body mass index. The patella width is, in part, a marker for mesomorphy. Reconstruction of the ankle to enable the width across the malleoli to be measured would yield useful estimates of weight and height. The findings have been applied to the Paviland femur. A provisional male attribution has been made. The derived height is similar to that of tall modern White men. The physique was probably mesomorphic and ectopenic, the physique of strength rather than mobility, but the confidence intervals are very wide. To enable this sort of assessment to be made more confidently, the study requires replication substituting the precision of magnetic resonance imaging for the relative imprecision of skeletal measurements taken directly from the intact body. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The dental arcade and human morphology

Cranio-dental fossils are relatively common in the fossil record and this paper considers the question of whether the dental arcade can act as a predictor of hominid morphology. A method of measuring the catenary number of an arcade is also described and defined. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Political Forest in the Era of Green Neoliberalism

Nancy Peluso and Peter Vandergeest first used the term “political forest” to denaturalise forests, refiguring them as political-ecological entities. Across three moments of colonialism, post-colonial independence, and counter-insurgency struggles, they analyse how states in Southeast Asia (re)made forests as a means of territorialising power. More recently, they identify a fourth, contemporary moment characterised by the entry of diverse non-state actors into the making of forests, and a shift in the rationalities and technologies of forest management. We label this fourth moment “green neoliberalism” to identify an era of global environmental governance characterised by market-based solutions to socio-ecological problems, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration priorities, and new moral and scientific claims to forests spanning a variety of sites and scales. The papers in this symposium transport the analytic of the political forest to Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Madagascar, Singapore, and Thailand to examine how green neoliberalism’s discourses and practices have created new sites and expressions of territorialisation, governance, knowledge production, and subject formation. In doing so, they illuminate the multiplicity of actors (re)making political forests at a moment when forests’ virtues as carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots draw massive flows of capital and justify remaking socio-ecological relations across the globe.     

Southern Farmers and Their Stories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History

Melissa Walker, an associate professor of history at ConverseCollege, author of All We Knew Was To Farm: Rural Women in theUpcountry South, 1919–1941 (Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2000), winner of the Willie Lee Rose Prizefrom the Southern Association for Women Historians, presentsan intellectual tour de force in Southern Farmers and TheirStories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History, part of the NewDirections in Southern History Series from the University ofKentucky     

The Right to a Nice Home: housing inspection in 1930s Stockholm

This article deals with how the authorities taught the Swedes to live and how Swedish citizens came to accept such an intimate encroachment in their private lives. Why did people accept these social experts of everyday life? The answer tells us something about modern society and modernity itself.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Stockholm had one of Europe's worst housing conditions, according to Swedish experts of the time. One-room apartments were the norm, even for large families. Not all buildings had running water and often several families shared one outhouse. At the same time, the idea that the home was the place in which the conscientious citizens of the future would be raised was introduced – in Sweden as elsewhere. Dwellings became part of the social question. Many people believed that a well-functioning home would improve other aspects of life as well: men would stay at home in the evening instead of going to pubs; women would do a better job of raising the children; and public health would improve. A neglected home was seen as a sign of the exact opposite; the right to a nice home turned into a duty to live well. As an extension of this idea, housing inspections became important processes in the effort to improve the lives of citizens. The inspections were carried out by municipal employees, who were expected to monitor people's everyday lives. They functioned as housing experts, but what did these social engineers actually do? How did they become housing experts? And was their encroachment into people's daily lives accepted by ordinary citizens?