‘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.     

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.     

An exploration of regional climate change scenarios for Scotland

Based on a high resolution regional climate model (RCM) experiment, a climate change scenario for Scotland for the end of this century is constructed with the aim of exploring the added value of utilising a regional rather than a global model (GCM) for climate change scenario construction. Spatial variations in regional seasonal average temperature and precipitation change are analysed and the local response of ‘extreme’ weather events to climate warming is assessed using daily model output. The analyses suggest that in comparison with the GCM, the RCM does not provide fundamentally different patterns of seasonal climate change and daily weather response over Scotland, although it does capture more subtle spatial variations in these changes. The RCM also simulates more realistic daily weather events than the GCM, although the relative changes in the frequencies of daily extremes are not greatly different. However, with the limited length of the single model simulation analysed here, it is not easy to establish how robust and significant are the sub‐national patterns of climate response across Scotland. To improve the quality and comprehensiveness of regional climate change scenario information, a number of research issues remain to be addressed.     

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 Bronze Age landscape of the Bjäre peninsula,southern Sweden,and its relationship to burial mounds

Palaeoecological analyses from a small fen deposit, combined with pollen analysis from buried soil profiles under prehistoric burial mounds, have been used to investigate the timing and vegetation change associated with the Holocene development of a cultural landscape in southern Sweden. Traditional pollen analysis is complemented with plant macrofossil analysis and soil pollen analysis from within and in close proximity to the burial mounds in the coastal Bjäre peninsula, well known for its high density of well-preserved Bronze Age monuments. The vegetation development is linked to the construction of the burial mounds. A marked increase of cultural impact on the landscape is recorded during the Neolithic–Bronze Age transition and estimates of landscape openness suggest that by the onset of the Bronze Age, forest cover was only 20–40%, falling to 10% in the immediate vicinity of the burial mounds themselves. The coastal strip appears to have been affected by human activity to a greater extent and at an earlier date than sites from further inland in southern Sweden and the Bronze Age burial mounds were most likely designed to be visible in a largely deforested landscape.     

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.     

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?